Chapter 15
Alison Jenson was in bed when the Panda car pulled up outside of her house, as was her mother. The uniformed police woman kept knocking for some minutes until the upstairs window was eventually opened and Annabelle Courtney-Jenson's blonde head was thrust out, Annabelle always used both surnames with a hyphen to remind herself and the world of who's daughter she was. By this time the neighbours on both sides were at their windows watching the proceedings. Annabelle saw the uniforms and a look of dismay crossed the sleep puffed features. She stared down into the carefully neutral faces of Bob Evert and Mary Dunn.
“Oh no. What has the little cow done this time?”
Her head disappeared and the window closed. Thirty seconds later the door opened and the angry woman, who was dressed in a very thin lace housecoat that did nothing to conceal she was wearing only a pair of panties underneath it, appeared. Mary Dunn shot her gawping companion an amused look and bet herself a few bob that he would be holding court on this little story in the canteen at lunchtime. Both the constables were seized by the arm and dragged inside. Bob Evert resisted and Annabelle pulled harder.
“For Christ's sake, come in will you. I don't want everyone in the street to hear what is going on. Heaven knows they have had enough to laugh about lately.”
She turned her head and screamed up the stairs.
“Alison. Get yourself down here at once or I will come up there and drag you down.”
There was the sound of a toilet flushing and Alison Jenson appeared at the top of the stairs wearing only a very short “Baby doll” type nightdress and nothing else. Bob Evert stared up at the unhindered view of her bush as she stepped off the top stair and then hurriedly pulled his gaze away, only to find it confronted by one of Annabelle’s nipples that was now thrusting through one of the larger apertures in the lace of her housecoat. Alison reached the bottom off the stairs and swept passed them and into the lounge, smiling in obvious contempt at Bob Evert's acute embarrassment at being confronted by two half dressed women. The constables followed them in and Annabelle turned anxiously to them.
“What has the little bitch done?”
PCW Dunn glanced in amusement at her confused companion and took over. She became very formal.
“Alison Jenson. We are arresting you for the malicious wounding of one George Frederick Fairbrother at the Mecca dance hall at eleven thirty on evening of Friday 23rd September. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you. Do you understand the charge?”
The girl just curled her lip at them.
“You useless bastards wouldn't do anything and even my dad went soft after you lot had a go at him, so I did it myself. Now that bastard knows what its like to have something stuck into you when you don't want it. I am sorry I didn't kill him.”
She turned and pouted a smile at Bob Evert.
“Are you going to be sitting in the back with me to make sure I don't do a runner?”
Mary Dunn looked at the sweat on the other's brow and answered for him.
“I shall be in the back with you, Alison and I don't advise trying to do a runner.”
The girl looked Evert in the eyes and made a moue of disappointment.
“In that case I had better put some clothes on. I don't really fancy cuddling up to her in the back of the car.”
She swept out of the lounge and ran up the stairs leaving the two police officers looking at each other and shaking their heads. Annabelle Courtney-Jenson collapsed onto the sofa and reached for her cigarette packet.
Mitael Khorta was a worried and angry man because he didn't know where his car, gun and money were. He had made several arrangements before the Swindon job, all of them aimed at covering his back if things went badly. Went badly? That was a laugh. One old woman, one policeman and that stupid junky, Leroy, and the Walker twins, all dead and for a mere sixty thousand pounds. Shit! That wasn't worth leaving home for under those circumstances. He had always intended getting rid of the other three with the Semtex in the bottom of the sports bag, but that had been to take all suspicion away from him and give the police something to puzzle about and maybe even believe the robbery was the work of an IRA cell working on the mainland. But it wasn't supposed to end up with dead women and policemen strewn about.
He was also sorry that he had been forced to use Rachael in this business. It wasn't that she didn't know how he had made his money, but he had wanted her to only be part of the respectable side of his life, not mixed up herself in criminal activity. When the phone had rung that night while he was talking to that pig MacAllister and the other copper, the one he had downed with the kick to the balls, he had thought that it was Rachael phoning back to say where she had taken his car. That's why he had switched the volume down on the answer phone so MacAllister couldn't hear. Now the tape was missing from the answer phone and it could only have been MacAllister who had taken it. He would have listened to the tape by now and if it had been Rachael on the phone, found out where she had hidden the car. But if that were the case surely they would have been around for him long before this.
On the other hand, if it hadn't been her phoning him before MacAllister took the tape, then call was from someone else. Rachael would then have had to wait until at least early on Sunday morning before she could have got in touch with him or left a message, because that's when they had released him and he had returned home and gone straight to the answering machine only to discover the tape was missing. He had put the spare tape in the machine, but so far no message from Rachael. He rubbed his face with one hand.
He had close come to running when he found that tape missing. He felt sure it had contained a message from Rachael ringing to say where she had hidden the car and he felt equally sure they would play it and be back for him. Now over ten days had passed and nothing more had been said and he was beginning to feel safe from the law, but extremely anxious about his money. The thought that Rachael may have just upped and done a runner had crossed his mind more than once. He wouldn't be the first man to trust a woman he thought was in love with him and ended up with nothing. He gave that some more thought.
Rachael Kaukauna was a tall, graceful girl, so much alike to Khorta himself that they could have been brother and sister. They were from the same corner of Africa; and had met when she had come to England to study medicine. He had felt the need for a permanent woman for some time now. Time to settle down and start a family. Time to leave the past behind and get matched with a good woman.
His problem was that there was a distinct shortage of Somalian girls in Britain and although Khorta had never followed his religion closely, only going to the church for the weddings and funerals he couldn't avoid, he would only marry someone from his own general culture. It was true there were plenty of black girls in Bristol, but they were practically all West Indians, a race he considered to be without culture or breeding. It was his opinion that the only thing they had ever given to the world was Reggae and that was no gift. He wanted an African girl who was as tall and graceful as he was.
When a cousin had introduced him to Rachael it had been a revelation. She was beautiful, intelligent and very politically aware. Over the two years he had known her it had become understood within their community that they were betrothed. His family were delighted and felt that she would be the one to control the wildness he had always shown, although her family were understandably less enthusiastic. He smiled. When he had eventually told Rachael how he had made his money it hadn't worried her at all. She thought it right that they should be getting something back from this country that had played such a large part in influencing their own history in what she considered to be a detrimental way. However, he wasn't sure what her reaction would be to five deaths. He put the thought aside. Rachel would not desert him. She would get in touch soon.
He grinned to himself. That sergeant, what was his name? Sayers. That's right. Sergeant Sayers. He had been crowing when the forensic test showed that he
had fired a gun recently. But only until Dave Pike, his tame Bookmaker had arrived and confirmed that he had spent the previous afternoon shooting a .22 target pistol on the range in his cellar. His brief had arranged that for him and that made him worth every penny of the tear-jerking fee he would charge. Then they had made a song and dance about why had he assaulted a policeman and run away and in return he had made a song and dance about being afraid of being beaten up in the cells because he was black and knew that MacAllister had it in for him.
Next they asked him where his car was and he had told them that while they were harassing an innocent man some bastard was stealing the car from right under their noses. They had huffed and puffed a lot, but when his solicitor started talking about suing them for wrongful arrest they'd had to let him go. It would cost him two thousand pounds for Dave Pike's co-operation, but it was worth every penny. Which brought his thinking around in a circle. Where the hell were his car, his gun and most of all, his money?
He went to his writing desk and checked the international flight timetable to discover when Rachael would have arrived at her mothers house in the small village outside of Debre Marcos, about two days bus ride from Addis Ababa over some pretty awful roads. If she had caught the early morning flight on the Friday, as she planned, she should have been home days ago. He had tried ringing several times every day but the primitive telephone system in the country had always defeated him and he had waited for her to call him. Perhaps he should give it another try.
He put down the timetable and picking up his address book from the desk, found the number and then started on the tortuous business of making a phone call to Ethiopia that went farther than Addis Ababa. He got through to Addis after only three tries, which was something of a minor miracle. But from there he was outside of any automatic relay system and in the hands of the local operators. Three times he was left in silence for so long that he thought the connection had been broken again before yet another strange voice asked him what he wanted. Then at last he heard the faint ringing tone of a real telephone in a real house. The ringing stopped as the phone was picked up and a voice asked him what he wanted. He struggled a bit with the language, which he had learnt, but never really used since his first day at school in Bristol over thirty odd years ago and then he cursed the stupid bastard of an operator. He had the wrong number.
He was about to put the phone down in rage and frustration when he realised what the man on the other end was saying to him. It was the wrong number, but the right village. Rachael's mother's house was on the other side of the village. He asked if some one could go and fetch Rachael. In the ensuing silence he thought that the man on the other end had put the phone down in misunderstanding. Then a woman's voice spoke to him. She talked in passable English and asked him if he was a relative. Puzzled he explained the relationship. He and Rachael were engaged. There were another few seconds of silence and then he was listening to what she told him in disbelief. There would be no wedding. There had been a terrible accident. The bus had suffered a blown out tyre up in the mountains and had gone over the edge into a ravine. They were all dead, all of them. Rachael was dead.
He put the phone down while the woman was still trying to express her sorrow at being the one to give him the news and sinking down onto one of the sofas dropped his head into his hands. He couldn't believe it. His Rachael was dead. Only nine, no ten days ago, they had made love on the rugs in this very room. Now he had lost her and more to the point, his car, gun and money. It was a disaster. They could be anywhere.
He had told her to hide the car, then to ring him and tell him where it was and then post him back the keys by registered package from Debre Marcos. That way even if they arrested him and kept him for a week the keys wouldn't arrive until they had been forced to let him go for lack of proof. It would also make sure that if they picked up his mail while they had him under arrest they wouldn't find the keys and realise what had happened. Now, even if the keys did arrive unless there was a note with them that told him where the car was, he would be no wiser.
He had checked around the neighbourhood to see if he could find Rachael's car, but there was no sign of it. Not that it meant much. Any car left for two days with the keys in it would have been just begging to be stolen even in this area of the city. She might well have left him her car as arranged, but if some one had stolen it in the meantime it could be anywhere now.
He threw the address book across the room in grief and anger. Sooner or later some one would find his car and report it to the police who would see it was listed as stolen. They were bound to examine it inside and out and then when they found the gun and the money in it they would have him. He opened a draw and taking out a notebook and pencil pulled the yellow pages towards him and started to make a list of the entire car hire agencies in greater Bristol. He had to find that car before MacAllister did. And he needed wheels to do that.
Vengeance Page 15
