A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [125]
These three men hadn’t come for an evening’s entertainment, however, they’d come to see her. They demanded to know where Reggie was, saying he owed them £15,000 for gambling debts, and they showed her an IOU signed by him.
Of course she told them that he’d robbed her and run out on her and that she had no idea where he was. But they said that as his wife, she would have to pay.
She just shrugged it off, told them it was nothing to do with her, and that she couldn’t possibly be held responsible. When they left quietly, she assumed they’d accepted what she’d said.
But the following night, she’d just got into her flat in the early hours of the morning when the doorbell rang. She opened it, thinking it was the woman who lived above her, and there were the men again.
They pushed her aside and barged in, one holding her back so she couldn’t phone the police. They turned the whole flat upside down, pulling out drawers, going through the wardrobe, even the bookcase, and when they found nothing but £20 in her purse, they threatened her.
One of the men held her arms behind her back, while the leader, whom they called ‘Earl’, ran a knife menacingly down her cheek.
‘You are a good-looking woman, and I expect you want to stay that way. So pay us and you can.’
She was terrified, instinctively knowing by the cruelty in his cold blue eyes that he’d enjoy scarring her for life. She cried and told them again and again that she had nothing but what she earned at the club. He said that for the time being he would settle for £50 a week, and he would be round to the club every Friday night to collect it. As the men left, taking the money from her purse with them, Earl turned at the door and smirked menacingly.
‘Don’t even think about going to the police or you’ll find yourself waking up in hospital with your face rearranged. And don’t try and run for it either. We’ll soon track you down and make you regret it.’
Nora guessed that they had found out about her wealthy background and didn’t believe that Reggie had taken everything. She realized, too, that if she’d taken an ordinary job in an office or shop, she would never have come to their notice. But by taking a position in a Soho nightclub, she might just as well have advertised herself in the national newspapers.
She didn’t dare go to the police for fear of the men carrying out their threat, but she couldn’t leave her flat and job either. For five weeks she paid them, each time pleading that she couldn’t continue to do so as that was all she earned.
She was sick with fear and anxiety, she couldn’t sleep or eat, and the few pounds she had tucked away for a rainy day were soon eaten up in living expenses.
But on the sixth Friday, Earl said that in future they wanted £100 every week, because at the rate she was paying it back she’d be on her old age pension before the debt was cleared.
She pleaded with him, insisted there was no possible way she could give him that much. But Earl just laughed at her.
‘You’re sitting on a gold mine,’ he said with a sneer. ‘You might be knocking on a bit, but there’s blokes who’d pay thirty or forty quid to fuck you. So do it and stop snivelling. Next week we want a ton.’
John came over to her after they’d left the club. ‘What’s going on, darlin’?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said, trying to smile, but she was so scared she was shaking.
‘I know that crew,’ he said, his usual wide grin disappearing. ‘What have they got on you?’
She fobbed him off with a quip about one of them asking her for a date and getting nasty when she refused, but John wasn’t easy to fool, and she felt him looking speculatively at her whenever she was sharp with one of the girls or a customer.
The following Friday night she was a bag of nerves. She didn’t even have £50 to give them as she’d had to pay a month’s rent.
They came in at nine, before the club got busy, went straight over to a table on the far side of the bar and beckoned to her. She was so scared of Earl that she could hardly manage to tell him that