She emptied a bag of sweets she had bought in the prison shop on to the table before him. ‘I bought you these. A harmless vice.’
Her sarcasm was not lost on him. ‘Thanks,’ was all he allowed himself to say.
Catherine dusted down the chair before she sat. ‘How are you coping?’ she asked stiffly.
‘Not too bad. How’s Michael? Is he all right?’
‘He’s fine. The new drugs are at least stabilising his condition and the move to the Royal Marsden seems to give him a boost too. God knows why. From a child fighting cancer to an adult... Well, I suppose you could call it progress of a kind.’
John sighed. ‘I wish I could see him.’
‘Give him little more time. I think he’s finally coming round to the idea.’ She knew what John still meant a lot to Michael, and her son’s attitude was softening. She had caught him reading accounts of the trial.
‘I thought he didn’t want to know me anymore?’
Catherine took a deep breath. ‘Michael loves you. He’s just very protective of me.’ She searched for a handkerchief in her bag as unexpected tears welled up. ‘And don’t think I’m crying for you,’ she protested, blowing her nose loudly.
‘I know. And I’m not pestering you, am I? All I want is for you to go on visiting me.’ He waited until she had composed herself, then said in a low voice, ‘I love you, Catherine and I’m desperately sorry for everything. Not seeing Michael is killing me.’
‘I know.’ She gave him a reluctant smile. ‘Who would ever have thought we’d end up two sentimental old fools?’
He took her hands, squeezing them between his own. ‘How’s the Estate?’
‘I want to sell it,’ she said quickly. ‘ Well, I don’t really want to, but the upkeep of the place is crippling. You know that. Sometimes I wonder if owning the place was so important, that it drove you to crime.’
‘Of course not. I want to help you with the upkeep. Please let me...’
‘No!’ Her face hardened. ‘I don’t want your money. It’s tainted.’
‘Visiting time over,’ the prison officer shouted.
John stood up to kiss Catherine on the forehead, then gathered the sweets in his hand and took them over to the next table, where a harassed wife was trying to placate four unruly children and a desperate father.
John waved goodbye to his wife, still sitting at the table, then turned towards the heavy iron gate leading back into the prison.
* * *
Michael visited a few days later. When John was told his son was there, he was overcome with nervousness.
The boy waiting for him was at least a foot taller than when John had last seen him, and the chubby cheeks with their high colour were long gone. His son had lines around his eyes and mouth that did not belong on a sixteen‑year old. Facially he bore a strong resemblance to Catherine’s father, Archie Carven, blue‑eyed and hollow‑cheeked, a lock of sandy brown hair falling forward over his high forehead. He wore a country tweed jacket, battered and patched at the elbows. The collar of his checked shirt was frayed. Catherine had obviously meant it about not taking John’s money.
‘Hi, Dad,’ said the boy in a low unfamiliar voice.
‘Michael.’ They stood looking at one other for a long time without speaking, then John sat down and waved for him to do the same. ‘The last time I saw you, we’d just finished our fishing trip.’
‘Wasn’t that great? The best week of my life. I often wish we could do it again.’
‘So do I.’ John smiled ruefully. ‘But you probably have a girlfriend by now. You wouldn’t want to be lumbered with your old dad.’ He hesitated then asked, ‘How’s your mother?’
‘Still mad at you. But if you were home for a month, you could change that, Dad, I haven’t forgotten what it used to be like.’
The pain and uncertainty of his illness must have coloured his memory, John decided. He doubted he could ever win Catherine round, though for his son’s sake he would keep on trying.
At the end of the visit, Michael reached over and took his hand. ‘Don’t forget, I miss you a lot, Dad.’ He brushed the back of his hand across his eyes, got up and pushed his way through the crowded room, not looking back.
* * *
On his wing again John lat down on his bunk and closed his eyes.
‘Forbes!’ Two officers were standing in the cell door way. John had not seen the men before. ‘The governor wants a word with you.’
At least it could not be any bad news regarding Michael, John thought on the way through the prison. Could the police had come back with new charges? Was that why David Kennedy and Duncan Grace had not been mentioned at the Old Bailey?
‘Please.’ The governor waved his hand for John to sit down. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.’
The governor looked at the two officers standing at the rear of the room. ‘Could you leave us alone for a moment? Thanks.’
‘Is it about my wife?’
‘No.’
John relaxed slightly, waiting for the governor to continue. He knew that the man was not one of the useless do‑gooding sorts, but had worked his way up through the prison service and taken two years off to become a priest along the way. At their first meeting, the governor had told him, ‘I don’t want be troubled with the details in your file, Mr Forbes. We start fresh today. You keep a low profile and I’ll ensure you have as uneventful a time here as possible.’
Now he cleared his throat looking troubled. ‘There is no easy way for me to say this,’ he began. ‘I’m afraid that your application for parole has been refused.’
John froze. He remained deadly calm, but his voice held a note of anger. ‘What?’ He knew exactly what this meant in time left to serve. It was one year and two months until automatic parole.
‘You’ll have to serve two years four months longer. I’m very sorry.’
‘Two years four months!’ said John, astonished, getting half out of his chair.
‘I’ve spent the whole day trying to get the Home Office to change their minds,’ the governor continued, ‘but as from yesterday it’s government policy that a drug‑related sentence over five years must automatically mean a longer term in prison, namely two thirds of the sentence given by the court. Although this change wasn’t introduced to penalise distributors of soft‑drugs, I’m afraid you fall into the category because of the volume involved. I didn’t believe it would apply retrospectively but the Home Office is standing firm on this. A minister out to make a name for himself. I really am very sorry, John.’
John had read newspaper articles expressing outrage at the short sentences drug dealers were actually serving, due to one‑third or half the sentence being written off as automatic parole. He had never thought for a moment a change of policy would affect him.
John spent the weekend in his cell feeling angry and trapped. An extra thirty months’ imprisonment felt like a lifetime. He had turned forty‑four a month ago. His master plan, as well as all his other enterprises, could not easily be overseen from a prison cell for more than two years. And what would it mean for his chances of rebuilding bridges with Michel and Catherine? He was stuck in here, with no way of knowing if his son would even be alive at the end of his sentence.
There seemed to be only one option open to him, and he spent Sunday setting arrangements in hand.
* * *
A week later, Arthur received a prison Visiting Order made out in a different name and sent to an address provided by the Clark twins.
‘You look great,’ John told his elderly visitor the following day. ‘Perhaps you’ve overdone the make up a bit, but a bald head rather suits you.’
‘I’ve spent two hundred pounds and a couple of hours with a stage makeup expert to look like this,’ Arthur grumbled, ‘but I think it’s worth it. No one would ever recognise me, eh? So what devious scheme have you in mind now?’
‘I’m not staying here any longer.’
‘You want to be moved to an open prison or somethin
g? That shouldn’t be a problem. I can work on that. Do you know the name of the allocation officer here?’
Looking hard at his friend, John said, ‘I need your help to escape’.
‘Oh, my God,’ gasped Arthur.
Determinedly John continued, ‘A new identity, transport from here to a safe house in England and then abroad.’
Arthur put his head in his hands. ‘Bribing the Home Secretary would be an easier option!’
‘I don’t want any violence or guns involved,’ John continued. ‘The escape must happen outside the gates. Listen, Arthur, I’m a category C prisoner on gardening detail which means I get to work outside about one day a week. It’s our best chance. Tell Jim and Neil to arrange all the details.’
‘God help us all!’ Arthur said aloud and raised his eyes to the ceiling.
* * *
On Tuesday, 2nd August 1983, John was the first to be ready for work. The governor had ensured that he got a gardening job as compensation for the extra time he must serve, but for three weeks now no work had been done outside because of wet weather. This morning, however, it was fine and they were to tend the shrubbery outside the main gates.
Once outside, John looked around, noticing the grey van parked opposite. He bent down to tie his shoelaces, the agreed signal to go ahead. He then started raking the dry soil, second to last in a long line of men. The guards stood talking and smoking in the hot August sunshine.
The peace was suddenly shattered by a noise so loud that every man dropped his rake or hoe and held his hands over his ears. The earth was whipped to a cloud of dust, flowers and bushes bent in the wind as a micro light aircraft hovered above the working party, small and impossibly frail‑seeming, just a pilot, an engine and a propeller. A rope was thrown down and a scuffle broke out on the ground as various men tried to grab it and guards struggled to hold them back.
John stood close to the edge of the pavement, ignoring the commotion behind him. Suddenly a motorbike appeared from the back of the van, skidded to a momentary halt beside him, then revved off down the road with John clinging to the driver, Jim Clark, who was dressed in black leather and a visored helmet. In the busy centre of Maidstone he handed John a helmet and map, pointed to another parked motorbike, its engine already running, and clapped him on the shoulder. John continued alone. On a remote road five miles from Maidstone he stopped at a van parked in a layby. In the back of the van he changed clothes.
John drove the van for an hour in the direction of Croydon, using only side roads. Then he stopped, parked the van and walked to a mini cab office, asking to be taken to Sutton, then on the way changing his mind and going to Wimbledon. In the toilets at Wimbledon Station he again changed clothes, taken from the holdall he had found as expected in the van. That evening he arrived at a small terraced house off the Fulham Road.
Jim and Neil Clark looked after him there for a week before with a passport in the name of John Miller, which Arthur had procured, he travelled to Ireland, took a flight to Brussels, and then a train to Paris.
John stayed in a small flat there and for the first time in months enjoyed the taste of complete freedom. After a week he visited Bertrand Boucher in Montmartre where he picked up a nearly new yellow Renault 2CV and a completely new and different identity, with a passport, driver’s licence, national insurance number and credit cards.
He drove south on the Route du Soleil towards the Mediterranean and the house that Arthur had arranged to be bought by a foreign company for an Englishman called Peter Carter.
PART FIVE
A PEACE CALLED SOLITUDE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
_________________________
Lodeve, Languedoc, France, Friday, 2nd September 1983
John stopped the car in front of a rambling, grey stone house. In several places its walls had recently been patched and plastered over and this had not yet dried, leaving a raw unfinished appearance. The black shutters at the windows and the heavy wooden front door were firmly closed, giving him the feeling he was unwelcome.
Somehow though he felt an affinity with the place. It was as if the house were presenting itself to him as he had always shown himself to the world; a blank facade behind which only a few were allowed to penetrate.
Shortly before, he had crossed the bridge over the River Orb and driven into the medieval village of Lodeve.
The inhabitants, he had read, were a mixture of French, Arab and Spanish Gypsy. It was market day and the main streets and squares were full of stalls. Unable to understand the handwritten signs, he found himself stuck in the middle of the bustling market with several people crowding in at the car‑windows trying to give him directions. Finally he parked in front of the old cathedral and consulted his map.
He had left it up to Arthur to find a suitable hiding place. He had not seen so much as a picture of the house or been given any description of it. Eventually he found a man who understood a little English and told John with many shrugs and gesticulations that the address was eight miles away, at the end of a track far off the main road. John smiled, Arthur had done his research well.
After having driven higher and higher, half an hour later he had found the nearest village, a few old stone houses huddled close together with a church and a boulangerie which also functioned as a general store. All the shutters were closed. It was becoming intensely hot and there was no one to give him directions. John walked into the shop and showed his map to an elderly lady dressed in black who pointed to the road leading out of the village, indicating he should turn off on the first track to the left.
The track went on for miles, through violet‑blue fields, now with the dark blue mountains rising majestically in the distance, shifting and blurring in the heat haze. At the end of the dusty track was a burnt‑out wreck of a car, and next to it a high rusty gate.
Climbing out of his car, John looked around. Arthur seemed to have taken his need for seclusion a little too seriously.
He pushed open the squeaking iron gate and drove up an overgrown drive shaded by gnarled old olive trees, towards his new home.
He stood looking at it for a minute or two. He had no key and was wondering if he should try the door and walk in, when it was opened by a woman of about thirty, dressed in a plain blue dress and sandals. ‘Monsieur Carter?’
‘Oui, c’est moi,’ John said in what little French he possessed.
She smiled. ‘I speak a little English. Come with me.’
Her narrow, freckled face with its brown eyes and strong black brows had a permanently serious expression. Long straight black hair, parted in the middle, was pushed behind her ears and hung down to her shoulders. She was strongly built and taller than John. As she took the one suitcase he had brought with him, he could see that her hands were calloused and dry from hard work.
‘Merci beaucoup,’ he murmured.
The woman walked round the house opening doors, explaining things to him in fairly good English mixed with French. Inside it was pleasantly cool with a faint flowery fragrance hanging in the air. The rooms were large with white walls, original stone floors and very little furniture. The main bedroom was on the second floor. It contained a large bed, with a carved chestnut headboard, a side table with a lamp and a heavy old armoire. From the window John saw several barns and outbuildings in various stages of dereliction.
‘This all looks very suitable,’ he told the woman.
‘The English gentleman who made the arrangements asked me to live here, to clean and cook for you. I hope this is good?’
‘Perfect.’ John smiled. ‘How did you learn to speak English so well? Not many people can in this area, as I’ve discovered already.’
‘I worked in a hotel in Lodeve and went to evening classes to learn English.’
‘Good. You can teach me French. What’s your name? Comment vous appelez‑vous?’
The woman blushed. ‘Je m’appelle Cecilia Brassac.’
‘Je m
’appelle Peter Carter.’ They shook hands solemnly. ‘Will you show me around outside? It will make me feel more at home.’
‘Un moment. I need my other shoes.’ She disappeared to return wearing stout boots, a lighter dress and a large straw hat.
For several minutes John tried to work out what was growing in the fields. It looked like lavender, but he was unsure. He had expected a small remote cottage, not a rambling country house with fields of blue as far as he could see. He had to ask what they were.
‘Grosso, Abrial and Sumian,’ Cecilia answered. John looked even more bewildered. Suddenly she realised that the man had no idea at all what the crop was. ‘Grosso Lavendin? Lavender. Perfume. Cosmetics. Soap.’ Cecilia made gestures.
‘Ah,’ said John, knowing he must explain to her soon that the farm had been bought for a holiday retreat, and that was why he did not know what was growing in the fields.
It took hours to walk around the farm’s perimeter. There were apparently ten hectares of land, planted with a hundred thousand lavender bushes. Cecilia told him that the neighbours, a Monsieur Popougnot and his wife, came a few times a month with their men to weed and inspect the lavender. They were also in charge of the harvesting, which they did with their own people and machines. She explained that most of the land was planted with Grosso, and a few fields with the Abrian and Sumian variants, on a rotating basis year by year. The distillation was carried out by a company in Provence and the essence sold in the perfume centre of Grasse.
Cecilia explained that there were only eight farms specialising in lavender in the area, though many in Provence: how in early spring the fields turned lightly green, darkening to a deeper shade as the weather grew warmer. In early summer the flower buds would swell at the end of the new stalks, at first purple and especially noticeable, when the wind swept through the field. In summer the flowers came out a sparkling violet‑blue, as now. Within a month the fields would be harvested and everything would turn grey again. Each day the field looked different and no two plants were exactly alike.
John was impressed by the unspoilt beauty of the place and glad that there was no one living close by. The land bordering two sides of the lavender fields was completely uncultivated.
Back at the house, they were both exhausted. John said he would take a nap and went up to his bedroom. A little while later Cecilia entered quietly, placed a glass of iced water on the table and closed the shutters. She left without a word.