Charity Read online

  ‘You know I don’t have it yet,’ Toby said haughtily. ‘What are you going to do about it? Go to the police?’

  He felt smug; the little shit couldn’t do a thing to him, he didn’t know why he’d worried in the first place.

  Weasel hadn’t had much of an education, he could only just about read, but he was respected as being fearless and shrewd. Burglary had been his game until recently. He could strip a bedroom while the occupants slept on.

  ‘Disposing’ of people had started only two years ago, when he was asked to stage an accident for a man whose wife had grown tired of him. She was well away at her sister’s, and the wiring in their thatched cottage was ancient. All it took was smearing an already overloaded electrical point with some white spirit after the man had staggered home from the pub witlessly drunk and plugged in a kettle with no safety cutout. He then let himself out the front door. The next morning he read in the papers that the cottage had burnt to the ground due to an electrical fault. She got the insurance, a widow’s pension and her freedom – and Weasel got three thousand pounds for a two-minute job.

  But the colonel was different. It was all very well Toby telling him he was sick in the head as well as being a cripple. But actually creeping up to the man while he was snoring, strapping him down, then holding a pillow over his face, that was just a bit too personal. He’d taken so long to die too. Bucking and heaving like a rhinoceros on heat.

  Weasel wanted out. To put as many miles as possible between himself and Toby Stratton.

  ‘Don’t come it with me,’ Weasel snapped back. ‘For one thing you can’t do nothing to me without landing yourself in the shit. For another just remember I’m the bloke who makes “accidents” happen.’

  ‘There’s no need to talk like that.’ Toby used an aggrieved tone, but Weasel’s veiled threat frightened him.

  ‘I ’appen to know you’ve got a deal coming up.’ Weasel’s eyes narrowed. ‘You can pay me out of that.’

  Toby’s gut contracted with fear. He couldn’t imagine how Weasel had found out about his sideline. Sweat was popping out all over him; he touched his upper lip and found it was wet.

  ‘Put the money in the account, soon’s the job’s done,’ Weasel said and got up from the trolley, his bright eyes cold and knowing. ‘Or else.’

  Toby had to agree.

  ‘You promise you won’t contact me again?’

  ‘I’ve got no interest in you once I get the bread.’ Weasel looked Toby up and down with a sneer. ‘For all yer fancy school, yer looks and family estate, you’re a maggot, Stratton. Lowest of the low.’

  He had disappeared into a crowd of people before Toby could think of a reply.

  George Bayliss had never been one to stay in bed after seven in the morning. He normally jumped out, went down to his indoor pool and swam thirty lengths, showered and shaved, ate his breakfast and was out of his house in Essex by eight-thirty at the latest. But today George had no desire to get up. He was thinking about Dorothy.

  She had everything he ever wanted in a woman: looks, brains, sensuality, and above all she was honest.

  He doubted most men would agree with that but they were just fooling themselves. Dorothy laid her cards on the table at the outset, and if they couldn’t read them, they were fools. So she wanted rich men! Well that was honest. What woman actually planned to get a poor one? She traded her body, her company for a few comforts, but he would bet she never told anyone she loved them when she didn’t!

  He had driven Dorothy back to her friend’s flat after a long lunch. They had talked easily, as if they’d known each other for years. He felt no need to try and impress her, she seemed comfortable enough with him just being himself.

  Outside the flat she turned to him and kissed his cheek.

  ‘I hope we can be lovers,’ she said, without any coyness. ‘I like you more than any man I’ve met for years and we’d be good for one another.’

  For once he was lost for words. Her words mirrored his own thoughts, though he wouldn’t have dared voice them. He sensed she meant after Charity was better and when Dorothy was in command of her own life again. He liked her even more because she wouldn’t embark on an affair while her friend was in so much trouble.

  George was forty-eight, he’d married young and lived to regret it. Since his divorce a few years ago he’d never wanted a permanent woman in his life, but Dorothy was the kind of woman he’d make an exception for.

  ‘Ring me when you’re ready,’ was all he could say and as he drove away he felt like a dog with three tails.

  He felt he knew Charity now from what Dorothy had told him. A woman who had guts and compassion, and had been driven by a fierce love for her family to make it in the hard world of business.

  Getting information on Toby Stratton had been his brief, and he’d already accomplished that, but what Dorothy wanted – enough evidence to hand to the police – was more difficult. He had never been an informer and he wasn’t going to start now, but there was nothing in the code he lived by to say he couldn’t trip a man up.

  George got up and stretched. He had a couple of good contacts in Hamburg. It shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange a double-cross with Toby Stratton right in the firing line.

  ‘What are we going to talk about this afternoon?’ Rob asked Charity.

  ‘Can’t we talk about you for a change?’ she countered. ‘I’m a fraud, I don’t need to be in this place any longer.’

  ‘Charity, you are in here just until your body’s mended. As I see it, you are still in pain when you walk and there’s plaster on your arm.’

  ‘Yes but mentally I’m OK now. Aren’t I?’

  ‘You are the best judge of that,’ Rob said.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘When my patients start wanting to escape it usually means my work’s over.’

  ‘I don’t like the thought of not seeing you,’ she said in a small voice.

  ‘You can still see me when you get home if you want to,’ Rob said quietly. ‘I don’t cut off my patients until they’re ready.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I depend on you,’ she blurted out.

  Rob remained silent, as he always did when he wanted her to explain herself. But she couldn’t explain it, everything was mixed up in her head. Telling him about the escort agency and Ted Parsloe had been tougher than she’d expected. Rob and she had had many sessions discussing her father and she’d found those difficult, but at least she didn’t feel responsible. But having sex for money was cold-blooded and calculating; however she looked at it, it stayed the same.

  How could they just be social friends when he knew all this about her? But she couldn’t continue to see a psychiatrist when it was no longer necessary.

  ‘You depend on me for what?’ he said. ‘I don’t bring you food, help you dress.’

  ‘You know,’ she said stubbornly.

  ‘That you’ll be alone again?’

  Rob did know exactly what she meant. He felt it too. He had never put himself in a position where he wanted to hang on to a patient before, and this time he hadn’t got the right answers to give her.

  ‘Yes, and no,’ she said shaking her head in frustration. ‘I’ve got friends, I’m not scared of being alone in my flat. I just can’t imagine not having you around.’

  She had dreamed last night that she was making love with Rob. It was one of those vivid dreams that stayed long after she woke. In normal circumstances if she had such a dream about a man, she’d go out with him and see what happened.

  But these weren’t normal circumstances. Rob was her doctor … and wasn’t she just influenced because both Dorothy and Rita had suggested he was in love with her? All her life she’d been looking and hoping for the big love affair that would last. What if she was only building up a kind of fantasy around Rob? After all, she knew so little about him.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ Rob said. ‘Remember how
I once told you to use the words “I feel”. Let’s try that once again.’

  ‘I feel …’ Charity paused, unable to say anything.

  ‘What?’ Rob raised one eyebrow. ‘Happy, sad, gloomy, tense, angry?’

  ‘Frustrated,’ she said defiantly, hoping to get a reaction. ‘I feel frustrated.’

  ‘Physically, mentally, or sexually?’ he said.

  ‘All of them.’

  ‘Well the first and last are understandable.’ Rob smiled. ‘With a bad back and a broken arm, it’s hard to jump a fence, run a mile, and the last requires an imaginative lover and you’ve had few male visitors. So in what way are you mentally frustrated?’

  ‘Because you only talk about me! I want to know about you.’

  Rob leaned forward in his chair. He knew he was losing the battle to remain detached.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  Charity looked at him. She knew she was better and she had this terrible desire to be naughty and shocking. Rob’s face was getting more and more desirable. She kept looking at his lips, wanting to trace her finger round the shape, to hold that square chin and ruffle his already untidy hair.

  ‘What you kiss like.’

  He didn’t say a word, just those speckly eyes looking right into hers. His hand reached out and took hers, and lifted it to his lips.

  A delicious sensation ran down her spine as he kissed the tips of her fingers.

  ‘It’s too soon to even think about going down that path,’ he said softly.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Toby leaned on the rail of the cross-channel ferry watching white foam curl back as the bows cut through the inky water.

  It was pitch dark, not even the moon visible. Sea and sky merged into one sweep of blackness giving the impression that they were motionless despite the wind whipping back his hair and the noise of the engines.

  Adrenalin and a snort of amphetamine sulphate had kept fear at bay on the long drive down through Germany, Belgium and France. But in front of him, as yet unseen, was Dover.

  ‘Nothing to it,’ he whispered. Raucous laughter wafted up from the bar below, reminding him that he was just one of dozens of men who would walk through the customs within the hour.

  He turned away from the rail, opening his jacket to shield a cigarette as he lit it. Dragging deeply on it he looked towards the stern of the ship, noting faint pinpricks of lights from other vessels.

  There was no one else on deck despite the warm, balmy air. Earlier there had been a couple of students up here; he had smelt the pungent cannabis they were smoking and sensed they too were nervous about the approaching customs. But they had gone now, mingling with all those lorry drivers who stood five deep at the bar, drinking with the camaraderie of men who anticipated the end of a long trip away from home.

  In the past Toby had scorned these jovial, nomadic men with their beer bellies, grubby clothes and the smell of sweat and diesel that clung to them. But just now he almost wished he was one of them. They at least had wives and girlfriends anxiously waiting for their return.

  Just remember it’s the last time, he thought, sighing deeply as he dropped the cigarette butt over the rail. You don’t have to go through this again.

  Conscience was a concept he hadn’t understood until recently. He’d felt no guilt at arranging his uncle’s death; after all, the man had manipulated him since he was a small boy. Nor did he trouble himself about the ethics of drug running. Even when he heard that Charity had been discharged from the nursing home he’d seen it only as the perfect excuse to ask for compassionate leave; there had been no real relief that she was well again. But as he drove away from Hamburg guilt prickled at him like the strapping on his chest, and for the first time ever he felt ashamed of what he was.

  Even the knowledge that he would inherit somewhere in the region of two hundred thousand pounds after the death duties, that Studley Priory and its contents were probably worth as much again, didn’t make up for the emptiness inside him. For some strange reason he kept thinking of all those other Pennycuicks, his grandfather and his great-grandfather who had put family honour before everything.

  The lights of Dover appeared. Silver threads reflected in the black water. Within minutes he’d see the white cliffs, that symbol of hope and glory for all those countless soldiers who’d fought in France in both world wars. Yet here he was approaching them with only greed in his heart and blood on his hands.

  Toby sniffed, swiped angrily at a stray tear. It had been something of a shock to find he actually minded not getting letters from his sisters. Girls, drink, and his fellow officers filled some of the emptiness, but not all of it. He felt now as he did when he was first sent away to school: isolated and unwanted.

  He could see Dover clearly now, the cliffs looming up behind the town, the bright lights of the harbour reflecting off the chalk. Just half an hour or so, and it would be over. He would drive up as far as Canterbury, then find a hotel for the night.

  Toby leapt out of his green MG Midget on the customs bay, reached into the back for his holdall and the plastic bag containing his duty-free bottle of whisky and cigarettes and nonchalantly strolled into the customs room.

  It was quieter than he’d ever seen it before, but then his car had been one of the first few off the ferry. A group of long-haired student types with backpacks who’d been larking about on the boat were subdued as they filed through, and he idly wondered if they were carrying something too.

  A young couple were in front of him, the woman carrying a sleeping toddler in her arms while her husband struggled with two huge suitcases. Behind him the doors swung open again and a group of chattering French teenagers broke the silence.

  One of the customs men waved through the young couple without so much as a cursory glance at their luggage, but another one was zealously raking through one of the students’ rucksacks.

  ‘Is this your only bag, sir?’ The officer who had let the young couple go beckoned him over and unzipped the bag the second Toby put it down on the counter.

  The man had a polished, bland face and his eyes looked right into Toby’s with that penetrating look that suggested he had X-ray vision.

  ‘Yes, only home on a forty-eight-hour pass.’ Toby had a strong desire to scratch his chest and hoped that wasn’t really sweat forming on his upper lip, but he didn’t dare lift a hand to check it.

  The man went right down to the bottom of the bag, even checking his leather toiletries case. Then he zipped it up again and smiled.

  ‘Have a good leave, sir,’ he said and turned to the next person.

  Another customs man was checking his car as he got back outside, but as Toby walked up he closed the door and waved him to drive on.

  It wasn’t until Toby was out of the town, driving up the steep hill by Dover Castle that he dared relax and reach for his cigarettes. The cool breeze coming through the open window was soothing, the road ahead of him was clear and at last he felt exhilarated rather than fearful.

  Switching on his cassette recorder, he punched a Pink Floyd tape in. It made him smile as the track ‘Money’ was the first to blast out and he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music. He wouldn’t do any more trips again, whatever inducements he was offered. By tomorrow he would be free of Weasel and debt. His life was just taking off.

  The strapping was itching like crazy under his shirt, but he always kept it on until the moment of delivery, for safety. The road was deserted and very dark, he put his headlights on full beam and stepped on the accelerator.

  His mind was on Studley. On his next leave he could invite a few friends down, show off all the treasures, discuss his plans to convert it into a country club. He could almost smell the roses in the Italian garden, feel the sun on his bare chest. So the police were still sniffing around. Maybe they’d never give up entirely, but as long as he kept his nose clean from now on, there was no way they could touch him.

  He was about halfway to Canterbury. As he spun r
ound a sharp bend, he saw a white car ahead stopped in the middle of the road. He stepped on the brake, and just as he swerved to avoid it he saw a girl in a white dress waving her arms at him.

  ‘Shit,’ he exclaimed, indignant that anyone should leave a car in such a perilous position. There was no choice but to stop; no one could cruise past, leaving her alone on such a dark, deserted stretch of road without at least enquiring what was wrong.

  The girl ran towards him. ‘Thank goodness you stopped,’ she said breathlessly as he opened his window. ‘I was afraid I’d be here all night. I’ve broken down and I don’t know what to do.’

  She was the sort of girl few men would avoid offering assistance to. Long, dark hair cascaded over tanned, bare shoulders, and she had big soulful eyes and a wide, luscious mouth. She was well spoken, perhaps in her mid-twenties, and as she leaned closer he could smell Apple Blossom perfume that evoked an old girlfriend.

  The only light came from his headlights; high hedges lined both sides of the road. Another car came up behind them and veered round them, shooting off into the distance, reminding Toby he must at least push her car in closer to the hedge.

  ‘You’ve got petrol in it, I assume?’ Toby asked as he got out to look. Girls never seemed to think of this.

  ‘Yes I put some in before I left Dover,’ she said. ‘Do you know anything about cars?’

  ‘A bit,’ he said, opening his own boot and taking out a torch. ‘It might be the plugs. Have you got a rag for me to clean them on?’

  She was even prettier closer up, and as she bent into her car he noticed she had a tight little bottom and good legs. All at once he hoped he couldn’t get it going. Maybe he could give her a lift into Canterbury!

  ‘This is terrible,’ she said, looking at him as if she might cry. ‘What will I do if it won’t go? There’s no garages open at this time of night.’

  Toby took the duster she offered him and opened the bonnet. He cleaned the plugs and fiddled around with everything else, shining his torch around as if he knew what he was doing.