In the fourteen years since then the business, had expanded beyond recognition. It employed nearly sixty people and Roger made sure everyone who worked in his company were well paid, and enjoyed the benefits of private healthcare and a subsidised canteen. The company even had a small crèche. And no so-called management fast trackers telling his highly experienced engineers how to do their job.
Roger liked to think he set a good example. He gave to charity, was a regular blood donor and involved in helping out with several local community projects. He kept himself fit at the gym. He’d liked to have become a vegetarian but couldn’t quite manage it so ate as little meat as possible.
The success of the business meant in 2006, Roger had been able to purchase a beautiful five-bedroom luxury detached house with almost an acre of garden at 36 Fieldview Lane in Cherrywood, the swankiest part of town. It cost £295,000. With the added extension and improvements he made, it was valued close to £850,000.
The day they moved in, their only child, Julie, was nine and the new neighbourhood meant she attended a new school. It was there she met Sarah Parks whose father was a solicitor with his own practice.
The two girls hit it off right away and had remained best friends ever since. In turn, the parents of both girls gradually became friends.
But Roger had his faults.
A year after Wendy Northgate become his PA, the pair were working late one night to finish a contract bid that need to be finalised. Wendy lent across Roger’s desk facing him. As he looked up he couldn’t help but notice the top two buttons of her blouse were undone and her exquisite cleavage was on display. She caught him peeking and in a sexy voice he’d never heard her use before, said, “They’re very sensitive to a man’s touch.”
Two minutes later, all the paperwork had been scattered and she was lying across his desk, the pair frantically going at it like rabbits.
Wendy loved to talk dirty. During their affair, it was the thing that turned him on. She would walk into his office and say things like “I want you to fuck my brains out” or “I’m not wearing any knickers today.”
The affair lasted for two years until Wendy found a boyfriend and she and Roger agreed it was for the best to end things.
The only other time was three years later, when Wendy had been married for just over a year and her husband was eight days into a two-week training course in Canada for his new job. Just before it was time to go home for the day, Wendy walked into Roger’s office and said in the sexy voice he remembered so well, “Steve’s not back for another five days and I’m bloody gagging for it.” Roger couldn’t resist.
Since then, over the past seven years, it had returned to a normal boss and PA relationship.
Despite his liaison with Wendy, it hurt him when his wife was unfaithful and moved out to live with someone else. Roger’s young daughter decided to stay with her dad, and that was the turning point that made him realise he spent too much time working and not enough time with his family. He loved his wife. The fling with Wendy had just been about sex.
Maybe his wife wouldn’t have gone off if he had spent more time at home. But he was trying to secure their financial future during a time of recession where it was touch and go if his business would survive. Luckily his hard work had paid off, and now it was highly successful. Nowadays, most of his customers were large well-established companies and needed the services he offered more than he needed them.
Chapter Four
KEVIN O’CONNOR
The headline of the Trentbridge Times read ‘Schoolteacher in Car Park Coma Attack Dies’.
When he saw it, Kevin O’Connor knew it meant trouble.
The incident happened outside the Five Bells pub nearly three months earlier. Kevin had hit the man over the head from behind with an iron bar.
He hadn’t meant to hit him so hard. And the brutal kicking he and his two sons, Lennox and Tyson, had given the man as he lay unconscious on the ground didn’t help matters.
For a while, it seemed the man would regain consciousness and make a recovery of sorts, but recently he had taken a turn for the worse, and now he was dead.
There was a witness sitting in his car who had seen the entire event and called the ambulance and police but had then driven off. However, the police had tracked him down through the 999 call he made and he gave a statement describing the three assailants. Detective Inspector Eden Gold who had been heading up the enquiry interviewed Kevin at the time but as the victim had looked set to recover and there was only one witness prepared to come forward, the Crown Prosecution Service had decided there wasn’t enough to be certain of a conviction in court.
However, even in the current flawed justice system murder was seen as a top priority case and the police now upgraded it to a murder enquiry. They would come back to question Kevin again as they had done at the time of the incident. The extra resources required in such a case would be made available in the hope of obtaining a conviction.
Maybe it was a good time to go back to Ireland for a few months until things had blown over? Although he and his family had lived in Trentbridge for the past twelve years, he still had property back home.
The last thing he needed was the police sniffing around again. He had a large drug shipment due in shortly, and was aware from his contact inside the local police station the drug squad looked into his
