Murder... Now and Then (29 page)

They had a meal at about six o'clock. It was probably the most delicious meal Judy had ever had, and she made a mental note to tell Michael that there was no way she would measure up in the cooking department. She managed not to say it in front of his mother who she was certain would have insisted on lessons. Later, Michael's father suggested the pub; Mrs Hill wouldn't be joining them because she wanted to see something on television.

‘Oh – a friend of mine at work has just bought one of these video tape-recorders,' Judy said.

‘Oh, yes?' said Mrs Hill.

‘You can record things when you're out,' said Judy. ‘They're very expensive, but he thinks the price will come down. He records old films – he's very fond of …' She tailed off. She was talking about Lloyd, of all people. She felt herself colour slightly. Oh, God, get me out of here, she thought.

‘Nice,' said Mrs Hill, encouragingly.

She had a cigarette in the pub; Mr Hill on his own wasn't just as daunting as both of them together. When Mr Hill excused himself to go and see a man about a dog, as he put it, Michael looked at her seriously. ‘You … you do like them, don't you?' he asked.

She nodded. In truth, there was nothing not to like, really. She just felt like a creature from Mars, that was all. And she didn't want to tell Michael that. They left the pub, arriving back at the house at ten. By half-past, Mr Hill was making time for bed noises. Judy was heartily relieved.

‘Oh, I haven't shown you your room,' said Mrs Hill.

Judy looked at Michael. Presumably he knew where his room was; surely this wasn't going to be what she thought it was going to be? They both followed Mrs Hill upstairs, and she opened the door to a little room with pretty wallpaper and matching bedspread. ‘This is yours,' she said pointedly. ‘Michael's across the landing, and Mr Hill and I are next door.'

Judy managed a smile. ‘It's lovely,' she said.

‘I think you'll have everything you need,' she said, and stepped back out of the doorway. ‘And I expect you two will want to say goodnight' she said, starting downstairs. ‘ We'll be up in ten minutes or so,' she warned them coquettishly.

Judy waited until the downstairs door had closed. ‘You haven't told them we
live
together?' she said.

‘Well … no.' Michad steered her into the little room and closed the door. ‘ They're old-fashioned,' he said. ‘They wouldn't understand. They'd think you were no better than you should be.'

‘Oh, Michael! I haven't seen you for a month!'

‘I know,' he said, putting his arms round her. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘It's all right,' she said. ‘Let's not waste the ten minutes.' She kissed him, and smiled.

‘Are you angry with me?' he asked.

She shook her head. She wouldn't have been able to tell them either, she was sure.

‘Engaged couples are obviously allowed a ten-minute heavy-petting session,' he said, and they both giggled.

‘They will let us sleep together when we're properly married, will they?' she asked.

Too soon, they heard the Hills make their way upstairs, and drew apart.

‘Goodnight,' Michael said, with a final kiss, and opened the door. ‘Goodnight Mum – Dad.'

‘Goodnight Judy,' called Mrs Hill.

‘‘Goodnight Mrs Hill,' she called back.

‘Night ducks,' said Mr Hill.

‘Goodnight, Mr Hill.'

‘They sounded like that bloody family on the television; Judy closed the door, and looked round the room. Mrs Hill had gone to a lot of trouble. But she wanted Michael. She wanted her mother. She wanted her teddy bear. She wanted a cigarette. She wanted to go home.

She refused to allow herself to think of what she really wanted.

Ray was dead.

Anna really hadn't asked questions on Ray's visits to her; Victor wasn't someone she had any intention of crossing. He had believed her, in the end. But Ray had told her what he was doing for Victor, and had hinted that that wouldn't be all. He had always been like that; she could have told Victor that it was a mistake to use Ray for anything that he wanted kept discreet, but she had been afraid that that might have been regarded as failing to mind her own business.

And now Ray was dead. Suicide, they said, and maybe he had killed himself. She hoped he had. Because in the end, Victor had made her tell him everything that Ray had said to her, not letting her move until she had.

That had been the night when Victor had finally caught his stepdaughter in, which hadn't been easy. Wherever Catherine had been spending her evenings for the previous couple of months, it hadn't been in her bedsit. But Victor had stayed with Anna for hours, making certain that she had dredged up every syllable that Ray Wilkes had uttered, and then he'd spent more time advising her that if she warned Ray that Victor knew he had been shooting his mouth off, she would deeply regret it. She hadn't warned Ray.

He had been in the middle of this menacing advice when they had heard Catherine going into her bedsit, and she had been released. She could hardly stand up by that time, having been sitting for hours on her knees at the cupboard, terrified that Victor was going to do to her what he'd done to Bannister. Instead, he'd paid her for the time she'd lost, and told her that she had done the right thing. Then he had seen his stepdaughter briefly, and Catherine had moved out next day. Back home to her mother, mission accomplished. Anna hadn't seen Victor since.

It was mid-morning when she heard the knock at the door; she felt the old, familiar stab of fear, back now that it wasn't going to be Victor. It was probably a meter-reader or a Jehovah's witness come to save her, but it might not be. Her heart was beating too fast as she opened the door on the chain; she would never forget Dave Bannister's visit, and she would never again open a door incautiously, not for as long as she lived. Victor had bought her a tougher chain; hers had given way too easily when he had broken in, he'd said.

She peered out, surprised and relieved to discover that it was indeed Victor; she smiled, leading him in to the sitting room. Victor was the only man who had ever seen her sitting room, if you didn't count Bannister. She flopped down on the sofa, smiling up at him. What had happened to Bannister, and what had happened to Ray Wilkes was pushed firmly to the back of her mind; Victor was here again, and she felt safe with him now, because she hadn't let him down. She had visited his friend in his hotel room; she was certain she had given satisfaction. Perhaps he had another job for her.

But not this time. This time, she was in real trouble, worse even than the business about Ray. She had tried to give Victor's story a happy ending, but that hadn't happened; Victor had seen Catherine, but she had rejected any idea of going home. She had moved out, not to rejoin her mother, but in order to disappear again, and Anna hadn't done anything to prevent it.

‘I gave you a number to ring,' he said, standing over her, one hand on the arm of the sofa, the other on the back, preventing her from getting up.

‘I thought she'd gone home,' she said, drawing her legs up underneath her, getting as far into the corner of the sofa as she could, as far away from him as she could.

‘I don't expect you to think. I expect you to do exactly what I tell you to do. I could have had someone here before she'd finished getting her stuff out of the room,' he said. ‘Someone who could have seen where she was going. And now it's going to take more money and more time, thanks to you.'

‘I didn't do it on purpose!' she cried, ready to argue her case in the desperate hope that that would save her from retribution. ‘I thought you'd persuaded her, I thought—'

‘Be quiet! I have no interest in what you thought – you've let me down badly, Annabel.'

He moved one hand, and she shrank away from him, an arm automatically shielding her head as she turned her face away, burying it in the sofa. ‘Don't hurt me!' she cried, her eyes tight shut.

‘I'm not going to hurt you,' he said.

She lowered her arm and looked round slowly, fearfully, as he still stood over her.

Victor stepped back. ‘ I have no intention of hurting you,' he said. ‘Now or ever. You're not worth the energy.'

The relief made her feel weak. And the promise made her feel safe again, despite the reason given for it. But she had to sit there miserably listening to what he thought of her, of how he should have known better than to trust a cheap whore, of what folly it had been to give money to someone with the morals of an alleycat and expect her to take responsibility in return. His quiet voice poured out all the contempt that he felt for her, all the insults that she had had to put up with from other men. She could ignore it when it came from them, but not from Victor. She began to cry.

‘Tears don't work with me, Annabel,' he said.

‘My name's Anna,' she said defiantly through the tears, almost to herself.

He sat down beside her. ‘Is it?' he said. ‘Do you have another name?'

She wiped the tears with her hand. ‘ Worthing,' she said, not looking at him.

‘Well, cry if you like, but a cheap whore is what you are, Anna Worthing. And you make yourself prey to every malcontent, every sexual deviant, every social inadequate who cares to come knocking at your door. You leave yourself wide open to rape and assault and battery – but why not? It's all you're good for, isn't it?'

She shook her head.

‘Isn't it? You hire out your body to men to do what they want with it. You have one talent Anna Worthing. Just one. But that tin box isn't going to buy you out of the gutter, because that's where you belong.' He stood up. ‘I'm going abroad very soon,' he said. ‘I advise you to watch that temper – I won't be around to rescue you from the next Bannister who comes calling.'

He was leaving. She no sooner felt safe again than he was leaving. Leaving her to the sexual deviants and Bannisters to do with as they pleased.

‘You can come with me.'

She turned her head and stared up at him.

‘You'll have the use of a flat a car, clothes, whatever you need – whatever you want, within reason. You will have my protection, and my word that I won't hurt you, and I won't allow anyone else to hurt you. In return you'll do exactly what I tell you to do – whatever I tell you to do, whenever and wherever I tell you to do it. You won't ask questions, you won't talk out of turn, and above all, you won't think. You will do as you are told.' He bent down towards her. ‘And you will never, never let me down again,' he said.

‘What?' She was blinking at him, stupefied.

‘At the moment you rent yourself out by the hour. I'm simply offering to buy you outright. You'll still be a whore, but you won't be a cheap one. It's your decision, but you would be wise to accept.'

She'd had worse offers. None stranger, but a great many worse.

‘You will also do anything else I tell you to do,' he said, ‘One of these will be to receive phone-calls and reports from private investigators – once they've found Catherine again. I want to be able to keep her mother informed of what she's doing, and I don't want her to know how I'm doing it. She thinks Catherine and I have reached a truce, and I don't want her finding out that it isn't really like that.'

He really couldn't bear the idea that a seventeen-year-old girl was doing what the police and business rivals had been unable to do. Giving him the run around. But Anna wondered what Catherine's mother had done to her that she was prepared to hurt her like that.

No longer in fear of a violent response, prepared to be given another hurtful character assessment, she asked him why Catherine had run away, and he told her. Because she had found him with someone like her, in essence. Anna couldn't imagine thinking highly enough of her own father to care what some woman was doing to him, but Catherine had left home over her stepfather. Silly bitch. But then she got a little more, and she began to realize just what Victor had been going through. If you asked Anna, he and his wife were better off without the neurotic Catherine. Victor did not of course, ask Anna, and Anna wouldn't have said that if he had.

But he was afraid for Catherine, he said. Afraid that his enemies would use her to get at him. He had to find her again. Keep an eye on her. Her mother would never forgive him if anything happened to Catherine. That's why he had to have people watching her.

Anna felt awful. It had taken him almost a year to find her, and three months after that just to see her; now she had let her disappear again. It had been an honest mistake, but it had been a bad one. She hadn't liked hearing all those things Victor had called her, but she understood. And instead of ditching her, Victor was offering her a new life. She had to push a lot of disturbing things to the back of her mind, but she had had to do that all along with Victor. And he had befriended her when she had needed a friend more than she had done in all her life.

She would go to Holland with him.

Judy had got married today.

Lloyd tried to concentrate on the film, but in truth it was a touch boring, and his mind kept wandering. He was in the lecture-room annexe of the local College of Technology, in which the Film Society held its monthly showing of esoteric and uncommercial films.

He could see why this one was uncommercial. In truth, he wasn't a film-society type; he had joined mainly to have somewhere to go at least one evening a week that would get him out of the house. He had tried persuading Barbara to come with him, but they never went anywhere together now; it wouldn't be impossible to get a baby-sitter, but Barbara chose to pretend that it was. He'd tried volunteering to be the one who stayed in, but she didn't want to go anywhere on her own. She didn't seem to want his company either, so he was the one who went out.

The new house was a considerable improvement on the old one, but she didn't seem to have made much of an effort to get to know any of the neighbours. She didn't want to stay in London, she said. She was missing Stansfield, still, after all these years. All her friends were there. She could go out on her own in Stansfield. Not in London. The friends she had made here were all too far away now since the move. And that was true, he supposed. Perhaps he should think about going back to Stansfield. Perhaps that was what they needed; if Barbara was happy, perhaps he would be too.