girls — but strict budgeting ensured she survived.
She had known Wayne Massey for a while. He had gone out with Linda, a short tempestuous relationship that ended acrimoniously when she accused him, justly, of stealing cash from her.
From the sidelines, Laura secretly fancied him. He was a known drug dealer in the city, a hard man, even though he was only twenty-three, and he possessed a mysterious, dangerous aura that fascinated Laura, even though it went against her sense of sanity.
It was on a girlie night out with Linda and others that she bumped into Massey in a club where, it was rumoured, he controlled the drug trade.
He had a stand-up squabble with Linda over their failed relationship and she flounced off, carrying her high heels. But Massey caught Laura’s eye and the bottle of champagne he sent over fuelled a feeling of naughtiness. She had just broken up with her own feckless boyfriend and was on the lookout for a physical encounter just for the hell of it.
The champers got them chatting. And at three that morning they were fucking like there was no tomorrow in her flat by the river. It was the beginning of an intense relationship for Laura, who found herself inexplicably obsessed by Massey and the way he threw himself around the city like he owned it. Pretty soon she thought she was in love, as he seemed to offer excitement she had never before experienced.
Despite a stark warning from Linda — ‘He’s a dangerous, unpredictable fuckwit and knocks about with dangerous people and he’ll screw every penny out of you’ — Laura was certain that once she got her hooks into him, she could change and mould him.
When Massey disappeared for a couple of days once without contacting her, she became worried, but he returned haggard-looking on the doorstep. He refused to tell her where he’d been, but did promise her he had not cheated on her, all she needed to hear. He screwed her dispassionately that day, a cold, clinical fuck, and just once she caught him looking at her in a way she did not quite understand. But it was only a fleeting glance, a moment of uncertainty, before they climaxed together.
Post coitus, she lay tucked into him, her head on his chest, her hand holding him gently, willing him to become hard again.
‘Babe?’ he said.
‘Yes, what is it?’
‘Yeah, look, I need to borrow some money. I hope that’s OK.’
‘From me? I don’t have anything.’
He chortled. ‘I need a few grand to tide me over.’
‘What for?’
‘Just a bit overstretched.’ It was a complete understatement.
‘I haven’t got that sort of money. You know that.’
He took her hand from him and pushed her away as he sat up. He took hold of her chin in the V of his right hand, where his thumb and forefinger connected. ‘Don’t fucking lie.’
She jerked herself away. ‘I’m not lying.’
‘Honey — some very bad men think I did the dirty on them, y’know, short changed them. If I don’t pay back, I’m going to suffer.’ She blinked. ‘And I know you’ve got money in a building society account.’
‘You’ve been through my things,’ she accused him.
‘Yeah — and you’ve got three big ones stashed away. I need it.’
‘Honey, it’s my money. I’ve been saving it for years.’
‘Do you want me to get my head kicked in?’
‘No, but…’
‘Then trot down to the building society and draw it out.’ His voice softened. ‘I’ll pay you back, you know I will.’
Laura was now sitting on the edge of the bed, her mind tortured, but knowing she would do as asked. She withdrew the money later and handed him the cash.
‘I need it back,’ she said.
‘Trust me,’ he said, reassuringly.
The money was never mentioned and their love life returned to normal, until that morning three days ago. The day on which he would die.
Massey had been out the previous night, without Laura, having returned very drunk to her flat at 3 a.m. He stumbled into bed and slept with his mouth agape, snoring horribly, ensuring that Laura got no sleep for the remaining hours in bed.
When he returned to bed from vomiting, she had touched him and asked if he was OK. He had just uttered the words, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ when she heard the first crash at the door. A massive smashing sound that initially puzzled her. It was followed by another.
Massey, however, seemed to know exactly what was happening. He screamed an obscenity, fell to his knees by the bed, forced his hand between the mattress and bedstead, frantically searching for something.
In the short hallway there was another crash.
‘What’s going on?’ Laura demanded. By this time she was on her feet, wide eyed, terrified, the duvet clasped around her.
‘Where is it, where is it?’ he chuntered, his voice rising, his right hand still groping under the mattress.
‘What’s going on, what are you after?’
Massey extracted a snub-nosed revolver from its hiding place, spun around with it as the bedroom door was kicked off its hinges and two men, followed by a third, burst into the room. The first pair were carrying baseball bats and as Massey swung the gun towards them, shouting something incomprehensible, they were on him. A bat smashed down on his wrist and the gun dropped from his fingers. The second man kicked it out of reach and the third stepped forward as Laura watched the spectacle, horrified.
This man carried a semi-automatic pistol and as the first two men hauled the cowering Massey to his feet between them, the weapon was ground into Massey’s cheek, and the man’s face leered into Massey’s.
‘Time to face the music,’ said the man she later identified to Henry as Tom James.
The story had been told falteringly, with certain parts omitted, to Henry Christie in the living room of Tom James’s house in the snowbound village of Kendleton in north Lancashire. Tom himself was handcuffed in the office across the hallway, watched by Steve Flynn, whilst Henry listened to the tale behind a closed door.
‘You’re sure it was Tom James? The guy in there?’
She nodded. ‘I didn’t know his name, or who he was, but that is him. Yeah, he got Wayne to get dressed and then the other two men walked him out between them, and that’s the last I saw of him.’
‘Three days ago?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you contact the police?’
Laura dropped her eyes. ‘I was too frightened. I knew this was a gangland thing.’
Henry ruminated a moment. ‘What brought you here?’
‘I did make some enquiries,’ she said defiantly. ‘I asked questions of the people I’d seen Wayne with in the clubs. No one wanted to say much, really, but a guy eventually told me that Wayne was selling drugs for a guy called Jack Vincent. Then someone else told me the rumour was that Wayne had skimmed loads of money and drugs from a deal and that this Vincent guy was after his blood. He was in serious trouble. I think that’s why he borrowed from me, to pay Vincent back, so I can’t understand why Vincent kidnapped him. Surely he must have paid him with my money, otherwise…’ A dawn of realization crossed Laura’s young, innocent face. ‘Unless he blew it, and didn’t pay them off, otherwise why would they have…?’ she said. All Henry could think was, you poor deluded woman. Men like Wayne Massey have self-destruct buttons where money is concerned.
Henry doubted two things. First that she would ever see her money again, that was long gone. Second that she would see Massey again.
‘I heard something else, too,’ she said meekly. Henry waited. ‘That Jack Vincent owns a leopard or mountain lion or something — and he feeds people to it.’
Henry stared at her, his initial disbelief replaced by a shiver running down his spine as he recalled the ghostly shape behind the fencing on the hill and the effect it had on Roger, the German shepherd dog. He laughed it off. ‘Sounds rubbish that,’ he said, but his voice didn’t even convince himself.
