239

The Dance of the Pheasodile

by

Tim Roux

Published by Night Publishing, Smashwords edition

Copyright 2008, Tim Roux

ISBN 1452860572

EAN 9781452860572

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All characters are fictional, and any resemblance to anyone living or dead is accidental.

To discover other books by Tim Roux, please go to http://www.nightpublishing.com/id13.html.

Chapter 1

I have to admit that I am in a bit of a predicament.

I have regained consciousness to discover myself swinging upside down outside the plate glass window that wraps around the lawyers’ office where my wife works – where she is a partner, in fact. I am bumping up against the pane as I dangle here. I can see several of the office staff taking pictures of me with their mobile phones, and feverishly distributing them somewhere over the ether.

My wife has just noticed me, and she is holding her hand to her mouth in shock.

If I tell you that my wife works on the eighteenth floor of the Baxter Spires building, you may get an inkling of what is happening to me.

If I add that I am freezing cold, despite its being mid-summer, you might guess that I am not appropriately dressed for such a feat. I will let you into a secret I too have only discovered since I came round. I am only dressed in two boots and a safety harness, and all those secretaries in there with their mobile phones are almost certainly taking pictures of my winkle, which is probably about winkle sized, given that I am freezing to death.

Someone is saying to Chrissie something like “Do you know him?”

She nods horrified.

Presumably they will have followed up with “Who is he?”

Has Chrissie admitted that I am her husband? I cannot tell. Yes, she has, I think. There is a scowl on the other person’s face as she turns round to point towards me, referring to me as something like “that thing”.

Everyone is looking at me in a new light.

Another woman is arguing with Chrissie.

Chrissie is nodding emphatically.

The other woman shakes her head equally emphatically.

I guess that she is saying “That is not your husband!”, and Chrissie is saying “Yes, he is!”

“But your husband doesn’t look like that. I have met your husband. He is slim and intellectual-looking, not stubby and hairy.”

That will take some explaining, which I would very much appreciate the opportunity to do, but we have been joined by several army helicopters and a couple of fighter planes, probably objecting to our flying over London, which is massively against the law. We could be terrorists.

Well, I am the one being terrorised. I am some seventy metres from the traffic and the tarmac below, held only by a rope and a harness of uncertain strength and durability, my hands tied behind my back, utterly defenceless, with the pilot of the helicopter that is trailing me realising that he, she or it is going to have to take evasive action. I have now been swung away from the site of my shame and humiliation, and am hurtling towards another skyscraper, swinging wildly. There is nothing I can do to protect myself. What if the pilot simply jettisons me? What if they make an error of judgment and smash me at seventy or eighty miles an hour right into a concrete tower? What if the rope snaps? What if they forget I am even here in their hurry to get away?

I think I know why I am here. I think it is because my other wife thinks I have been committing adultery with my wife. I want you to know that half of me is entirely innocent, although the other half is less so. My body may have been inserting itself in places it should never have been, but my mind is totally innocent.

Let me explain ……..

* * *

Chapter 2

I have always adored Chrissie. We first met when I was twelve and she was ten, and we fell deeply in love instantly. You may assume that children of that age are incapable of profound love, but from personal experience I can assure you that you would be wrong to think so. I am as in love with Chrissie now as I was then, and it feels exactly the same. I sense her every vibe, and quiver alongside it, amid calm, ecstasy or despair. Chrissie is my reference point. I have no other. Whatever will please Chrissie delights me. Whatever will upset her tears me apart. I cannot bear to hurt her any more than I would want to drive a nail through my big toe. The pain is the same – I have done both.

Chrissie is beautiful. She is so beautiful that she steals away my breath every time I look at her, and I cannot even glimpse her without appreciating everything about her. She is so elegant. Her body is straight if you see her from the side, and nicely curved if you catch her from the front. Her hair naturally swings like a soft, glossy rope. Her smile is innocent, yet a touch knowing. She only thinks the best of anyone, and never gossips maliciously. She is devoutly Christian, yet she never talks about it, or tries to impose it upon you. When we make love, I feel that I am swaying with an angel, a female angel that is. Her skin is pure white and as perfect as an exotic silk.

We talk to each other all of the time. We are continuously in a state of excitement with each other, fighting to share our thoughts.

Our children are a girl and a boy. Ella is twelve and Mark is seven. Ella will no doubt grow into a stroppy teenager in time, but she has yet to be soured by all that stuff. She is sweet and helpful and kind. She is excellent at her homework, and effortlessly bright. Mark is a boy. He rushes around doing energetic things, and playing riotously with his friends. He has never been known to do the least harm to anyone. He has short hair and a frank expression, and likes to cuddle both of us during quiet times. He is mummy and daddy’s boy equally. He also works hard, and his results are reliably competent. He has it all under control, without exerting himself any more than is decent for a sporty, physical young man.

I am an architect, whose commercial designs are increasingly in demand. Chrissie is a partner within one of the top law firms in the country, specialising in maritime law. My only gripe is that she works long hours, and yet she brought the children up without breaking her stride and without a single word of complaint as to how difficult it all was to raise children and to keep the flame of her career ambition stoked at the same time. I did pitch in, but men do not really contribute that much, even when we believe we are shouldering half the load, do we? We also have a housekeeper and nanny, a lovely Scottish lady called Agnes, who can only be described as rigorously spick and span, and absurdly well organised. She is almost one of the family, like a surrogate grandmother to the children, and she often pops round at weekends too for a chat with us, and to play with them. Chrissie and I are both orphans, left with no family whatsoever. In fact, we met in a residential care home, when such institutions were still prevalent. Perhaps that is why leading the perfect family life is so important to us. We want everything to be right for our children, squared with our consciences.

We both love reading. Chrissie has to read mountains of paperwork anyway, but when she has cast that aside, she still reads magazines and the occasional book which she regularly falls asleep to. Come to think of it, she has probably been reading “Wuthering Heights” for the last five years. I recently asked her, as a prod, how Heathcliff was getting on, and she replied “Who’s he?”

“Heathcliff?” I exclaimed in astonishment, thinking how could she not know who Heathcliff is, even if she weren’t reading the book.

“Oh that Heathcliff,” she recovered. A puzzled look crossed her face, followed by a slightly embarrassed smile. “To be honest, I cannot really remember. I think he is OK.”

According to her colleagues, Chrissie has a jaw-dropping capacity both for marshalling complex data and for precise communication, so it is strange how daffy she can be over her reading, not that feyness characterises her in any way in the manner with which she runs the house. She and Agnes between them are so organised that they could ensure that everything was spotlessly in place and march on Russia at the same time, not that Chrissie has a single warlike instinct in her psyche.

We may have two children, but we still go out a lot. Chrissie read somewhere that it is really important for a couple to act as a couple even after their children are born. The children are special, and must bask in the warmth of their parents’ unconditional love for them, but they must also understand that while they may be the primary focus of the family, they are not a part of your marriage. That is something exclusive to you two as lovers, and must remain sacrosanct and fully electric. That way, you two thrive as people, and therefore as parents, and your children will also benefit accordingly.

I cannot say whether it was good or bad advice; all I can say is that Chrissie and I have found it very easy to follow it. Every week, since each child was old enough to physically survive without us, we have gone out on the town, which is why you may have noticed that so much of London is red. We didn’t do stupid things like nightclubbing to all hours, commuting to New York, or attending relentless corporate events. We spent time quietly by ourselves in intimate restaurants we fancied trying out, and seeing movies, and we always topped off the night by hiring a room at the same prominent hotel near Hyde Park Corner for some post-prandial, vigorous and, most importantly, uninterrupted nookie.

At first we got some suspicious looks from the reception staff when we booked out of the hotel at one a.m., having only booked in at eleven. They wanted to know whether “Everything was all right, Sir, Madam?”, or rather they wanted to ascertain whether Chrissie was a hooker. On our third visit, the manager took me aside and discreetly asked me what was going on.

“We are a married couple and we have children,” I told him rather sharply.

My off-the-cuff answer was not immediately enough for him; it was too forthrightly delivered, which he mistook for being a sign of defensiveness. He raised an eyebrow.

“Chrissie,” I shouted across the lobby, “the manager here thinks that you are a prostitute. Is there anything you want to say before we never come back here again?”

An elderly couple who were making slow progress across the lobby, seemingly encumbered by the sheer weight of the jewellery she was wearing, stopped in their tracks.

“You see,” I explained to them, “we have very young children, and we want to be alone together.”

The couple beamed. Her well-powdered nose even hinted at a delighted blush. “Good for you, my dears,” she exclaimed. “Do you know, Harold here is eighty-three and I am seventy-seven, and we have been doing exactly the self-same thing for the last fifty-six years. It keeps you regular, doesn’t it?”

The manager was beginning to hop up and down on one leg in sub-conscious acknowledgement that he had made a serious faux-pas.

“Still,” the woman went on, “for thirty of those years, Harold used to come here with his mistresses too on other days of the week, but so long as I got the Saturday slot, I have never minded too much. You can get too precious about sex, can’t you? You can accord it an importance it doesn’t deserve.”

Chrissie grinned at the old man, and whispered, “If you see Keith here with another woman, could you let me know?” She started searching in her bag for our address card.

“Oh, he doesn’t do that sort of thing nowadays,” the old lady boomed across the lobby. “At eighty-three, his tank doesn’t refill that fast. I knew that if I stuck to the Saturday night slot, I would outpace the rest of them in the end. Come on, Harold. We had better let these two romantic young things get back to their children.”

The manager was seriously flummoxed. I think he feared for his job. Chrissie smiled sweetly at him, and offered him the card she had been searching for. “If you ever see my husband with another woman, or another man come to think of it, could you let me know?”

I was absolutely incensed as I paid the bill. The manager apologised to us in grovelling terms all the way to the steps, and insisted on hailing the taxi and paying for our ride home.

“What on earth did you give him your card for?” I asked Chrissie.

“I just wanted to make sure he knew where to send the champagne, flowers and chocolates in the morning,” she replied.

And she was right. All three arrived on cue at ten o’clock the next day.

So we decided to give the hotel one more chance. When we arrived there the following Saturday, the manager came straight out to greet us with the news that, by a stroke of luck, one of the executive suites was available, and he would be delighted to offer it to us for the night at our usual rate. We accepted graciously, and giggled at each other all the way to the room, which was wreathed in a mass of fresh flowers. A chilled bottle of champagne and a box of Belgian chocolates were being proffered as peace tokens on both sides of the bed. More miraculously still, they kept it up week after week, as did we. We were not always so lucky as to be offered an executive suite, but we always got the flowers, champagne and chocolates.

About a year later, I happened to be reading The Daily Telegraph, and saw a photograph of the old man we had met in the hotel that night. He had just died. Being both titled and a luminary in his industrial field, he merited a full-page obituary. His wife, it reported, had died twenty years previously, and not a day had gone by without his missing her. He had never remarried. He was reputed to be one of the most generous philanthropists in Britain. Over the last ten years, he had been greatly comforted by his friendship with the Countess of XXXXX.

* * *

Chapter 3

We have always really enjoyed our holidays, not least because we often manage to persuade Agnes to come with us.

We usually choose self-catering villas in Northern Italy, France, Spain or Portugal. There is an absolute rule. Neither Chrissie nor Agnes is allowed to cook. I can cook as often as I wish as I love slapping salads together and grilling fish or meat but, if we eat in, I have to do the lot – preparation, cooking, laying the table, clearing the table, and washing up – aided, if they feel like it, by the children.

Having young children, our preference is for finding houses perched on the side of lakes rather than overlooking the coast where we will constantly have to worry about their being swept out to sea. Usually, the houses will have their own swimming pools, which we insist on being filled only to Mark’s shoulder height, a request that always baffles the Spanish who generally have a preference for swimming pools which double as wells.

Agnes has a particular penchant for taking long walks in the countryside, however hot the climate, and each day she drags the children off with her for a couple of hours. The rest of the time, we make sure that we are available to them for fun and games.

We have had some fabulous holidays, occasionally interrupted by either Chrissie’s office or mine phoning in such a panic that whichever of us is being called may have to return to the UK for a couple of days. We don’t mind these interruptions that much. We always make sure that we are so fully compensated for the inconvenience that our respective firms will only contact us in absolute emergencies.

Both Chrissie and I are flat-out ‘gourmetands’ (‘gourmandets’?), as we term ourselves. We like to eat well, and lots of it, and to wash the food down with as much wine as we have a taste for and deserve. Indeed, the one real imposition we make on Agnes is to ask her to drive us all back from restaurants which, as she is a resolutely Presbyterian teetotaller, is of minimal inconvenience to her. She doesn’t even mind us sloshing it back. We always prefer to drink the local wines either at dirt cheap prices or at fairly exalted ones. We generally find that the mid-priced local wines are disappointing, although we do check them out from time to time. The children are welcome to join us on our oenological adventures, although we try to limit them to one glass. Ella is naturally abstemious and rarely touches her wine. Mark, on the other hand, has a flare for it, and we mostly have to argue him out of a second glass, which is becoming harder as he becomes more knowledgeable and resents the missed opportunity to try all the wines we are sampling. I am sure that you are squirming slightly over the presumed state of our livers, and especially of Mark’s, but our drinking is not as irresponsible as it sounds. Having said that, we do make sure that we sail in the mornings, rather than after lunch, partly because of the alcohol, although mostly to avoid being on the water during the hottest part of the day.

We are all keen sailors, especially of catamarans which the children can handle solo fairly easily. Despite considerable technical skills, Ella remains cautious on a boat, whereas Mark throws himself into it with a passion. There has only been one incident when we got really worried. A storm suddenly blew up when Mark and Ella were out on Lake Maggiore in Italy. We were on the shore, shopping, which, in retrospect, was negligent of us. The sky blackened, the wind whipped up without warning, and it got so dark that we could not make out Mark and Ella’s catamaran at all. We were on the verge of doing something drastic when we suddenly saw a boat beating into shore at high speed, barely touching the water, and it was them. Mark bounced off the deck as if nothing could have been more fun in the whole wide world, and he could not wait to tell us all about it, including a PR download on how skilled he had been. Ella was very much more shaken, and we had to help her off the boat and hold her tight for a few minutes.

On the other hand, Ella is an absolute natural at water skiing, whereas Mark struggles to get the hang of it. That is unfair; he is a perfectly adequate water skier, but he doesn’t go his accustomed extra yard when doing it, whereas Ella is beginning to master some pretty impressive competencies, including some serious jumping and trick skiing.

The one thing we cannot get the children to do on holidays is to laze on the beach. They always have to be doing something, which is slightly exhausting as we are not entirely happy letting them wander off on their own. Mark is too young, and Ella is too young for a girl, and especially for a startlingly attractive one. With long legs, Scandinavian clear blue eyes and precocious physical development, she could easily be mistaken for being two, three or even four years older than she is. While her tendency is always to be sensible, infatuation makes fools of us all, and she is certainly partial to boys with Latin looks and predatory confidence. I do try to warn the boys to go steady, otherwise they will have me to answer to, but being slim, light-boned and intellectual-looking with designer glasses, I am probably a good deal less frightening than their fathers, or even their mothers, and Chrissie does not come over as the rolling pin type either. I am delighted that we have one of each, but girls are a real worry, however laid back you are. We don’t want Ella pregnant at fourteen, not least in that Chrissie and I are beginning to savour our rediscovered freedom, although providing the local taxi service for our children does eat inordinately into our time.

* * *

There were no taxi services when Chrissie and I first met, simply because we didn’t have any parents to ferry us about. It was lucky that we found each other so quickly, and perhaps that is why we found each other so quickly, not that the authorities fully approved of such an intense relationship at such a young age. We learnt to be very sneaky about it all, which also added to the fun. I’ll never forget us cuddling up in a loft over one of the day rooms, while everyone was looking for us, often passing within feet of where we were lying barely daring to breathe. We bit into each others’ arms and legs trying to suppress our giggles. At one point I breathed very hard down Chrissie’s sweater, and she seemed to enjoy that. I think that may have been the moment when we decided that we would spend every moment of our lives together.

It was also the day when we were betrayed by Jenny Blythe who caught us sliding down through the loft hatch. Without a moment’s hesitation, she summoned everyone within bellowing distance to witness the fact that she had captured the absentees post-flagrante.

Initially, we were surprised by how gently our escapade was treated by the staff. Indeed, it was Jenny Blythe who suffered the immediate repercussions, not us, for being a malicious little snitch. They wanted to know exactly what we had been doing, of course, and they cross-questioned us for some time, coming at us from every angle they could think of. However, once we had persuaded them that nothing too outrageous had taken place, they seemed to want to play the whole incident down. Tiptoeing around us, they lulled us into a false sense of security where we thought that we had permission to be open about our feelings towards each other. Big mistake. The staff clearly must have gained the impression that if we weren’t into each others’ pants already, we soon would be, and between a twelve year old boy and a ten year old girl that would not look so good.

So we were separated. Chrissie was the first to go. Robert Dankworth told me one afternoon that he had just seen Chrissie packing her belongings (and orphans do not have many of those, especially in those days) and being driven off in the residential home minibus. I immediately rushed to the entrance hall, as if I would be able to pick up her scent. It was empty and echoing, masking any traces of Chrissie in shadows and fustiness. I went immediately to the Principal’s office, where Mrs. Foulks pretended not to know anything about anything. “Chrissie Jackson?” (as if there were another ‘Chrissie’ in the place). “I’ll have to ask around, dear. Leave it with me.” I left it with her, and there it stayed. The next day, having quizzed almost the entire staff, only to be met with shifty expressions and implied ignorance, I accosted the principal himself, a generally kindly man called Mr. Barr.

“Chrissie? Please sit down, Keith. You were very friendly with Chrissie, weren’t you?” That use of the past tense skewered me. He coughed. “I am sure that you will be delighted to hear that she has been offered the opportunity of an excellent foster home, and has accepted it. It is a wonderful break for her. I have no doubt that she will be very happy there.”

“Bollocks!” is what I thought then, and ‘Bollocks’ is what Chrissie was thinking too. They had played us for lemons, and then cut us in two.

What really gnawed at me was that Chrissie had not mentioned a thing to me. She must have been taken on several visits to see her prospective foster parents, and kept quiet. So, however betrayed I felt by the residential home staff, I felt ten times more betrayed by Chrissie. How could she?

I went berserk. If they thought that they were avoiding trouble by splitting us up, I was about to show them otherwise. I found out later that they were planning to ship me off to a foster home too, but I behaved so indecently that they never dared put me in front of any prospective foster parents, as they would have taken one look at me and said “No, thanks.” So the home got it in the neck. I refused to eat, I refused to study, I absolutely refused to be polite, responsive or otherwise accommodating to any request. I became bad.

Luckily, Chrissie became even worse. We often laugh together at the sorts of things she got up to once she got to her foster home, which wasn’t immediately after she left our residential home at all. The principal had lied to me. She had been transferred to another residential home, and gone through the placement process from there.

According to Chrissie, her foster parents were not horrible, but nor were they in any way equipped to handle her, especially in her current mood. One morning they woke up to find the kitchen plastered with the contents of twenty-six yoghurt pots, three tubs (two half-finished) of cream and seven cereal packets. Chrissie hid in the utility room, the other side of the kitchen, waiting for them.

“You could certainly hear them coming,” she giggles. “Crunch, crunch. Pause. Crunch. ‘What on earth? Sandra, come and look at this. Chrissie has gone crazy. Where is she?’”

Her foster father, Stephen, went to her room, and did not find her there. He searched the rest of the house, and did not find her there either. He glanced into the utility room, but Chrissie had hidden herself silently in a cupboard. Her foster parents assumed that she had run away, and called in the Care people, who were less easily fooled, discovering her hiding place within five minutes of turning up. Chrissie was subjected to a long “Are you unhappy? What were you feeling?” session from the Care people, with an even longer tale of perplexity from her foster parents who woke up the next day to find their white car splattered with khaki-grey anti-slip floor paint.

Within a week Chrissie was back in a residential care home, but not ours. I did not see her for another two years, during which time we each got ourselves into serious trouble. In retrospect, despite the heartache of our separation, we were lucky, believe it or not. Both of our residential homes had devoted principals who were desperate to find a child who might prove to be a credit to them. 85% children in care are so fucked up that they leave without a single exam pass. Chrissie and I emerged into the world ready to study law and architecture at Bristol and Bath respectively, which must have made us two of the highest-achieving orphans of all time. Both of our principals believed that really troublesome children are likely to be highly intelligent, and we were among the worst-behaved they had ever come across, smashing, wrecking, sabotaging, punching, spitting, sneering, complaining. We were so continuously abusive of everything and everyone within those two years that our principals decided that we must be geniuses. Coincidentally, they each oversaw our schedules personally, insisting that we spend between ten and fifteen hours in detention each week to keep us out of trouble. We honoured their commitment to us by being both devoted students and habitual criminals. Chrissie destroyed the banister on the stairs. I added paint to several baths while children were sitting in them. To be precise, I poured it all over their hair. Chrissie set fire to the dining room (although she claims that this was an accident); I added weed killer to the Sunday lunch, not realising quite how dangerous that was. Nevertheless, our respective principals never gave up on us, however tempted they must have been to march us down to punishment cells and to throw away the key, which we now know did indeed happen in some residential care homes.

Then they did an even more courageous thing. At the ages of fifteen and thirteen, they brought Chrissie back to my residential home and left us to get on with it. We never put a single foot wrong again after that, unless you count the things we did with each other.

Another thing we were extremely fortunate about is that there was never any significant sexual abuse in either of the residential care homes we were in. The children were certainly abusive to each other – bullying was rife – and some of the staff could give better than they got too. However, it was rare that anyone insisted on forcefully removing our pants, and the staff never did. Chrissie and I regularly removed each others’ pants, but the only force exerted was that of frenzied downward pressure, and by that point nobody dared mess with us.

* * *

Chapter 4

Both Chrissie and I love socialising. We insist on getting together on either Saturday or Sunday lunchtime with friends who have children who match ours, so that our children have lots of good friends, and we have lots of laughs. We don’t do anything particularly fancy. We eat and the children play, and we never get those two things mixed up. The children are banned from the table, and we ban ourselves from playing with any of their toys before four o’clock.

Jerry and Sam and their two children, Jack and Natty, are particular favourites of ours. Jerry is a social worker and Sam is a travel agent. Before any of us had children, we would have long boozy dinners where we discussed anything and everything with declining comprehensibility. Jerry never asked us about our childhoods, but one night we insisted on telling them all about them. What was extraordinary was the number of details we disclosed that we had never shared with each other, and had totally forgotten about until then. It became a very emotional exchange and we all ended up sobbing our eyes out and hugging each other, until Sam said she would fix a weekend in Paris for all of us in compensation for all the misery we had undergone, at which point we all hugged her instead.

This conversation set off a week of soul-searching between Chrissie and me. Up until that point we believed that we had never hidden secrets from each other, but our revelations during that dinner party blew away that theory. We both recognised that the other had not been deliberately withholding information; it was more the realisation of how much of our lives had passed the other by. We believed ourselves to be so much the same person that what the one knew, the other knew too, by relational osmosis. Not so. And it was not the quality of the missing facts but the quantity of them. I counted over twenty things that Chrissie had never told me about herself and, if anything, I had held back even more. By the end of the dinner party, we were sparring, driven crazy by the heretofore invisible childhood debris that had been separating us to a far greater extent than we had realised. We monopolised the conversation so that Jerry and Sam never got a chance to spill their own beans there and then. Apparently, their session started on the way home, and didn’t end until the evening of the next day. After that, I expected them to pull the plug on us for future encounters. Instead, we were back together the following week, saying how much fun the previous party had been, and vowing never to repeat the experience. However, they still call me ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ and Chrissie ‘the Damson Damsel’ in honour of that night.

We see Adam and Julie with their children, Rock and Crystal (yes, really) about every two to three months, which is about as regularly as any of us can bear. To be honest, the thought of them is much worse than the reality. Each and every time so far, much to our astonishment, we have had a ball together, we adults at least. It is much stickier with the children. Rock is a year older than Ella, and Crystal is three years older than Mark, so their ages run 13, 12, 10 and 7. Rock expends much energy and ingenuity trying to make Ella fall for his body through the chimera of his mind, affecting a veneer of jejune sophistication that wrinkles our toes and sends shivers up behind our ears. Crystal thinks Ella should be her friend exclusively, and goes all out to drive Rock away from her by spitting a relentless stream of acid invective at him while deconstructing his sneaky stratagems. Ella, cool as ever, balances her favours, thus extending her quiet enjoyment in having others fight over her. Mark is left out in the cold as being too young for the adolescent game the other three are playing, and therefore too lightweight and naïve for their consideration. After about half an hour of trying to fit in, he normally slinks off to mitigate his sense of rejection by determinedly distracting himself with his toys in his bedroom. Chrissie and I have vowed never to invite them around again because it is so unfair on Mark, but what do you do when Adam is your boss and the man who gave you your chance in life by hiring you against all the odds and at considerable personal risk?

Well, I say that, but he was really only making a point to the rest of the partnership about who was in charge. He had inherited his position from his father who retired to play golf and to monitor his investments and, like all such presumed impostors, he wanted to do at least one thing markedly differently as an exercise in flexing his power to both subdue and impress the sceptical board of management he had inherited. The particular ground on which he chose to make his revolutionary impact was that of the impartial selection of candidates, regardless of colour, race or creed, to shake up the cosy professional-class recruitment policy that obtained at that time by insisting on introducing a bit of rough into the team. According to gossip, he was pushing hard for a black African candidate before he discovered that I had been an orphan brought up in a residential care home - just the level of disadvantage he was looking for, alongside his growing conviction that I actually had natural talent, whereas the African was only African (actually he is carving out a name for himself very nicely over at Kempson & Baileys).

Another foursome we have invested in are Robert and Fiona, and their children Richard and Andrew. We all try our best to swing along when we meet three or four times a year but, in truth and try as we might, we interact at best like weak magnets, failing to either attract or repel each other, although at the end of each session we book up the next appointment all the same. We have numerous sets of friends like that, several of whom are a riot so long as we stick to trying to entertain each other rather than attempting to communicate at any meaningful level.

Our most outrageous lunch dates are Kyle and BoJo (I haven’t a clue what the ‘Bo’ is – she did tell us once - but ‘Jo’ is Jo), with their Brett and Emico. Kyle and BoJo are self-confessed anarchists, or ‘anashits’ as I have been known to describe them snidely. If they could manage to kill enough people, they could be Che Guevara and lady friend. They don’t believe in government, they don’t believe in religion, they don’t believe in taxes (so far, so Wokingham), they don’t believe in discipline, they don’t believe in competitive sports, they don’t believe in non-organic food (still fairly Wokingham), they don’t believe in school, they don’t believe in miscegenation, they think the poor should be sterilised, and that the Jews should be driven into the sea (and the Mediterranean would not be their first option – too calm, too shallow). We don’t really understand how they became our friends at all, but they are such bêtes noirs among our other friends that we feel it would be moral cowardice to disown them, even if we want obsessively to stab forks into their hands to accompany every word that they utter. I know what is going to happen. In thirty years’ time, they will be the only friends we will have remaining to us dating from this period in our lives, and they will have spun volte-faces like Greek plates and ended up ultra-respectable and exceedingly dull.

We also have a paper-cup army of other friends we only wave at when we catch sight of each other across rooms at parties. They are running candidates to become real friends if we had the time to check them out in the social dissection area of our dining room, but we lack the vacant diary slots.

* * *

Chapter 5

I tell you all this in the present tense because it was once like this, and I sincerely pray that it will be again. However, in the present-present, Chrissie and I have separated, albeit entirely by accident I assure you. I have left her, and I am still completely baffled as to how it happened. I became a completely different person, literally.

The only cloud that hung over us was the vacuum of our childhoods. It wasn’t as if anything specifically terrible happened to us, except during those two years after we discovered each others’ love and were separated for it. It was more an overall sense of absence from our lives, a lack we only fully comprehended once we had been bringing up our own children for several years and could appreciate the emotional riches that surrounded them each second that they breathed. We were delighted for them, of course, but thrown into mourning for ourselves, for the deprivation in our lives that had never been fully addressed.

We were grieving our early dormant years before we willed ourselves, and each other, alive.

Our mantra is that the care home (or homes, in Chrissie’s case) wasn’t really that bad. Yes, it was an emotional pressure cooker of seriously disturbed children crammed together and often tormenting each other either physically or, worse, psychologically. And yes, there was even some mild sexual abuse. I was once held down by five other boys and fiddled with in an attempt to make me ejaculate all over my clothes. These things happened. The environment was a relentless manhunt where there was always a victim in the process of being torn apart by the rest of the pack. The identity of the victims could change at any time, like in a game of tag, but they tended to be drawn from a narrow repertoire with some, such as Brian Spooner, being ultimately hounded to death. Yes, there were several suicides that took place in the home too.

Chrissie and I do not like to think about these things, so we pretend that they did not happen, or gloss over them fast should we ever be confronted with their reality. We do not want those incidents, that blight, to infect the rest of our lives. When we found each other, we saved each other from all that, and even when we were forcibly separated, the thought of each other helped us to keep our balance.

Yet while these shadows in our lives can be ignored, suppressed, denied, dismissed or displaced, they cannot be either neutralised or eliminated. In our darker moments we know they are there, and we partly relive them like a horror story you are allowed to put down in favour of going to the kitchen to pig out on toast and marmalade. At other times, we sense their pre-conscious presence as a low drone, a gentle shaking at our roots that subtly disturbs us.

At some point, we both accepted that we would have to confront these leakages into our determinedly and carefully constructed new world.

We considered many options including psychotherapy and family counselling, but decided in the end on hypnotherapy.

Why did we even consider family therapy? What did it have to do with our children? Well, as parents, we were, and are, a little paranoid. This has all been so new to us, which is what every parent says, but most of you have some reference points to either copy or reject. You have had parents who have either treated you well or badly, or both at different times and to different degrees. We have had nothing. When it comes to the natural experience of family life, you live in a city surrounded by buildings which are usually ornate in the centre and somewhat shabby in the suburbs, whereas we live in a desert roaming lost and loose between clear horizons. If we want even shrubs as landmarks, we need to plant them ourselves. We embarked on parenthood with a vision of the ideal superimposed on nothing other than on a nightmare which had nothing to do with a real childhood and, to our pride and credit, we made it happen. We really do have two children who have been brought up in the perfect home. Sheer will-power and intelligence has fashioned our paradise, and for that we are first and foremost grateful for the chance to achieve something so special. However, in the end, we decided that this was exactly why we could not proceed with family therapy. We did not want the children suddenly to hit real life head on and at break-neck speed. This was a battle we must fight exclusively ourselves, as we have always done, like the Thebes regiment of lovers battling back-to-back to safeguard each other.

We had no experience of hypnotherapy, and we did not want to alert our friends and acquaintances to the existence of complications in our lives lest they gossip and exacerbate an already fraught situation, so we more or less picked the first hypnotherapist we could find on the Internet who worked within a reasonable striking distance of where we live in Wokingham, Berkshire.

Chrissie contacted her, reporting that she seemed very warm and compassionate over the phone, so she booked an appointment for us to see her together for a two hour introductory mutual exploration, which turned out to be a revelation in itself; almost a continuation of our freak-out dinner party with Jerry and Sam of some years ago. We did not dredge up any new incidents between us, but we certainly examined to new levels of detail some of the ones we had already acknowledged to each other.

About an hour and three quarters into the session, the hypnotherapist, Sian Bridge, leaned forward towards Chrissie and said: “Don’t answer this if you don’t want to, Chrissie, but have you ever been raped?”

Chrissie went stone still. We both did. Then Chrissie recaptured her composure and replied calmly: “No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t think so, or you’re sure that you haven’t been?”

“I am almost definitely sure that I haven’t been. Why do you ask?”

“Experience. There is something in the way you approach the whole subject of your care homes that reminds me of several people – some women, and some men – who have discovered under hypnosis that they have been raped.”

We both sat back, shocked and reflective. Chrissie turned to me. “Have you ever suspected that I have been raped?”

“No,” I replied emphatically. “I have never heard of it, and there is nothing in your behaviour that has ever suggested it.”

Chrissie returned to the hypnotherapist. “No, I am afraid not.”

Sian lent forward towards Chrissie again. “Chrissie, I raised the issue not because I wanted to know the answer, but because you must be aware that under hypnosis these sorts of secrets, that you may have subconsciously kept extremely well buried, may emerge, and that it will be a terrible shock to your system should they do so. These are the sorts of issues you may find yourselves confronted with during this sort of therapy. This is why it is sometimes cathartic, but it can be traumatising too. Are you prepared to take that risk?”

Chrissie consulted me silently. “Yes,” she said, “we are prepared to take that risk.”

Sian sat back in her chair. “Good, in that case, let’s set up your first appointments. Who goes first? Chrissie? Would next Thursday at 11:00 suit you?”

* * *

In the car on the way home, Chrissie was perplexedly incensed. “Of course I haven’t been raped,” she insisted. “I wonder what gave her that idea. Do you think we can trust her? We can cancel our appointments if you like.”

“Would you rather find somebody else?”

Chrissie laughed. “My guess is that they are all the same. Sex mad. If it didn’t happen, they implant it in your brain anyway. There have been so many cases of false memories after people have visited psychiatrists, and we must be the ideal candidates as children brought up in homes. She was simply jumping to conclusions, I would guess, or going on a fishing trip as we lawyers call it.”

Chrissie loves the expression ‘we lawyers’, although she pretends that she is being ironic. Being a lawyer is immensely important to her, perhaps more so than being an architect is to me. She adores the legal world, she wallows in it ten to fifteen hours a day, it is part of the definition of who she is. She is quick to tell new acquaintances “I am a lawyer” whereas most of her colleagues are rather shamefaced about their career choice. She set her heart on being a lawyer at the age of fourteen and she worked her guts out to qualify as one. Dammit, she deserves the title. I have a gift for drawing and for 3D visualisation. Chrissie became a lawyer through sheer focus.

In the lead up to her first session, Chrissie was naturally nervous given the risks she had been told she was taking. When Chrissie is nervous, she eats nuts and raisins by the kilo packet load. She also becomes preoccupied and a little manic.

She phoned me at work just before she got into the car to drive to Sian’s.

“I am going now,” she said. “I love you.”

“Take care,” I replied. “I love you too.”

She also phoned me immediately after she came out. “It wasn’t too bad at all,” she declared. “I went back to the time we were hiding in the loft when everyone was looking for us. We were so young!”

Phew! “Can I order one of those too? I would love to relive that scene.”

“It was very romantic. You even fondled my chest, you dirty dog!”

“I did what? No I didn’t, I breathed into your chest when we were trying to stifle our giggles.”

“No, you definitely groped me. I was frightened that you were going to go further – frightened and excited at the same time. I felt safe that there were people just below us, so I thought that you would not try it on too much. At the same time, I was tingling a bit. Come home, Keith, let’s redo the scene over lunch.”

“Where?”

“Usual place. I’ll be there by one.”

“Why not? Do they have a loft directly over the reception area?”

* * *

So, when I went for my first session, I was full of the joys of adventure. I wasn’t going to the dentist, I was going to the cinema of my life in a glorious re-run of colourful events. I totally forgot about the horrors I might choose to resurrect. Well, no, I had not forgotten about them; I was confident that I could steer the psychic trip towards the brighter side of my life.

“Sian,” I asked, “could we focus on some cheerful memories first? I need to have those in my pocket before I start to explore darker issues.”

Sian looked me straight into the face with her level gaze. “It is sort of your choice where you go, but I will, insofar as I can, try to lead you away from anything too traumatic too early.”

I felt comfortable with Sian. She was exactly what I expected - mid-thirties, dressed contrary to fashion without being intentionally arty, grounded, solidly overweight, calm and matter-of-fact. Her Trance Room, as she called it, was lightly bathed in spices. She had fantastic, ethereal art all over the walls – huge paintings of galaxies and celestial cities, painted by a French artist she had recently met on holiday called Claude-France Decam.

“I am glad you like them,” she said. “She is a wonderful woman too. She told me that when she was born, her father, who was also a painter, went off to register her birth at the Mairie intending to call her Angélique, the name he and his wife had agreed to give her. However, along the way, he changed his mind, and registered her as Claude-France instead: ‘France’ as a patriotic gesture, and ‘Claude’ after a former mistress of his.”

“His wife must have been pleased.”

Sian took me through a technique intended to relax me from the top of my head to the tip of my toes, then she counted backwards from thirty with instructions to let go, feel drowsy, and only to listen to her voice. I parted with my body at about the count of sixteen. Sian invited me to visit a happy moment in my life, which steered me towards Ella’s first birthday, with this perfect child in the centre of our lives surrounded by so many people who loved her. She did not really know what was going on, which made it all the more wonderful. She hadn’t yet learned to be greedy for presents, which led me on to think of all the presents she had received during her life, and of her favourite possession, a real ring that we bought her when she was seven. Sian was asking me to disclose what was happening like a running commentary. I could hear my voice interjecting and asking “What about Mark?”. I felt immediately guilty. Why was I preferring Ella over Mark here?

“Does that trouble you?” Sian asked me.

“No, I love Mark every bit as much as Ella, but yes it does trouble me.”

“Why does it trouble you?”

“It would be terrible to love one of our children less than the other.”

“And what about Mark’s birthdays?”

I recalled Mark’s birthday when he was about four. We had bought him a Thomas the Tank Engine train set. He was ecstatic, and kept talking to all the characters – Thomas, Henry, James, Cranky Crane, George the steam roller, Edward. He soon knew all their names and carried at least one of them around everywhere he went. For his fifth birthday, we bought him Bob the Builder characters in Lego, and it was an exact repeat of the previous year – Scoop, Roley, Spud, Lofty, Dizzy, Muck – they were all extra family to him.

And then I cannot remember any more, until I heard a clicking of Sian’s fingers.

I opened my eyes. “That was nice,” I smiled, stretching on the sofa.

“Was it, dear?”

Sian’s voice was different, harsher, less companionable.

I opened my eyes. A completely different woman was sitting by my side. A much tougher looking woman, behaving like she was being paid by the hour, and speaking in a northern accent.

“It sounded rather violent to me, I have to say.”

“Violent?” I exclaimed, astounded. What had I been recounting during the period when my mind was blank? And who on earth was this woman? Surely it was not normal, or even ethical, to switch hypnotherapists mid-trance. I was beginning to feel outraged.

“Don’t sound so shocked, dear. I am sure it did you the world of good to get it off your chest, and it doesn’t go beyond these four walls, so you needn’t worry.”

“What has happened to Sian?” I demanded.

“Sian? Who is Sian?”

“Sian, the hypnotherapist.” Why was she being so obtuse?

“You are beginning to play one of your games are you, Harry?” Harry? Couldn’t she even get my name right? “You know that I won’t stand for that sort of thing. This is a place and a time when we concentrate on trying to help you be a better person, to recover your dignity. I am on your side. This is what I do. There is no need to try to wrong-foot me.”

“Harry?” I said. “Who is Harry?”

“Oh get away with you. It’s all a game with you, isn’t it? Trying to see if you can outsmart everyone else and dominate them. I can see that you are going to make me very rich, all the time it will take for me to help you sort yourself out.”

I remained lying on the sofa, my heart beginning to pound in aggravation. “Who is Harry? My name is Keith.”

“Keith who, dear?”

“Keith McGuire.”

“That’s funny, you were Harry Walker when you came in here, and you look exactly like him still. You haven’t changed a bit, which some people would say is more the pity.”

I looked down at my arms, and was jolted into sitting up. My arms were all hairy, and I was wearing shabby suit trousers and lace-up shoes I wouldn’t be seen dead in, all cuffed and muddy. I smelt rather off too. I brought my hand up to my face in panic. No glasses, but I did have a moustache. I leapt off the couch, a movement that was so fast as to startle whoever the woman was. Well, I know now: she is called Brenda, Brenda Starbright. I was looking frantically for a mirror.

“Is there a mirror?” I demanded, my voice shaking almost uncontrollably, except that it was not my voice. It was much deeper, and it too spoke in a northern accent.

“In the toilet, dear. You know the way.”

I didn’t, of course, but I wasn’t going to bother arguing the toss. It would be through the door, anyway, where I discovered a small square lobby with three further doors leading off it. The second one was the toilet, and I went inside. There was a basin and a mirror in a hand-washing area before you got to the toilet itself. I confronted the mirror. What a face. How angry it looked. How care-worn and aggressive. Cold eyes. Heartless eyes, all love driven out of them. I looked ready to pick a fight with my own reflection, like kittens do. I felt my face again. The skin was rough with peelings of eczema around the eyes. My hair was greased back and seriously thinning. My lips had a kind of Les Dawson pout to them. My teeth were good, though - charmer’s teeth. I smiled suavely to myself, and my face transformed itself into that of a practised oily git, a second hand car salesman, an insurance salesman, maybe an estate agent about to spin an incredible yarn. White shirt, shabby suit trousers, a fit body, though – hardened stomach muscles, useful in a fight. I went and sat in the toilet cubicle and examined myself in intimate detail. Incredibly hairy legs, not washed for a few days, really ugly penis, fat and floppy. Skinny knees. Hairy bum, no doubt. Yes, very hairy bum. Who was this?

I got dressed again, washed my leathery hands, and returned to the hypnotherapist.

“Are you all yourself again now, Harry?” she inquired.

I didn’t reply. She wasn’t going to believe me.

“Well you can go home now. You have satisfied your court order for today.”

I don’t know which thought alarmed me the most: ‘home’ or ‘court order’.

“Where is my home?” I asked.

She was beginning to betray signs of confusion. “Come on, Harry. Stop it now. I know you like your little joke, but I have had enough of your wit for one day.”

“I mean it,” I persisted. “Where is my home?”

“Pease Street, isn’t it?”

I waited for more elucidation.

She consulted her records. “34 Pease Street. Are you happy now, Harry? Are there any more details you would like me to fill you in on?”

“Well, frankly, yes.”

“What else would you like to know?”

“Where are we?”

“In my practice in Hull, last time I looked.”

“Hull?”

“Yes, Hull, dear, you know, Yorkshire (well, sometimes), England, the United Kingdom, the British Isles, Europe, the world, the universe. Have you placed yourself now, Harry? And more to the point, have you stopped messing us around?”

I shrugged. “Ta. I’ll be going then.” Ta? When had I ever used that word? I really had to get out of that place to collect my thoughts and to decide what to do, however I did have one burning question, although I don’t know why the answer was so important to me at that precise moment. “What do I do for a living?”

Brenda burst into a genuine hoot of laughter, bubbling with riotous amusement, and some derision. “Work, Harry? Nobody’s ever accused you of that before, but I suppose that you sometimes con yourself that what you do is work. You are a conman, Harry, and from the looks of things, a very convincing one.”

“Let me show you something,” I proposed, changing tack and deciding to linger a couple of minutes more. “Do you have a pencil and a sheet of paper?”

“Here, have this.” She handed me an A4 lined pad, pummelled and contoured with the heavy-pressure notes she had made on previous pages she had removed. Never mind. A pen was resting on top of the pad. I had wanted a pencil really, but a pen would do.

I proceeded to sketch out very quickly the façade of the office block I had just designed for Longley, Bairns & Woodward, where I worked.

She responded with something approaching appreciation, if not awe, as I worked the pen over the page.

“That is fantastic, Harry. I would never have imagined you had that in you. Perhaps you should think of becoming an architect or something. Not that anyone would dare buy a house that you designed around here. All the pins, joists and RSJs would be missing.”

I looked at her with what I hoped portrayed something like dignity. “I am an architect,” I asserted. “I work in a large London practice. I have never been to Hull in my life. I cannot begin to think what has happened to me, or to the other guy who used to live in this body I see around me, but I want to go home to my house in Wokingham to see my wife and two children. The trouble is that in this state, they wouldn’t even open the door to me. So what can I do?”

She began to fidget. She no doubt wanted to pick up the phone to ask for help. She had probably decided that I was psychotic, suffering from multiple personality disorder, or something.

I shrugged. “I’ll convince you in time.”

She did not say a word. She wanted me out of there. I put on my jacket – at least I assumed it was mine as it matched the trousers – and walked out into the lobby area. I got the front door first time. I turned back on her. “Do I have a car, by the way?”

“No. you came on foot,” she answered quickly.

I gave her a big smile, one designed to frighten sharks. “Thank you,” I said. “Goodbye.”

My gut feel told me that I was near the centre of Hull somewhere. When I got to the end of the street, I read the sign “Whitefriargate”. I searched in my pockets for money. There was a scrunched up five pound note, and some pence. I didn’t know whether it was enough to get me to Pease Street, wherever that was, or not. There was a square across the road with a statue of Queen Victoria in the middle of it, plonked on top of what looked like public conveniences. Between me and it, there was a taxi. I went up to it. The guy seemed friendly enough.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Could you tell me where Pease Street is?”

“Just down the Anlaby Road, mate. About five to seven minutes away.”

“How much would that cost me? I only have a five pound note.”

“I can do it for a fiver,” he replied. “Hop in. Trade’s slow at the moment anyway.”

* * *

He was right. It wasn’t far away. It came in at £4.85 in fact. I gave him the rest as change.

“Thanks, mate,” he responded, before driving off.

I stood at the front door of 34 Pease Street. It was the sort of house I was expecting. Terraced. Green front door. Perhaps a bit better maintained than I would have expected, in fact. I rang the bell. A quite pretty but resentful woman in her early thirties opened the door.

“Have you forgotten your key?” she fired at me.

I felt in my pocket. “No, I have got it here,” I announced, brandishing the key.

“Oh.”

I followed her into the house, down the corridor, through into the kitchen. A young boy, rather a nice-looking young boy, was sitting drawing on a high stool perched against a counter top.

“He has been drawing all morning, has Tommy. He is getting quite good at it.”

I leaned over to examine the drawing. It was indeed quite good. “Yes, it is very good,” I replied. “Well done, Tommy.”

The woman gave me a funny look, as did the boy.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“Yes, I am, I think.” It was hard to know in this body whether I was hungry or not. I had not calibrated my sensations yet.

“Fish and chips? Tommy and I have already eaten. We didn’t know how long you would be, or if we would see you today at all, like last time. You must have run all the way home. What was that in aid of? Did you miss us?”

“I took a taxi.”

“You did what?” Tommy stared at me as if the ceiling were about to fall down in front of him. “We can’t afford taxis. What got into you? Did that woman turn you soft?”

“I felt disorientated.”

“Disorientated? You? It must have been a right session you had with her. You are behaving a bit oddly, I have to admit.”

“In what way?”

“Dazed, somehow. You should go more often. Go and sit yourself down, and I’ll cook your dinner.”

Dinner? It surely wasn’t dinner time.

She pointed back down the corridor, so I followed her gesture and found a sitting room with two big chairs and a settee. I sat down on the settee and waited. I didn’t really know what to do, so I assessed the room. Comfortable chairs, although oldish. Patterned curtains, newish. Sash windows. Patterned carpet that clashed with the curtains and didn’t quite gel with the furniture coverings either. A nest of tables. A TV. A mirror over the fireplace – rather a nice mirror, in fact – 1930s. The smell of someone else’s home.

“What are you doing sitting there, Harry?” the woman challenged me with a certain amusement-cum-bemusement in her voice. “Aren’t you going to sit in your chair?” She parked the fish and chips and peas on the settee next to me, and shook free the largest of the nest of tables, placing it in front of a single chair, presumably ‘my chair’. She had a direct and elegant trim to her movements.

“Sit yourself down, then,” she said. “It will get cold.”

I got up and sat down in my chair, pulling the table over my knees. The fish and ships smelt good, and really fresh. There was a bottle of Heinz tomato ketchup perched next to the plate which rested on a round cork and melamine mat. I picked up the knife and fork. It felt clumsy using them, as if I was having to remember how to do it. I put the fork laden with fish to my mouth and stabbed my lip hard. “Ouch!” I exclaimed.

The woman was watching me with a puzzled expression on her face. “What is it, Harry? What is up? You are behaving really weirdly.”

I suppose that I could have seized the opportunity to tell her, but I didn’t, making it progressively harder to do so later on.

“I am feeling really odd,” I said.

“You are certainly acting that way.”

Tommy appeared in the doorway and watched me with more than idle curiosity. “Will you play cards with me later, Dad?”

I didn’t realise it then, but it was a trick question, designed to elicit whether I was in my right mind.

“Of course,” I replied, confirming that I wasn’t.

“Straight after dinner?”

“Shouldn’t you be in bed soon?” I inquired.

Tommy stared at me incredulously. “At two o’clock in the afternoon during the holidays? Why are you sending me to bed? What have I done wrong?”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

The woman was loitering, hesitating. I guessed that she was considering phoning the hypnotherapist for reassurance and advice. Indeed, a couple of minutes later I heard her talking on the phone very quietly. There was a lot of surprise in her reactions at her end of the call.

She came back into the sitting room and sat herself down in the other chair. She paused for a second. “Harry, I am worried about you.”

“That makes two of us,” I replied, honestly.

“Mrs. Starbright says that you were really freaky at the end of your session with her too. She couldn’t tell me the details. I know that the probation people thought that hypnotherapy might make a difference to your behaviour, but I wasn’t expecting anything like this, and certainly not as quickly as this. You look completely befuddled.”

“I feel it.”

She smiled hesitantly, sympathetically. “Harry, do you think that the session has affected your brain somehow - fundamentally?”

“Yes, I do. I feel a completely different person.”

“You are acting like a completely different person; like a large child.”

“I am certainly feeling like I need to start to learn things all over again.”

“This hypnotherapy has definitely got to you. If you didn’t have to go again in two weeks or get into trouble with the probation service, I would be suggesting that you gave it up. I am a bit nervous as to what I will get next time. You might come back like Attila the Hun - swing the other way. Would you like some tea?”

I was thrown by the question. “What, is it tea time?”

“Oh God,” she exclaimed, “I am married to an imbecile.” Then she flinched. When I didn’t react, she added “I meant the warm and wet stuff.”

“Is there any chance of a coffee?”

“Coffee, Harry? Since when did you drink coffee? You chucked a whole cup of boiling coffee at me once when I accidentally handed it to you while I was picking something up. I had to go into the Infirmary, if you remember.”

“No,” I replied. “I don’t.”

“Harry, have you lost your mind entirely?”

“Well, yes actually, I think I have.”

She left the room, throwing over her shoulder “Well that could be a good thing, couldn’t it?”

* * *

The phone rang.

I stood next to it, anxious not to have to answer it, hovering in indecision.

"Aren't you going to answer that?" the woman asked me in some exasperation.

I picked it up. Tommy was watching me again.

"Hello?" I announced more timidly than I had intended. I coughed. "Hello," I repeated, much firmer this time; much, much firmer, in fact. I had overcompensated.

"’ullo. Is Kathy there, ‘arry?"

"I'll pass you over. Hang on tight!" (my standard joke). "For you," I said to the woman, handing her the phone which I almost dropped before she could get a proper grip on it.

"Hullo," says the woman. "No, Martin, Kathy isn’t here. I am telling you, Kathy isn’t here. .... I don't know why he said that. He is a bit funny at the moment……..Sorry, Martin, I still cannot help you. Kathy is not here." She put the phone down abruptly, and turns on me.

"Harry, what is wrong with you? Why on earth did you tell Martin Kathy was here? He'll be around here next, shouting and screaming as usual. You had better get her out of here before he arrives. What happened at that place? Did they give you a lobotomy? You really are beginning to scare me."

"So Kathy is here?"

"You know damn well she is. You haven't forgotten your own sister now, have you? If that man catches up with her, she's dead, you told me that yourself yesterday. ‘Don't tell anyone she's here’, you said. So what happens the fist time someone calls asking for her? You say she's here. Get her out of here quick. We don't need any more violence around here. You're bad enough. I don't want that bloody Martin smashing up the place too."

"Where do you think I should take her?"

"You are asking me, you who claim to be the boss of the Hull underworld? How should I know? Get your sister out of her marathon two hour bath upstairs, and escort her out of here before Martin shows up. Go on!"

She virtually pushed me towards the stairs, where I was confronted with some highly perfumed bathtime fragrances permeating the stairway.

I started to climb the stairs. "Harry, is that you?"

"Yes." At least I recognised my own name by now.

"What's up with that mad old cow?"

"Martin is coming round looking for you. He just phoned."

There was an explosion in the bath like an elephant had suddenly jumped into it, and a girl appeared, barely managing to cover herself with her towel.

She was in a flat-out panic. "What are we going to do, Harry?"

"I don't know. How fast can you get dressed?"

"Time me. Come and talk to me. Calm me down."

It took her less than two minutes to get dressed, at which point she was all ready to run, literally.

"Let's go."

We rattled down the stairs like rats, and I opened the door.

Three men were standing there. They were obviously well-practiced in intimidating people.

"’ullo, Kathy. ‘ullo, ‘arry. Thought we might find you both ‘ere."

Kathy backed away behind me, tugging at my shirt.

“You don’t mind if we come in, do you?”

I stepped aside. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks,” said the first man perfunctorily. He made sure he pushed me backwards into the hallway as he passed me. Presumably this was Martin. His two accomplices grinned at me. Having made his physical point, Martin stepped aside in turn, and ushered Kathy and me towards the kitchen. “We’ll follow you.”

As we entered, the woman who was supposed to be my wife, or partner, or whatever, backed up against the sink. Tommy remained where we was at the counter, crayon poised.

“Good afternoon, Deirdre,” Martin said to the woman, wryly.

“Who’s Deirdre?” she replied.

“Any lying slut I cannot be bothered with,” he replied. “I know a lot of Deirdres, but I don’t know them for long, if you get my drift.” He turned on me. “Right, ‘arry, let’s get to your point.”

“My point what?” I asked.

“What are you doing with Kathy?”

“She came to have a chat with me. It’s a family thing.”

“That’s not ‘ow you explained it last time, ‘arry. You said that she was a right old slapper, and you didn’t mind if I shoved a red hot poker up her whatsit. It might kill some of the germs up there.”

“Brothers and sisters fall out sometimes.”

“I am thinking I might take your advice.”

Kathy whimpered and clung onto the other woman. I did not respond.

“But I think we should teach you a quick lesson too, don’t you think, ‘arry, just to show everyone that you are more of a big mouth than a big cheese, although you might smell a bit cheesy by the time we have finished with you.” His boys rather liked that. “Deirdre ‘ere can tell everyone all about it.” He took a step towards me. I took a step back. I waited until he was off balance, and kicked him as hard as I could in the solar plexus, following this manoeuvre up with an elbow jab to the temple as his head came down, knocking him unconscious outright. He wasn’t expecting Harry to be an all-England kick-box champion. One of his heavies stepped forward, I expect because he was confusing his forwards and his backwards. I took one sharp step to meet him and upper-cut him cleanly to the floor, making him bite his tongue. Blood poured from his mouth. The third man stood there dumbstruck.

“Harry, where on earth did you learn to do that?” Kathy exclaimed admiringly. Even the woman was visibly impressed, and Tommy was cock-a-hoop. He encouraged me to “Finish off the third one, Dad!”. The third one did not move, and neither did I.

“Awesome!” Kathy added.

The second man stirred and staggered slowly to his feet. “You can go if you want,” I offered. “I’ll deal with Martin for you.” The second man grabbed the other one by the shoulder and urged him towards the door.

“Now what?” asked Tommy’s mother.

“Now you three go upstairs and calm yourselves down. I’ll see what sense I can talk into Martin when he wakes up.”

“You’ll never talk any sense into him. You know him as well as I do. He’ll be out of that door and back in again within ten minutes with the rest of his mates.”

“So what do you suggest?” I asked.

“Short of killing him, I don’t know what you do to him, to be honest.” Tommy stared at his mum in amazement. “And you obviously can’t do that.”

“Go on, girls, go and powder your noses. Tommy, you help them. I’ll work out what to do down here.”

The woman gave me a strange look, trying to second guess my thoughts. Kathy took Tommy’s hand, turned and left.

It took about twenty minutes for Martin to come round. He was preoccupied with his own sensations for about another minute, then he looked up at me, bewildered.

“You’re full of surprises, ‘arry.”

I drove the carving knife straight through his heart. “There’s another one,” I muttered. It certainly surprised him. I stood back. The deed was done, and I felt quite good about it. The women were right. His type never gives up, the care home had taught me that long ago. Luckily, he had a gun and two knuckle-dusters in his pocket. Who was to say that it wasn’t self-defence?

* * *

The police came round and didn’t even arrest me. I doubt that they believed me, but they were plainly delighted to be rid of Martin whom they believed had shot and killed in cold blood one of their own last year, without their being able to prove it. They had forensics around for hours and interviewed all of us, except Tommy, and they were gone by nine.

“Just be good and sure that you turn up to the Coroner’s Inquest, Harry,” Detective Inspector Martin warned me as he stepped back out into the street. He seemed to know me. They all did.

Tommy’s mother, who by then had revealed her name as being Fran to the police, came up and touched me affectionately on the chest. “I never knew you had it in you, Harry. And I am absolutely sure Harry never did one second of kick-boxing, so who are you?”

I was astonished to have a willing audience at last.

“My name is Keith McGuire, I am an architect with a wife, called Chrissie, and two children, Ella and Mark. I also happen to have briefly been the UK kick-boxing champion, so you can look me up on the Internet if you want to.”

“We don’t have no Internet here, but I will when I get the chance. My friend Sandy has it down the road.”

We all went to bed. Fran slept with Tommy, and I got her room.

I woke up in the middle of the night to find someone slipping into bed beside me and cuddling up against me.

“What are you doing?” I demanded.

“So you are awake, Harry,” she whispered. I could tell immediately that it was Fran.

“I am.”

“Do you mind?” she asked, stroking my chest.

“Yes.”

“But it’s not your body, is it? It’s Harry’s, and Harry has his duties.”

“Yes, but I am Keith, not Harry.”

Fran got back out of bed again and switched on the central light. “Take a good look at yourself. Who do you look like?”

“I look like Harry, but I am Keith.”

“Kathy and I are the only two who are ever going to believe your story.”

“Chrissie will.”

“Maybe eventually, but she won’t want to. I’ve sneaked over to my friend Sandy’s house while you were asleep to look you up on the Internet. You are very good looking when you are not Harry. I would trade your body for his any day of the week. Is Keith good in bed?”

“I don’t know. I’ve only ever made love to my Chrissie, and we don’t really discuss it. And, as far as I know, she has only ever made love to me, so she has no point of comparison.”

“Well I have,” she said. “You are just going to have to do your best.”

She certainly did hers, and somehow, despite desperately wanting to, I found myself too weak to resist.

* * *

Chapter 6

I woke up at four in the morning as if my heart had stopped.

Fran was lying beside me, her legs intertwined with mine.

The thought that woke me from my dream, and tipped me into my nightmare, was that if I had replaced Harry within his family, perhaps he had replaced me within mine. Perhaps he, with animal instinct, had managed to disguise from my Chrissie that he was phishing in their midst, and was in fact an alien in my form. Perhaps my Chrissie had shown him all the tenderness she willingly offers me. Perhaps she had even made love to him

The thought shocked me to a sense of apoplectic outrage. How dare he take advantage of her? That would be rape. I’d kill him for that! Nobody rapes my Chrissie and lives. True, I had just made love to his wife, but it certainly wasn’t rape. She knew exactly who it was she was being intimate with, and exactly who it wasn’t, and she was much happier making love to me than to him, or so she told me. I was evidently a man of considerable accomplishment and determination; someone to be admired.

And had I committed adultery? Are you amazed and taken aback that I succumbed so easily? Well, the way I finally saw it was that it was Harry, not me, who had done his duty a few hours earlier. I had merely gained some vicarious enjoyment through helping him satisfy his wife, rather better than he could have done, in his absence. Yes, he could have made the same case, except that I doubted that he had performed better than me, and I was certain that he had acted in complete deception. It was his absolute dishonesty that made me hate and despise him.

Perhaps he had hugged Ella and Mark, as their father. They are extremely astute and intuitive children so I was convinced that they would have been perplexed by how much I had changed. That gnawed at me too. The children would be pouring all of their trusting nature into that slimebag.

Another shock: perhaps he would be going into my work that morning, destroying my carefully nurtured reputation within a few hours. Perhaps he wouldn't bother turning up at all, and fail to warn them, which might possibly be worse.

From what I had been able to learn about Harry, he was not a caring man. He was at the very least a conman, a crook, a hollow charmer, and prone to violence too. What would happen if he hit my Chrissie, who would absolutely not tolerate it? What would she go through, believing her soul mate to have turned on her without reason, to have gone mad? What would the children think if they saw their father beating their mother up?

The whole situation was terrifying, but if he was indeed acting uncharacteristically, then surely Chrissie might hear me out if I phoned her first thing in the morning. From the sound of things, the guy could barely hold a knife and fork.

And what did I think of the woman lying beside me, breathing gently, demonstrating a level of affection for, and trust in, her husband she had probably not felt for many years? She seemed rather sweet, and certainly beautiful. Harry’s sister was not bad, either. I had certainly thought it a stroke of luck when she had got dressed in front of me in the afternoon. However, as her biological brother, I resolved to have nothing physical to do with her, tempting though it otherwise was. Any babies would still be the result of genetic incest, and run a heightened risk of being born deformed.

Would I ever return to the body of Keith McGuire? If so, this would certainly have proven to be an interesting experience on my side. It is not often that you get to make love to a striking woman, who is not your wife, in all innocence. Up until this point, Chrissie had been my one and only love. I had never expected to be involved with anyone else throughout my entire life. If I could get back, this episode would be the equivalent of a carneval, where in Italy couples were entitled to stray for one night once a year. Maybe it would only be for one night. Maybe I would be back with Chrissie within a few hours, having to explain away my strange and possibly shocking behaviour in the meantime.

At six o’clock, I phoned her, having overcome a ridiculous sense that London might occupy a different time zone from Hull. It certainly felt a long, long way away.

Keith answered. He sounded quite different from the way I was used to hearing myself when I was him, however the words he used and his intonation was me.

“Hello,” he said. “Who is this?”

“I was wondering if I could talk to Chrissie urgently,” I replied. “I am a work colleague and we have an urgent problem.”

“She is not awake yet, and I am loathe to wake her. Can it wait until she stirs, which won’t be long?” Surely Harry did not use words like ‘loathe’ and ‘stirs’. “Can I get her to call you?”

“It’s okay,” I replied. “I will call back in an hour, if I may.”

“I am most grateful,” said Keith, and put the phone down.

Was it safe to have a conversation with Chrissie in front of Harry? Would it send him over the top if he realised what was going on? I imagined my wife and children being held hostage at gun point, although I doubted that Harry would have a gun yet.

I phoned again at seven. Chrissie answered it. “Yes?”

I hesitated momentarily, then I launched in. “Chrissie?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know how to explain this to you, but I am Keith, your husband.”

There was a stunned silence at the other end of the phone. “Who is this?”

“Keith McGuire.”

“Keith McGuire is standing here in front of me.” Was that a rebuttal, or a warning to play it carefully, a signal that she had already caught him out?

“You know I went for hypnosis yesterday ……”

“…. I am sorry, whoever you are, but I don’t want to talk to you,” and she put the phone down on me.

“Who are you phoning?” Fran asked me.

“I am phoning home,” I replied, feeling like a cheat.

“Any luck?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I replied. “I think I shocked her.”

“I know the feeling except, in this case, it is rather good to find that you like your husband again after having hated him for nearly ten years. Come back to bed.” She took me by the hand and led me there. She insisted upon us making love again. This time it felt like dirty adultery, but I couldn’t stop her or myself. It wasn’t through any weakness in my will; it was simply that my body took over and I couldn’t control it. I physically could not override its automatic reactions. I was a helpless backseat driver in a vehicle that did not belong to me, and where I had no physical access to the controls.

Immediately after we have finished, Kathy opened the door. “I thought so,” she announced triumphantly. “You two seem to be getting on famously.” She was only wearing a shirt herself. She came and sat on the edge of the bed. “Has my brother improved suddenly?”

“You bet,” Fran replied. “Marital relations have been restored.” She delivered this statement distractedly, clearly resenting the fact that Kathy had considered it appropriate to intrude into our room.

“I guessed that is what I was hearing.”

“You’ve had plenty of practice at it,” Fran commented.

“Yes, I have,” Kathy responded, “but I have never had it off with a body swap. That would definitely be a first.”

“You keep your hands off him,” Fran warned her. “He is still my husband and your brother.”

“You needn’t worry,” Kathy assured her tartly, and got up and left to have a shower.

“I never have liked your sister,” Fran confided to me, “although you have always been fond of her yourself. I have never been able to work out why.”

I held up my hands. “Anything that happened in Harry’s life before lunchtime yesterday is a complete blank to me, I promise you. You cannot use me to spy on Harry. I know nothing at all about him.”

Fran pulled a disappointed face. “That’s a shame. Still, I would rather have you than Harry with all his sneaky little secrets any day. Tell me about yourself.” She settled back down into the bed, ready to listen, so I told her all that I would tell a stranger, without betraying any confidences.

* * *

I decided to phone Chrissie at work. What did I have to lose, after all? It was only a phone call. Sooner or later she would give in and hear me out. I had known Chrissie a long time, and was sure of it.

Of course, I had to get past Chrissie’s secretary, Linda, first. “Chrissie McGuire’s phone. I am Linda, her PA. How can I help you?”

“Can I talk to Chrissie, please?”

“Are you a friend of hers?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Can I say who is calling?”

“Harry Walker.”

There was a pause for consultation.

“I am sorry, Mr. Walker, but Mrs. McGuire is not available at the moment. Can I take your details and ask her to call you when she gets back?”

“Certainly,” I replied, before realising that I hadn’t a clue what number I was calling from.

“I am sorry,” I said. “I am phoning from a friend’s house, and I need to find out what the number is.”

“No problem,” responded the intrepid Linda. “Do you have a mobile phone?”

“Yes, it is 07899 062836,” which is Keith’s mobile. It wouldn’t enable her to reach me, but it might trouble her enough to want to talk to me sometime.

“I think you must be mistaken, Mr. Walker. I happen to know that that number belongs to someone else.”

“Well, yes and no. I think Chrissie will understand. In the meantime, I’ll find out my number here.”

* * *

“Any luck?” Fran asked me again.

“No, this is going to be very hard work.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I think I am going to have to travel to Wokingham to see her in person.”

“How are you going to pay for that?”

Now, that was a good question.

I smiled. “I may have to find some work.”

She laughed. “Now I am certain that you are not the Harry I used to know and despise. I wonder what happened to him.”

* * *

The obvious thing for me to do was to try to find work as an architect except that, as Harry Walker, I did not have a glimmer of a qualification, and with a shabby suit and a rat’s face, I didn’t look anywhere near the part either. Nevertheless, I managed to persuade Tommy to lend me five sheets of his drawing paper on which I reconstructed some of my most successful designs of the last two years. If I could get them in front of an architect, I might stand half a chance of at least getting some dogsbody work that would earn me enough money to get back to Wokingham.

Well, naturally, I didn’t. I tracked down about five architectural practices and received nice, polite, calm receptionist permafrost. In four cases, I was dismissed within a minute. On the fifth and last occasion, one of the partners happened to be passing and asked to see my drawings.

“Very nice,” he said. “Where did you study?”

“Bath.”

“Bath?”

“Bath.”

“Whom have you worked for?”

I told him the truth.

“Good credentials,” he commented. “As it happens, I know someone there – Bobby Coningsby. Do you know him?”

“Very well,” I replied. “I have worked with him for years.”

“Come through. My name is John Farmer, by the way. And yours?” He invited me to sit down.

“Harry Walker.”

“Good to meet you, Harry. Would you mind if I called Bobby?”

“Well, it might be a bit awkward. No-one knows that I am thinking about leaving, Bobby included.”

“Oh don’t worry,” he assured me. “I can be very subtle. What’s the number?”

He got through to Bobby straightaway. He started with “Hi, Bobby, we haven’t spoken in a long time,” and continued in catch-up chat mode for about ten minutes, ten excruciating minutes for me as I knew exactly what was going to happen next. I should have stopped the torture, but I couldn’t work out how and, anyway, I thought it might be yet another clue for Chrissie to pick up on sometime. And then the punch was landed. “Bobby, can I ask a favour? We have some work that we do not feel sufficiently experienced to handle ourselves, and someone recommended a guy called Harry Walker who works at your place I believe …..Oh. you have never heard of him? Are you sure? Oh, okay, no matter. I must have been mistaken ……..”

John came off the phone projecting a look of hurt thunder. “Bobby hasn’t heard of you. You are not in the phone book, and he checked with reception who had never heard of you either. Would you care to explain?”

Some things are beyond explaining, so I got up, with an apology and a protestation that the drawings were indeed my own designs, and walked out on any prospective career in Hull as an architect.

I was strolling rather dejectedly along a street called Ferensway when a car stopped alongside me, and two very determined-looking men invited me to get in.

“You aren’t architects?” I inquired facetiously.

“No, ‘arry, but we’ve done our time in construction, if that counts. Jump in, ‘arry. We think you’ll want to ‘ear what we ‘ave to say. Kathy ‘ere will vouch for us,” at which point my sister leant over and shouted “It’s okay, Harry. It’s safe to get in. I think they are going to offer you a job.”

It turned out that it wasn’t only the police who were pleased that I had offed Martin in Pease Street. Martin’s old gang didn’t appreciate him much either, plus they were in urgent need of leadership given that a gang from Bransholme was closing in on them. They thought I might be interested in helping them out.

“Well, I am certainly looking for a job,” I admitted.

“That’s settled, then,” concluded Mike “the ‘ammer” Stevenson, so named I was told a short while later because “’e’s crap at DIY”.

“We’ll call you ‘Boss’ from now on, then, shall we, ‘arry,” volunteered Andy “Fingers” Murphy, a man with an almost super-human craving for fish fingers, apparently, which was noteworthy even in an old fishing port like Hull.

“’e’ll have to prove ‘issen first,” objected Pete “Cut-throat” Carver whose epithet had indeed been earned by cutting throats to order. Perhaps he had wanted my job, because he gave me a hostile and evil look.

Kathy came up and hugged me. “We’re a team now, bro. With their muscle and your brain, we’ll make Hull the crime capital of England.”

“Just like it used to be,” added Fingers Murphy nostalgically.

“When you were a lad?” I asked.

I got some strange looks. “Nah, three years ago.”

“Where ‘ave you been, ‘arry?”

“Biding my time,” I replied, and tried to make it sound menacing. “Watching and waiting.”

* * *

“You’ve gone and done what?” Fran stormed at me. “And I thought we were going up in the world!”

“They didn’t give me a lot of choice. They had already held the election before I turned up.”

“This is Kathy’s doing, this is. Silly tart. Wait till I get my hands on her! She has obviously been paid off to betray you. She gets some better clients, or a rake-off or something, and you get picked up and shoved in prison for ten years as the local gang boss. I am sure we are all going to enjoy that.”

“How do I get out of it?”

“How did you get into it, more’s the point?”

And, indeed, how did I? How could a bunch of thugs suggest that I become their boss, and I agree just like that? I would never have done it as Keith McGuire and, of course, nobody would have asked me. Something inside me said “Yes, go for it. It is what you have always wanted.” The place was surreal, the people were surreal, the situation was surreal, and I went along with it as if in a dream. There’d be no chance of resigning now, I supposed.

“You’re sleeping on your own tonight,” Fran informed me fiercely. “I would rather sleep with Kathy, although something tells me that she will be working overtime this evening, and that we won’t be seeing her sorry face until the morning. And keep away from Tommy. You’re not just as bad as the old Harry; you are worse.” And with that, she grabbed Tommy’s hand and dragged him upstairs.

I winked at him. “Thanks for the paper, Tommy,” I said.

He winked back. “No problems, Dad.” Fran scowled.

* * *

Chapter 7

Thus I became the boss of the ‘Royals’, as they called themselves, as we all lived in the vicinity of Hull Royal Infirmary. Fran was surely right, they were only looking for a scapegoat leader, one who knew nothing about them and who would therefore not be able to implicate them in anything, especially as I seemed to have had my memory wiped and didn’t even seem to know what day of the week it was. I was perfect, a malicious dope with a recent killing to his name, and a long history of pitifully petty crime. I would be a cinch to bang up, all honour satisfied. The police in Hull were spreading it about that they were dramatically reducing crime in a city which had one of the worst records in the country, so they would be only too happy to pick up and incarcerate a gangland boss to crown their glory.

"Not exactly ‘ard to reduce crime," commented Mike the Hammer cynically. "You just wipe ‘alf of the incidents from the records. A mate of mine is a copper. ‘e says they’ve two sets of records, the one which ‘olds all the incidents in case the victim suddenly turns up, and the one they use for reporting up the ladder. When crime goes down, everyone is 'appy, and no bugger questions the numbers. When there’s another crime wave again, they give you more coppers, pay rises, overtime, everything. So that’s a bit of alright too. They keep the numbers yo-yoing up and down, and every bugger’s a winner, eh? That's 'ow it works in real ife, ain’t it? People'll believe anything."

Mike may have been stupid about many things beyond DIY, but I guessed that in this case he was probably spot on. I had heard in London about all these corrupt northern cities where the police and the councillors sit in each other’s pockets raking in the cash, tying in the local magistrates who just want to hang somebody. I didn’t know where Hull stood in the pecking order of such places, but I soon had it pegged as a feudal society with a ruling class sitting pretty in their country mansions, lording it over the grovelling servant classes whom they employed. If you could square any issue with the elite, you could get away with it, that was my guess.

And where would I fit in? Well, immediately, I was about the lowest of the low-life, scum, which was tough on Fran and Tommy. I have always felt responsible for others, which was probably how I started out with Chrissie. Now I had to do something for my new family, and I was amazed what I was prepared to do. It felt like I was not really the one doing it. What Harry chose to do was not my doing. I had an escape hatch. If the situation got too hot, I might find a way of airlifting myself out of there. I was in the middle of a computer game. It wasn’t real, it was surreal. And all the time there was this little buried voice inside me egging me on. “You can do it. Prove you can do it. Get yourself a better life for Fran, Tommy, all of you. Be someone. Be a really big someone. You are made to be someone.” The way that I had wanted to make it big had been as an architect, but there was no chance of that for the time-being. Instead, I was following a path that no-one who realised that I had been brought up in a residential care home would have been surprised at. I had struggled to avoid this sort of life, and now I had been plunged down into it anyway.

And I thought to myself “Why not?” What did I have to lose? When I looked at myself in the mirror, it was obvious that the world hadn’t given Harry much in the first place, and had subsequently taken most of it away again.

Tommy still had some time for me, especially if I could break heads the way he had seen me do with Martin and his gang. Kathy, in desperate straights of her own, thought I was potentially useful, although there was some genuine affection there too. And Fran was persuadable, I guessed, although, for the present, she was completely switched off. I felt I had to win her back, which was idiotic as I had never won her in the first place beyond a one-night-and-one-morning stand.

Well, first off, I had better do something about keeping myself out of prison. At any moment the police would be kicking the door down and presenting the magistrates with a stitched up case, having done a deal with Mike the Hammer or Cut-Throat Carver. If I was going to survive, I would have to skip that bit. But how?

As Fran had predicted, Kathy did not drag herself home until seven in the morning, but when she did, I was waiting for her.

“Kathy, I need to talk to you,” I said as she fell through the door, hanging from the key which was still rattling in the latch.

“Oh come on, Harry. Give me a break. I’m bushed.”

“I still need to talk to you, Kathy, and you got me into this mess.”

“You’ve been in this mess all your life, Harry.”

“Yes, but I am not Harry, and I have only been here since yesterday.”

“OK, then, but I need some kip. You can talk to me until I start snoring.”

So I did, although Kathy did throw in a free strip show whilst she was at it.

“When will the police come for me, do you think?”

“I heard Mike say that you wouldn’t last past Thursday. Whether that was to do with the Inbies or the coppers, I don’t know.”

“Who are the Inbies?”

“Trevor Plant’s gang in Bransholme - North Bransholme Estate – NBE – Inbies.”

“Who is Mike working with here?”

“He said it in front of the whole gang - Cut-Throat, Fingers, Knitting Needles, ‘ull Bitter, Rackets and Welton Willy.”

“And have I got a nickname yet?”

“Yeah, you are Slasher.”

“Slasher?”

“Yeah, originally as in peeing in your pants, but now as in stabbing Martin. They do admire you for that.”

“It doesn’t exactly amount to loyalty, though.”

* * *

Hull, East Yorkshire, was a place as obscure to me as Hull, Canada, until I inadvertently turned up there.

Everyone in Hull knows that in 2005 it was officially considered to be the worst place to live in the country. Probably nobody outside Hull cared. Within a few days, I had decided that it looked a lot better than Stoke-on-Trent, which is a classic “I spent a fortnight there last weekend” sort of place, although people in Hull say that about Grimsby. I have never been there, but the name sounds right.

Hull is pronounced “’ull” by the locals who live below the salt. Harry Walker pronounces it that way too. Its official name is Kingston-upon-Hull, because Hull is really a river, not a city. It used to be the biggest fishing port in England, and the streets around Pease Street are where most of the trawlermen used to live. You can see some of these old-timers still hanging around, often wearing dark suits and reminiscing about the days when they travelled everywhere in taxis and got through three weeks’ wages in two days, leaving the missus and the kids to rely on the kindness of neighbours. They tell me that Hull was rugged and honest in those days, a community. The roughness came from the seas. Many trawlers went down over the years, drowning their entire crews. Up in the arctic, you last about a minute in the freezing waters. No-one quite knows why the ships sunk, but they suspected that the rigging became iced up, the boat then became top-heavy and ‘turned turtle’. Back in the ‘60s, three trawlers capsized within a few weeks of each other, killing everyone on board. Despite this, the old fisherman pub haunts, like Rayners down Hessle Road, are nostalgic for the way things were. You were surrounded by good mates you signed up alongside for trip after trip, serving legendary skippers who claimed to be able to smell where the fish was, and villainous, thieving trawler owners, who weren’t so bad really. Everything in Hull ain’t so bad really, even when it is.

The most significant things about Hull are its white telephone boxes, and its inclusion in the phrase “Hell, Hull and Halifax”, because Hull and Halifax were the hanging towns in Yorkshire. I have never been to Halifax, but maybe they were grateful in Hull to be put out of their misery.

I needed to dig myself out of my immediate misery and, for that, I needed help. The only two people I knew were Fran and Kathy, both of whom I had just met. Fran was not speaking to me; Kathy was dead to the world (and she was right, she did snore). If anyone knocked on the door, it was a toss-up between it being the police or the Inbies.

There was only one way I could think of to knock both out of the equation.

Fran and Tommy were downstairs in the kitchen. Tommy was still drawing. He smiled at me while Fran turned away.

“Fran,” I started. She busied herself with a task that did not require her to look at me. “Fran!”

“She’s cross with you, Dad. She thinks you are going to get us all killed.”

“I am going to give us all a better life,” I contradicted him.

“What do you mean, Dad?”

“Don’t listen to him, Tommy, he is talking pipe dreams.”

“Those too,” I confirmed. “If we are going to make it really big, we have to have a pipe dream.”

Fran turned on me, sneering. “What do you mean ‘really big’, Harry? You are a small-time crook. In fact, you are smaller than that, and you have even messed that up.”

“I haven’t messed anything up, Fran. I have been here a day, let me remind you.”

“What do you mean, Dad?” Tommy was smiling broadly in concerned disbelief.

“Don’t listen to him, Tommy. He is raving.”

“Do you have any contacts in the police, Fran?”

“I haven’t, but you certainly have. You have been nabbed about a thousand times.”

“Who has nabbed me?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“I need just one name, Fran.”

“What about the guy from the other night, when you stabbed that Martin guy? Why do you want to know, anyway?”

“I need to do a deal.”

“You are going to be a grass?” Fran exclaimed incredulously.

“I don’t have any other choice.”

“You’ll get yourself killed, and like as not us besides.”

“Let’s look on the positive side.”

“What side is that, then?”

“At least I won’t be going to prison.”

“You call that the bright side? I call it a crying shame.”

I winked at Tommy, but he was too stunned to respond.

“Fran, if we are going to pull this off, I need you and Kathy to help me out.”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you are on about.”

“Well, there I can help you.” She shrugged her shoulders and went to fetch something from the sitting room, which was just as well, as I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about either.

* * *

“Dad,” Tommy pleaded with me. “What is going on?”

“I don’t know, Tommy.”

“How do you not know, Dad?”

“Tommy, come here,” I coaxed him although, in fact, I pulled up a stool next to him. I gave him a hug. It was a genuine one. I was already beginning to feel fond of this boy. It was as if I belonged to both of them in a shadowy sort of way, to him and his mother; as if I always had. “Life is sometimes confusing.”

“What is confusing?” I think he was asking me to define ‘confusing’, but I answered as if he was seeking more information.

“Tommy, a few days ago, I thought I was somebody else. Now I feel like I am that somebody else and your dad, as if the old me has been superimposed on your old dad, producing I don’t know quite what.”

Tommy eyed me as if I had gone completely mad. “Do you need to see a doctor, Dad?”

“No, I need to consult a metaphysician.” He stared back at me blankly. “Metaphysicians address the questions of ultimate knowledge; the truth behind the illusion.”

Tommy didn’t know how to respond so he clutched me tight, as if trying to cling me to reality, or to cling onto it himself.

“Tommy, shall I tell you about the man I think I used to be?”

“Yes, please, Dad.”

I led him to the sitting room. Fran was no longer there. She must have gone upstairs. We sat down side-by-side on the sofa. Tommy cuddled up against me with a sense of total intimacy, and trust, and need, as only a small child can achieve. How did this pillock Harry manage to spawn and live alongside such a child?

“The man I think I used to be lost his parents before he even knew he had them. His father was killed in a fight in a pub before he was born ……”

“Why was he fighting?”

“I don’t know.”

“What happened to the man who killed him?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“And then what?”

“My mother died giving birth to me.”

“What did she die of?”

“She started bleeding heavily, and they couldn’t stop it. She bled to death.”

“Why couldn’t they stop it?”

“It happens sometimes. Giving birth is not as easy as everybody makes out.”

“Was it easy for Mum when I was born?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

“Where were you?”

“I was this other man.”

He frowned, as if trying to come to terms with something. “And then …..”

“And then I went to live in a residential care home. I had no relatives, or at least none that they could trace.”

“What was it like there?”

“I didn’t know any different. It was probably a bit like being brought up in a hospital, and then like being brought up in a prison, with frequent remands.”

“What is a remand?”

“A remand is when you are let out of prison to see if you can live a better life than you did. In my case, I was sent to live with foster parents to see if I could live with them.”

“Could you?”

“I don’t know. They couldn’t live with me. I was sent to six foster homes in my first ten years, and they all decided that it wasn’t working, that I did not fit into their families.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“I thought I could. It thought I was doing well, but each time they decided that it wasn’t working. It always ended up with them shouting at me. I don’t think that foster parents have the same tolerance of other people’s children as they have of their own.”

“Do you love me? Would you ever send me away?”

“Never.” I answered his question genuinely, sincerely, then I thought about what I had just promised. I had committed never to leave him, and yet I had two children of my own that I could not abandon either. How was I going to get around that?

“I love you too, Dad. More than ever.”

“Thank you, Tommy.”

“And then what?”

“Then, when I was twelve, I fell madly in love with a girl called Chrissie.”

“Was that before you met Mum?”

“Long before I met your mum. Eighteen years ago.”

“What was she like?”

“She was wonderful. She still is wonderful. I love her very much.”

“More than you love Mum?” He lifted his head to search my eyes.

“I have only known your mum for two days. She seems really, really nice, but I don’t know her.”

“Dad, why are you teasing me? You have known her for years. You have known her all the time that I have been born.”

“Not in my mind, Tommy. To the best of my recollection, I only met her for the first time the other day.”

“That’s stupid, Dad, don’t tease.”

“I am not trying to tease you, Tommy. I am trying to tell you the truth; my truth.”

“How could that be true?”

“That is what I don’t understand.”

“I don’t like what you are saying, Dad. You are frightening me.”

“I am not trying to frighten you, Tommy.”

He got up sharply, tears in his eyes, shaking. “I want Mum. Where is she?”

“Probably upstairs.”

He ran into the hallway. “Mum! Mum!”

“Yes, Tommy?”

“Where are you?”

“Up here? What’s the matter?”

“Dad is lying to me. He is being horrible. He is pretending that he is not my dad.”

I heard Fran swiftly descending the stairs. She poked her head round the door to give me a scowl. “Don’t worry, Tommy,” she consoled him. “Dad has his crazy turns.”

“Is he my dad?”

“Of course he is.”

“So why does he say that he isn’t?”

“Something funny happened to him the other day when he went to see the doctor. He has not been quite himself since. In some ways he is much nicer. In others he is behaving like a complete twerp.”

“Will he get better?”

“I sincerely hope so. I can’t put up with him the way he is now forever. It’s exhausting, and he is doing and saying some very silly things.”

Tommy came back into the room and gave me another hug. “Dad,” he declared, “I still love you, even when you hurt me.”

“Come on, Tommy,” Fran called. “Let’s go shopping.”

“Do you have some money?” Tommy exclaimed, all excited.

“That’ll be the day,” Fran replied, “but a cat can look at a king.”

“What cat?”

“It’s an expression, Tommy. It means that we can still look at the things we could buy if we had the money.”

“Will we ever have any money?”

“Your dad says that we will someday, although your dad is not that reliable. It is best not to believe too much of what he says at the moment, or to get upset by it. He’ll be himself again soon.”

I listened to the sounds of an expedition preparing itself in the hallway and the kitchen, until the voices began to fade, and I heard the front door shudder behind them.

* * *

Chapter 8

I managed to find the name of the detective who called round after I killed Martin Jenson on a sheet of paper in a drawer in the kitchen – Detective Inspector Richard Martin, coincidentally, from Humberside Police, Queen’s Gardens – so I left the house shortly after Fran and Tommy.

I had to ask directions at the end of the road to Queen’s Gardens. Luckily, the location was well known and the middle-aged woman whom I accosted pointed the way and suggested that I ask again once I was in town. In all, I had to flag down three people before I got there.

DI Martin was out when I inquired, so I waited for three hours in total until he arrived back, and for another hour until he would see me. He led me to an interview room.

“Sit down, Harry.”

“Thank you.”

“Well?”

“I have come to ask a favour?”

“A favour? What would that be?”

“I was wondering if I could help you.”

His eyes narrowed alarmingly. “In what way?”

“I would like to become an informer.”

DI Martin sat back in his chair and roared with laughter. “Now I have heard it all,” he commented. “Harry Walker an informer, eh? What do you want to inform us about?”

“The Royals have invited me to become their leader.”

“Congratulations, Harry. It is quite a promotion for the likes of you. What did you say?”

“I said yes.”

“And now you want to stitch them up?”

“I think it is more that they are trying to stitch me up.”

“So what are you proposing to tell us?”

“I don’t know yet, but I will keep you informed of what their plans are.”

“And you want precisely how much for this trivial information, Harry? The Royals are not exactly the most fearsome gang in town.”

“I was thinking of proposing a merger with the Inbies, then I can inform on them too.”

DI Martin reached back in his chair, and winged his elbows to the side of his head. “Now they are much more like it. If you can tell us about their movements, that would be much more interesting to us.”

“I am sure that I could.”

DI Martin leant forward across the table. “And what exactly is there in it for you, Harry? You know what the Inbies do to snitches. We found the last one floating in King George Dock without any of his wedding tackle. It looked like it had been hacked off with a deliberately blunt knife. Is that what you want to happen to you? Have you given up satisfying your missus? She was quite attractive, if I remember rightly.”

“I think I can look after myself.”

“I doubt it, Harry, I doubt it. Still, if you want to tell us stuff, and you are not expecting to be paid for it, then it’s a free world. You just go ahead, and if the leads you give us prove valuable, we can reconsider your remuneration. That is all I can promise you.”

“That’s enough,” I confirmed, stood up and offered to shake DI Martin’s hand. He was so baffled, poor man, that he acquiesced. If he had had the time to think about it, I bet he would have refused. The police track down criminals as best they can, but grasses make them sick.

I left him shaking his head, and no doubt reflecting on the strange and unexpected ways of the world.

* * *

So that bargain at least bought me a few days of freedom. They were bound to leave me loose a short while on the off-chance that I might come up with something useful, perhaps until the coroner’s hearing into Martin Jenson’s death.

When I got back to the house, Fran and Tommy were still out, and a tired and dishevelled, not to mention barely-dressed, Kathy answered the door. She held it open for me, without saying a word, then yawned in my ear before climbing back upstairs.

I followed her into her room, where she slipped straight into bed and showed me her back.

“Kathy,” I said. “I need to ask you something. It is urgent.”

“Not now, Harry,” she murmured, “unless you want to fuck me.”

“No, I wasn’t planning on doing that.”

“Then fuck off and leave me be. I need to sleep. I’m working again this evening and I have to have my wits about me. Come and talk to me just before I go out.” She turned and gave me a sweet smile. “Okay, Harry? I love you really.” Then she turned back towards the wall.

* * *

I suppose that one advantage of having been sent to all those foster homes is that I have learnt to try to blend into a family of total strangers at great speed. It was an aptitude that never turned into a skill when I was young, but I had evidently improved with the passage of time.

Fran and Tommy came back in about five o’clock. They returned empty-handed and yet Tommy was smiling, a combination I could not imagine Ella and Mark managing. Chrissie always bought them something when they went out shopping together.

“Hello, Dad,” Tommy greeted me. “Are you feeling better?”

“Funnily enough, I am, thanks, Tommy, and all the better for seeing you.”

That made him beam all the more, and he rushed over to give me a kiss.

“So you’ve been able to get your head around a few things, have you?” Fran quizzed me, not as aggressively as it may come across. It was a question posed more in hope than in bitterness.

“Yes, Fran” I replied, “I think I have a few things worked out. The situation is not as dire as it was.”

“Come upstairs and tell me about it.”

We both sat on the bed together, and it was almost as if we really were a married couple.

“What happened?” Fran asked.

“I think I have bought us a few days.”

“And then?”

“By then, with a bit of luck, we are home and dry.”

“How do you figure that one out?”

I didn’t know how much to tell her. I felt I could trust her, but a secret is no longer a secret once it is shared. “A plan is forming,” I commented mysteriously.

“I am delighted to hear it.” She fixed me fiercely. “If anything ever happens to Tommy, I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth to avenge him. Do you understand me, Harry Walker, or whoever you are!”

“I would never do anything to hurt Tommy.”

“I think you already have done. You told him you would never leave him.”

“I know.”

“But you will, won’t you, the minute you can.”

“It was a reflex response because I have become very fond of him. As for the rest, I cannot tell you. I will carry on trying to connect with Chrissie, but I don’t know if she will ever listen to me. And if she does, maybe she will still have nothing to do with me, especially looking as I do. We have fought too hard to drag ourselves out of the mud for her to leap at the lowlife I would appear to her to be. My face alone would churn her stomach.”

Fran smiled in recollection. “It churned mine the first time I saw you. Do you remember, at Hull Fair?” She hesitated. “Of course you don’t, or pretend not to. You were with some of those old friends you never see anymore, looking very slick. You gave the impression of being wild and fun, as well as ruthless and sharp. It’s tragic how first impressions can be so wrong.”

“And you we wearing a blue flowery dress ……” I stopped. Where did that come from?

Fran snapped up my description immediately. “How do you know that, Harry, if you claim only to have known me since Tuesday? Is your memory coming back?”

“I don’t know. It suddenly slipped out, and I felt a warm glow as I said it. I also have this phrase ‘He thinks a lot of himself’ in my head.”

“You heard that, did you, Harry? I have always wondered. That is what Ellie said to me when she saw you.”

I felt faint. How could this be? How could I access traces of memories of Harry and Fran meeting up? Was the memory stored in Harry’s body somewhere, like addresses on a mobile phone being stored on the phone itself, not on the chip?

“This is really weird,” I said.

“For me, the Harry who cannot remember a thing is the weird one. You must have been so traumatised by something you discovered during your trance that you got amnesia or something.”

Well, it would certainly have been easier if I could have accessed Harry’s thoughts and memories, but it did freak me out. What was happening to me, Keith McGuire?

* * *

I stayed talking with Fran for another hour, during which time it felt that we had made up, so I missed catching Kathy before she went out, which was frustrating because I really needed to sound her out.

Fran cooked supper. She is an excellent cook. In fact, she is a far more accomplished woman than I would ever have expected from someone living in this sort of area and married to Harry Walker. Her speech is incisive and articulate, her mind is sharp, and she knows her etiquette, as adapted to the local environment.

I put Tommy to bed and read him a story. Fran had been reading him the “Faraway Tree Stories” by Enid Blyton, and he was transfixed.

Once he was asleep, I came back downstairs, and Fran and I started talking again.

She filled me in on Harry and her life in the hope that it would lift my amnesia.

It turned out that Harry was basically a heavyweight petty crook – able to fight his corner, but a man of limited ambitions. He had been to jail twice before Fran and he met, and a third time while she was pregnant with Tommy, and into Tommy’s first year. He was basically a conman, defrauding people by selling them non-existent insurance policies and pocketing the premiums, much like real insurance companies do in fact. He also fenced used cars, and managed to pickpocket people’s credit cards, having watched them entering the PIN in the shop. That was always good for £200. He only ever withdrew money off each card once, immediately after he filched them. His thieving skills and his physicality had always meant that he was taken seriously by individual members of the Royals, but Martin had never rated him, refused to let him join them, and tended to humiliate and demean him in front of the others who liked him, but were not about to cross Martin.

“I want Kathy to go,” Fran announced suddenly.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want that sort of woman around Tommy in his formative years, and I don’t want her around me either. People keep looking at me asking themselves if I have become a prostitute too.”

From what I could gather, it was a fair question as Fran did not work, and Harry’s erratic income was never felonious enough to afford them regular food on the table. It turned out, though, that Fran’s dad pitched in with spare cash. He was a builder on the make in the Hull and East Riding Area (he probably still is), and Fran was the apple of his eye. He had wanted to give Harry many black eyes over the years for his carelessness with his daughter, but he found Harry too intimidating for that. However, when Fran confided in her dad that she thought Harry had slept with his sister, Kathy, on several occasions, her dad was round in no time to tell Harry to sling his hook and leave his precious daughter alone. Harry had denied all, and as Fran’s dad had no proof, as neither did Fran, then the confrontation was stalled into a stalemate.

“You can’t just kick Kathy out. What would she do?”

“She earns a damned site more money lying on her back than you have ever earned standing on your two feet. She can afford to rent a house more than we can. And now that Martin is dead and not bleeding her dry, she is well away, protected by her elder brother, naturally.”

“Of course I will protect her if I can.”

“You will do a lot of things to her if you can.”

“Oh not that load of old rubbish again, Fran. Wash your mouth out, and your brain with it.”

“What load of old rubbish would that be, Harry?” And I had to admit that I didn’t know, but that somewhere in the back of my mind I felt that it was the basis of a longstanding row between us.

Fran also filled me in on Harry’s childhood which, similarly to mine, had never been a childhood at all. Harry’s parents had died when Harry was six and Kathy two. They both ended up in care. From all accounts, Harry doted on his sister, and stuck by her through thick and thin. Indeed, he was a rather mature child whom the social services believed would do well for himself in later life. However, like most such children, he had been processed off the end of the conveyor belt, straight into the dung heap which is adolescent life. Without qualifications, Harry had to scratch around for a living wherever opportunities presented themselves, and Kathy did much the same, using her body as the scratching post.

The parallels with my own life were obvious, as were the differences. Which qualities determined that I would become a successful architect and Chrissie the partner of a law firm, against all the odds, whereas Harry and Kathy ended up doing exactly what could have been predicted for them? What quirks did we have, or talents, or turns of the cards, or virtues – and, ultimately, what did the discriminating factor matter when I was destined to end up back here anyway? I might as well have done nothing, fought for nothing, have achieved nothing, because the sodding great master of fate fully intended to wreck it all for me whatever I managed to construct for myself, and for others, my wife and my children. Shit lands on the just beetle as well as on the unjust one, and only dung beetles appreciate that fact.

This was the state of mind with which I turned into bed alongside the woman who was not my wife, but whose good opinion I valued nonetheless, and with whom I could probably manage to construct a passable life if I could not find a way to escape my slam-dunk fate.

So, I thought to myself, here I am, now how do I make a success of this life? That was one fundamental difference between Harry and me. He expected to be a failure; I intended to transcend misfortune.

Success was going to have to be based on criminal activity, wasn’t it? I wasn’t going to make it as an architect, nor as any version of myself that required qualifications. I had no money to my name, and no access to any sort of seed capital.

So what criminal activities are profitable? The Royals were already squeezing people for their debts no doubt, and flogging dodgy goods and dodgier drugs. Unless we contrived to wipe all the other local gangs off the face of the earth, there was no chance of a step-change in our fortunes. We had to find something else. Declaring an embargo on moral qualms, what could I come up with – bank robbery, hold-ups, blackmail, fraud? Fraud might prove lucrative, but I would need either a stonkingly good new idea or a degree in computer science. It was worth considering.

What else? In the middle of the night, I came up with an alternative scheme. It wasn’t complete yet, but I thought it was definitely inspired, coming from someone who had never had a single criminal thought in his being until a few days previously. The Royals and I should be considering the protection business. We would be the Robin Hood and his Merry Gang of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and then of the whole of England. But we weren’t in the West Riding. Exactly. You don’t piss in your own porridge; Slasher Walker can tell you that for free.

The evil thought that began to formulate in my mind was to threaten to kidnap the children of the rich in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and to demand protection money, say £20,000. For that price, my guess was that they would just do as we asked. Anyone with any financial form could raise that much on a credit card within a few hours, and it certainly wasn’t worth risking your child’s life by involving the police for that amount, which would make collecting the money easier too. And if the pilot scheme worked, we could spread it across the whole country. It was possible that nobody would realise what was going on for some time because the victims would keep their mouths shut. That would be the deal. The rich are paranoid about having their children kidnapped. I knew that from private clients. They always wanted the most elaborate alarm systems, not so much for protecting their Rembrandts, although the insurance companies insist on that anyway, but more to ensure that their children stay tucked up in bed. We just needed a child to be actually kidnapped to set the ball rolling. And guess who was going to kidnap this child. You’ve got it, the Inbies. That way, the Hull police would have their gang boss, and it wouldn’t be me.

Pleased with my thought, and in a way I was, I started racing through the details. A prodigious architect has to master both form and substance, the big picture and the devilish minor detail that could collapse the project twenty-four years out, just before the guarantees expire.

Which child? That was the first question. How would I find a child that we could whisk eighty miles away before anyone spotted his or her disappearance? Was a girl better than a boy? No, a boy was better, I decided. People are used to girls being abducted. The disappearance of a boy would signal that not a single child was safe. How would we transport him from, say, Dewsbury to wherever we would hold him? How would we keep him quiet for a week or two while the world looked for him? And then how to incriminate the Inbies in general, and their boss, Trevor Plant, in particular?

These were all unanswered questions immediately, but that was acceptable. Far more than that, it represented the process solution. That is how I set about my projects. I have a pad to list every single question I can think of. I then encourage others to raise questions too. When I can no longer unearth a single new question, I know I am approaching the home straight. I can’t fail. In creative problem solving, the trick is to pose ingenious questions. If you have those in your pocket, the ingenious answers will inevitably follow, even if it takes some time to generate them. If you are missing a question, you are facing a potentially fatal flaw. If you are missing answers, you have only exciting opportunities.

Now here came the most important question of all – who among the Royals could I trust? To answer that question, I would need Kathy who would be injecting herself with some scum’s cum about now, or waiting around to do so.

Kathy was better than this life; so was I, and so were Fran and Tommy. I couldn’t speak for the rest of the Royals. Perhaps they were living precisely the life they deserved, from which some of them would be rescued by the sheer force of my good fortune. Whoever had recommended my leadership of the Royals was a wise man, even if he assumed he was behaving like a douche-bag at the time.

* * *

Chapter 9

Kathy rattled her way through the front door a few minutes shy of five in the morning, crept upstairs and slid into bed. Before she could turn over to fall asleep, I was wrapped up in her bed beside her. She didn’t object. She merely held my arm to her waist.

“What are you up to?” she asked me.

“I have the beginnings of a plan. I need your help.”

“If you can catch me before I fall asleep, I am all ears. And don’t ram your cock up my arse. I have had all that already tonight.”

I wasn’t planning to.

“First question, how can you make people pay you in such a way that the money can never be traced back to you?”

“Cash, I suppose. How much are you talking about?”

“£20,000.”

“Too much for a postal order. It could be a payment in stuff that is easy to shift – a car, gold, silver, a lorry load of Nike sports gear - something where you can tamper with the serial numbers. You may get into a spot of bother with the VAT inspectors though.”

“What if we forced them to give us things they were ashamed to be involved with – some dodgy negotiable instruments issued by the Russian government, that sort of thing?”

“I don’t know much about negotiable whatsits, but anything involving the Russians must have a good chance of disappearing into a dark hole.”

“Arms,” I almost shouted suddenly, making her jump. “We get them to pay us in arms, or drugs, or sex slaves. The people I am thinking of wouldn’t want to admit to any involvement in any of those.”

“Yeah, £20,000 would buy you several Philippino slappers.”

“But not too much heroine, or that many weapons. I am not sure about the arms trade. It is bound to be teeming with dangerous psychopaths who come after you just for the sake of it.”

“So Philippinos or drugs it is.”

“It rather looks like it. So what drug dealers do you know?”

“They are only amateurs around here.”

“And in Leeds, or Manchester, or Liverpool?”

“Yeah, they are a bit more serious.”

“Do you know any of them?”

“As it happens, I was with one of them last week – Kenny Bender. I think he had been sampling too much of his own gear. I spent my time trying to work out whether I was more likely to end up dead before the end of the session, or he was. He gave me a right roughing up, which he had the cheek to tell me meant that he liked me. He doesn’t torture just anyone in that screwy mind of his. He would certainly be up for anything that would make him money. He wouldn’t mind how bent or dodgy it was.”

“Okay, that is the method of payment sorted out. Now, how do we grab the child, and who?”

Kathy turned round on me, shocked. “What on earth are you on about, Harry?”

I explained the scenario. We needed to nab one high profile boy for about a week, milk the frenzy, shock and outrage of the tabloid-reading public, plant him on Plant over in Bransholme, and then cash in on the proceeds – the systematic terrorising of parents so that they each cough up £20,000 in protection money.

“Harry,” Kathy commented, “you are just as evil as ever, but you have become a lot greedier suddenly.”

“Transportation. What sort of transportation can we use to move the boy around?”

“How about a Post Office van?”

“A Post Office van?”

“Yeah, there are millions of those around, and there must be one that we could buy for a knock-down price at a car auction.”

“Don’t they strip them of their livery?”

“I am sure that the gang can find us someone who can tart it up again. We can tell them that it is for a bank robbery or a postal snatch, or something. They are never going to question that.”

“Who has enough money to buy a Post Office van at an auction?”

“It doesn’t need to be a Post Office van exactly. It could be a British Gas van, or a YEB van, or something. They would work too.”

“So who has the money?”

“The gang has. They would have it in ready cash. Ask Mike.”

“Is he trustworthy?”

“You don’t need to tell him the truth but, as it happens, he probably is. In fact, he is the only one I would trust. The rest are just a bunch of thieving bastards. They all owe me for services rendered, for starters. Mike is the only one who pays up.”

“What do you think of my idea?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. I’m in. Now, are you going to do something useful with that stiffened pole of yours, or am I going to have to sing myself to sleep. Having a sister in the trade has to count for something, you know,” and, as I hesitated, “there is no way in buggery I am going to get pregnant this time round. Go on! Do us all a favour. Shove it in. I need a friendly poke for a change.”

* * *

It turned out that Harry and Kathy’s residential home had been nothing like ours which was a port in a storm in comparison. In ours, nothing much happened. In theirs, Harry was sodomised a couple of times to keep him in his place, and Kathy was anybody’s by the age of ten, with or without her consent. With that sort of background, who cares what happens next?

* * *

I woke up at 6:30, realising that I mustn't be discovered in Kathy's bed by either Tommy or Fran. I needed a shower. All women have noses that smell recent sex, and the trail of other women. But how would I explain that I was up so early? Did I need to?

I had a lightning shower - enough to cover any tracks - and rushed downstairs. Exercising myself on Kathy had reminded me that I needed to get in touch with Chrissie urgently.

Chrissie answered the phone herself in a short, distracted proclamation of her identity, warning the caller that every second spent could never be recovered.

"Chrissie," I said.

"Oh God, not you again. Can't you leave us alone? For your information, my husband Keith does not have a northern accent, so even if I couldn't see him from where I am standing right now, I would still not be fooled by you."

I had to make it quick, short and impactful.

"Attic, Sean cutting you, Seagrave v. Benson, Cordoniu, red, chrysanthemums, 11, South America, Bozo Bill, Lena Marlin, Charlton, Petrus, getting sued for millions, anything happening to the children, sucking your index finger …….” It was a frantic list of Chrissie’s like, dislikes, fears and dreams, delivered at racing commentator speed, but it certainly stopped her in her tracks. Who could know so much about her, except her husband Keith?

There was a sharp intake of breath at her end as she reacted to my onslaught as if someone had just whacked her in the solar plexus. “Some guesswork,” she said, trying to recover her composure. “Shame that it’s all hopelessly wrong. Those must be your fantasies, but they are not mine.”

“Do you want me to come up with some more? You know as well as I do that they were spot on.”

“No, I’ve heard enough already, thanks.”

“Two more,” I persisted. “Jane Jackson and unknown. Nobody knows who your father was.”

That really shook her. One sob got loose down the phone before she could stop it. “Who are you?” she asked earnestly.

“Keith, your husband.”

“But he is here. He is looking at me.”

“Ask him the questions to which I gave you the answers, starting with Charlton.”

She covered the phone for ten seconds, then repeated triumphantly “Not knowing who Bobby Charlton was.” It was my turn to be surprised.

“Ask him which flowers you cannot bear to be in the same room with.”

The phone mouthpiece was covered again. “Chrysanthemums.”

“Not bad. Are you sure that he did not hear me.”

“How could he have heard you?”

“Who was Brian Spooner?”

This time she let me overhear her conversation with the man pretending to be me. “Who was Brian Spooner?”

I heard my own voice say exactly what I would have said. “The guy as St. Crispin’s who hanged himself from the pipes in the bathroom with a bell rope he had stolen from the church.”

This man knew everything I knew, without hesitation. How did he manage it?

“Were you satisfied with the answer Mr. Whoever-You-Are down the phone?”

“I think I am now as confused as you are. How is the Hollander project coming on?”

“Great,” Chrissie replied. “Keith showed me some of the preliminary work last night.”

Damn. This man’s alibi was fireproof. He was me, and I was me too. How could that be?

“I am baffled,” I said. “How can we both be me?”

“That I cannot answer,” Chrissie retorted, but gently. “I have to admit that you are spooking me. You don’t sound remotely like Keith, but you are behaving like him, and you know one hell of a lot about me that I don’t think I have ever told anyone apart from Keith. You two didn’t get drunk one night together or something?”

“Now you are clutching at straws, Chrissie. Appealing to Equity’s Maiden.” It was one of Chrissie’s favourite expressions, ‘Equity’s Maiden’ being the arbiter of an equitable principle mitigating a strict interpretation according to the letter of the law.

There was such a long silence from the other end of the line that I thought Chrissie must have cut us off. Eventually she said “How can I contact you?”

I gave her my number, which I knew by now.

“Give me a couple of days to think things over.”

What was going through Chrissie’s mind was the calculation of whether it would be safe, or advisable, for us to meet up.

“Of course, Chrissie. It is safe to meet me, but I haven’t any money. The guy whose body I seem to have adopted is absolutely skint, unemployed, and a petty crook to boot. If we are going to meet up, you will have to come and find me.” I gave her the address.

“Hull?” she repeated.

“Yeah, Hull. I told you that last time.”

“Why would you be in Hull?”

“Perhaps it is hell after all. Perhaps I am contacting you from the beyond, or the back of beyond as they say around here.”

“I’ll think about it. I promise I will. And I’ll get back to you.”

“I know you will. I’ll be waiting.”

* * *

“Was that Chrissie you were talking to?” Fran challenged me the second I was off the phone.

“Yes.”

“Did she believe you this time?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I think she did,” I replied in contradiction to my gesture. “I was much better prepared this time.”

“Does that mean that you are going to walk out on us and bugger off to London?” she asked, with more than a suggestion of gratifying resentment in her voice.

“Not for the moment,” I assured her. “I haven’t got the money, and Chrissie is not ready to meet me yet. If I push her too hard, she will panic and run away from me.”

I approached Fran and forced my arms around her. Her body was absolutely rigid, rejecting both me and any emotion I might try to project onto her, yet seeking it out nonetheless. “I am not going to abandon you and Tommy,” I assured her.

“You aren’t going to abandon Kathy more like,” she retorted.

“I am not going to abandon anyone. There is a way round this.”

The phone went. Fran answered it. “Hello? Yes, he is just here. It’s Chrissie for you, Harry.” She emphasised the Harry.

“Chrissie? That was quick.”

“I have thought about it, and no thank you. Have a pleasant life.” She cut the phone line with a determined click.

That was a quick decision, much quicker than Chrissie would usually make, I told myself. She was bound to reconsider it in a few days. On the other hand, I could not rely on her changing her mind. In the meantime, I needed the money to get to see her, whether she wanted to see me or not. I had better press ahead with my plan.

* * *

Mike the Hammer lived, and lives, in Chomley Street, less than five minutes away. Kathy arranged for me to see him at his house alone.

I knocked on the door, and he invited me into one of the most rundown, depressing and soulless places I have ever visited. His nickname was stiletto-precise in its sarcasm. Mike certainly did not like DIY, or even painting. His wife had left him twenty years ago, and he hadn’t painted the place since. It may have been vacuumed in the meantime, but it had dark heavily-patterned carpeting and rugs everywhere which looked dirty without actually betraying specifics. The door to the sitting room was shut (closing me off from God knows what horrors), and he led me into the kitchen which was tatty but not untidy. In fact, there was not the slightest evidence that it had witnessed fresh cooking this many a year. It was as if it had been mothballed by social historians to illustrate how lonely abandoned husbands typically lived at the turn of the millennium. My wife has left me and I only pass through the place. I don’t really live here either.

Mike picked up two mugs and flicked the switch on the electric kettle. Within two minutes it had begun to make hissing noises accompanied by a few ominous percussion effects. Mike did at least make coffee, white with two sugars for him and for anyone else who happened to be around. It was instant coffee, of course, the cheapest, Kwik Save’s own. He must have been stockpiling the stuff. Kwik Save had gone bust the previous year and he was obviously a regular coffee drinker. Maybe he had bought it in a fire sale.

I would guess that Mike was ‘typical ‘ull’ – a guy who had been trying to make ends meet, an imperative that had forced him to narrow his horizons all his life.

I found myself staring at his face, examining every line, of which there were many, few of them denoting any past pleasures. As the saying goes, up until forty you have the face you were born with, and after forty, you have the face you deserve. How had Mike deserved that face? And yet there was kindness etched there amid these corrugated scars to hardship, and his pale blue eyes were more grieving than aggressive. He actually gave the impression of being a man I could confide in. Maybe that was how he survived.

“Well, ‘arry, what’s up? Kathy was all mysterious over the phone. She said you needed to see me urgently about something.”

“Yes,” I replied, “I have a plan.”

He looked surprised. He already had a plan for me, which would make any of my plans entirely redundant.

“What’s your plan, ‘arry.”

“To make money, a lot of money, a lot of easy money, you and me.”

“You want to cut out the rest of the gang?”

“Initially, yes. We will give them something afterwards.”

“Some boss you are.”

“It is called the need-to-know principle.”

“I am glad that there is a principle still in there somewhere, then, ‘arry.”

“Oh, there is much more than you would ever imagine in there, Mike.”

His expression indicated his scepticism that Harry’s brain could dream up even a fraction of what I was claiming. He had Harry pegged as a fall guy, not as a savvy criminal strategist.

“Spit it out then,” he said.

“First we need a van.”

“A van? Why do we need a van, ‘arry?”

“To ship the merchandise.”

“And what’s the merchandise, ‘arry?”

“Human cargo.”

“You what?”

“People, Mike. People.” I could be as condescending as he could. The shift in the relationship between us was beginning to trouble him. He slurped his coffee rather too hard, sounding a bit like his kettle.

“Go on.”

“I need to kidnap someone.”

“Kidnap?”

“Yes, kidnap. Only for a few days.”

“That’s a serious crime, ‘arry. The coppers will be down on us like a ton of bricks for that.”

I levelled with him. “You and I both know, Mike, that the police will be down on me like a ton of bricks anyway over the next few days.”

“What do you mean, ‘arry?”

“You know exactly what I mean, Mike.”

“You think that someone has ratted on you, ‘arry? One of the gang?”

“I think that everyone in the gang has ratted on me, Mike, starting with you.”

Mike’s habitual response to any acute embarrassment was always to stand up sharply and hit someone. I beat him to it, sending him sprawling against the frayed melamine. He came back up again, fingering his right cheek, checking for lost teeth. “What did you do that for, ‘arry?” he asked more plaintively than angrily.

“I’m not messing around, Mike. I wouldn’t forget that if I were you, if you want to be in my team.”

It had clearly never occurred to Mike that Harry would ever be worth teaming up with over anything, but he was rapidly reappraising his position. “Nah listen …..” he said, launching into some sort of threat I was not going to hear out.

I raised my fist, and he stepped sharply backwards, rattling the electric kettle on its stand.

“Either we are blood brothers, or I leave you here a dead man, Mike. Which is to be?”

Mike was all confusion. It was plastered across his face as if someone had just custard-pied him.

“Now ‘ang on a second, ‘arry ……”

I stared at him with malice in my eyes, and said nothing.

He spluttered into silence too.

I stepped towards him. He took evasive action, edging towards the fridge. I opened the cutlery drawer from which I had observed Mike extracting a teaspoon earlier, and I picked out the sharpest knife I could find. I gestured that I wanted him to offer me his right hand, which he did, hesitantly. I cut my right palm first, then his. He flinched. I squeezed both our hands together.

“Right,” I announced conclusively. “Now I’ll tell you my plan.”

* * *

Mike listened attentively, only interrupting my flow to ask for respectful clarifications.

“It’s a good plan,” he said. “It is risky, but it’s good.”

“Now we have to engineer the risk out of it, systematically. That is a speciality of mine.”

For a second, Mike reverted to his previous scepticism of my worth, but he recovered quickly.

“Where are the weakest points, do you think?” I challenged him.

“Snatching the boy. Giving oursens enough time to get away without being traced. Keeping the boy for a week in a place where ‘e won’t be noticed. Planting ‘im on Plant without ‘is noticing. Making sure the coppers nab ‘im before ‘e has time to extricate ‘imself from our trap.”

‘Extricate’? That was a word I would never have associated with Mike.

“What are your thoughts?”

He hesitated like a boy being quizzed by his headmaster, then he smiled so sweetly that I began to like him. “I think it’s time I cracked open a couple of John Smiths to ‘elp us mull it over.”

‘Mull’? There was another surprising word. Mike was turning literate all of a sudden, and I had become worth talking to.

* * *

Tommy was watching TV in the sitting room at Pease Street, the first time I had seen him in front of a TV set. He didn’t even seem to be enjoying it very much. My real children, Ella and Mark, spend hours each day paying homage to the moving, and frequently violent, image. The other day they were watching Transformers, and Chrissie and I overheard one character say to the other “Watch it, Motherfucker!” In a children’s programme?

I turn to Chrissie. “Did I just hear what I thought I just heard? Did they just use the word %^$*&*&?” I mouthed the word motherfucker, underpinning it with a whisper.

Chrissie smiled slowly. “Yes, I think they just did.”

“What do we think about that?” I asked Chrissie.

“I think it is extraordinary.”

“I think we should stop the children watching it. We can’t have %^$*&*& [mouthed again] turning up in children’s programmes.”

“No, I agree,” replied Chrissie, “it distracts from all the wholesome violence.”

I conceded Chrissie’s point. “So what do we do?”

“I think that after the programme finishes we should sit both the children down and explain to them solemnly, and especially to Mark, that motherfucking is very wrong, and should certainly never take place in this home. It belongs to the realm of Greek tragedy, and has nothing to do with the rolling housing estates of Eastern Berkshire.”

“Do they know the story of Oedipus?”

“No, I don’t believe that it has ever been illustrated as a children’s story. Somebody is missing a trick there. Perhaps we should write to the producers of Transformers. They could work the plot into one of their episodes. They could even introduce a character called Oedipus Rex. He could be Optimus Prime’s best, if sexually confused, buddy. He could transform into a camper van, or something.”

“What are you two talking about?” Ella broke in.

“We are developing a plot line for a new Transformers episode, Ella,” Chrissie informed her, “maybe even for a whole series.”

“Cool,” Ella came back. “I don’t really like Transfomers that much, but it would be cool to tell all my friends that you wrote an episode.”

How unlike Tommy’s world. I doubted that any character in Bob the Builder would be likely to use the word ‘motherfucker’, not even Spud on his best and most devious Ken Livingstone form. There was no corrupting influence to fear from the TV set, which was perhaps why Tommy was only attending to it distractedly.

Kathy and Fran were waiting for me in the kitchen. It was a shock to catch them in the same room at the same time at all, and even more so to realise that they had been conversing quite amiably.

“Well,” said Kathy, “how did it go?”

“Yes, we think we can probably do something together.”

“What exactly?” Fran asked me.

I glanced at Kathy, trying to fathom what Fran already knew, but Kathy refused to meet my eyes.

“What do you know so far?” I quizzed Fran.

“I know that you have a plan, and that Kathy claims that it will probably transform our lives.”

“Yes,” I reply, “it may well.”

“So what is it?”

“I would prefer it that you and Tommy didn’t know. The less you know, the better.”

“Except Kathy.” The peevishness, and possibly jealousy, had returned.

“We need Kathy to execute the plan.”

“You do?” Kathy fired back.

“Almost certainly,” I replied.

“So I am the one who gets to do the snatching,” Kathy observed.

“It would make sense.”

“Snatching what?” Fran asked.

“Grabbing the things that we want,” I deflected her.

“No way!” Kathy declared.

“You are not critical, Kathy, but your participation would undoubtedly help make the plan run more smoothly.”

“You are asking a lot, Harry. Taking liberties with me.” A crooked smile appeared on her face which Fran noticed with a sense of shock.

“As I say, Kathy, it is up to you. Nobody is forcing you to do anything. Mike and I can handle it if necessary.”

“It sounds very dodgy to me,” Fran commented.

“It is a lot dodgier than that,” Kathy added wryly. “You wait.”

“I am not sure that I want to.”

“Don’t worry,” I pacified her. “It will work out fine. And, if it goes wrong, this way you are not implicated.”

“Not implicated?” Fran sneered. “How does your going to prison again not implicate me? You think that the cops won’t be pumping me for information for hours, do you? You think that Tommy won’t be hurt, devastated to have lost his dad again? Think again, Harry. Whatever you are doing, it had better work. I don’t mind it being illegal, so long as no-one really gets hurt, but I do mind a lot if you get caught. I am not standing by you again if that happens. I am going to take Tommy off and find him a better father, one who is actually there for him every now and again.”

* * *

Funnily enough, Chrissie and I had had a similar conversation only a few weeks previously – similar but in many ways opposite. Chrissie was concerned by how little she saw of our children. Top solicitors often work upwards of sixteen hours a day, and over weekends, partly because they have to, and partly because they love their jobs which present them with a continuous supply of enticing riddles they are handsomely paid to solve. As a top solicitor, you are paid to have fun, but if you look at most of their physiques you will realise that the relentless excitement inexorably grinds them down or, more accurately, puffs them up.

I have never resented the hours Chrissie works. I am far too aware of her extraordinary achievement in getting herself into that position in the first place and, after all, I have chosen a parallel, if less steep, path.

However, even I feel neglected by her sometimes. I begin to suspect that I as a husband, and we as a family, do not matter to her as much as we should. I am a grown-up, and have at least some resources developed by experience to cope with this situation, so what must the children, who are relatively new to the world, vulnerable and needy, be feeling? This restrictive contact with Chrissie is enough to remind us of how much we love her, but the sprinkling of time she feels able to spare us is nothing like enough to quench the thirst we have of her.

Typically, Mark has engineered his own bust-through solution. He phones Chrissie at the office, even in the middle of business meetings. Initially, Chrissie tried to discourage him, but he simply persisted until she had no option but to accommodate him. Now she refers to him as “my Prince”, so that most of her clients assume that he is some Middle-Eastern potentate and willingly cede the floor to him. Even the most demanding client accepts that loaded oil sheiks must take precedence over ordinary international business people. The connection might prove commercially useful one day, although nobody has yet called in Chrissie’s bluff. Little do they guess that the potentate on the other end of the line is a seven year old boy desperate to hear his mummy’s voice, not having seen her for five days straight.

Ella, on the other hand, is visibly suffering, all the while protesting that she has everything under control. She doesn’t want to be any trouble to us, and so she refuses to complain, and she equally declines to copy Mark’s ruse; indeed she denounces it as dishonest, intrusive, selfish and damaging to Mummy’s professional reputation. With Ella, Agnes and I have to fill in as best we can, while keeping a vigilant eye on the situation. Agnes’ soft shoulder is proving infinitely preferable to my bony, male one. Try as we might, we men are not women; and we fathers are not mothers.

Most days it is I who get the children up and take them to school, because Chrissie usually has to leave the house before seven to beat the commuter rush. She cannot bear being crushed up against people’s smelly armpits or ‘flu-infectious noses. As far as my office is concerned, I ‘work’ at home each day until ten, and get in shortly after eleven. If this troubles anybody, they have yet to confront me with my laxity. Agnes picks up the children from school, feeds them and provides background security, in all its senses, until either Chrissie or I get home. Again, most days I am back first, but rarely before seven o’clock. Chrissie often staggers in between ten and eleven.

Chrissie is as unhappy with this arrangement as am I. This is not the ideal happy family package we had dreamed about and planned for so long, but what are we to do about it? We must live, and we prefer to live well. The children certainly like the good things in life: the toys, the holidays, the treats, the fact that virtually nothing is denied them. That all costs, and what it costs them is us. Only time will tell whether the price was too high to pay.

I sat there staring at Fran and Kathy, mulling these thoughts, as Mike the Hammer would say, and wondering whether the routine at home had changed in my absence, if indeed I was noticeably absent. It was a chilling thought that the situation for Ella and Mark might have deteriorated further, and an even more chilling one that nothing might have changed at all, and that they had not even realised that I was no longer there..

* * *

Chapter 10

I decided to take Tommy out for a walk for a guided tour of Hull. At first he wasn’t that interested, and I had to coax him away from his heart-breakingly few toys with the promise of a new toy which I couldn’t afford to buy. Fran was livid when I asked her for the money to fulfill my commitment, but agreed that it would be good for Tommy to be outside for a few hours, even on the streets of Hull, and coughed up five pounds. I could see it in her face that she was calculating how to feed us for the rest of the week off our dole money. I could also see her consoling herself with the faint hope that I would manage to attract some more funds with whatever petty fraud I was planning.

Our children back in Wokingham have two roomfuls of toys, stacked up the walls, stuffed into cupboards, strewn around the floor, traipsing into the bedrooms (including our own), the sitting room, the dining room, both bathrooms and even the kitchen. Every fad there has ever been has delivered another collection of branded toys to our home. Nothing has ever been refused, although Chrissie and I both nag the children to clear up after themselves, which Ella reluctantly does and Mark evasively doesn’t. It is usually left to me to swear that one day I will throw into the bin everything I judge to be out of its proper place. There are only two flaws in my argument. Firstly, nothing has its proper place. Secondly, I have threatened these reprisals so often, without the remotest attempt at a follow-through, that it would be brutal for me to be as good as my word.

Tommy, on the other hand, had a pad of paper, a depleted pack of coloured crayons, a stuffed rabbit and a balding, one-eyed bear, Bob the Builder himself, Postman Pat, his cat and his Post Office van (useful, if old-fashioned), a Thomas the Tank Engine, and that was about it apart from McDonalds flotsam and jetsam. I could have wept for him. Holding up Postman Pat as your favourite toy at the age of seven for want of owning anything more inspiring should be an outright indication of living beneath the child poverty line.

So, having five pounds to spend on a new toy was tantamount to a trip to the moon so far as Tommy was concerned, it was so exciting. I vowed there and then to gain the means to buy this boy armfuls of Power Rangers, Transformers, Pokémons and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, much as I despised them at home.

Tommy led me left and right until we reached the Hessle Road, where we turned left towards the City Centre and, more importantly, towards Toys-R-Us. The Hessle Road used to be the thriving hub of the fishing community, and vestiges of that energy remain embedded in the tarmac and the bricks, even if the shops are somewhat cheap and forlorn. This is evidently not the commercial heart of the City of Hull any more, until you encounter the towering presence of Smith+Nephew, surrounded by a cluster of other offices representing companies evidently famous in their own neighbourhood if not in mine. Tommy’s pace quickened appreciably at this point as he detected the imminence of Toys-R-Us. He wanted the money irretrievably spent to ensure that it was all his. I gave him a short facile lecture about his resisting the temptation to spend all of his five pounds at once, but he only eyed me uncomprehendingly and probably resentfully. When was the last time anyone said to a child in England “Five pounds is a lot of money. Don’t spend it all at once”? Tommy must already have been fully aware that he had an irritating fool for a father, and my pomposity certainly went no distance to persuading him otherwise.

Inside the architecturally doleful shed which is Toys-R-Us, Tommy dashed around like a cat in a field of cat mint. He even forgot whom he was dealing with and magnanimously sought to enthuse me with his excitement. Of course, he wanted the whole shop, but I would bet that that five pounds gave him one of the best eighty minutes of his life. In the end he didn’t even spend it. “Mummy needs it for food,” he counselled me wisely, but the mere impetus of the possibility of spending it had brought him irrepressibly alive. Awed by the maturity of his decision, I renewed my vow of providing abundance to this brave, even heroic, little boy.

As we came out of the shop, I asked him where we could find the “King Billy” statue, the one where the king dismounted his horse and proceeded to parade around the square at midnight. Tommy looked bewildered, recovering to say “Don’t tease, Dad, it is over there.”

“Let’s go there,” I suggested.

“But there is nothing there.”

“I just want to see it,” I insisted.

So we walked the five minutes or so between St. Andrew’s Quay to the Market Place, and there indeed was King William III, gleaming with gold, or more likely bronze, and currently immobile.

“What did you want to see him for?” Tommy asked.

“Just because he is here,” I replied.

“Well, well, well,” a voice boomed behind me. “Guess who it isn’t. If it isn’t old ‘arry Walker, taking a walk with ‘is pet. Yer’ve become a bit of a culture vulture ‘ave yer, ‘arry?”

There were three men who had every intention of crowding me. One had seized Tommy’s arm and was hurting him.

“Leave Tommy alone!” I commanded the scruffy bearded thug who was manhandling him. They ignored me, and Tommy yelped.

“This isn’t yer part of town,” a second one advised me censoriously. “This is our patch ‘ere. Ye’re trespassing. We shoot trespassers ….”

“…… when no-one is looking,” added the third.

“And sometimes even when they are,” the second corrected him. The thuggiest one stamped hard on Tommy’s toes, making him cry loudly. He put a hand over his mouth. “’e’s about as much guts as his dad, I see,” he observed.

“It must take a hell of a lot of guts to do what you are doing,” I retorted. “A twenty stone man smashing up a four stone child.”

“I’ve gone metric,” the thug riposted, “so I ‘aven’t the foggiest what ye’re saying,” at which point he laughed.

“Anyway, ‘arry,” concluded the second man, “I don’t suppose that yer’ll be breathing fresh air for much longer, if the rumour I’ve ‘eard is true.”

Suddenly I guessed who this man was. “That’s a shame, Planty,” I said. “I was going to propose a merger.”

The man scoffed. “A merger? Between five runts and a dozy dwarf like yer and the majestic might of the Inbies? I don’t think so, but yer’ve made me laugh, ‘arry. In fact ye’re so funny that I will overlook yer referring to me as Planty, this time anyway. Go on Big John, let go of the tiddler and let Little and even Littler pitter-patter their way ‘ome. Being see yer, ‘arry. And yer, Tommy, I suggest that yer keep as far away from yer dad and ‘is sperm bag of a sister as yer possibly can. Yer mummy’s okay, though. She’ld be good for five minutes if I got bored one day.”

* * *

I was reminded of the time when Ella nearly sawed Mark’s hand off. She must have been eight, and Mark three or four, and for some reason she decided to play doctors and nurses with a fret saw. She was obviously never really going to hack all the way through Mark’s wrist, however matchstick it was in those days, but she drew so much blood that we feared she might have severed either an artery or a vein. It was one of those Sundays when both of us were actually about, reading the papers in the sitting room while the children played, waiting for the inevitable scream from Mark. Ella always managed to hurt him one way or another, it was only a question of how much resolute peace we could pack into the gap between their dashing off to play and our rushing upstairs or into the garden, summoned by howls denoting a degree of urgency lying between anguish and trauma. This time it was definitely off the scale of trauma. More decisive than usual, I tourniqueted Mark’s wrist and held it tight while we ushered them both frantically into the car, pausing only to register the fact that we were probably both too drunk to drive. That, of course, is irrelevant when one of your children’s lives is in danger, which it manifestly wasn’t, but we could probably have persuaded a policeman that we believed that it was if we had needed to.

We hit Accident & Emergency at the Royal Berks with quite a flurry and, to give them due credit, they dealt with Mark’s injury straightaway, impelled by his breath-stopping distress.

We watched as they sewed four stitches into his wrist, after administering a local injection, and before adding a tetanus jab. Ella was horror-struck, and needed even more consolation than Mark.

All of which is to observe that watching your child having been accidentally injured by an innocent experimenter is excruciating enough, but witnessing him being tortured by a pot-bellied, smelly-bearded thug requires exemplary revenge.

* * *

When we got back to the house, Tommy worked himself up into a frenzy again and rushed inside to tell his mother all about it in rasping phrases.

Fran was in the kitchen chatting to probably the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life: dark hair, tall, slim legs, sloe-green eyes, a sensuous mouth I could imagine brushing my lips against the second I saw her.

She was not pleased to see me, and blatantly didn’t have the slightest intention of positioning her lips anywhere near mine.

“What on earth have you done to Tommy, Harry?” Fran demanded.

“I haven’t done anything. We bumped into Trevor Plant and his gang.”

“Where?”

“In the Market Place.”

“You what? For Christ sake, what were you doing there? You know that is their territory. You were asking for trouble.”

“No,” I replied steadily. “No to all of those accusations.”

“You’re not quite right in the head, that’s your problem, Harry,” Fran spat dismissively at me. “I suppose you don’t know who this is either, now, do you?”

I examined the raving beauty. “Actually, I haven’t a clue.”

Miss Divinity hissed almost like a cat.

“Debbie, Harry. This is Debbie. Remember?”

Debbie Harry – that name rang a bell somewhere.

Fran turned to Debbie. “Ever since he went to see that hypnotist, he’s turned soft. He’s hopeless, even more hopeless than usual.”

Debbie shot me a judgment of unappealable contempt. Then she opened her mouth to ooze out pure nectar in sound, if not in content. “Well, Harry, if you have forgotten me, I have certainly not forgotten you, not as long as I live.”

Now what had I done, I asked myself, although my intuition was hinting at the answer. Had it been harassment, assault or rape? Some residual devil in my mind hoped that it had been rape.

“After we broke up,” she continued, “I certainly intended to try to forget all about you, but it never crossed my mind that you would actually succeed in erasing me from your memory, especially after I took that steam iron to you.”

My eyes involuntarily slipped to my wrist where I had noticed a burn mark.

“So you haven’t forgotten,” she added, “nor, I hope that I found you in naked conversation with my best friend Fran here.”

“Naked?” enquired Tommy.

“Sorry, Tommy,” Debbie apologised. “We shouldn’t be discussing this in front of you, especially after the shock you have just had, poor thing.”

“It was nothing. I have forgotten all about it.”

Debbie raised her ravishing eyes slowly and sumptuously to the ceiling, where they fixed on a grease spot. “Not you too, Tommy. What a family. Must be going.”

Debbie kissed Fran on the cheek alongside a “See you soon,” then bent right down to hug and kiss Tommy at his own level. Needless to say, I didn’t merit a backward glance, not even a spiteful drop dead one.

When she had left, Fran fussed over Tommy and ignored me too.

When we went up to bed that night, she turned to me and suggested curtly that I sleep with Kathy again, and that we both pack our bags and leave in the morning.

* * *

Kathy went to lodge with Fingers Murphy and Mike the Hammer graciously invited me to put up with him.

Tommy was touchingly distraught and wouldn’t let go of me until Fran grabbed him, pushed me out of the door and declared to Tommy “You are very much better off without him, believe me.”

This new arrangement served to speed up the planning process considerably. Mike bought a van that had been used by a nationwide electrical goods company, and had it restored to its former glory. We progressively ironed out the creases and then the wrinkles in our plan by applying the adversarial principle. Mike attacked the plan from as many angles as he could think of. We built it back up again. Then it was my turn. After two days, and several heavy drinking sessions, we reckoned we were ready to present it to Kathy.

“What you got boys?”

“Now you are asking,” Mike joked.

“You couldn’t afford me.”

“You have got to be bloody kidding,” Mike retorted. “I’m the one who actually pays you, remember?”

“So you do. Okay, I can give you a quickie if you like, while Harry makes the coffee.”

“Good old ‘arry,” Mike declared, adjusting himself and slapping me across the back at the same time. We’ll be back before you ‘ave time to add the milk and sugars.”

For some reason Mike considered this to be a proud boast. For some other reason, he was nearly right. He couldn’t even have removed his clothes.

“Okay,” Kathy said. “Tell me about it.”

“We are going to Dewsbury,” Mike started.

“Why Dewsbury?” Kathy asked.

“Because their League team get on my tits, smug bastards.”

“Is that a reason?” Kathy challenged him in wonderment.

“Dunno, but it’s my reason,” Mike asserted.

“Then what?”

“We are looking for a kid out on ‘is own somewhere around ten, twelve years old.”

“Why?”

“Easy to grab and not strong enough to put up much resistance. Old enough for ‘is mum and dad not to panic if ‘e goes missing for a few hours, to give us time to get away.”

“What sort of kid?”

“Doesn’t matter. Any kid we can drive off with. Of course, if ‘e ‘appens to ‘ave folks who love bawling their eyes out in front of TV cameras, so much the better.”

“Then what?”

“We drug ‘im – that’s your first task, Kathy, to get some drugs that will keep ‘im occupied and silent for a few hours ….”

“I’ll ask my friend ……”

“And then we drive him to Pocklington.”

“Why Pocklington?”

“It’s a little known fact that Planty’s aunt ‘ad an ‘ouse there. She died last year, and left it to Planty who uses it as his country retreat, but not too often. Everyone thereabouts knows it is ‘is, and keeps well clear. If they see anything suspicious, they’ll keep their traps shut until after ‘e gets arrested, then they’ll sing like nightingales, ‘elping us to stitch ‘im up good and proper.”

“What happens if he suddenly turns up there?”

“We scarper and tip the police off. ‘e then gets caught red-‘anded.”

“So you are going to keep the boy there for a week?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you stop him escaping?”

“We tie ‘im up and gag ‘im, unless you think that drugs would do the trick better.”

“And then?”

“And then you tell Fingers. It’s a bleeding miracle that you have shacked up with ‘im.”

Kathy scowled. “Why Fingers?”

“’cos Fingers tells Planty everything. Always ‘as.”

“So Planty goes to check things out at his house in Pocklington and you tip off the police.”

“Nah, better than that. While ‘e is going to Pocklington, we transfer the boy to Planty’s place in Bransholme. Then, when Planty returns to Bransholme, we phone the coppers, and ‘e’s caught four-square.”

“How are you going to ensure that you get the boy into Planty’s house without any of his gang noticing?”

“Yeah, that is the trickiest bit, but we ‘ave a way, and a week to practise it.”

“What is that?”

Mike tapped his nose exaggeratedly, not to mention irritatingly and condescendingly. “That, my girl, is for us to know and you to guess, but you don’t tell a word of this to Fingers until we give you the word, otherwise we’ll all be found strapped by our bollocks swinging from a lamp post.”

“Speak for yourself, Mike.”

Mike squinted. “I’m sure that they will find somewhere suitable to stick an ‘ook in you, Kathy. They’re not short of imagination when it comes to that sort of thing.”

“They’re going to do that to us anyway once Planty has been nicked and they work out what has happened.”

“That’s your brother’s job, isn’t it, ‘arry? ‘arry has to persuade Mr. Plod that if the whole gang isn’t picked up, there’ll be reprisals. That will at least give us a few days to get out of ‘ere. We can do the rest from anywhere.”

“Won’t it be a bit obvious when you start kidnapping people and the Inbies are behind bars already?”

“That’s the beauty of ‘arry’s plan, isn’t it? We don’t touch nobody after that. We just threaten to kidnap their children and demand our twenty grand to leave them alone. No bugger’s going to sing to the coppers, so no bugger will know it’s ‘appening, and we can run the operation from anywhere. Neat eh?”

Mike leant forward at Kathy. “If anybody finds out about this, we’ll know who squealed, and that will be very bad news for you, I promise you. Right, ‘arry?”

“Right,” I said.

“I’m not bloody telling anybody,” Kathy spluttered indignantly.

“Then everything will go to plan, won’t it?” Mike replied. “’ang on a mo.” He got up and disappeared upstairs for five minutes while we heard furniture being noisily shifted around. When he retuned he handed fifty pounds to Kathy. “There you are. That’s to prove that I’m as good as my word. Now off you trot back to Fingers, and be very, very nice to ‘im. ‘e mustn’t suspect a thing.”

“I don’t believe you two.”

“We’re your passport out of ‘ere, girl. That’s all you ‘ave to believe. That ‘n’ that your brother ‘ere loves you, don’t you, ‘arry.”

I nodded.

“Thanks,” Kathy retorted, “but if it all the same to you, I’ll settle for the passport.”

“And don’t go talking in your sleep.”

“Don’t worry yourself, Mike. There is only one person I have actually slept with, and he is on your side.”

* * *

Chapter 11

You must be asking yourself why I was doing this, I of all people, who love children and hate to see them hurt. If anyone were ever to kidnap Ella or Mark, or even Tommy, I would throw everything up and I would kill them, I am convinced I would. I know that it is easy to say, but I am sure that that is what I would do. I would say “Okay, you have returned them to me without visible injury (if they had achieved even that), but you have destroyed their lives. They will never recover from what you did to them. They will be terrorised by your memory all of their lives. They will never forget that there was a moment when they were snatched from the midst of an ordinary life, tortured and abused. They were drugged, they were blindfolded, they were separated from us their parents, they didn’t know what in hell was going to happen to them. They were lonely, they were cowering, they were hopeless. A carousel of fears churned around their minds. They were uncomfortable, trussed into the same position for hours on end. They were cold. They were lonely. They couldn’t breathe through the gag. They feared the physical pain you might inflict. You say that you looked after them well, that not a hair of their body was harmed, that they had enough to eat, that you even gave them treats. I say that you are an unspeakable monster who deserves not only to die, but to be tortured in exactly the same way as you tortured them, before you die. And I would kill you, I swear. I would torture you, and I would execute you, for devastating my son’s or my daughter’s life.

Yet I am that monster. I chose to inflict exactly this suffering on an unsuspecting innocent boy for no better reason than that I had a plan, and that he was in the wrong place at the right time for us.

How do I explain this?

I can’t, however hard I have tried, although I have some partial hypotheses. One is that the original Harry was still there lurking inside his body, alongside me but invisible to me, hidden by my presence, so that the physical Harry now combined my intelligence and self-confidence with his mean, vicious ways. It was he whose anger and whose venom was coaxing me on to achieve whatever we were capable of together, to give ourselves the good life that the world had heretofore (Chrissie’s word) deprived us of.

That is a cowardly explanation, although quite possibly true. After all, if I, Keith, was still in Keith’s body alongside my family in Wokingham, and also partly in Harry’s body up in Hull, where was Harry? Either he had taken over somebody else as part of an infernal chain reaction, or at least part of him was cohabiting within my space, or his space rather. I was a cuckoo in the nest where the original resident was still trapped, squashed beneath me.

I have another, more ‘normal’, explanation. I had extreme anger of my own. My parents had died before and during my birth. I had been brought up in this hell-hole of a residential care system, prostituted off to foster families, rejected and returned wounded to the asylum. I had teamed up with Chrissie, and we had resolved to beat the world together. She was snatched from me and prostituted in her turn. She was rejected, and restored to me. Together we worked flat out to elevate our lives, leaning on each other continuously, sighing with relief as we felt the doors of our prison giving way. We made it. Chrissie became a lawyer, I became an architect. We pulled off miracles through our relentless determination and our almost superhuman persistence. We created our family, our fabulous children, Ella and Mark. We designed and realised an environment in which we were all safe, and loved, and deprived of nothing except time. We had defied the world and triumphed.

And then the world defied us, flouted our courage, proved that it could destroy us at whim. It ambushed me in a moment of weakness, and it cast me down to where I should have been, living the dysfunctional life of a brutalised petty crook in some godforsaken northern city. We had shown hubris, and hubris must be punished. Each to his allotted station, and he who tries to escape that station will be returned to it, broken and humiliated.

Well, I was not going to accept this bitter fate. I was going to hit back, and drag Fran and Kathy and Tommy out of the mire with me (and maybe Mike too), and be restored to my own cherished family. The world was not going to win. And I was willing to play it very dirty in order to escape back into the light. I was going to give it whatever it took to succeed. This was me against everything that was bad and cruel and evil in the world, and sometimes I would have no choice but to turn its own weapons against it.

I realise that this is warped thinking, but it is an approximate reflection of what was going through my mind at the time.

So what about betraying Chrissie, by sleeping with Fran and then betraying Fran by sleeping with Kathy? How did that work? I cannot say. My only comment is that they were there, they were willing, the flesh is weak, and I wasn’t using my own body for any of it. That was Harry’s doing. I didn’t do anything that he hadn’t done before. He had even got Kathy pregnant at some point in the past, for Christ’s sake. I was enmeshed in Harry’s tangled relationships, and I wasn’t clever enough, or motivated enough to extricate myself. One day I would escape back to my own body, that of Keith McGuire, and Harry could dig himself out of his own hole.

* * *

Mike, Kathy and I were patrolling Dewsbury in our Ford Transit looking for a boy to remove cleanly and surgically from his environment.

We had to be careful not to drive the same road more than twice, or we would look suspicious and attract attention. Equally, we could not stop for long, for the same reason. Kathy had the needle ready to administer a cocktail of knockout drugs. Mike had diabolically come up with the idea of stacking some computer games in the back of the van which we might use as bait. They weren’t real. They were empty cases with photocopied labels, but the idea was that Mike and I would talk about them loudly as our target approached us.

For Mike and me, we were in the marines, the SAS, the SBS. We were the physically audacious brainy buggers these guys were looking for. It was a one-off, do-or-die mission, deniable, resulting in either ignominy or glory, prison or steady income. Once we had put the fear of God up the prosperous parents of West Yorkshire, all we had to do was to issue some choreographed threats and send in Kathy’s clapped out friend (maybe in more than one sense), Kenny Bender, to deal them the drugs, which they would pass onto us as protection money, and which we would pass back to Kenny at a £7,500 discount on £20,000. We were shooting for £5,000. Kenny countered with £10,000. We said “50%, no way!”, so £7,500 it was, all negotiations being handled with seasoned proficiency by Kathy.

So, there was only one moment of supreme danger, one step in the plan that had to be executed faultlessly – this one. We had to pick up a boy and get him some 60 miles away before anyone noticed, and without a single clue or witness as to how he had disappeared. One mistake and we would potentially be buggered forever as any subsequent attempt would be cursed by someone’s recollection of the two men, the girl and the van who had attempted a failed snatch in Dewsbury on this day.

We thought we had him in Howard Street. He was a nice looking boy (we preferred not to court trouble) and he appeared to be walking slowly and reluctantly home at around 5:30. We didn’t know who he was, or where he lived, but his attitude was right, and he was alone with nobody else immediately in sight. We passed him and pulled into the curb. Mike opened the back of the van and we started to discuss the knock-off computer games we would be offering to the neighbourhood at knock-down prices. The boy even slowed down his already meandering pace to listen to us. He was interested. He was approaching. We were pretending not to have noticed him. I moved around Mike so that if the boy joined us he would be cornered between Mike, me and the door which was opened against the pavement. He was right next to us. All I had to do was to pick him up and toss him into the van where Kathy would instantly administer the befuddling party chemicals. I shifted my position, tensed my muscles and …..

“Hey, Roger. What’s going on there?”

A mate had spotted him from across the street.

“Knock-off games,” Roger shouted back.

“Oh yeah? What have they got?”

“Dunno yet.”

“Let’s have a look.”

Mike smiled at Roger. “Maybe you could ‘elp us,” he suggested. “We need to offload some of this stock, but we know bugger all about it personally. We just bought it from a mate. Would you be interested in flogging them for us?”

“What is there?” Roger asked while his mate crowded in next to us too.

“Burnout Dominator,” Roger read out.

“That’s okay,” commented his friend. “That would sell.”

“Heavenly Sword.”

“Don’t rate it.”

“Burnout Paradise.”

“Yeah, I like that one.”

“Tomb Raider Anniversary.”

“Crap.”

“Grand Theft Auto City.”

“Have you got IV? That would sell a bomb.”

“It’s coming shortly.”

“How much are you offering them for mate?”

“A fiver,” replied Mike.

“And how much do we make out of it?” asked the friend.

“Whatever you can score over the fiver.”

“What’s their condition?”

Roger moved to open the Grand Theft Auto cover. Mike moved it away from him. “’oly shit,” he exclaimed with genuine panic in his voice. “Coppers!”

I was impressed by his acting skills until I realised that two uniformed police were indeed approaching us.

“Thanks, guys,” said Mike. “Thanks for the advice. Being seeing you,” then, in a whisper, “walk away slowly and casually.”

Fortunately, they did exactly as Mike asked and we had time to slam the doors shut, climb into the van and drive off as the coppers watched us go.

“’oly shit,” Mike spluttered again. “That was a close one.”

We got some way down the Bradford Road before we stopped and consulted with Kathy. We decided that we would try again the next day, in Leeds this time, then we returned to Hull conducting our individual post-mortems.

* * *

Actually, there was another hole in our plan. After we had kidnapped the boy, after there had been a gratifyingly intense onslaught of media frenzy, after the boy had been returned by the police to his distraught parents, after old Planty and his gang had been arrested and vilified, in short when the moneyed gentry of the West Riding had reached the peak of their sensitivity to the threat of their children disappearing without trace, how exactly did we threaten them, practically, I mean?

We would pick up the phone. Then what would we do? What would we say? Would we rather contact them first by post, perhaps jazzed up with the classic cut-out letters, some of them becoming detached from the page, making the deciphering of the threat that much more stressful.

Obviously, we needed to approach people who had access to £20,000 who could be made to fear for their children’s lives. How would we know whether they had children or not and what those children were called? How would we learn an intimate detail about the child sufficient to suggest we were lurking close enough by to do them some real damage, and that we weren’t just a bunch of hoaxers from Nigeria firing out random communications?

We could start drawing names out of the phone book, with some geographic targeting. "Hello, Mrs. Brown,” we would say. “Do you have children?"

"Why are you asking?" she would reply.

“We are the Britman Heinz insurance company and we have very special policies to benefit children currently aged between eight and sixteen. What they save now will be a nest egg that will allow them in the future to invest in their dreams, for instance to provide the capital to start up a business.” Make it hard. Dreams alone sound a bit dreamy. Which middle class parents invest in dreams? Investing in a good solid career or business idea, that sounds more worthy of consideration.

If they hesitate, we will know that they do indeed have children in the target zone.

“I will talk to my husband and see what his reaction is.”

“What do you think his reaction might be?”

“He would want to meet you first.”

We don’t want to show our faces. “Could I ask some profiling questions, to make sure that we are not wasting either your or our time? How many children do you have?”

“Two.”

“Are they boys or girls?”

“One of each.”

“Lucky you. How old are they?”

“Samantha is twelve and Jason is nine.”

Perfect! “I suppose that it is too early for them to have any career ambitions yet.”

“Well, yes, although Samantha thinks she wants to become a glamour model, and Jason is planning to be anyone with a laser sword.”

“That’s wonderful. They sound like fabulous children.”

“They are.”

“In that case, I will call you in a couple of days to ask if your husband is agreeable to an appointment. Thank you so much for your time.”

“Can we phone you?”

“Yes, that would be most helpful although, if we don’t hear from you, we will call you in a couple of days anyway, if that is okay with you.” I would give her a false number.

Or …..

"Hello, Mrs. Brown, it is the school here."

"What school?"

Click.

Or ….

"Hello, Mrs. Brown, it is the school here?"

"Oh hello. Nice to hear from you,” said in a voice seeping at the edges with anxiety. “There isn't a problem with little Johnny is there?"

“Well, you know what boys are like. They do get themselves into scrapes.”

“I’ll be there at St. John’s straightaway, or is he in hospital?”

“No, he is in bed, resting up, at the school. I think it would be best if you dropped by. What time should we expect you?”

“It will take about an hour and a half.”

“Good, we will expect you then.”

We would have to be prepared to go into more medical detail, but with the last conversation we would know that little Johnny was a border at a school called St. John’s some 90 minutes away from home. That would certainly be enough information to enable us to rock their foundations. The image I had was of well-to-do burghers and their wives, perched up trees, with their pockets full of cash. Our job was to march up to the trees, bold as brass, and give them such a shaking that all their money fell out of their pockets and fluttered to the ground where we would collect it as easily as sweeping up autumn leaves.

We would have to work on our accents if we used the school sting, though. Nobody would believe that respectable schools employ administrators with Hull accents.

So that was one possible angle, to simply phone up and find out what information we could suck out of them through a process of inspired improvisation and, if we managed to get enough, we were up for the jackpot. It would beat hanging around half-empty pubs cloaked in hoods, chatting up the locals in the hope of bumping into a lonely chatterbox who happened to know all about the private lives of the nobs in the area. That was far too risky, would take far too long, and prove far too boring.

The ideal would be to get hold of a school's central mailing list, the sort of thing some schools distribute to parents to facilitate social networking among the parents and the children, as Ella and Mark's school did, in fact. Come to think of it now, it was an incredibly irresponsible thing to do. It put the whole school at risk of abduction or blackmail. The thought had never occurred to me before, or to Chrissie. I needed to tip them off immediately. They would probably laugh at me and accuse me of letting my fears run away with me.

You must have had the experience of having what seems to you to be a brilliant idea, before challenging yourself with the quibble that if it is such a good idea, why has nobody else thought of it? That happens to me often. Then the follow-up question is: is it because anyone with any intelligence has already spotted the fatal flaw, or is it that I have had the wit and insight to spot an opportunity overlooked by millions? Why hadn't there been a steady stream of twisted ne'erdo-wells contacting Chrissie and me to demand payoffs to have Ella and Mark protected round the clock?

It was a question I couldn't ask now, but it reminded me of the Woody Allen dictum that 80% of success is about actually turning up. Contrary to everything you hear and read, crime is extremely rare outside run down housing estates and grimy city centres. Out in the wealthy suburbs, finding a burglar climbing through your window is so remarkably rare that you would immediately phone up all of your friends who would reply "Thank God that has never happened to me. You must have been terrified!", or "I was burgled fifteen years ago, I know what it's like. Poor you!"

Mike, Kathy and I were operating in a virtually green field site. If we got it right, we could generate some serious shock value with very little effort. Watching your back all the time is not only scary, it is exhausting. Exhaustion catalyses the fear. Watching your children's back is worse because you are necessarily separated from them most of the time. Bystanders may be apathetic about the fates of strangers, but they are paranoid about what might happen to their own children. They have invested so much of their love into these younger selves, and then they are gone forever. It would not matter how much they had invested, how careful they had been, what precautions they had taken, everything would suddenly be different.

That is the point on which we would keep them spinning, the realisation that the most reliable solution was to pay a fraction of the value of their house to keep their children safe. It was only a question of our being convincingly menacing in our attitude and our preparation. I was not sure of all the detailed steps yet, but I was positive we would get there without getting ourselves caught. Ours would be an invisible, sneaky, perturbing crime.

* * *

So next day it was Leeds - same procedure, no rush.

We hit Alwoodley at a quarter to five in the evening when any twelve year old boy out on the street would probably not be expected back home for a while.

Driving down the main Harrogate Road, we saw a gawky-looking kid kick a can with some aggression. He was too obviously angry to fit naturally into our target profile, but somehow he felt right.

While there were several people in sight, preoccupied with their own thoughts, there were only two within striking distance, and they had just passed him walking in the opposite direction, a middle-aged scrawny dishevelled man stepping out wirily at an even pace, and an old woman who was stumping along talking to herself. Mike and I peeled out of the van and took up precise positions next to the stock of computer games. The boy noticed us and pulled a world-weary face.

"What have you got there?"

"Games," I replied.

"Oh, another lot," he responded. "Knocked off, I suppose."

Mike and I did our best to look uneasy.

"Or is it just rubbish pretending to be knocked off?"

We ignored him. That would goad him.

"I could call the cops," he threatened us.

We laughed in a cock-sure way. "It wouldn't do you much good, Sonny," I said.

"So you are cops, are you?"

We turned our backs on him as if to continue a private conversation.

He came across to the van. "What is going on?"

Mike squatted down and pointed into the back of the van, beyond Kathy. "Do you see that thing there?" he confided.

"No."

"That thing there that is gleaming?"

"No-oo."

The boy leant into the van trying to identify what Mike was pointing at.

"It is flashing faintly, very faintly," Mike added. He was so convincing that he even had me looking for it.

The boy searched Mike's face perplexedly. "What is it?"

"It's a special camera," explained Mike, "that records people buying what they think are stolen goods. Then we've got them cold. You can't even make it out when you are looking straight at it, it's that good."

"Oh, so that's how you do it," the boy commented, a skewed grin crossing his face.

“We ‘ave to ‘ave evidence,” Mike commented.

“Isn’t that entrapment?” the boy challenged us.

“Are you studying law?”

The boy looked pleased. “No.”

“So ‘ow do you know about entrapment?” Mike pressed him.

“I just know stuff.”

“Good on you,” said Mike. “You should be one of us. You could be a copper too one day.”

“You’re joking,” replied the boy. “Who wants to be a copper?”

Mike stared at him.

“Sorry,” recanted the boy immediately. “No offence meant.”

Mike leant towards him confidentially. “’ere are some lads coming down the road,” he said, pointing towards two youths who were about three hundred yards away. “Do you want to see ‘ow it is done?”

“Sure,” the boy replied.

“’op in, then,” Mike encouraged him, “right next to Sergeant Wilson ‘ere, and try to make yourself invisible.”

The boy climbed in.

“’ang on a mo,” Mike continued, “there’s a right lively bunch over there. Brian, get the van into position, will you. I’ll get in ‘ere. We don’t want two people up front in the cab, it might tip ‘em off.”

Mike joined the boy and Kathy in the back of the van, and I slammed the door. I then walked calmly around to the driver’s seat and drove off. I heard a quick clunk in the back as if something had been kicked or banged, but that was it. I headed at a leisurely speed for York, and then took the A1079 Beverley road for Pocklington.

* * *

We were there by a quarter to six, and backed into Planty’s aunt’s driveway, which made sense as it was situated on a blind spot in the road. As we had already checked out, the van could be pulled right up alongside a side door which Mike opened up for us. We had already picked the lock when we had reccied the place two days earlier. By opening up the back door of the van so that the door opened to touch the wall, nobody at all could have seen us dragging the boy inside. We hauled him into the dining room and I took a good look at him.

I eyeballed Mike.

“’e’ll do,” Mike said. “’e’s taken well to the drugs.”

“He’s out like a light,” Kathy commented admiringly.

“Can we get him upstairs?”

“Yeah, let’s give it a go,” said Mike, “then I’ll be off. We don’t want anyone to notice the van ‘ere.”

Even twelve year old boys require a fair amount of tugging and manhandling to get them up narrow stairs, especially as dead weights, and we must have given him a few bruises along the way.

“Wait a minute,” said Kathy. “I thought we wanted him somewhere where there would be a quick getaway. We would be trapped up here.”

So we dragged him back downstairs again to the dining room, adding a few more injuries.

“I’ll fetch a mattress,” Mike offered. After a couple of trips he had a sheet, a duvet and two pillows too. “Luxury,” he observed. “’e’ll be living like a king.”

“Like The King, more like,” Kathy added.

“What king is that then?”

“The King. Elvis.”

“I didn’t know you were an Elvis fan, Sergeant Wilson. You look far too young for that.”

“The King never dies, Bob,” Kathy replied.

“Well let’s ‘ope to God ‘e doesn’t,” Mike retorted.

“He won’t. He’s just in for a few days of gentle R&R.”

“Is that Rest & Recreation or Rock ‘n’ Roll?”

Kathy giggled. “A bit of both, I’d say.”

“Right,” concluded Mike. “I’ll be off. If Planty interrupts you, call the police sharpish on this mobile I nicked a couple of weeks back, phone me, trash the SIM card, and I’ll meet you by the doctors’ surgery. Okay?”

“Trust us,” I said.

“Right, I’ll be seeing you later.”

* * *

It was a harrowing week. We had to keep sufficiently awake that we could jump out of the window at any moment if Planty and his gang paid us a surprise visit, which meant that we were both on watch most of the time. We allowed ourselves a couple of hours’ sleep a night, plus the doses we couldn’t avoid, but they were never deep sleeps. We also had to be conscious for when the boy started to stir in order to feed him sugared milk and mushed fruit before sending him on his way again. I was really concerned about him overdosing, we both were, but he seemed peaceful enough and his breathing remained strong. He must have spent quite a week on his continuous high. I wonder what he was thinking all that time.

We managed to persuade him to go to the toilet on a serving dish when he was semi-conscious. I held him while Kathy stood by with the next shot should he come round quicker than expected.

All-in-all, he behaved perfectly. What else could he do?

Kathy found some games to play, including a pack of cards, and we read our way through Planty’s aunt’s library of Agatha Christies.

Mike came back with the van on the Tuesday to transport him to Planty’s house in Bransholme. We dropped Kathy off at Fingers’ place, then hid out near Swine while Kathy told Fingers that a client had let slip that he was involved in the kidnapping of Jeremy Wilkinson, the missing Leeds lad, and that he was being held somewhere in Pocklington. A few minutes later, she overheard Fingers relaying something urgent down the phone, and we risked driving onto the North Bransholme Estate, past Planty’s front door to see what was happening.

Luck was on our side, because on the first pass we saw Planty, the thug from Hull Market Place and one other man jumping into a car and driving off. We wouldn’t have wanted to hang around in that area for long. We took the risk, pulled up to his house and knocked on the door. There was no answer. Mike slipped round the back and within a minute had opened the front door, marvelling at how poor the security was. It had probably never occurred to Planty that someone would try to burgle him, and it probably hadn’t occurred to anyone else either, on pain of a slow, anguished death.

We had put the boy in a trunk, so we got him into the house really quickly and efficiently, and sat him in a chair in the sitting room injected with a fresh cocktail of pharmaceuticals that Kathy had taught me to administer. We then poked our heads outside, saw that the road was momentarily clear of pedestrians, slid the trunk back into the van, and drove off. We parked in Clough Road and phoned 999 to tip the police off as to where to find the missing boy. We left the van in Brough, switched the trunk over to Mike’s car that was waiting there (he had gone there and back by train the previous day), and returned home to Mike’s.

As we headed up the A63, Mike said “Blimey we were lucky,” and it suddenly struck me that getting the boy into Planty’s house was virtually unplanned. We had all assumed that Planty would dash off to Pocklington when he heard the news from Fingers, as indeed he had, so there had been no Plan B whatsoever except to return the boy to Pocklington overnight and to phone the police in the morning, which would have been far less incriminating of Planty and his gang, and extremely dangerous.

As it happened, everything went perfectly, so we had been right not to get ourselves worked up about it, but I started to have retrospective panic attacks at Mike’s house when I fully realised for the first time what enormous risks we had been taking. What would we really have done if the Inbies had burst into the house in Pocklington? What if the neighbours had started nosing around, or the police? What if we had been intercepted transferring the boy into Planty’s house in Bransholme? What if we had been seen leaving it? Our plan could have gone wrong anywhere and, if it had, we could have got ourselves tortured to death or locked up in prison for twenty years. What if the boy had died? I had spent much of that week in Pocklington staring into his face and secretly apologising silently for the inconvenience and physical danger we were subjecting him to. Viewed from an objective standpoint, what we were doing was unconscionable, but I tried to stay away from that level of clear-sightedness - it freaked me – much as, later, it did me no good to appreciate just how incredibly lucky we had been both holing up with him in Pocklington and insinuating him into Planty’s home. I was tempted to believe that God had been on our side, but why exactly would he be backing us? There was nothing remotely good about what we had been doing. We were destroying an innocent life at random before it had even had the opportunity to flourish.

Stuff it! We were lucky, he was not, that’s the world for all of us. I had played it by the rules too long, and ended up as Harry Walker for my pains. Now Harry Walker, pathetic sucker that he was, deserved an even break.

* * *

Chapter 12

The other thing that Mike told me on the way home was that Fran and another woman had been around several times looking for me over the weekend.

“Who was the other woman?” I asked.

“Never seen ‘er before. Not from around ‘ere, I wouldn’t think.”

“What makes you think that?”

“She was dressed like a Southerner. She behaved like one too. Very attractive though, if a bit posh, like.”

“What was her name?”

“Can’t remember.”

“What did she look like?”

“I don’t know really. Blonde. Pretty. Good natured.”

So Chrissie had changed her mind after all, as I predicted, and had decided to come looking for me.

I rushed straight round to Fran’s house in Pease Street, even though it was getting late. Fran opened the door and momentarily seemed pleased to see me before she slammed the mask of indifference back over her face. “Where the heck have you been?” she demanded. “I have been looking all over for you.”

“I went off to try to find work?”

“Where did you go?”

“Leeds, Bradford, Wakefield, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield.”

“And what did you find?”

“I think I may have started a few balls rolling.”

“Where did you stay?”

“B&Bs.”

“Where did you get the money for that?”

“Mike lent me some.”

“Let’s hope that he is a patient man. I can’t remember the last time I got any money from you, other than your social security.”

“Mike’s okay. He is willing to take a bit of a punt on me. He’s noticed that I have changed.”

“I haven’t.”

“Then you haven’t been looking properly.”

“Are we in for another argument then?”

“Seems so.”

“Well come back when you can behave yourself.”

“Is Chrissie around?”

“So that’s why you have come round is it? You’ve heard that Chrissie was here.”

“Frankly, yes.”

“She went back to London on Sunday.”

“Oh, in that case I will call her.”

“Not from here you won’t.”

“No, I’ll call her from Mike’s.” I turned away. “Give my love to Tommy, won’t you?”

“What’s he to you?”

“I am very fond of him.”

“And what am I to you?”

“I like you too.”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“I’ve only known you a few days, and you kicked me out the last time I saw you.”

“For fucking your own sister.”

“She’s not my sister. I’ve only known her a few days too.”

“I think you should go back and see your hypnotist, Harry. Maybe she can unconfuse you.”

“I shall. Night then.”

She closed the door.

* * *

The publicity surrounding the arrest of Planty and his Inbies was terrific. I cannot remember any plan of mine delivering such instant gratification. The whole thing had worked like a dream, which was exactly the way my life felt at that time. The coverage was rabid. Planty was depicted as a mafia-style hoodlum whose appetites for violence and perversity were insatiable and legendary. He had been terrorising Hull for years, and no-one had ever dared stand up to him except the intrepid DI Richard Martin, whose finest hour had arrived.

According to the reports, Planty and two of his gang had brutally seized the boy, Jeremy Wilkinson, from the garden of his home where he was playing, and packed him off to Planty’s three bedroom bunker in Bransholme where he was kept bound and gagged and drugged up to the eyeballs so that there was a severe risk of his being addicted to hard drugs for the rest of his life. Reports were not clear as to whether he had been assaulted, but several hinted that he might well have been used for sexual purposes. He was now safe in the relieved bosom of his family and receiving around the clock psychological support to help him deal with his acute Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He was unlikely ever to fully recover and to live a normal life again. Everyone was agreed that in the absence of the death penalty, Planty and his evil accomplices should be locked up for at least twenty-five years.

Mike, Kathy and I had a party to celebrate the runaway success of our plan. That would teach Trevor Plant to cross us, although at that moment he might well be seething with a renewed psychotic desire to revenge himself on whoever stitched him up. Luckily, he was very unlikely to believe that it was us given his contemptuous dismissal of our abilities. In the limelight of the way that DI Martin was lapping up the adulation, he probably thought that it was the police themselves who had planted the boy in his house and then immediately discovered him there.

All in all, ten members of the Inbies had been arrested and were to be indicted for kidnapping, assault, grievous bodily harm, poisoning, false imprisonment and conspiring to do the same.

The next morning, there was a sharp wrap on the door which I opened to find myself face-to-face with DI Richard Martin himself. “Good morning, Harry,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“It’s not my house,” I replied, “and I would prefer you not to be seen talking to me. I don’t want Planty to believe that I had anything to do with your fitting him up.”

“You think we fitted him up?”

“Can we discuss this somewhere else, if you have come to see me, that is.”

“Yes, I have come to see you and, if you let me in, nobody will see me. I came in an unmarked police car.”

And so it was.

“Okay then.”

“Who’s that?” shouted Mike from the kitchen (I still hadn’t set foot in the sitting room).

“DI Martin.”

“What’s ‘e doing ‘ere?”

“Beats me, but he wants to talk to us, and I don’t fancy leaving him on the doorstep to parade himself off to the neighbours. They might get ideas that we are either collaborators or villains.”

“Bring ‘im in then.” He met DI Martin in the doorway to the kitchen. “Good morning, Inspector. To what do we owe your exalted presence?”

“Cut the crap, Mike. I wanted a word with you boys.”

“Okay, we’re listening.”

“It’s about what you’ll get up to now that most of the Inbies are off the scene.”

“What are you expecting us to get up to?” Mike asked him.

“Mischief, obviously. You’ve got the place to yourselves now, haven’t you?”

“I don’t really understand what you’re on about, Inspector. What ‘as all this got to do with us?”

“Don’t get clever with me, Michael Stevenson, I know exactly who you are and what you get up to, and we all know it. What I am saying, and I think you two lads should listen, is that if you start going on the rampage to fill the vacuum, you’ll soon find yourselves sharing a cell with your good mate Trevor Plant and his even nicer friends, and I doubt that they are the ideal cell mates, judging from what they did to that poor Wilkinson boy. You wouldn’t believe the state he was in.”

I shrugged. “I would believe anything of that lot. So they did abuse the boy, did they? I can’t say that I am surprised.”

DI Martin smiled (it was a reassuring one), and made ready to leave. “It’s just a friendly warning. I am watching you two, and at the first sign of any trouble, I’m going to pick you up, understood? So keep your noses clean.”

As I had brought him in, it was my job to usher him back outside. We parted with discrete nods on both sides, before I closed the door, and returned to the kitchen where Mike was punching his right fist into the air, with a finger to his lips.

“What?” I said.

Mike mouthed the word “bugs” at me, although it took me a few attempts to interpret his whisper.

“Where?” I mouthed back.

Smugly, Mike crouched down in front of the breakfast bar and pointed to a tiny piece of plastic glued in place with a pad.

Mike stood up. “I think I need to wash my mouth out with coffee after dealing with that monumental prat Martin,” he announced, straight to microphone. “Would you care to join me, ‘arry, then we’ll go for a pint down the Kingfisher.”

* * *

Living with a bug is like adlibbing a script twenty-four hours a day. We had to incriminate ourselves sufficiently for Martin to believe that we had not discovered his secret while at the same time never giving away anything that could get us into real trouble. So we spent hours discussing how we could mop up the Inbie’s loan sharking operation and whether we could take over their protection rackets, while making it clear that we hadn’t made a move to do anything yet. If we judged it right, we could send the old bastard round the bend with frustration, although right now he was probably preoccupied with counting his column inches.

We discussed our next steps with Kathy either out in the street or in secluded corners of pubs we had never visited before outside Hull itself– the Burtons, Hedon, Anlaby, Hessle, Cottingham, Walkington, Beverley, Welton, the Caves. The planning of this next stage was running up some pretty hefty bills in food and drink, for which Mike siphoned off money from the Royals’ kitty.

We were ready, in fact readier than I had ever expected. Not having been acquainted with Kathy for more than a few weeks, I hadn’t realised that she had taken drama lessons and had even appeared in a couple of Hull Truck productions. She had a particular knack with accents and an excellent telephone manner.

Mike had tapped the Royals’ stock of nicked mobile phones as well as their petty cash, and he had bought several pay-as-you-go SIM cards, each from a different shop in a different area of Leeds in case the police could track the phone numbers back to the shops that had sold them. The plan was that Kathy would phone the targets from Mike’s car well away from the Anlaby and Hessle roads, and she would switch SIM cards, destroying the old ones, every few hours, as well as keeping herself continuously on the move in case the police tried to track her on GPS after a tip-off. At this stage, it was unlikely that anyone would twig what was happening as Kathy had decided to go with my insurance scam which would come across as a genuine enquiry, nevertheless we decided to get ourselves into a routine and to take no chances whatsoever.

We were expecting that Kathy would have to work hard for her money to extract any information from anybody over the phone, but it appears that the great British public still trust insurance companies, God knows why, even when they are cold-called by people they don’t know representing an insurance company they have never heard of. I don’t know how she did it, but Kathy reliably got all the information we needed and more, including their salary brackets. We guessed that some may have exaggerated their earnings, and maybe they all did, but after ten days we had at least twenty perfect hot leads, as the marketing people call them, I believe. These were families with youngish children, good incomes, and who were unmistakably anxious to protect their children’s futures. All we needed was that extra titbit of information that they would know had not been divulged over the phone, to suggest that we were tracking their children so closely that we only had to reach out to touch them. This is where Braine the Brains came in. He was a teacher who had done quite a few assignments for the Royals in the past, and knew his way round computer systems, especially those serving local education authorities. What we wanted was the children’s school assessment results. All twenty families we were targeting had told us where their children went to school, so if we could hack into the computerised records we could drop into the conversation with their parents that it was a shame that little Johnny had slipped up in maths so badly during his last assessment. What would it do to parents to believe that one of their children’s teachers was behind the prospective kidnapping, someone who would have unlimited access to their child during all break times, and at the start and end of the school day? That would make them feel very vulnerable, we hoped.

Brains sucked out the information for us at record speed, and we were ready for the off, having adapted the payment delivery system. Instead of getting the parents to buy drugs from Kenny that they would give to us, and we would give back to Kenny, we decided to opt for a much simpler scheme. We would order on their behalf £10,000 worth of drugs, for which they would pay £20,000 (most of them would probably not even realise that they were being done), Kenny would have the money collected, and hand £10,000 onto us. So he got his way in the end, claiming that as he was offering us a complete turnkey solution he deserved £2,500 more for his professional services.

Mike and I were to make the menacing phone calls. The strategy was simple: always talk to the mothers, and never for more than five minutes. It was strictly ‘no conferring’ with their husbands who would be bound to feel obliged to come over all macho. We weren’t going to waste our time in slanging matches. We would punch straight in there with a blow to the heart, and keep them in a mounting state of panic until we clinched the deal and slammed down the phone as the punch line to a final threat about not honouring their commitments.

Mike and I decided that our opening gambit would be to say “We have your son/daughter.” That should grab their attention before we added “any time we want them.”

So the gist of the conversation went like this;

“Hello, Jennifer Brown speaking.”

“Hello, Mrs. Brown. We have your daughter.”

Shocked silence, then a hysterical quiver to the voice “Who is this? What do you mean?”

“We have your daughter. Which word don’t you understand?”

“You have my daughter how?”

“By her throat.”

“What? On no! Please don’t hurt her. Please don’t hurt her. What do you want me to do?”

“We have your daughter, Lucy, anytime we want her. Pretty little thing, isn’t she? Still. Intelligent too, looking at her maths results. Very impressive.”

“What do you want?”

“We want you to buy her some drugs.”

“Drugs? What would Lucy want with drugs?”

“She is going to grow up, isn’t she, unless you mess things up? She is going to need a few drugs to get her through life, so we are suggesting that you buy her some now.”

“And if we don’t?”

“Then she isn’t going to need them, is she?”

“Why not?”

“That’s for us to know and you to guess, Mrs. Brown.”

“I must have a word with my husband.”

“You aren’t talking to anybody, Mrs. Brown. You have five seconds. 5, and 4, and 3 …..”

“All right, all right. What do I do?”

“We’ll deliver the drugs through your letter box, then we’ll call round within a few days to collect the £20,000.”

“We don’t have £20,000.”

Click.

Everyone has £20,000 when they live in the suburbs, have an income in excess of £60,000 a year, and their daughter’s (or son’s) life is on the line.

Needless to say, Kenny never delivered the drugs through the letter box. They were usually to be found in their children’s school bags. We don’t know how Kenny managed that. Kenny would then collect the money with two of his mates. Only once had the parents tipped off the police, and it was obvious to Kenny before they even entered the driveway. Their son had a very nasty accident the next day, and the parents instantly recanted and paid up in a McDonalds bag thrown away in a park rubbish bin.

One final touch – we used electronic voice modifiers to make the calls, so that our Hull accents were undetectable. Within three weeks we were £200,000 the richer.

* * *

Our activities were briefly interrupted by our day in the Coroner’s Court, where the coroner had to deliver a verdict on the cause of Martin Jenson’s death. I had to give evidence for about two hours, answering to some rigorous cross-examination. Fran and Kathy were also called as witnesses. Tommy was spared. DI Martin assured the coroner that I had killed Martin Jenson in self-defence, after running through a huge list of increasingly nasty crimes Martin J had crammed into his itinerary during a relatively brief career, and the coroner agreed without demur, returning a verdict of lawful homicide.

* * *

When I started handing serious amounts of money over to Fran and Tommy, Fran’s first reaction was “Where did you get this lot from?”

I took Fran for a walk down the street.

“Crime,” I replied.

“What sort of crime?”

“The sort where no-one gets hurt. An insurance scam.”

“It certainly pays well.”

“It does.”

“Congratulations. You have graduated to being a real crook. I never knew you had it in you.”

“Harry didn’t until I turned up.”

“I suppose you want us to get back together again.”

Why not? I wasn’t enjoying Mike’s company that much, and Kathy hadn’t given up her night job, which surprised me as I would have thought that she would have had enough of sucking greasy pubic cock and having some fat, smelly, sweaty lecher pounding her up and down, smearing himself all over her. Perhaps she thought that her good fortune couldn’t last. Perhaps she had become institutionalised.

“All right then,” I replied.

“And not Kathy. I am not having Kathy here!”

“All right,” I conceded.

“And you don’t touch her ever again.”

“You are making up a lot of rules for someone who badly wants me back,” I said.

“You flatter yourself.”

“Yeah, but I can still read minds. Anyway, for the record, I won’t touch Kathy ever again.” How would she ever know whether I did or didn’t?

“Get your stuff, then. Tommy has missed you. What you do for your kids.”

“Not to mention money,” I told myself.

* * *

The first thing I did when I moved back into 34 Pease Street was to take Tommy back to Toys-R-Us, after school, to buy more or less as many toys as he wanted. This time he knew that money was growing on trees, so he browsed the shelves until nearly closing time, and ended up buying over £100 worth of stuff, much of it Lego Star Wars and Star Wars Transformers. I then treated him to a McDonalds and insisted on taking him back to the Market Place, which made him extremely nervous. I, for my part, strutted around the square, savouring the enforced absence of Planty and his gang.

“Aren’t you frightened of those men coming back again, Dad?” Tommy asked, looking agitatedly over his shoulders.

“No, Tommy, they’ve gone. They won’t be troubling us until you are a man and they are old men. You will be able to beat them up without any effort by then.”

“What has happened to them, Dad?”

“They have got themselves arrested.”

“Why?”

“For beating you up.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Well, it was true, if they hadn’t hurt Tommy, I would never have gone through with stitching them up.

I dragged Tommy all over town to make the point – Whitefriargate, Princes Quay, Ferensway, George Street, the old High Street, even Spring Bank and the Avenues (Mike had given me a guided tour of Hull a couple of weeks back). We walked everywhere unmolested, and I was Tommy’s hero, as I wished to become.

Two days later, I decided to go down to Wokingham and talk to Chrissie. Fran was furious. “What’s that in aid of?” she demanded.

“I want to see my wife.”

“I am your wife.”

“Yes, but Chrissie is my real wife.”

“So you are simply going to walk out on Tommy and me.”

“Of course not.”

“It looks like it from where I am standing.”

“Perhaps you should open your eyes too. I want to see Chrissie because we are soul mates, which you and I will never be …..”

“Charming!”

“Oh, come on, Fran. We are not exactly lovers, are we?”

“If you stopped putting it about elsewhere, we might be.”

“I don’t think you have had a proper relationship with Harry for at least ten years.”

“It doesn’t mean we can’t have one now.”

“Fine, but I still want to see Chrissie.”

“So you can walk out on us.”

“I am not walking out on anyone, Fran. I adore Tommy. Strangely enough, I even quite like you. I am committed to giving you a better life than you have had, or even than you could dream of. I will keep my promise. But, on the other hand, I do have another wife and two small children whom I equally adore, and whom I have not the least intention of abandoning either. So, I have to get down South to see what can be arranged. That does not constitute walking out on you.”

“Are you taking Kathy with you?”

“No.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“No, I am not taking Kathy. She has work to do here.”

“And she is flat out doing it, no doubt.”

Anyway, despite Fran’s protests, her shouting and her tears, I went to pick up the van in Brough, to drive down to Wokingham. Mike and I had already decided that we needed to get the van moved before someone started asking questions. Brough is not a haven of anonymity. Everyone is after everyone else’s business. Just as I fired the van up, a guy came up to the passenger’s window and threw at me “So, it’s your van is it?”

“Yes.”

“Couldn’t you park it somewhere else?”

“I’m going to.”

“And a good job too. I nearly phoned the police.”

What for, exactly, parking in a road in a space that belongs to anyone, first come first served? Who the bloody hell did this guy think he was, Boris Johnson?

Halfway down the M1, I realised that I should really be heading for London. I couldn’t exactly turn up at her home at eleven at night, and I wasn’t going to wait until the weekend. So, I had to stop and pay the congestion charge, not to mention £50 in parking fees but, as I have already mentioned, money was growing on trees at that point.

I turned up in reception and asked for Chrissie. I had been to her office several times before, but not disguised as Harry, of course. It was quite an eye-opener to observe how Harry was treated compared with Keith, the dashing husband of a partner. “Mr. Walker, Mrs. McGuire will be with you in a few minutes. Please help yourself to coffee from the machine and to any magazines you can find.” In the past, I had been treated as an admired long lost adventurer returned from a hazardous tour of the Amazon. Now I was merely a stranger.

Chrissie actually came to collect me at remarkable speed, much faster than she had joined me in reception when I was Keith, the patient husband who could wait while she finished whatever she was doing.

“Mr. Walker, how nice to see you,” Chrissie greeted me with practised courtesy. “Have we ever met before? You look very familiar.” She hadn’t lost her playfulness. “Follow me.” She led me down the back stairs to a conference room on the seventeenth floor. “Do sit down. Coffee?”

“Yes, please, Chrissie,” I responded, making her jump.

“Coming right up.” Linda entered the meeting room and took the order.

“Did you have a good trip South, Mr. Walker?” Chrissie enquired, closing the door.

“Delightful,” I replied, a manner of speech which clashed with my Hull accent.

“What do you think of these offices?”

“What I always thought of them, I suspect, although I have never visited this fishbowl before.” I waved at the glass walls and door of the meeting room we were in. Beyond them, people regularly bobbed up from their cubicles and scuttled or strolled (depending no doubt on their status) across the floor. Most of them glanced surreptitiously at the occupants of the meeting room to add to their office narrative of the events of the day. “Chrissie is with a client, I assume, although he looks a bit of a tramp. Is he an eccentric millionaire, or is Chrissie doing a bit of pro bono work for a down-at-heal relative or a friend of a friend? I shouldn’t think that anyone in her own circle of choice would come here looking like that.”

“So you have visited these offices before, Mr. Walker?”

“Yes, Chrissie, I must have been here seven or eight times, although more often I have met you in Starbucks round the corner. I came here once to bring you your mobile phone which you had left at home. I have attended a couple of office parties; three actually. I brought Ella and Mark here once on a family open day, and they set off the fire alarm …..” I laughed, but Chrissie did not join me. My recollections were troubling her too much. “I also picked you up when you were feeling ill with what turned out to be appendicitis, which then turned into peritonitis. And I have signed a couple of documents as a witness as I happened to be passing, I cannot remember quite why.”

“Where is my office from here?”

“Up a floor, on the eighteenth. Out of the lift, turn right, through the double doors, on the left hand side about seventh or eighth office, about twenty-five square metres, desk across the far corner, four pictures of me and the children, the three of us together in Albufeira and three portrait photos taken about three years ago when Ella was nine and Mark was five. You usually have a large pinky-purple orchid right inside the door, and a coffee table with three chairs to the left. The coffee table is steel with a round clear glass top, and the chairs are low slung steel-tubed with white leather seats. You have prints of two Picassos on your walls – ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” on the wall behind the desk, and “Entreinte” (one of my favourites of his) on the wall next to the coffee table behind the door. Have I passed yet?”

Chrissie held her head in her hands. Mike Roberts, passing on the other side of the glass petition stopped to assess the situation, not sure whether to interrupt or not. He knocked on the door. “Sorry to disturb you,” he excused himself to me. “Are you all right, Chrissie?”

Chrissie emerged from her temporary asylum. “Yes, I am fine thanks, Mike. Something that Mr. Walker here told me upset me. Mr. Walker, this is Mr. Roberts.”

“Hello, Mike,” I said. “Nice to see you again.”

Mike reacted with mild embarrassment. “I am sure that I have seen you somewhere before, Mr. Walker, but I cannot quite recall where it was. I do apologise for not recognising you immediately.”

“No problems,” I replied in my thick Hull accent. “I have changed considerably since last time we met. That is what I was telling Chrissie all about, which upset her, I am afraid.”

“I am so sorry,” Mike said. He must have been racking his brains as to what this greasy-looking, thinning, dishevelled geezer from the North might have been before he was transformed into his present incarnation. My guess was that his guess was probably that I was a successful northern industrialist come down in the world. Perhaps my wife had died. Possibly my business had folded. Maybe I had been chronically ill. “Anyway,” he added, “so long as all is well ….” He stared solicitously at Chrissie to reassure himself that he was free to take his leave with a clear conscience.

Chrissie smiled bravely. “I am fine, Mike. Thank you.”

When he had closed the door, she added “We have to go and talk somewhere else. I don’t mind appearing distressed in the office, but it will get gossiped up into a crisis out there, and I cannot cope with that right now. Where do you think we should go?”

“How about Starbucks round the corner? It has served us well in the past.”

“Come on, then.” She touched my arm as she passed me.

We presented ourselves back to reception on the eighteenth floor where George Adair and Sally Brockhurst were conferring with some seriousness about us, I would guess. They interrupted their discussion as we emerged from the lift.

“If you don’t mind waiting for me here a minute, Mr. Walker, I just need to collect a couple of things from my office.”

I smiled at Sally and George who returned bemused acknowledgement.

“That was a short meeting, Mr. Walker,” commented the receptionist.

“Well, I’m a fast worker,” I replied, flashing her one of my disconcerting gleams. “We are now off to inspect the scene of the crime, Mrs. McGuire and me. Mrs. McGuire is a stickler for the gruesome details.”

The receptionist didn’t know how to respond to this obscurely bizarre commentary on our joint itinerary, and nor did Sally and George who decided that they needed to continue with their separate work schedules, colliding with a hurrying Chrissie as she barged through the double doors.

“Sorry,” she apologised to both of them, adding to the receptionist in professional confidentiality “Mr. Walker and I are stepping out for a while to discuss his case. I expect to be back within two or three hours. Joyce knows where I am if anybody needs me, and I’ll leave my mobile on.”

“Thanks, Chrissie. We’ll see you later, then.” The receptionist’s concerned frown followed us into the lift until the doors shut.

Trapped in close proximity, Chrissie and I simply did not know how to behave towards each other. I desperately wanted to hug her and to kiss her on the forehead (kissing her on her lips would have been too intrusive at this stage in our newly-fashioned relationship), and I think that she may have wanted to hug me too, although she was undoubtedly doused by my physical appearance. Instead we hovered around each other for the short time it took to arrive directly at the ground floor. We went through the automatic plate glass doors and into the street. I immediately turned to the right towards Starbucks, a move which seemed to wrong-foot Chrissie. “We are going to Starbucks, aren’t we?” I checked.

“I was thinking,” Chrissie replied, “how about Ha!Ha!s in Victoria?”

“I don’t think I have ever been there. Why not? Presumably you are looking for somewhere public but discreet, are you, Chrissie?”

She stood there with her arms wide, pleading to the world. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t even know what to call you. I don’t know how to relate to you.”

“Call me ‘Harry’ for the moment. It will be easier for you, and pretend that I am Gerald or someone, more than an acquaintance, less than a friend.” She nodded gratefully while I hailed a taxi.

Arriving at Ha!Ha!s, we both ordered coffee and sat down in the corner.

“So what has been happening?” she asked. Now there was a tough question.

“I have basically been biding my time and saving up enough money to come to find you.”

“Fran seemed nice,” she said, “and that child of hers seems extremely studious. Never stops drawing. Have you been helping him?”

“Not a lot. I haven’t been there much recently. Fran and I had a disagreement, and I went to stay with a guy called Mike.”

“Yes, I gathered that, but Fran did not say what the disagreement was about.”

I was going to say “bedtime arrangements” but I stopped myself abruptly, realising that would raise the lid on a conversation that I definitely did not want to pursue at that moment, and in all probability never would. “I simply couldn’t fit in,” I explained instead. “We are strangers to each other. She expects me to be her husband, and yet she is not my wife. What would you do?”

“What did you do?” Chrissie replied as I realised that I had unconsciously steered the topic towards the one I explicitly had wanted to avoid.

“I wandered around like a spare prick.”

“And at night?”

“Fran slept with Kathy, when she was there. Kathy mostly works nights,” I added.

“Who is Kathy and what does she do?”

“She is Harry’s sister, and she is a prostitute.”

Chrissie scrunched her face. “Charming,” she observed. “Quite a household.”

“It is that.”

“So you got out before she made any demands on you.”

“Yes, that’s about it. At least Mike is a man. We didn’t need to even talk together much.”

“And what does he do?”

“He is unemployed.”

“Does anybody up there have a normal job?”

“Nobody that I have met so far. Harry’s ex might have done.”

“What was she like?”

“Very angry, especially with Harry.”

“Ow.” She laughed. She placed her left hand on my right knee. “I tell you, Keith, it certainly has its funny side when you think about it. How did you cope with it all? What must you have been thinking?”

Now that Chrissie’s and my relationship had settled back down to calm normality, it was time to come clean about just how awful the experience had been “I was absolutely terrified,” I started. “I could not get any grip on what was happening to me. I must have been groggy coming out of the trance anyway, but I was then confronted with this hideous woman I had never seen before treating me with the detached contempt professionals have for people who are not paying their own bills and who are forced to attend sessions with them. She clearly thought that I was a right crook and that every word I uttered was designed to either trick her or to stab her. Then there was this absurd body you see before you. Not exactly me, is it?”

“No.”

“And it felt really uncomfortable sitting inside it, as if my diaphragm was squashed up. I had severe indigestion, and was feeling sick, and I had to get to the toilet or throw up all over her or across her floor, which was extremely tempting, but we have brought ourselves up too well for that. And then, when I saw my reflection in the mirror, I started crying. Who was this fucking guy? He was absolutely revolting. Everything about him was revolting, his face, his body, his muscly hairy arms, his hairy bum, his penis, oh God, you should see his penis.”

“I think I can wait.”

“Well I am not bringing it out here. I am too ashamed of it for starters. And when I went back into her room, this hypnotherapist woman totally ignored the fact that I must have looked pretty distraught, and she simply carried on laying into me while I tried to get some basic facts together in order at least to be able to get away from her and to rally my emotional resources to see how I could get back to you.”

“And I didn’t believe you either.”

“I think you did. Even the first time, I think you did. You were just scared, as anybody would have been. There was Keith by your side, there was this stranger with a northern accent barking down the phone, pretending to be Keith. Of course you hesitated. If Keith had been behaving differently, you might have reacted differently.”

“He is behaving a bit differently, Keith. It’s as if he is not all there. He is absent-minded and he seems to have far less energy than he used to have up to a couple of months ago. The children have noticed too, and it is beginning to upset them. He doesn’t really want to interact with them any more. He is distracted and confused, and his work is no longer going well. He has lost his flair. Adam phoned me up the other day to inquire whether everything was all right at home, whether we were having family or marital problems, you know the sort of call. He said that Keith seemed to be having increasing difficulty getting his shit together, kept missing meetings, kept being discovered staring out of the window. Of course, that is what I was almost waiting for after you had contacted me, that there was some significant change in Keith, and there is. Somehow we have to get you two back together again.”

“Has Keith been violent towards you at all, or cruel?”

“No, not at all. He is no longer all there, but he is not turning into the sort of guy Harry sounds like he might have been from what you say, if that is what you mean.”

“Yes, that is what I was referring to. So where is Harry, that is what I would like to know? I get the nasty feeling that some of him is still trapped inside here, egging me on to do things I would never do myself.”

“Like what? What have you been doing?”

“Nothing dramatic, but I have become far more foul-tempered and mean. That is why Fran kicked me out. I kept shouting at Tommy and physically threatening her.”

“Have you hit her?” Chrissie exclaimed, shocked.

“No, not yet, but I have been extremely tempted. She really bugs me. I don’t know why she bugs me that much, but she does. Perhaps it is because she bugs Harry. That is what I fear.”

“And you haven’t slept with her?”

“I don’t think Harry has slept with her for years, from the sound of things, not since they conceived Tommy. I think that Harry finds his pleasures elsewhere.”

“And you?”

“No, I have not been finding my pleasures elsewhere.”

Chrissie touched me on the arm again, affectionately. “That’s a relief. Do you promise that you will not sleep with anybody except me? Keep yourself for me, Keith, whatever the temptations. I could not bear to hear that you had been intimate with other women. I don’t think that I could accept you back if you did, even when things sort themselves out again, as I am sure they will. That is the only thing I ask of you. I realise that, as Harry, you might be forced into doing all sorts of terrible things, but please don’t do that. Promise me?”

I didn’t hesitate. “I promise you, Chrissie. I am absolutely yours, and I always will be.” At that moment I was grateful that Harry was such a fluent liar, although even then I realised that I was storing up problems for the future.

* * *

Chapter 13

The setting where I most feared revealing my secrets was also the one where I had the greatest expectations of salvation – the office of Brenda Starbright, the hypnotherapist. On the one hand, she might return me to the land of Keith McGuire, Wokingham, his career and his familial bliss. On the other hand, the next time I visited her was on the day before we were due to kidnap the boy, whichever boy that might end up being. If I didn’t escape the appointment, I might blab. In theory, anything I said to her was privileged, and she was forbidden, on pain of being struck off, to divulge any aspect of our session to the police. However, if she were to learn that I was about to kidnap a child, she might decide that her moral duty was to prevent me from doing so at almost any risk to herself. Besides, once the police had caught us red-handed, how could I prove that she had told them anything, and who would doubt the appropriateness of her judgment?

I could not refuse to attend the session as it was a condition of my remand order that I visit her every two weeks and, if nothing else, I didn’t want the police snuffling around trying to find out what I was up to or where I had got to. What I could do, I assumed, was to refuse to co-operate. I had never seen the remand order, but I doubted that it insisted that I should succumb to hypnotic suggestion during each and every visit, without fail, or else.

I decided to hijack the agenda by firing loads of questions at Ms. Starbright about how I could possibly have switched bodies with Harry Walker last time around. Her immediate response was to attempt to bluster and bully her way through my thorny thicket of defences, asserting that it was her right to be in control of what took place in her office, and that she therefore insisted that we proceed with the session as she envisioned it. I countered this demand by arguing that she might have every right to impose her treatment on Harry Walker, who would be there by order of the court, but not on Keith McGuire, who had never appeared in a criminal court in his life.

“But you are Harry Walker,” she protested.

“I am Harry Walker on the outside, but can you prove that I am Harry Walker on the inside?”

“Harry,” she smiled condescendingly, “I don’t need to.”

“Brenda,” I replied in kind, “I know who I really am, and who I really am is Keith McGuire. Now I want to know why I am here, and you could help me discover the answer to that. Wouldn’t it be more fun to explore that as an issue? Why don’t you just go with the flow of my conceit, and see where it leads us?”

It was immediately obvious that Brenda Starbright was not in search of fun, especially at the seasoned hands of a notoriously slippery con-artist.

“Harry, I may simply have to inform the court that you are impossible to treat.”

“I can live with that.”

“It might mean that you will be sent to jail.”

“For having a multiple personality disorder or a severely dysfunctional personality disorder? I don’t think so. They will merely send me to another therapist.”

“They might just decide to commit you to Broadmoor, and to throw away the key.”

She might have said that merely to bully me into compliance, but I decided to risk dragging the discussion out for the full hour, at which point she announced that she had another patient booked.

I refused to leave, arguing at the top of my voice about my right to be given my due treatment as proposed by a court of justice, even if she didn’t believe that I was worth her valuable time and effort. This so incensed her that she screamed back at me a whole torrent of insults, and I managed to extend the whole shouting match for another half an hour. It served her right. I suspect that in the last few minutes she realised that she had fallen into my trap, which annoyed her all the more as I was now in the position, with a witness to prove it, to claim in front of the court that despite anything she might allege to the contrary, far from refusing treatment, I was actively being deprived of it.

I left there a much relieved man, but I knew it was only a temporary reprieve. The next session was due in another two weeks, and who knew what she might discover poking around my brain if she managed to hypnotise me? Yes, I was desperate to return to being Keith McGuire, but on the balance of risks, remaining a hypno-resistant Harry Walker was definitely safer. Fortunately, when I turned up at her office for the next appointment, the week after we planted Jeremy Wilkinson on Planty, and a couple of days after I had returned from seeing Chrissie, my knock was not answered. Either she was ill, or she was cowering behind the door. Even better, she then went off on her holidays, which meant that I missed the subsequent sessions as well. I cannot believe that she was that afraid of me, but it was very convenient whatever lay at the bottom of it.

* * *

Actually, I would have liked to have consulted somebody immediately after I had seen Chrissie because the experience had been so disturbing. It was bad enough talking to her with this weird sub-text going on as we spoke, each knowing that I was partly Keith McGuire and partly not, and neither of us knowing how to handle the fact. We wanted to be as physically close to each other as we always were, but my appearance precluded that. Eventually, after an hour of deeply frustrating conversation in Ha!Has!s Victoria, we both agreed that I must be brought face-to-face with Keith as Chrissie knew him still, the pale shadow of his former self. It seemed the only logical conclusion.

I doubt either of us had any idea of what would happen. We were only hoping that something would, and that it would be for the better. We caught the train out to Wokingham. I had to buy a ticket, which was weird, because I normally had a season ticket. It felt a waste of money somehow, which should have been a tiny matter, but it disconcerted me considerably, and threw me into a foul temper, the like of which Chrissie had never experienced, especially as the victim of it. By the time we had climbed into Chrissie’s Lexus RX, we were no longer talking to each other. I was in full sulk about the life that had been seized from me – Chrissie, the children, the house, the cars, the job, and even Agnes. I am sure that Chrissie understood my frustration, but it only served to trigger her own.

“I am not sure that you are in a fit state to see Keith, and especially not the children,” she announced sharply as we pulled up outside the door of the house in Barkham Road. “I’m going to drop you back at the station.” She started to turn the car round.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Chrissie,” I exploded. “I am not exactly going to hurt the children, and Keith is me, remember. If I hurt him, I hurt myself, and I am not as daft as that.” The word ‘daft’ slipped out with the northern flat ‘a’.

Chrissie stamped on the brake. “Okay, then. Let’s get it over with.”

The first one I saw was Mark, running screaming round the house, chased by Luke, a friend from school. Then, there was Ella, emerging to greet her mum. “Oh,” she reacted when she saw me.

Chrissie introduced us. “Ella, this is Mr. Walker.”

Ella didn’t say anything, which was rather strange for her. She is usually exceptionally polite. I held my hand out. “Nice to meet you, Ella,” I said, desperate to touch her hand, but she declined to offer it. “Dad’s home,” she volunteered to Chrissie, escaping into the sitting room.

As indeed he was. He emerged into the hallway, and I froze. Watching myself was very much more frightening than I had anticipated. I had expected it to be intriguing; instead, it was creepy. The other Keith clearly felt the same, without the benefit of knowing why, because he stepped back as if I had hit him. I could feel his shock, as perhaps he was experiencing mine. I nevertheless wanted to touch his hand, to see what would happen. It could have been that my exiled soul would leap across at the first opportunity to return home.

Chrissie rushed forward towards him. “What’s wrong, Keith?”

Keith collapsed to the ground. “I feel like I am having a heart attack.” The children who had sensed change, had rushed into the hallway to investigate the commotion. They stood there horrified as they watched Keith.

“What is happening, Mum?” asked Ella, in her smallest of voices. Mark was transfixed, silent. Luke shuffled, realising that he should not have been witnessing this, but not sure as to how to absent himself politely.

I felt like I was having a heart attack too. My heart was pounding, my chest was ripped through with shock and panic, my body was impossibly heavy. Keith and I were compounding each other’s reactions. I crawled over to Keith and touched his arm.

There was a cataclysmic explosion. Ella jumped forward screaming “No! No! Get away from him! What have you done to him? Who are you?” hysterically.

Mark looked at me with traumatised calm. “Who are you?”

I was not sure that I wanted to answer that question or how to do so, or whether I could even physically respond at all. It was as if Keith and I were electro-magnets repelling each other, with all the intense power and vibration that electro-magnets emit.

Keith stared at me with a wounded look on his face, and I would guess that my expression was much the same. Ella was hopping up and down screeching and caterwauling. Mark repeated “Who are you?”

I held out my hand. “Come here, Mark,” I beckoned him fondly.

Mark stepped back. “No way. You are bad. I am not going anywhere near you.”

“Go away!” Ella screamed. “Get out of here! Get out of here! Leave us alone! You are evil. You are evil. You are evil.”

“No, I’m not,” I protested. “I am not at all evil.”

“Come on,” Chrissie encouraged me gently. “This is not working. Come outside for a minute, and we’ll discuss what to do.” She held out her hand and helped me rise to my feet, leading me out of the front door where I collapsed over the roof of the Lexus.

“That was worse than I could ever have imagined,” I observed.

“Yes,” Chrissie responded. “That was really bad. Poor Keith. Poor both Keiths.” She rubbed my back consolingly as Mark and Ella watched from the doorway.

Ella marched up to Chrissie determinedly. “Is he your lover, Mum?” she demanded.

Chrissie smiled wanly. “It is a lot more complicated than that,” she said.

“So he is?”

“Not in the sense that you mean, no.”

“Who is he then?”

“He is your father.”

Shock slapped Ella across her face and then turned and swiped Mark too.

“You mean that he is our real father? Him?” She was not relishing the discovery.

“They are both your real father,” Chrissie explained enigmatically.

“You made love to both of them? At the same time?” gasped Ella incredulously.

Chrissie shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way, darling. I am not a cat.”

Ella started to cry. She stood there all alone, shaking, utterly abandoned by her comforting assumptions. She looked at the same time very small and very big, a child and an adult, a victim about to turn vengeful. “Explain yourself!” she shrieked. “Explain yourself!”

Keith appeared behind her. He placed his arm around her chest. She stood stock still. “Mum believes that this man has a bit of me inside him,” he ventured.

“A bit of you?”

“She believes that my personality has split, and some of it has become lodged in this man.”

Ella did not react. Mark squinted at Keith and said “Really, Dad? Is that true?”

“Really,” Keith confirmed.

Mark transferred his gaze to me. “Is that true?”

“I think it may be,” I replied. “Something really strange and rather terrible has happened, but don’t worry, Mark, we will find a way of putting things back to normal.”

“How?”

“I really don’t know. I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how to get back, but I know, watching your Dad, that what I suspected is true. I am here, and I am there, and I don’t know how to get from here to there.”

“How did you get there in the first place?” Ella asked.

“I went to see a hypnotherapist, and when I woke up, I looked like this.”

Ella laughed, not unkindly, but certainly sardonically. “Poor you.”

“That is what I felt, Ella. Believe me.”

“So why don’t you go back to the hypnotist?”

“Maybe I should.”

“Go. Go now.” She stepped up to me and pushed me away. “Don’t waste any more time. It is killing all of us. Look at Dad.”

She was right. Keith was statue grey and folding slowly back to the floor. I could feel everything he was feeling although, for some reason, I was able to remain a lot stronger, both physically and mentally. I pushed myself off the Lexus and started to walk towards the road.

“Wait,” said Chrissie. “I’ll take you to the station.”

I climbed into the car. Chrissie got in beside me. She fired up the engine and slowly pulled out of the driveway. We stopped outside the front of Wokingham station. Chrissie took out her mobile phone. “I am phoning Sian,” she explained. “Sian, this is Chrissie McGuire. I need you to see a friend of mine desperately. It is really urgent. He is called Harry Walker, and he is on his way to see you now. Please see him. We are desperate.” She turned to me. “Answerphone.” She rummaged in her bag and took out her note pad. She copied Sian’s phone number onto the next page, ripped it out and handed it to me. “Sian’s number. Call her. Do you want her address?”

“No, I can remember where she was.” I leant over to kiss her on the cheek. She let me. Indeed, she even kissed me back. “Good luck, Keith. We really need you. Do everything you can, won’t you.”

“What do you think?”

“I think we will pull through. We always do.”

I got out of the car and entered the station. I didn’t see Chrissie drive off.

* * *

Chapter 14

Needless to say, I couldn’t risk visiting any hynotherapist, not even Sian, so I overshot Sian in Egham and when I reached Waterloo I retrieved the van, paid the £50 parking fee, and headed out to Slough, where I abandoned it in the first side street I could find that didn’t have parking metres. I quadruple-checked that I was not infringing any parking laws so as to ensure that the police did not come searching for me, wondering why a white van in such good condition had apparently been abandoned. I jettisoned the ladder on the top of the van en route because I didn’t want locals to notice that it had been stolen and that we hadn’t done anything about it.

Satisfied that the status of the van would not be investigated at least for another few weeks (at which point we planned to sell it once there was no possibility of its being linked to the kidnapping), I took the train from Slough into Paddington, and booked a room in the Royal Lancaster Hotel in Bayswater. I spent the rest of the night on the town, reliving my love affair with London. Returning to the hotel across Hyde Park, I had to climb the railings on the northern side because the gates were locked. Fortunately, two park benches had been conveniently placed one on either side of the fence, so I managed to straddle the railings without getting caught up in the spikes.

The next morning I crossed London in the rush hour (more nostalgia) to stand outside Longley, Bairns & Woodward, my employers. I saw several of my colleagues, including Adam, but failed to catch sight of Keith. Eventually, I went inside to Reception to ask if Keith was there. I explained that I didn’t want to see him, but I wanted to check that he still worked there.

“Yes, he does,” the receptionist informed me, “but he is not in today. Are you a friend of his?” She managed to keep her face deadpan.

“More of a close acquaintance,” I replied. “No matter, I’ll try him another day.”

“Can I say who called?”

“Yes, tell him Harry Walker called in to see him, if you don’t mind.”

“Do you have a card I could give him?” I was sure that she expected me to be carrying nothing of the sort, but her face betrayed no other emotion than the desire to help me.

I patted my pockets. “Sorry,” I declared. “Fresh out.”

“I’ll tell him you called. Goodbye, Mr. Walker.”

I had all day to kill, or rather to savour being back in London, so I roamed the streets for hours, walking past all my favourite places – restaurants, shops, art galleries. I thought of going to see a film, but I decided that it would waste valuable time I could spend outside. At four in the evening, I headed up to King’s Cross to catch the train to Hull, arriving there just after eight.

Fran seemed surprised to see me, and even pleased. Tommy was already in bed.

“So you came back, then,” she said.

“I said I would.”

“I didn’t really believe you.”

“You can, you know. I’m not Harry, for better or for worse.”

“Yes, that is what I am trying to discover. You have gone from not having a penny to your name, and even having to borrow from me, to being flush with the stuff. I can’t say as I mind, but I do wonder where it will all end.”

“Happily, I hope.”

“That takes a lot of believing. Do you want a coffee?”

“I could kill for a coffee.”

“What else could you kill for, Harry?”

The sharpness of the rejoinder threw me for a second. “Well you and Tommy, for starters,” I replied. “I have already proved that.”

Fran made the coffee, and we moved into the sitting room where we sat side-by-side on the sofa.

“So what were you doing in London?”

I assumed that she was clairvoyant for a second as I had said that I was going to Wokingham not London, then I remembered that everyone in Hull called anywhere down South ‘London’, wherever it was.

“I went to see Chrissie.”

“How was she?”

“Sympathetic.”

She waited for me to elaborate, and when I didn’t she added “And?”

“We made progress, but there is a long way to go.”

“Did you see your kids?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“They told me to go away.”

Fran winced. “Really?”

“I also met Keith, and that was a total disaster. I nearly killed him. I nearly killed myself.”

“Why?”

“We gave each other heart attacks, well almost. It seems that we cannot confront each other without setting off a fatal reaction.”

“So you came home?”

“So I wandered around London for a day, and came home to you and Tommy.”

“What are your plans now?”

“To stay here for a while, and to plan what to do next - how I can make us all happy.”

“That would be nice.”

I scowled. “Yes, but at this precise moment, I would settle for making anyone happy, anyone at all.”

“I am happy to see you, Harry,” Fran assured me, “and Tommy will be really happy that you are back when he sees you in the morning. He may even get up to check in the middle of the night. He did last night. He likes his new dad. He is proud of you. He was always desperate to find something to make him proud of you, and now he has, so he definitely doesn’t want to lose you again.”

“Why is he proud of me – because I have brought some money home for a change?”

“That might be part of it, but I think that it is mostly that you have wanted to spend some time with him. That is really important to him. Harry hardly bothered with him at all. He left him entirely up to me.”

I took Fran’s hand. She did not resist, although she did not react with any warmth either, only with acquiescence. “I will always be there for Tommy, Fran, as long as I possibly can, and for you too. I may be a crook; I may be a lot worse than a crook, in fact I am; but I am no longer a cheat. I am very fond of both of you. I am committed to both of you. I am also, of course, deeply in love with Chrissie, Ella and Mark as well, so there is a lot to work out, but I will give it my very best shot, I promise you.”

“We’ll see.” She got up. “I must go to bed now. I’m tired. You can come too, if you like, or you can sleep in Kathy’s old room.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Come on, then. If you turn the lights out here, I’ll deal with the kitchen.”

* * *

In bed, Fran confessed to receiving some attention from a new admirer.

“He started chatting to me in Monsoon. I haven’t had that happen to me in years. There again, I haven’t been in Monsoon for years either. Couldn’t afford it. I was holding up a skirt against me in front of the mirror, and he said “That will look really pretty on you.” I turned to see who the guy was, and actually he looked really nice, not the smooth-talking git I was expecting.

“What was he doing in Monsoon?”

“Buying his wife a present for her birthday. Apparently I reminded him of her, so he wanted to use me as a model for her.”

“And did you?”

“Yes, I tried a few things on for him. Do you mind?”

“I mind that he was chatting you up.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Maybe a bit, but I am more concerned that he was chatting you up.”

“Why?”

“Because I am asking myself why he was chatting you up.”

“Perhaps he fancied me, or perhaps I really do look like his wife.”

“It’s possible.”

“You don’t think that an attractive, educated man like that would go for a woman like me?”

“I am sure he could. That is not the point.”

“What is the point?”

“It feels contrived – as if he wanted to get to know you for other reasons.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“That is what I am asking myself. I am just hoping that he really did fancy you, but I would bet that there was more to it than that. Did he get your phone number?”

“He never asked. I told you that he wasn’t the pushy type.”

“So he already knows where you live.”

“Do you think so?”

“I am guessing so. Did he tell you anything about himself?”

“He said that he was a test pilot for British Airways in Brough. He was going to fly his wife by helicopter to Harrogate for dinner for her birthday. I thought that sounded really romantic. Would you do that?”

“I don’t even know when your birthday is,” I admitted.

“On the 23rd of June, in five weeks’ time.”

“I don’t think people who live in Pease Street hire helicopters.”

“You could probably afford it, from the look of things.”

“Yes, but I don’t want that look of things to reach DI Martin, which means that I cannot do it around here, and we cannot involve Tommy because he will tell all his school friends.”

“We could go away for the weekend. Debbie will be prepared to look after Tommy, I’m sure, and you could show me the heights of wherever in England you think it would be safe to hire a helicopter.”

“I’ll see.”

She began to unbutton my pyjamas. “And I’ll give you some encouragement,” she said.

* * *

Kathy just kept turning up at Mike’s house with money, £10,000 at a time. The scam was working wonderfully. We were up to £50,000 a week, the equivalent of £10,000 for every working day, and we could have doubled it if we had wanted to, as we nearly did. The amount of money we earned was merely a factor of how many phone calls we made. We had unlimited numbers of victims. We were never going to run out. It was a really simple system we had devised. I considered myself to be a criminal genius.

Our biggest issue was how to cut the rest of the gang in. We absolutely did not want them to know what we were doing, otherwise Fingers, among others, would tell Planty and the Inbies for sure, and who knew what they would do. They may already have guessed that we had fitted them up, so sooner or later they would be after us, but so long as they didn’t realise what the scam was, there wasn’t much they could do to interfere. Humberside Police weren’t going to care about things that were not even happening on their patch, and that they didn’t know we were mixed up in. So, it was a question of watching our backs against hired hit men or vengeful stray Inbies. One of the things we did was to hire the rest of the gang as our bodyguards, claiming that we feared reprisals as we were progressively mopping up all the dodgy business in town. We also recruited some fictitious operatives who specialised in Internet fraud, claiming that we were earning money that way.

It seemed to be working. Fingers, Cut-Throat, Knitting Needles, ‘ull Bitter, Rackets, Welton Willy and Bobblehead were really not that bright, so we reckoned that should they ever catch on, we would know about it. Sherbert Friscali was admittedly a great deal sharper, but he seemed to be too out there following his own agenda smashing windows and crushing limbs to worry about what we were doing. Which left Kenny Bender who knew exactly what was going on, and who might decide to branch out on his own. Given his propensity for violence and his aversion to subtlety, he could drive the whole thing out into the open in no time, queering the pitch for all of us.

DI Martin called around regularly to remind us that he was watching us, and the fact that he had to talk his way past some rather thick bodyguards must have reassured him, as it was intended to. Clearly we were tightening our grip on the Hull underworld, but we weren’t causing any noticeable trouble and we were too boneheaded to be considered a threat to the peace, or the police, in the longer term either. Everything was strumming along as it should – we were subversive folk-rock bashed out by scruffy hippies, not screeching lead guitar to annoy the neighbours.

That is until Cut-Throat was found bobbing in the Humber, tied on a leash to the suspension bridge. That made us all sit up. What was that about? It had echoes of mafia or Masonic killings, or whatever. Cut-Throat’s wife was around in five denouncing every suspect she could think of and demanding blood-curdling revenge on all of them simply because their names had entered her mind. Cut-Throat had a whole KC Stadium load of enemies, it seemed, assiduously nurtured over a provocative career lasting more than twenty years. Cut-Throat had not managed to cut many throats, which might have been his mistake, but he had managed to slash a few cheeks and noses and to screw a lot of angry men’s wives.

DI Martin summoned Mike and me to Queen’s Gardens for a meeting. The message was dogmatic and unequivocal. We had to find out who did it and to serve the culprit(s) up on a plate, in one piece, to DI Martin himself, recipient of all glory. We didn’t have to find the right villain, but we did have to finger a plausible one who could be sent down for life, thereby cleaning up the official crime ledger.

The problem was that there were no obvious leads at all, and that the whole process was distracting us from what we should have been doing (threatening the middle-class burghers of Sheffield and Rotherham). We were getting bogged down in administration when we should have been going flat out for short-term sales.

Nonetheless, it was another excuse to keep the rest of the gang busy doing what entertained them, hobbling bow-legged about town pulling threatening faces. They were soon unearthing even more suspects, each of whom at least one of the gang was absolutely convinced had been either the perpetrator of Cut-Throat’s murder, or the master-mind behind it. For a while, the odds-on favourite was his brother-in-law, a haulage contractor who had a whole team of people who were handy with knots and ropes, and who had the easy means of carting Cut-Throat’s body to where it had been discovered. Police forensics assured us that he had been long dead before he ever hit the river – he had no water in his lungs. Unfortunately, his brother-in-law was a good mate of DI Martin and even kept him on the payroll as an informal ‘security advisor’, whatever that might mean, so we had to search elsewhere.

The husband of the woman Cut-Throat had last been balling stepped up to the plate next. He was a nine stone asthmatic, so he must have had help if he had any involvement in the first place. Luckily he had a brother with a notoriously vicious temper who made no secret of the fact that he was as close to being in love with his sister-in-law as he was ever likely to be capable of. Even better, he boasted openly of taking a crow bar to Cut-Throat’s limbs, biting out his tongue and roasting him alive over his B&Q Super Deluxe barbecue set, a claim that was totally without foundation as none of these things had been visited upon Cut-Throat in his final hours, but he bragged about his adventures so persistently and so publicly that he served himself up to DI Martin who was delighted and told us to go about our business, as we duly did.

* * *

Chapter 15

…. and the next thing I know, I am swinging all over London at the end of a rope, hurtling towards my own oblivion, or so I suspect.

What am I doing here? What happened between my being up in Hull and my flying naked across London, pursued by helicopters, planes and curious and gasping onlookers?

I cannot see them gasping, but I can see them straining to see me against the sun. This is the worst fairground trip I have ever been on, the worst fun park roller-coaster, and certainly the worst flight of which I haven’t had that many. At least in all of those alternatives, you are assured that the management team intends, to a degree of absolute certainty, that you survive and thrive, and that there is a bearable end point.

Where will this end? When will this end? When the helicopter runs out of aviation fuel? When it is shot down? When I am dropped into the Thames? Over Essex? Over Kent? Over the North Sea? In the North Sea? Over Belgium? Over Holland? Over France? In the Seine? In the Maas? Shredded to pieces somewhere?

And, in the meantime, my insides are being churned around up, down and sideways. I am feeling sick; I am being sick. I am screaming my head off. I am cold. I am very, very frightened. I am panicking. I am defecating. I am doing everything except the one thing I most want to do – to escape.

We are heading ever more East, over the docklands, in front of the sky scrapers of Canary Wharf, out towards Greenwich, down the Thames.

I cannot bear it a moment longer, and I cannot get away.

* * *

Chapter 16

Ella is saying to me “Dad, can you help me with my homework?”

I look at her blankly.

“Dad, can you help me with my homework? I need your help on the next set of maths questions. Why didn’t I inherit your maths skills?”

“Dad is always helping you,” Mark comments. “That is why he is always so tired nowadays.”

Ella steps away from me and begins to wrestle playfully with Mark. “He’ll help you one day too, Mark, so don’t complain. Wise up. I am paving the way for your future homework bliss.”

“I don’t need Dad’s help with my maths homework. I am good at maths. I am better than Dad at maths. I should be helping him with his buildings.”

“You wish!”

“I’m learning to be an architect too, aren’t I, Dad?”

“Come on you two. Leave your father alone for a while. He needs his rest. Let him have some peace.” Agnes has entered the room and is shooing them off. She closes the door behind them, and quickly turns to me in determined earnestness. “Chrissie phoned a few minutes ago. There has been a crisis at work. She is going to be back late tonight. She said that you shouldn’t wait up for her. Would you like me to put the children to bed?”

I am staring at her. My mouth is open so wide that I am dribbling. I know that I should connect with my body and come back down to earth, but I can’t. I am still in a blanket state of shock. I think that I have just died, and that I am not fully here yet. “Mr. McGuire? Keith?”

Agnes is really concerned. She is leaning over me as if I am an accident casualty, as indeed I probably am, except that it was almost certainly no accident. I shake my head. “Can I have a couple of minutes to gather my thoughts, Agnes?” I plead. I am slurring my words like a drunk, and dribbling. She must be wondering whether I have had a stroke. I am wondering that self-same thing.

“Certainly, Mr. McGuire,” she replies before turning away from me and closing the door behind her.

What does this all mean? I am Keith again. Harry is gone. Is he dead? Who had him (and me) dangling from a rope? Who knew that there was a connection between Harry and Chrissie? Am I still in danger? Is Chrissie in danger? Are the children in danger? Why did I immediately assume that it was Fran who had arranged for me to be swung in front of Chrissie’s office window, except that she is the only person who knows who I claimed to be, so it must have been her, mustn’t it? What about her recently-met pilot admirer? Was he flying the helicopter and, if so, was he doing so at Fran’s insistence or for some reason of his own? Could Kathy have told on me? She knew about Chrissie, come to think of it. Was this the work of the Inbies despite their all being locked up awaiting trial? Was it all simply a dream? Have I been in a long coma? Have I been hallucinating? Have I been fevered? Was my visit to Sian yesterday or even today? Was Harry a figment of my imagination? And, if so, was everyone else a figment of my imagination too?

I hope so. I don’t want the responsibility of what I did up there. I want the slate to be wiped clean.

But Agnes’s message does sound ominous. Or maybe it doesn’t. Chrissie is always having crises at work. It is what top lawyers believe justifies their salaries according to their overblown work ethic.

What do I actually know about my predicament? I know that the children are here, that I am here, that Agnes is here, and that Chrissie is working late. That all seems entirely normal to me.

I stand up, expecting to feel so weak that I collapse back into the chair. I am wrong. I am lighter on my feet than I have ever known myself, full of energy, needled by an urge to run upstairs, which I duly do. I burst into our bedroom and confront myself in the mirror. There I am – Keith McGuire – the bespectacled, tolerably handsome beanpole. I want to inspect myself, so I get undressed and stare at myself in the mirror. This is the body I like, the one that I especially appreciate after holidaying in somebody else’s, if that is what I did.

Ella barges into the room. “Dad!” she protests. “What are you doing?”

“Checking to see if I have lost some weight.”

“You know you have, Dad. We talk about nothing else, about how you are fading away before our eyes.”

“In that case I am checking to see if I have gained any weight. What do you think?”

“I think that I am embarrassed.”

“Why are you embarrassed?”

“Well, you know.”

“Not really, no.”

“You look so pleased with yourself, as if you are showing yourself off, saying ‘Look at me!’. I am a twelve year old girl, Dad. You shouldn’t be doing that sort of thing in front of me. It is indecent.”

“But I was in here by myself until you came charging in.”

“Can’t you keep it for Mum for later, without involving me?”

“I wasn’t trying to involve you. You involved yourself.”

Mark enters. “Dad, will you come and bounce on the trampoline with me? Now?”

“I need to get dressed first, Mark.”

“When you are dressed, will you come and bounce on the trampoline with me, before I have to go to bed?”

“Why not?”

“Then come on, Dad.”

I get some shorts out of the drawer and a polo shirt, and slip them on. Ella is watching me with a troubled expression on her face. “You are different somehow, Dad. What is it?”

“I don’t know. I am feeling great.”

“Yes, that is what is different. You have been such a misery-guts over the last few weeks. Mum thought you were going to die. I overheard her discussing it with Agnes and then Linda. You aren’t going to die, are you, Dad?”

“No, I am not going to die, Ella.” I step towards her to give her a hug, but she chooses to retreat in equal measure to avoid the intimacy of a man she has just seen naked. “I have done all the dying I intend to do for one day.” She frowns.

“Aren’t you coming, Dad?” Mark hassles me. “I am waiting. I have to go to bed soon.”

“Mark! Ella! Supper time!” Agnes’ voice summons them.

“I am going to bounce on the trampoline with Dad, Agnes. He said that I could.”

There was a silence from down the stairs while Agnes awaits further instructions from me.

“It is true, Agnes,” I confirm. “I did promise that I would bounce with Mark for a few minutes. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not, Mr. McGuire. I will pop the food back into the oven to keep it warm, if you are only going to be a few minutes.”

“We will.”

Mark grabs my hand pressingly. “Come on! Come on!”

Ella trails behind us pensively.

* * *

Chrissie arrives back at eleven o’clock. I am in the sitting room reading “Flat Earth News” and sipping at a glass of red wine.

“What a day!” Chrissie exclaims.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Don’t ask,” Chrissie replies. “We were in conference with George Bartholomew and Jengo Shipping most of the day, then Peter Brenton decided that it would be the perfect moment to call me in to demand an explanation of that strange incident with Harry Walker last Tuesday.”

“Last Tuesday?”

“Yes, last Tuesday. Peter said it about fifteen times. I said it about fifteen times. So, it was definitely last Tuesday.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that it was a man who claimed to be my husband, and I hadn’t the first idea why he was there flapping naked outside the office window.”

“How did he react to that?”

“He asked me where the man was now.”

“And?”

“Well, you know ‘and’, Keith. He plunged into the Thames, presumed drowned, so that is what I told Peter, although he must have read it in the papers as much as we have. He said that he wanted to ensure that the man was dead as he didn’t want any more incidents of that sort outside his premises. I said that I couldn’t be responsible for the insane behaviour of every weirdo who decides they want to gain my attention. I didn’t know who this guy was. I only knew that he kept phoning me to claim to be my husband, when I had a perfectly good husband already beside me.”

“So, basically you washed your hands of him.”

“I decided that it would make my life very much easier if I could. I could have entertained Peter with the full explanation, but it would only have made matters worse. He would definitely have assumed in that case that I was complicit in bringing the name of the firm into disrepute.”

“So, was that it?”

“Not really. I then needed to go back into the conference to deal with George who was behaving like a right pompous buffoon. You know how Jengo resent anything which isn’t 100% buttoned down. They were fuming, and Rachel kept calling me out in order to demand that we drop this idiot and find ourselves someone at least vaguely tolerable. I kept insisting that George was the best man for the job, however peculiarly he behaved, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jengo don’t simply up and leave us, and then Peter will be hauling me in again to explain why I have now lost one of our key clients, and to predict how long my run of disastrous bad luck will continue.”

“Poor you,” I give her a monumental squeeze.

“Where did you get all that strength from?” she challenges me.

“Why?”

“You haven’t hugged me like that recently.”

“I haven’t been myself recently,” I reply, “but I am now.”

“What do you mean?” She watches me carefully.

“I mean that I am now the whole nine yards again.”

“How?”

“That I cannot say. All I can tell you is that I am back again as Keith, and we are re-united as one whole human being, and I am also re-united with my family, and you cannot believe how relieved I am.” The realisation of the truth of what I have just declared hits me like a wave in the face, producing uncontrollable floods of tears. I carry on sobbing for at least ten minutes, perched over the bed, every now and again trying to break into speech to explain myself. Chrissie shushes me, and holds herself against me empathetically.

She waits for my anguish to subside, and then whispers “You mean that you used to be Harry?”

“Yes.”

“And now you are back?”

“Yes.”

She grabs me really hard so that we both collapse back onto the bed, with our feet in the air “That is fantastic!”

“That is what I have been trying to tell you, but I haven’t been able to stop crying about it.”

“The nightmare is over. Thank God for that.”

“That I am not so sure of,” I reply.

* * *

It is not often that Chrissie becomes the British Welter-Weight Champion, but her reaction to my statement was as if I was about to receive a 1-2-3, followed by the knock-out upper-cut.

“What do you mean?” she demanded.

“I have responsibilities,” I reminded her.

“No, you don’t! What responsibilities do you have?”

“I can’t just leave Fran and Tommy and Kathy there. They might be in great danger. They may be starving. I promised Fran that whatever happened I would make things all right for them.”

Chrissie grabbed me by the shoulders to seize my full attention. “Look here, Keith,” she said firmly, “you have no responsibility to these people whatsoever. How you got mixed up with them, God alone knows, but they are not your concern, you only knew them a few weeks, I am sure that you did your best for them while you were with them, as you always do, but now you are back with your real family, as Keith, and that is where you are staying. I am not going through the last few weeks all over again, burdened with half a husband and two frantic children who adore him and cannot understand what is wrong with him. You are back, you are healthy, the children are delighted I’m sure, don’t mess it up again. Don’t take risks you don’t need to take. Pick up your life here again, and put those people in Hull out of your mind forever. They don’t matter to you, you don’t owe them anything, they don’t even exist. Understand? Capisce?”

“I understand what you are saying, Chrissie, but that is not possible.”

“Keith, believe me, it is possible.”

“Chrissie, it is not possible, for one simple reason.”

“What is that one simple reason?” Chrissie apes me sardonically.

“Somebody knows that Harry is linked to you.”

“So?”

“So they are not going away.”

“How do you know that?”

“Chrissie, I promise you, I know it. Believe me, I would love to be back here, focussing on you and Ella and Mark, and picking up my job again, and I cannot imagine what sort of mess that is in …...”

“….. quite a mess, according to Adam …..”

“That is what I would like to do, and I know that these people in Hull seem completely irrelevant to us down here, just northern clowns who would be out of their depth even if they bothered to chase us down here, but it is not true. They are gangsters, they are drug dealers, they run prostitution rackets, they almost certainly have friends and associates down here, and dangling me, and Harry outside your office window prior to blowing Harry away was meant to make it absolutely clear to us that we would not be off the hook even when Harry had been disposed of. They wanted to tell us that they know the trail leads to you and Ella and Mark, and that their thirst for revenge is not yet satisfied. I don’t know what they plan to do with you or me, but I have a pretty shrewd idea of what they will try to do to either Ella or Mark or both, and I am not about to let them, I promise you that!”

“What will they do to Ella and Mark?”

“Put it this way, we have to keep a super-vigilant eye on both of them. I think we should home-school them for a bit, never let them out except under armed guard, never ever let them out of our sight. In fact, we need to go further than that. We need bodyguards. How do we get bodyguards?”

“Keith, are you being serious? What are you talking about? How can you give twenty-four hour protection to young children? What do the bodyguards do, sit next to them in class and try to resist the temptation of helping them with their work or answering all the questions the teacher throws at them?”

“Chrissie, I don’t want to frighten you, but there is every chance that they will try to kidnap Ella or Mark, or both, and I shudder to think what they will do with them once they have them in their hands.”

“Why would they want to kidnap our children?”

“Because that is what Harry did to them.”

Chrissie’s eyes widen. They are tinted with a menacing glare. “You kidnapped their children?”

“Not their children, well I assume not their children (it depends on who they are), but Harry was a kidnapper and he, or I, stitched up some pretty dangerous people up there. I don’t know quite who we are dealing with, I cannot work it out exactly, but whoever they are, they have every reason to want to hurt me as they have clearly realised that I was tied up with Harry in some way, and their best way of hurting me is by hurting you. That is what I must stop, so that is why I must find out what has happened to Fran, and Tommy, and Kathy and Mike, because they are the only allies I have. They can probably tell us what is going on. In fact, I am going to ring Mike now.”

“Which Mike?”

“Harry’s accomplice.”

“Will he be awake at this time of night?”

“He will be once I phone him.”

I pick up the phone. Mike answers immediately. He sounds groggy, or drunk, or groggy and drunk. “Mike?”

“Who’s that?”

“Keith McGuire.”

“Keith McGuire?”

“You used to know me as Harry.”

“Yeah, I know who you are. Kathy told me the whole story. I thought she was completely barmy.”

“What did she tell you?”

“Well, it was after Planty, and Nobby and Ernie and Basher burst in ‘ere and started beating us up, demanding to know where you were.”

“When was this?”

“About two weeks ago. Two weeks last Thursday.”

“And?”

“They picked you up, you being ‘arry that is, somewhere out towards ‘edon, whatever you were doing over there. Probably trying to get into prison before they got their ‘ands on you.”

“And?”

“They took you to a warehouse somewhere and beat you to a pulp. They left you alive and conscious, but that is about it. And while they were breaking your legs, and plugging you into the mains through your nuts, and drowning you, and whatever else they did with you, you told ‘em the whole story, about ‘ow you weren’t really ‘arry, and that it was ‘arry they were after, not you, and as you weren’t really ‘arry, they should leave you alone. They then rang Kathy to tell ‘er what pitiful rubbish you were blurting out, and Kathy told Fran, and Fran said yeah, it was true, then Kathy told me.”

“I told them everything?”

“I don’t know what you told ‘em, ‘arry, but I’ll tell you some’at. Whatever you told ‘em, I’d ‘ave done the same thing in your shoes. From what Kathy and Fingers said, they really gave you everything they’d got. You were black and blue and yellow, and swollen, and covered in blood and everything when they brought you round to present you to Fran. She was beside ‘erself, understandably. She took ‘erself off to bed for a week. Kathy and I ‘ad to look after little Tommy. Fran couldn’t move an inch. She was no bleeding use to anyone. She was even peeing in her bed, according to Kathy – a right mess. Kids shouldn’t have to see their mums in that sort of state, so we let Tommy sleep ‘ere, and Kathy moved in for a few days to ‘elp look after ‘im.”

“That must have been nice for you, Mike.”

“It ‘ad its compensations, shall we say.”

“Hang on a second, Mike. I just need to ask Chrissie something.” I held my hand over the voice-piece of the phone. “Was Harry covered in bruises when he was hanging outside your office?”

“Yes,” she replied, “from head to toe, except that I could not see what had happened under the boots. You must have been in agony. You were writhing all over the place. You looked like you had been marbled, and your legs and your arms and your face were completely swollen. I almost couldn’t recognise you. You could almost have been a Guy Fawkes effigy or something. You were absolutely stomach-churning.”

I turned back to Mike. “Okay, Mike, then what?”

“Then they drove you down to London in the back of a van and strung you onto a rope and tied the rope to an ‘elicopter, and flew you over London and paraded you in front of your wife’s office building, at least that is what they told everyone. They were right chuffed with theirsens. They were over the moon about it.”

“And then?”

“And then they chucked you in the Thames and watched you drown. Well, they couldn’t really watch you. You went straight to the bottom. It was all over the news.”

“Have they been arrested?”

“Neah. Where’s the proof, except for their boasting? And the coppers are not going to arrest ‘em again in an ‘urry after they got let out last time, even though they thought they ‘ad ‘em good and proper. DI Martin keeps snooping around, but ‘e’s going to need a lot more evidence before ‘e makes ‘is move.”

“So how did they get out in the first place?”

“Lack of evidence. The coppers found the boy at Planty’s ‘ouse, and ‘is neighbours in Pocklington reported that they ‘ad seen activity in ‘is ‘ouse there, but they couldn’t actually prove that Planty was personally involved, nor that any of the Inbies were involved either, so they ‘ad to let ‘em all go.”

“How did Planty know it was us?”

“’e didn’t know it was us. ‘e still doesn’t. ‘e thinks it was just you and Kathy, and ‘e doesn’t think Kathy ‘as the brains to plan anything like that, ‘e’s a right chauvinist pig, so ‘e came after you, and left Kathy to ‘er own devices spreading the word of what ‘appens when you cross Trevor Plant.”

“But how did Planty find out?”

“Well you know your mate Kenny Bender?”

“Of course.”

“Well, Kenny Bender distributes ‘is drugs through Planty’s network, doesn’t ‘e? When Planty and ‘is gang were shoved in the nick, Kenny didn’t immediately associate your scam with what ‘appened to Planty, or at least didn’t realise what you ‘ad done to ‘im, or if ‘e did, ‘e was waiting to see ‘ow things would work out. In fact, ‘e approached Kathy to ask whether the Royals would take over from the Inbies in distributing his drugs, and she said not a chance. So ‘ere ‘e is, Planty and his gang in the clink, no distributors in ‘ull and the East Riding, and losing a bloody fortune despite ‘is 50% of our business. Then ‘e says ‘alf a mo, how did Planty get ‘issen arrested, and ‘e started asking around and found out that it was for kidnapping a boy. ‘ang on another mo, ‘e said, but ‘ere was you blackmailing families with the threat of kidnapping their children, which ‘e knew ‘cos ‘e was picking up the cash, wasn’t ‘e? Bingo! You ‘ad stitched up Planty in a gang war, to the major detriment of ‘is business. ‘e didn’t like that, so ‘e ‘ired a swanky London lawyer to get Planty and ‘is gang out of the nick. The coppers could not prove that Planty and co had carried out the kidnapping or even knew anything about it, and the coppers ‘ad to release ‘em, which is when they came after you, didn’t they? And the rest you know.”

“I cannot remember a thing.”

“You are lucky, then.”

“Now what?”

“I can’t say, but my guess is that it will not stop there. Planty knows who you are, and it’s a matter of ‘onour for ‘im. ‘e didn’t get where ‘e is by being kind to ‘is enemies. I’d skip the country with your wife and family if I were you my old pal.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Then get yourself insured, big time, and ‘ire some people with shooters. Do you know anybody in the London mob down there?”

“No, I have never had that sort of life down here.”

“Pity.”

“So how about you guys? How are you doing?”

“Well, the scam is all over of course, because we ain’t got any bugger to pick up the cash now that Kenny ‘as twigged. Still, we pocketed a decent amount before’and like, so we ain’t skint. Kathy and Fran are talking about going to live in Leeds or some’at, just to get away in case Planty comes after ‘em again. The Royals are keeping their ‘eads down now that Planty is back. We ‘anded everything back to ‘em without a fight, with interest, so we are mostly living off dole money now.”

“So there was no talk of avenging Harry then?”

“Was there ‘eck as like. ‘arry was always going to be the fall guy. ‘e just fell even ‘arder, and from a greater ‘eight, and into a wetter place too. No bugger even talks about ‘im any more – gone and unlamented. Sorry.”

“Well, Mike, I have promised to help you guys out, especially Kathy and Fran and Tommy, so I will. Can you help me?”

“’ow’s’at exactly?”

“Could you hide Chrissie and the children for a while?”

“Oh yeah, we could do that. Take a ‘oliday, like? We could even come and stay with you, if you like. It’s a bit lively around ‘ere at the moment. Do you ‘ave any spare rooms?”

Apart from anything else, I could not see how I could ever sell the idea to Chrissie. “Mike, if you were Planty, would you strike now or later?”

“Later. I’d let you sweat for a while. Besides, Planty likes people to sweat.”

“That is what I was thinking. I don’t think he’ll come after me just yet. I think he’ll play with me first, and then try and grab Chrissie and the kids, or maybe just one of the kids, in about three or four months’ time.”

“I think you’re right, ‘arry, Keith I mean.”

“So let’s plan your holidays for then.”

“But it’ll be November.”

“I was thinking of getting you all well away.”

“Australia? I’ve always fancied going to Australia.”

“It could well be.”

“Count me in, ‘arry. I am definitely on for that!”

* * *

Chapter 17

It is infinitely worse to have those you know and love being threatened than it is to face almost any risk to yourself alone. All you can do is to watch, and to hope, and to take what inadequate precautions you can. How can you guard free agents, which you want your children to be, from a predatory hazard that could strike from any direction at any time without a moment’s notice, and with catastrophic consequences? I cannot lock my family into a sealed vault until all danger is passed. It could take years to outlast the danger. I cannot, in all conscience, hold their lives in suspension for a fraction of that.

I know I said to Mike (and to everybody else) that Planty would probably not strike immediately, but the other half of me tells me that Planty likes to surprise, and that he might even turn up today. So, we banned Ella and Mark from going to school while we made some arrangements. Chrissie has taken the day off, and has spent most of it following up leads to track down private detectives. Her firm hires corporate investigators to identify and expose marine insurance scams, and while these people cannot help us directly, they know a few men, and even a few women, who can.

Both Chrissie and I immediately liked the idea of hiring female private detectives – less conspicuous, and more trustworthy. Our guess is that they will stick to the job whatever it takes, while who knows what a male one will get up to? However, it appears that a lot of other people prefer female private detectives too, so most of them are booked through into next year. Perversely, we became extremely suspicious of the quality of the few who remained available, and there were several Chrissie turned down peremptorily based on their telephone manner. Nevertheless, late this afternoon, Chrissie discovered Nadya (no surname), a woman who claims to have worked as a private detective in Russia for over fifteen years before moving to Britain. She gave Chrissie the impression that she was tough and resourceful and would protect our children at most costs for £550 a day, plus expenses, which wasn’t that expensive either. Chrissie told her she would phone her back, and Nadya did not play any hard-sell tricks by saying that she might not be free later, which impressed Chrissie the more.

“What do you think?” Chrissie asks me.

I shrug. “I don’t know a thing about private detectives. I never thought in a million years I would get to hire one. I haven’t a clue what we should be looking for. You hire them at work, so you must at least have a few ideas.”

“I don’t hire them personally. Shall we see her?”

She seems keen to try her, so I say “Yes, why not?”

Nadya turns up with a small, round, worn motherly face, quite pretty for a woman of around fifty, a soft Russian accent, and an air of calm resilience. We take her into the sitting room and motion her to a chair, where she sits demurely and attentively.

“Nadya,” Chrissie starts, “we are new to this, so I hope that you will excuse us if we appear naïve.”

“That’s no problem, Mrs. McGuire,” she replies. “Most of my clients are new to this. I am the experienced one.” Her speech is viscously coated with additional ‘h’s’ and ‘n’s’.

“I explained our situation over the phone. We are frightened that one of our children, or both of them, could be kidnapped.”

“You said that a man wanted to do you harm. Excuse me, why do you think he wants to attack your children?”

“That is what we have been told he will do.”

“Who told you this?”

“A friend of my husband’s, Keith’s.”

Nadya turns to me. “Why do you think that this man wants to kidnap your children?”

“That is a long story,” I reply.

She awaits my explanation, smiling encouragingly.

“That is what he does,” I add. “He kidnaps children.”

“What sort of children?”

“He is a gangster, up in Hull, if you know where that is.”

“Yes, I know Hull. There is a lot of trade between Hull and Russia. Quite a few of my clients travelled to Hull quite often. But why does he kidnap children? I have known many gangsters, and some have kidnapped children, and some have not. Why does he kidnap children?”

“I suppose to terrorise us.”

“What does he do with these children?”

“He drugs them, and he demands a ransom for them.”

“And what if he asks for a ransom from you – will you pay him?”

“We are trying very hard to make sure that it never gets that far.”

“I understand, Mr. McGuire, but if it does, will you pay a ransom?”

“If necessary, yes.”

“How much?”

“He hasn’t kidnapped them yet, so we don’t know what he will demand. Whatever we can afford, I suppose, and probably a bit more.”

“£100,000, £200,000, £500,000, a million?”

I suspect that she is setting her fee, sizing the potential budget for this operation. “Three months – four months,” she is probably calculating.

“It is not easy to borrow money at the moment, as you know. It would be whatever extra money we could raise on the mortgage.”

“And would you be willing to have this man killed?”

Chrissie and I both freeze.

“The easiest thing would be for you to kill him. That would be a lot cheaper, and a lot less worry.”

“Nadya, we don’t kill people,” Chrissie objects. “I am a lawyer.”

“Where I come from, lawyers often kill people. Many ex-KGB men pretend to be lawyers.”

“Maybe,” Chrissie concedes, “but not here.”

Nadya clucks her teeth. “The differences are not so great. So, you are not prepared to kill him. Is he prepared to kill you?”

“Oh yes,” I say, “almost certainly.”

“And your children?”

“That I don’t know. Possibly, if he makes a hash of things.”

“Then I must be armed. I am afraid that will cost you a lot extra. Being caught carrying a gun is a very serious thing, even if the police accept that you are protecting people, even if you are protecting small children.”

“Nadya, we will pay you what is necessary,” Chrissie assures her.

“In cash? I will need to be paid cash in advance.”

“Well, we haven’t got it here now, but yes, we will get you cash in advance. I will draw it from the bank on Monday.”

“And what am I supposed to do?”

“We cannot keep the children at home for long,” I explain. “They will soon have to go back to school, and we have to make sure that Planty and his gang don’t grab them there.”

“How many are there in his gang?”

“Quite a lot of people – 10, 20, and he sometimes draws on the local teenage gangs as well – but I don’t think he would bring more than two or three people with him to London.”

“Planty? That is his name is it?”

“Yes.”

“How well do you know this Planty?”

“Not very well, but I have a sense of him.”

“How do you know him?”

I smile ruefully. “That is something I cannot explain.”

“Try, Mr. McGuire.”

“Well, I have this friend, well more of an acquaintance, called Harry Walker who lived in Hull, and who has told me a lot about him.”

“Where is this friend now? Can he help us?”

“He is dead. Planty killed him.”

“So you want to avenge your friend’s death too?”

“I want to protect Harry’s family.”

“And where are they?”

“Up in Hull.”

“And do they have any children?”

“Yes, there is a small boy, Tommy, who is seven years old.”

“So if this Mr. Planty wants to get at you, he could kidnap this small boy instead.”

“He could, but I think he is more likely to come after our children.”

“But the other boy is much closer.”

“Yes.”

“But you do not want to protect this other boy too?”

“I would like to protect him, but I am not sure I even can. As I said, there are lots of teenage gangs in Hull. Planty would have no difficulty lifting Tommy any time he wanted to using one of these kids, so I just have to hope that Trevor overlooks him for the time-being.”

“I am sure we could protect Tommy if you wanted us to. We could use the gangs on our side too. We have often done that. If you show them some motherly interest and give them some money they are normally extremely helpful. I am very hopeful that we can keep Tommy safe, perhaps safer than your own children.”

I glance across to Chrissie who gives me no lead. “We’ll think about it, Nadya. You make a good point, but we do not have unlimited money to spend, so we have to make choices.”

“It would not cost you so much. Maybe £2,000. You don’t have to pay the kids’ gangs so much. They like the idea of earning money acting as a gang. That is enough for them, and they would not even be breaking the law.”

How can I refuse to spend £2,000 on Tommy? I feel heartless and insincere in my commitment to him, and Nadya knows it. She is a shrewd business woman, as somehow you expect Russians to be. She has probably been a prostitute at one time or another. She has the air of someone who will do anything to survive, and we need that level of determination on our side right now. I like her. She makes me feel safe.

“How would you protect the children in the school?” Chrissie asks.

“Mrs. McGuire, you have to understand that we cannot only protect your children. We must also deal with the source of the danger. We must identify the people who are working for this Planty. If we can take photographs of them near the school, and they know that we have photographs of them near the school, they cannot kidnap your children. They know that they cannot get away with it. In my country, they would probably kidnap them anyway because they would use their connections to fix things, but here that cannot happen, except if it is a political case involving your secret services. So our first job is to incriminate Planty and his gang. Then they will leave you alone. If we cannot do that, we have to protect the children, and that means being around the school to make sure they don’t rush in and grab them from the playground. We will have to walk up and down the street all day. As women, we can do that. We will arouse suspicion, but we can explain. As men, they would fear that we were paedophiles.”

“So we would need eight-hour surveillance.”

“Yes, you would need eight-hour surveillance, unless we could get the photographs. As an extra precaution, the other thing we can do is to take a photograph of Planty and change it to make it look as if it was taken near the school but, if he is not thinking about kidnapping your children, it would put ideas into his head.”

“It might help us to get them back faster though, might it not?” Chrissie suggests.

“Yes, it might do that, so we will do that as well and keep the photographs to ourselves.”

“What happens when the children go to play with friends?” I ask.

Nadya shrugs. “You need to protect them. We could do that too, but you would need to warn us to make sure that we have someone who is free.”

“So you do not work alone, Nadya.”

“No, Mr. McGuire, I can get as many women as I want. There are a lot of Russian women in this country who need the work, and we have learnt to look after ourselves from being small children. Russian women are very good at this type of work. I think that we are the best. We are tough, we have good eyes and ears, we are brave, and we are honest.”

She could have added “Sign here …..”

I look across to Chrissie. “Anything else?”

“We have a lot of details to discuss,” she responds.

“Nadya, could you give us five minutes to talk among ourselves? Would you mind walking around the garden for five minutes?”

Nadya stands up, and immediately heads towards the kitchen. “The entrance to the garden is through here, is it not?”

“Yes, it is.”

“I thought so. I know these types of houses.”

Watching Nadia calmly inspecting our garden, Chrissie and I immediately agree on hiring her although we are traumatised by the cost. £2,750 a week, plus overtime, plus gun money, and probably some expenses, that is a lot of money to spend week after week.

“I wonder how much it would cost to kill him?” Chrissie jokes, and quickly adds “I am not being serious, Keith.”

“It is tempting, though,” I add, “and he has tortured me and killed me once. It would not be on my conscious.”

“No, but it would be on your criminal record as you sat in prison ruing your decision.”

“Let’s go with Nadya,” I suggest, “but we need to find another way as well. I am not paying for Nadya and her team for months while Trevor laughs about how much money we are wasting, knowing that in a year’s time he can still kidnap them when we have run out. There has to be another way. Perhaps Mike and Kathy can help us after all. I might just go back up to Hull and see them, see if we can work out something.”

“What about your work?”

“Yes, I had better put that right first. Nadya is at least buying us some time. I will go up to Hull in a few days, maybe see DI Martin and pick his brains, if I can find a credible explanation to give him as to why Planty wants to kidnap our children in the first place.”

“That is going to be difficult.”

“Everything is possible……”

“…if it is somebody else’s job.”

“Yes, but unfortunately this one is mine.”

So we hire Nadya for peace of mind while we worry our way through alternative solutions. She starts on Monday.

* * *

Chapter 18

Despite the exceptional security precautions we are having to impose on ourselves, it is still great to be home, with Ella and Mark playing around the house (even if they are restricted as to how much they can go outside), hugging Chrissie whenever I can and snuggling up to her at night. It is like a second honeymoon, with a nanny and children in tow, taken in a country where there is nonetheless an on-going risk of being mugged at gunpoint.

Agnes is still wary of me. She keeps eyeing me as if expecting me to take another turn for the worse, and she uses the expression “Mr. McGuire” incessantly, as if distancing herself from me. Did she call me “Mr. McGuire” quite that often before? She is the one tension from inside our home at the moment, and I almost want to get rid of her as she reminds me of what it was like in Hull. Some people live very stressed and complicated lives, and I do not want to be one of them. I do not wish to have Agnes’ suspicious glances flung all around me.

“Can’t we give Agnes some time off?” I propose to Chrissie.

She looks shocked. “Why would we want to do that?”

“She is bugging me. She keeps appraising me and it is beginning to grate.”

“Talk to her about it.”

“I am not sure that I want to, or that it would help.”

“Talk to her about it. There is no point talking to me. The problem is between you two.”

“What if she gets upset and walks out?”

“Then that is what she does. We don’t really need someone as high-powered as Agnes any more. We could just get a cleaner. A cleaner would cost less.”

“I thought that you considered Agnes invaluable.”

“She is, especially to the children. She has been here all their lives, but if she walks out then that is her decision, and there is nothing we can do about it.”

“You don’t think my tackling her will make things worse?”

Chrissie puts her arms around me and gives me a kiss. “Not if you are your usual kind, adorable self.”

* * *

It is my first day at work for about two months, although the rest of me has been dropping in most days. It feels really strange, disorientating, as if I am back from a long holiday in the Caribbean or Australia or somewhere.

Adam is in his office, and I go straight over to him. “Adam,” I say, “I need your help.”

Adam gets up from behind his desk, offers me a chair and closes the door. “Yes, Keith?”

“I haven’t been myself recently.”

“We have noticed that.”

“I have been very distracted.”

“We have noticed that too. Is there anything you would like to talk about?”

“I am not sure that I could explain.”

“Okay. No worries. You do not need to, obviously, but if there is a problem at home, for instance, you and Chrissie and the children, Ella and Mark, are our friends. We would like to help you.”

“That is very kind, Adam.”

“Julie and I have gone through our tough times too.”

“It’s not that ….”

“…I’m not saying it is. I am just saying that tough times happen. Rock has caused us some heartaches, I can tell you. He is very aptly named, and we have needed to do some nifty footwork to smooth things down at school from time to time. He has a bit of a habit of laying into teachers, not physically thank God, but verbally. Crystal is usually an angel, but Rock can be a nightmare. I know what, why don’t you all come over for lunch when we both next have holes in our diaries? We haven’t seen you guys socially for ages, and it must be our turn to host. I’ll get Julie to phone Chrissie. The women are much better at this sort of thing.”

“That would be good, thank you.”

“Is there anything else?”

“No, that was it. I just wanted to assure you that I will be back to normal from now on.”

“In that case, welcome back Keith. We have missed you.”

I get up and just as I reach the door, I turn around Colombo-style. “There is one thing, Adam. Would you mind if I took a couple of days off next week to go to Hull?”

“Hull? What happens in Hull?”

“I have some unfinished business there.”

“Well, yes, feel free.”

“Thanks, Adam.”

“No problem, Keith.” He has a bemused look on his face before he settles over his desk again.

I feel like greeting everyone in the building as if I have not seen them for a while although, in reality, Keith has barely missed a day. Nonetheless, many of my colleagues do treat me as if I am just back from somewhere. Sally has a huge beam on her face as if mightily relieved, as has Tony. “It is good to see you so cheerful again,” Meg volunteers. Meg is from Singapore, and she is notoriously cheerful in that high sing-song voice of hers, and with her face set in a relaxed, friendly grin.

I log onto the computer and explore what I have been doing over the last few weeks. Actually, what I have been doing is not too bad, except that I haven’t done as much of it as usual. There are no obvious errors, but I am missing my little signature touches. Still, they are easy to add in. I scrutinise the details. We are still on schedule so, all-in-all, nowhere near a disaster. Phew!

Bobby Coningsby passes me mid-morning and stops. “Adam tells me that you are off to Hull next week,” he comments. So much for confidentiality.

“Yes, I am,” I reply.

“I got a strange phone call from there a few weeks ago. John Somebody-or-other whom I had vaguely met at a conference somewhere phoned me up to tell me that he was with a colleague of mine, I cannot recall his name, and could I vouch for him, I suppose. The trouble was that I had never heard of this colleague. God knows what was happening up there. Be careful, Keith. There may be a Mad Cow disease outbreak, or something.” He snorts at his joke. He snorts up quite a lot of things if the rumours are true.

“How odd,” I reply. What else can I say?

“They design Legoland knock-off buildings up there, you know. Bright colours, no inspiration, parked next door to clapped out curtain-wall constructions which should have been pulled down thirty years ago.”

“So you have been there, have you, Bobby?”

“Yes, I was there a couple of years ago on a prospective project. They couldn’t afford us, and they were concerned that anything we might produce would be out of place.” He snorts again. “Ridiculous really. Something has to be in place before you start worrying about things being out of it. Anyway, there was no dealing with the prices they wanted to pay. They were so low that it indubitably wasn’t worth our while pursuing. That is why there are architectural practices in Hull, I suppose.” He walks off.

Well, that is Hull sorted out, architecturally speaking, although I have to admit that it didn’t look that inspired, except for a few old buildings in the centre. Nothing modern. Perhaps I should drop in on that guy in Hull again and assure him that Harry Walker did work for us. That would confuse him. There wouldn’t be much point in doing that, but I feel the need to correct the record and to have John Farmer apologise to me for doubting me.

“Are you coming for lunch, Keith?” Su throws at me. She is always inviting me out for lunch, and I am always accepting. I think she secretly fancies me, but that I can rely on her to keep her secret to herself. The idolatry keeps me young.

* * *

Agnes says “I must be going now, Mr. McGuire. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you, Agnes. Thank you very much.”

“Bye, children.”

“Bye, Agnes.”

The phone goes. Agnes answers it as she is standing right next to it. “No, this is not Mrs. McGuire. I am their child minder and housekeeper …… Mr. McGuire is here …… Can I say who is calling? .... I cannot give your name?......” She holds her hand over the mouthpiece.

“There is a gentleman on the phone, Mr. McGuire, who says he must talk to you urgently. He won’t divulge his name.”

“That’s okay, Agnes. I’ll take it. Thanks again. Hello, Keith McGuire here.”

“’ullo, Keith. Trevor Plant ‘ere. Yer must remember me.”

“Should I?”

“Well, I tortured yer for several days and then dropped yer from an ‘elicopter into the Thames. Most people would remember that.”

“I am sure that I would have done. How can I help you?”

“Well, I’m just ringing to say that I ‘aven’t finished with yer yet.”

“I wasn’t aware that you had started. Who are you?”

“Yer know precisely who I am, Keith. Does this ring a bell?” The sound of a man screaming agonisedly is blasted into the phone at top volume, accompanied with ominous clankings and mutterings. As I listen to it, I realise that it does mean something. My legs slip away from me, and I am lying on the ground.

“Dad!” Mark shouts, rushing towards me.

“Mark, get out of the way,” Ella orders, reaching me first. “Dad, what is it?”

“Somebody has blown my ears off,” I reply, trying vainly to persuade Planty down the phone that it was the decibels not the content that affected me.

“What are you doing on the floor? Did you fall?” I put my finger desperately to my lips to silence Ella who looks uncomprehending and mouths something at me, so she is at least doing as I ask.

“So it does mean something to yer, does it Keith?”

“It means a loud screaming in my ear. What the bloody hell are you trying to do you bloody idiot. Get off my phone, and ring some other fucking idiot with your nuisance phone calls.” I slam down the phone.

“I didn’t know you could swear, Dad.” Ella’s eyes are wide with revelation.

“I just needed him to go away,” I explain.

“Was he a bad man?”

“A very bad man, Ella.”

“Will he hurt us?”

“Not if I have anything to do with it.” But he already has. The snippet he played down the phone has awoken a demon in my layer. My heart is racing. I am as terrified as I have ever been consciously. There is a nightmare in my mind that is awakening. I can sense it approaching. “I must go and lie down for a few minutes.” Mark looks horrified. Ella begins to cry. “What’s wrong, you two?”

“You are not better, are you, Dad? We thought you were better.”

“I am a lot better than I was,” I reassure them. They are not convinced.

The phone goes.

“Don’t answer it,” I say rather too desperately.

“It might be Mum,” Ella says. She needs to talk to her mother at this moment.

“If it’s Mum she’ll phone my mobile next.” Sure enough the house phone stops ringing and my mobile goes off. Mark fetches it for me as I am still on the floor.

“Keith.”

“Hello, darling. How are things?”

“Trevor Plant has just phoned.”

“Oh…….. What did he say?”

“He played the sound of a man being tortured down the phone.”

“You’re joking.”

“It had the intended effect. Can you come home?”

“I’ll come immediately.”

“And be really, really careful. Can you get someone to accompany you?”

“I cannot instantly think of anyone I can ask. I am almost the last one here. Do you think he might be waiting for me at the station?”

“It is possible. He could be anywhere.”

“So what should I do?”

“Get off at Bracknell and get a taxi. No, play it safer, get off at Ascot.”

“Hang the expense, eh?”

“On this occasion, definitely. However, when Nadya starts submitting her bills, who knows?”

“How are the children doing?”

“Concerned.”

“They know?”

“They saw me collapse.”

“It was that bad?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be home as soon as I can.”

“Be careful in the driveway. Make sure that they aren’t waiting for you there.”

“Oh my God. I hadn’t thought of that. I will pick up Derek on the way, if he is in, or James, or Jerry. Somebody must be in. They’ll call me a crackpot for the rest of my life, but at least I will have one.”

Chrissie cannot get between the City and Wokingham that fast, so it is nearly two hours later that she arrives in convoy as Derek’s and Jerry’s cars pull up. I rather wish that Planty were here.

“This is exciting,” Jerry announces as he enters the house. “Haven’t you guys been paying your bills again?”

“Something like that,” I acknowledge.

“I have never been asked to be a bodyguard before. It took me ages to track down my gun, not to mention my horse,” Derek adds.

“Er, Derek, I think you may have forgotten your horse,” says Jerry.

“In the boot. We couldn’t get the seat belts to fit, and we weren’t going to take any risks.”

“Touché, Derek.”

“Thanks, guys,” Chrissie says, giving each of them a hug. “You don’t know what it means to us, putting yourselves at risk on our behalf. I think you need a drink.”

“Why not?”

So we have an impromptu party which Ella breaks in on asking “What’s going on here?”

“Derek and Jerry have dropped in, but you should be in bed.”

“I was, Mum, but you guys are making a lot of noise.”

“Sorry, darling.”

“Will they be going soon?”

“Darling!”

“So that I can get some sleep.”

“Don’t worry, Ella, we won’t be long,” says Jerry. “We’re only here for a quick drink. We’ve all got homes to go to.”

“Go to bed now, Ella,” Chrissie coaxes her, with an edge to her voice to show that she is somewhat peeved by Ella’s rudeness to our guests.

“I am going. Night, everyone.”

“Night, Ella.”

“She is getting so rude,” Chrissie apologises. “She is definitely becoming a teenager.”

“She is picking up on the stress,” Derek defends her. “She knows that something is majorly wrong. What is it, by the way?”

“Somebody is threatening the children,” Chrissie replies. “We don’t know why, but we are very afraid.”

“Who is it?”

“We don’t really know. Somebody who claims to know Keith, except that he doesn’t.”

“That’s terrible. Have you called the police?”

“We are thinking of it, but what do we say? To say that a stranger wants to hurt us without the slightest excuse or explanation is a bit bizarre.”

“Has this got anything to do with the recent helicopter incident?”

“Exactly, Derek.”

“He must be sick, Chrissie. How can we help?”

“I am not sure that you can. We are hiring a private detective, and the rest is hoping that he gives up, although it doesn’t seem likely.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“Yes, Jerry, he lives in Hull.”

“In Hull?”

“Yes, Hull.”

“That could be a lucky break. I have relatives in Hull. They might be able to help us. They know the Chief Constable, I know that. I met him once. He may not be the same guy now, but I am sure that they can get someone to listen to them.”

“That would be fantastic, Jerry.”

“Leave it to me, Chrissie. I’ll phone my cousin as soon as I get home. It is already about five hours after the last fish and chip shop closes up there, but I’ll call her anyway.”

“Thanks, Jerry.”

They leave fifteen minutes later, Jerry insisting that he will be on the phone instantly.

“Thanks, Jerry.”

Their cars pull out of the driveway, and we close, lock and bolt the door. Chrissie hugs me.

“This is a nightmare.”

About ten minutes after Jerry and Derek leave, someone rings the bell.

“Don’t answer it,” I tell Chrissie.

We sit still where we are, wondering whether our triple-glazing will resist anything that anyone smashes against it. There are no footsteps, not that we would be able to hear them, and no faces at the window. The bell does not ring again.

We walk around the house expecting someone to appear at any moment. We no longer feel remotely safe here, and we soon retreat to bed, wondering how we can secure the stairs. In whispered consultation we consider barricading it, but in the end we decide it will only serve to panic the children. I pick out a cricket bat from the hall stand. That will have to do, that and Chrissie’s carving knife. I just hope that she does not hallucinate that she is being attacked by a snake in her dreams.

* * *

The thug is smashing my legs with a crowbar. He is battering them with absolute relish and concentration. “Here yer are, yer bastard, take this. This is for fitting up Planty. This is for fitting me up, yer filthy pervert, yer ‘eap of slime, yer cunt.”

The pain has been agony my brain tells me, but I cannot detect the blows any more. They disappear as the crowbar leaves my sight. I doubt that there is any more that they can do to hurt me. That is when the thug puts down the crowbar and takes up the pliers. “Give us a squeeze, ‘arry,” he taunts me, before his hand disappears blow my waist. There is a searing pain that rips right through me. The pain is not over yet.

I hurl myself out of the bed, brandishing the cricket bat. “Take that, you bastard,” I scream flailing hysterically with the bat. “I am going to smash your brains out!”

“Keith, Keith,” comes a plaintive voice. “Please put down that bat.” For a second I assume that it is Planty pleading with me, and I make to give him a celebratory whack, before I realise that it is Chrissie. I stand there panting and sweating. Ella has entered the room and is hurling herself at Chrissie. “What is going on? What is going on?” Mark hesitates at the door, almost sleeping on his feet.

“I had a bad dream,” I say, but it is an inadequate explanation for the consternation that surrounds me.

* * *

“Keith,” Chrissie ventures. “We need to do something. You are endangering our lives. You could have brained one of the children with that cricket bat last night.”

“I know.”

“You nearly brained me.”

“I know.”

“You are going to have to see someone.”

“I’ll go to see Sian.”

“That is what you said last time.”

“Yes, but Harry is dead now, so I cannot become him again, and I have a feeling that she may know what to do.”

“I am scared of sleeping with you, Keith.”

“I am scared of sleeping, Chrissie. I know that the worst has not surfaced yet.”

Sian can see me in the afternoon. There has been a cancellation. I leave the house at twelve, while Chrissie and Agnes barricade the door behind me.

Sian greets me like a long-lost, and very sympathetic friend. “I’m surprised to see you back again,” she says, avoiding calling me either ‘Keith’ or ‘Mr. McGuire’. You seemed thoroughly disorientated after the last session.”

“Yes,” I reply, “it was a very strange experience – stranger than you know. That is what I have come to talk about.”

“Have a chair.”

“Sian,” I begin, “have you ever had a client who has gone off into a trance and who has never come back?”

“No. That is a fear a lot of people have, I believe, when they visit a hypnotherapist, but it never happens in practice. It couldn’t happen. The body doesn’t work that way.”

“I have to disagree, Sian.” I make this statement quietly.

“How is that?”

“After you hypnotised me, only part of me came back. That is why I appeared so disorientated.”

“And the rest?”

“The rest ended up in a very ugly and unpleasant body in Hull.”

“Which bit was worse? The ugly and unpleasant body, or Hull?”

“There were some lighter moments. This guy had a very nice, if very angry wife, and a lovely child called Tommy, but all-in-all it was pretty grim, as they would describe it up there – hard to find jobs, lots of gangs, hand-to-mouth existence, run-down areas. Hooligan gangs for the children. Criminal gangs for the men. Those are your best job prospects.”

“Tell me all about it.”

She doesn’t even confirm that our conversation is confidential, but I tell her all anyway – everything this time. It is strange how you can sometimes trust a stranger far more than someone you have known and loved for years. I suppose that the occupation of being a spouse is not classed as a caring profession, or even as a profession. Poison can leak anywhere. People like Sian are licensed and obliged to mop up that poison as you spill it out.

Throughout my monologue, Sian nods and smiles and grimaces appropriately, encouraging me that I have a wholly empathetic audience and therefore to continue. When I have finished, back as myself, back in her room, she sits back in wonder and exclaims “That is quite an extraordinary story, Keith. You should write a book about it.”

“Nobody would believe me.”

“Some people would, then others would too. I have heard many much stranger stories than yours from clients, about being abducted by aliens, or about being Henry VIII in a previous life, and even I have been tempted to believe them because they have described the situation with such conviction. Your story is much more believable in the first place, and you are a credible story teller, even here.”

“Do you believe me?”

“Every word.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“So how did it happen given that you said it had never happened before?”

“It has happened to me once before, although I never admit it outright. It actually happened in reverse. A woman came to me claiming to have been completely taken over by someone, the Harry experience in your case, except that hers was not after any hypnotherapy. It just happened while she was shopping. Suddenly she was smothered by this other soul.”

“What happened? What was it like?”

“She said it was like being crowded out into a tiny corner of herself where she could barely breathe. This other person simply took all the decisions for her. It was like the army had taken over, she said. And this other person was not at all like you. She was extremely aggressive, sometimes violent, abusive, foul-mouthed, systematically horrible to the children.

Of course, everyone believed that she had gone mad, become psychotic. So they put her on various powerful drugs to control her behaviour, which only served to rile this visiting soul even more. She became extremely violent, putting the children’s and the husband’s lives at considerable risk. The husband walked out, then the authorities stepped in and took the children into care. She was at her wits’ end and then, for some reason, picked my name off the Internet because I mentioned that I did exorcisms.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, I have done quite a few of them.”

“Successfully?”

“It is mostly somewhat hard to tell, but in this case it certainly seemed to work. I hypnotised her, and it really did feel like I was hypnotising two different people. I started getting responses back in two different voices, the one scared, the other extremely sarcastic. I eventually suggested to the sarcastic one that it imagine living a different way of life, as somebody else, which it seemed more than happy to do, then, when it was fully settled, I slammed the door on it and wouldn’t let it back in. It was furious, but there was nothing it could do. I had locked the door and written on it in gold, so there was no possibility of it getting through, then I recalled my patient from her trance and everything was fine. She was cautious at first, but became increasingly ecstatic as we talked afterwards. The other creature, as she called it, had gone away, she fervently hoped forever, and as far as I know it did. She never came back, anyway.”

“Did she ever find out who it was?”

“I didn’t see her again after the session, so she never told me if she did.”

“That really is extraordinary.”

“It is exactly as extraordinary as your story, Keith. In fact, it is an identical one. And you believe it.”

“I lived it.”

“Exactly. But people have many much stranger experiences than they ever admit. There are many things that happen on this earth that we do not fully understand, or understand at all. There are some obvious ones, like madness for instance. We claim to understand it, we dissect it, we categorise it, we give people drugs for it, but it is quite possible that there are forces at work there that we do not recognise at all, that we have no means of measuring and, as we cannot measure them, they don’t exist as far as we are concerned.”

“What frightened me was how I did things I would never normally dream of doing. I couldn’t think of kidnapping a child as me, sitting here, and I am certainly beginning to understand the full implications of what I did. Trevor Plant is making sure of that. Do you think he is some kind of avenging angel?”

“Some people might believe that, but I very much doubt it personally. I suppose two things could have happened with you. Firstly, Harry’s soul may have been cooped up in the corner with you and, in his case, he may have been capable of surreptitiously steering you towards his own ends. The other, if you will forgive me for suggesting it, is that you found yourself liberated to do anything you wanted, devoid of all social and moral restraints. If you fancied a woman, you fucked her, if you will pardon the expression, but I think it is justified in this case. It didn’t matter to you whether it was somebody else’s wife, if you were cheating on your own wife, or even if it was your sister. She was available, she was willing and you did it. That, of course, is straightforward, unconstrained social behaviour. I am sure that many of us would do the same if there were no possible paybacks to our activities. Why wouldn’t we? We are animals after all. We find somebody attractive, we get an urge, we satisfy that urge as often as it arises. Then, with the kidnapping, that was another kind of moral holiday. You have never been obliged to earn your living by criminal means, but you have never had the opportunity either, and maybe you found it fun, a game, a trial of your wits. Maybe you even enjoyed manipulating people. You came up with a clever scam, and you had the satisfaction of experiencing it playing out exactly as you intended, at least initially. And, in the end, you escaped scot-free, and Harry is dumped into the Thames.”

“Not exactly scot-free,” I counter. “I am getting nightmares which I am sure are memories of the time I was tortured by Plant and his gang.”

“Perhaps we should deal with those, Keith, as quickly as we can. I can surface them for you, and condition your mind to at least contain them. I am busy most of this afternoon, but if you would be willing to come back at seven, I would be more than happy to spend an hour or two exorcising your nightmare, in effect.”

I hesitate for a second. That will mean leaving Chrissie and the children alone at night. “I had better phone Chrissie first.”

“No problem. If you are here at seven, I will see you. If not, I fully understand.”

* * *

I am back at seven, but with many qualms, firstly for Chrissie’s and the children’s safety, secondly for the ordeal I will go through, but I need to rid myself of my ghosts in order to move on. I need an exorcism which, I suppose, is why we came to Sian in the first place.

“I am glad that you have come back,” Sian greets me. “Are Chrissie and the children all right?”

“I sincerely hope so.”

“If you lie down on the couch and make yourself comfortable.”

It is the same routine as before, with Sian counting back from thirty and telling me that I am going deeper and deeper and becoming drowsier and drowsier. I take a little longer to disappear this time because there is a lingering fear that I will be off on my travels again, but I am not. I can understand what is happening to me throughout. Sian rapidly moves me back to the scene of my and Harry’s torture by Trevor Plant. It is gruesome, absolutely gruesome, but I am watching it through safety glass. It is not as it was in my nightmare. I am not completely revisiting it. I am erasing it, but I am also stealing myself to deal with Plant once and for all in the future. I am no longer afraid of him; I am murderous towards him. I want to rip his throat out, stamp on his head until his blood and his brains spill all over the floor. I want to rip at his testicles with rusty pliers and smash his body with a crowbar. I want revenge. Sian even takes me to the point where I am falling into the Thames and gives me the experience of drowning. After the initial thrashing panic, it is actually as peaceful as everyone describes it. The waters warm up and become serene. I swim around my body like a mermaid. The world is silent. A light comes to greet me and I am transported away from my earthly existence with delight. It is literally heavenly.

Then Sian takes me further, back to the residential care home, back to the first moment I fell in love with Chrissie, the first time I became physically excited to be with her and wanted to touch her surreptitiously so that only I would know, our first mutual smiles, our first kiss. I can understand now why they used to describe an orgasm as a death in miniature. They really do have much in common in the realm of the sensations. Then, Sian leads me through the more traumatic moments, the pressure-cooker aspects of my time there – the jealousies, the rivalries, the cruelties, the minor physical tortures and the light, and even slightly pleasurable, sexual abuse, the moods of the staff, the constant corrosion of powerlessness and lack of autonomy, of suffocation. Asphyxiation of the mind, unlike drowning, is a brutalising, rotting experience, and what I need to exorcise its lingering creepers is absolute power, at least that is how it feels, although I recognise intellectually that absolute power is an equal and opposite assault on the soul. However, I crave a few moments of being God, of having everything at my feet, of watching everything happening as I wish it to happen in its every detail and, as an architect, I have an exquisite mind for detail. Perhaps that is it. Perhaps I have to design and supervise the building of my masterwork, a building that to me is perfection, in its execution as in its conception. My experience of construction projects tells me that merely getting the thing to stand is hard enough, and that perfection is quite beyond achievement, but that is what I will aspire to. I will rid our lives of Plant, and then I will devote my life to my family at home, and to my epiphany of a tower. It has to be a tower of sorts, a bricks and mortar penis, I suppose. Maybe it could be a house built as a tower, our own house, where I really could demand that every detail be perfect, but that would be much smaller than I am envisaging here. I want something gigantic, towering over London, a monumental shrine to my virility. I want the full Richard Rogers. Now I know what inspires him, perhaps what inspires us all.

In short, by the time Sian recalls me from my journey, I am a raving lunatic powered by force-ten megalomania. I think to myself that I must be looking scary but, if I am, Sian is not responding. She smiles. “How do you feel, Keith?”

“Ready to shake trees.”

“That sounds good.”

“Not if you are in the tree.” It is a pathetic macho comment which she ignores without, I am sure, overlooking the impulse behind it.

“Do you feel exorcised?”

“I cannot really say until I have been to sleep, but I certainly feel like I am ready to float on air.”

“Are you feeling happy, then?”

“In a way, although more exultant, determined, ruthless. I am going to pick up my nightmares and turn them into Planty’s nightmares. He is going to wish that he had never heard of me, that he had never believed that Harry Walker was linked to Keith McGuire, that he had never turned up on our doorstep. It’s the only answer, isn’t it? With people like him, might is right.”

Sian laughed. “You certainly have changed, Keith.”

“But not for the better?”

“I am not here to judge, only to observe. You came in here a victim now, forty minutes later, you are a victor, your head is crowned with laurel leaves, and you are ready to put the quarrelsome barbarians to the sword. You are certainly in a more positive state of mind, positively violent that is. It is for you to decide whether that is the place where you should be at this moment. I am not your conscience.”

It must be a difficult position to be in nonetheless. Here is a guy who walked in quaking with fears and anxieties, only wanting to run away from them, and she has turned him round into an avenger and a tormentor. How do you square that with your conscience as a healer? How do I square it with my conscience? Well, let’s face it, I have done it before.

* * *

Nadya has taken some background shots of the area immediately around the children’s school. Now she needs photos of Planty and members of his gang.

I phone Mike up to see if he can arrange it. “Yeah, no problem,” he says. “Fingers’ll have some. ‘e’s always taking snaps of ‘em for their photo albums. Well, they used to be photo albums. They probably keep ‘em all on computer disks nowadays.”

“How will you get Fingers to give them to you? What will you tell him?”

“I’ll tell ‘im the truth,” Mike replies, “that we need as many recent photos of the boys as ‘e can find so that we can stitch Planty up all over again.”

“Why on earth would you tell him that?”

“Because it’s the truth, and nothing is simpler than the truth.”

“But he’ll go off and tell Planty ten seconds later, and he’ll be around looking for all of us.”

“No, ‘e won’t. Fingers knows ‘ow to keep a secret.”

“I thought he told Planty everything.”

“Only when we want ‘im to. ‘e’s our man on the inside. You certainly can’t knock Fingers for pluck. ‘e ‘as it in ‘andfuls. You wouldn’t catch me spying on that lot for five minutes, never mind ten years. Not that I would ever ‘ave told ‘arry that. You couldn’t trust ‘arry as far as you could throw ‘im. ‘e’d ‘ave ratted on Fingers the minute things got ‘ot.”

“I hope you are right.”

“I’m right. You’ll have your photos in no time.”

As indeed I do. Two days later, there they all are in a dropbox for me to collect. I transfer them to a stick and hand them over to Nadya. She scans them through on her PDA, quizzing me as to who each person is and taking notes. “We may need more,” she comments. “I will let you know. I will see what Karl thinks. There must no lines. I think it will be okay. Karl is the best - that is why he charges so much.”

“How much?” I ask, expecting her to quote £2,000 at the most.

“£5,000.”

“£5,000? Isn’t there anybody almost as good and cheaper?”

Nadya shrugs, which is not a gesture of resignation, more one of fending off my objection.

“For this kind of work you need the best. They have to stand up to many forensic experts examining them with all the modern techniques available to them. They must be perfect. If they are anything less, they will be recognised as fakes immediately. If they cannot detect anything wrong after they have put them through many, many tests, then they will be convinced and therefore convincing. That is what we want, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I had to concede.

“So, it will be at least £5,000, and maybe as much as £10,000.”

She undoubtedly knows how to shoot us through the wallet. If Planty’s boys ever venture anywhere near the school, they are in mortal danger. That is what we are paying for, after all, but how long can we afford it?

* * *

Jerry phones Chrissie to say that the Chief Constable of the Humberside Police will see us next Tuesday.

We have a discussion as to who should go to the meeting. Chrissie is definite that she is not leaving the children down here, however rock solid Nadya appears to be.

“Let’s take them with us,” I suggest.

“But that will put them in even more danger. They will be on the man’s doorstep.”

“Let’s take Nadya too.”

“Where do we stay?”

“Outside the jurisdiction - well outside it. It can’t be too close to Hull, and it can’t be too close to Manchester, otherwise Kenny Bender might pitch in. How about Derby? That must be about an hour and a half away, maybe two hours. I am not too sure of my geography up there, but Via Michelin will no doubt tell us.”

We look it up – one hour, thirty six minutes. That seems about right. Nadya and Agnes will take care of the children. We will dash over to Hull. The meeting won’t last more than an hour. We will then come back down to Wokingham in the afternoon. We should be back for five.

“What do we tell the school?”

“This is a time when I wish we had family,” I joke ruefully. “Something medical? A competition win? How about if we say that we think we may have tracked down somebody in my family, and we are going to investigate en famille? They must realise how important it would be to us to discover possible family. We had better say that they are in Bristol, though. It is better to take no chances.”

* * *

Chapter 19

The problem is Agnes. How did we manage to find a Scotswoman who will get on a plane and fly anywhere south with us, but who refuses to travel north? She is absolutely adamant about it. She will not take one step towards Scotland, so she will not be going to Derby either. She has her cosy flat in Finchampstead, her cat, her routine, and she is not about to enter the barbarian wastes. I have never known ‘barbarian’ be pronounced with so many ‘r’s in it, or with such contempt. Agnes despises and detests the north.

“Look what it did to you, Mr. McGuire. It nearly ruined your life. The north is like that, a barren, desolate place, full of scrunched up faces and blunt remarks. I was brought up there. I know exactly what it is like, and I’ll not be going back, not even for an afternoon.”

“But Derby is not in Scotland, Agnes.”

“It is where Bonnie Prince Charlie got to on his march south, so it is within striking distance.”

“What if we made it Nottingham?”

“No, Mr. McGuire. I am very sorry to be a nuisance, but I am not packing up my bags and heading north for anyone, and if I would do it for anyone I would do it for this family, I can assure you. That is where I will draw the line. I want no flat caps, no plain speaking, no homely ways, no chips and no drunkards careering around the street covered in their own vomit.”

“You can get pretty much all that around here,” I protest.

“I do not notice it around here.” Who can argue?

So we have to make another plan. I think that it is essential that Chrissie be there at the meeting with the Chief Constable. She is very good with people, and especially good with authoritarian men. That is why she is a partner already. She has the right mix of I don’t know what – empathy, resolution, calm, humour, motherliness? – to have them queuing up to hire her. How many times have I heard her colleagues say “Yes, but they all really want Chrissie”? Well, if I am counting, perhaps not too often as I do not visit her office much, but I have heard it said at least three to four times, and I have never heard anyone else described that way so consistently, so it may not be statistically proven, but it is good enough for me. Everyone wants Chrissie, I want Chrissie, the children want Chrissie, and we need to have the Chief Constable wanting her too. It is either that or I have to hire a contractor after all and get rid of Planty with a bullet in his head. In my present mood, that is what I would prefer. I can envisage old Planty lying there, blood swilling the pavement, hands twitching as his life struggles to remain inside him in counterpoint to the grim reaper tugging it away, but I cannot be sure that I will get away with it, so that is what caps that particular fantasy. What we need to do instead is to have Chrissie sweet-talk the Chief Constable into a position “where a bairn could play with him,” as Mike would say, then we will show him Nadya’s doctored photos, which look really excellent, as we innocently ask “Do you recognise any of these people, Chief Constable?”. Naturally, he won’t. Chief Constables are obsessed with politics not with criminals. Their only concern is that the crime statistics pay testament to good solid, occasionally innovative management, and that no scandals ooze out between the cracks of his command-and-control edifice to suggest otherwise. However, DI Martin will lean forward and say “That’s Nobby”, or “That’s G-Man.”

“G-Man?” the Chief Constable will repeat quizzically.

“They call him G-Man,” DI Martin will explain conspiratorially. “He calls himself Geronimo, but his real name is Archie Windballs, so you can understand why he gives himself a pseudonym.”

“Windballs,” the Chief Constable will repeat, gently stroking the word. “That’s an unusual surname.”

“It probably used to be Windles or Wendles once, and got corrupted somewhere. Corruption has obviously run in the family for some time.”

“So you know these people?”

“Yes, they work for Trevor Plant’s mob on the North Bransholme Estate.”

“And here they are in London.”

“It appears so.”

“And they are loitering in the vicinity of Mr. and Mrs. McGuire’s children’s school after Mr. Plant has made menacing phone calls to Mr. McGuire.”

“So it appears.” DI Martin will not be entirely swallowing the story yet. It will not quite make sense to him. Why would the Inbies be operating so far away from their patch, except that there is no denying that Harry Walker was hoist onto a helicopter hawser and swung across the rooftops of London before being dumped into the Thames bound hand and feet. Were his hands bound? DI Martin will not be able to remember. It is an irrelevant, niggling detail that will trouble him. He will have to get someone to look it up for him. That always impresses the lads, his attention to the minutest details, because they do not realise that it is only the result of compulsive need on his part never to be mistaken about a material fact.

“So what do you plan to do about this situation, Detective Inspector?” The use of ‘Detective Inspector’ will indicate that the Chief Constable has entered PR mode.

“We are going to have to have a little word with them, I should think. We can’t arrest them. We just have to let them know that we know what they are up to, that we are doggedly on their trail.”

“Mr. and Mrs. McGuire, does that constitute a satisfactory answer for you? We cannot arrest them, but we can let them know we are watching them indefatigably. It is all we can do for the moment until we can collect together sufficient evidence to arrest them. As yet, there is no compelling evidence of their having committed any crime and, contrary to popular opinion, we do not arrest people simply because we do not like the look of their faces, otherwise half of Hull would be in gaol.”

Then he will produce a politician’s smile of dismissal, and the meeting will be over exactly on the hour.

Will that be satisfactory? Satisfactory, who knows, but it will not be sufficient. It will leave Planty pacing the streets with even more of a bee in his bonnet. You don’t intentionally bug people like Trevor Plant unless you are sure that you will be able to squash him afterwards. There has to be another route.

* * *

With the prospect of meeting the Chief Constable in mind, and as a thank you for setting up this encounter, we invited Jerry and Sam and the children round for Sunday lunch. Of course, it wasn’t any kind of hardship. We were dying to share with someone what was happening to us, and who better than they with whom we have always shared so much, our good and sympathetic friends?

Jack and Natty came bundling in, kissed us, greeted Ella and Mark, and went off to play with them far from our view, leaving a trail of noise tapering into silence. Luckily, the children are now of an age where quiet no longer intimates naughtiness or danger. Unfortunately, in our case, it is explicit danger that signifies danger, so we are both continuously listening out to assure ourselves not of what the children are doing, but of the fact that they are still there. We have cautioned them that they must absolutely not go into the garden without our explicit prior permission, and that they must never leave our sight. It is as if they were toddlers all over again. We were expecting that our next set of panics would be when Ella is fifteen or sixteen years old, and she starts going out at night in the cars of boyfriends who have only just passed their tests, maybe having drunk more than they should have done, possibly she too having drunk more than she should have done, all pointing to the risk of a car accident or rape, moral deterioration or pregnancy, none of which we remotely want to deal with, but which we know could be headed our way despite our best efforts and those of Ella as well.

In the meantime, we thought that we were in remission, enjoying a moment of respite between terrors over lost children. Mark doesn’t disappear off any more when our backs are turned, and it no longer generally matters if Ella does. We are careful not to let her wander alone down lanes, or to be out after dark. If she goes into town, we drop her there, although she often finds her way back during the daytime. We prefer it when she is with several of her friends, even if they may lead her astray a little and get her into minor trouble, which has not happened yet.

And now, suddenly, total security has to be enforced. They cannot be out of our sight or earshot; they must be guarded. We must even guard each other. Getting between the car and the house is a risk. The supermarket feels safe. The underground feels relatively safe. Wokingham station is highly dangerous, and we do not use it anymore although, if we were to be followed, any suburban station would present the same danger. Over the last three days, Chrissie has been getting home by six o’clock. I have stayed at home with the children whom we have not allowed to go to school for the entirety of the week. They are due to go back on Monday, just as we are due to travel north.

We are still not sure about this. There will be a solution, but we do not yet know what it is. Our provisional fix is that the children continue to work from home for a few days more, and that we get Nadya to come to the house and stay overnight, together with Agnes. Agnes is game, and Nadya is available and willing, but she is insisting that we pay for every hour that she is on duty, which is the full twenty-four, so we would be paying in excess of £1,500 a day. I tried to bargain her down to £1,000, but she wouldn’t even come down to £1,500 exactly, so £1,650 it remains, and Nadya has said that we must confirm by this evening, otherwise she cannot guarantee her availability. One of our hopes is that perhaps Jerry and Sam will at least look after them overnight.

“So,” says Jerry, stroking his glass of scotch, “what is really going on?”

“You know, Jerry,” I reply, knowing full well that he doesn’t.

“I know a bit of it,” Jerry concedes, “but I am not at all clear why this hoodlum wants to harm you and the children.”

“That’s very odd,” Sam echoes. She shudders. “I cannot imagine it.”

“When it happens, you have to,” Chrissie emphasises resolutely. “We have to anticipate every possibility, even if we think we are going way over the top.”

“Jerry says that you have hired a bodyguard for the children,” says Sam.

“Yes, a Russian private detective,” I reply.

“Does she speak like this?” jokes Jerry, adopting a cross between a genuine Russian accent and a phoney Liverpudlian one.

“No,” says Chrissie. “She sounds Russian.”

“I am very proud of my Russian accent,” Jerry protests.

Jerry is always putting on accents, none of which he ever gets quite right, but he adlibs them irrepressibly and with great gusto.

“What’s she like?” Sam inquires.

“3Ms,” replies Chrissie. “Motherly, meticulous and mercenary. I think she is planning to buy a country estate on the basis of our fees alone. It is absolutely breathtaking what she wants to charge us. Not the base fee, that is reasonable. It is all the extras. We will be bankrupt within a month.”

“You know that you can always come and stay with us,” Jerry offers.

“That is very kind of you, Jerry,” I reply.

“Not you, Keith. Just Chrissie.”

“You should be so lucky!” says Sam. “You can barely handle one woman. I don’t know what you think you would be able to do with two.”

Jerry leans forward. “Anyway, back to where I started. What have you two done to upset this guy?”

I chuckle. “You would never believe us.”

“Try me.”

So we tell them much of the story, and they don’t believe a word of it.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” says Jerry. Sam sits there without venturing any comment at all yet.

“No, Jerry, it is entirely true.”

“So you seriously woke up in the body of this Harry Walker character?”

“Yes,” I confirm.

“Swear to God?”

“I would even swear on my granny’s grave, if I had one.”

“You have. You just don’t know who she is. And whom have you told this version of the story to so far?”

“A few people.”

“And they believed you?”

“Strangely enough, yes.”

“That is certainly strange.” Jerry is rolling around his chair enjoying this. Sam is sat stock still watching each of us in turn as we speak.

“You are actually suggesting that a real, intelligent human being has actually fallen for this hokey metaphysical malarkey?”

“Not everybody is as cynical as you are, Jerry,” Chrissie chides him.

“And if you were in court, and the defending lawyer said that his client could not possibly have committed the crime because he had just popped off into someone else’s body at the time, you would just go ‘oh, all right, then’, would you? You wouldn’t seek to challenge this rather unusual attestation?”

“Well, Jerry, firstly I am a solicitor, not a barrister, so I don’t usually appear in court. Secondly, I am a marine lawyer, not a criminal lawyer. Thirdly, as a barrister, it is your job to challenge any idea the other side puts forward, whether you doubt it or not, if you judge that to do so might further your case. So, if I were a barrister, and if I were a barrister specialising in criminal law, I would certainly do everything I could to rip the story to pieces. In fact, I would be rubbing my hands with glee because I couldn’t fail to discredit the entire defence case on that point alone. However, it doesn’t mean that I would be right, only that the jury is unlikely to have more than one spiritually enlightened member present at a time, and the minute she opened her mouth to explain her point of view, the rest of the jury would write her off as a weirdo.”

“So you think that this sort of thing really can happen?”

“It did happen,” Chrissie states emphatically.

“And how can you be so sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Why?”

“I’m just sure.”

“That doesn’t sound too scientific an explanation.”

“It is not, but us lawyers have intuitions too, you know. Plus I did have this naked guy hanging outside my window, and Keith was a pale shadow of his former self for nearly two months, plus this Harry Walker character knew things that only Keith could know.”

Sam swallows. “You are really spooking me, Chrissie.”

“It is spooky,” I reply. “Nobody is arguing otherwise.”

“How did it feel?”

So I have to go through the whole story again, adding in a full emotional commentary this time.

“How did you fend this Fran off, then?” Jerry throws in.

“She was so pissed off with Harry that I didn’t need to.” I hope that I have delivered this smoothly, without blinking. Chrissie frowns slightly. “Chrissie met me as Harry. You have to admit, Chrissie, he was pretty ugly …”

“….as oxymorons go …”

“As oxymorons go.”

“I didn’t fancy him,” Chrissie confirms, “even knowing he was Keith under there somewhere.”

“It sounds suspicious to me,” Jerry insists, “unless she was ugly too.”

“Oh no,” Chrissie counters, “she is very pretty. Quite Keith’s type, I would think.”

“Luckily,” I battle on, “Harry wasn’t hers.”

“So you became Harry Walker and, as Harry Walker, you get up this Plant guy’s nose, and he comes after you, and beats you senseless for a week, during which time you plead with him that you are not really Harry Walker at all, but Keith McGuire, and you tell him all about Chrissie and the children, where you live, what a happy family life you have, blah-de-blah, and so that when he has bumped off Harry he decides to come after you in your other guise?”

“Precisely.”

“Bollocks!” Jerry holds up his glass to salute us. “Cheers. Your very good health. That was a wonderfully entertaining story. I cannot think why you told us it, but it has certainly got the afternoon off to a good start. I hope that humble pie is on the menu, and that you two will be serving yourselves two generous portions. By the way, are you going to tell the Chief Constable all this on Tuesday?”

“Hardly,” I reply. “If good and trusted friends like you don’t believe us, I cannot imagine that he will.”

“Thank God for that. Nor can I.”

“So you won’t look after our children tomorrow night while we go up to Hull?”

“Of course we will,” Jerry replies, glancing at Sam.

“But will you keep an eye on them? Keep them really safe?”

“Keith, I am a social worker. Nobody who messes with us can hope to come out unscathed. We will gladly look after your children, it would be our great pleasure, we’ll keep them as safe as houses, and we will take the opportunity to run a few tests on them to make sure that they do not qualify to be considered as children potentially at risk, before their parents are kidnapped by aliens, that is.”

“Funnily enough,” Chrissie interjects, “that is our other story,” on which comical note we decide to move into the dining room for lunch.

* * *

After they have all gone home, the phone rings. It is Fran. I feel very uncomfortable talking to her, especially after the cross-questioning from Jerry at lunchtime. He has definitely stirred up some suspicions in Chrissie. Nice one, Jerry.

“Is that Keith McGuire?”

“It is.”

“Hi, this is Fran Walker here.”

“Hello, Fran.”

“How are things?”

“A bit fraught at the moment.”

“I can imagine.”

“And you?”

“Horrible. I never thought that I would miss Harry, but in fact I do. Tommy does too. He is really upset. He won’t settle. I am on anti-depressants. I keep expecting Trevor Plant to come knocking on our door. It’s hell. Mike tells me that you are coming up here tomorrow.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to stay here? I have a spare room, as you know.”

“Chrissie is coming up too.”

“So Mike said. That is not a problem.”

“I’ll check with Chrissie. Can I call you back?”

“Certainly. Goodbye, Keith. Talk to you later.”

Chrissie’s first reaction is “Is it safe?”

“Probably not,” I reply. “But if anyone has tipped off Planty, nowhere is safe.”

“We could always still stay in Derby. We can easily get from Derby to Hull by eleven. Perhaps we should accept Fran’s invitation, and then stay in Derby anyway. How do we know we can trust her?”

“I think we can.”

“That is not enough reassurance in this case, Keith. Ring her back and say we will be there late, then book a hotel for us around Derby somewhere, as we agreed.”

“I can’t do that. That would be cruel.”

“I’ll settle for anything that keeps our family safe. After all, she has been a party to getting us into all this mess. She has to take some of the responsibility. I have no qualms doing it. I’ll phone her.”

And she does.

* * *

We stayed over at the Menzies Mickleover Court, and gave ourselves two-and-a-half hours to get to Hull for our eleven o’clock appointment with the Chief Constable. We parked in Princes Quay and I had enough time to quickly show Chrissie where Brenda Starbright’s office, Queen Victoria and the massive BBC screen were, before heading across to the Police Station in Queen’s Gardens. We were immediately ushered in to meet the Chief Constable who was indeed with DI Martin, as I had predicted.

What I hadn’t anticipated was how short both men would be and, indeed, how short Harry Walker must have been too. As Harry Walker, I had faced DI Martin eye-to-eye. As myself, I towered over him. Both men greeted us with generous civility and an air of anticipation.

“Please sit down, Mrs. McGuire, Mr. McGuire. Can we offer you some coffee or some tea?”

We were all four perched in rounded back chairs clustered around a coffee table.

“I understand that you have some concerns you would like to raise with us about one of our local residents.”

“That is correct,” I replied.

“Please carry on, Mr. McGuire.”

“A week ago, I received an extremely abusive phone call from a man who called himself Trevor Plant.”

The Chief Constable raised his eyebrows, and DI Martin shuffled in his chair and chuckled slightly. “We are well acquainted with Mr. Plant,” he replied. “Aren’t we, Richard?”

“We sure are.”

“Nor is it any surprise that he should be abusive. In fact, it would be something of a surprise if he were anything else.”

“I am relieved that you know him,” I continued. “He was very frightening. He basically said that he was going to do us great harm as a family.”

“That is interesting, Mr. McGuire. Do you have any idea why he should want to harm your family?”

“None whatsoever. He must have picked our name initially out of the phone book, or something. What he did say was that it was he who was responsible for hanging that man outside my wife’s office in London. You may have seen it on the news.”

“Harry Walker,” they declared in unison.

“Yes, that was his name,” Chrissie confirmed, “according to news reports, anyway. I had to do a lot of explaining to my senior partner in respect of that incident even though I had no explanation whatsoever. It was a totally freak, random event as far as I could tell.”

I was impressed by how fluently Chrissie could lie. I had never had the chance to observe her doing that before.

“And what do you do for a living, Mrs. McGuire?”

“I am a lawyer – a partner in a London solicitors’ firm specialising in maritime law.”

“Interesting.” The Chief Constable was considering something. “I suppose that you get involved in cases of marine fraud.”

“Yes, I do. Not that frequently personally, but I do.”

The Chief Constable turned to DI Martin. “But even that doesn’t really sound like Plant’s line of business, does it?”

“He could well be responsible for fencing the proceeds, if the fraud related to missing cargo.”

“Yes, Richard, you are right. Have you been involved in a case where a ship lost some cargo in Hull, on the off-chance, Mrs. McGuire?”

“I cannot remember anything like that. I have been involved in a couple of cases which related to incidents in the Port of Hull for sure. One was a dispute over ownership, and one was where some illegal immigrants were smuggled into Hull on board a ship carrying wheat.”

“Now that could be Plant,” declared DI Martin. “People trafficking – right down Plant’s street.”

“Were the immigrants caught?”

“Yes, that is why we were involved. The ship was being prosecuted for carrying refugees and allowing them to enter the country illegally. We were representing the ship owners.”

“Still,” said the Chief Constable, “there is no immediately obvious connection between that case and Mr. Plant, although I could fully understand if he were involved.”

“No,” Chrissie replied. “I cannot see any conceivable link either. We are both at a total loss. The man just simply seems to be off his head and he has decided, for I don’t know what reason, to pick us out and to torment us. I suppose sooner or later he is going to demand money. But still, why us? We have some money, but there are a lot of people richer than us.” Chrissie reached into her handbag, and withdrew the doctored photos. She placed two each in front of the Chief Constable and DI Martin. “As soon as we were threatened, we hired a private detective to watch the area around the school, although we have actually kept the children back at home until today. The private investigator noticed two people loitering suspiciously around the school. Do these people mean anything to you?”

DI Martin was almost bouncing up and down in his chair. “Nobby Bridgnorth and Archie Windballs. They are part of Plant’s Inbie gang all right.”

“So Plant is as good as his word,” commented the Chief Constable. “They must be planning a kidnap. Very strange, though. Plant never struck me as a player on the national stage. I had assumed that his theatre of operations was exclusively local, not stretching much beyond Leeds. You must have accidentally really got his goat over something.”

“So these two people are definitely associated with Trevor Plant, are they?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” replied DI Martin, “no doubt about it. What we can do about it, though, is a different matter. Being seen walking near a school, even two hundred miles away from where you live, is not exactly a criminal offence, but at least it confirms what we are dealing with.”

“We need to set up a project liaison with the Met on this one,” the Chief Constable stated decisively, “without delay. Can you handle that for me, Richard?”

“No problems, Boss. I will get straight onto them.”

“Firstly, Mr. and Mrs. McGuire, we are extremely sorry that you have been troubled in this way by one of our less law abiding citizens. It must be causing you immense distress. Secondly, we will do whatever we can to help you, in co-ordination with the Met. Thirdly, though, we cannot act directly against Mr. Plant and his associates at this minute because we lack sufficient evidence to make any kind of arrest. Any case has to be absolutely watertight against the likes of Mr. Plant. We recently arrested him and several members of his gang for a clear case of kidnapping, but we had to release him again because we could not absolutely prove that he was involved in the incident, even though we discovered the boy bound and drugged in his own house. You may have seen the case on the news, about a Leeds boy who was kidnapped.”

We confirmed that we had seen something about it.

“Thank you so much for coming directly to us,” the Chief Constable continued. “I think that your next step should be to contact the Metropolitan Police and to see what they can do for you, unless you have already done so.”

“Actually,” I corrected him, “Chrissie works in London, but we live in Wokingham.”

“My apologies. In that case, we need to liaise with the Berkshire police. Wokingham is in Berkshire, isn’t it? Good. Change of plan, Richard, please liaise with the Berkshire Police instead.”

“Will do, Boss.”

We emerged into Queen’s Gardens feeling a sense of elation that our plan was working. Two months ago, we could not have dreamt that we would ever need such a plan, but now everything seemed normal and as it should be. I had attended a hypnotherapy session. I had woken up to find myself to be Harry Walker. I had committed unconsciable acts as Harry Walker. Harry Walker had been gruesomely tortured and murdered, and then his killer had come after us at our home in Wokingham. Objectively, this sequence of events was patently absurd, but experientially it was increasingly mundane, a pressing problem to be solved.

We were just turning the corner into George Street, when we almost bumped into Planty himself, accompanied by Nobby and the thuggish guy who had tormented Tommy in the market place. I was holding Chrissie’s hand, and I forced her to a stop.

“What is it?” she asked instinctively.

Planty glanced across at us.

“I think I must have left my keys in the car.” I willed Chrissie not to question this. Planty looked away and carried on talking to Nobby and his pal. Chrissie and I kept walking. We turned towards the big screen. “Phew,” I said. “That was close.”

“What was all that about?”

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that they were not following us. “That was Planty and two of his mates,” I said.

“It was?”

“It was.”

“Do you think he knows what we look like?”

“He might well.”

Chrissie jerked forward. “I think we had better get out of here. Fast!”

On the road out of Hull we debated whether we should contact Fran and/or Mike. We were passing the Humber Crown Hotel. “Let’s call them,” I said. “We have an apology to make.”

Fran answered.

“Fran, this is Keith McGuire. Are you free?”

“Yes, why?”

“Could you get a taxi to the Humber Crown Hotel? We’ll pay the fare.”

“When?”

“Immediately.”

“Should I bring Mike or Kathy?”

“No, come now and alone, please.”

“I’ll be about thirty minutes. Is Chrissie with you?”

“Yes.”

“Thirty minutes, then.”

We go back to the car. We are not going to get trapped in the hotel. If Fran brings Planty and his gang with her, we want to be in a position to make a high-speed getaway. I don’t think Fran would betray us. Chrissie is not sure. We agree to play it safe.

Fran arrives alone. We wait a minute or so to see if another car pulls in behind her, by which time she has paid the taxi off. It leaves.

“Fran!” I call.

“Keith?”

“You know Chrissie.”

“Hello, Chrissie.”

“We are sorry about last night.”

Fran smiles. “No need to apologise. I have done some ducking and diving many times with Harry in my life, I can tell you. I know the feeling.”

We go into the bar area.

“Will you have lunch?” I offer.

“That would be nice. Thanks.”

We explain our meeting with the Chief Constable and DI Martin, which is the main point of catching up with Fran. With a bit of luck, she will tell Mike, Mike will tell Fingers, and Fingers will tell Planty, unless Fran contacts Planty directly, that is.

“It’s unsettling to see you looking like this, Keith,” Fran confesses. “It is as if I know you and yet I have never met you in my life before.”

“In a strange way, I feel the same. Obviously you look the same, but everything else is completely different. How is Tommy, by the way?”

“Oh, he is fine, but he is desperate to see you. He really was disappointed about last night, although I did warn him that you might not be coming. He really wants to see you. He has been very badly hit by Harry’s death, and of course by all the trauma I went through around that time. It cannot be easy for a seven year old boy to lose his dad and then to watch his mum go off her head for a while.”

“You must come down and visit us when all this is over,” suggests Chrissie.

“We would love to. Thanks. When will it all be over?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “At the moment, we cannot imagine it ever being over. How do we stop him? He is a lunatic.”

“’e certainly is that,” a voice confirms from behind us. Chrissie and I turn round sharply. Planty is standing there with Nobby and the thug. Planty lays a settling hand on my shoulder. “No need to stand up. We’ll join yer, if we may.” Nobby and the thug pull over a chair each, leaving Planty the one that was already in place. We shuffle our chairs to make space.

Planty leans forward. “Nice to meet yer, Chrissie. Trevor Plant.” He gestures towards the others. “My friends Nobby and Sylvester.”

“Hullo,” they say.

“So what are yer two doing up ‘ere? I suddenly realised who yer were in the street there. Yer should ‘ave introduced yersens. Making a little call on Mr. Plod, were yer?”

I stare at him defiantly. “As it happens,” I almost spit. “Yes. We were trying to stop your stupid little games.” I can hear Nobby and Sylvester rustling.

“That’s strange,” Planty retorts. “That is exactly what I was planning on, stopping yer little games.”

“What have we ever done to you?”

“Apart from trying to stitch me up with the kidnapping and abuse of a small child? Even for yer, ‘arry, that was uglier than turds.”

“I am not ‘arry, whoever ‘arry is.” I emphasise the lack of the ‘h’. “I am Keith McGuire. I have never met you in my life before. I have only spoken to you once when you were abusive and threatening. So what is your game?”

“The fact that Fran is sitting ‘ere all conspiratorially tells me ye’re lying, ‘arry. Yer can’t fool me. I knew that even if I beat yer to pulp, knocked yer unconscious, and dropped yer in the Thames, bound and gagged, yer wouldn’t die. Nothing kills yer, ‘arry. Ye’re the Devil, and an evil, snivelling, whining, sneaky, disloyal, disrespectful, slimy, greasy, under’and, vicious, mean, creepy, malignant one at that. I knew that yer would crawl out of there some’ow, and that yer’d already set everything up for yersen as this Keith McGuire character – new woman, new life, new children. Then I did a bit of investigating like, and guess what I came up with. Of course, I said to mesen, that makes perfect sense now, don’t it? What were yer going to do, ‘arry, all set up together in London – yer, Fran, Tommy, Chrissie and yer kids? I don’t think so, ‘arry. Yer may be my kid brother, but ye’re dead, good and proper, this time.”

“’arry was your brother?”

“Yeah, yer my kid brother, as yer well know. I didn’t want anything to do with yer, but yer kept turning up. Yer still do.” He eyes me meaningfully.

“How could you do that to your brother?”

“Do what, ‘arry? Torture yer, reduce yer to flesh and cracked bones, try to drown yer? That I could do easily. It takes nowt to do that when yer’ve got yer to look at, ‘arry. Yer abused me, yer abused our sister, yer abused yer wife Fran ‘ere and yer kid. Ye’re muck, ‘arry, and yer pretending to be this Keith McGuire character, all posh and fancy, and outraged, don’t fool me. Yer never could. Yer never will. Yer’ve walked out on Fran, yer’ve walked out on Tommy, yer’ve walked out on Kathy, and where do I find yer, shacked up with my other sister, Chrissie, the one I didn’t know sod all about, but yer did. Yer sniffed her out like dead meat for a vulture’s breakfast. ‘ow do you do it, ‘arry? ‘ow do yer live with yersen?”

“What do you mean ‘sister’?” Chrissie demands indignantly. Nobby and Sylvester are looking slyly on.

“Yer my kid sister, Chrissie? Didn’t ‘arry tell you?”

“You’re mad!”

“Mebbe, Chrissie, but I’m not an idiot. Look it up on yer records. It’s all there. Mum ‘ad me. Mum then ‘ad ‘arry ‘ere, and gave ‘im up. Wisest thing she ever did. Then she ‘ad Kathy and gave ‘er up too. Then she up and left me with this Gordon character she was shacking up with at the time, married actually, and she went off and ‘ad yer, and then died. So, I was adopted by Gordon, which wasn’t too bad at all in fact, ‘arry and Kathy were dragged up in care in the Midlands, and yer were put into care in the South, where she died. Yer don’t know any of this?”

Chrissie is fighting for breath, gulping.

“Neah, I didn’t neither until the other day. I got ‘arry’s mate, Brains, to do a bit of digging while I was trying to work it all out, and when ‘e came back, it all made sense. ‘e knew ‘ull would get too ‘ot for him sooner or later, so ‘e leaves off from shagging Kathy and ‘e starts shagging ‘is other sister. Just like ‘arry, eh?”

“So how do you explain the fact that I’ve known Keith from the age of ten, when he was twelve? If he was in care in the Midlands, how could he have been in care with me in the South? That doesn’t make any sense.”

That brings Planty up short. He has been so fired up with his imagination that he has missed a crucial point.

“Ye’re just saying that,” he protests.

“No,” said Chrissie. “We have been together ever since I was ten and he was twelve. There’s no way he could have been someone else.”

Planty recovers. “And these last few months, is there no way ‘e could ‘ave been some’at else then too?”

“That’s different. I knew he was someone else then.”

“So ‘e was ‘arry.”

“Yes, he was Harry. You got that part right.”

“So, given that strange metaphysical phenomenon, if yer’ll pardon all these long words, ‘ow do you know ‘e wasn’t ‘arry all along, as well as Keith. I tell yer, ‘arry is the Devil. Yer can’t put nowt past ‘arry.”

“Well he could have been, I suppose,” Chrissie concedes. “Is it true that I’m your sister?”

“Yeah, Chrissie, it’s God’s ‘onest truth. I’ve got all the evidence back ‘ome. I’ll show yer.” He takes a revolver out of his pocket and holds it where Chrissie, Fran and I can see it but the bar staff cannot. “Okay, guys, we’re going back to my place, all of us. If any of yer break for it, ‘arry ‘ere gets it. And believe me, it’ll be a pleasure. I might ‘ave to shoot ‘im several times, just to make sure like.” He hands a wadge of notes to Sylvester. “Off yer go, Sly. Earn yer keep and pay the barmaid there, and no chatting ‘er up. We’ve got some precious cargo ‘ere, an’ I want to get to the bottom of exactly what it is.”

* * *

Chapter 20

Planty takes Chrissie with him, while Nobby and Sylvester loom behind Fran and me from the back seat of my car.

“No funny business,” Sylvester warns me idiotically. The onerous job of paying the barmaid entrusted to him by Planty must have given him confidence.

Fran demands to be allowed to pick up Tommy from school, so we detour by her house to let her out. I get a revolver poked forcibly and fatly into my neck to remind me what will happen if I try to make a run for it. They sound like they are considering shooting me anyway. We have to skim the centre of Hull, and that annoys them, perhaps because it gives me a greater chance of escaping, as if I would leave Chrissie in Planty’s hands. Planty probably thinks I would and has shared his opinion.

I am spinning over and over in my mind whether Planty was playing mind games on us or whether Chrissie really is his sister. It seems impossible to believe, but perhaps no more impossible than that I should be Harry, and I know that at least to have been true. Planty has not produced the slightest evidence to support his claim, but I do believe he means it. And, of course, it is quite possible. Families are forever being split up in care. We had several children in our home who had brothers and sisters somewhere else, but whom they never saw and might never see. It doesn’t make sense, but it happens. Well, it did then. Maybe things have changed for the better. Conversely, nowadays, they want you adopted or in foster care, so it could be worse.

So, assuming that we mange to parlay Planty into sparing our lives, what does the future hold for us? Will he be down with all his mates for Sunday barbeques in our garden? Will Ella and Mark have to recognise Tommy as their cousin? That would be okay. What happens when Kathy and Chrissie get together and start sharing sisterly secrets? What happens when Kathy, Chrissie and Fran get together? That could destroy us. With Planty, I can stonewall and claim that he is talking utter shit, and Chrissie will believe me, but if the three girls begin to confide in each other, there will be no way of getting around that. Harry slept with me. Harry slept with me. Harry slept with me even after he was Keith. He slept with me too. How funny! Chrissie is going to kill me. She is going to walk out with Ella and Mark, and I am going to be left with Fran, Tommy and Kathy at best waiting for Jerry Springer to call and invite me on one his confessional circuses. “Let me get this straight,” he will say. “You slept with Chrissie here. Then you slept with her sister-in-law, Fran, then you slept with her (Chrissie’s) sister, Kathy, believing that she was your sister? Is that right?” Half the audience will boo me, the other half will laugh like hyenas, and our perfectly conceived life will be no more.

Talking of Jerry, the terrain has deteriorated from jerry-built 1950s houses to the flatter jerry-built seventies ones. As one of the largest housing estates in Europe, Bransholme looks like a place purpose-designed to incubate teenage thugs. There is no recovery from this sort of place. I know that I have been here before, but last time it was dark, and I was seeing it through Harry’s eyes, and he was no architect. I am beginning to understand the subtle nuances of perception between the way I see the world and the way I-as-Harry viewed it. Harry must have been there too, influencing my every move. It eases my conscience to believe so, but I think it is true as well.

Well, actually, it doesn’t ease my conscience. It is supposed to, I want it to, but it is like a moment of childhood guilt which keeps popping up and jeering at you. You cannot excuse yourself, much as you should, on the grounds you were only a child. You were still you. It is the same here. Harry may have been there, but so was I. I could have stopped him if I had been strong enough. There is no getting away from it.

We pull up outside Planty’s house. I recognise it from my previous visit. I check the tyres, which is stupid because I know they are here now, and I know that they won’t be here when I get back. This is one of these places where they strip the car while you are stopped at the lights. You drive off, and all that is left is the steering wheel and the exposed chassis.

“Is the car safe here?” I ask Nobby and Sylvester. They chortle. In fact, they keep on chortling.

Planty opens the door to us, and I pick up that familiar smell. We architects often forget how powerful people’s senses of smell are. We concentrate on form and structure, texture and colour, and practicality, but the first thing that hits anyone over the head walking into a building is its odour, whether it is that of new carpets, or of wood, or of urine, or of boiling cabbage, or of some piped artificial fragrance. I suppose we cannot control how a building will smell once we have handed it over, which is why we pay such scant regard to it, but maybe we should try to anticipate possibilities and build in remedies – mental note for when / if I get back to Wokingham. I will mend my ways.

Chrissie is perched in the sitting room on a velour couch. The brown of the couch clashes horribly with the patterned reds and greens of the carpet and the smooth texture of the velour does not work with the contoured design of the carpet either. In the corner there is a large TV set and a micro hifi system. Planty is carrying through cups and a teapot from the kitchen in a confounding affectation of domesticity.

“There yer are,” he proclaims. “Quite cosy, ain’t it? Yer’ll be glad to ‘ear, Keith, that Chrissie and I ‘ave ‘ad a good chat in the car on the way over, and that ye’re off the ‘ook. If I can believe Chrissie, and I do, there is no way yer could ‘ave been ‘arry, unless yer go for all this metaphysical rubbish, which I don’t. I was ‘appy to go along with my idea that ‘arry set up two ‘ouse’olds, one as a getaway from t’other, but I’m not buyin’ any body swappin’. I’m not sayin’ that it ain’t true, but I’m not goin’ there. So that’s it, brother-in-law, welcome to my ‘umble abode. It’s not much, ‘n’ it’s not mine. I’ll take yer up to my real place in Pocklington sometime. There’s lots we can do together now that we‘ve found each other. Yer can show me around yer neck of the woods too.”

A new horror pokes its head out at me; that he may spare us after all but at the price of our never being able to rid ourselves of him. I make to get up to sit next to Chrissie and get very strong ‘keep away from me’ signals. I have never had those from her before. I try to press forward, which makes her glare at me even more fiercely. I think she and Planty have been indulging in some very detailed and intimate discussions.

“Yer can go ‘ome now, boys,” Planty says to Nobby and Sylvester. “Ta very much for yer ‘elp,” and he settles back in his chair clutching his cup and saucer. Either Planty is treating us as best, or he has pretensions.

“Well, Keith,” he says turning towards me, “what do yer think of all this, then?”

“The situation or the interior décor?” I ask him.

“Poncey git,” he replies. “Is ‘e always like this?” he fires at Chrissie.

“I am beginning to wonder what he is ever like,” Chrissie fires back. “I feel like I don’t know him at all, as if he has been fooling me for years.”

“Oh dearie me,” Planty chuckles, “it looks like ye’re in the dog box this time, Keith me ol’ mate.”

Chrissie shakes her head in disappointed bewilderment. “How could you?”

“How could I what?” I demand indignantly.

“Fuck other women, kidnap a boy, threaten to kidnap other people’s children? Where does all that come from?”

“’arry,” Planty jumps in immediately, “that’s all ‘arry. Where yer’ve got ‘arry, yer’ve got trouble.”

“Yes, but Keith was there too.”

“So yer say, but I think all that’s a load of cock and bull, something ‘arry made up and some’ow yer ended up believin’ it. I think yer should ‘old Keith to account for things yer know Keith hissen ‘as done, and that yer should leave the rest for bygones. Yer’ll do yer ‘ead in if ye’re goin’ around believin’ owt else.”

“I’ll think about it,” Chrissie responds, and I can feel her backing off. She doesn’t invite me to come and sit next to her, though.

“Do yer mind if I watch the news?” Planty asks.

“Sure,” I say. “Go ahead.”

Planty reaches out, picks up the remote, and flicks the screen on. His timing is second-perfect. The title images have just started to roll. There are all the usual stories of floods in Bangladesh, civil war in the Sudan, deaths in Iraq, domestic inflation. Planty is watching intently, as if waiting for something specific. Abruptly, he flicks the news off again, and leans back in his chair, massaging the ridge of its back into his head and neck. “There’s never nowt on the news nowadays,” he mutters. “I only keep the tellie for the footie.”

There is silence. Planty continues to massage himself. Chrissie sits primly upright. I wait expectantly. It is my image of tea with an aunt – Aunty Planty. I fail to suppress a cackle.

“What?” asks Chrissie.

“What?” asks Planty.

“Nothing,” I reply. I was just thinking how funny it is that Trevor here believed that I was Harry, raised from the dead.”

“Raised, but not from the dead. That man is undead, always was.”

“So what did he do to you that was so bad?” I challenge.

Planty screws up his face. “’e was like a mosquito or a gnat, or some’at – always buzzin’ me, always stickin’ his nose in my business. That’s what ‘e done to me. What ‘e done to other people is another story. ‘e only did one person in so far as I know, and that was in self-defence, but ‘e ‘urt quite a few. ‘e enjoyed it. ‘e did most of the physical stuff ‘issen, with a knife, more personal like. ‘ow Martin let ‘im knife ‘im, God alone knows. ‘e must’ve ‘ad a brainstorm. ‘e should’ve known better. ‘e should’ve known a lot better.” He shakes his head in wonderment.

“Whom did he hurt?” I ask.

“Owt as crossed ‘is path. If there was some’at who as much as looked at ‘im, ‘e was a candidate for a bit of roughin’ up from old ‘arry. Women too. Fran could tell you some ‘air-raisin’ tales. ‘n’ look at Kathy. ‘e prostituted ‘er from when she was eight years old, just so as ‘e could get what ‘e wanted. ‘is own kid sister. It’s small wonder that she’s such a flea-bag now. Still, she got her own back, rattin’ on ‘is little scam to put me be’ind bars. Couldn’t wait to be rid of ‘im. She didn’t want any part in kidnappin’ small kids, but ‘arry insisted, an’ yer didn’t cross ‘arry. ‘e got exactly what was comin’ to ‘im, God rot his soul.” He got to his feet. “I think I’ll drink to that. Is anyone joinin’ me?”

I consult with Chrissie. “We should be going, Trevor. We need to get back to the children.”

“Why don’t yer stay the night? Leave first thing in the mornin’.”

“The children will be worried,” Chrissie says.

“Where are they? Stayin’ with friends?”

“Yes.”

“Give them a ring, tell them that things are goin’ well ‘ere and that yer’ve just a few more points to cover, an’ yer will be back ‘ome by lunchtime. I would like a few more ‘ours to get to know me new kid sister.”

“Well, I suppose we could. What do you think, Chrissie?”

Chrissie takes her mobile out of her bag. “I’ll ring Jerry and Sam and see what they think.”

Chrissie gets through to Sam straight away and gives the explanation for our wanting to stay the night in Hull as dictated by Planty. Sam is cool with that. Chrissie spends fifteen minutes talking to the children, accepting a glass of white wine from Planty with one hand as she does so.

“I wish I’d ‘ad children,” Planty comments. “I like children. Never ‘ad the time. Too busy buildin’ the business to find the right woman and, quite frankly, they ask too many questions. Of course, if yer business is legit, it ain’t a problem, but mine ain’t, as yer know.”

“How big is your empire?” I ask.

“A lot bigger since ‘arry took a dive, so to speak. The Royals ‘ave given up. Mike’s a nice guy, but nice guys don’t make leaders. Yer need people like ‘arry ‘n’ me to ‘ead up a gang. People who don’t give a shit, who’ll do whatever is in the best interests of the gang, whoever gets ‘urt. That is what ‘arry and I ‘ad in common. We are both ruthless. It must ‘ave come through the blood. Are you ruthless, Sis?”

“Not at all,” Chrissie replies.

“Not at all, eh?” Planty echoes. “Yer come out of care, yer become a partner in one of the biggest legal firms in the country, and ye’re not at all ruthless? Some’at don’t chime quite right to me. Face it, Sis, yer’ve got our blood. Ye’re as ruthless as the rest of us. Take Kathy. Everyone does. She looks like she’ll bend over backwards for owt, ‘n’ she does ‘n’ all, but she makes sure she gets exactly what she wants out of it. Martin tried to pin ‘er down, ‘n’ Martin got killed. It didn’t look like Kathy did it, but yer can bet yer life that it worked out exactly the way she planned it. Then ‘arry strong-arms ‘er into doin’ what she didn’t want to do, and ‘ey presto, ‘e’s a gonna too. It gets a bit past a coincidence, don’t it? Are you ‘ungry? I interrupted yer lunch, didn’t I? Do yer want some fish and chips – delicacy of the area?”

“That would be nice,” Chrissie says, so we get into Planty’s car and he drives us to the only fish and chip shop in Hull that merits his clientele. On the way out to his car, I notice that ours remains untouched. That’s power for you. And it’s true. You feel very well protected when Planty is looking after you, safety guaranteed by the meanest bastard in the valley. If anyone is going to hurt you, it is going to be him and no-one else. He always has this edge. Even when he appears friendly and almost pandering to you, you can sense this underlying buzz of energy like a sunken power cable. His solicitousness is like a trap laid over a pit. Take an ill-considered step and down you go, with Planty gloating over your troubles from upon high. I don’t know how I am going to spend a night in his house. If Chrissie really is his sister, perhaps we’re safe, and perhaps we’re not.

We get back to Planty’s house with our pack of hot fish and chips, and Planty is getting out some plates for us, when Chrissie’s mobile goes.

“Chrissie McGuire. Hello, Sam. What? You don’t know where they are? They were in the garden. Jack and Natty are missing too? Oh my God!”

Sweat has pricked its way out of me, and blood is thumping into my brain, lifting the hair off my head. I am praying that what Chrissie is saying is not what I am guessing, but of course it is. Chrissie spends twenty minutes talking to Sam, then Jerry, then Sam again. They decide to call the police urgently, which Jerry does while Sam continues to discuss the situation with Chrissie over the phone. Finally, and reluctantly, Chrissie cuts the line. She comes over to me and holds me, wailing loudly. Planty doesn’t appear to have understood the situation. “Come to the table yer two. Yer chips are getting cold.”

“Our children are missing,” I splutter.

“Oh yeah,” Planty replies. “I’ve been meanin’ to have a chat with yer about that.”

* * *

Chapter 21

We are to spend the night behind bars. Parts of Planty’s house are hyper-secure in terms of keeping people in, more so, as I know, than in keeping others out. No-one in their right minds is going to break into Planty’s house, except that we did of course. That must have rattled his cage.

Planty has our children, and Jack and Natty as well. He told us as if it were as normal as the fish and chips we were eating. “Don’t worry,” he assured us, “yer’ll get ‘em back in two weeks. Shall we say that it’s in my interests that parents across the country get to panickin’ about their children being kidnapped. That was ‘arry’s ruse, ‘n’ it were a clever ‘un at that. If yer want devilish plans, ‘e always ‘ad plenty up his sleeve, did our ‘arry. So there yer are, I ‘ave yer kids. I’ll keep ‘em for ten days, ‘n’ then I’ll ‘and ‘em back to yer. All right?”

“How do we know you will hand them back?” I asked.

“What else am I goin’ to do with ‘em?”

We weren’t going to answer that question. It is absurd to suggest that we would have been putting thoughts into his head by suggesting alternatives, but we weren’t going to put words to our fears.

“They’re me kid sister’s kids. I’m not goin’ to allow any ‘arm to come to ‘em, am I? I’m not that much of a bastard. That’s the sort of thing ‘arry would’ve done, but not me. Sit tight, do some ‘igh profile press conferences where yer do a lot of bawlin’ and make some ‘eart-rendin’ pleas to the kidnappers to ‘and ‘em back safely, ‘n’ that’s it. Don’t do nowt stupid, whatever yer do. I’m not nice when I’m provoked, I cannot deny that.”

After his confession, he seemed to want to have a normal evening’s discourse with us around a few glasses of wine, asking about our lives and telling us about his. He got increasingly frustrated that we weren’t up to sparkling conversation and carefree good humour.

Whether we wanted to hear it or not, he insisted on telling us about his life – how he had been brought up by his father after his mum walked out and then died, how they had moved to the North Bransholme Estate from the Midlands when he was seven, and how he had had to learn to survive in one of the roughest spots in the country.

“Yer don’t get many accountants or lawyers out of this place, nor billionaire entrepreneurs, nor doctors nor architects. What yer get out of ‘ere are shop assistants, ware’ouse packers, factory workers, drunks and layabouts, ‘n’ I weren’t goin’ to do any of that lot. The big career move around ‘ere is to become a wrong’un. Yer work for yersen, yer’ve flexible hours, ‘n’ yer’ve all the cash yer can lay yer ‘ands on. That was more the job for me. So I did me apprenticeship like, smashin’ shop windows where they weren’t caged in, shopliftin’, grabbin’ cash from tills when the shop assistant wasn’t lookin’, beatin’ up other kids, that sort of thing. ‘n’ I were good at it. The leader of the Inbies at the time were a guy called Leggitt, Michael Leggit. ‘e ‘ailed from a line of crooks as long as yer arm. It ran all through ‘is blood it did. ‘e started lookin’ out for me, gave me errands to run for ‘im, encouraged me to smash a few people up on ‘is be’alf, generally taught me the ropes. ‘e was all right, was old Leggit. I became one of ‘is sort of lieutenants. Then, all of a sudden like, ‘e died. ‘e got cancer of the stomach which wasn’t surprisin’ the amount ‘e ate and drank. ‘e was never fat like, but ‘e packed it away like a rhinoceros. So there was the question of who would take over from ‘im. Every bugger was expectin’ it to be Kneecaps Cartwright, but I decided differently. I decided it were goin’ to be me. I weren’t goin’ to wait for dead men’s shoes. That’s what true leadership is about, not fancy courses and empathisin’ with your staff; it’s about takin’ risks. So I up ‘n’ challenged Kneecaps to a duel – knives at dawn. ‘e didn’t like that idea and sent some of the gang round to put me in my place. I knew all these people, ‘n’ they weren’t really up for it. They reckoned that sooner or later I would become the boss, ‘n’ then I would reward ‘em or punish ‘em accordin’ to what they did that day. Too damn right. So they ‘ad a judgment call to make, didn’t they? Either they did me in once and for all, or they came over to me. I laid out their options bold as brass, ‘n’ they agreed. So we all marched round to Kneecaps’ house, pushed aside the couple of mates ‘e ‘ad round there at the time, ‘n’ beat the crap out of ‘im. ‘e was in the Infirmary for six months, ‘n’ that was before ‘ospital acquired infections that was. That was from genuine injuries – broken arms, broken legs, cracked skull, five broken fingers. ‘e got the message, as did all the other buggers, ‘n’ I became the boss, ‘n’ I’ve been the boss ever since. Nobody ‘as ever challenged me except that snivellin’ rat ‘arry Walker, me kid brother. So, sooner or later, ‘e would ‘ave to go if ‘e didn’t mend ‘is ways, wouldn’t ‘e? Ye’rve probably been askin’ yersens ‘ow I could’ve done what I did to me kid brother. Simple. I couldn’t afford not to. In this job, every bugger is watchin’ yer. If yer show a moment’s weakness, a moment’s ‘esitation, some daft bugger will be up ‘n’ contemplatin’ takin’ a pop at yer. I’m not goin’ to spend ‘alf me life dealin’ with people who’re after me job. I deal firmly but fairly with any trouble as it arises, ‘n’ every bugger stays where I put ‘em. I bet it is the same rule in a lawyers firm or an architects office, ain’t it, Sis.”

Chrissie took a breath. She had only been half listening. She was still in a state of shock about the children. She didn’t reply immediately, then she said “I don’t remember breaking anybody’s bones to become a partner, no Mr. Plant.”

“Yer can’t go around callin’ me ‘Mr. Plant’. I’m yer kid brother.”

“At this moment you are the kidnapper of my children,” Chrissie stated levelly.

“Yer’ll get ‘em back, yer know yer will.”

“Yes, but they aren’t here now.”

“Neah, that’s right.” He continued with his line of thought. “In a lawyers firm it is all words and ‘ushed conversations in toilets, or power breakfasts or plannin’ lunches, or dinner-time schmoozin’, gettin’ the right people on yer side to get yer promoted, but yer ‘ave to beat the competition just the same. When yer got yer partner job, some other bugger didn’t. Yer had to stamp all over ‘im or ‘er to get there. It’s the law of the world. It’s the law of the jungle. It ‘appens everywhere. Same with Keith ‘ere. Same with every bugger. Another glass of wine?”

After telling his story to the full, he insisted on listening to ours. I had to hand it to him, he proved himself to be a very good listener. Contrary to his own assessment, he really did empathise with his staff, and by now he definitely regarded us as being a temporary part of his crew, sort of national vocation trainees, there to learn from the old hand. He wanted to know everything about us, and especially about the care home.

“Yer see,” he said, “’arry never ‘ad any of that, ‘arry ‘n’ Kathy didn’t. No bugger took an interest in ‘em where they were dragged up. It was an ‘ard school, literally like. It was like ‘ere in Bransholme. Yer fought yer way to the top, ‘n’ yer didn’t fight fairly. ‘arry was a natural too. ‘e didn’t care who ‘e stepped on, not even his little sis. If givin’ Kathy to a few of the lads got ‘im where ‘e wanted to be, that was all right with ‘im. It did ‘im in in the end, of course, but yer can’t calculate that far forward. One step at a time, perhaps two. Yer two were lucky, reet lucky. I ‘ope yer appreciate it.”

“We had to work pretty hard too,” I protested. “It wasn’t that easy for us.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knockin’ yer achievements. I never knock achievements. Yer’ve done reet well for yersens, but ‘arry and Kathy didn’t ‘ave the advantages yer two ‘ad, you ‘ave to concede that. A place where the boss looks out for yer is very different from a place where the boss ‘n’ the staff are vicious buggers, even more vicious than the kids. In some ways, I ‘ad it more like yer. Leggit looked out for me. If it ‘adn’t been for ‘im, I wouldn’t be where I am, that’s for sure. I would be wastin’ my life in a packin’ shed somewhere, or fannyin’ around like Nobby and Sylvester ‘n’ that lot, spendin’ half my life be’ind bars. I wouldn’t ‘ave been the boss with twenty people workin’ for me, not countin’ the kids, ‘n’ all the cash I can think of. Don’t worry, it’s not what yer see ‘ere. It’s all stashed away for me retirement when I’ll go ‘n’ rest me bones in Spain or some’at. If I started surroundin’ mesen with me ill-gotten gains, bought mesen an ‘ouse ‘n’ a Roller, DI Martin would be around in no time tellin’ me to tone it down or to accompany ‘im to the cop shop. Yer can’t spit in the face of coppers like ‘im, not even me.”

When it got to ten o’clock, Planty decided it was time for bed. He lent us some new toothbrushes and was very insistent that we went to the toilet. We half-guessed why and, sure enough, it was because he intended to lock us into our room. Both of us immediately glanced over to the window which had been very professionally secured as well.

“Night, Sis. Night bro-in-law. See yer in the mornin’. Don’t let the bed-bugs bite yer.”

Chrissie and I whispered for a while, without coming to any conclusion as to what to do, and without making any progress at all, beyond the fact that Chrissie was now talking to me again, and had either temporarily forgotten my misdeeds or forgiven me. Only time would tell.

We fell asleep.

I woke up to a purposeful figure marching into the room, armed with a crowbar. “Get up, ‘arry, or I’ll whack yer one where yer are!” It was Planty. I began to twist my way out of bed and he whacked me anyway, right across the thigh. I screamed. He whacked me again. I fell on the floor. He grabbed me by the collar and dragged me out of the bedroom, across the landing to another room. To my horror I realised that he had a full torture chamber set up there. This was where he must have brought me before when I was Harry. He clasped handcuffs around my wrists and hauled me upright by the chains they were attached to. He took the crowbar and smashed me in the stomach. “Yer never bloody listen do yer, ‘arry. Never bloody listen.” He smashed my left leg with the crowbar, then the right leg, then the left leg again, and so on for several minutes. He had worked himself up into a frenzy of grievances against me. He wanted literally to reduce me to pulp. I was barely conscious when he exchanged the crowbar for a pair of pliers and switched his angle of attack. The pain was searing through me. He put the pliers down again, and with a little self-satisfied sigh he picked up a fret saw. I didn’t remember a fret saw from before. He came at me and he started sawing through my fingers, one after the other, showing me each one as he removed it. There was nothing I could do except to try to lose consciousness.

Instead, I woke up. I was covered in sweat, and Chrissie was holding me trying to calm me down. I looked at my hand and all the fingers were still there. My legs and arms were untouched. I had never left the room. Planty’s voice came through the door “Are yer all right in there, Keith? Yer must ‘ave been ‘avin’ a bit of a nightmare. I did try to warn yer about those bedbugs.”

* * *

Planty allows us out of our room at eight, and we follow him downstairs. We have been hearing food preparation clinks and crashes climbing the stairs for over half-an-hour, but we have not been expecting such a lavish display. Planty clearly takes his breakfasts seriously.

"Just the coffee to come. 'ope yer like it."

He has the side table ranged with aluminium dishes containing (separately) scrambled egg, fried eggs, bacon, sausages, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried bread. Across the middle of the dining table there are both chocolate and blackcurrant muffins, croissants and pain au chocolat, with butter, jam, marmalade and honey arranged around them. As a final dramatic flourish, there is an enormous bowl of assorted exotic fruit – kiwis, passion fruit, star fruit, mangoes and paw-paws. It is too early for him to have slipped out to Waitrose this morning. It doesn’t open until half-past-eight or nine. He must have bought them yesterday, which means that he already knew we were coming up to Hull and when to bump into us coming out of Queen’s Gardens. That had not been a coincidence. The only three people who could have tipped him off were DI Martin, Mike or Fran, and it was Fran who knew we were waiting at the Humber Crown Hotel. He couldn’t have realised in advance that we would be stopping there. I wonder what his Plan B had been to prevent us from leaving the area – something to do with Tommy perhaps?

Planty approaches Chrissie and kisses her on both cheeks, then formally shakes my hand. "This is to apologise for lockin’ yer in last night. Regrettable, but necessary. Tuck in!"

"Trevor," I exclaim. "This is amazing!" It sounds spontaneous and heartfelt even to me who knows it is neither of those things. I don't forgive false imprisonment easily.

"It is amazing," Chrissie echoes, and she is being honest, I can tell.

Planty looks secretly pleased with her appreciation. "I'm glad yer like it, Sis," he says.

Without our discussing it, I detect that Chrissie has decided to run a charm offensive. "Trevor," she says, "can you assure me that the children are safe?"

"They're in excellent 'ands."

"And they aren't too worried?"

"We've told 'em that they're on their way to meet yer on a surprise 'oliday, which is almost true, come to think on it."

"They must be a little concerned," Chrissie persists. "Can I talk to them to assure them that everything is okay?"

"I don't see why not," Planty concedes. "Before or after breakfast?"

"I'd enjoy my breakfast much more if I had spoken with the children first."

"Okay, no problem." Planty dials one set of numbers, waits, and dials a second set of numbers. "The call can’t be traced," he explains, "in case ye’re wonderin’."

Chrissie remains silent, demure and expectant.

"’ullo, Plant 'ere. Chrissie wants to talk to ‘er kids. Can yer put 'em on? Ta."

He passes the handset over to Chrissie. "Hello, Ella darling," she enthuses. "Are you enjoying our surprise? You don't know who these people are? They are friends of your new Uncle Trevor. Isn't that exciting? I have a brother I never knew existed until yesterday, and we want to go away and celebrate. Shouldn't you be at school? Yes, you should, darling, but family is more important than everything, and the school doesn't mind. They have given us three weeks off. You play with Uncle Trevor's friends for a few days, while we get to know Uncle Trevor better, then we'll all join up and go on holiday. Won't that be exciting? I have discovered a brother I never knew I had, and you have three weeks additional holiday. And Jack and Natty? Sam and Jerry suggested they could keep you company, and the school agreed. Sorry, it was all arranged in a bit of a rush. We'll do better next time I discover a new brother. Actually, Uncle Trevor says I have a new sister too, but I haven't met her yet."

She keeps up this gushing rigmarole with all four children for over forty minutes, during which time I notice Planty eyeing his breakfast first longingly, then frustratedly, and finally irritatedly. Nevertheless, when Chrissie comes off the phone he claps her and adds "Good work, Sis," before ushering her precipitately into starting her breakfast, launching in gluttonously right behind her. I have been assuming that the spread before us would defeat ten people but, in the end, it barely seems enough to satisfy Planty alone. How does a man eat so much and remain so slim? Is he bulimic, or does he have the nervous energy of a miniature power station?

Having stoked his boiler sufficiently to generate enough steam to hold a modest-length conversation, Planty continues "Yer know what I want from yer, don't yer? I want consternation, I want panic, I want every child in the country to be considered at risk. Yer could call it public safety broadcastin’.” He chuckles. “I need yer ‘n’ the other parents to get some key messages across. Fost, say that these are great, obedient kids – didn’t deserve anythin’ like this to ‘appen to ‘em. Two, yer should say that they were playin’ safely in the garden – yer thought there was nowt to fear. Three, ye’re terrified as to what the kidnappers’re doin’ to ‘em. Four, yer fear that yer will never see ‘em again. Then lots of bawlin’, ‘n’ the big appeal – if owt knows anythin’ about their whereabouts etc.. If yer can do that convincingly, yer’ll ‘ave yer kids back inside a couple of weeks, no sweat. They really are on their ‘olidays, yer know. I wish I ‘ad ‘ad their luck as a kid. I wouldn’t ‘ve missed me dad either.”

“Can we see them?” Chrissie asks.

“I don’t see ‘ow that works, Sis. ‘ow do yer get to see ‘em. Ye’re bein’ trailed by the coppers. It wouldn’t work. I would if I could for yer, Sis. Sorry. No-can-do.”

“And we’ll definitely get them back within two weeks.”

“Definitely, I swear on’t, so long as there is no monkey business from yer side. Pull a fast’un, ‘n’ the deal is off.”

“We will play it straight, Trevor.”

“Who knows, Sis, I may even cut yer in on the profits. That ‘arry, yer can say this about ‘im, ‘e ‘ad a devious mind on ‘im, that man.”

* * *

After breakfast, Planty suggests that it is time for us to head south to begin our work. The BMW is still intact, which is a miracle considering where it was parked. It even looks as if someone may have washed it, inside and out, which is a bit worrying.

Turning on the GPS (it is incredible that the windows weren’t smashed for that alone), we go through the centre of Hull again before tracking the river out past the hotel where Planty in effect kidnapped us, and away.

We are virtually silent for the first few minutes, but we get into our stride as we hit the motorway when I don’t need to think any more for thirty-three miles until the M18.

Chrissie is in quite a state which you would never have guessed from her behaviour in front of Planty. She is desperate to see the children. “They are really scared,” she says. “They didn’t believe a word that I told them, but they were so brave! How can you be that brave at the age of seven? Poor Mark, what has he gone through this year already?”

“So they know they have been kidnapped?”

“Yes, they knew, but at least I could talk to them. At least they know that I can reach them. That must be some comfort.”

I think that part of the trauma is also the suspicion that Planty may really be her brother. We still don’t know for sure, but Chrissie thinks that it is a real possibility, and maybe even a saving grace. “I know that he tortured and killed Harry without the least compulsion, and he was his brother, but knowing that he is dealing with his nephew and niece may at least restrain him a little should he plan anything drastic. If it is true about his being my brother, I think I can play on that a bit. It is the only thing we have.”

“What do you think about being his sister?”

“It’s scary, isn’t it? He’s scary, but he is also something of a little boy lost. He has family. He still has Kathy and Fran and Tommy, but he seemed to crave genuine, respectable family, like you and me. I think we’ll be okay. I hope to God we’ll be okay.”

“It’s weird that Harry was his brother.”

“It happens in families, I suppose. It even happens in my family.” She laughs unexpectedly at the warmth of having discovered kinsfolk after more than thirty years.

* * *

Chapter 22

Not only do we have to deal with our own anxieties, but we are confronted with Jerry’s and Sam’s full-on neuro-storm when we get back to Wokingham.

Chrissie tries really hard to assure them that everything will turn out all right if they do not panic, but they are all-out hysterical, and it is exhausting just to watch them hopping up and down, wailing and gnashing. I really feel like saying “For God’s sake, get a grip. It is really dangerous to react this way. You are firing off in all directions. Calm yourselves. Take some deep breaths. Take a breath. This needs planning, not a freaked-out middle-class war dance.”

They keep repeating “What will they do to them?”, and we keep answering “Nothing. They are not going to do anything to them.” Sam repeats “My babies, my babies, my babies,” while Jerry hangs his head low and ponders his children’s distress in their abandonment.

“Well, there is one thing,” Chrissie observes cynically when we are alone in the kitchen together. “If they keep this up, Planty will be ecstatic about how his key messages are being delivered. We had better get them in front of some cameras and a pack of marauding reporters fast.”

This is easily achieved as the police are as eager to get us broadcasting to the nation as Planty is. If only they knew the extent to which they are playing into his hands. After all, I know the game. I invented it with Kathy and Mike only a couple of months back. Will they never learn? No. The pressure on the police to be seen to be doing something is irresistible.

The police set up the press conference in the Madejski Hotel in Reading. We are met by a swirling throng of reporters shouting their questions over the top of each other, even though they will have their orderly turns within a few minutes. This is a feeding-frenzy story for them, with four young children kidnapped, leading to the enticing page-turning possibility of their murder and/or sexual abuse. They none of them spare our feelings. During the Q&A, they cut straight to the grizzliest and most gruesome possibilities. How distressed are they likely to be? Are they being looked after properly, do we think? Won’t they be missing their parents? Might they be molested? Might they be sold into slavery? Might they already be dead? What does it feel like to have the prospect of never seeing them again? At the end of all that lot, even Chrissie and I are sobbing and shrieking. Planty must be rubbing his hands together over another voluminous breakfast, unless those are put on exclusively for honoured guests.

We, the parents, are escorted from the conference room, comforted by police liaison officers, keeping our heads down. In the car park, we go our separate ways.

And then there is Agnes, who also insists on shredding our nerves. Confidentially, we allocate her an official wailing wall in the hallway where she can indulge in as much keening as she has a heart to do. She never uses it as we never actually inform her that it is there. Instead, she becomes a one-woman Greek chorus. Isn’t it horrific? Isn’t it sick? Can we guess what she would do to these people if she ever got hold of them? Poor little Ella! Poor little Mark! What will become of them? What will become of us? How will we fill the time while we wait for news? How can we bear it? Will we be able to cope? If there is anything we would like her to do …… (other than disturb us less, that is). It is sweet, and decent, and kind, and humane, but God does it unsettle us yet more than we are already. We have all these thoughts occupying our own heads without their being repeated out there in reality. The only consolation is that after a while we are forced to comfort Agnes, the two of us, and that serves to distract us, that and endless phone calls which are sometimes from our friends, but mostly from the press, so we disconnect the phone after a while.

In the end, we give Agnes a couple of days off to come to terms with her continuing ordeal. We do have to recognise that she has been caring for our children all these years every bit as much as we have. She is a pseudo-grandmother, and she is suffering a real grandmother’s distress.

Nadya, on the other hand, is a different matter. For all her studied motherliness, she is sniffing big bucks big-time. She wants to know how we can track the children down, so I call Mike. I catch him in first time and he says that he already knows where the children are being held. Fingers is keeping him informed. They are in a remote former-farm holiday cottage on the Hereford-Wales border. Mike counsels me urgently not to do anything stupid. Planty is not planning to hurt them. They’ll be champion if we just keep up what we’re doing. Planty is well-pleased, and we all know exactly why.

“Do you have the address of where the children are being held?”

“Yeah, I ‘ave the address when you need it.”

“That’s great. Thanks, Mike.”

“Don’t mention it. And next time you are in this neck of the woods, be sure to drop in, won’t you? Kathy and I were most ‘urt that you didn’t even try to see us.”

“You sound like a married couple, Mike.”

“You never know. We might yet get that way.”

* * *

And then events take a dramatic turn for the worse. The blow comes from Planty amid a flurry of blood-curdling oaths.

“What the fuck!” he starts, and he never really stops.

“What the fuck!”

“You crazy fucks.”

“I’m goin’ to fuckin’ kill yer.”

“I’m goin’ to brain yer fuckin’ kids.”

“I’m goin’ to tie belts around their fuckin’ necks and fuckin’ strangle ‘em.”

“I’m goin’ to drown ‘em in baths of boilin’ fuckin’ water. I’m goin’ to skin ‘em alive.”

“I’m goin’ to fuckin’ chop up yer kids, and then fuckin’ come after yer as well and rip yer fuckin’ tongues out.”

“Ye’re goin’ to be fuckin’ sorry for this.”

And I respond desperately and fatuously in equal measure.

“Calm down, Trevor!”

“Calm down, Trevor!”

“Calm down, Trevor!”

“Calm down, Trevor!”

“Calm down? I’m goin’ to fuckin’ kill yer fuckin’ kids, then when I’ve finished with ‘em, I’m going’ to fuckin’ kill yer. It’ll be slow, it’ll be painful, it’ll be my pleasure.”

“What has happened?”

“Yer know fuckin’ well what ‘as fuckin’ ‘appened.”

“No.”

Chrissie has walked into the room. She is visibly alarmed.

“Yer know fuckin’ well what ‘as fuckin’ ‘appened,” he repeats.

“What has happened?”

“Yer’ve given phoney piccies to the coppers. Yer’ve tried to do me in. Yer tryin’ to send me down. I’m going to fuckin’ kill yer, all of yer. No exceptions.”

Right.

“Our private detective took pictures of your guys casing the children’s school last week …..”

“They weren’t fuckin’ casin’ the fuckin’ school …..”

“So how comes she got pictures then?”

“They weren’t fuckin’ there. These piccies are soddin’ fakes. Yer’ve faked soddin’ piccies to send me down.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Well someone soddin’ ‘as.”

“They are pictures taken by our private detective ……”

“I’m going to fuckin’ kill ‘er as well. Cunt! ……”

“….which we gave to DI Martin before we met you.”

“…and yer didn’t think to fuckin’ tell me.”

“It didn’t come up.”

“It’s going to fuckin’ come up now – right up yer fuckin’ arse. Right, I’m goin’ to give the order now. Your kids are fuckin’ dead.” He slams the phone down.

“Quick,” I say to Chrissie. “Where’s Planty’s phone number. It’s an emergency!”

I have never seen Chrissie outright scared before. She is rushing and dithering and spinning round in circles.

“On your mobile,” I suggest.

“Oh yes.” She hands her mobile over to me, shaking so much that she drops it and we crash heads bending down to retrieve it.

I phone.

“Trevor ….”

“Too late, mate, I’ve given the order. Yer kids will be snuffin’ it about now. All four of ‘em. Do you want to listen to it ‘appenin’. I’ll get ‘em to call yer.” He slams down the phone again.

Our phone rings.

“Planty’s told us to wipe yer kids. ‘e says yer want to listen.”

“If you touch our kids, you cannot begin to guess what will happen to you. The devil may fry you in hell, but I’ll fry you first, and that is a solemn promise.”

Chrissie loses it entirely.

“What’s happening?”

“What’s happening?”

“What’s happening?”

“What’s happening?”

I hear Ella shriek in pain and terror. The phone goes dead again. I hit Last Number Recall. The number has been masked. I phone Plant. “Plant,” I declare, “I curse you to a thousand generations. I curse you to rot in hell. I curse you to hellfire eternal. I curse your body, your soul, your mind, your heart, your liver, your spleen …….”

He laughs. “Now yer’e talkin’ sense,” he says.

I pause.

He cuts off again.

“What’s happening?”

“They’re threatening to murder the children.” I tone down what they have really said.

“What???” Her mouth drops to her chest, and she hits the floor where she begins loud, inconsolable, breathless screaming. “Make it stop. Make it stop. Make it stop. Make them stop.”

Agnes hurries in. I am flailing. “Agnes, please quickly, take over with Chrissie. I have to make another call.” I run upstairs, dialling Mike as I go.

“Mike?”

“Mike. They’re threatening to kill the children. Planty has gone mad. I heard them torturing Ella. What can we do? Is there anything we can do?”

“’e’s not going to kill your kids, Keith. ‘e simply wouldn’t do that. They’re his family, ‘is nephew and ‘is niece. ‘is code of honour would never allow it. ‘e might come after you, but ‘e’ll never ‘arm them, ‘owever narked ‘e gets. ‘e can go completely psycho, ‘e offen does, but ‘e’ll never ‘arm them, I promise you.”

“I heard Ella squeal.”

“It was for show.”

“What can we do?”

“Give me five minutes.”

The longest five minutes ever.

* * *

He rings back. “Planty ‘as cancelled the order, but ‘e wants to see you. You personally. Alone. And ‘e wants you to approach ‘im with your knob in your mouth, and ‘e doesn’t mean doubled-up. You’d better accept, for now leastwise. It’s the best offer you’ll get.

* * *

Chapter 23

I have always thought that the line of “we never negotiate with terrorists” is a peculiarly empty and feeble one. What is there for me to negotiate with Planty? What have I to offer? I can do somersaults, and it will be irrelevant to what he decides to do with Ella and Mark and the other two children. He has the power to do anything he can persuade his guys to do. If his conscience does not intervene, nor will my special pleading.

Chrissie has taken to her bed. I think I can sense Jerry and Sam praying frantically over the ether. I don’t blame any of them. This is a hell of a situation, the worst possible.

Tomorrow night I will travel up to confront Planty. It will do me no good to grovel to him. The only hope is that he regards me as a worthy and honourable opponent. If I appear to be begging, he will ritualistically humiliate me and relish the exercise of his power. He will cut me to pieces physically and psychology. I really will end up with my penis in my mouth as he is demanding. He will get two of his men to hold me, he will rip my trousers down and he will slice it off and shove it in my mouth. I am sure that he has every intention of doing just that. I have twenty-four hours to prepare myself, either to thwart him or to make peace with my fate.

I go into the bedroom. Chrissie is actually asleep, or rather passed out. I kiss her, and she momentarily stirs, which I regret. I go straight to the shed where all my DIY equipment is stored. It takes me three hours to fashion a discreet weapon.

I phone Mike. “Can I stay at your place tomorrow night?”

“Me casa es su casa,” he replies.

I climb in beside Chrissie and fall asleep.

* * *

“Don’t concede anything until he has released the children,” Chrissie urges me.

“I won’t,” I promise.

“Wait until it is confirmed that the children are safe.”

“I will.”

“And darling, please, please look after yourself.”

That I cannot guarantee. “I will.”

It only takes me four and a half hours up to Hull – M1, M18, M62, A63. turn left towards the Infirmary, left, left and right.

Mike is waiting for me. Fran and Kathy are chatting in the kitchen. Tommy is drawing in the sitting room that Mike has opened up at long last. It is stacked full of boxes, filled with all the debris he shared with his wife while they were living together. Tommy has cleared himself a space. “Hello,” he greets me. “Are you Keith?” I hug him, a gesture which he does not resist.

Fran comes over and kisses me on the cheek – the Judas kiss. Kathy hesitates, then follows suit. I feel like the last knight of the roundtable with his sorry final act of valour still ahead of him.

“What time are you meeting Planty?” Mike enquires

“Ten.”

“Where?”

“The Market Place.”

“What do you expect to happen?” Fran asks.

“I haven’t a clue. It’s going to end up in a fight of some sort.”

“Men are pathetic,” Kathy comments. “Seriously, you should all be locked up. You’re all loco.”

“What would you rather I did?”

“Dunno. I would have to be a man to answer that,” Kathy replies.

“Are you all right?” This is from Fran.

“I don’t know what I am, Fran. I just know that I have to do whatever it is I will have to do.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

It was ten at night when I arrived, so we soon turn in. Fran and Tommy go home. I can hear Mike and Kathy creaking domestically in the bed as they settle themselves down.

* * *

I arrive in the Market Place at five to ten, accompanied by Mike, Fingers, and a couple of the others I barely know.

Planty and about ten of his crew approach from the old gateway.

Life ebbs around us, oblivious.

Planty steps forward. So do I.

“I don’t see yer knob in yer mouth,” Planty taunts me.

“I haven’t heard that the children have been released.”

“I never said they would be.”

“Release them now, then,” I suggest.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because the alternative is too horrible to contemplate for all of us. You’ve got what you want. Why prolong the agony?”

“I need to teach yer a lesson.”

“You are always teaching people lessons, Trevor. Isn’t it time you gave teaching a rest?”

“I can see that ye’re way out there in cuckoo land this morning, Keith.”

“Release the children, Trevor.”

“And if I do?”

“And if you do, we have peace. You can’t fight everyone forever.”

“I’m not fightin’ everyone, Keith. I’m dealin’ with yer for lyin’ and cheatin’ and generally fuckin’ me about. I need to teach yer some respect in front of the lads ‘ere. Are yer ready, lads?”

“We’re ready, Planty,” Nobby confirms.

“Drop yer trousers, Keith, and we’ll get it over ‘n’ done with. Show us that you can ‘andle at least some’at with dignity.”

“And you are calling kidnapping young kids dignified, are you, Trevor?”

“We ain’t come ‘ere to discuss owt with yer. We’ve come to do a job. Let us carry out yer punishment without a struggle and we’ll let the kids go. Come on, lads.”

Nobby comes at me first. He is about an arm’s length away from me when I slide the machete down from its sheath between my shoulder blades and slice his carotid artery in two. I step round him and slash at Planty’s head, slicing his ear off as he manages to pull his head away from me. As the others back off, I kick Planty’s legs from under him and stab him through the stomach. Planty is lying there, looking as startled as a chicken on a production line.

“Right, Plant,” I order. “Release the children.” As he hesitates, I cut him across the cheek. “Release my children.” I wave the machete at the other members of his gang. “Give him a phone.”

Somebody I don’t recognise runs forward, places a mobile in his right hand, and runs back to his place.

“You have five seconds, Plant,” I state blandly. “On the sixth I take you out. Okay?” I poke him in the groin with the machete.

I really don’t know what he will decide. He is not a man who is easily intimidated. He might order the children to be killed out of sheer cussedness.

“And don’t think I am not going to kill you,” I add. “Five, four, three, two …..” He begins to dial the number.

“If the children die,” I continue, “you will go to gaol for life. You may be sectioned as a child killer, or you may not. Either way, you are going to be trussed up for years and years and years, and every moment is going to be a living hell. Why would you throw everything away like that? Why would you decide to jump into the shit and drown there? What good would it do you, when you can simply walk away? You release the children, and that is the end of the matter.”

He watches me levelly, his hand shaking not from fear but from loss of blood and clinical shock. “’ullo,” he says. “Planty ‘ere. Kill ‘em!”

I wield the machete and slash it as hard as I can down the middle of his face. No-one steps anywhere near me to try to prevent me, not from either side. Two police cars screech up alongside me, and four policemen jump out. One relieves me of the machete, and leads me quietly away. A third police car arrives, and DI Martin gets out. He takes stock of Nobby lying dead on the pavement, and the bloody mess that is Trevor Plant. “Good news, Mr. McGuire,” he announces. “We’ve just heard that the children have been found safely wandering around Hereford town centre.”

Arthur Windballs approaches me. “Planty wasn’t really goin’ to do owt to yer, yer know,” he confides. “’e was only trying’ to scare yer.”

“He succeeded,” I retort.

* * *

Trevor Plant pulled through, more is the pity. Apparently he looks like Frankenstein’s monster with a deep scar down the middle of his face. They managed to stitch his ear back on again. We feared for a time that he would come after our children again, or even after us, but Mike assured us that he is a spent force. I had carved him up in front of the most important members of his gang. He had lost in single combat to a southern architect with no previous history of violence whatsoever (they didn’t know about the kick-boxing), thereby effectively resigning from the Inbies even as he was being carted off to Hull Royal. Mike tells me that the new boss, who was not present that day, is called Charlie Stone, and he doesn’t expect him to be bothering me.

I was prosecuted for carrying an offensive weapon and for breaching the peace, and received a suspended prison sentence and forty hours of community service as the result of a plea bargain. Adam loves that and has rewarded me with a significant promotion.

Chrissie hired a genealogical investigator to check her relationship with Planty, Harry and Kathy. There isn’t one. Planty is indeed Harry and Kathy’s brother, and there is, or was, a fourth sibling, called Christine. But she was Christine Norris with a different surname, birth place and birth date from my Chrissie.

Ella and Mark consider me to be the ultimate hero, taking on Goliath face-to-face, and ripping him to shreds. Chrissie seems to think much the same thing, and any impropriety on my side has been forgiven.

I feel like the last knight of the roundtable who has done what was required of him, and who is now utterly sick of war.

We have never really seen Jerry and Sam since the ordeal. We have other best friends now, Robert and Fiona, and our family life has closed ranks on the past and is in the process of recapturing its former serene beauty.

Mike came down to see us last weekend, with Kathy and Tommy, and we all had a great time. Fran couldn’t make it. She wasn’t feeling well, she said, but sent her love.

* * *

About the author - Tim Roux

Born near Hull in the UK in 1954, Tim was called to the Bar before working for over 20 years in business strategy and strategic brand marketing for a major multinational corporation.

With degrees in both law and social sciences/psychology, and having worked as a volunteer for Amnesty International for several years, he is fascinated by the complex issues surrounding personal rights (human, civil and animal), and much of his writing is centred on these themes.

Tim has a wife and two children, and lives between the UK, France and Belgium running Valley Strategies Ltd. which is a marketing strategy consultancy.

His books to date are:

Blood & Marriage (2007), or From Kingston-upon-Hull to the first genocide of the 20th century. Driving down the Mediterranean to inspect the family papers held by his cousin in Narbonne, David Lambert reviews his own troubled times against the backdrop of his family who fled Germany in the 1880s on pain of death for mutiny and desertion, to face genocide, espionage, bombs, bullets, tragic accidents, murderous designs and that curious fruit cordial Great-Grandma used to make. Classify under genealogy, or something.

[‘The End of the World Sextet’: Book 1]

Little Fingers! (2007), or How good can a killer get? Following her mother’s suicide, Julia Blackburn vows to understand her tragic life. She knows one person she must confront—Mary Knightly. She knows where to find her. She hasn’t a clue what she did. And she knows nothing about her mother’s rapist. Will she take revenge? Will she get away with it? At its heart, “Little Fingers!” asks the troubled question: who does the greater wrong—those who ruin many lives with impunity, or those who kill to stop them?

[‘The End of the World Sextet’: Book 2]

Girl on a Bar Stool (2007). Branding isn’t real life, or is it? When Adam Melton, the ambitious brand manager of Petrovsk Vodka went out on the town that night, he was hoping to pick up a beautiful girl and a few hints and tips from his target market, the vodka-swilling ladettes of Reading. Meeting the sultry Yasemin at the bar in one of his favourite haunts, he got all that he was hoping for, and ominously more. Now he has been condemned to save the world.

[‘The End of the World Sextet’: Book 3]

Shade + Shadows (2008), which is about Alan Harding, an alternative healer with a particularly unusual basis for his therapies, who marries the former wife of a controversial ambassador who survived an assassination attempt by Muslim terrorists. When his wife, Jane, is kidnapped as retribution for her husband’s crimes, everyone assumes that the kidnappers are referring to the ambassador’s activities. However, the good doctor has his own dark secrets . . . .

[‘The End of the World Sextet’: Book 4]

Fishing, for Christians (2008): “When the horror has stopped, when you have watched your beloved children being ripped limb from limb, when your friends have rotted before your eyes, when you yourself have crumbled into dust, snapping and cracking as you go, you will return to this earth as eternal beings in the flesh, your days will be endless, your joys countless, your love infinite. At least, that is the theory. I think that there are a few technical issues to sort out in the meantime. If I were an engineer or an accountant, I would promise you nothing at this point. If I were a salesman, I would promise you the earth. What do you want to hear?” (Testimony of the Archangel Michael).

[‘The End of the World Sextet’: Book 5]

The Ghoul Who Once (2009): Ghosts don’t just come back to haunt you. When the bones of a murdered girl are discovered in the garden of a French holiday home one at a time, the non-stop party-goers up at the nearby Château de

Freyrargues start to bet on which one will turn up next. However the stranger thing is that when her bones are forensically tested, they are found to contain no DNA whatsoever.

[‘The End of the World Sextet’: Book 6]

The Dance of the Pheasodile (2008): Keith and Chrissie McGuire are determined to create a perfect life for themselves and their two children, having been brought up in care homes themselves. Everything is going well: Chrissie is a partner in a London law firm, Keith is an up-and-coming London architect, and the children have all the toys they want. However, when they decide to visit a hypnotherapist to address some residual childhood issues, Keith emerges from his hypnotic trance as Harry Walker, a petty gangster soiling the streets of Hull, locked in deadly rivalry with “Planty”, a notorious Bransholme hard man.

The Blue Food Revolution (2009): She was a girl from an alpine village where she tried to murder her sister. He was a bank clerk from Reading whom her sister tried to murder. Theirs was a marriage made in heaven…..but would they ever meet?

(Just like) El Cid’s Bloomers (2010): Jake Pembleton is a Hull-born singer-songwriter who once killed a man. This doesn’t make him the East Riding folk-singing Yorkshire Ripper of CrackTown’s famous song, but it still plays on his conscience. Now he is in real trouble. Ever since returning home to his wife and kids to find his suitcases parked outside his front door, Jake has been holed up in that wild and lawless part of Hull known as ‘The Avenues’ with a springy nineteen year old groupie who is so sexy that she nearly gives him a heart attack each time she steps out of the shower. Jake’s only hopes are Harry, his wife’s new boyfriend who keeps her sane, and that he will never meet his Kirkella-dwelling parents-in-law again. Beyond that, he just sits there clutching his guitar, writing his songs, loving his girl, and praying for better days and relief from a day job he is too ashamed of to talk about.

Missio (2010): Stevie Francis lost his dad when the Hull trawler, The Gaul, disappeared without trace somewhere on or around 8 February 1974 while fishing in the Barents Sea. Its owners, British United Trawlers, had nicknamed it ‘the unsinkable’. Speculation at the time was that The Gaul had been captured or sunk by the Soviet navy because there was a British government spy on board, or that its fishing net had become entangled with a passing Soviet submarine, or that it had simply become overwhelmed by heavy seas.

The wreck of The Gaul was located in 1997 and the remains of four of its crew were retrieved in 2004. A more recent suggestion is that The Gaul suffered from significant design faults. Walking the rundown streets of his dockland

neighbourhood searching for his cat, Stevie meets The Great Macaroni, a children’s magician who spends his time trying to persuade his young audiences that his real magic is mere trickery. He teaches Stevie that nothing in this world is as it appears, that teaspoons can fly, and that the future is never set even if it has already happened. What he cannot tell him about are the two years of his life that Stevie will spend in absolute darkness.

Table of Contents

The Dance of the Pheasodile