Murder... Now and Then (15 page)

Victor Holyoak got out of the car and pulled his shirt away from his back where it stuck to his skin. He walked down the deserted, unkempt street, counting door-numbers when there were any. He stopped outside an old building with a neglected frontage and weeds sprouting up in the tiny space that separated it from the pavement. This must be it.

At last, Catherine's name had turned up on an official form, and one of his private detectives had detected it. He took a breath of warm fresh air, since it seemed there would be precious little of that inside, and walked up to the front door.

My God. Every doorbell had a more outlandish name written above it than the one before, and a less than cryptic message to the caller. Surely she hadn't …

The front door was open, anyway. He pushed it further open, and walked into the hallway. Stairs went up on his left, and he checked the piece of paper for the number of her flat.

His foot was on the bottom step when he heard the woman crying out and he raced upstairs to where the cries were coming from, praying that he would be on time as they grew ever more frightened.

‘No! Don't! Don't! No,
no
!'

The last word was screamed over and over in sheer panic, and Holyoak was at the door, which jammed itself against a chain. He shoulder-charged it, breaking the chain, and ran into the flat, following the direction of the terrified screaming, along the hallway, and burst through into the room.

A girl lay half-clothed on the floor, curled into a ball for protection. A shirt-sleeved police officer crouched over her, his truncheon raised. Holyoak seized him by the arm, forcing it behind him, making him drop the weapon, then pushed him headlong into the wall. On impact he bent over, both hands clutching his head, swaying slightly.

Holyoak looked round, and saw his helmet lying on the bed. ‘You should keep that on,' he advised him, thrusting it at him as he straightened up. He kicked the truncheon to his feet. ‘Pick that up and get out,' he said, his voice quiet.

The policeman did as he was told and fled.

Holyoak went to the girl, checking her for serious injury before lifting her on to the bed settee, where she sobbed in his arms until she had no more tears. She was thoroughly scared, but not too badly hurt. The injuries were superficial; she wouldn't look too good for a couple of days, but she was all right.

She begged him, almost as frightened as she had been before he'd arrived not to report Bannister, for such was his name. Or he would come after her again. Reporting him was the last thing on Holyoak's mind, but he didn't tell her that. He promised her that he wouldn't, and in return made her promise not to tell the ‘stuck-up bitch across the landing', for such was her description of Catherine, that he'd been there.

He had to handle this very carefully; he wanted to work out his strategy. He had more pressing worries than Catherine's retrieval; now that he knew where she was, that could wait until his other difficulties were sorted out. A possible solution to one of his problems had dawned as Annabel had told him how she had let herself in for Bannister's retribution; now, he had to work everything out without distractions.

He would need Annabel's co-operation; he gave her money in return for her keeping a weather eye out for Catherine. He gave her a number to ring if she had to contact him, told her he would be back. He believed he could trust her, but the money was a test. If she and his money had disappeared by the time he returned, he might have to think again.

Annabel had assured him that Catherine wasn't on the game; indeed, she would have laughed, if she could have with a split lip, at the very idea.

Candlelight, soft music playing. Catherine had never been out to dinner; it was a special treat for her birthday.

Max had picked her up from the flat, and hadn't stopped talking about her choice of accommodation until they had got to the restaurant. It was cheap, she had pointed out. It was a bedsit, and therefore not what her fellow tenants wanted; they, she had discovered, needed to have a waiting room, like doctors. She had supposed they would, once she had thought about it. She didn't have much to do with them, but in a way it was comforting to know that all these people were around in the middle of the night.

Max had continued to be horrified, but he had at least stopped going on about it now. He had bought her a present; she unwrapped it at the table, and smiled as she saw the little pendant. He got up to do up the clasp, and sat down again, his dark brows drawn together in a query.

‘It's lovely,' she said.

The meal was wonderful, Max was wonderful. Until he cleared his throat. He always did that when he had something had to tell her, like losing a client or having to wait for her wages.

She looked apprehensively at him.

‘Catherine—' he began, and looked down at his biscuits and cheese.

She waited. She knew she wasn't going to want to hear it, so the longer he took the better.

‘I'm thinking of giving up the office,' he said in a rush.

‘What?'

He sighed. ‘ It isn't paying,' he said.

‘Will you be working from home?' She supposed his wife could do what she did; she would be out of a job.

He shook his head. ‘I'm packing it all in,' he said. ‘ I've got the offer of another job, and I'm told it's as good as mine already. I'm going to tell them I'm available.'

Catherine took that in. Well, she could get another job too. It was a shame, but it hadn't been too difficult to see it coming.

‘It means leaving London,' he said.

Her eyes widened. No.
No
. ‘But – but … where are you going?' she asked, trying desperately not to cry.

‘A place called Stansfield.' He cut up a piece of cheese with no intention of eating it. ‘I'll be chief accountant at a factory there,' he said. ‘But we've got weeks to sort things out. I don't start until February – and I've still got to meet the woman who runs the place.' He smiled. ‘ Maybe she'll change her mind when she interviews me,' he said.

They drank the coffee in silence, and he ran her back to the flat, insisting on coming in with her to make sure that she didn't run into any of the passing trade.

She loved Max. He had never asked her after that first time in the car what had made her run away; he had never tried to find out about her. He could have taken advantage of her, financially or any other way, and he hadn't. She made him coffee, and wondered if she should make her feelings clear.

She hadn't known many men; her benchmark was her stepfather, and now she knew how different Max was. Victor Holyoak was a wheeler-dealer, who made money and lost money and made it again. She doubted very much if any of his activities were lawful. His money didn't go into the bank, like other people's. It went into safety deposit boxes, and antiques and paintings. And everyone thought how wonderful he was, how devoted to her mother, but that wasn't true. He was a fraud through and through.

Max didn't really care about money, except when he couldn't meet his mortgage. He had taken a risk just stopping to pick her up that night; he had given her a job, and security. He had been a friend, someone she could talk to, someone she felt more at home with than she had ever felt.

Max had his faults; he wasn't a paragon of virtue – far from it. His office was a couple of rooms in a building full of similar tiny enterprises, and when she had started work, Max had good-naturedly put up with a lot of teasing from the other people, jokes which suggested that she was the latest in a long line, and by far the youngest. A lot of would-be witty remarks about cradle-snatching, even one about jail-bait that she had not been meant to overhear.

She was quite certain that his Don Juan reputation was deserved, but he had never been anything but a gentleman as far as she was concerned. And the jokes had altered in character during her time at his office; now, the emphasis was on his recent good conduct. The office was closed up at five thirty, and remained closed. The office, it seemed, was Max's preferred site of operations, and had been in use long into the evening in the past. He had changed; the evidence suggested that her presence had changed him.

But she loved him; she didn't want to change him. And if that was what he wanted, if that would stop him leaving …

The headlights that lit the frosty cobbles, and which Dave Bannister expected to sweep past him as he walked through the narrow lane, didn't; instead, the car slowed to walking pace and was now moving along beside him. He had just come off duty; he was having to walk home, hunched inside his leather jacket, his ears burning with the freezing wind that howled through the darkness of the alley. His car was off the road, and it was going to cost an arm and a leg to get it through its MOT. He didn't need jokes, not tonight.

The Daimler pulled in, its front wheel on the tiny strip of pavement blocking his way. Bannister turned to find the rear passenger door opening into his path, and a man stepping out, ensuring that he couldn't go that way either. In the dim light from the inside of the car, he couldn't make out the man's features, but his mind instantly logged a police description of what he could see. Medium height bare headed, dark overcoat, dark gloves, brown trousers, lace-up shoes. It was expensive gear. His eyes flicked towards the car, but there was no one with him except the driver, who was thin and weedy, and sat behind the wheel, staring straight ahead, hearing nothing, seeing nothing.

The passenger walked beyond the car door, beyond the light, coming closer to where Bannister stood. He was completely in shadow now, and Bannister turned his attention to the Daimler, the colour, the model, the personalized number plate.

‘Good evening, Mr Bannister.'

The voice was quiet, but it carried in the confines of the arched alleyway. Bannister watched warily as the figure walked into the pool of light thrown up by the car's headlamps on the white-painted wall, and automatically catalogued the features. Light brown hair, mid to late thirties, powerful build, bearded with racial scarring.

Christ. It was the guy from Annabel's. Bannister tensed up, ready to defend himself.

The man smiled. ‘No need for that, Mr Bannister,' he said. ‘I'm sure we can conduct ourselves in a civilized fashion.'

Bannister frowned. ‘What do you want?' he asked.

‘It strikes me that your attitude to your duties as an upholder of the law is, shall we say, flexible? I think I could use your services, Mr Bannister.'

Bannister leant back against the wing of the Daimler. So that's what it was. He gave Annabel a hiding, so he must be for sale. Well, he wasn't. ‘I don't take bribes,' he said.

‘I wasn't offering one. But if you don't co-operate with me, I will persuade Annabel to press charges.'

Blackmail. A smoothie who thought he could intimidate him with his flash car and expensive tailoring. No chance. He smiled, shaking his head. ‘Whores get knocked about by their pimps all the time. I'll say you did it yourself when you couldn't bribe me, and now you're trying to stitch me up. Let's see who they believe. Me or a couple of slags.'

‘But I'm not her pimp, Mr Bannister,' he said, his voice still quiet, well modulated. ‘My name, for the record, is Victor Holyoak. I've never been involved with the police in any way. You can check.'

Not so good, if he didn't have a record. But Annabel had a deep distrust of authority, of police, of courts, of anything that smacked of officialdom. Her one departure from form had got her into trouble; he'd scared the hell out of her, and she wasn't about to repeat the experience. ‘ You'll never get that little whore into court,' he said.

‘Oh, yes I will.' The statement was unequivocal. ‘And I wouldn't like to be defending you.' He stepped closer, his shoes making a soft scrunching sound on the frosty pavement. ‘She's already made one complaint against you, she can identify you, she has an eye witness, and the bruises to show for it.'

Holyoak wasn't about to stick his neck out for Annabel, and Bannister, knew it. And if she still had bruises, it wasn't from what he'd done to her. ‘Good,' he said. ‘I hope they're bad for business.'

Holyoak tutted as he gave a brief nod in the direction of the driver. ‘I had expected remorse,' he said.

The car's headlamps were extinguished; in the sudden, disorienting darkness Bannister felt the other man's fists slamming into him, forcing the breath from his body; he doubled up, sinking to the ground as his legs gave way. On his hands and knees, retching with the effort of trying to breathe, he was completely helpless as Holyoak stood over him.

‘I advise you to think again about co-operating with me, Mr Bannister.'

He was breathing again, if the agonizing, uncontrollable gulps of icy air which his lungs immediately coughed out could be called breathing. But he wasn't for sale. ‘ Get stuffed,' he said, with difficulty,

Holyoak grasped his jacket collar, almost strangling him, and wrenched him to his feet with one hand, while landing vicious body blows with the other, over and over and over again, until Bannister knew no more about it.

He came round jammed into a sitting position between the wheel of the car and the wall, his legs sprawled out in front of him. His head swam, and he sank into near unconsciousness again until a strategically placed kick forced his eyes wide open with pain and shock.

‘Get up,' said a disembodied voice from above him.

The headlights were switched on again, the full glare two inches from his face.

‘Now.'

His eyes screwed tight shut once more, he heard his own voice rasp out through the double agony. ‘The headlight,' he croaked. ‘Put … put it out.'

‘Get up if you don't like it.'

He couldn't get up. But he had to get away from the light. One hand on the rough surface of the wall, the other clasping the front tyre of the car, Bannister tried to move, but it was too difficult; he dropped his head again.