The Vow (28 page)

As the lift doors closed behind them she turned to him pink faced and gasped, ‘Marcus, that wasn’t fair!’

‘
I don’t play fair. I should have thought you knew that by now. Don’t fuck with me, Lucy, you’ll always come off worse,’ he replied as he strode off towards his solicitor’s suite of offices.

She caught the satisfied smile on his face. Damn him, he always seemed to be able to get the better of her. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but then she saw the funny side of it. She was about to sign a pre-nuptial agreement with a man who touched up women in lifts!

Laughing, she ran after him calling out, ‘You’re a bastard, Delacroix!’

As she caught him up he took her hand, and with a smile nodded in agreement.

‘True. Do you still want to marry me?’

Between giggles, she told him,
‘Too bloody right I do, you’ve got loads of money.’

‘
That’s my girl. Well, let’s get this thing signed, then we’ll hit the shops and see how much of my money we can spend.’

‘
Hurrah!’

~

The Harp was packed and as Grant Pritchard walked through the door a wall of heat and noise hit him. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke and the smell of beer. It was Friday and those with a job were celebrating the end of the working week and payday. Those without had never needed an excuse to be down the boozer any night of the week.

People stood back respectfully to let him through as he made his way to his place at the bar, where no one else would have dared to stand on a Friday evening. He nodded, unsmiling, to the various greetings.
‘Evening, Mr Pritchard.’ ‘How you doing, Mr Pritchard?’ ‘Can I get you a drink, Mr Pritchard?’

By the time he and Frank, his ever-present sidekick, reached their stools the first drink of the night was waiting for them. Grant Pritchard had come to collect money, he never spent any. Frank produced the ledger book; its columns of neat figures spelling misery and little chance of escape for those whose names were listed there. For the next hour and a half the residents of the Turner estate turned up to pay their dues.

Pritchard was twenty-nine, and it was two years since he had inherited the reins of the family business, along with the assistance of the not very bright but suitably violent Frank, from his elder brother. Danny Pritchard had earned himself a fourteen-year stretch for attempted murder, handling stolen goods and living on immoral earnings.

Grant relied heavily upon the reputation of his brother, and his father before him, both of whom were feared and respected on the estate. He had a nasty streak, but he wasn’t in the same league as these two men who had never thought twice about the maimings and beatings they had ordered. It was all the same to them if their victims were young, old, infirm or pregnant. If you borrowed money you paid, one way or another. The Pritchard family had held the Turner estate in its sway for more than twenty years. No one quite remembered how it had all started, it was just how it was. You borrowed a few bob just to tide you over, missed a few repayments, which made the already sky-high rate of interest double, and you were locked in. You had to keep paying so you may as well keep borrowing. The debts followed you to the gr
ave and beyond as the Pritchards visited the sins of the fathers upon the sons.

The current head of this enterprising clan lacked not only his predecessors’ killer instincts but their physical presence too. Where they had been dark, well built and threatening, he was slight and fair with rather girlish good looks. He shaved his head in attempt to look harder, the scar across his chin helped even if it had be acquired falling off his bike as a kid, and he had the obligatory tattoos. But his heart wasn’t in it. The motley collection of men and women who lined up that evening to have their payments noted in the ledger, or to offer up their sorry excuses, would have been surprised to know that the feared and detested Mr Pritchard nursed a dream of a very different sort of life. A dream he thought he had no chance of realising. Until very recently.

Without the support of his redoubtable mother, Grant would never have got to college. When his uneducated bully of a father had heard that his youngest son wanted to be a chef he had ridiculed the sixteen-year-old unmercifully. Cooking was for women, or poofs, and certainly not an acceptable job for a son of his. Grant’s older brother had spent his time at Lewisham Comprehensive beating up the boys, and occasionally the teachers, impregnating as many of the girls as possible and had left without passing a single exam. His father was proud of him and considered Danny to be a chip off the old block. Why Grant came straight home from school to do his homework and always had his nose stuck in a book was a mystery to him.

It was not so to Irene Pritchard who had a pretty good idea why Grant was so different. Brought low by a nasty dose of the flu her husband had packed her off for a fortnight in Benidorm with his sister Pat for company. Pat was a lush and a tart who rarely made it back to their room before dawn, if at all, and remained blissfully unaware of her sister-in-law’s fling with the English manager of the hotel where they were staying. When nine months later Irene gave birth to her second son she was fairly sure he was not a Pritchard.

If “Black” Jack Pritchard had a weakness it was for his wife whom he adored and could refuse nothing and when she continued to insist that Grant should have his chance he finally gave in. So Grant went to Catering College and on to a series of jobs which slowly moved him up the hierarchy of the professional kitchen. It was a happy time for him, and if his father took no interest in his career, at least his mother was proud of him.

During those years Danny helped expand the family’s interests in loan-sharking, protection and prostitution. He served two short prison sentences, indulged in mindless violence and earned himself a fearsome reputation. When two heart attacks in quick succession left Jack a shadow of his former self Danny stepped into his shoes, and without the more cautious influence of the older man soon got out of his depth.

As he awaited trial, it was made very clear that if he went down then the family would be looking to Grant to protect their interests during his absence.

In court to see his brother led from the dock, shouting and swearing, to begin a fourteen-year sentence, he knew the judge had taken the same number of years away from him too.

Just after ten o’clock Grant and Frank drained their glasses and set off for Bridge Street to check their stable of tarts were all on parade. The atmosphere in the pub lightened considerably as the door closed behind them.

Rounding the corner of the side street where they were parked they stopped in their tracks and Frank asked his boss,

‘Who the fuck does he think he is?’

An enormous black man was leaning nonchalantly against the red BMW.

Grant stepped forward and asked belligerently,

‘
You gotta problem, nigger?’

‘
No,’ responded Saule calmly. ‘But you have, Mr Pritchard. You’re walking in shit and you’re wearing the wrong shoes.’

Lucy was later tha
n usual arriving at her workshop. Tired from the travelling and hard negotiations of the German deal, Marcus had decided to spend an extra night in the peace and quiet of Graylings. It was just after ten when he dropped her in Camden and she found Zoë waiting for her in the corridor looking very agitated.

‘
There you are at last! I need to talk to you,’ she said with the air of someone who had big news to impart.

‘
Is something wrong?’ Lucy asked anxiously.

‘
No, something is very right!’

Lucy unlocked the door and they went into the workshop, stuffy from having been shut up through the weekend. Dropping her overnight bag in the corner and opening the window she demanded,
‘So tell me then, what’s happened?’

‘
Has Marcus paid the money to Mr Pritchard yet?’

‘
Err, I’m not sure. He hasn’t said, but you don’t need to worry Zoë, he will.’

‘
Well, that’s just it, he may not need to,’ Zoë said excitedly. ‘Grant Pritchard disappeared Friday night!’

‘
What!’ exclaimed Lucy. ‘How do you mean, disappeared?’

‘
It’s all round the estate,’ said a gleeful Zoë. ‘Apparently Pritchard and that thug he sent to see me were ambushed as they left the pub where he collects money on a Friday night. Frank, that’s the thug, was beaten unconscious and serves him right too! Anyway, he was found in the gutter at closing time but there was no sign of Pritchard, or the book where all the debts are recorded. His car was still there, parked where he’d left it, but he’s not been seen since.’

Lucy had a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

‘So what do you think has happened to him?’ she asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

‘
Well, they’re saying he might have upset the wrong person. The Pritchard family move in some pretty dodgy circles. Frank says there were four or five of them but he didn’t recognise anyone ‘cos it all happened so fast. It could be a turf war. With old man Pritchard dead not so long ago, and Grant’s brother inside, perhaps someone’s decided to move in on their action. Everyone’s waiting to see who, if anyone, turns up with the accounts book. I really hope Marcus hasn’t paid yet ’cos there’s an outside chance that book has gone in the mincer or the river along with Grant.’

Lucy was starting to feel slightly faint
. Leaning against her workbench she managed to ask, ‘So they think he’s been…’

‘
Bumped off,’ Zoë confirmed. ‘That’s what everyone’s hoping anyway.’

As soon as Zoë left, Lucy called for a taxi and then dialled Marcus’s private line hoping he had by now reached his office. He was surprised to hear from her so soon but she cut him short.

‘Marcus, I need to talk to you. Now. I’ve called a cab and I’ll be there in about forty minutes.’

She disconnected before he could make any reply.

~

She swept into his office like a ship in full sail and he had to hide his amusement. Leaning back in his chair, he said mildly,
‘As delightful as it is to see you again so soon, Lucy, I have had to postpone a meeting.’

Normally he would have gone ahead with the meeting and left her to wait, but he could guess what this was all about.

‘I don’t care about that Marcus, this is far more important,’ she told him impatiently. ‘Did you have that man killed?’

‘
Which man would that be?’ he enquired obtusely.

‘
Don’t play games with me! You know full well I mean Grant Pritchard. He has suddenly disappeared without trace. His thuggy friend Frank says they were ambushed by a gang of men and now everyone thinks Pritchard is at the bottom of the river or has been minced up!’

‘
Calm down and take a seat,’ he told her, looking unperturbed by this outburst.

Lucy sat down heavily in a chair across the desk from him and waited.

‘Lucy, I am a businessman not a gangster. I find solutions to problems. I do not have people murdered.’

‘
But you do know what has happened, don’t you?’

‘
I do,’ he agreed. ‘And although it’s exactly what people are supposed to think, I can assure you no one is at the bottom of the river, or minced up.’

‘
Someone was beaten unconscious though,’ she said accusingly.

‘
You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs. Anyway this was the man who threatened to break your friend’s fingers.’

‘
True,’ she admitted. ‘So are you going to tell me what happened or is this another of those things I don’t need to concern myself about?’

He smiled.

‘Mr Pritchard didn’t turn out to be quite the man we thought he was.’

Saule’s legwork and Clive Yates’s enquiries with his former police colleagues soon gave them something to work with. Pritchard had a long-term girlfriend stashed away on the other side of
London who was unknown to his family and associates. A sweet and pretty young midwife she was increasingly unhappy about Grant’s involvement with the family firm. He had earned much less as a chef, but he had been happy and she had been able to talk with pride about his advancing career. Now he was moody, short-tempered and their relationship was suffering.

Claire was deeply ashamed that he earned money from loan-sharking and prostitution and lied to her friends and family when they asked how he was doing. She didn’t think she could go on like this for much longer. She understood that he was trapped but there had to be a way out; with her qualifications and his experience they could go anywhere in the country and start a new life surely? But Grant told her it was impossible; when Danny got out of prison he would not rest until he had hunted them down and Grant would pay the price of deserting the family. His only chance of escape was when his brother was free to take over again but that would be at least another five years and Claire wasn’t sure she could wait that long. When all of this was reported back to Marcus he decided that her plans for a new life needed a helping hand.

Falling at a time when Frank was out on some nefarious errand, Pritchard was disinclined to let his visitors in so Saule kicked down the door. This, along with the size and threatening demeanour of the two men, focused Grant’s attention beautifully and for the next ten minutes he listened in silence to what they had to say. He would never understand their motives but he had no fault to find with their plan, and given that the alternative laid out for him involved a similar sort of punishment he could expect from his brother, arrangements were made.

Frank was big but out of condition and slow; no match for Saule. Had time not been an issue the middle-aged thug’s suffering would have been protracted and considerable but there was a tight timetable that night. Saule took his man down with a flying kick to the throat and a flurry of punishing blows left the somewhat ineffectual bodyguard unconscious and bleeding before he had time to throw a punch. A final vicious kick which ruptured his spleen was dealt in the name of Zoë, who Saule rather liked. Pritchard watched his henchman’s beating with a satisfied smile and when, within minutes
, Yates pulled into the side street, he began the journey to meet Claire at the airport without a backward glance.

By the early hours of the next morning they were over the Atlantic on their way to start a new life in
Canada. Meanwhile Saule quietly ransacked the fleeing man’s home taking the laptop computer with its comprehensive business records and leaving the safe wide open and empty. Marcus took the large amount of cash that Pritchard had purposely allowed to build up over his last few days in exchange for the funds he wired ahead to the newly opened bank account in Toronto. The couple’s entry into Canada, work permits, credit ratings and a rented apartment had all been arranged through a mixture of favours owed and IOU’s given.

As Marcus related as much of these events as he felt she needed to know Lucy sat in wide eyed wonder. When he came to an end she asked,
‘Aren’t you worried about the police? Surely they will be investigating Pritchard’s disappearance?’

‘
I’m reliably informed any investigation will be low key. There’s no body, no real evidence and frankly they will be glad to see the back of him. From what you say, Frank has been very helpful in muddying the water by saying there were several attackers. Doubtless he doesn’t want it said that he failed to protect his employer from a single man. Not good for his future job prospects.’

‘
What about the book with all the debts in?’

Marcus opened a desk drawer and pulled out a hard covered ledger book.

‘I thought you might like the pleasure of putting it through the shredder.’

He didn’t mention that Saule had been through it, page by page, on the off chance it contained anything of use to Marcus.

‘So all of those people have had their debts wiped out? They’re all free now?’

‘
For a while, yes. It won’t be long before someone new moves in on the Turner estate, and people being what they are they will start borrowing again. In a year or two’s time most of them will be back where they started. But hopefully not Lyndsey.’

Lucy sat for a moment looking at the book on the desk in front of her. Then finally she looked up at him and said quietly,
‘I don’t know what to say, Marcus.’

Smiling at the serious expression on her face, he told her,
‘Thank you will do just fine.’

‘
That’s not what I meant. I accused you of having him murdered. I’m sorry, Marcus.’

She sounded very remorseful and given he had been unmoved by the accusation he
decided not to make her suffer.

‘
You may like to consider the possibility of my not being quite as black as you are apt to paint me.’

As he showed her out she paused at the door and turning to face him asked,
‘What would you have done if Pritchard hadn’t wanted to disappear?’

‘
Found another solution.’

‘
Would you ever have just paid him the money?’

‘
No, Lucy, I would not have deemed that to be a solution.’

It was the reply she had been expecting.

~

As Marcus left his office to chair the delayed board meeting, Angela called to him,
‘Mr Delacroix, I have a Mrs Jenny Blake on the line, she says you would know her better as Jenny Wren. Will you take the call?’

Marcus stopped in his tracks, turned on his heel and went back to his office shutting the door firmly behind him. He sat back down at his desk, paused for a moment a deep frown on his face, and then picked up the phone.

‘Good morning, Jenny, what can I do for you?’ His tone was even.

‘
Marcus? Oh good, I was afraid you wouldn’t take my call and I do need to talk to you. There’s a journalist, Martin Culver’s his name, he’s becoming a bit of a nuisance. He wants to talk to me about the Marquis de Sade club. I’ve told him I have nothing to say but he keeps ringing my office and last night my home. He says he knows something about…’

‘
Jenny, I don’t think we should discuss this on the phone,’ Marcus interrupted. ‘Why don’t you come to my office this afternoon? Are you in London? I can send a car for you.’

‘
No, that’s not necessary, thanks. I know where your building is, would three-thirty suit you?’ she replied.

On his way out again Marcus told Angela,
‘Mrs Blake will be here at three-thirty, I want you to be waiting in reception and bring her straight up. Clear my diary for the rest of the day.’

After fifteen years Angela knew her boss well, and didn’t much care for the look on his face.

~

Looking out of the window, he had his back to her when she came into the room. He turned, his face devoid of expression and said,
‘Hello, Jenny, it’s been a long time.’

‘
Twenty-three years to be exact,’ she replied smiling. ‘The years have been kind to you, Marcus.’

‘
You too.’

It was true. In her early forties now she
remained reed slim, the red hair still abundant and untouched by grey, the beautiful face barely lined. He had forgotten how beautiful she was. His eyes went instinctively to her throat. The scar, like a fine silver chain, was barely visible.

They did not kiss or touch in any way. He indicated the least uncomfortable of the chairs and she sat down crossing her long slim legs. He took a seat opposite her and waited.

‘It struck me on the way over that you might think I’m here to cause trouble or ask for money, something like that,’ she began. His expression did not change and she burst out laughing. ‘Obviously you do! Let me assure you, that’s not at all the case. I want this stamped on hard and fast. I’m in business too, public relations, it may not be quite in your league but I’ve worked bloody hard at it over the years and it’s a success. This sort of publicity would do me no good at all. More importantly though, I have a husband and two teenage kids, and I really don’t want them finding out what I used to do for kicks when I was young. I don’t understand what’s going on, how this little creep Culver has got hold of all this, and why now?’