Bia's War (27 page)

Bia turned to Mr Vine.

“You are aware that she’s going
gaga, aren’t you?” Bia almost spat at him. “Any change you make to
her will won’t be legal, you know. I can prove she’s going mental,
cos the police picked her up the other night when she was wandering
round the town. You have a word with the sergeant, he’ll tell
you.”

“I’m fully aware that Mrs Lymer
sometimes has difficulty with her memory but I am also aware that
her medical practitioner is of the opinion that her memory loss is
due to stress. I have conducted all the testing I need to do today
and, in my opinion, Mrs Lymer is of sound mind at this precise
moment, which means I consider her perfectly capable of making
whatever changes to her will that she wishes to make. May I also
add that, legally, you have no right to discuss or question any
aspects of her will, unless she wishes to discuss them with you.
Now, Mrs Lymer, if you will just sign here where I have placed a
cross and then Mr Lethbridge and I can sign it and our business
today will be complete.”

Mr Vine presented the sheet of
paper and a pen to Nana Lymer and waited until she had signed at
the bottom of the page. He and Mr Lethbridge then appended their
signatures to the sheet and Mr Vine placed the sheet of paper into
his briefcase.

“I shall bring a copy of this
for you when I call next Wednesday.” Mr Vine said as he shrugged on
his coat. “It’s been wonderful to see you again and I look forward
to being able to stay longer next week when I call and we can have
a good old chin-wag about the old days. You take care of yourself
and let me know if you need anything before next week.”

The two men both shook Mrs
Lymer’s hand and then headed for the door. Victoria’s mother had
stepped back as they both passed her but she made no comment as
they left the room. For the first time in her life, she had been
bested in an argument and it was a bitter pill for her to swallow.
If Victoria hadn’t been the object of her mother’s diatribes so
often in her life, she may have found it possible to feel sympathy
for her mother’s stricken expression but, instead, she enjoyed
passing her mother to follow the two men downstairs to let them out
of the side door. When she got back to Nana Lymer’s bedroom, her
mother was still standing in the same place, staring at her mother
as she lay in bed.

“If you don’t close your mouth,
Bia, a passing fly is going to get in it and that would be a bitter
taste to swallow, wouldn’t it?” Nana Lymer said.

“How dare you do this to me,
Mam?” Bia whined. “I’ve waited on you hand and foot for years.
Nobody else would have done it for you, none of the others in our
family have bothered about you, but I’ve been here all the time,
out of the goodness of my heart and then you want to change your
will. Why? I just don’t understand.”

Nana Lymer looked her up and
down before she answered.

“You have never done anything
‘out of the goodness of your heart’ in your life, Bia” Nana said.
“Basically because you’ve never had a heart to do anything with.
You’ve wasted a lot of years being bad-tempered and shallow and if
all this makes you stop being like that then my time won’t have
been wasted. But I very much doubt that you are capable of learning
tolerance and kindness, given that your father and I tried to teach
you but you wouldn’t listen to either of us. I’ve watched you
nagging Jack until it’s a wonder that he doesn’t up and leave you
and I’ve listened to you constantly deriding anything Victoria
tries to do, making her feel unloved and unwanted. You don’t
deserve the wonderful family you have around you, but if you end up
a lonely old woman, it’ll be because you pushed everyone away from
you. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like a cup of tea to sort my dry
throat out. I’ve done a lot of talking today.”

Chapter Thirteen

Victoria’s mother had been very
quiet all evening after Mr Vine had left and Nana Lymer had made
her speech. Victoria hadn’t dared stay in Nana’s room after tea,
but she was determined that she was going to get to the end of the
story before the Christmas holidays were over so, the next morning,
she asked if she could sit with Nana again that day.

“If you want,” was her mother’s
terse reply. Victoria glanced across at her father when it was
obvious that her mother wasn’t going to expand her brusqueness, but
her father only smiled and nodded his head. Victoria decided to
leave her father to sort out her mother’s sulk and made tea for
herself and Nana and took it upstairs.

“She’s not refused to let you
sit with me, then.” Nana smiled, when Victoria placed her tea
within easy reach.

“She isn’t really speaking to
anyone today.” Victoria replied, “So I decided I might as well make
hay while the sun shines and come and listen to the rest of the
story, if you want to tell me anymore.”

“Of course I do, pet. You need
to know all of it, to understand what happened. It’s not a very
edifying story, I’m afraid, but it is the truth about what happened
and I’ll go to my grave happier to know that the story hasn’t been
lost and that I’ve got it off my chest at last.”

“Nana! Don’t say that!” Victoria
cried. “You aren’t going to die for a long time yet. Don’t think
like that, please.”

Nana smiled. “It happens to us
all, pet, whether we like it or not and I’m not going to argue
against it when my turn comes. Not unless I haven’t finished
telling you the story, anyway. Right. Where had I got up to?”

“William had just been
strangled, Nana, and you were all standing staring at his
body.”

“Yes, I remember now. We all
stood and stared at William, as though it was a perfectly normal
thing to do, watching a man who had just been strangled. I couldn’t
feel any grief for him, in fact I was glad that he was dead. He
hadn’t deserved to live from the moment he had used young Dennison
as a shield to save his own, rotten life, but the same didn’t apply
to Peter and Sam. They both had worthwhile lives still to be lived
and I didn’t want the pig butcher to shorten either of their lives,
to prevent them from informing the authorities what he had done
that night. I needed to act to save them both and I needed to act
immediately, while Dennison was still distracted by having killed
William.”

“The thunder roared louder and
longer than ever before and the ground beneath us definitely bucked
and heaved as the thunder rolled and echoed above us. We all
staggered as the warehouse floor seemed to lift as though it was
trying to make us all lie prone on the floor, just like William. It
gave me the opportunity to shorten the distance between myself and
the pig butcher, so that I would be able to more easily slip my
knife into his heart. I had thought that I would be the only person
in the warehouse capable of coherent thought at that moment after
William’s murder and the crescendo of noise from the thunder, but I
was wrong. Sammy had let go of Peter’s arms when the pig butcher
had started throttling William and Peter took advantage of his
freedom.”

“He reached Dennison before I
had taken two steps towards the pig butcher and it was his deep
guttural roar that alerted the butcher to the danger he was in. He
spun on his heel to face Peter as Peter descended on him; hands
outstretched, and grabbed him round his neck, just as the butcher
had done to William. But it wasn’t Peter’s intention to throttle
Dennison. He lifted him up by his neck and shook Dennison wildly,
like a dog shakes a rabbit and we all heard Dennison’s neck snap as
his head flopped backwards. Even over the sound of the thunder,
still rumbling high above us, we all heard the bone shatter under
the strain of the force which Peter was using. The pig butcher was
as strong as an ox, but even he was no match for the terrible
strength, fuelled by righteous anger, which Peter had within
him.”

“Peter stopped shaking Dennison
then and dropped his body to the floor, stepping back from where
the pig butcher now lay, equal with William and Simon on the floor.
I stood stock-still and the knife slipped from my nerveless fingers
and clanged to rest next to the butcher’s corpse. The thunder
stopped suddenly and a terrible quiet descended on my warehouse, so
deep a silence that we could all hear each other breathing.”

“Sam was the first of us to come
to his senses. He knelt down next to the butcher and checked the
pulse in his neck.”

“‘Dead.’ Sam said, although I
hadn’t expected any different. He then moved over to William’s body
and checked him for any signs of life.”

“‘Dead.’ Once again was his
conclusion and it was this second repetition of the word that
brought me back to my senses.”

“‘We’ve got to get them out of
here.’ I said, my mind suddenly working as clearly as though I was
serving a customer in the shop. ‘We’ve got to work out a way for it
to look as though all three of them died somewhere else, in some
sort of accident or something, so that none of us can be blamed for
their deaths. Sam, what can we do? Where can we take them?”

“Before Sammy could answer me,
Peter began to cry. I had to soothe him because we were going to
need his strength if we were going to move the bodies of William
and the pig butcher. I could carry Simon, but Sam and Peter were
going to have to move the two men. I hunkered down next to Peter
and wrapped my arms about his shaking shoulders.”

“‘He shouldn’t have killed
Simon.’ Peter wailed. ‘I don’t care about William, because he was a
selfish, cruel man, but the pig butcher shouldn’t have killed
Simon. Simon was my friend and he hadn’t done anything to hurt the
butcher, so why did he kill him? It’s not fair, Bia, it’s not fair
at all.’”

“I know, pet.’ I said. ‘But he
had lost his son and I think that had affected his mind. He didn’t
really know what he was doing.’”

“‘He knew what he was doing.’
Peter’s pet lip came out and the tears continued to rain down his
face. ‘He was a wicked man and I’m glad that I killed him. I know
that the Bible says that you mustn’t kill people, but he was really
wicked and he deserved to die. He called me a moron as well. That’s
not kind at all.’”

“I clutched him to me, rubbing
my hands up and down his back in an effort to soothe him and the
tears rained down my face as I did so. I wanted to take my time
with him and explain everything in detail for him, but we didn’t
have the time for a luxury like that. We had to get the bodies
moved before the storm passed over and we lost the cover of the bad
weather. I could feel the anxiety building inside me and I turned
to see what Sammy was doing, hoping that he would come and help me
with Peter. He seemed lost in thought, standing next to the
warehouse door, almost as though he was listening to the storm
outside.”

“‘We’ve got to get them out of
here.’ I repeated to Sam. ‘When the storm is over, any ships
waiting to dock will come in and there’ll be sailors and dock
workers all over this area. We’ve got to be away from here before
then or someone will see us. I’m not risking Peter being sent to
jail for what he’s done tonight.’ I didn’t say it out loud because
I didn’t want to startle Peter, but, if he was caught for murdering
Dennison, then he would hang.”

“‘I don’t think we’re going to
be able to carry out any plan.’ Sam said as he walked towards Peter
and me. If he thought he was reassuring me, he was on the wrong
track altogether. I opened my mouth to ask him what he meant, but
the thunder suddenly returned, this time with double the intensity
it had had before. I waited for it to fade before I spoke again
because I knew it would be impossible for Sam to hear me over the
crescendo of noise which was battering our eardrums. I could see
the lightening flashing through the gaps in the boards of the
warehouse walls and, even at that time and after all the dreadful
things that had happened that night, I could still wonder at the
intensity of that storm. It was so unlike anything I had ever
experienced before in my life, but the power and the force it was
displaying seemed to fit with the tableau of Hell which was the
inside of my warehouse.”

“Peter disentangled himself from
me and stood upright, so I followed his lead, although the ground
was shaking so much with the storm that I was having difficulty
staying on my feet. I watched Peter cross the floor to where Simon
lay and crouch down next to him. He cradled Simon’s head in his
arms and rocked him back and forth, as though to soothe a
frightened child. I could feel the hysteria rising in me as I
watched him holding my dead son and I turned to Sam for his
strength.”

“‘Sammy, we will have to move
the bodies before the storm fades. Where can we take them and how
are we going to get them there?’ I was almost wailing at him, but
he seemed to be miles away and I wasn’t getting through to him. My
panic level rose as I concluded that he was going to walk out and
leave me. It was Peter who answered me, in a quiet calm voice as
though everything was normal and I was over-reacting badly.”

“‘This isn’t a storm.’ Peter
said. ‘That’s not thunder out there.’”

“I stared at him, wondering if
his mind had been unhinged by what had happened that night and
wondering what I was going to do if both of my mainstays abandoned
me now. Sam snapped my attention back from Peter.”

“‘Peter’s right.’ Sam said.
‘That’s not the noise from a storm out there.’”

“I decided that I was surrounded
by people who were in shock after the events of the evening and my
panic and anxiety levels shot through the roof. What would I do
without them both? Why had they both let me down when I needed them
the most? But Sam was suddenly making for the warehouse door at a
run. He snatched it open and ran out into the night. But it was a
night the like of which I had never seen in my life before. The gap
where the warehouse door stood open was filled with an intense red
light and there were terrible sounds coming from every direction.
Before I had chance to wonder if Sam had left me to deal with the
bodies on my own, he was back, racing in through the door and
crashing it closed behind him."