Six
It was a while before Lilian felt able to do anything to help herself. Eventually she called DS Pamela Mitchell, the detective who had visited her in hospital, the one with whom she had finally logged her formal complaint against Kurt, and the only police officer she’d had any dealings with who had shown her any real understanding. She told Mitchell about her finances being cut off and the visit from the goons.
The DS was as sympathetic as previously. There was however little more she could do, she said.
‘Has your husband actually threatened you since the incident?’ she asked, glossing over the matter of the truncated credit cards with merely a vague reference to financial affairs between married couples being a matter for the civil courts.
Lilian sighed inwardly. He hadn’t threatened her, of course. Well, not in the way DS Mitchell meant, anyway. She ended the call.
The only direct approaches from Kurt during the last three weeks had been a succession of messages expressing undying love. It was impossible to explain to anyone, and certainly not a police officer, even a sympathetic one, just how threatening Lilian found those messages.
She had never before felt quite so desolate. Nor so alone. She had no family left worth mentioning. Few friends either. Not that she was in touch with, anyway. He had seen to that. Or to be fair, him and her pride. Her damned stupid pride.
She hadn’t told anybody what was happening in her marriage. Not even Kate, her oldest and most dependable friend. Kate still called occasionally. And Lilian continued to lie to her.
Kate had left two messages on her mobile while Lilian was fighting for her life in her hospital bed.
When well enough to reply Lilian had called back and told her that she and Kurt had been travelling together in a remote part of Africa where her phone hadn’t worked. Kate wanted to arrange lunch or a shopping expedition. Lilian had made excuses, as she had done so often before when in no fit state to meet anyone.
In the mirror on the far wall she caught a glimpse of a woman who was not only broken and bruised, but almost anorexic looking, with arms like sticks. The sleek, shoulder-length, reddish-blonde hair she had always considered one of her best points, freshly washed but unkempt, framed a painfully thin pale face, and haunted hazel eyes that seemed sunken in her flesh. Her abundance of freckles, which she now hated more than ever because Kurt had told her they were what had first attracted him to her, stood out starkly. She looked away quickly.
She hobbled into the kitchen and made tea and toast, which she forced herself to eat. From the kitchen window she could see right across Berkeley Square, a small green oasis in the heart of the West End. A beautiful morning was beginning, in sharp contrast to the grey chill of the previous day. Sunlight laced through the plane trees, almost in full leaf. Already, though it was not long after nine, the life of the small park was in full swing. A boy and a girl sat wrapped around each other on the grass beneath a cherry tree in full blossom. A black Labrador cocked its leg dangerously close to them. They remained oblivious. Two children were running circles around each other, engrossed in some incomprehensibly wonderful game. This was such a familiar scene.
But the black Range Rover still lurked, parked illegally again almost directly opposite the entrance to Penbourne Villas. Of course, if she ever attempted to park there she’d have a ticket slapped on her windscreen almost instantly. But these guys... these guys were different. Those they couldn’t bribe they would bully, she supposed. Pretty much like Kurt.
A man stepped out of the passenger side, leaned against the side of the car and lit a cigarette. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite see his face at first. Then he looked up. And she had a clear view of him.
She gasped, and stepped back into the room. It had seemed as if he was staring straight at her. She had recognized him at once. It was, without doubt, Kurt’s brother William. He was a little shorter that Kurt and more thick set, with a distinctive shock of prematurely white hair. The family good looks had passed him by. He was heavy featured and had suffered a badly broken nose at some stage in his life, which did not help. She had, in some ways, always found him even more intimidating than Kurt. Kurt was the acceptable face of the St John business activities. Except, perhaps, in his dealings with her. William, who rarely left South Africa, ran the more nefarious side, of which she knew little, but had become increasingly aware of since her marriage. Cautiously she moved forward and peeped out of the window for a second look. The man was no longer leaning against the Range Rover, which remained parked in the same place. But it had been William, she was sure of it. And that meant even bigger trouble for her.
She at once called DS Mitchell again.
‘Kurt’s brother is here,’ she began. ‘William controls what the family call “security”. He’s usually in Johannesburg. I dread to think what it might mean for him to have come over here and be watching me. He’s nothing but a thug, like the others. Only more powerful. They’re sitting outside in their vehicle. Right beneath the flat. Can’t you at least send somebody to make them go away?
‘They’re not breaking the law,’ said the detective sergeant.
‘Well, they are actually. They’re illegally parked.’
DS Mitchell chuckled.
‘All right, I’ll speak to Uniform,’ she said. ‘I just wish I could do more, Lilian. As you know, we are seeking to arrest your husband on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm. But until we can get to question Kurt, there’s very little we can do.’
‘And Kurt is safely in South Africa and will probably remain there until he and his lawyers have found a way of wriggling out of any charge at all. Which he will, by the way.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘Look Lilian, we are in touch with the South African authorities over this, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time...’
‘You don’t understand, Pam, do you? You really don’t understand. Time is a luxury I do not have.’
She ended the call then. It was hopeless. She felt as if she were going around in circles, just like those children outside in the square. Only this was no game. The law, she was well aware, was at best cumbersome. From the moment a police investigation began, right through to the conclusion of a trial in a court of law. Even if eventually it lumbered its way to a fair result, it rarely did so at speed. And that alone could have disastrous consequences for Lilian.
She wondered how long she had. What would Kurt and William do next? They weren’t the kind of men who did nothing. Just as she had told Pamela Mitchell, Kurt would have his lawyers on the case. If anyone could manipulate the law, it would be Kurt. And if anyone could strike even more fear in her heart than him, it was his brother.
She had told herself she was probably not in direct physical danger from Kurt. Not the way she had been. And, in any case, his attacks had always been provoked by aspects of his character which she sincerely hoped were no longer relevant in her life.
But the family goons had already been sent around to frighten her. They were not just outside in the street, but able to lurk in the corridors of Penbourne Villas, it seemed. And William St John, a man she believed capable of almost anything, and who she suspected rarely bothered even to pretend that he was operating inside the law, was with them.
She was trapped. Escape seemed impossible.
Seven
Vogel was woken by the shrill tone of his mobile at what seemed like the middle of the night. He checked the time as he answered it. It was actually five forty-five a.m. And the caller was Morag Docherty.
‘It’s Gill Quinn,’ said the PC breathlessly. ‘She’s trying to discharge herself from hospital, I don’t know what to do...’