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Dead Run By Peter
Edington "Mr Walton, there's a
policemen to see you," the receptionist announced over the intercom.
“A Sergeant Burbidge.” Tom Walton recapped the
afternoon’s appointments in his mind. He
couldn’t think of a reason why the detective sergeant should be calling on
him, especially this late in the day. Burbidge
was a very determined policeman and he’d almost got the conviction against a
client in a recent embezzlement trial. But
that had been weeks ago now. "Thank
you, Polly,” he said, still puzzled. “Can
you show him up?” The detective sergeant, when he
followed Polly into the solicitor’s office, was short and overweight and wore
a beige mackintosh. He stood in
front of Walton’s leather-topped desk and said, “I wonder if you could spare
me a few minutes, Sir?" Tom Walton screwed the top onto his
fountain pen and laid it down beside his legal notebook.
He looked up. "Of course, Sergeant.”
He leaned back in his leather swivel-chair and said, "Please take a
seat. Now, what can I do for
you?" DS Burbidge sat untidily in the
chair and began. “We have been
approached by a Mrs Dorothy Brown, an employee of yours, concerning alleged
discrepancies in the accounts relating to clients' monies."
And then Walton knew exactly what this visit was about. "Really, Sergeant?” he said.
“Well you'd better tell me about it." * Alone at last, the solicitor sat
and thought about what the policeman had said.
He levered himself up from his seat.
It was late. He crossed to
the Georgian windows of the office and looked down onto Birmingham's empty,
rain-slick streets that glistened in the light of the neon shop signs and
suddenly he felt very cold. Of course, DS Burbidge had been the
right track. Almost forty thousand
pounds was missing from the firm’s accounts.
Thirty-seven thousand, to be exact.
Presumably, Dorothy Brown, that efficient, grey-haired book-keeper, had
discovered that much. Hence, of
course, the visit from the policeman. Walton
lifted his gaze and stared at his reflection in the black rectangles of glass
that rattled chillingly under the onslaught of an autumn gale.
There were lines around his mouth and his hair was beginning to turn grey
at the temples. He was now thirty-eight.
How many years had he been practising law in Birmingham?
Fifteen, or was it sixteen? Well, now it was over.
For generations, the rules
governing clients' accounts had been instilled into young articled clerks; the
penalties carved on their hearts. He
visualised a ritual where the name of Thomas James Walton, Solicitor, was being
struck from the Law Society Roll and his reflection smiled grimly back at him as
he remembered his old Law tutor's dry thin voice. "Half the buskers in London's Underground stations are
solicitors who played fast and loose with clients' accounts!" He turned from the window to look
round the expensively finished office. Mechanically,
he gathered the papers from his desk and put them in his briefcase.
Pillar of society today, down-and-out tomorrow.
He walked slowly down the stairs and let himself out into the cold blast
of the night. Walton pointed his BMW south, down
the dual carriageway out of town, wipers hissing across the windscreen,
headlights freezing jewels of rain in their brilliant path, streetlamps flashing
rhythmically through the tinted sunroof. He reached for the mobile phone and
searched for a number, eyes flicking between the handset and the road ahead.
A set of traffic lights turned red and he eased the car to a halt.
The phone was ringing and ringing as he stared vacantly into the night.
What choice had he had? The
question went round and round. He
looked to his right, as a car pulled up alongside him, and quickly hid the phone
when he realised he was looking into the face of a policeman.
The lights changed and the two cars moved off together.
Walton allowed the police car to get ahead, then put the phone back to
his ear. It had stopped ringing. "Hullo?" he said
tentatively into it. "Hullo," echoed a sleepy
voice. "Jenny, it's me." "Are you at home?" "No, I'm in the car.
Look, can I come over? I
need to talk." "It's nearly midnight,
Tom," Jenny said. "Won't
it keep?" "It's important," he said
and the habitual English understatement rang ironically in his ears.
Hell, important was seriously short of the mark. "Where are you?" she
asked. "By the Blues grounds.
I can be at your place in ten minutes." "OK," she sighed.
"I'll put the kettle on." As he negotiated the lights and
roundabouts of Birmingham, Walton's mind went back over the last few weeks - the
phrases the collector of taxes had used in his final letters … Appeal has
been dismissed … payment in full within seven days … warrant to seize
property … bankruptcy proceedings. Surely it hadn't been too much to
hope, a few days grace before bloody Dorothy picked it up.
Good old Dorothy Brown, the human bloodhound.
Damn! He banged the steering
wheel. Why had he employed such a
straight-laced book-keeper? Could
he stall the police for a while, tell them he was asking for copies of
documents, make out there had been some big mistake?
How many days could he gain, two, maybe three - and then what? Arrest? Indictment?
A trial? God, the police
would pillory him if they got him into court.
How many times had he made them look stupid in front of a jury? In sixteen years of law, Tom Walton
had defended hundreds of criminals but only now, did he fully understand the
shock of being caught. Only now,
could he taste the fear of watching the pulsing blue light of a police car sweep
across the ceiling and knowing there was no way out. He swung onto the ill-lit car park
of a block of flats in South Birmingham. The
fat tyres of the BMW crunched over broken glass as he slotted it between a Dodge
van with tinted windows and a burnt-out Ford with no windows.
A black cat stared implacably at him from the roof of the van while he
closed the car door. Was the cat a good omen, or a curse, he wondered as he
carefully set the alarm. The wired-glass door banged shut in
the wind when he entered the dark, concrete stairwell of Jenny's block of flats.
Much of his working life, Walton had spent talking to men and women in
the interview rooms of prisons, trying to understand why they did the sad,
desperate things that led them there. Well
now, he knew. As he mounted the steps, his thoughts went back to those
cells. The ringing of his feet on
the stairs echoed about him. Prisons
echoed. The bare stone walls echoed
so loudly you had to open the grilled windows in order to dampen the noise.
He turned the corner onto another flight of stairs.
The wire-guarded lights that glowed yellow at each landing emphasised the
inhumanity of the building and his pace slowed as he passed increasingly
grotesque aerosolled messages, wondering what crimes had been plotted from such
brutish surroundings. * Jenny Lindt opened the door of her
two-room flat. The short, tousled
fair hair made her face seem younger than her twenty-two years.
The long T-shirt, which was all she wore, hung off one shoulder, exposing
a tattoo above her right breast. She
had been in bed when he phoned. Jenny had spent enough years on the
streets to know fear when she saw it. She
had seen it on the eyes of addicts overdosing in tower-block squats and on the
swollen faces of her girlfriends, beaten by their pimps on the back-streets of
Birmingham. But she had not
expected to see it in Tom's eyes that night. "Christ, what's
happened?" she asked. He pushed past her into the small,
surprisingly tidy sitting-room. Jenny glared across the corridor at
an inquisitive neighbour and shut the door.
She turned to face him. Walton looked at the small tattoo.
It was less than two months since he had seen it first.
She had worked in a pub near the football ground, where he met other
respectable businessmen to discuss fund-raising schemes for youngsters involved
in football, like his sons. Her anarchic dress-sense had been
the first thing he noticed, that and the body piercing.
And her build. She wasn't tall, perhaps only five foot three or four, but
she was athletic with well-muscled shoulders under the spaghetti-strap T-shirt
she was wearing. He had learned
later that she made a religion, almost, of going to her Jujitsu training every
free night of the week – which explained the curious purple bruising he had
noticed on her forearms. This, and the penchant for spiked
hair and black clothing, had all seemed so much at odds with that delicately
crafted tattoo of a butterfly landing on the leaf of a tropical plant.
But it was aggression not delicacy
that had attracted him to her. Self-confidence,
her contempt for the values of a world that was, even now, coming apart for him.
That's what it was - the excitement of her challenge: I make my own
rules, who makes yours? At first it had been difficult to
get to know the private girl behind the façade: The girl who'd chosen to live
on the streets when she was fifteen, the age at which her younger sister had
died; the men she'd lived with - slept with - some more seriously than others;
Gary, the one who'd got her hooked on the drugs he dealt, and her time in drug
rehabilitation. More recently, he had seen the
sketches she made when she was alone. They
were good. She'd be happy at art
school, he thought, if she could be happy anywhere. "Tom, for God's sake, what's
happened?" She spoke again and
dragged him back to the present. He looked round the small sitting
room, with its strong colours and the sketch she had done of him, propped up on
the television, against a black candle. Where should he begin?
How could he tell her that everything she had imagined about him was a
lie? He sat down.
“I had a visit form the police, this evening.
I’m about to go down for theft." “Jesus, Tom,” she cried.
“How?” “I used someone else’s money to
pay my tax bill.” Jenny looked at him in disbelief.
Eventually, she asked the obvious question, “Why?” Why indeed.
“Because I had no choice?” he said.
“Because I’d run out of better ideas?”
He raised a smile at the old cliché.
“Because it seemed like a good idea at the time?” The girl still watched him
incredulously and he sighed. “Angela
owes me a load of money from the divorce. She
was supposed to have sold the house by now and I was going to get half the
equity, what was left after she’d paid off the mortgage,” he elaborated.
“There was a bid on it months ago and she told me it had all gone
through. I should have got the money last month. If I had, I’d have been laughing, but she wasn’t telling
me the truth.” He shrugged.
“She's always been good at lying to me.”
He shook his head. “And so
I used someone else’s money and now I’ve got the police all over my back.” “Whose money have you used?”
Jenny asked. “A client’s.” “Christ, Tom!
Couldn’t you have just told the taxman to hang on?” “What, tell him I was waiting on
some cash from my wife?” “Well, yes,” Jenny said and she
nodded. “I did but I think he’d heard
that one before. He told me to
raise the money or see him in court.” “And couldn’t you raise the
money?” “Forty grand?” Jenny considered what forty
thousand pounds might look like and said, “Shit. Did you tell Angela you needed the settlement?” “Oh, yes.
She said she was very sorry to hear I was having difficulties and put me
on to her solicitor.” “Who said?” “That when the house was sold,
he’d make sure I got my share.” “Well, surely if you’d told the
taxman that, he’d have given you time to pay.” “He’s already done that,”
Walton sighed. “This all started
months ago.” He took a breath.
“To be fair, he’s been trying to help, but can only go o far.
I got a letter last week saying pay up or face bankruptcy.
He was going to pull the plug next week, Jenny.
What more could I do?” He
swore, quietly. “I should have
let him get on with it, just close me down.
It would have been better than this.”
He lifted his hands in despair. “But
I thought I could keep the firm going till Angela came through with the cash.
If I ended up bankrupt, I’d lose the practice.
Everyone would be out on the streets.
Jesus, Jenny, I couldn’t just let it all collapse, so I wrote a cheque
on the Client Account.” “Which is…?” “The Client Account?
It’s a separate bank account where Solicitors keep other people’s
money. You know, stuff we’re
holding on their behalf. Proceeds of house sales,” he smiled grimly at that,
“deposits, settlements, that sort of thing.” Jenny nodded and was silent for a
while. “You’ll get Angela’s
money in the end, though?” she asked and Walton laughed unkindly. “Oh, sure.
In the end, but it’s a bit late, now, isn’t it?”
God, he was tired. He rubbed
his eyes and stood up. "So now
I’ve done the deed. Technically,
it’s theft and a short, balding detective from Digbeth Police Station wants to
know what I’ve done with the money. Dorothy
Brown invited him in to look at my accounts, bloody woman!” “He came today?” “This evening.” “Why didn’t he arrest you?”
Jenny asked suddenly. “It’s a big thing, nicking a
solicitor,” Walton said. “He’d
need to be sure he’d got his facts right.
No, tonight was more of a fishing trip; see how I’d react.
But next time…” Walton shook his head. “Next
time it’ll be the thumb screws down at Digbeth Nick.”
He’d spent enough time representing prisoners on remand to know that
you could spend months inside, waiting for a trial date. "Can't you just pay it
back?" she asked. "Carry
on as though nothing has happened. Say
it was all a mistake." “If I could, I would.
But then, if I had the money to pay it back,” he argued logically, “I
wouldn't have needed to use the Client Account money in the first place, would
I? Anyway, paying it back won’t
change PC Plod’s opinion. Theft
is theft. You can’t undo it just
by handing back the cash. Even if
you could,” he added, “the Law Society would never forgive and forget.
They get quite shirty with Solicitors who help themselves to client’s
money, even if it is in a good cause.” It had taken less than ten minutes
to tell Jenny all that had been keeping him awake every night for a week, since
he’d got that letter. Ten minutes
to explain something so simple, and yet so utterly cataclysmic.
He was bankrupt and he would go to jail, despite the fifty thousand his
ex-wife owed him. If only he hadn’t made that one,
irrevocable, decision to write that cheque.
He was finished now, whatever way you looked at it.
By Friday the firm would be locked up, the staff would be looking for
jobs and he’d quite likely be on remand in Winson Green prison, awaiting the
trial. “You must have some money,
Tom!” she said but he just shrugged. “You tell me where.
I’d like to know. I’ve been trying to think where I’d find forty thousand.
The bank won’t play, my credit card doesn’t go anywhere near that
sum.” He poured himself a drink.
“If you think of anything, let me know.
I’m going to bed. It’s
been a long day.” Jenny combed her fingers through
her hair. She watched him walk
through to the bedroom. She thought
she'd found the man to take her away from the squalid world she inhabited, a man
who cared. Tom Walton had been that
man. Tom Walton, whose easy
self-assurance made the dreams he dreamed for her seem so plausible.
But no. She'd been wrong.
He was as hollow as the rest and suddenly it all seemed so bone-weary
pointless. Too much even for her
anger. "Why you, Tom?"
she asked the empty room. "Why
you!" * Later - much later - they lay in
the darkness of her tiny, freezing bedroom.
Jenny watched the shadows made by the city's street lights on the wall
and thought of all those things he'd half promised her and that she had allowed
herself to believe in. She rolled
on to her back and brought her knees up under the quilt. "Couldn’t you sell the
BMW?” She asked.
She knew he was awake. "Not mine.
It's owned by a finance company.” "The flat," she tried
again. "That'd sell for a
hundred grand, easy." "Jenny," he cried, “you
think I haven't thought of that? If
I could have raised some money against the flat, I would have done it,
wouldn’t I? It's mortgaged.
There's no equity in it. A
ninety-five percent mortgage, just like when I bought my first house at
twenty-five." He laughed harshly. "Only
this time, the building society thought I was a better risk!" "Come on, Tom," she said.
"I know you’ve got money." "Oh yeah?" he snorted.
"Tell me about it." She looked at him incredulously in
the half-light. "What about
the theatre in London? Those
tickets were over fifty quid, and the dinner in that restaurant in Soho and the
hotel. How did you pay for all
that?" "With plastic,” he
explained. “That's what I'm
telling you. I might have some cash
in the bank, but if I do, it’s only because it's the beginning of the month.
I run out, just like you do." He
threw back the quilt and pulled on some clothes.
Her flat, with its threadbare carpets and draughty metal-framed windows,
was icy cold. He started pacing the
small bedroom, tracing her line of thought.
Was she right? Was there
something he’d overlooked? She pulled the bedclothes round her
shoulders. "For God's sake, Tom, your
place stinks of money! There's the
stereo, the antiques. God, the
furniture alone must be worth thousands!" "Not mine!
It all belongs to the banks or Visa.
That’s how you do it these days. You
don't really own any thing. God
forbid!” He turned to face her.
"Come on, what do you actually
own, here in this flat?" She looked around the darkened
room, visualising her possessions. "Not
a lot. The TV, the stereo, some
CDs. And I bought the car last
year." Walton laughed for the first time.
"You do? Well that's
better than me. Here am I, Tom
Walton of Walton and Co, Solicitors; with the grand office in the middle of
town, all chrome and tinted glass; and the latest DVD system in my flat; seen in
all the best circles and I don't even own my own car!
Damn it, Jenny, I couldn't put my hands on enough money to pay the lease
on the BMW for three months if I lost the practice."
He stopped. "Which I
will. Even if I could pay the money
back, the Law Society will close me down. I'm
finished as a lawyer. And the
police will have a field day. The
courts get really excited about bent solicitors," he turned from her,
"like to make an example of us. I’m
facing two years at least and a job as a shoeshine boy, when I get out.”
He thought for a moment. “The
maximum for theft is five years, actually." "And what you did really is
theft?" she asked. "Yes.
But what difference does it make? The
taxman was going to close me down next week anyway if I didn't pay him.
I was stupid to think I could get away with it.
It was the wrong decision, I know that, but I didn’t expect Dorothy to
pick it up this quickly." He
sat heavily on the edge of the bed and sank his head in his hands.
"Damn her!" He
looked up into Jenny’s eyes. "You
know what really makes me angry? I'm
actually quite a good lawyer. I've
spent years building up a practice with a good reputation all over the West
Midlands and now Angela and the taxman and Dorothy Brown have done for me.
Jesus, if I had been a bad solicitor, I wouldn't have had such a
ridiculous tax bill. Thirty-seven
thousand pounds, it's madness!" Jenny watched him.
"Poor Tom. What will happen to these clients, the people whose money you
used, will they just lose it?" she asked. "God no," he cried.
"The Law Society takes money off us every year as an indemnity, a
sort of slush fund against bent lawyers! The
clients will get their money back - in the end."
The girl asked, "So there'll
be no little old ladies, taking to the streets to earn a living then?" "No, of course not." She slipped from the bed and pulled
a candlewick dressing gown over her T-shirt. It reached to her feet, which she quickly slid into a pair of
slippers. "What are you going to
do?" She spoke as she moved
through to the kitchen and filled the kettle.
"Will you go in to work tomorrow?” Walton propped himself against the
kitchen door-frame and watched her move around her flat.
It was nearly five o'clock. Three
hours and he would have to be back in the office.
If he didn't show, alarm bells would ring in Sergeant Burbidge’s head,
and he’d be collected and banged up without his feet touching the ground "I’ll have to go in, in the
morning,” he said. “I thought
I’d get Dorothy to dig out all sorts of records, pretend there's been a
mistake somewhere. I told Burbidge
I’d see him again on Wednesday and explain everything." “But you can’t explain it, can
you?” Jenny asked desperately.
“You’re just going to hold your hands up and say it’s a fair
cop, aren’t you?” Tom Walton looked down into the
face of the girl who embodied so many of the changes that had taken place in his
life over the last couple of months: meals he no longer ate by himself in the
flat while his wife and sons lorded it in the Victorian mansion he used to own;
smoky jazz clubs and fringe-theatres that were way below Angela's dizzying
intellectual heights. And there was
the unceasing delight in her company ‑ like the feeling he'd thought would
last throughout his marriage, but which had evaporated so utterly and in so
short a time. And now it would all
end. He’d lose her. “You can’t just let them lock
you away, Tom!” she said. “What choice do I have?”
He was past caring. He was
tired. The nightmare had come to life and he just wanted the
roller-coaster to stop. “You can fight it!”
Jenny insisted. “Too late.
The cheque’s there, in the cheque book.
Thirty-seven thousand quid.” Jenny Lindt rounded on him.
“So that’s it? You’re just going to give up?” “Find me an alternative.” Suddenly she was standing in front
of him. "All right, I’ve got
an alternative. Leave the country.
Grab what you can and go. Disappear
just like that…" she searched her memory for a moment, “like that Lord
Lucan did. Never be seen again." "Hell, Jenny," Tom
whispered in disbelief. "I
can't do that." She held her arms out wide,
surprised that should he have trouble with the idea. "Why not!” It
was so obvious to her. "Your
clients get their money back from your Law Society, you said that.
The taxman has got his money, so I say screw them.
Screw the lot of them." "Nice idea, Jenny but I
can’t do that." "Why not?” “For one thing, Lord Lucan had
some heavy friends. It’s easy to
disappear when you’ve people like that putting up a smoke screen for you.” “Well what's the option?
Prison? You go to prison,
you go to Brazil. Come on!
Surely that’s a no-brainer, Tom. Take
the money and run!" "There is no money," he
replied angrily. "And anyway I
can’t.” She cocked her head on
one side. “What about my sons;
the people at the office; the creditors.”
She waited. “I can't just
walk away from a thing like this – I can't just run off and hope it will go
away." "That's bollocks," she
declared. "The boys will just
have to live with it. It's too late
to think about them, now. Whether
you're in jail or in South
America, Angela will marry someone with money and the boys will forget about
you. They won't want a thief for a
father when they could have an accountant or an estate agent!" The truth hurt but she waved aside
his argument. "Face it, Tom, it’s true.
If your dad robbed little old ladies, you’d do the same thing.” “I didn’t rob any little old
ladies!” he cried. “Whatever,” she said.
“They won’t want their friends at school giving them a hard time any
longer than they have to. And as for those poor sods at the office that you're so
worried about, how many years do you have to pay their wages before you don't
owe them anything? You worked
till ten and eleven every night, they didn't.
You're the one who made the running.
You've looked after them, Tom. History.
Now they'll just have to look after themselves.
They'll get over it. Life's
like that. Some days it's good
other days it sucks. Think of
yourself, now Tom. Everybody else
does!" "No, Jenny!”
Walton cried. “I can't just walk away from it, I have to face it.
I broke the law and I have to face the consequences.
This isn't television, Jenny, this is the real world!" "And that’s what people do
in the real world, is it?” she cried. “That’s
bollocks! And what am I supposed to
do while you’re in prison? Am I
supposed to wait for you? What
about all that stuff you promised me?” She
was in front of him, driven by the anger of her dreams betrayed.
“You’re full of bullshit, Tom! You
don’t know anything about the real world.
I've been living in it since I was fifteen!
I've begged on the streets till I couldn't beg any more, then I took the
easy option. I’ve stolen bags,
I’ve stolen food, I’ve stolen money for the drugs that bastard Gary got me
on to. Christ, I've even screwed
guys for the money to pay the rent on this rotten, cold, stinking flat. I know about the real world, Tom!
You don’t." She sank back against the table,
shaking, and pointed a hand at him. "Jesus,
I thought you were different, Tom. You
were the lawyer. You were going to
take me away from all this, remember? And
I was stupid enough to believe you. To
believe that - just for once - somebody would keep their promise to me. But it was all crap, wasn't it?
Like this I can't walk away from it stuff.
It’s what I've been fed all my life.
Except yours was twenty-four carat gold-plated fucking crap, wasn’t
it?" Tears welled up but she
thrust them back. "That's what made it so believable, you bastard!" No man had seen her cry since she
left home and she was damn sure he wasn't going to be the first.
"Give your self up," she ended suddenly and pushed past him to
the bedroom. "I don’t care
what you do, it’s not my fucking problem, is it?" Tom Walton was shocked.
He tried to remember what these promises were she spoke of and, all too
easily, the glib sentences came back to him, things he'd whispered as they made
love, extravagant offers he'd made out of the blue: to travel; to go to Greece;
to see the renaissance art of Italy; to send her to art school.
To get married? Had he ever
suggested marriage? He didn't think
so. And she'd taken it all at face
value, hadn't recognised any of it as idle dreaming. And why shouldn’t she?
Hadn't he already made some dreams come true with opera tickets and
London hotels? To her, he was some
kind of knight in shining armour who could carry her away from the life she'd
lived in Birmingham - an image he had basked in - until reality struck. Carefully, Tom Walton picked up his
watch and squinted at it in the half-light. Half past five. He
had let her down. "Perhaps
I should just go?" he asked quietly from the hall and she said, yeah,
perhaps he should. * Jenny was asleep when the phone
rang. Morning light filled her
bedroom She stumbled through to the sitting
room and dragged the telephone back into bed with her.
"Yes?" "Jenny, it's me, Tom.
Look, I'm sorry. I’m down at the Botanical Gardens. I’ve been thinking." The girl looked at her alarm clock.
It was nearly eight. “I’m sorry Jenny.
I didn’t mean to lead you on. I
really meant those things I said about travelling and seeing Italy and all
that.” There was a long silence
and she felt he expected her to say she was sorry too, but she wasn't. "Jenny?" "And?" she said. "And there is
money." "Good, you’ll be able to pay
the forty thousand back, then won’t you?” "No, not exactly." "Tom, last night you said
there wasn't any money and today there is.
What’s going on?" “I’ve realised there is a
way.” “A way to do what?” “To stay out of prison.” She waited. “Jenny, if I do nothing, I’m
going to jail. I don’t want that.
God knows, I’ve been foolish, but locking me up doesn’t change
anything. If I had to make the
choice over writing that cheque again, I’d choose differently.
But that’s history, now. I’m
outside the law and that’s an end of the matter.” In her flat, Jenny shook her head
and Walton went on, “Look, if I’m going to go to prison, I’m going to make
it worth my while.” “Tom, I don’t know what
you’re talking about,” she said in the silence that followed. "Jenny, listen, if we're going
to go to Brazil, we'll need cash." "We?" "Well yes, we, a
couple. Two people doing things
together - you know. From what you
said last night I thought that's what you had wanted." "Until last night, it was,”
she said. “But till last night, I
didn't know you were skint." "And that makes a
difference?” he asked. “Is that
what you're saying – you're only interested in me if I have money?" She sighed.
"No, Tom." "That’s what it sounded like
to me, Jenny." "That’s not fair!
I like you a lot, you know that. We
get on well and you're fun to be with." Walton added the unspoken but.
"But I've suddenly got no money." "It's not that.
You're one of the nicest men I've been with.
You took me off to London and did crazy things just for the hell of it.
You make me laugh. But crazy
things don't pay the bills, you can see that.
You ask me if the money's important and I have to say Yes.
Without money, tomorrow will just be the same as today.”
She took a long breath. “Tom,
I can get men without money any day of the week.
I've been there." "Yes.
I know that, but listen, last night when I said there wasn’t any more
money, I meant I didn’t have any, me personally.
That's not to say that there isn't money to be had.
There is, quite a lot of it, but it's not mine."
She was silent and he said in a rush, "There's probably three
hundred thousand left in the Client Account.
Now would that make a difference?"
She took a long breath.
"Are you serious?" "Never more so," he said.
"Look. I’ve already
broken the law. I’m going down if
they catch me. Where’s the
difference? Forty thousand, three
hundred thousand? It’s only a
question of scale." He waited
for some encouragement but none was forthcoming.
"Jenny, are you on for this?" "You could do this on your
own,” she said. “You don't need
me." "I do, Jenny.
I’ve lost everything. I’ve
spent fifteen incredibly straight, boring years chasing success.
And what have I found? It’s
a chimera. It’s as unreal as the
morning mist. I’ve wasted half my
life, Jenny. I don’t want to
waste the rest. Come with me. I love you. I
need you." "Tom, you don’t love me.” “I do!” “Jesus, we hardly know each
other." “We do. I know lots about you.” “No you don’t.” “I do, Jenny.
Yes, you’ve broken some rules, but so have I now!
The system let you down, so you said screw it.
Fair enough, who wouldn’t? But
you’re a damn-sight more honest than most of those so-called decent people I
mix with. At least you give a straight answer to a straight question,
like me needing money to be of interest to you.
Well, I can get the money. So,
will you come with me?” “Tom, God knows, there's nothing
for me to stay here for and you’re lovely, but what if it doesn't work out?
What if you decide you don’t like me after all, that I’m not
sophisticated enough for you, or you don’t like the way I live my life.
I wouldn’t be able to just hop on a plane and come back to England,
would I?” “Well, no, I suppose not.” She waited and at last Walton said,
"Come on, Jenny, what do you want me to say?
That we’ll be together forever?” “It’d be a start.” “Well, maybe we will but I
thought Angela and I would be forever and look what happened there.
I'm older, now and a bit wiser. No-one
can talk about 'forever' … " “Tom!” She stopped him. "Think
about what you've just said. Would you run away to Brazil with someone under those terms?
Come with me, I've got all this money but if we split up, there’ll be
no hard feelings. Just what am I
supposed to say to that? What do I
do when we do split up? Go work on
the streets of some South American city or something?
You’re still dreaming.” Walton thought very hard.
Was he? What had he offered
her? He went back over the
conversation. "OK," he
agreed slowly. "That's fair.
Then we split it fifty-fifty.” “Like that’s going to
happen!” she cried. “No. If it’s what you want, take it.
Have your own money, a hundred odd thousand. You can be free to come and go as you please, live with me or
leave me. I can deal with that.
Just let’s give it a try. Come
with me Jenny, please." There was a nervous laugh, “Half
and half?” “Yes.” “You’re mad.” “Maybe.” There was a long pause.
“When do you need to know by?” He thought about that.
How long did he have before the ceiling came crashing in on him?
Half a day? Three days?
He didn’t know. “Now would be good,” he
ventured. “And you can you really get hold
of this money?" "Yes, I think I can." “Fifty-fifty?” “Fifty-fifty.” There was another silence during which he could hear her
whistling through her teeth. "Oh,
fuck it,” she said at last. “Is that a yes?” he
asked. “Yes,” she said.
"Thank you," Walton
sighed. "Thank you Jenny.”
He laughed briefly, “And I thought leaving the country was going to be
hard!” She laughed too. “We should use your mini Metro,
if we can,” he said. “My BMW's
too ostentatious for a quiet exit." "OK," she agreed. "You remember, I got a new
front number plate for my car after that shunt on the motorway?
Can you just buy number plates over the counter somewhere?" "No sweat.” “Can you get me some?” “What for?” “I’ll tell you.
Where do you get them from?" “A motor factors, silly.” “Right.” He should have known that.
“Look, I thought you could take a look at that Rover dealership round
the corner from you, find a car like yours and get some plates made up with the
same registration number." She sounded perplexed but said
"Yeah, whatever you want." Now that it was time to act, he
wanted to get on with it. "Have
you still got your key to my flat?" She
said she had and he continued, "Good. Can you go round there and pack me some things." "God, Tom, what do you
want?" "Oh I don't know, Jenny.
You decide. Everything I
shall need for the rest of my life, but no more than I can carry on one
shoulder? Clothes, wash things,
whatever looks important.” He
paused. “You're sure you'll be
able to get those number plates?" "Tom, I can get the
plates." "Won’t you need some kind of
paperwork?" he asked. “Registration
documents or something?” "Depends how tight my jeans
are," she teased. "Oh yeah?" "Yeah!" she replied.
"You'd be amazed what my arse can get me!" Tom had to laugh.
"You are shameless, do you know that?
But I love you. Now, I've
got to go. Best be at my desk when
Dorothy arrives. I'll speak to you
around lunchtime. Wish me
luck!" He rang off. She looked at the dead phone.
"Uh, yeah," she said. "Bye
Tom," and dropped it on its cradle. * Jenny sat for a long time at the
kitchen table. Was she really going
to be rich? She dressed and began
to look around the flat trying to decide what she ought to pack for herself.
There was nothing she needed from this flat.
She could walk away. Leave
it - all of it. She had taken over the rent book,
the furniture, and even the right to say who slept in the bed, the morning Gary
had not come back from the hospital. Of
the rest, there was little that she owned and less that she valued, especially
today. What did she need from here?
Tom had said fifty percent of two hundred thousand pounds.
A hundred grand! In the
bathroom, she threw toothbrush, toothpaste and assorted bottles and packets into
a wash-bag, She levered off a panel at the end
of the bath and, kneeling down, reached into the damp, cobwebbed space, to
recover an old coffee jar. Unscrewing
the lid, Jenny pulled out a small roll of banknotes - her savings, a hundred and
ten pounds. She knelt, holding the
open jar, at the corner of the bath, remembering how, as a little girl, her
father had scattered cornflakes in a space like this to tempt back her missing
hamster and she had sat for hours in her night-dress, waiting for it to come
back. Eventually they had
discovered an empty nest of shredded paper, just out of her reach. Jenny thought of those lost days as
she put the lid back on the empty jar and placed it back under the bath. More slowly now, she went back
through the flat, picking things up and weighing them in her mind.
Perhaps there were one or two she would like to take with her; a
photograph of her parents, a picture she had been given by a girlfriend the day
she left school. She caught sight
of herself in the mirror. Her clothes seemed all wrong, so hard, and so callous.
What had happened to the little girl?
Where had she been all these years?
She sat silently on the edge of the bed.
She missed her sister. Why
had she left Becky alone like that, when she needed her so badly?
How could she have been so blind she didn't see what was going to happen? With a burning anger, Jenny
remembered the face of another man - the one who had pretended to be a friend
but who had destroyed her sister's life. She thought of her mother who she
hadn't seen for so long. She tried
to picture Tom's mother and father, who she had never met.
They would learn what he had done, why he had run away and they might be
angry or ashamed, but at least they would know why he had disappeared.
Her mother would never know. She
had never known about Tom. She
wouldn't be able to put two and two together, when she heard of the
disappearance of a bent solicitor on Central Television News.
She wouldn't be able to guess why her daughter had suddenly gone missing.
God knows what she would think had happened to her.
She would have visions of Jenny lying, buried under some freak's
floorboards. The girl stopped and
stared through the kitchen window at a plane full of holidaymakers that rumbled
into the clouds from Birmingham Airport. If
her mother ever did see her again, it would probably be under camera lights at
Heathrow, handcuffed to a Policewoman. Either
way, vanished or re-appeared, she would never see her daughter again as she did
now. Jenny searched for her address
book, but could not find it. She
called directory enquiries, for her mother's number and was just replacing the
phone when it burst into life under her hand. She jumped. Cautiously she lifted the receiver.
"Hullo?" she said. "Hi, it's me." "Tom, you scared me to death.
Is something wrong?" "No."
There was the briefest pause. "I
forgot to mention my passport. It's
in the desk drawer in my sitting-room. Can
you bring it too?" "OK,” she said.
"Desk drawer. Anything else?" "Don't forget yours." Jenny hesitated.
Passport? When had she ever
needed a passport? She decided not
to tell him and simply answered, "Sure," before adding, "Have you
thought how we're going to do this yet?" "I'm working on it," he
said. "Got to go." Before he could hang up she said,
"I'll be in at lunchtime. Call
me?" "Of course.
Bye." * "Get Lewis for me at the
bank," Walton called to his secretary when she came in at nine.
"I want to see him this morning, can you arrange it?" She brought him his coffee a few
minutes later and placed it carefully on the desk, by his elbow. "Mr Lewis says he can see you
at 11.30. He's busy, but can fit
you in for a few minutes." I
should bloody well think he can, Walton thought, after
all the business I've given him. "Thanks, Mary," he said.
"Ask Dorothy to come in, will you?" While waiting for the accounts
clerk to arrive, Walton made a couple of phone calls; one to a businessman named
Eddie Woo, the other call was to Enoch Hickman an ex-con, with whom Walton had a
long standing relationship, having been responsible, variously, for keeping him
out of prison or arranging for his sojourns at Her Majesty's pleasure to be as
short as possible. When Dorothy Brown arrived, he
gestured to the seat opposite. "I
expect you know I had a visit from the police, last night,” he said. The accounts clerk studied her
fingernails. “I must say, I think you might
have shared your concerns with me first,” he said and she looked into his
face. He thought he saw doubt in
her eyes for a moment but it passed. “It’s
all a mistake, you know,” he continued. “I’ve
asked Sergeant Burbidge to come back tomorrow afternoon so I can explain
what’s happened. He paused.
She was looking at her hands again.
“I’ll need you to get some stuff together, if you’d be so kind,”
he said with exaggerated indifference. “I'll
want a list of all the transactions made through the bank since, say, last June.
. File references, dates,
amounts. Who from, who to.
You know the sort of thing. I
must have them first thing tomorrow." As she left the room he called,
"Better make it since last April, the tax year end, just to be safe." "That'll keep you busy, you
interfering old bat!” he said to himself as he shrugged on his jacket.
He pressed the button on his intercom.
"I'm going out now, Mary. Back
after lunch. Tell Gerald to hold the fort.
He'll have to see Appleby for me at 11.45." |