ARTHURS SEED THE RETURN (Book Two, chapter four)

ARTHUR’S SEED

THE RETURN

Chapter Four.

Lillian crept into the lounge wearing her fur coat to find her husband curled up asleep on the old couch, he was snoring as usual. She tutted loudly, walked over to him, kicked an empty whiskey bottle laying on the floor out of her way and shook his body violently to wake him. He stirred and gradually opened his eyes to see the fuzzy outline of his angry wife’s body standing over him with her hands gripping her waist.

Jacob tried to focus his blurred vision, caused by a night of heavy drinking and said, “Lillian… why are you wearing your fur coat…I know my mother’s house is cold and draughty, but don’t you think that’s a bit over the top?”

She looked down at him in disgust and replied, “I’m leaving this horrible house Jacob; I’ve had enough so I would be grateful if you would get Collins to take me to a decent hotel.” She looked around, “Where the hell is he? He’s not upstairs.”

Jacob got to his feet and stumbled in a daze to stand upright then gathered his thoughts shouting at his wife, “What the hell Lillian, he’s not here, he’s gone to pick up Tyler from school.”

Lillian grabbed her mobile phone from her coat pocket, switched it on and tried to connect, “Then I will phone for a cab.”

Jacob laughed at her and said, “You’ll be lucky…there’s no mobile signal here.”

After raising her phone in the air for several seconds trying to find a signal she screamed in frustration before walking over to the old-fashioned phone on the dresser and picking up the handset, waggled it at him with a smirk, “Then I’ll use your mother’s phone.”

Jacob rushed over to where she was standing and snatched the handset from her before she had a chance to dial a number and slammed it back down on the receiver. “Oh no you don’t, you’re staying here…You’re not going anywhere…do you hear.”

Lillian’s anger exploded into a rage and tried to slap him in the face. But Jacob was too quick for her and dodged her violent attack by pushing her away. She lost her balance and fell backwards, hitting the back of her head against the hard surface of the stone hearth of the grate with a horrifying crunch as she fell to the floor.

He stood over his wife’s motionless body for a moment and looked down at her not realising the extent of what he had done and shouted, “Lillian…for god’s sake Lillian get up dam you.”

The blood from the wound at the back of her head began to leak out onto the craggy stone hearth and formed a shallow puddle on the surface before finally dripping onto the rug in front of the fire.

He knelt beside her on both knees and lifted her head off the hearth then quickly lowered it again when he felt her warm blood oozing between his fingers.

Still on his knees, he squatted backwards on his haunches in horror, staring down at his blood-stained hands and burst into tears before shouting out, “Oh my God, what have I done?”

He shuffled forward to put his arms around his wife’s limp upper body and pulled her closer to his chest, covering his own body in her still, warm blood. Looking down at her ashen face he rocked himself slowly backwards and forwards as he cradled her in his arms. As tears rolled down his face and trickled onto hers he cried out in anguish, “Oh Lillian, Lillian. Why do you always have to spoil things between us with your dammed arguing.”

After a few minutes of mourning his wife’s untimely death, he gently lowered her body back to the floor and wiped away the tears from his face before standing up to gather his thoughts. Collins would be arriving soon with Tyler so he shook his head and said to himself loudly, “Come on Jacob, pull yourself together man…It was an accident, she’s gone…you can’t do anything about it now.” Jacob was slowly replacing his remorse for his wife’s demise with anger towards her for upsetting his plans for freedom, freedom from the FBI’s clutches and most likely, a possible death sentence for his crimes.

In a top-floor office of New Scotland Yard in London, a tall man dressed in a smart dark suit stood at the head of what appeared to be a meeting between him and a group of male and female high-ranking British police and NCA officers seated behind three rows of tables in front of him. On the wall in front of the assembled officers was a projector screen. On a tall table at the back of the room was a slide projector and standing behind it was another man dressed in a similar dark suit.

The man standing at the head of the assembled officers nodded at a plain closed policeman sitting in the front row who stood up and walked towards him. He turned around to face his fellow officers and gestured to the man with his arm saying, “This is Agent Myers from the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Agent Myers nodded politely towards his audience.

The police officer continued with his introduction, “we have been asked by the American Consulate and our own Police Commissioner to assist Agent Myers and his team of FBI agents with enquiries to locate and arrest a certain US high-profile individual whom they believe, has recently escaped to the UK to evade the warrant for his arrest in the States.”

Agent Myers nodded as he stepped forward and said with an American accent, “Thank you Chief Inspector Ryan for your introduction.” Ryan nodded towards him and returned to his seat.

Agent Myers walked over to the corner of the room and dimmed the lights before signalling to his colleague to turn on the projector. The strong beam of light lit up the screen in the now dimly lit room. As the projector’s fan sounded he took out a remote from his pocket and pressed a button. The projector’s cassette clicked as it pushed a slide into the stream of the beam of light to produce an image on the screen. It was Jacob.

Myers pointed towards the screen, “This ladies and gentlemen is our target. We know him as Jacob Henry Hanford, a British ex-pat who became an American citizen in 1999. We believe Jacob Hanford is not his real name as is always the case with these criminal individuals. He is presently married to this lady. He switched the remote to change the slide. “Her maiden name was Lillian Pendleton, that is her real name because we know she is the daughter of one, Francis John Pendleton, who is presently serving a life sentence in the United States for drug smuggling and various other crimes, including murder…If you ask me he should have received the death sentence…Sorry I digress.”

He nervously coughed and continued, “Lillian Pendleton is for obvious reasons, now known as Mrs Lillian Hanford and she and Jacob have a fourteen-year-old son by the name of Tyler. Recent information has come to us, which I will explain later, that he attends a special private school in North Yorkshire that care for boys diagnosed with Autism. Because of this, he is of no special interest to us, but we are keeping him under surveillance, just in case his parents try to contact him while they are in the UK.”

He clicked the remote to return to the earlier slide of Jacob and continued. “When Hanford married Pendleton’s daughter he was given control over her father’s criminal empire at the time he himself was indicted for his crimes and went to prison. Mr Hanford extended his newly acquired business to include contract killing and money laundering, in fact, it’s become one of the most powerful criminal organisations throughout America and Europe. In the last three years, this man and his specialised operatives have handled the deaths of over 150 people that we know of. As I mentioned before, we have recently received a great deal of very useful inside information from an informant, who as we speak is in witness protection in the States. He has also supplied us with a list of several high-profile federal judges and high-ranking police officers in the States who are on Hanford’s payroll, so you can see why it’s extremely important we apprehend this man and his wife as soon as possible. Hopefully, with your help, we can bust this organisation wide open before they do any more damage to our two great countries.”

Back at Gorawen’s house, Jacob had overcome his emotional dilemma over his wife’s death and had cleaned up his mess by dragging Lilian’s body into the cellar and letting it slide to the bottom of the stone steps. He planned to eventually put her body in his mother’s large chest freezer for the time being but would need help to lift her heavy body into its deep casing. A job for Collins he thought, so he left her there in a heap with her luggage and the bloodstained rug he had earlier removed, at the foot of the steps. He would tell his son Tyler that she had left in a taxi to find a hotel somewhere more luxurious. He locked the door behind him and placed the key in his pocket for safekeeping.

He went over to the fireplace with a bucket of soapy water to try and remove the bloodstains from the hearth by first scrubbing the area with bleach before disguising the now clean stones by rubbing soot and ash into the rough surface. He let out a loud sigh of relief, “that’s done,” he said to himself, “Now it’s my turn to scrub up for when Tyler gets here.”

He disappeared upstairs to his mother’s bathroom and returned an hour later carrying a black bin bag filled with his bloodstained clothes. He took the key to the cellar door from his pocket and unlocked it, then with one swift action, threw the bag into the cellar before closing the door and locking it again.

He looked at his watch to check the time and after stoking the fire to bring it back to life, placed some more logs onto the blaze from the log basket.

The one important thing he hadn’t done was to give Collins his mother’s landline number. Due to the lack of a mobile signal at the house, he decided to ring Collins’s mobile using the landline to inform him of the number, just in case of any problems and check on his progress in picking Tyler up from school.

Jacob picked up the handset and dialled his number, praying Collins would answer. After waiting a couple of minutes he heard Collin’s distinctive Northern accent, “hello…Jimmy here.”

“Ah Collins…Thank god you answered…It’s Jacob here.”

“Hi boss didn’t recognise the number, but I always pick up just in case it might be a job,” he laughed, “know what I mean. You usually call me from your mobile, so why the landline?”

“Well, there’s no mobile signal here so have had to resort to old technology. If you need to contact me save this number on your cell phone so we can stay in touch.”

“Yes boss, already done.”

“So what progress? Are you anywhere near ready to pick up Tyler from his school yet?”

“All in hand boss, should get there by about 6 pm this evening as arranged. Should get to you by about 10 pm with any luck, if the fuzz don’t get in the way.” He laughed.

“Great, the tide will be in your favour then so you can drive over the dammed causeway without too much of a problem. I think that’s all for now.” Jacob was about to put the phone down when he remembered something important, “Nearly forgot…there’s no food in the house and I’m starving so could you get some shopping in…you know, enough for a couple of weeks.”

“Yes boss, will do. Anything special for the missus, is she vegetarian or anything?”

“No, don’t worry about her, she’s not here. Look, I will explain later when you get here, let’s end this conversation now, so you can get on.”

“Ok boss, see you later.”

Jacob returned the handset to the receiver and stretching his arms in the air with a yawn, walked over to the sofa to get a well-deserved forty winks. The morning’s efforts to clear up after Lillian’s mess had tired him out.

It was about 8 pm when Jacob was awakened by the phone ringing. He stumbled his way to the phone still half asleep and picked up the handset.

It was Collins on the other end who whispered into his mobile so as not to disturb Tyler who was asleep in the back of the car, “Boss I think we’re being followed.”

Jacob replied, “What?”

“Yes it’s been tailing us ever since we left the school, so I did as you said and headed north. If it’s the police then they know that it’s a hire car by the registration number.”

Oh my god, can’t understand how they knew Tyler was at that school, we have always kept his whereabouts a closely guarded secret. That does suggest we may have a turncoat in our midst after all.”

“Don’t worry boss, I have a pal not far from here so I will ditch the car and hide it in one of his lockups as soon as I’ve managed to lose the cops and swap it for one of his. Then make my way to North Wales from his place.”

“That’s great Jimmy, very well thought out, I said you would go far in my organisation.”

“Thanks boss, I will phone him straight away…but, thinking about it, maybe he can get the cops off my back by arranging a little accident with their car to speed things up.”

“Great work Jimmy, I will pay whatever cash necessary to your pal for doing this favour for us. Let me know how it goes.”

“Right Boss, I’m sure he will appreciate that.”

Jacob put down the phone and breathed a sigh of relief.