by Wendy Reakes
Steven Banks leaned down and squeezed himself between Katherine and Bridget, who was sitting to her right. “It’s going to be a good night by the looks of it, Katherine,” he said. “Are you sure you’re up to doing your speech?”
“Yes, I’m fine, Steven. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Well it is your night. You deserve the accolade, I’m proud of you,” he said patting her on the shoulder “Any idea what table Shelley’s on?”
“Somewhere at the back of the room.” Katherine raised her bandaged arm to point the way. “For some reason she changed the seating arrangements at the last minute. I thought you’d want her down the front here with you.”
“Yes, I know about that. It’s that new chap she’s seeing. I’ve never met him but I was told I probably wouldn’t like him.”
She laughed. “You’re too protective, Steven.”
“That’s true enough,” he answered. “I’ll see you later. Good luck with the speech.”
Steven Banks finally caught up with his secretary, Shelley Bride. “Why aren’t you sitting up the front with me?”
“My boyfriend’s a busy man,” Shelley answered. “He asked if we could sit back here so that he could nip out and take the occasional phone call. Had he sat at the front he could have disturbed everyone.”
“That’s considerate of him. So where is this new man?”
“Ah, here he is,” Shelley said as she stood to make the introductions. “Ben, this is my boss, Steven Banks.” She turned her body and linked her arm through his. “This is Ben Corner.”
Jack givesin his invitation at the foyer and went into the gents' toilets to tidy himself up. He was out of breath, exhausted even. That was one a hell of a day, he pondered as he tightened his tie once more. Pulling on his jacket he pushed open the swinging door and moved across the foyer to the rear of the ballroom. At the entrance he scanned the seating-plan resting on an easel, searching for Katherine’s table. Some of the women sitting at the back of the room turned their heads to gaze at him but he didn’t notice them. He was only interested in making his way to the front where Katherine was waiting.
“Jack, where have you been?”
He leaned down and kissd her and pecked Bridget on the cheek before he sat down.
“I just had some business to take care of. When are you doing your speech?”
“Just after dessert! Before the coffee.”
“Right! Look, Katherine, I want you to be on your guard. Keep your eyes open for anything strange.”
Katherine’s face dropped. “He’s here?”
Jack put his hand over hers resting on the table. “Maybe. Just be careful.”
Yvonne Warner slipped into the ladies' toilets when no one was looking. She locked herself into one of the cubicles until she was sure the meal was over. She hadn’t been to a thousand of these events without picking up a bit of knowledge. It was easy to get in once the meal was over. People wandered freely around the room, sometimes never going back to the seat they’d once occupied. No one would even notice her, once she was in.
The wash area of the toilets began to fill up with chattering women. The meal was finished and they were re-doing their lipstick. She slipped out of the cubicle to wash her hands. She was wearing black trousers with a black jacket over the top. No one would notice that she wasn’t properly attired. Earlier, hiding away in a cubicle, she’d simply removed her sweater and then put the jacket back on over her bra, revealing ample cleavage, as the gold chains around her neck dazzled.
As she washed her hands, a woman standing next to her began talking over her shoulder to someone behind a cubicle door. “He’s too fat….,” she was saying and Yvonne shivered when she heard the name.
She moved into the room, scanning the crowds. Looking for a face she knew she would never forget.
D.I Watts and his men circled the room, pinning themselves up against the walls at intervals, the wires from their jackets plugged into their ears.
Detective inspector Watts was not having a good night. It was the millennium and he’d rather be at home with the missus, than there, on a stake-out, searching for Frank Warner. The wife wasn’t very understanding, but he’d assured her he’d get back as soon as he could. And he’d promised to bring home a take-away. A curry!
Jack stoodup with disbelief written all over his face when he saw the Bentleys arrive.
“We’ve just had a hell of a time getting in, Jack.” Gordon Bentley said. “Christ, get us a beer mate, will you?”
“What are you doing here?” Jack kissed Alice on the cheek.
“Katherine invited us,” Alice said.
“Not for the meal, though,” said Gordon.
“She never mentioned it.”
“So where is our girl?”
“She’s just gone backstage to prepare for her speech.”
“Great!” Gordon said. “So where’s that drink, Jack?”
“Psst…” She heard her before she saw her.
She was just about to walk on stage when she turned to see Yvonne Warner at the side of the platform. “Yvonne. What on earth are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to warn you,” she said. “He’s here. Frank! He’s here!” Yvonne looked scared. Really scared.
“Where?” She glanced around the room. She knew when not to argue. Jack had warned her something may happen.
“I don’t know! I haven’t seen him, but I know he’s here.”
“How do you know?”
“I overheard a conversation in the ladies……some woman, complaining about her boyfriend.”
Katherine shakes her head. She didn’t get it.
Yvonne spoke as if every word mattered. “She said he was too fat. She said his name was Ben Corner.”
Frank moved from his table and left his ‘girlfriend’, Shelley Bride, behind. He’d instigated a liaison with her two weeks ago when she’d been on her lunch break in the Four Oaks pub. He’d told her he was a film producer and that he’d like to get her involved in his latest project. He’d told her he was doing some undercover research and needed to watch a millennium party in full swing, “Just to get some ideas for his new film,” he’d said. “Just tell everyone I’m your new fella,” he’d suggested when she invited him to go as her plus-one to their work’s do. “They’ll appreciate the charade when they see you in the movie in the summer,” he’d said. Stupid bitch!
He made his way through the people standing about talking, towards the still-room at the side of the ballroom. He had already seen Jack Taylor come in, and he couldn’t help smiling thinking of him waiting at Warner Street station with his mate Detective plodding Watts. He knew they’d come once they’d realised he wasn’t going to turn up and now he’s got them all there. Even Gordon Bentley! It was Bentley who’d stitched him up in the first place. It had all started going wrong around the time he'd bought the café for the Killa girl. It was all Gordon Bentley's fault. Frank had done alright before that.
He watched Katherine Killa walk towards the stage. It was time.
“You’re not supposed to be back here, sir,” one of the waiters said. Frank grabbed his arm and pulled the waiter towards him. Their faces nearly touch as their bodies leaned together. The waiter looked down as Frank silently stuffed a fifty into his hand. The waiter thought his numbers had come up before he walked blindly on.
The device was tucked behind the steps at the back of the stage. It was a small bomb, intended only to hurt the people sitting at the tables in the front of the ballroom: Jack Taylor, Gordon Bentley and the Killa girl. Frank had added in Detective Inspector Watts for good measure. He’d been trying to take Watts down since he began investigating Frank five-years ago. Now they could all die together. Or maimed! Frank wasn’t bothered which. He’d get equal satisfaction.
Frank pinned himself against the stone wall behind the door. He pulled a mobile phone from his pocket and he held his breath as he dialled 69, 69, 69.
The blast was loud and destructive. Over on
e-hundred people were injured, and, with much derision on Frank Warner’s part, only two people died.
Chapter 86
When the explosion subsided, Jack got up from the floor and brushed himself down. His ears felt as if he had symbols clanging in them one after the other. He was dazed, a little shocked, but the only thing he could think about, was Katherine. He saw Gordon brushing dust off his lapels and Alice, dazed by the blast, ironically trying to tidy her hair. The picture was surreal. People were screaming, running for the entrance and dust settled itself everywhere as chairs and tables laid randomly about the dance floor.
Jack searched for Katherine as the feeling of sheer dread tightened like a knot in the pit of his stomach. He looked in the direction of the still-room and saw Frank Warner’s head peep around the door, searching the room. Behind the door inside the ballroom, Brian Watts was crouching, leaning his back and his head against a wall for support. He had a look of shock on his face as he spoke into his receiver, alerting ambulances and crew.
“Brian!” Jack shouted. When he looked up Jack pointed towards the still-room door. “Warner!” he yelled, as he charged forward. Jack followed Watts as they chased Frank Warner through the vast kitchens at the back of house. Chefs, in their panic from the noise of the blast, were standing transfixed by the activity in their kitchen. Frank Warner fell first, and then D.I Watts fell on top of him as he wrestled him to the floor. Catching up with them, Jack puts his black Gucci clad foot over Frank Warner’s hand as he grappled for his phone. D.I Watts sat astride him as the officers manning the back kitchen entrance piled inside, taking the suspect from the floor in one easy motion.
“I got your girl though, Jack boy,” he said as they pull him away, dishevelled with his shirt torn across his chest.
Fear, mixed with adrenalin, surged through Jack’s body. He turned and ran back to the dance floor and all its carnage.
Shecan see Jack searching for her. “Jack!” She was crouched on the floor helping a woman who was lying at the side of a turned up table. Katherine had wrapped a white linen napkin around her neck, stopping the flow of blood coming from the cut behind her ear.
Jack pulled her to her feet and hugged me in a crushing embrace. “I thought…” He held her as if he never wanted to let her go. The felt good.
“I’m all right. I was on my way to the back of the ballroom with Yvonne to look for Warner. If it wasn’t for her, Jack, I would have been on that stage.” They both looked back towards the splintered wood that was once the podium, lying across the floor. “She’s dead, Jack. Yvonne was behind me and got caught in the blast. Her body shielded me.” Katherine thought about Ben and the mother he detested, the woman who’d saved her life.
One of Watts’s men walked past them. Jack caught his arm. “Was anyone else killed?”
“A waiter,” he replied. “He was just walking out of the still-room. We think he may have worked with the suspect.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Someone saw him with Warner, just before the explosion. He was coming out of the still-room when the bomb went off. We found a fifty-pound note rolled up in his hand.”
At ten minutes to midnight, after everyone had evacuated from the hotel, a group of people made their way to a bar across the road. It was Stephen Bank’s idea. He said they could all use a strong drink and since everyone had dispersed after the explosion, and as the police had sealed off every avenue in and out of Victoria, he couldn’t see why not.
Jack and Katherine, Gordon, Alice and Bridget, as well as another dozen people or so followed him across the road. All bar Shelley Bride! She had been taken in for questioning after someone recognised her as Frank Warner’s girlfriend. She was crying when they took her away, claiming she wasn’t really his girlfriend. She’d just helped him get in. “He wanted to do research,” she’d said “He just wanted my help to scout the room!”
“That was some do you invited us to!” Gordon yelled over the noise of the people in the pub partying to midnight.
Katherine leaned towards Jack and spoke in his ear. “I didn’t invite them. Alice told me they were going to The Ritz for dinner.”
“Warner must have set it up. It looks like he wanted everyone here who he had a grudge against.” Jack looked at Gordon sipping a pint of beer. “Might be best not to mention it. We’ll never hear the last of it.”
At a minute to twelve, the DJ announced the countdown of the new millennium. Some of the crowd spilled out onto the pavement, not noticing who got caught up in the tide of bodies. Everyone was dancing and shouting and singing, as Jack and Katherine got swept along with them. Jack put a protective arm around her, keeping the crowd from jostling her. He saw a gap just outside the door and pulled her with him to an outside wall, away from the mass.
Inside, the DJ counted; 6,5,4… Jack pulled her against his body and put his lips on hers. He kissed her…3,2,1…
At one minute after midnight he released his hold. Fireworks exploded above their heads as he looked down at her, still in his arms. “Now you claim to have been kissed through two centuries,” he said as he took her back into his arms and kissed her with a passion she had never known.
Epilogue
In Gordon Bentley’s mansion on the South Wales coast, Mrs. Garford heated a pan of milk on her stove. A quick glance at the clock above the back door told her it was way past her bedtime. Two o’clock in the morning! Well, it was the millennium, she pondered. Maybe one late night wouldn’t hurt.
When the milk was hot enough, Mrs Garford poured it into her Best Cook mug and gave it a stir. She ran the teaspoon under the cold tap and left it on the draining board, then, guided by the hazy blue light of the electric fly zapper, she pushed open the swing door.
She stepped back again when she heard voices coming from the hall. She allowed the door to close whilst keeping her foot inside the jamb. With her fingers around her mug, the cook peered through the gap to the grand entrance hall.
The Bentley’s had just arrived back from their New Year’s Eve party. Mrs Garford wondered why they looked so dishevelled. She watched them remove their coats.
“That was quite a night,” Gordon Bentley was saying.
“Yes, indeed,” Alice replied. “Thank God that dreadful man has been taken into custody. I never did like the sound of him.”
Mrs Garford raised her eyebrows as she took a small sip of her cocoa. She wished they’d hurry up and sort themselves out so that she could go to bed.
Gordon offered a solemn nod of the head. “Well, darling, it’s the new millennium. A brand new century and a brand new beginning.”
“I like the sound of that,” Alice replied. “No more drama please.”
Then the doorbell rang.
The Bentley’s stared at each other as if they were suspended in time. “Who could that be?”
Alice shook her head.
Gordon turned around and went towards the door. He swung it open.
Standing outside was Teresa, looking older but none the wiser. “Hello daddy,” she announced with a big smile. “I’m back.”
THE END
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