by Tim Heath
Brendan never told Tommy anything about Jessica, though he was there for him when the weekend was over, and it was clear that Jessica had gone. Tommy was further encouraged in his job, with more work thrown his way and before long he was into a rhythm of working long hours, seemingly ‘over’ Jessica, though Brendan avoided the subject with him whenever they met up, which was only occasionally. And so Tommy became another asset in the group, as had Jessica and Sophie in the past, along with many, many others. Tommy kept his head down, getting to grips with all that was put before him.
Robert walked into the kitchen as the small silver kettle whistled away on the gas hob, steam rising high into the oak beamed ceiling. Having woken up only about fifteen minutes before, he stood there in his dressing gown. The side door of the kitchen was wide open, the fresh air blowing in. Pouring himself a cup of tea, he went and stood in the doorway while the tea brewed on the kitchen worktop.
From the doorway, Robert could see sweeping yellow fields surrounding the house from the bottom of the small garden to as far as the eye could see. At the front of the house, either side of the mud track that formed the entrance to the house was farming land with grazing cows and sheep. The farm also had pigs and chickens, the eggs of which were usually for sale by the front gate. Robert would occasionally allow himself the treat but decided against it today.
Robert went back into the kitchen and taking the tea bag out of his cup, picked up the tea and took a sip. He hadn’t got any milk yet so drank it black, which was just about bearable at that time of day though he’d need to pop to the shop later to get the essentials.
Twenty minutes later, having showered and dressed, Robert left through the front door, closing it behind him and walked down the drive to the main road. As usual, he didn’t see anyone and those he did see would give him a friendly little nod and carry on their business. He was not a local but wasn’t a stranger either. This became a distinct advantage of village life and a perfect place to hide because any new faces poking around the area would soon arouse suspicion, word soon getting around. Not much remained a secret for long in the village, and such was the close-knit way of life.
“Good morning, Mr Sandle,” said Norman, the old man who owned the local and only shop around. Not a large building, it did manage to carry most of the main lines of products, its shelves stuffed with as much as they could take. Norman knew where everything was though, even if the customers didn’t, having worked there on his own for well over six decades.
“Good morning, Norm,” Robert replied. Norman never did like his name shortened but had let it go from the beginning and didn’t feel comfortable saying anything now, having known Robert on and off for several months since he first arrived in the village.
“Just down for a few days, are you?” Norman said.
“Yes, maybe a little longer this time, it depends really.”
“Want the usual then?” Norman said, moving away from the cluttered cash desk and already starting to collect together some bread, milk and meats as he was talking. Robert went over to the papers, of which there were only a few left, picked up a broadsheet and returned to the counter as Norman put down the basket, an assortment of various essentials stacked inside. Robert knew he wouldn’t need all of them, but custom must be slow in a place like that, and besides, he didn’t know how long he was going to be anyway, so he let him put them all through the cash till.
Paying up and leaving, Robert strolled back towards the house. In another life, in another time, he could just have stayed there, settling down. It was so quiet after all, so peaceful, a small piece of countryside trapped in its time-warp having been left much the same for the last one hundred and fifty years. At that moment in time the thought of settling down somewhere, with someone, brought a warmth to his stomach. Though not a large village, there were women that he could have seen himself settling down with, though he’d had very little to do with them to date.
In the distance, Robert could hear the odd piece of farm machinery working away, as life went by in much the same way as it had for years.
Things would change, they would have to change one day, and Robert was only too aware of it.
Getting back to the house, Robert opened the door, having a quick look back over his shoulder and into the surrounding fields, but only out of routine as no one would be there, not here, not without knowing what he knew and those that knew what he knew were very few indeed.
7
Jessica awoke slowly from her sleep, her phone vibrating with the alert of an incoming call. Rubbing her eyes gently she sat up on the sofa that she’d spent the night on, squinting to look at the time as the mid-morning sun came streaming through the windows. Three empty bottles of wine lay spread out on the coffee table, a plate and bowl next to them. Now fully awake she reached for her still vibrating phone. It was an old girlfriend she’d kept in touch with since youth, and they’d had reasonably regular chats down the years but not for a few months.
"Yes," said Jessica, trying to block out the severe pain that now racked her head from last night’s excesses.
"Jess, have you seen the news? It’s Tommy…,” Amy said. Jessica tensed at those last two words, preparing herself for the worst and not hearing anything that Amy went on to say. "Jess?"
"Sorry, it's just when you said his name I thought something bad had happened."
"No, I couldn’t believe it. Jack was watching TV this morning and called me in saying, Isn’t that Jess’ ex on the news!’ Have you heard from him?”
“No, of course not. I heard about it last night as well. Just seeing him made me so angry! Decided to drown my sorrows, what with that and the day I’d had.”
“I just don’t understand it.”
“Oh, it didn’t surprise me as he’d always been mad about football.”
“What do you mean it didn’t surprise you? He just used to work in an office for God’s sake!”
“Yeah, I know that it’s complicated. Listen, Amy, it’s great to hear you but can we chat some other time? I overdid it last night, and now my head is banging. Send my regards to Jack. Didn’t know you were still with him. Didn’t he sleep with that girl in his office?”
“Yeah, but that was only because I slept with his brother. It’s all forgotten now though! Nice chatting Jess, let’s meet up again sometime.”
“Sure, see you,” Jessica said, ending the call in the process. Spending an evening with Amy and all her problems was the last thing she needed to do at that moment.
Getting up and stretching, Jessica went over to the kitchen and took two tablets from the drawer, washing them down with a large glass of water. It was nearly eleven, and there were things that she needed to do. She went back to the lounge and cleared up the mess a little, moving it instead onto the kitchen worktop. Going into her bedroom, she pulled out a clean top from her wardrobe, together with a denim skirt, and stripping down to her underwear; she sprayed on some deodorant before re-dressing into the clean clothes. She checked herself in the mirror for a couple of minutes and five minutes later was off out the door, looking gorgeous as usual.
Simon Allen had spent the last couple of days working through the figures that Mary Ingham had passed to him. Needing some peace to start pulling all his research together, he had stayed at home that day, as someone in his position was entitled to do, so that he could spend it writing a report on his findings. Running out of instant coffee granules halfway through the day, for him an unacceptable failing on the shopping front, he’d collected up his papers and with his laptop had relocated to a coffee shop in town.
He’d told his assistant Terry what he was doing, and he was to let him know anything new that emerged. Simon spent all afternoon camped out in Starbucks, papers all over the small table, a pile of used mugs now starting to stack up. At that moment they got too much so that one toppled to the ground making a tremendous crash, pieces going all over the floor. A girl came running across to help clear things up just as his mobile phone rang.
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“Hello, Terry, anything?”
“Nothing new at this end. How are you getting on? What are you making of things?”
“It’s as I thought yesterday. Something is bizarre, maybe even very wrong. It looks at face value as if they only take on new cases which aren’t going to have a claim––thereby taking a nice premium for zero risk. Quite how this is worked out, I don’t know. But this, however, is what the figures say. Why they want to cover them up, I don’t know. I can’t see that there is any pressure put on firms not to claim though. I decided to call a few, and they’ve had nothing but positives to say about them, some of their clients didn’t even remember the name of their insurance provider, it was just the large annual bill that their finance department had to pay.”
“Have you got this in writing?”
“It’s just scribbled notes on napkins at the moment. I haven’t typed them on the laptop yet. As I like doing all reports on paper, I’ve been doing it the old way.”
“Have you let Mary know what you’ve found yet? I’m seeing her in a minute so can let her know a little if you’d like”
“Could you Terry, great, that would be good. I’ve not had a chance to speak to her yet, and she needs to see this. Something isn’t right. We might need to bring the police into this; I’m not sure. I’ve not come across anything like this before.”
Robert had woken early that day and had gone out for a run. He liked to try and keep fit and the fresh air in the country at that time of the morning, before the world was awake, was terrific. With it being the country, there were plenty of signs of life even at that hour, as the area was mainly farmland. They used the early hours of sunlight as much as they could.
Getting back inside, he took the calendar off the wall and laid it on the table next to his giant white notepad. Confirming that day’s date, he opened up his pad and scanned it, hundreds of messy entries that only he would make sense of, with dates next to most of them. Not seeing anything that was pressing he closed it and put it to one side. Picking up his tea, he walked to the kitchen. There he reached up on the kitchen cupboards and found a large key, which opened the door down to the cellar. Walking over to the door and pushing the key into the large lock that sat just under the handle, he turned it slowly, the sound of metal working against metal only too apparent. It creaked open as only an old, underused rotting wooden door could. A staircase sat beyond in the darkness leading down into the cellar. Robert reached for the light switch behind the door, light now flooding the stairwell from the bulb hanging loosely about a foot above his head.
Getting to the bottom of the fifteen steps he turned on another light, which illuminated the one main room. Being an old house, it had deep cellars, the head height at least seven feet. The room was cold and damp, boxes stacked up all over the place in an untidy fashion. On the far right corner, reaching to the ceiling and partly hidden behind a stack of four cardboard boxes, stood a tall covered object, the draped sheets, which were once white, covering it completely, the damp and dirt now turning them grey. The hidden object cleared the ceiling by only two inches and was about three feet wide.
Robert walked over to it, clearing away the boxes that stood in front. Taking hold of the giant sheets, he pulled down hard, bringing both sheets free from the object as they fell to the floor, landing in a pile. The revealed bronze sparkled in the light, though most of the metal was now somewhat tarnished, an indication that it was nearly as old as the house in which it stood. The sight of the giant bronze doorway-shaped structure always brought a buzz to Robert’s heart, a rush of fresh energy running through his veins once again.
Robert touched the right side of the door frame, the metal feeling very cold to his skin. Two inches wide on either side and one foot deep, he often marvelled at its creation, especially given its age and the obvious work that must have gone into it. Much of the object’s wonder lay hidden within the semi-hollow towers of the doorway, which supported the equally chunky top section. This bore the name WENTWORTH in raised letters clear to see, the name of the family that had first lived in the house.
Terry Goldman had been Simon Allen’s assistant for three years. He was a slightly chubby young man, who knew his way around a computer, as well as having a head for numbers and statistics. In public, he would not often stray from talking about just these two subjects. This made him quite hard work in social settings and together with his hygiene issues he was not a hit with the ladies.
Before working at the Department of Trade and Industry, he’d been an analyst at HICL, where, in the last few months of his employment there, he’d spent more and more of his time––too much––looking at indecent sites on the internet from his desktop computer. It wasn’t long before this was brought to the attention of Brendan Charles, who being aware of the issues, said that he’d take things on from there and would personally start watching Terry, building an idea of the guy before waiting for the right moment to strike. Not long after that, far more offensive images appeared on both his office and home computers, as Terry started getting into the more obscene material, his mind became sick with lust, each time trying to outdo his last fix.
Terry’s time had come, and Brendan made a big show of calling him into his office; Terry’s own desktop computer had been moved and was now set up and sitting there on Brendan’s desk. Terrified at being caught, Terry fell to his knees and just wept. He pleaded with him not to tell anyone about it.
Brendan played things out a little, having already thought through how he wanted to handle it, though none of it ever sat pleasantly in his memory, so troubled had he been by what Terry had been viewing. With Terry still on his knees but now in silence and just looking up at him, Brendan tried to remain calm though tension showed on his face.
“Do you have any idea what the other prisoners would do to someone like you, a pervert, at Strangeways?” he’d said. “Because that’s where you’re going to be serving your fifteen or twenty years.” He shook his head slowly, momentarily lost for words, which only added to the tension in the room as Terry looked on in horror. “I have to say that people like you disgust me. The thought that you can see anything good in those kinds of sites turns my stomach. It makes me sick! I’m a father too, you know.” Brendan turned away for a minute in order not to say the wrong thing, wanting instead to remain focused, as Nigel had asked him to be, already having agreed to carry out his boss’s wishes yet again. In this case, though, Brendan did not agree with him regarding Terry. Brendan took a breath before continuing the performance.
Turning the screen to Terry, he revealed the worst of the material now on his computer. Terry looked sick with fear, like a rabbit in the headlights of a car about to be run over, physically shaking from what was happening.
“I don’t...,” he said, but Brendan didn’t want to hear any of it.
“Please, save it for the judge, if it goes that far. They might just decide to pass sentence and lock you up for good. You are a sick, sick man!”
Terry was shaking more and more, large beads of sweat now pouring down his face, his shirt wet with sweat. Brendan only played things out for a little while more, but then getting concerned that Terry’s weak heart would give out on him right there in the office, Brendan changed tack and offered him a ray of hope, something he’d been asked to do all along.
“You know, I could just make all this go away, as long as you do what I say.”
The break in the tension was dramatic as Terry just looked up, hope now starting to appear for the first time.
“I’ll do anything you say, just make this go away! Make it all go away. Please don’t report me. I can’t go to prison, I just can’t...,” and he’d broken down again, staying on the floor weeping like a baby.
On he went, therefore, taking within a week a new role within the Department of Trade and Industry which Brendan had worked for him. He was his ‘sleeper’ there, as Brendan had called him. Terry just had to get his act together, put his past behind him and listen out for
anything that could threaten Brendan by passing the information along. And in return, Brendan would forget about those photos and save him. Of course, the threat always remained so Terry didn’t have any escape. In time he grew to like the job, though, and finally, after a few years, he had something important to pass on to Brendan.
Leaving a message on a particular voicemail service that Brendan had set up, Terry told him everything about what Simon Allen had been researching. It wouldn’t be long before Brendan would be made aware of the fact that he had a message. Terry just felt glad that he’d been able to help at last.
Business aside, Brendan valued nothing higher than his family and the time he was able to spend together with them. Having stayed at home that morning to keep some distance between himself and any unwanted press attention following the Forest takeover, Brendan relaxed with a large freshly squeezed glass of orange juice, just sitting in the conservatory at their Cheshire residence. His wife Catherine was pulling up weeds from the flower beds in their beautifully landscaped garden. His three children were possibly around somewhere, though it was getting to the stage when it was impossible to know where they were precisely at any one moment. In their twenty-two years of marriage, the thing Catherine had valued most was the way Brendan had always separated business from home life, almost protecting them from what he faced but also honouring them enough to be interested in what they’d done each day.
