Notorious - John Jones (read after .TXT) 📗

they wouldn’t discover his bank activity, which in turn would perhaps mean that Anthony’s infiltration may be discovered as they may investigate whether or not other banks had defective firewalls that allowed hackers access. They could then easily trace it back to the perpetrator.

 

Anthony knew he had to risk it. The advancement of medical knowledge was a higher priority to him than being wealthy, and wished he could just tell Tom his way of thinking. Wished he could simply disagree and have a proper discussion about the pros and cons of the argument. Yet, it may lose Tom’s friendship, which he did not want, in becoming the thing he hated. He would basically be the enemy. If Tom ever found out, then he didn’t know what would happen. Yet he knew that if he did discover it, there would be no tears. So be it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

22

 

 

He sped along a main road which was on a downward gradient, speeding past vehicles towards red lights which eventually made him slow down. He rode through them, around a corner, onto the kerb, riding through a few pedestrians until he came to a lamp post. He chained his bike up, rummaged around in his denim jacket for his ipod. He wore it, and walked along the pavement listening to Geoff White’s greatest hits. It was country and western, his favourite genre, so much so that his house was a virtual shrine to all things country.

 

He always wore related clothing, and his record collection featured only 6% of other genres. It was his obsession which had brought him here, and to other main high street shopping areas across the northwest and sometimes beyond. Most days he would be out searching second-hand and charity shops for basically all country records, no matter who they were.

 

Robert Layton had long hair that nearly touched the top of his trousers. It was tied back in a ponytail. He had a long curving moustache down both sides of his mouth. He was 39, and lived alone. He had always lived alone, never truly integrating with anybody, choosing part-time employment as a delivery man at a local take-away. He had few friends, but that was exactly how he liked it. Those friends had never seen the inside of his house. Not many people had since he had moved in there 7 years ago.

 

He was an intensely private man, a man of few words in public. When he had reason to speak to anybody other than his friends, he spoke as little as possible, and would never make eye-contact. His answers were usually always’ ‘Yep,’ and ‘nope’. He had a western acoustic guitar which he always practised at home, and he had written a few songs, but did not have an albums worth of material, but it was only a matter of time. He would soon try and get a disc made to send to prospective record companies. He was, however, afraid of success. What if he was signed up straight away, and sent on the promotional circuit? All eyes on him, basically.

 

Performing to an audience was his most daunting fear. He knew he had the talent, but did not want all the accolades that came with it, simply because his privacy would shrink, and he would lose his seclusion. No longer would he be able to walk along the street and rifle through old records. Photographers would be camped outside his house.

 

Yet, he guessed his talent was too good to not be heard, so decided that should he obtain a record deal, he would make it absolutely clear that all he wanted to do was make an album. Signings, TV appearances and gigs he could quite easily do without. He guessed he would maybe do it to simply promote the album, and once it was out there, in the charts, he would disappear from public view.

 

Until then however, that deal was not even a forgotten thought of the deal makers. Studio time was expensive, so he had to be certain of the tracks he had lain down. He had even thought of doing a few cover versions, but wanted the album to float on its own merits. He was confident in his own ability to write songs, and until the album was completed and finalised he continued to gain influence from his idols, and there were always albums he would find of artists he had never heard of in his particular genre, so would snap them up straight away. Country music was his life. Other aspects simply paid visits every now and then.

 

He was heading towards a charity shop he had not visited in over a week, so hoped they would have new stock. He walked along a line of shops to it, but outside a newsagents, before his destination, there was a person stood with a clipboard, trying, and failing, to catch the eye of pedestrians who walked past as though she was not there.

 

She looked to be in her early twenties, had long, dark curly hair, and wore a bright yellow body-warmer with the name of the company she worked for splashed across it: ‘Eco benefit trust’. She was a ‘chugger’, or charity mugger, who would try and enlist people to sign up to make donations for good causes, usually by direct debit. Each charity seemed to have adopted the same method of enrolment, with the chugger well versed in what seemed like a prepared speech.

 

Isabel Clemence was no different. She spoke the same words to everybody she caught, and knew that the more she said, the more likely they were to sign up, because the feeling of guilt at walking away became more intense as she talked. Whether this was intentional by the company, she did not know, and was not told to make them feel guilty enough to sign up, but she did anyway.

 

Having been doing it for five months as a simple career step towards becoming a public sector accountant, she knew she had to start somewhere. This was her second step. She had previously volunteered for an animal charity, and also knew that to get where she wanted to be, there were many more steps to take.

 

Robert tried to avoid eye-contact, but he couldn’t. Isabel gave him a big painted smile, as she did to everybody.

“Scuse me sir, I wonder if I could just have a few seconds of your time.” Few seconds? thought Robert. More like half an hour. Ten minutes it took. Robert couldn’t get away, and the more she spoke, the more interested he became in the charity. He eventually wrote down his address and bank details.

“Thank you sir, we’ll post information out to you,” she said. Robert walked away towards the charity shop, and Isabel looked down at the form, at his hastily written address. She tore it off, folded it, and put it in her pocket, then threw down the clipboard and walked along the row of shops.

 

Crossing main roads, three bridges, and walking alongside roads, Isabel eventually emerged at a busy shopping area. She stood in the middle of a car-park, looking for the shop she sought. Rummaging around in her pocket, she took out fifty pounds in ten pound notes and walked across to a DIY store. The doors slid open as she entered. It took a good five minutes of walking up and down the aisles to find what she was looking for, but eventually, she was stood in front of four hand axes, their blades gleaming as though they had recently been polished. She picked up two, and further along, found the spades, and picked one up. She paid, finding she still had fifteen pounds left.

 

In the car park, she put down her goods and took out the form that Robert had filled in. She saw that his address was at least five miles away, so decided to get a taxi. It took only a few minutes before she was heading in that direction. The driver was the silent type, and wore small, dark sunglasses. He pulled up outside the house. She gave him the rest of the money which was much more than the total fare, and this produced a small nod and a small smile from the driver who then sped away.

 

With the two axes in one hand, the spade in the other, Isabel just stood on the pavement, looking at the house. From where she was standing, most of it was obscured by a privet hedge. It seemed to be an old Victorian house, semi-detached, crawling with ivy. The windows looked as though they hadn’t been washed in years. The front door was once white, but was now grey and brown, its paint flaking. There wasn’t what could be called a pathway.

 

From the black, rusty iron gate, to the front door, it was around four feet, and was probably an insect paradise. Pushing the gate open with the axes, she stepped across the cracked, weed-ridden tiles and knocked on the door. No sounds came from within and she knocked again. There was no answer. He wasn’t home. There was nothing she could do but wait, and walked along the road, trying to find a way in behind the house. There was a narrow trail that ran behind the houses, flanked on one side by nasty looking bushes which looked like a huge tangle of disguised barbed wire.

 

The sky was becoming darker as evening crept in, and Isabel found the back of Robert’s house. He had quite a large garden. There was an unused wooden door separating the path from his property, and was locked by a small rusty padlock. One strike from the spade and she was through. The garden fared no better than the front of the house. It was overgrown by grass and weeds, and somewhere beneath it all, a path cut through it from the patio behind the house to the door she had just entered.

 

With the soil being soft, she plunged the spade into the ground, and left it there as she walked onto the patio. It was scattered with biking equipment. Several air-pumps, several inner tubings from wheels, and what looked like several bicycle repair kits were simply strewn across the paving. The window of the upper half of the back door had a net curtain across it so she could not see in, but that did not matter, it only took one strike from an axe to allow her to put her hand through and unlock the door. She walked in, glass crunching beneath her feet.

 

The kitchen was fairly typical, the counter scattered with crumbs and pieces of dried food. The fridge was covered in magnets, from metal American flags to plastic cartoon characters. Out in the hallway, there were many framed pictures of men she did not recognise, but they all looked like country music singers. Most of them wore wide, Stetson hats and grinned out at the world with a certain smugness as though they were the most famous person in the world. Some of them were signed.

 

A large, American flag adorned the left wall, so it was the first thing Robert would see when he came home. She climbed the creaking stairs and saw that only one door was ajar. Crossing to it, she entered his bedroom. It was much like the hallway, only with more country related paraphernalia.

 

More framed portraits adorned the walls, along with posters and photocopies of album covers. The room was fairly small, made even smaller by the single bed which took up nearly half of it. There was a bedside cabinet, upon which was a tape recorder. Cassettes were scattered around it, and there were rows of them beneath. She sat on the bed, placing the axes beside her, and waited.

 

Robert was fairly pleased with what he had bought. Three albums and a light brown leather waistcoat. He already had several of these, but could never resist buying them when he could afford them.

He entered