Embarrassingly I found myself blushing, something I hadn’t done since a teenager. I guessed she was in her early twenties. Her legs seemed to stretch up into infinity and her shoulder length hair was so thick and golden that it reminded me of a field of ripe corn. Despite my best efforts at self-control my body responded to three and a half years of enforced celibacy. I cleared my throat and tried to speak but the words wouldn’t come. If she noticed my discomfort she didn’t show it. Instead she smiled and said:
‘It’s incredible that there was once an Anglo-Saxon village here, right where we are standing.’
I think I mumbled something in reply, but wouldn’t swear to it. I felt like a bloody adolescent schoolboy.
‘I’m a historian,’ she added, apparently undaunted by my silence. ‘I get carried away sometimes, occupational hazard. I think I live more in the past than the present and that’s not very healthy.’
Tell me about it I thought, her words striking a chord with me. Had she just given me a message: stay away from the past, from Andover, or else? No, that was ridiculous.
‘Are you researching the church’s history?’ I finally found my voice. I was curious about her.
‘No. I’m writing a book about the Island during the Second World War.’
‘That shouldn’t take you long,’ I said jokingly.
The Island was very small, only twenty-three miles from east to west and just over thirteen miles from north to south. Its population of about a hundred and twenty thousand increased by many in the summer holiday season. I didn’t know much about the part the Island had played during the war, apart from the tales Percy Trentham used to spout about the radar station.
I hadn’t really been interested.
‘On the contrary,’ she said, ‘The Island is most fascinating and the past can often help us put things into perspective. We’re all so self-obsessed with our own petty problems today, and yet in a hundred years’ time we’ll all be dead and what we thought so important will be forgotten.’
‘It’s a point of view.’
‘And one you don’t share?’ She gazed at me curiously. I saw amusement in her sapphire blue eyes.
‘No,’ I replied. My problems were important now because I had to live now and not in the past or the future. Someone other than myself had rewritten my future because he had radically altered my past. I had to know why. I had to set the record straight not only for myself but more importantly for the future of my boys, and their children.
She looked as if she wanted to challenge me, but something in my expression must have made her reconsider.
Abruptly she said, ‘Well, I mustn’t disturb you.’
With a smile she was gone. The church felt cold and dark after she had left as though she had taken the sunshine with her. I closed the heavy oak door behind me annoyed with myself for being so inept. The smooth-talking easy-going Alex Albury had evaporated over the last few years, leaving a tongue-tied idiot in his place.
As I walked back across the marsh and through the woods to Bembridge I examined her words.
It was as though there were a subtext to her conversation. Was it some kind of warning? Or was I just being paranoid? I couldn’t be blamed for having a persecution complex. Perhaps she really was a historian and the meeting pure coincidence. I had to get a grip on myself. I couldn’t see suspicion everywhere I looked.
I had reached the airfield again when I heard the throb of an engine behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that a light aircraft was just coming into land. I picked up my pace. I had time to reach safety.
The aeroplane throttled back. I looked again in its direction, more anxiously this time. It seemed to be approaching with alarming speed.
I walked faster, but it was getting nearer. It was closing rapidly on me. Jesus!
I broke into a run cricking my neck over my shoulder. It was heading straight for me.
Couldn’t the bloody idiot see me? But then my blood ran cold, of course he could. I was the prey.
I swerved but still it came. The sweat was pouring down my face. My breath was coming in hisses and gasps. My feet were striking against the hard hummocky turf. Desperately I tried to keep my balance, the uneven surface jarring my knees and twisting my ankles. The hedgerow and safety seemed as far away as ever.
Suddenly the throb of the engine was in my ears, inside my head. It was so loud that it must be on top of me. I dropped to the ground flattening my face in the wet grass. It swooped over me with a roar, almost brushing my hair. I didn’t have a moment to lose, certainly not to lie here panting. I sprang up and tore across the remaining strip of grass.
The aeroplane was flying in the direction of the harbour across the bird sanctuary. It dipped its wings as it turned. It was coming back, but I would be out of its reach by then. Already my calf muscles were telling me I was climbing the hill to the windmill and safety. The pilot must have seen this because the aeroplane turned round and headed out to sea.
I walked quickly back through the village and along the Embankment, hoping I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. My head was spinning with what had just happened. Had the pilot intended killing me? It would have been a clumsy way to do so and would probably have resulted in his own death. I didn’t think even the most desperate of men would commit suicide over me. But why attempt to frighten or injure me? The answer was simple; it was a warning, just like that woman’s in the church. Forget the past. Do nothing and you’ll be allowed to live. But doing nothing wasn’t a choice I had. No amount of warnings was going to frighten me off. I had been out of prison less than twelve hours and already Andover was running scared. That was good.
I let myself into the houseboat feeling optimistic. Joe Bristow had been wrong. Andover hadn’t flown the country. He was right here in England, perhaps even on the Isle of Wight. Now all I had to do was find him.
CHAPTER 2
I rose early the next morning after a restless night. The houseboat had seemed eerily quiet; I had missed the sound of men snoring and coughing, the prison warders’ footsteps along the corridors, the slamming of doors and the rattling of keys.
I took a quick shower unable to adjust to the fact that I could stay as long as I wanted under scalding hot water. Then, after sitting with a coffee and watching the sun rise over the harbour, I stirred myself and took a long walk around the shore to Culver Cliff. Here I looked out upon the world. The sea sparkled and shimmered beneath me in the crisp, April morning, but instead of making me feel happy it had the opposite effect. My heart was once again heavy with the thought of all the mornings I had lost at the hand of Andover. I couldn’t feel at peace with myself. Andover and the poison of prison had seeped its way into my soul and had made everything sour. Time to do something.
The world would have woken up by now I thought, consulting my watch.
Bembridge library was open. The librarians were busy with a couple of grey haired women who looked vaguely familiar, my mother’s old friends I seemed to recall. I scuttled past them, my head low, cursing Andover silently for forcing me to behave like this. One day, I vowed, I would hold my head up high and not feel ashamed.
I looked up Clive Westnam on the Internet and found references in various articles to my court case and the embezzlement. There didn’t seem to be anything I hadn’t read before, and certainly nothing that wasn’t already in Joe’s reports, which I had studied again last night. The references seemed to stop about two years ago.
That had been when three judges had ruled that my sentence would stand. It was the second and final time they had refused my leave to appeal.
I found the Manover Plastics website and saw that Westnam was no longer its chief executive.
I was surprised. Why hadn’t Joe told me he’d left the company? His final report had been in January last year. Perhaps Westnam had left Manover after then. Where was he now?
I did a search for Roger Brookes. Again there were many references in articles to the fraud, all of which I had in my press cutti
ngs file, including the one that told me Brookes had sold his travel agency business to Sunglow almost two years ago. I could find no other reference to him after that. Joe had provided me with his address in Gloucestershire. I would check if he was still living there and then I would pay him a visit. It was against the terms of my licence but I had to chance it. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to go haring off to Gloucestershire without speaking to Joe first.
I found a call box. Joe’s secretary said he wouldn’t be in until Tuesday. Slightly irritated I rang directory enquiries and got the number for Manover Plastics. The lady in human resources said she had no idea where Mr Westnam was. I got the feeling that even if she did know she wouldn’t have told me.
I replaced the phone, feeling tension knot my stomach. The aeroplane incident had made me think that I needed to move quickly. Perhaps one of the business journalists who had written about Manover Plastics could tell me where its ex chief executive was, but I was reluctant to contact them. The first sniff of a story and my past could be emblazoned across the newspapers again.
There was no way I wanted that.
I popped into the newsagents and bought the local weekly newspaper. Idly I scanned it and then drew up with a start. Staring at me from the front page was the name of the man I hated almost as much as Andover: DCI Clipton. What was more he was dead. I couldn’t believe it.
Avidly I read the small stop-press article, ignoring the fact that I was standing in the middle of the pavement and people were jostling to get around me.
FORMER POLICE OFFICER FOUND
DEAD ON WIGHT LINK FERRY
The ten o’clock Wight Link ferry, St Catherine, was delayed for forty minutes yesterday when a man was discovered slumped over the wheel of his car on the lower car deck.
The captain of the vessel radioed the police and a doctor pronounced the man dead before cars were allowed to disembark. The dead man is believed to have suffered a heart attack and has been named as Michael Clipton, a retired police superintendent of the Hampshire Constabulary. He was fifty-eight, widowed with a daughter.
Why had Clipton been coming to the Isle of Wight? A holiday, perhaps? It could hardly have been to congratulate me on my freedom.
I couldn’t say that I was sorry he was dead; rather I was annoyed and disappointed. I had wanted to find the truth and shove it in Clipton’s face. I had dreamt of hearing his grovelling apology and seeing the discomfort in his eyes when he discovered he had robbed me of so much. I felt cheated.
I telephoned the newspaper to find out where the inquest was being held and at what time and then I called Miles.
‘Clipton’s dead. He was on the ten o’clock Wight Link ferry on Thursday.’
‘Christ! The sailing before mine. They said there was a delay. It’s why I was late meeting you.
How did he die?’
‘The newspaper says heart attack. I’m going to the inquest. It’s on Tuesday.’
‘You think there’s something suspicious about his death?’
I heard the surprise in Miles’s voice. ‘I don’t know.’
I rang off with the promise that I would keep Miles informed. Three days seemed a long time to wait, especially when I was itching to get to the truth, and someone had made it clear they didn’t want me to.
I collected my yacht from Ted’s boatyard, where it had spent the last few years on blocks, and motored it round to moor at the end of my houseboat. I was grateful to Ted for his complete lack of curiosity about my prison life. He greeted me like an old friend and not a pariah. A ray of hope flickered inside me that others might be as forgiving as Ted. Heartened by his attitude I plucked up the courage to call Vanessa, my ex wife. There was no answer. My initial relief quickly turned to irritation, and then bitterness when there was still no answer on Saturday and Sunday. I guessed that knowing I was being released she had taken the boys away for the weekend. She probably feared that one of the first things I would do would be to attempt to see them, despite the court order banning me from having contact with them. Well, that wasn’t going to stop me.
In between calls I went sailing. It was heavenly.
It almost made me want to forget about Andover, Clipton and my vendetta, but not quite. Each time I returned to shore Andover was still there on my shoulder like an albatross and joining him was Clipton.
On Monday morning I collected what was left of my mother’s personal belongings from her solicitor in Bembridge. William Kerry wasn’t as welcoming as Ted. I got the feeling that he blamed me for my mother’s death. I didn’t linger long in his office. I had let Vanessa sort through my mother’s possessions and decide what should be stored and kept for me on my release, and what should be discarded. I’d no option. It must have been painful for her, but not half as painful as it was for me locked in a cell unable to mourn openly, and feeling as guilty as hell over my mother’s death.
I struggled out of Kerry’s office with a large box and bumped right into Percy Trentham, one of my mother’s oldest friends and the village gossip.
‘It’s Alex, isn’t it?’ He peered at me from underneath the peak of a grubby white baseball cap. He was pushing a lady’s bicycle, complete with shopping basket, which he engineered so that it blocked my path.
I stifled a groan. ‘Hello, Percy.’
‘I hardly recognised you. Your hair is as white as mine. I suppose prison did that to you.’
Say it louder, why don’t you? They didn’t quite hear you on the mainland.
‘Heard you were out.’ He pulled at his right ear and sniffed. ‘Steven told me.’
How the hell did he know? Steven was Percy’s son and had been my childhood friend before my mother had sent me away to a private boarding school on the mainland for which Steven had never forgiven me. I’d lost touch with him for years.
I guessed now that everyone would know about my release. I would have to steel myself to meet a certain amount of hostility. If I had wanted anonymity I shouldn’t have returned here, but the houseboat and my yacht was all I had left.
Percy said, ‘It can’t have been easy inside for a man like you, used to the good life.’ A passing couple eyed us curiously. ‘Fair broke your mother’s heart. I can remember her saying just before she died –’
‘I can’t stop.’
I hurried home with a pounding heart, cursing Percy for his thoughtless words. If this was the taste of things to come then perhaps I had better move away I thought with bitterness.
I stepped onto my houseboat and caught sight of my neighbour hanging out her washing on the deck of her houseboat. I guessed she was in her late thirties, although I could be wrong, as her clothes defied current trends, but seemed to be a mix of fashion through the decades, starting with the 1960s. Her long, multicoloured hair was blowing unchecked across her face. I certainly didn’t recall her living there before I had gone to prison.
She looked up. Her gaze was unwavering. I smiled. She blanked me, picked up her washing basket and, turning her back on me, disappeared into her houseboat.
‘Well sod you,’ I muttered. I felt even more determined to prove to them all that I was innocent.
I steeled myself to look through what remained of my mother’s possessions. She had died in the December before last, from a fall down the stairs.
They had let me out for her funeral. I remembered it was a bitterly cold and grey January day. Vanessa had chosen the occasion to tell me she wanted a divorce. It still made my stomach clench every time I recalled it.
I found the official documents of the sale of Bembridge House, the deeds of the houseboat and other papers like insurances, a selection of my mother’s diaries – thankfully nothing spanning the months of my arrest, trial and conviction. I didn’t think I could bear to read that. There were a couple of photograph albums, and a sealed plastic bag containing some of her jewellery. It wasn’t much to show for a lifetime.
When Vanessa had cleared my mother’s house I was beyond caring about personal possessions. I would have sold
my soul for a chance of freedom.
A photograph caught my eye. It was of my mother crouching beside me, then a fair curly-haired little boy in dungarees; I was holding a small telescope to my right eye. Behind us was grandad’s folly in the garden of Bembridge House. My mother was pointing at the photographer, my father, I guessed. On the back of the photograph she had written: ‘Alex in the garden with his birthday present 1969.’ I was four and it was March. I threw it back in the box. It reminded me too much of everything I had lost, and of my sons, David and Philip.
On Tuesday I slipped in at the back of court number four in Quay Road, Newport just as the inquest on Michael Clipton opened. There weren’t many people there. A woman who I assumed to be the daughter was sitting in the front, with either her boyfriend or husband. I couldn’t see her face. She was dressed in black.
Behind them were a couple of men that I knew instantly to be policemen despite their not wearing uniform. On the other side of the aisle was a journalist with her notepad and beside her, in uniform, was presumably the captain of the ferry and a couple of crewmembers from the St Catherine. The doctor was on the stand.
I scoured the room for members of the Specialist Investigations Unit, but couldn’t see anyone I knew. Neither had there been anyone following me over the last few days. There had been no dark car with tinted windows and no more incidents on my walks. And I hadn’t seen the beautiful blonde again. Perhaps the aeroplane incident had just been some idiot having fun.
Perhaps the blonde really had been an historian.
Perhaps the car with tinted windows had been visiting Sam’s fishing business.
I turned my attention to the doctor as he told the coroner’s court that Michael Clipton’s arteries had been so clogged his heart attack could have happened at any time. Clipton had been on medication for high blood pressure for six years, which explained his red face as he had thrust it close to mine during his interrogations.
A crewmember told how all the cars had been vacant of their passengers and drivers, as the ferry had sailed out of Portsmouth at 10am, and again half way across the Solent when he had checked.
In for the Kill Page 2
