The Retribution Read Online Free PDF Page B

Collins’ existing sentence.
    Then Collins got a different kind of sentence. Leukaemia. The kind where you have only a forty per cent chance of still being alive five years after the initial diagnosis. Meaning he’d probably never have a second chance to provide a future for his kids or his wife. Even if he got maximum time off his sentence, Collins felt like he’d only be going home to die. ‘They’d let you go home anyway if you were that close to dying,’ Vance had pointed out. ‘Look what happened to the Lockerbie bomber.’ It seemed like a perverse version of having your cake and eating it. Collins could help Vance escape and it wouldn’t matter – they’d still let him out when he was sick enough. Either way, he’d be spending the end of his life with his family. And if they did it Vance’s way, his wife and kids would never have to worry about money again.
    It had taken all Vance’s powers of persuasion and more patience than he knew he possessed to draw Collins round to his way of thinking. ‘You all grow unaccustomed to nice,’ his psychologist had once remarked. That had given Vance a powerful tool, and finally he’d cracked it. Collins’ elder son was about to become a pupil at the best independent school in Warwickshire and Jacko Vance was about to walk out of jail.
Vance tidied up, tearing the soggy paper into fragments and flushing it, along with hair wrapped in thin wads of toilet paper. He scrunched the plastic film into little balls and squeezed it between the table and the wall. When he could think of nothing more, he finally lay down on the narrow bed. The air chilled the sweat on his body and, shivering, he pulled the duvet over him.
    It was all going to be all right. Tomorrow, the screw would come for Jason Collins to take him for his first day of Release on Temporary Licence. ROTL was what every prisoner in the Therapeutic Community dreamed of – the day they would emerge from the prison gates and spend a day in a factory or an office. How bloody pitiful, Vance thought. Therapy that so reduced a man’s horizons that a day of mundane drudgery was something to aspire to. It had taken every ounce of his skills in dissimulation to hide his contempt for the regime. But he’d managed it because he knew this was the key to his return to a life outside walls.
    Because not everyone in the Therapeutic Community would be allowed outside. For Vance and a handful of others, there would always be too high a risk involved in that. No matter that he’d convinced that stupid bitch of a psychologist that he was a different man from the one who’d committed the deeply disturbing murder he’d been convicted of. Not to mention all those other teenage girls that he was technically innocent of killing, since he’d never been found guilty of their murders. Still, no Home Secretary wanted to be branded the person who released Jacko Vance. It didn’t matter what his tariff from the judge said. Vance knew there would never be an official return to society for him. He had to admit, if he was in charge, he wouldn’t let him out either. But then, he knew exactly what he was capable of. The authorities could only guess.
Vance smiled in the darkness. Very soon he planned to take the guesswork out of the equation.

7
    T he liveried police car made a slow turn at Carol’s direction. ‘Third house on the left,’ she said, her voice a weary sigh. She’d left Paula at the crime scene, making sure things were done the way the Major Incident Team preferred. Carol had no problem with delegation, not with a hand-picked squad like this one. She wondered whether she’d have that same luxury in Worcester.
‘Ma’am?’ The driver, a stolid twenty-something traffic officer, sounded cautious.
    Carol roused herself to attention. ‘Yes? What is it?’
    ‘There’s a man sitting in a parked car outside the third house on the left. It looks like his head’s leaning on the steering wheel,’ he said. ‘Do you want me