Not Passing Go! Ch. 06

"Actually, I didn't even ask him."

"OK, so you didn't ask him, maybe you thought he would deny it anyway, but you didn't go all hell out getting blood samples to send off for his DNA, did you? Right?"

"Right. So what?"

"So if you weren't concerned if Mickey was the father or not, why were you chasing these other two guys?"

"Look at this my way. They stole five years from me."

"They didn't just steal those years from you, Danny, they stole you from me, too," she pointed out, "and it is not as if we need the money."

"OK, but although I ... we ... don't need the money but why should I let them have it? They stole five years away from the woman I loved unconditionally and now, I don't know what kind of love is in my life."

"I love you unconditionally, or I would if you let me Danny," she lifted the focus of her eyes off the table and looked into my eyes. "I know this is difficult, of course I know, but should all the blame for where we stand at the moment lie with one person, the woman who was abandoned by her husband, in a strange country, with no support or skills to offer without her man?"

"You didn't seem miss your old man for long before..."

"Long or short, Danny, time is relative. Being alone on a cold, dark night, with no family or friends, with no end to that misery in sight, those promised thirty months and possibly five years, can last an eternity, compared to being snug and curled up with the man you love, and loves you back, when time slips by in a blink of an eye."

"I was lonely too!" I was getting angry, but she remained calm and serene.

"I know you were. I know exactly how you must've felt, so you must know how the wife you left behind, felt about that."

"I have never told you about the time I was away in prison, Agnes, but I had to fight for my life and my virginity every day ... and while I won most of the time, I didn't win every fight. I paid in blood, pain, humiliation, loneliness, and every fight ate into the time off my sentence that I should've been entitled to under good behaviour. I had nothing to fall back on but the love of family and dreams of vengeance for betrayal."

"And whose fault was that? It was your choice to turn to crime—"

"I had no choice—"

"Danny, you were caught the same day as the robbery," she said quietly, "at the very first hurdle in your life of crime. Who is to say what else would have gone wrong that day?"

"I can't."

No, I can't say, but I also don't like being out-thought by my wife who is supposed to be cute but dumb. She was right, I had to admit that I had become obsessed with revenge, until Polly-Jo came into my, our lives. Did that matter now, that I was looking to rebuild the trust in my family? I was thinking so quietly and not immediately replying, that Agnes changed tack.

She was about to continue, but I stopped her.

"I was involved in crime before that. You drove me to it, Agnes, but you didn't even know," I said. "I got away with it, and we had a cash buffer for a few months, but still nothing came in job-wise. You were my princess and I needed to provide, so I turned to crime again."

"When? When did you do this first crime?"

"When you got us in debt with the loan sharks ..." I said, but she was clueless. "About a year before the bank job." She still looked blankly at me. See, as cute as she is, she's as Tom Thumb as a chocolate chisel. I had another go at explaining, "Remember when we lived with my Mum after I was demobbed and you took over the housekeeping and seemed to be doing a brilliant job?" I paused but she shook her head. "When we found you had borrowed a few hundred from the local loan shark and I owed thousands?"

Her eyes grew big and she shook her head as if this was all news to her.

"I had to work a week for the local mobster to pay off the loan, I had to do horrible things to people who owed him money. Then he let me go and only paid me 10% of what he had promised, which had been the whole of the debt. So I was tied in as his beck and call, probably for ever. You don't remember the warehouse fire in Wharf Lane that all those people died in?"

She still looked shocked, shaking her head, so I continued.

"I had to kill them all, Agnes, to pay off the two hundred pounds you borrowed. I sealed them inside and burned the building. I took a briefcase of money from them which kept us going for six months or so. If I hadn't, we would have got deeper in debt, they would've used me as part of their gang, or beaten me up and taken you to occupy a room in the one of their whorehouses until the debt was paid, or until you were too old to attract any more customers."

"I didn't know," she said quietly and started crying.

"Eight people, the loan shark, his abusive girlfriend, and six of his protection and prostitution gang. All died because of your tiny debt. Then when that money ran out I had to do some minding for Mickey, who was a local gangster who did good for himself. He came up with the idea of the bank job and I came up with a plan to do it, then Mickey rounded up the other two members that we needed to complete the team."

She dabbed her eyelids dry and straightened her back now. "Freddie killed those men that tried to kill us in the Bahamas, and I justified that killing because they were armed and under orders to hurt our children. But I don't want other deaths on my conscience, Danny."

"Well, when we met up with Polly and you both went upstairs to pack, both Freddie and I agreed that we would only find them to keep an eye on where they were, I have no intention of having any more to do with them."

"Really, Danny?"

"Really. Now, put those DNA results away in a drawer because you never know when we might need them, but I have no reason to read them right now. They are my kids and you are my wife. So let's get our run in before we wake the kids, feed them, and get them to school. I'm only going in to collect any mail before the staff get in and see me, then we can come back here and continue this conversation. OK?"

"OK."

***

Maybe I had become too relaxed and let my guard down. I knew the Slocombe School site was insecure, Freddie had exploited that for me before we even considered coming here. Maybe we should have made recommendations to make it secure, especially as the girls' futures were so tied up in the place for ten or twelve years to come.

No, whoever it was that was watching us were just too clever for me and would have got me anyway. My past was just about to catch up with me and there was nothing I could do about it. I waved goodbye to the girls, Agnes, Freddie and Polly at the school gates and proceeded to my small coaching staff office next to the gym.

I was still dressed and disguised as the chauffeur, but being responsible for family security, it would not be unusual for me to check the area away from the main school building where my charges would be spending so much time.

The power to the lights was out in the gym and I felt my way to where I knew the fuse box was, so I could check the outage and reboot the rest of the system. But I felt a spray hitting my face, from an unseen assailant, probably wearing night vision goggles. I tried to hold my breath, but the spray was having an instant effect so I assumed it was a nerve agent active through the skin, and knew I was going down and had only seconds before my own lights went out.