She tried to bring a bit of normality to the conversation. It was the only way to survive.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Five

Tony Jones had lain awake all night. His tossing and turning so disturbed his wife Jeanette that at three thirty she got up and slipped into their daughter’s old room, now the spare. Tony smiled despite himself. She liked her Sooty and Sweep did his Jeanette.

Finally, after many hours of restlessness, he had the glimmer of a plan. The main thing to bear in mind was that Patrick Kelly was not a man to cross. After the turn out with the rent boys, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would not make Kelly’s Christmas card list. He shrugged mentally. He never had anyway. All the same Kelly would not forget his part in the rent boy business for a long time. If he went to the repoman with any old cock and bull story, Kelly would see to it that he did not live long enough to collect his reward. If Kelly even suspected that he knew the name of his daughter’s murderer . . . Tony swallowed heavily.

But, and there was always a but, if he pretended that he had been going over his customer lists and happened to notice a George Markham from Grantley on it. Or better still on his mailing list. Yes, that sounded much better. As if he had never actually met the man.

He bounced the ideas around in his head for a while, finally convincing himself that if he played it just right, he would come out of it all with a good few quid and his neck intact. The latter being the most important.

He would put his plan into action first thing in the morning.

George woke up to a fine, crisp day and grinned to himself. The previous night’s events bundled into his mind, crowding it with erotic images. George hugged himself in the warmth of his bed. All his life he had wanted to be part of the men’s world, and always he had had to stand on the edge of it. Watching as an outsider. Last night it was as if a door had been opened and he had crept through it into the magic world of men together. He had been drunk on the mystery of it. At one point, he had experienced an ecstasy so acute he had felt tears sting his eyes.

He left the warmth of the bed and went into the bathroom. He had a long, leisurely bath as he dwelt on memories of the night before.

By nine he had finished packing, had ticked off everything on his carefully prepared list. He had everything from lightweight clothes to sunglasses. He had bought these a few years before. They were mirrored. He could watch and stare and no one knew what he was looking at. George kept them lovingly in a leather case.