by Sean Russell
The doorbell interrupted his thoughts. It must be Jade. She was early, but no worries, it was not as if he was busy. He had mixed emotions as he walked to the door. He had not seen her since the accident.
He was concerned and relieved and looked forward to actually being with her in the flesh as opposed to on the phone. He also had some unresolved anger issues, like how could she have been so stupid, and how could she have gotten into any situation with Jimmy Cadogan. Finally, he knew she was going to drill him on Amanda. To his credit, he had had no contact with Amanda after their evening tryst three years prior. It was an old, literally dead story. He knew that Jade would try him and convict him. As unpleasant as that was, it was better than facing real jail time.
Phil opened the door, and what he saw as the door swung open put him in a state of shock. There stood Amanda, as stunning as ever. Her skin was radiant, as was her smile, her teeth were flawless and framed by those sensuous lips which were perfectly covered with a lipstick shaded a red that set his heart in flames. Her fingers and toes matched for the complete effect. She wore a white skirt suit which was tailored to accentuate her figure, close-fitting but not tight, short but not slutty. This one was her own design.
Phil stood at the door staring at her as if he had never seen her before.
She shifted her weight from one foot to the next.
She was still smiling.
“Hi Phil, I know I’m wearing white but you don’t have to look at me as if I’m a ghost.”
“Hi.” He paused, still looking at her. “Hi Amanda, what are you doing here?”
“Standing in your doorway.” She was still smiling.
“I mean… you can’t be here.”
“But I am.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see you. I know you’re in trouble. You never answered my calls, my texts, my emails. I had no way of knowing what was happening with you, no way of contacting you.”
“Why didn’t you check at my office?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Huh?”
“You’re not at your office, are you?”
“Oh, I see.” Phil’s expression changed. “How’s Jimmy?”
“He’s fine. Had dinner with him the other night.”
“Had dinner with him or had him for dinner?” Phil said this with a sarcastic smile.
“Never had him, never will.”
“Enough bullshit Amanda. Why are you here?
Cadogan sent you?”
“No!”
“Haven’t you done enough damage already?
Cadogan used you to set me up!”
“I didn’t try to kill your wife!!”
“No, not that.”
“What?”
“Us. You and me that evening!”
“I didn’t tell Jimmy anything. That was between us.”
“You planned it with him. He gave Jade pictures of us.”
Amanda looked like she’d just got cramps. “He what?!”
“You heard me.”
Amanda was furious. Her face changed, but only for a moment. Phil wasn’t sure he saw it.
Then she recovered with a smile.
“Trust Jimmy Cadogan, he should have some good shots.”
She looked Phil up and down and at the front his pants. She bit her lower lip. Phil was not amused.
“So you set me up!”
She looked him straight in the eyes. “No I did not.”
Her eyes had welled up and a tear was streaming down her left cheek.
She leaned forward and kissed Phil full on the lips.
She turned around, walked off and drove away. Phil had no time respond. He was even more confused, and of course, as fate would have it, Jade’s car was coming up the driveway towards him. He was not sure how much she had seen. He wiped his lips. He was deciding how to greet her. He was not sure how to act.
He was afraid that his emotions would betray him and the joke was, he was not sure what his emotions were.
She gave him no time to ponder.
“Hi Phil, how are you?”
She embraced him. She smelt so good, so familiar, it seemed like an eternity since he had smelled her, seen her, touched her. He started to stumble, but caught himself quickly.
“I know I haven’t been in the gym recently, but I haven’t put on that much weight.”
She smiled. It was so infectious that Phil felt himself smile back and then he was grinning.
Soon he was laughing and laughing. It was almost hysterical. He looked at Jade. She was laughing too.
It was as if they were stricken by a bizarre defence mechanism to defuse the raging emotions they both were experiencing. It also bonded them.
“Lets go inside and talk, we have a lot to discuss.”
“Sure.”
They walked into the living room. Phil stood facing Jade. He put his hands on her shoulders and stared into her eyes.
“How are you Jade?” His expression was sincere.
“I’m fine. The question is, how are you?” Her face registered concern. She noticed that he had lost weight, but he was still a fine-looking man.
“I’ll be honest with you. I don’t know up from down. I feel as if I’m living a nightmare. It could not be worse if someone scripted it. All I need now is a health challenge.”
Jade flared up immediately. “Don’t even think that.
Kill that thought!”
Phil smiled wryly. “I know. I know. Positive thinking, laws of attraction, blah blah blah. Honestly. I feel like my brain has been fried to a crisp. This stuff has got me overloaded.”
Jade was sympathetic.
Phil continued. “I had no idea what I was going to say when I saw you. I didn’t know what you were going to say, what your attitude would be like. We’ve been through so much with no contact with each other and we are husband and wife living in the same country, together in the same house, with no problems. Then…”
Jade became agitated. “Hold up. No problems?” Phil realized where she was going. He looked like he just stepped in a pile of shit. Jade was getting more agitated and her voice became louder.
“No problems!”
Phil was dumbfounded. He had no way of denying the affair and he could not play off the timing. He had gotten a tattoo since his encounter with Amanda. He was sure from Jade’s attitude that she had figured out the timeline.
Jade tilted her ear towards him, holding her hand behind it.
“Beg your pardon!”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“What? Cat got your tongue?”
Phil did not answer.
“Yeah cat got your tongue, except it wasn’t my cat.
It was hers!”
Phil was starting to boil inside. He felt like a punk.
He would not normally allow Jade to handle him like that, but these were extreme circumstances. He had as much control of his emotions as a pet fish had over its aquarium. His last vestige of common sense told him to leave before he did something stupid. Her accusations placed him at the night when he got the email from Jimmy Cadogan, and the rage he felt made him want to kill.
He said nothing. He practically walked through Jade and picked up his keys. Before Jade knew it, she heard the roar of a powerful six-cylinder engine. It did not stop. It was only punctuated by the occasional screeching of tyres. It was an awful sound for Jade and she started to relive the accident. She lost her balance and started to fall. She caught herself on the arm of the couch nearby. She sat in the couch and breathed deeply. Then she started to cry.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Phil drove blindly. He had no idea where he was going. His eyes saw the road and allowed him to pilot the car at pace along the road and through the traffic. His conscious brain had little idea of what was happening in front of him. All he knew was that he had to get away. He just had to. He was going crazy. His next conscious thought was Why is everything upside down and what is th
is balloon doing in my face?
“Mr. Ferguson! Mr. Ferguson!”
Phil looked towards the voice. The image was mostly obscured by the stupid balloon. It was a uniformed policeman. He looked concerned, even upside down.
Someone is really screwing with me, Phil thought.
The officer pulled on the door. It did not budge. It was jammed shut. The car was a wreck. It was sitting on its roof which was slightly crumpled. The front was shortened by about two feet by the guard wall it encountered enroute to its present location. The right front wheel was some distance away, lost in a bush.
By the officer’s estimation, Phil had hit the wall doing over one hundred miles an hour. The car was airborne for maybe three seconds. Its body had rotated through the air, allowing the roof to face the ground and the tyres to face the sky. The car finally landed that way at the bottom of a thirty-foot gully. The good news was that the rear quarter of the car was undamaged.
The officer made calls on his radio. A crane would have to lift the car out of the gully. The jaws of life would be needed to get Phil out of the car. He suspected he would need an ambulance, so he called for one.
The process of getting Phil out of the car took three and a half hours. It was only when Phil was being lifted from the car that the EMT noticed that his left leg was rotated outwards and was shorter than the right. He had broken his femur. Phil did not feel the pain.
*****
Jade was not surprised when she got the call. Phil had left at such a speed that she was sure he was going to hit something. She was relieved to hear that he was alive and not seriously injured. She stopped being angry with him. She knew that Phil was a good man. His positive qualities far outweighed his shortcomings. She also started to feel upset that someone was not now just attempting to destroy Phil, they were succeeding. It was one thing that Phil’s environment was being ruined. It was another when Phil himself was losing his integrity, his ability to hold himself together, to maintain his principles and control of his emotions. It would not be long before Phil became a broken man. She did not even want to consider the prospect of him going to prison. Beyond the embarrassment and losing his livelihood, there was the loss of his freedom.
Phil was a very active individual who hated to be pinned down. He wasn’t the kind of person to relax and lay up. He was kinetic. How would he survive in an 8
foot by 8 foot cell? He would be like a caged animal.
Then there was the possibility, worse yet probability, that he would have a cellmate, or cell MATE! That thought made her sick. It was bad enough that he had an affair with a woman and that she found out about it. But this would pale in comparison with the situation of a man putting his hands on Phil. Ugghh.
She knew it could only happen by force. Phil would die before he would allow that. The thought made her feel sick and depressed.
She would go see him in the hospital. She was going to be a wife, not an angry victim. She was going to give him her full support. She was going to go all out to prevent him from going to prison. She would deal with everything else after.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Amanda was disappointed, and on more than one level. The more poignant disappointment was that Phil did not trust her, that he believed she had set him up. To be fair, she was a willing and not completely ignorant accomplice. She had hoped that his feelings for her would override his suspicions and that he would understand that she truly cared for him. Again, when she considered it, she’d had no opportunity to interact with him in an open and honest manner. That brought her to her second disappointment, she had hoped to create the opportunity to be open and honest when she visited him at home, but that did not work out. His wife still wanted to be with him. This brought her a deeper disappointment. Amanda was caught up on Phil. She could not muster interest in anyone else.
Why him of all people? Come to think of it, the Phil Ferguson situation was fraught with issues. Amanda settled herself. She had had many disappointments in her life. The good thing was that she had learnt how to handle them. She knew how to learn from them and move on. She thought of her friend who was arriving the next day. Jackie was always fun. Amanda told herself to focus on the good times she was going to have with Jackie and with Jimmy Cadogan. It was going to be a blast.
*****
“So wuh happen to you? You feel you is Lewis Hamilton?”
Phil lay in the hospital bed. He managed a weak smile for his friend’s twisted expression of concern.
That was typical of Teddy.
“You know your mistake.” It was a statement, not a question. Phil looked at his leg encased in a bright red fibreglass cast. His toes were pointing the right way now. Teddy continued. “Hamilton don’t drive a BMW, he drives a McClaren.”
“All this time I thought the M3 was a McClaren.”
“Fool, you should know better. And you know you can’t drive too pretty with that slow-ass car you got.”
“Slow? Hmmm.” Then Phil started to laugh—a full-hearted, belly laugh. Teddy always knew how to cheer him up. He was a good friend. Teddy was out of the island throughout Phil’s tribulations. He had left the day after he talked Phil out of attempting to kill Jade.
He had just returned home. He had to go see Phil.
“So what is the plan?”
Phil settled down from his laugh and got serious.
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t let Jimmy get away with this. You got to fight.”
“You think I don’t know that? What you think I’ve been doing? You know me Teddy. I’m a fighter.”
“Yeah, I know. But here is your problem.” Phil allowed himself a smile despite his frustration.
“I know, I know. I’m not Lewis Hamilton.” Teddy glared at him just for a moment. “I’m serious.
Listen to me. You know what your problem is?”
“The man is too well connected…”
“No.” Teddy moved closer to Phil so he was in his face. “Jimmy don’t play fair and you only know how to play fair.”
Phil looked back at Teddy as if to say ‘what you want me to do?’
“You play that man fair, he will destroy you every time.”
Phil looked at Teddy in protest, but he knew that Teddy was right.
“You got to learn to play dirty.” Teddy said this with venom in his voice.
Phil finally reintroduced his brain to his tongue.
“Teddy. I honestly don’t know how. I never came up that way. I don’t think I can be like that.”
“You better learn, and learn fast my friend. In case you didn’t realize it, your life is on the line.” Phil digested Teddy’s words. Then he looked as close to tears as Teddy had ever seen him.
“Teddy. Excuse me. I need to be alone now.”
“Buddy, I will give you your space, but I ent leffin’
you. I got your back, and I fightin’ with you ’til we beat this man. I goin’ show you how to be dirty.” With that, Teddy bounced fists with Phil and marched off.
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY
Your leave is approved.”
Mobert looked up at the face the voice belonged to. The statement was followed by the approval letter landing on his desk. His stomach churned with disgust as the implication of what just transpired became clearer. Mobert had applied for study leave for training at Scotland Yard. He knew his efforts had been stymied because of his personality.
He’d managed to have a conversation with Jasmine Gittens. She had filed a case of sexual assault against Jimmy, but the case somehow got ‘lost in the system’.
Mobert believed that the only reason she didn’t go missing was that she was a not too distant relative of the Prime Minister.
Mobert remembered the case because she had come to the station to kick up a stink about her case not being heard. She was so furious that she had to be restrained and was almost charged. In the end, an uncle came and took her away. Mobert found her phone number in
her files, which curiously only had that she made a complaint against Jimmy Cadogan which he had denied.
Mobert heard the rage in her voice when he reminded her about the case and he mentioned Jimmy’s name.
“You leave day after tomorrow for twelve weeks.
Congratulations.”
“Great…”
Though Mobert was grateful for the opportunity, the timing was absurd. He had planned to meet Jasmine, discuss her case and explore how he could begin to make this man accountable. He had applied for the leave eleven years earlier. All expenses would be paid for by the government. He had been frustrated for years, especially since over time he had seen other officers junior to him get approval for their leave. His personality dictated that he not let the matter go until there was a satisfactory end. He had last checked on his application five months ago and he had gotten the same tired excuse he always got: that it was being processed. Suddenly, it was approved, just like that.
And who should give him the good news but the Pastor?
Mobert did not believe in coincidences. He could not refuse the leave, it would be bizarre for him to do that. Furthermore, it would potentially put his job at stake. Much as he hated to see injustice take place in front his very eyes, he had a mortgage to pay and he had no desire to be anything else but a detective.
The pastor read Mobert’s expression. He wore a mischievous grin. All Mobert wanted to do was to slap the grin off his face. He played the scene through his mind. He would get up, and as he elevated himself, he would swing his right hand across the pastor’s cheek with enough force to land him on his ass. The look of shock as the pastor felt the pain in his cheek would be priceless. Mobert allowed himself a snigger as he finished his reverie. It eased the impotence he felt from being manipulated.
