A Step Too Far (29 page)

     The bus, full to capacity, sailed past their standpoint and Katrin’s displeasure surged anew. A low tut expressing her irritation, she began to walk away, hoping they would remain at the bus stop for another bus. She wanted to be alone to muse on that episode in Arthur Whitman’s office.

     ‘I were just about to get my coat and leave when there he was  . . .’

     Bubbling like a running brook, Becky’s account of her latest amours flowed on, she and Alice walking one each side of Katrin.

     ‘Eh Kate, I wishes you’d seen him, he looked so ’andsome.’

     ‘Never mind the way he looked, tell Kate what he said,’ Alice chipped in testily.

     ‘He said I looked real beautiful in my white dress, just like  . . .’

     ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Alice snorted, ‘Kate don’t want to listen to you goin’ on about how you looked.’

     How right Alice was! In fact Kate didn’t want to listen to either of them!

     Becky continued joyfully.

     ‘It were durin’ the interval, Earl took me to our special place and it were there after we’d . . .’ she paused with a sudden attack of shyness, but with Alice urging her on she continued, ‘Well, it were there Earl told me he’d been called in to speak with the Commandin’ Officer, that were the cause of him bein’ late gettin’ to the dance  . . . so that’s what I’ll become next month . . . a bride!’

     Like stones rattling against glass the words rapped against Katrin’s brain, slipping through her mental defences. The other two turned down Holyhead Road, leaving Katrin to make her way along Lower High Street, and she dug deep in her mind seeking the rest of what Becky Turner had disclosed.

     ‘
He’d been given permission to marry, but first a check needs be made back in the States, seems they ’ave to be certain all be the way Earl says it is. They ’ave to make sure he don’t already ’ave a wife!
’

     The trill of laughter suggested the absurdity of the very idea.

     ‘
Earl said that would take no more than two, maybe three weeks and then we will be married. I shall wear that white dress, and you two will be my bridesmaids.
’

     Becky Turner was to be married. In four weeks she would be left from Wednesbury!

     Crossing the almost deserted Market Place, Katrin’s brain thundered with the revelation. Becky Turner would be gone, so where would be Katrin Hawley’s revenge?

     Four weeks! So little time. Would it be enough to make Becky Turner pay that long-held debt?

     Maybe now was the time to have Mary Turner learn of her daughter’s carryings on.

     She would have preferred something more damning, something that would follow Becky Turner through life as that prison sentence would always overshadow Freda Evans.

     Think! Katrin’s brain stabbed its own command. There has to be some  . . .

     Half formed thought and breath were lost in the gasp of pain and fear as Katrin felt herself hurled viciously against a wall.

26

‘Now if this ain’t my lucky night! Never thought to get what I wants so easy as this.’

     Winded, her sight fuzzy from knocking her head against the brick, Katrin fought to stay back from the brink of the void waiting to swallow her.

     ‘Y’ should ’ave walked by way o’ the town, there be folk comin’ and goin’ there, too many for me to go takin’ chances, but you chose this way and that be my good fortune.’

     Katrin would have fallen had not hands caught roughly at her shoulders.

     ‘No, not here!’ A low and menacing laugh carried briefly on the empty street.

     ‘I ’ave a better place for you to lie down, one where we won’t be disturbed; there you’ll spread your legs an’ I can take time to enjoy what you ’ave to offer, but then,’ the laugh sounded again, ‘offer be the wrong word since you don’t be gettin’ no chance to refuse.’

     The bite of cold night air or the gentle drift of snowflakes touching her face? Katrin could not tell, but suddenly her mind was sharp and clear. Slater!

     ‘You refused an offer once afore, one which were made civil an’ polite. But the one makin’ it were not grand enough for the hoity-toity Miss Hawley to be seen along of! Well, this time he’ll be takin’ no refusal.’

     ‘Wait.’ She eased her head back from alcohol drenched breath. ‘I realised later I had been hasty, I made a mistake.’

     ‘Too bloody true you made a mistake refusin’ of me, same as you made a mistake in gettin’ Jack Butler to give me a pastin’.’

     ‘That was none of my doing, it must have been Alice.’ She had hoped he would step away, but the grip on her shoulders remained firm, another cloud of alcohol fumes blowing into her face.

     ‘Don’t make no odds who done the tellin’ ’cos all three goin’ to do the payin’, that loud-mouthed Butler wench and the other one that’s always with her, they’ll get theirs. Oh, not both at the same time – that might give rise to question, no  . . . no,’ he smirked, ‘a bus . . . a dark night . . . a tragic accident . . . that poor Butler girl; then some weeks on the other one will be found floatin’ in the cut or mebbe her won’t be found at all, there be many a coal pit ain’t yet been sealed, her won’t be the only wench ever to go missin’ and the reason of it bein’ put down to a dissatisfied client not gettin’ all he paid for. And Jack! Money’ll take care of that problem; he’ll never use his fists nor his legs again. But first there be you  . . .’

     She must not antagonise him further. She must try to appease him, make him believe her truly sorry for her behaviour the evening he had invited her out.

     ‘Please.’ She forced herself to relax beneath his hands. ‘I’m sorry I was so abrupt, constant air raids and a heavy day at work had me on edge.’

     His grip lightened, his fingers no longer bit into her shoulder, but she must not move yet.

     Trying to close her nostrils against the assault of foul breath, she leaned her body into him, purring softly. ‘I was so tired, but I’m not tired tonight, maybe we could go now for that drink and then  . . .’

     She left it deliberately, a provocative worm to catch her fish.

     He snapped at the bait. ‘Then you can prove how sorry you be.’ Releasing her, he delved a hand into a pocket of his overcoat, bringing out an object wrapped in paper. Swaying uncertainly, he waved it in triumph. ‘Ain’t no need to go to no public house,’ he slurred. ‘We ’ave a drink right ’ere; it were meant for a customer but I reckons we’ll enjoy it more. Good old Johnnie Walker, he can warm the cockles of your ’eart and Jim Slater’ll warm the rest.’

     A lewd laugh mixed with the distant sound of traffic. No one had passed along this street from her entering it and it was highly probable no one would. Glancing at the Chapel rising dark at her back, Katrin cursed the luck which meant there was no service being conducted there. Deliverance had to be found!

     The gentle fall of snow had ceased and a high full moon spread its silver cloak. In its light she watched him tear the paper away and drop it heedlessly to the ground.

     ‘There, you get y’self a swig of old Johnnie.’

     He thrust the whisky bottle forward, his half stumble betraying an already over indulgence of whisky.

     ‘Go on, take a shwig,’ he slurred ‘then y’ can ’ave a good old shwallow of the other delight I’ve got for you.’

     Revulsion swept Katrin. His use of language was as odious as his person; yet pointing that out would serve only to revive his anger.

     ‘You first.’ Placing a hand on the one holding the bottle, she guided it to his lips, saying laughingly, ‘Call that a drink? I would have thought Jim Slater could do better than that.’

     ‘Better!’ He threw off her hand. ‘O’ coursh ’e can do better, Jim Shlater be better’n any man at anythin’.’

     Katrin watched the bottle lift, watched it press to his mouth, heard the noise of liquid gulping past his throat. He had taken the lure, but how to make certain he choked on it.

     ‘Thash,’ he grinned, ‘thash be takin’ a drink, now . . . hic . . . now it’sh your turn.’

     His speech was becoming more distorted, the sway of his body more pronounced, but he was not yet incapable of harming her.

     ‘One more for you, just a little one,’ she wheedled.

     ‘You . . . hic . . . you ’ave shome.’

     The bottle almost hitting her face, Katrin knocked his hand away. The sudden movement made him stumble forward and strike his forehead against the mounting block, moaning as he dropped to his knees.

     This was her chance, she could be safe at home by the time he recovered. But that would not prevent him claiming she had given herself willingly to him. How damning would that be in the eyes of Arthur Whitman? What chance would she have then of becoming his wife?

     Her mind ice cold, her brain perfectly in control, she bent to retrieve the broken bottle.

     She must not lose that chance.

     Weighing the moment, waiting until he was nearly to his feet, she called his name. Then, as he lifted his head, she stabbed the jagged bottle into his throat.

‘Mother took a faintin’ turn, the kids were cryin’ and dad, well we had to pull him off that copper afore he throttled the poor bloke.’

     Alice Butler was talking of the arrest of her brother.

     ‘The police knowed of that shemozzle ’tween Slater and our Jack.’

     Slater! Katrin’s heart leapt. This was to do with Jim Slater; was he alive? Had that broken bottle in his throat failed to kill him?

     ‘They knowed Jack had peeled Slater’s onions a while back.’

     Katrin’s fingers clenched white beneath a table in the refurbished works canteen. Did they also know who had tried to kill him? Would the police come here to the factory, arrest her with everyone looking on? Lord, why had she not stayed long enough to ensure he was dead? She had felt the bite of glass against flesh, felt it rip as she drove it deep, heard the choking gurgle of blood bubbling into the throat, had seen his eyes glitter in the moonlight as he had reached a hand to his neck; then she had run.

     ‘So they thinks it be our Jack has done this’n an’ all.’

     ‘The police, ’ave they arrested him?’

     ‘Carted him off this mornin’.’ Alice answered Becky’s concern. ‘Asked would he mind goin’ along to the station to answer some questions. Mind!’ Alice’s voice rose angrily. ‘O’ course he’d bloody mind, but objectin’ would make no difference, he’d still ’ave gone to the station, only he would ’ave gone in ’andcuffs.’

     The police had taken Jack Butler in for questioning. Katrin’s pulse beat like drums in her wrists. How long before they did the same with her?

Notepad on her knee, Katrin wrestled to keep from her mind thoughts of what she had heard in the canteen.

     ‘Katrin, are you all right?’

     ‘What? Oh, yes, sorry, I was miles away.’ Katrin glanced at her employer, his fingers fiddling nervously with a dark blue patterned fountain pen.

     ‘Katrin, I . . .’ Arthur Whitman cleared an imaginary frog from his throat, ‘I’ve been meaning to speak . . .’ the pen rolled across the desk, his fingers scrabbling after it. He began again, though his glance remained on the pen. ‘Katrin, about what happened between us, I’m sorry and very deeply ashamed, I  . . .’

     ‘Please.’ Katrin rose quickly to her feet. ‘It’s me should apologise, I was to blame for being so silly when those air raid sirens sounded.’

     ‘You were not being silly.’

     ‘I was,’ Katrin blurted. ‘There have been so many air raids, I should be used to them by now, but with my mother—’

     ‘I ought to have realised, but I allowed my own feelings to get in the way.’

     Soft curls swinging with the shake of her head, Katrin flashed a brief smile. ‘We were both under a lot of stress and I suppose we each looked to the other as a means of relieving it; what happened, happened and there is no way of changing that, so couldn’t we just forget about it?’

     The look of relief on his face was quickly dismissed, but not so quickly it was not caught by Katrin. Enjoy it Mr Whitman. Enjoy your reprieve while you may, for it won’t last very long!

‘I thought it might be less of an embarrassment if we spoke in your own home rather than the station.’

     It would be less embarrassing were she not ‘spoken’ with at all! Keeping the thought submerged beneath the briefest of smiles, Katrin led the way into the neat living room before saying, ‘That is very considerate but why do you need to speak to me at all?’

     The Police Inspector ran a finger around the grey trilby hat he had removed on entering the house before asking. ‘Is your father at home, Miss Hawley?’

     Katrin frowned. ‘I thought from what you said in the hall it was me you wished to speak with.’

     ‘That is correct.’ The man nodded. ‘But you are not yet of age, Miss Hawley, and therefore you need to be accompanied by your parents. The law, you understand.’

     Here was the opportunity to rally the composure this man had sent haywire. But she must not appear too confident. The tremble of a sob in her voice, she said quietly, ‘I’m sorry, my father is not at home and my mother was killed in a bombing raid.’