The Corner House (25 page)

‘Cash?’

Maurice inclined his head in compliance.

‘Today?’

‘Tomorrow. The bank’s closed and—’

‘And, by tomorrow, you’ll have this place crawling with police.’

Maurice pondered. ‘A thousand. Come home with me, spend the weekend at my house. I live alone. You can rip out the phone, then travel with me on Monday morning, come to the bank for the money and—’

‘What’s in that bloody safe, then?’

‘Stuff you couldn’t fence up here, stuff that’ll need to go to London – Birmingham at least. Have you ever fenced?’

The man failed to answer.

‘It’s not easy. Some of the things inside my safe are here just for the duration – monogrammed family silver, original paintings. You’ll not get rid of that kind of loot from a barrow on Bolton Market. This is all good merchandise – you’d need experts.’

‘Happen I know some.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ mimicked the man. ‘Now, get on with it.’

Maurice spun the wheel, thirty-five left, back to centre, twenty-seven right … ‘One second,’ he begged. ‘Thirty-five, twenty-seven, centre … it’ll come to me in a minute.’ He leaned against the bench, his body turned slightly sideways to the robber. Deft fingers picked up a hammer. Could he?

‘What are you playing at?’

The jeweller blundered forward, saw the enemy reaching for his crowbar. Nothing mattered now.
Maurice Chorlton felt a blow across his shoulder, ignored the pain and smashed the hammer’s head between the young man’s eyes. The thief folded himself into a neat heap on the floor, blood seeping from his forehead, cries of anger emerging from his throat.

Swiftly, Maurice found nineteen on the dial, spun the wheel, turned the key and entered the safe. His shoulder throbbed and the door was heavy, but he managed to shift it home. This was foolproof. No-one else could enter the safe now, as it locked itself automatically once closed.

It was pitch dark inside. Maurice reached for a cord and switched on the single bulb. He breathed deeply, rubbed his injured shoulder and perched on a stool. The thief would go soon, he told himself firmly. Once the man had left the shop, Maurice could let himself out and …

Panic flooded his veins, causing his head to pound. What had he done? There was no way out. The mechanism could not be employed from the inside. He should have allowed the burglar into the safe, should have locked him in.

Silence burned his ears. The concrete and steel storeroom allowed no sound to permeate its fabric. This was Saturday. By Monday morning, he would be dead. There was no water, no food and the air supply was limited. The only man who knew of Maurice’s whereabouts was a thief with his own skin to save.

‘I’ll be missed at chapel,’ he whispered. But no-one would look for him on Sunday, he supposed. The shop would remain closed on Monday, but who was going to care about that?

He looked at his collection, but found no joy in the exercise. For the sake of these precious possessions,
he was going to die. If and when the police broke in, Maurice would be long departed. He thought about his son, realized anew that he had little affection for the lad.

While hours passed and the air thinned, Maurice climbed down from his stool and laid himself on the hard floor. His thoughts became disjointed as he drifted towards his final sleep. For a breath of oxygen, he would have given away every piece in the safe. His chest tightened as if it meant to burst wide open. For the sake of a few ornaments, Maurice Chorlton had given up his hold on life.

Christmas loomed large, its advent proclaimed by crêpe paper streamers and a large tree placed between the staffroom and a women’s toilet. Cotton wool caused branches to hang low, while a few baubles added further weight to the matter, giving the fir a slightly depressed appearance, as if some of Earth’s worries rested in its frail, spiky arms.

Theresa Nolan, who felt as if she had been in Williamson’s for ever, closed her eyes and leaned the back of her head against the corridor wall. She was waiting, had been waiting for months on end for the all-clear, the ticket that would set her free. Now, more than ever before, she needed to get out of this dressed-up fortress. Christmas made everything worse, since Christmas was a time for families. She swallowed her sadness, because she had to continue now without Jessica. It was time to move on, as Williamson’s was becoming a dangerous place for Theresa Nolan. And she had to get out into the world, needed to earn so that her daughter might have a bit put by for the future.

‘Hello.’

Theresa glanced upward and smiled. Monty Sexton, an older man and a patient in Room Fifteen
(Shared), had been visiting Theresa for some weeks, had brought her extra magazines, a few old books, some scented soap. Although Theresa could have moved into a ward, she had begged to remain alone until her room was needed. Her plans, her schemes for the immediate hereafter, required silence and a lot of thought. She sighed, shook her head at her companion. It was all right for him – he had an official clean bill of health on a signed sheet, every ‘t’ crossed, every ‘i’ dotted. Monty was due to leave in a matter of weeks.

He looked around furtively. ‘What are you up to?’ he asked, his accent announcing a close relationship with the city of Liverpool. Monty was not a great talker. He was the sort of man with whom Theresa could sit for half an hour without the need for senseless prattle and gossip. As always, he dived straight into the heart of the matter. ‘You’re stewing on something.’

She shrugged lightly. ‘What on earth gives you that idea?’

Monty Sexton scratched his head. ‘You’ve a suitcase under your bed for a start.’

‘It might be empty,’ she replied.

‘Well, it’s not. I picked it up and it was heavy.’

Theresa sighed. ‘I’m getting out.’

‘Really? Are you signed clear?’

‘No.’

‘Then what are you playing at?’

Theresa raised her shoulders again. ‘Well, it’s not a game of marbles, I can tell you that. In fact, it’s not a game at all.’ She sighed. ‘I am going to put my winter coat on and go through that front door, then I’ll walk and walk until something happens.’

‘Up here? What’s going to happen on these
bloody moors?’ An ex-seaman from the largest port in England, Monty was not keen on miles and miles of grass.

‘I’ll find a pub or a big house where help’s needed. I’m going, Monty.’ She looked him up and down. ‘Or, if you like, I’ll come with you. There must be work to be had in Liverpool.’

He opened his mouth, closed it, turned away and walked down the corridor.

‘Coward,’ Theresa hissed in his wake. She closed her eyes again and picked up the frayed edges of her thoughts. Jessica was Theresa Nolan’s only family, and the poor, sweet child could no longer figure in Theresa’s plans. Although Jessica must, of necessity, become a no-go area, Theresa felt the loss deeply. The woman’s existence was emptier and sadder since her daughter’s departure. ‘Work from your head, not from your heart,’ she told herself softly.

A complication had arisen, the sort of complexity that could not have been envisaged. Theresa Nolan, victim of rheumatic fever, rape and tuberculosis, was balanced on a precipice she had never intended to visit. She could not, must not fall in love. Love between a man and a woman was a precious, fragile thing, a vulnerable flower that needed nurturing, attention and time. She had no space in her agenda for that sort of commitment; she was impervious to it, had been denied the chance of ever countenancing it. And yet her heart was warm because a certain man existed, a man who seemed to care for her. And no, she was not daydreaming.

The chair was uncomfortable, but she remained where she was, considering the concept that a viable opening might just be about to present itself, a chance to get out of the sanatorium, to begin again.
She would have to work on Monty, but he had a soft spot for Theresa, had become something of a father figure in recent weeks. Liverpool would be ideal. Near enough, far enough, absolutely suitable. Later, she would start to persuade him.

The opportunity to be helped to escape from Williamson’s might not occur again for months. Theresa guessed that her life would be short; therefore, she could not afford to linger here while three newly demobilized menaces were allowed to continue their lives as normal, decent people. With a frail constitution, Theresa needed luck and as much time as she could grab before her erratic heart gave up the ghost. Time. Time to plan her revenge, time to work out how to obtain her sorry three pounds of flesh, time to save up for the orphan Jessica was destined to become. And space, she needed that commodity, too, because—

‘Theresa?’

This was not Monty. This was the wrong man in more ways than one, because Dr Stephen Blake represented no sensible chance at all. He was, in fact, the embodiment of Theresa’s recently discovered danger within the walls of the hospital. ‘Yes?’

He smiled, sat next to her. ‘Your results are very encouraging again. In fact, they’re absolutely marvellous.’

He sounded like a child who had just won a bag of toffees in a game of musical chairs. ‘Oh,’ she breathed.

‘The photographs are wonderful.’

Theresa sighed inwardly. It was like humouring a little boy, she reminded herself. No matter how long she lived, she would never understand how a grown man could wax lyrical over a cage of ribs and some
greyish shadows. He had begun to clean up his act, was slightly neater, less red in the face, was probably nudging his slow way towards sobriety. ‘Can I go home soon?’ she asked.

She knew the answer; she didn’t want to hear it all over again. And she had no home. Number 34, Emblem Street had been given to another family. Maurice Chorlton, who had owned the house, was dead, so his executors had sorted out his son’s various holdings. An air of mystery still surrounded Maurice Chorlton’s death, as he had suffocated in a safe, while a young man had perished in the shop’s cellar from a single, well-aimed blow to his skull. It had been a robbery, everyone had assumed, a crime which had gone horribly wrong.

‘Theresa?’

Roy Chorlton. She remembered his proposal and shuddered inwardly. Roy, Teddy Betteridge and Ged Hardman were three of the reasons for Theresa’s need to escape soon – yesterday, if possible – from the sanatorium. ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said to the doctor. ‘Did you say something?’ He was too close. Whatever was happening between them became stronger each day, harder to deny when physical proximity strengthened the curse. She could not allow herself to experience … need, desire for a man. The rapists had wrenched all feeling from her body, yet she craved to touch this untidy fellow, this doctor who drank too much, smoked too much, cared too much for the human flotsam among which he slaved for eighteen hours of each God-given day.

To distract herself again, she thought about George Hardman, who, before leaving his wife, had sent a one-off payment of five hundred pounds to Theresa. The nest egg had been laid and set to
incubate in the bank, but she needed to add to it, to nourish and care for Jessica’s small inheritance.

‘I said no, you can’t go home yet. You must learn to walk before trying to run. TB takes its own time.’

Theresa opened her ears to the present and sighed her exasperation. She had never felt better in her adult life. She was rested, well fed and was the recipient of more fresh air than the average privet hedge. ‘When?’ she persisted.

‘Some time next year. Probably towards the end.’

Another year? Here she sat, teetering on the brink of 1946 – could she wait until 1947? Another twelve months stuck in jail for a crime she had not committed? But Stephen Blake would be here … yes, he would be here, and the magnetism was intensifying with every passing hour. She was inexplicably angry with him, even more furious with herself. In her mind, she was pacing about like a distracted Victorian maiden with her virtue at stake.

‘Theresa?’

His voice was like warm honey, his hands were kind, his eyes soft and gentle. She was falling … Theresa amputated the thought, warned it not to regenerate. If she could bear to live in a world without Jessica, she could surely manage without this masculine hiccup. ‘I can’t stand this place,’ she said. ‘It’s like jail.’ There was business to do, business that needed thinking about. Until now, until her health had bucked up, she had felt thoroughly stuck inside a dimension that differed so keenly from normal life. But she needed to get moving while she felt well, she wanted work, money, a roof, some freedom. She had to go, had to start making preparation for … for whatever. ‘My life is on a back burner,’ she muttered. Then, raising her
voice, she asked, ‘What happens if I just walk out of here?’

The doctor raised a shoulder.

She closed her eyes again in case the quickness of her thoughts might show in her expression. There had to be positions in Liverpool. The place had been bombed, flattened, especially near the docks. Yes, there must be work there, cleaning, tidying up, serving those who slaved to rebuild their city. Anything would do, anything at all. Once settled in a job, she would not leave it, would not risk returning to Bolton. She had TB. Just like a criminal, she would need to keep a low profile. She would do anything, anything at all for a wage packet and somewhere safe to live until … until some unspecifiable time in the future.

He cleared his throat as if to remind her of his presence.

‘What would happen if I walked out?’ she asked again.

‘We would try to bring you back, because your saliva is still registering positive. You might reinfect your daughter, for example. Though she is probably fairly immune by now.’

Jessica would play no role in Theresa’s half-formed plan, because Theresa’s life was about to change radically if and when she made her break for freedom. Jessica was better off with Eva, Theresa said inwardly for the umpteenth time. ‘So I’d be arrested?’

‘Not quite.’

Theresa tried to glare at him, but discovered that the action was impossible. ‘Have you any idea of what it’s like for us in here?’

Stephen Blake raised an eyebrow. ‘I live here myself,’ he said.

‘From choice, though.’

He had never said the words, had never told anyone except the headshrinkers, and headshrinkers scarcely qualified as human. Now, for the first time ever, he framed the words voluntarily. ‘I’m not here from choice, Theresa. I’m here because …’ He was here because he was crazy, afraid of life on the outside, of crowds, of empty spaces, of the weighty loneliness in his chest, of free-floating panics, of too-dark nights and over-bright days. Afraid of decision-making, terrified of existence itself.