The Debt Read online

  The Debt

  Natalie Edwards

  Copyright © 2020 by Natalie Edwards

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Alex & Zachary

  Contents

  Leicester

  From The Leicester Herald, September 1978

  From The Evening Review, March 1993

  1. Southbank

  2. Edgware

  3. Golders Green

  4. Leicestershire

  From The Daily Bugle, April 1981

  From Here! Magazine, September 1990

  From The Examiner, June 1993

  From Dolly’s Dark Disclosures, August 1993

  From Luxe Living Magazine (US Edition), July 1995

  5. Highgate

  6. Edgware

  7. Highgate

  8. Leicester

  9. Highgate

  10. Edgware

  11. Notting Hill

  12. Soho

  13. Tufnell Park

  14. Holland Park

  15. Vauxhall

  16. Notting Hill

  17. Oxford

  18. Bankside

  19. St Luke’s Hospital, Islington

  20. Clapham

  21. St Luke’s Hospital, Islington

  22. Soho

  23. Edgware

  24. Earl’s Court

  25. Herne Hill

  26. Silvertown

  27. Newham

  28. Holland Park

  29. Notting Hill

  From The Bracknell Star & Echo, November 1996

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Leicester

  1976

  The first thing he smelled was grass - wet grass, fresh and earthy. Not around him but nearby, somewhere.

  The next thing he smelled was himself: stale alcohol, and vomit, and something even ranker and more acrid besides. Eyes closed against the sunlight he could feel even through the pink gauze of his eyelids, he reached a hand down to his trousers, feeling thighs, then groin, then arse through the worn fabric, and his fears were confirmed. He’d shat himself again. Slept in it too, most likely.

  The ground under him was hard and unyielding. Concrete, he thought. Damp concrete, watered with the sweat and piss that had no doubt seeped out of him overnight.

  There was something propping him up from behind - keeping his top half upright even as his legs flopped out in front of him, limp and crumpled as a pile of old laundry. He groped at his back with a moist hand, and felt the knots and grains of old wood on his fingers.

  A doorway. He’d fallen asleep in a doorway.

  He concentrated, trying to summon up some recollection of whatever had led him there the night before, but there was nothing, no there there, no sense-impression or narrative trajectory where memory should have been, just a ribbon of blankness, stretching from the ride on the bus he’d taken yesterday to stock up on cream sherry at the Co-op to the second that he’d woken, cold and shaking and stinking like a public toilet - not on his kitchen floor or draped over the porcelain rim of his bathtub, but outside, in the world, his humiliation on display for anyone and everyone who might walk past to see.

  He didn’t want to know where he’d ended up, where his body had steered him while his mind was absent. But he knew he ought to know - if only so he could begin to understand what he might have done, and who might have seen him do it.

  He opened his eyes, squinting to protect himself from the unwanted morning sun.

  Straight ahead were gravestones - old ones, grey slabs and crosses furry with moss, the grass around them wild and overgrown. Behind them was a path, curving down a slope to an old stone wall.

  A churchyard, then. Making the door behind him, he deduced, the entrance to the church itself.

  He looked down at himself, at his splayed body. His trousers were muddy, a new tear exposing the fishbelly-white skin of his left knee. There was vomit on the hems; a telltale dark stain around the crotch. One of his shoes was missing.

  With great effort, he turned his head.

  There was someone next to him - another person in the doorway. A woman.

  She was propped up in a sitting position, just as he was, her face turned away from him and covered by a veil of bottle-blonde hair. Her black skirt was short, very short, riding all the way up to the top of her legs; her breasts barely contained by a red tube top. The boots were the real giveaway - high and spiky, the patent leather covering most of her pale calf.

  What had he done? Gone into town, picked up a working girl and taken her to a cemetery, then got so drunk with her afterwards that the both of them had passed out?

  He scanned her body, hunting for clues. It took him a few seconds to see the bruises; a few more to understand what he was seeing.

  They ran all the way along her neck - a scattering of purple welts and blue-black thumbprints that reminded him, to his horror, of a china pattern. There were more on her legs, more again on the thin flesh of her upper arms.

  He inched across the doorway towards her, a primitive part of his brain already knowing what he’d find. When he was close enough, he reached out to her, brushing back her hair to touch her cheek with the back of his hand.

  She was cold.

  From The Leicester Herald, September 1978

  Churchyard Strangler Jailed For Life

  George Young, known as the Churchyard Strangler, has been sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey for the murder of Tessa Gardener.

  The judge, Mr Justice Penny, imposed a minimum sentence of 25 years, describing Young, an unemployed factory worker from Wells Court, Loughborough, as “a grave danger to the public.”

  The jury returned a unanimous verdict on one count of murder and a related count of sexual assault.

  Mother of one Miss Gardener, 37, who was working as a prostitute at the time of her death, had been beaten and strangled, her body left in the graveyard of St. Matthew’s Church in Leicester city centre.

  Young, who denied all charges, cried as the verdict was announced, while women’s rights campaigners were heard cheering from outside the court.

  An alcoholic with a history of violence and a previous conviction for assault, Young, 48, was caught by police at a Dover ferry port while trying to flee for Calais. His ex-wife Amanda, a nurse, was not in court, but in an interview with the Herald told reporters that she “wasn’t surprised” to learn about his involvement in the murder.

  “He was brutal to me while we were married,” she said. “I always said he’d end up killing someone.”

  Detective Superintendent Martin Sanderson, of Leicestershire Police, termed Young “vicious” and “remorseless.”

  “I am extremely happy that Young has been convicted of this horrifying crime,” he added.

  He said there was no evidence at this stage to link Young to other unsolved murders in the East Midlands region, but would be in contact with other forces across the country to “see if we can connect any dots.”

  From The Evening Review, March 1993

  Greenwich Arson Attack: Mother & Daughter Killed In House Fire Identified

  A mother and daughter who died in a suspected arson attack at a property in South East London have been named by police.

  Unemployed Heidi Simpson, 31, and her daughter Jade Simpson, 5, were pronounced dead at the scene of the blaze at their home in Greenwich last week.

  Police, fire and ambulance crews attended their address in St John’s Mews around 2.30am on Thursday morning.

  A postmortem conducted on Monday established smoke inhalat
ion as the cause of death of both mother and daughter.

  No suspects have been named, but police identified arson as the cause of the fire. A murder investigation is underway.

  Detective Chief Inspector Laurel Duncan said: “We have reason to believe that the fire was started deliberately and are treating it as an arson attack.

  We are working around the clock to understand the series of events leading up to the starting of the fire. Our thoughts are with the family of Heidi and Jade at this time.”

  DCI Duncan appealed to anyone who may have been in the area of St John’s Mews in the early hours of Thursday to come forward.

  If you have any information, please contact the incident room number on 0171 333 4872 quoting Operation Hornet.

  Chapter 1

  Southbank

  1996

  The cafe at the National Film Theatre was quietest on a Tuesday afternoon - the preserve of elderly couples, students and cinema historians, their heads buried in academic texts on soundtrack, mise-en-scène and the glory of the edit. El had chosen it for precisely this reason. In an environment like this, she was sure, neither she nor the guest she’d be entertaining would be recognised. The NFT’s just wasn’t that kind of audience.

  She arrived at twelve minutes past the hour, late by design. He was tucked away in a corner, stirring sugar into a teacup. Had anyone around him been paying him any attention at all, his college tie and pinstripe jacket would have marked him out as a banker at 100 feet.

  He stood up, clumsily, as she approached his table, knocking the spoon against the cup with a metallic clatter. When she failed to greet him, he flustered, his bewilderment playing out in uppercase across his wide red face.

  “Alison?” he asked, uncertainly.

  El nodded, firm but curt.

  “Bernard Croft,” he said, extending a hand towards her. She ignored it, leaving it hanging in the air between them, and lowered herself into the seat opposite his, crossing one leg crisply over the other through the confines of her skirt.

  “This isn’t how I do things, Mr Croft,” she said eventually.

  She’d pitched the voice just right - layering the haughty south-east vowels with boardroom impatience and just a hint of chiding matron. He quaked.

  “I know,” he said, “and I’m so sorry, Alison. Ms Miller. You must believe me - this isn’t how I’d normally go about things either.”

  He looked down at his tea nervously.

  “I’m not used to being... summoned,” she said. “Especially not by secretaries whom I imagine would struggle to spell the word ‘discretion.’”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Croft again. “That was Ailsa. She’s new. She just assumed you’d come to the office. Everyone does.”

  “I’m not everyone, Mr Croft.”

  “No. No. I realise that.”

  “Notwithstanding this summoning,” she continued, spitting out the word, “I don’t take on new clients cold. I work on an introduction-only basis. And to the best of my knowledge, we don’t have a single soul in common. I don’t even know how you came to hear of me.”

  His face reddened further, the lines of his lips drawn down in embarrassment. No, she thought; more than embarrassment. Shame. He was ashamed.

  “I... overheard,” he said slowly, the admission seeming to cause him physical pain. “At the theatre. The Donmar. Hedda Gabler, you know? With the wife. She loves Ibsen, can’t get enough.”

  “You overheard?”

  She thought she might have overplayed her hand on that last phrase; come off just a little too Lady Bracknell. Fortunately, it seemed the tone was lost on him.

  “The people in front of us,” he said, staccato with mortification. “They were talking. About you. How you’d... helped them.”

  “I see.”

  “We tracked them down. At the interval.”

  “And they gave you my name.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he answered anyway, sending a rapid-fire bullet spray of self-justification flying at her from across the table.

  “Just your name,” he said. “And the phone number, obviously. But only when Judy pushed, really pushed them for it. I tried to get her to tone it down, to leave those poor women alone, but she can be something of a steamroller when she has a mind to, and with Jonathan’s exams coming up in May...”

  “Jonathan,” said El. “Your son?”

  “Yes,” he said, breathing out. “My son. He’s 17. At City of London, just across the way.”

  He gestured vaguely to the glass separating the cafe from the Southbank and beyond it, the river.

  “17,” she said, appearing to give the number some thought. “Sitting A Levels this year?”

  He nodded, relaxing another inch, evidently hoping this revelation would help steer the conversation in the necessary direction.

  “He’s a good boy,” he said. “Very sporty, always has been. Hockey captain, rugby first XV. Eight tries last season.”

  She stared expressionlessly back at him, impassive in the face of Jonathan’s athletic accomplishments.

  “He just… isn’t much of a bookworm,” Croft finished weakly.

  She left him hanging half a minute longer before picking up the thread.

  “And so you called me,” she said.

  “Yes. I thought you might be able to… help. With his exams.”

  Inside, a part of her smiled, satisfied. It was so much easier when they begged; when you didn’t even have to try.

  “Help, Mr Croft?” she said.

  He was burning up now, the tips of his ears and the bridge of his nose catching fire with humiliation at the request he was steeling himself to make. He loosened his tie; turned the thick rose gold circle on his ring finger back and forth with his thumb.

  The shame surprised her, given his chosen profession and the level of success he’d manage to achieve in it. Maybe, she thought, the papers were right, and he really was the last honest man left in the City.

  Or had been, until now.

  “He’s failing everything,” said Croft bluntly. “Ds and Es in all his subjects.”

  “I see,” she said.

  “Judy’s spoken to the school, and they’ve not pushed him to apply for university. But I’m a Peterhouse man, and Judy was at Girton, so we always assumed…”

  “That he’d go to Cambridge.”

  “Yes,” he said. He sounded small, broken; the antithesis of the confident industry titan she’d seen sparring with Jon Snow on the six o’clock news.

  She reached into her shoulder bag; made a show of retrieving a leather-bound notebook and a heavy blue fountain pen. She placed both on the table, but made no move to write. Not yet.

  “Before we take this discussion any further,” she said, “I need to be absolutely certain that we’re on the same page, and that you’re clear on - and of course I’m speaking hypothetically - how I might support Jonathan’s academic performance this term. How I might be able to ease him through the admissions process. I’d hate for there to be any misunderstanding between us.”

  He looked furtively from side to side, once over his shoulder, then leaned in conspiratorially towards her. If this was his best crack at guile, she thought, it was probably for the best that she kept her own accounts offshore, safe in the hands of the genuinely unscrupulous.

  “The ladies at the Donmar said,” he whispered, “that you got them papers. Exam papers. I’d hoped - that is, Judy and I were hoping - that you could do the same for us. For Jonathan.”

  And there it was; he’d said it. He’d made his move. He sat back in his chair, relieved but deflated.

  She allowed herself an outward smile now, though not so broad that it might crack the foundation layered across the muscles of her mouth, and imagined how she must look to him: serpentine, calculating. Weighing up the risks of exposing herself to him against the rewards offered by his deep, deep pockets.

  She steepled her fingers together, thoughtfully.

  “It’s possible,” sh
e said, “that I might be able to help you.”

  The answer sank into him, and gratitude leaked out in response, trickling down from his forehead to his lips. He beamed back at her.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you. I can’t tell you…”

  A high-pitched trill chirruped from her handbag, stopping him in his tracks. She held up a finger and reached down again below the table, reentering his line of sight with a mobile phone clamped to her ear. There was, of course, no call; nobody on the other end of the line. But it never hurt to seem in demand.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly, one hand covering the bottom of the phone, “I really must take this.”

  He nodded, reaching reflexively out to brush his fingers against the right breast pocket of his jacket where, she imagined, his own phone was stashed.

  “Of course,” he said. “Can I get you a…?”

  He nodded towards the elaborate silver coffee machine at the counter; the line of glistening pastries in the glass case below it.

  She shook her head, rose to her feet and took off purposefully towards the bathroom without a glance back at Croft - bag over her shoulder, the dead weight of the phone still clasped against one side of her face.

  Keep them waiting, she thought. Always leave them wanting more.