Vengeance Page 8
Chapter 8
It was six o'clock in the evening a week later. MacAllister was in his office sorting out the hated paperwork when Jackie Ward put her head around the door and waved a copy of the local evening paper at him.
“Seen this Guv?” She drew the paper back from his reaching hand. “No you don't. That's how I got it.”
She opened it up and sorted out the page she was looking for. She read it in silence for a few minutes and then folded it up and put back it in her bag and smiled at him.
“Jackie, are you extracting the piss?”
“No, Guv, I am just refreshing my memory. Martin Andrew Jenson. Ring a bell?”
MacAllister nodded and sitting back let her enjoy herself.
“Well, it seems that when he told his regiment about his problems they saw the nasty publicity that could be coming their way and immediately offered him the golden bowler, which he grabbed. Early pension at fifty, that's ten years away for Jenson, and about two years salary in a lump sum straight away seems to be the average guess at what they gave him. Getting on for forty thousand in cash.”
She leaned back against the wall and smiled an even bigger smile.
“Well....”
“Bloody well get on with it Jackie and stop saying, Well.”
Jackie Ward just giggled at him, her eyes bright and merry.
“Well....”
MacAllister sighed and held his hands up in surrender and at his capitulation Jackie continued.
“Well, it seems that his wife's family had never approved of her marriage to a common or garden ranker because her Daddy is the Colonel of the regiment and Mummy's father is a full blown Duke no less and they have never spoken to him or their daughter since their wedding day. Then it turns out that while Jenson has been abroad, Annabelle Jenson has been having it away with half the regiment's junior officers, the latest being the colonel's own adjutant. Anyway, it seems that Jenson found out his wife was going off to see the adjutant at his flat last Monday night so he rang the Colonel anonymously and informed him that his adjutant was having it away with a ranker's wife. He also rang the local paper and they sent a reporter and a photographer along in time to witness the Colonel leaving the adjutant's flat, so that in the paper tonight they have a nice clear photo of him dragging his daughter out of the building by the hair. Jenson has also sold his story to the Sunday papers for an undisclosed sum. You know the sort of thing. “Officer's frolics with enlisted man’s wife forced him to abandon career”. I understand Jenson has now gone off back to his family home in Scotland. Evidently given both mother and daughter up as a bad job.”
She grinned at him. “Goodnight, Guv.” and she was gone.
MacAllister put his head back and yelled.
“Marcus.”
Marcus Lomax appeared in the doorway.
“Get me an evening paper and I don't care if you have to steal one.”
He sat back in his chair and lifted his feet up onto the hated paperwork, the grin on his face almost from ear to ear.
“Well, well, well. Good for you my old son as that sure is a better way of sorting them out than getting arrested for GBH.”
As he sat and read the paper that Marcus Lomax found for him he was totally unaware that on the third floor of the multi-storey car park across the road from the Bricewell police station, an elderly couple were handing over their money and jewellery to a man wearing a balaclava and a dark blue car coat and holding a ten inch kitchen knife. His cold grey eyes watching the valuables disappear into the carrier bag he was holding in his other hand until he was satisfied that he had it all. Then he asked them for their car keys and told them to turn round and face the barrier, which prevents people from driving through the four-foot outer wall of the car park and all the way down to the street below. When they finally plucked up the courage to turn around again the grey-eyed man was gone, along with their brand new Vauxhall Astra.
Alison Jenson sat and looked at her reflection in the mirror of her dressing table. She had just come back from a session with her Social Worker and the Social Services tame shrink. The gist of it had been that although her body had been violated she shouldn't allow them to hurt her mind. What the fuck did they know about it? They hadn't been them held face down across a dirty blanket while three of them had raped her and it wasn't them that had been questioned for hours in the bloody police station only to be told that those bastards were going to get away with it. Even her Dad had let her down. Oh yes, he had beaten that big black bastard up a bit, but then he had just pissed off back to Scotland and abandoned her with her mother. Scotland with me or stay with your mother he had said, but I am off.
Scotland? That meant some bloody cottage in the hills with no dances or discos and a load of thick country boys for company. She hated her mother's guts, but at least here she could see a bit of life and think about how she was going to repay those bastards in Metal Heaven. She couldn't do that in Scotland. She got up and went into her mother’s bedroom and opened the fitted wardrobes. She often “borrowed” her mother's clothes as they were much more sophisticated than the clothes she was allowed. She passed quickly by the outfit she had been wearing on the night of the rape and was soon lost deciding what she was going to borrow for this evening.