Deception and Desire (56 page)

The Fords lived in a small pretty house on the edge of town which was situated conveniently distant from its nearest neighbours. Clearly neither of the girls was now at home for as he watched the house Steve saw no one but old Ford and his wife, Joan, coming and going. Jodie must be away at college, he decided, and Lisa-Marie obviously had a place of her own with her husband. It surprised him how his gut could still tighten at the thought of her with someone else, but it only strengthened his desire for revenge. Steve returned to New York to make his plans.

A month later he was back. Very early in the morning he went to the Fords' house and knocked on the door. Joan Ford answered it, wearing a dressing gown over her nightdress and with no makeup to disguise the ageing of the features which had once probably been very like Lisa-Marie's. Steve, who was wearing a full-face crash helmet as an effective form of disguise, stuck a gun in her ribs and ordered her into the house. Old Ford was eating breakfast; when he realised what was happening he started shaking and blubbering and Steve experienced a surge of adrenaline and triumph.

‘Go to the bank and empty the safe,' he ordered. ‘Bring the money back here and give it to me. If you do, nothing will happen. If you don't – your wife gets it. And no tricks – right?'

‘What – now?'

‘No, you asshole – the usual time. Just make everything look normal. Do it, and your wife will be all right. But just remember I'm here with the gun looking right at her. Try any tricks and I'll blow her away.'

‘All right! All right! I'll do it!' Ford was gibbering. Steve felt nothing but contempt for him. He was certain Ford had not recognised him – the crash helmet concealed his face effectively and since Ford had seen him only the once, so long ago now, he knew it would never occur to him to connect the man now threatening him with the boy he had humiliated.

At the usual time Ford left for the bank, and Steve's only worry was that someone would notice something was wrong.

‘If anyone asks, say you have to come home again because your wife isn't well,' he instructed him. I'll be watching to make sure you are alone.' He saw Ford's eyes grow small and shifty in the sweaty face that was so reminiscent of the way he had looked that other, long-ago day.

‘You'll go away then – leave us alone?'

‘I'll take your wife with me and drop her off on the outskirts of town,' Steve said. ‘Just to make sure you haven't got the police waiting for me around the corner.'

When Ford had gone Steve prowled around the room, looking at the photographs, of Lisa-Marie and her sister as children, just the way he remembered them, but he made sure the gun he had brought with him was levelled at Mrs Ford in case she should try to get away.

‘Make us some coffee,' he said after a while. Mrs Ford went into the kitchen and he went with her, glancing at his watch. He had timed Ford's journey to the bank and back; he knew exactly how long it would take.

There was still a good ten minutes to go and he was drinking coffee in the kitchen, holding the mug carefully with his gloved hands and manoeuvring it beneath his helmet, when he heard the front door open. Instantly he was alert. He slipped back the safety catch on the gun, ordered Mrs Ford to stay where she was, and looked through the door into the hall. A young woman was unwrapping a scarf from around her neck; fair hair fell around her shoulders.

‘Hey, Mom!' she called. ‘It's only me!'

It was Lisa-Marie. Sweat broke out on Steve's face beneath the concealing crash helmet. What the hell was she doing here? This was something he hadn't reckoned on.

At that precise moment she looked up and saw him standing there – and she knew him instantly, crash helmet or no crash helmet.

‘Steve?' she said in a puzzled voice. Then her eyes fastened on the gun and widened with confusion and horror. ‘What are you doing?'

He knew then that he was cornered and there was only one thing to do if he did not want to wind up in prison. He would have to shoot Lisa-Marie and her mother, kill them both, because Mrs Ford was right there behind him and she had heard what Lisa-Marie had said.

‘Get in there, both of you!' he ordered, waving the gun at them.

Mrs Ford ran to Lisa-Marie, clinging to her arm and sobbing. With her dressing gown and nightdress flapping around her legs she looked pathetic and ridiculous. It would almost be a pleasure to put a bullet into her. But Lisa-Marie glared at him, her head held high.

‘You've gone mad!' she said. Her voice sounded just the same as it always had. Suddenly he was remembering the way her body had felt beneath his on the shingle all those years ago, and he knew he could not do it any more than he had been able to set the house on fire with her asleep inside. Funny how a girl could do this to him, make him hate her so much and yet, with a part of him over which he had no control, love her still.

‘Stay there and don't move!' he ordered. He backed along the hall, still pointing the gun at them. There was nothing for it but to get away now. The hell with the money. Then, just as he reached the door, he heard a car outside. Old Ford, back again. Perhaps he could still salvage something from this bloody fiasco! He drew back into the well of the hall and as Ford opened the door he was ready. Ford was carrying a black Gladstone bag; Steve guessed it held the contents of the safe. In one quick movement he snatched the bag from Ford and backed out through the door.

‘Don't do anything!' he warned. ‘The first one that moves, I'll kill you!'

But he knew he wouldn't – not if the one who moved was Lisa-Marie.

He ran down the path to where he had left his getaway car with the keys in the ignition, leapt in and brought the engine roaring to life. He was sweating all over now. He had the money, but they knew who he was. His only chance was to make his escape and disappear back into the teeming city. What a foul-up! He should have killed her – he should have! If it had been anyone but Lisa-Marie he would have. Now his plan was in ruins, his revenge soured, and he was on the run.

Steve did not get far. The Fords must have been on the telephone to the police almost before his car roared away, for he had gone only a few miles when he heard the sirens. He ducked and dived, he drove like a madman, the adrenaline honing all his natural and acquired skills, but when he saw the roadblock ahead he knew it was all over. Pointless to drive into them and probably kill himself doing it. Steve screamed to a halt, and when the patrolman came alongside he opened the door, took off his crash helmet and said, with great panache: ‘Yes, Officer? Can I help you?'

He was sent for a spell to New York State Penitentiary and it proved to be the turning point in his life. There were schemes for the retraining and rehabilitation of criminals and Steve was chosen to take part in one of them. Because he had always been a good swimmer and had all the physical and mental attributes considered necessary, he was selected to train as a deep-sea diver. The training was, he found, both absorbing and challenging, covering not only the techniques of diving but also underwater engineering, and the rewards promised to be high. This, perhaps, was a way he could make enough money legitimately to put his foot on the first rung of the ladder of success, and he could do it in some far-off isolated spot, where his record would not be known. Steve was not greatly ashamed of having tried to rob the bank; it was the failure to carry it off successfully that made him cringe.

On his release, because he had always fancied seeing Europe, he took up a contract with an international oil company, Excel Oil, who had massive operations in the North Sea. The bleak conditions there shocked him but the excitement of diving was still fresh and powerful and the promise of a great deal of money to be made was compensation for the biting cold, the long exhausting hours, and the absence of the three Bs – booze, broads and ballads. Ambition had resurrected itself within Steve during his time in the penitentiary – it burned now more fiercely than ever and he spent a good deal of time scheming.

Had he but known it, every one of those plans was superfluous. For in decreeing that he should find himself working on the Excel rig fate had dealt Steve a hand with a wild card in it.

That wild card's name was Mac MacIlroy.

Mac MacIlroy was one of the divers in Steve's team.

Steve's contract with Excel was for what was known in the trade as ‘ saturation-diving', which meant working two weeks on, two weeks off, in a team of three – two divers and a bell man. During the two weeks on the hours of work were long and arduous – twelve-hour stints of diving interspersed with living in the close confines of the recompression chamber; the two weeks off were spent ashore, sleeping, partying and often generally making up for the privations of life on the rig. In these claustrophobic conditions friendships were forged and enemies made. It was rare for the divers who worked as a team on the rig to see much of one another ashore, but Steve and Mac were an exception to this rule, though to all intents and purposes they were so different that their friendship was an unlikely one.

Mac had been brought up in Gloucestershire where his father was a much-respected solicitor. He had been educated at a private day school for boys but he had opted to leave at the age of eighteen and take an HNC in engineering rather than going to university.

After a few years working for an engineering company Mac had begun to be restless. He could see little future in his present job and since he had always been a keen sport diver he had decided to try to use his aptitude professionally. He had applied, and been accepted for, a training course at Fort William, and there, in the icy, pitch-black waters of Loch Linnhe he had learned to use underwater all the engineering skills that were his on land, and more. He learned how to use a thermic lance to cut steel under water and change massive bronze valves and how to check rig equipment and repair or replace it as necessary. He trained in the use of underwater explosives and there, in the deep hole in the floor of the lake, 450 feet below the surface, he discovered the kicks that came from doing a job that was both demanding and dangerous as well as skilful.

Mac was slimly built but strong, every inch of his five-feet-nine frame lean hard sinew. His hair was light brown, his eyes several shades darker. Like Steve he was something of a loner; unlike Steve he did nothing to try to disguise it. Whilst Steve presented a deliberately laid-back approach Mac was genuinely happier with his own company or that of one or two friends. He could not be bothered with forming superficial relationships, social intercourse bored and irritated him, and he preferred reading, listening to music or walking in the wild countryside to drinking and partying in noisy, smoke-filled bars. But beneath the almost gentle exterior there ran a vein of iron and another of fire. Few people had ever seen Mac's temper but it was there all right, slow to be roused but so explosive when it erupted that those who witnessed it never forgot.

He and Steve had only one thing in common, their Christian name – though it was years since he had used it. At his school the boys had still been referred to by their surnames and his friends had soon abbreviated MacIlroy to the nickname Mac. He like the name – whilst the Snottys and the Fatsos and the Weedys could hardly wait to leave their nicknames behind Mac adopted his and took it with him into the world. Only his parents called him Stephen now. To everyone else he was simply Mac.

Perhaps he and Steve would never have crossed over the boundary between comradeship and friendship if it had not been for something which happened whilst they were diving one day.

The two of them were checking out the equipment in the fathomless ice-cold water beneath the rig whilst the third member of their team, a cheery Cockney named Des Taylor, acted as their bell man, when Steve discovered a loose nut on one of the valves. It was a routine enough occurrence and Steve began to tighten the nut, bracing himself against the pull of the water by jackknifing himself into a crouching position with his feet pressed against the foot-diameter pipe. He had done the same thing many times before without mishap but this time something went wrong. As he put his weight against the massive spanner it suddenly slipped, crashing backwards and smashing into the mask of Mac, who was just behind his left shoulder. The mask cracked and instantly ice-cold water poured in, half blinding Mac as well as totally disorientating him. Air and gases streamed out from the fractured mask in a rush of bubbles and he floundered helplessly, knowing he had to regain the bell quickly or drown, yet unable to see which way to go and too shocked to be able to think clearly.

Steve acted instantly. He grabbed Mac, dragged him back to the bell and stuffed him, choking, through the hatch. Des pulled them in, closed the hatch and signalled for an immediate return to the surface whilst Steve tried to stem the bleeding from Mac's face, which had been injured by the force of the blow. It was a routine enough accident and working as a team Mac had not been in mortal danger, but it was enough to forge a bond between the two men.

When he had arrived to begin work on the rig Steve had taken bed and breakfast accommodation in Aberdeen whilst Mac, with his longer experience and stabler financial state, had rented a house. Now, when the latest stint was completed and the team went ashore, Mac suggested to Steve that he might like to move in with him.

‘Are you sure, pal?' Steve asked.

‘Sure,' Mac replied. ‘ The place is far too damned big for me on my own.' He did not add that he had always baulked in the past at the thought of sharing with any of the other men, who were liable to run wild and go on endless benders when they escaped from the rigours of life on the rig. But he knew Steve well enough to know that he was unlikely to behave in that way – though he did not know him well enough to know the dangerous secrets that lay behind that smooth exterior.

‘What the hell am I doing in a hole like this?' Steve asked irritably.