Bad Company Read online

  He said that Diane belittled people to make herself seem important. That true greatness comes from recognising other people’s worth.

  He always did recognise other people’s worth. From Harry Ball with his mathematical brain, to Ralph Aird.

  He made even the dumbest person in his class feel they had something to offer.

  There was never a teacher like Murdo.

  And I’ve just ruined his life.

  My diary told me something else too. How J.B. changed after he read it. Read how I hated him, read how horrible I’d become, read of the terrible thing I had done to Ralph. And when he read how much I wanted to go to Adler Academy he knew he’d need money to send me there. The kind of money he could only earn by working again for Magnus Pierce.

  The mysterious phone calls had begun in earnest after that. He had seemed to come to a decision. To have a purpose. The purpose being to turn back to crime.

  And I had driven him to it.

  Magnus Pierce and Diane. They had a lot in common. Both of them wanted to rule people’s lives. They both made people do bad things.

  J.B. and I have a lot in common too. I see that now. He didn’t tell on Magnus Pierce out of some false sense of loyalty. And I backed Diane up for the same reason.

  Take responsibility, Murdo says.

  Now is the time for me to do that.

  I can change things, or I can at least try.

  I can’t let J.B. work for Magnus Pierce again. It would kill my mum. She’s been happy since he’s been home. How can I convince him he doesn’t have to? But if he’s already told Magnus Pierce he would work for him, he can’t go back on that. Not with Magnus Pierce. So, no good talking to J.B. He won’t listen. He can’t. He’s caught up again and can’t get out. Like a fly caught in a web.

  But maybe if I ask Magnus Pierce. Beg him to let J.B. go, let us get on with our lives. Maybe I can do something. I have to try.

  If I want to change things I have to go straight to the spider.

  Magnus Pierce.

  Luckily, Dad was at the nursery with Margo so as I left the house there were no awkward questions, no need for more lies. I paused for a moment at the front door.

  Dad. I had called him Dad, and it hadn’t been painful at all. My dad.

  I took the bus to the far side of town where Magnus Pierce’s offices are.

  ‘You know where to find me,’ he had said once. And I did too. J.B. used to work there, in a brightly lit office, with phones and faxes and computers constantly linked to the Internet. All very businesslike and above board. Fronting a business that relied on fraud and smuggling and all sorts of dodgy dealings.

  Magnus Pierce’s Mercedes, MAG 1, sat in the driveway heralding his presence. Good. I wanted him to be there. I wanted to ask, beg him if I had to, to let J.B. go. We didn’t need the money. And surely he didn’t need J.B.

  It was only as I climbed the winding staircase from the street entrance that I began to grow really nervous. I had rehearsed over and over in my mind what I was going to say, but now as I took one faltering step after another my mouth went dry and my mind was a complete blank. All I knew was that it was up to me to get J.B. out of this mess.

  A long corridor at the top of the stairs led to Magnus Pierce’s office and I could hear murmured voices behind the closed door. One of them was his. Louder than the other. In charge as always.

  Even before I knocked on the door it was hauled open by a tall woman, very thin, her black hair streaked with grey. It took her only a moment to recognise exactly who I was.

  ‘Hey, it’s the Blythe girl,’ she called back into the office, then she stood aside to let me pass.

  He was sitting behind his desk, and he swivelled round in his chair to look at me. He had his jacket off and his tie was loosened. Papers were strewn on his desk, and he looked for all the world like a proper businessman and not … not what he was.

  No wonder at first he had fooled J.B.

  ‘Lissa.’ He beamed a smile at me with what looked like genuine warmth. ‘And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’ He gestured me to a seat and I took it nervously.

  The woman closed the door behind her and leaned against it. She looked unfriendly and her hooded black eyes never left me. She was scary.

  ‘C … could I speak to you alone?’ I tried to sound confident, but my voice was too shaky. ‘Please?’ I added.

  Magnus Pierce nodded in the direction of the scary woman. ‘Give us a minute, Esther.’

  She looked none too pleased to comply. ‘She’s Blythe’s daughter,’ she said. ‘I might want to hear this too.’

  Magnus Pierce’s eyes flashed a warning at her. It warned me too. She wasn’t a visiting girlfriend, or even a customer. She was one of them. And she didn’t like J.B.

  I watched her as she pulled the door closed.

  Be calm, Lissa, I told myself. Speak clearly, don’t get excited.

  Yet, as soon as I opened my mouth my words came out in a torrent.

  ‘It’s about my dad.’ There. I’d called him it again. Not too hard. ‘I know he’s coming back to work for you.’ He raised an eyebrow and I hurried on not wanting him to think Dad had told me anything. ‘It’s OK, I know he’s not supposed to talk, and he hasn’t. I heard him on the phone to you. Late at night, when he thought we were all sleeping. He didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell anyone. So you know you can trust him. He went to prison for you, didn’t he? He didn’t say a word then. I thought he was stupid doing that, but he thought he was doing the right thing. I understand that now. But you can’t let him come back to work for you. I don’t care if we never have any money. But I couldn’t bear him going back to jail.’ Still Magnus Pierce said nothing. He rested his chin on his folded hands and just looked at me.

  ‘I know he’s going to do what you want. I heard him tell you that last night. But please, let him be. You don’t need him to work for you.’

  Now, I got some kind of reaction, even if it was only that he sat straight in his chair. ‘And when is he going to do all this for me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Soon. That’s why I had to come.’

  Esther suddenly threw open the door. ‘I told you never to trust Blythe.’ She’d been listening to my every word. ‘Have you been talking to Blythe?’

  Magnus Pierce’s voice was icy. ‘I told you. He wouldn’t talk to me. Wasn’t interested in any of my offers.’

  ‘And if you haven’t been talking to him, who has?’

  I was baffled. Magnus Pierce hadn’t been talking to my dad? So who were all the phone calls coming from? Who had he been meeting?

  Magnus Pierce gave me the answer. ‘Who else?’ he said. ‘The police, of course. They’ve been after him since he came out of jail. Trying to get him to tell what he knows. And he knows plenty.’

  They were talking as if I wasn’t there.

  ‘Now it seems he’s ready to share what he knows with them,’ Esther almost yelled. ‘You’ve got to do something to stop this, Magnus.’

  I was trying to take all this in. Dad hadn’t been planning to go back to work for Magnus Pierce after all. He’d been planning to do what I’d always wanted him to. Tell the police everything he knew. Mum wouldn’t want him to do that. She’d know how dangerous it would be. No wonder she’d been crying. It all fell into place. The furtive phone calls weren’t from Magnus Pierce at all. They were from the police. They would protect him, they had said; but then, who could protect him against the likes of Magnus Pierce? I began to breathe faster when I realised I had just ruined everything. I had walked into the spider’s web and told him all he needed to know. If I’d done nothing, things would have been all right. How could I have been so stupid?

  I stood up. ‘Maybe I’ll just go,’ I said hopefully.

  Esther pressed her hand firmly on my shoulder and pushed me back into my seat. ‘I don’t think so.’

  Magnus Pierce smiled and lifted the phone. ‘Send a car for Jonathan Blythe. Bring him here. And don’t take no for an ans
wer. Tell him his daughter Lissa has just paid me a visit.’ He turned his chilling gaze on me. ‘And I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to her.’

  Chapter Seventeen

  I’d done the wrong thing again. I thought I was saving Dad from Magnus Pierce’s clutches and all I’d done was pull him into more trouble.

  As we sat silently waiting for him to arrive I tried to plan my escape.

  I could scream, but who would hear me? These offices were far from the main road, surrounded by building sites. I could make a run for it. Somehow I didn’t think I’d get very far. Esther was leaning against the door, barring my way.

  The best form of defence is attack. Could I throw myself at Magnus Pierce, take him by surprise? Another stupid idea. I could just picture that giant of a man holding me at arm’s length, or lifting me by the collar while she stood watching in amusement.

  This close, I saw how big and powerful and scary Magnus Pierce really was.

  What had made me think I could appeal to his better nature? This man didn’t have any better nature. And now, Dad was caught like a rat in a trap, because of my stupidity.

  Magnus Pierce swung himself round in his swivel chair to face me. ‘Won’t be long now, princess.’

  ‘I’m not your princess,’ I snapped at him.

  He smiled broadly. ‘Spirit,’ he said to Esther. ‘That’s what this one’s got.’

  She wasn’t impressed by my spirit. She scowled at me. ‘I told you we should have dealt with Jonathan Blythe a long time ago.’

  ‘He went to prison because of you!’ I shouted at both of them. ‘He never told on anyone. So why can’t you just let him be!’

  Magnus Pierce shook his head. ‘Ah, your father has always been hampered by a conscience, Lissa. Bad thing to have in our business. Sooner or later, he would have passed on his information.’ He held up his hands. ‘Now, we can’t allow that.’

  ‘Don’t bother explaining anything to her. She’s only a child.’

  And the way Esther was looking at me I didn’t think she intended for me to get any older.

  The clock on the wall ticked the seconds away with the beating of my heart.

  What were they planning to do to us? When Dad came would they just let us go? Somehow I didn’t think so.

  Were we going to ‘disappear’? I’d heard of people doing that. Without a trace, never heard of again.

  And if we did, Murdo’s life would be ruined forever because I’d never get the chance to tell the truth. Tell them that Diane’s story was all a lie. That Murdo was the best teacher in the world.

  I promised if I survived today, that’s the first thing I would do. Save Murdo.

  It all seemed a hundred years ago and yet it had only been this morning.

  I looked at the clock. Only ten minutes had passed. Had the car arrived for Dad yet? Was he being forced to leave the house? I could have almost cried as I imagined him trying to organise a babysitter for Margo. He’d never leave her alone under any circumstances. Never had since he’d come out of prison. While Mum worked he had cooked and cleaned and looked after us and I had never appreciated anything. The job at Burgers A GoGo must have been as humiliating for him as it had been for me, but he had been willing to suffer it just to have a job. And what had I done? Made things even worse for him. Just as I was doing now.

  And what was he doing now? Was he struggling with the men Magnus Pierce had sent to collect him? Was he being dragged out to a waiting limousine? Maybe the neighbours would see. His struggles would alert them. They might call the police.

  But of course, they wouldn’t. They knew Dad’s past. Who he had been involved with. They would probably think he was just being arrested again by some plain-clothes police.

  There was no way out. The car arriving at the house would have taken him by surprise. Magnus Pierce had given him no chance to contact the police himself to tell them what was happening.

  It took me all my time and effort not to cry.

  And suddenly, after an age, he was here! I could hear him pounding up the stairs before bursting into the office, his eyes wide with alarm.

  ‘Lissa!’ He dragged me close to him. ‘Did they hurt you!’

  ‘Of course not.’ Magnus Pierce sounded offended. ‘What kind of people do you think we are?’

  ‘I know exactly what kind of people you are.’ Dad held me even closer. ‘Magnus, let Lissa go. Please. That’s all I ask.’

  I struggled. ‘No. I’m not going to leave you. It was me who got you into all this.’

  From behind us Esther was laughing. ‘Let you go? Are you joking?’

  And Magnus Pierce just shook his head sadly. ‘I’m afraid, Jonathan, that is out of the question now.’

  I began to shake, I couldn’t help it. Dad pulled me closer against him.

  ‘What are you going to do with us?’ he asked.

  We never did find out.

  Because at that instant all hell broke loose in the office. The whole place was suddenly swarming with policemen and women, bursting through doors, pounding up stairs.

  Esther gasped and tried to rush past them but she was grabbed and held.

  Magnus Pierce’s face was ashen. He took a step back and looked from Dad to me, puzzled. It was all over in panic-stricken seconds. Handcuffs were snapped on Magnus Pierce’s wrists. He didn’t struggle. He looked straight at the detective who held him and said coldly, ‘I’ll be out of this in days. You know that.’

  The policeman grinned at him, and glanced at Dad. ‘Will he, Mr Blythe?’

  Dad’s voice was sure with his answer. ‘Not this time, Magnus. You were holding my daughter against her will.’ His voice was unforgiving. His glance moved to the policeman. ‘I’ll tell you everything you need to know.’

  Magnus Pierce’s eyes narrowed viciously and didn’t leave Dad until he was pulled out of the office.

  When he had gone, Dad let out a long, exhausted breath. ‘How did you know we were here?’ he asked the policeman.

  ‘We’ve had a man watching this office for weeks,’ he told Dad. ‘When he saw this young lady,’ he managed a smile in my direction, ‘running inside, looking, shall we say, slightly upset, he contacted us and even before we got here he saw you being escorted into the building by a couple of Pierce’s heavies. He said you looked even more upset than your daughter. It wasn’t too hard to put two and two together.’

  Dad held me close, and for the first time, I let him. He was shivering. ‘I was so frightened he’d hurt you. I couldn’t think why you’d gone to see him.’

  ‘I thought you were going back to work for him,’ I mumbled. ‘When you read my diary you changed. As if you thought all I wanted was money, to go to Adler Academy, to get my old life back.’

  He squeezed my arm. ‘It was reading your diary that did change things, Lissa. I realised the same thing that had happened to me was happening to you. You were being drawn into doing things by someone you thought was a friend. Keeping your mouth shut. Protecting Diane Connell the way I had protected Magnus Pierce. You made me see how wrong that was. That’s when I decided to tell the police everything I knew. No matter how dangerous it might be.’

  When he spoke again, his voice was choked with tears. ‘You’ve been caught up in a horrible world, Lissa, and it’s all my fault. No wonder you can’t forgive me.’

  But I had created a horrible world of my own, and I couldn’t blame anyone else for that.

  I hugged him closer. ‘Don’t worry, Dad. It’s all over now.’

  He shook his head. ‘With Magnus Pierce it will never be over.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  But he was wrong.

  Oh yes, Magnus Pierce got out on bail, and we were all afraid.

  But he was the one who ‘disappeared’. It was suspected at first that he’d fled the country, but that turned out to be wrong too. Because a few days later a body was found, wrapped in a tarpaulin and buried in a shallow grave. Magnus Pierce had made many enemies and he could never be r
elied upon to keep his mouth shut the way my dad had.

  Yes, my dad. Easy to say it now. He cried the night we heard, not for Magnus Pierce, but because of the dark and sinister world he’d drawn us into. A world, he said, we should have known nothing about so young.

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ he said, over and over. ‘How could I have been so stupid?’

  But I understand now, how you can get caught up with people, led astray, believing you’re not doing anything that’s so bad.

  Diane Connell was my Magnus Pierce. And the day after all that excitement I had to go into school and tell the whole truth. I had to stand there, in front of Murdo and Mr Knowles and admit I had lied. Knowing that my lie could have ruined his life. I expected Murdo to bawl at me, rant and rave at me in his anger. But he surprised me again. He only shook his head and pursed his lips and when he finally did speak it wasn’t what I expected at all.

  ‘It took a lot of courage for you to come here and say this, Lissa. Thank you.’

  And that was when I cried. I bubbled like a baby. Murdo didn’t come near me to comfort me and the headmaster only looked embarrassed.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Go on, have a good greet,’ Murdo said. ‘Let it all out.’

  Diane never came back to school. She’s not going to Adler Academy either. After what happened it seemed they rescinded – is that the right word? They withdrew their offer anyway.

  I did try to phone her. To explain to her what I’d done and my reasons. But it was her mother who answered. ‘Diane isn’t here,’ she told me in clipped angry tones. ‘And we don’t want you phoning here again.’

  I was suspended for a week though I know Murdo didn’t even want that. I didn’t mind. Too many things were happening at home anyway.

  It was the longest week of my life. I had no idea how the rest of my class would take what I had done to their favourite teacher. I was dreading going back that day.

  June 12th

  Murdo was waiting for me at the school gates when I arrived this morning. I deliberately came late, terrified of having to run yet another gauntlet. I waited round the corner till I heard the bell and only made my way to school when my class had safely filed inside.