Keep Reading …
Acknowledgements
About the Author
By the same author
About the Publisher
Prologue
Wandsworth Prison, 1970
If he torched the place, how long would it take for their bodies to burn?
He wanted them to suffer a prolonged, painful death, and now, as Kevin Dolby imagined his parents’ screams, he chuckled. While serving his sentence, he’d had years to brood, his hate festering until it had become an obsession. It was his mother’s fault that he was serving time and to top that he’d been cut out of their will. Him, their only son and heir!
He would punish them. They’d suffer. He’d see to that.
In his dismal cell, Kevin had fantasised about the many ways he could end their lives, but twice so far the parole board had denied him early release. He’d been a mug, played the hard man, had time added on after attacking his cellmate, but at last he had begun playing the game. Now, after serving thirteen years of a fifteen-year sentence, Kevin had ‘found’ religion – or so they thought. He’d become a consummate actor with his meek and mild manner, a ‘reformed’ character.
He was sure that he’d be granted parole this time – that he’d soon be free and ready to exact his revenge. Another scenario began to form in Kevin’s mind, this time taking into account that it couldn’t reach its finale until his parents had changed their will in his favour again. To make that happen he’d have to lull them into a false sense of security … play the part of a loving son.
A scowl marred his handsome face. Love! It wasn’t love he felt for them. It was hate!
Chapter One
Dolly Dolby smiled at her secret. For so long she had been woolly-minded, medicated after her mental breakdown, but just lately she had surreptitiously stopped taking the pills that Bernie, her husband, fed her. She felt that her mind had come alive again, that she was in control and thinking clearly for the first time in years.
It was a lovely spring day in March and Dolly was looking forward to seeing John, her grandson. He was the image of his handsome and dark-haired father, so like Kevin that every time she saw him her heart jolted.
Kevin was in prison, serving a fifteen-year sentence for robbery with violence, and had refused to allow her to visit him. She had no idea why, but then, to her joy, he had at last replied to one of her letters. The first thing she’d noticed when she went to see him was that Kevin’s eyes now burned with religious fervour and it was as though her son had been reborn. He wrote regularly now, his letters full of his plans to help others when he was released, and though until then she hadn’t had much time for religion, Dolly had gone down on her knees and thanked God for her son’s religious conversion.
At last Dolly heard the sound of a car pulling up outside their cottage which sat on a quiet lane on the outskirts of a village near Southsea in Hampshire. They had no close neighbours, though that didn’t bother Dolly. Nowadays she preferred seclusion. She had once owned a café in Battersea, London, and ruled the roost. No one had dared to cross her, but her world collapsed when Kevin had been arrested. There had been so much gossip, the story reaching the newspapers, and she’d been brought low with shame.
However, many long years had passed since then and pushing the memories to one side, Dolly flung open the street door. Her husband Bernie had taken to gardening with a passion and some of the daffodils were in bloom, but Dolly only had eyes for her grandson as he walked up the path.
‘Hello, Gran,’ John said, briefly accepting a cuddle before pulling away.
Dolly flinched, upset that he wasn’t more affectionate with her. Kevin had once rejected her too, and now his son was doing the same. No, stop it, stop being silly, she told herself. John was nearly thirteen years old now, no longer a little boy who wanted hugs. She had to control herself, had to stop imagining slights where none was intended. Briefly touching John’s shoulder, Dolly ushered him inside.
‘You took your time,’ she said huffily to Bernie.
Bernie frowned and for a moment he looked at her intently. ‘You seem to forget it’s a two-hour round trip to Winchester and back.’
Dolly didn’t want Bernie to realise that she hadn’t been taking her pills. ‘Sorry, love,’ she said meekly. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t wait to see John and the time seemed to drag. I expect you could do with a cup of tea?’
‘Yes please,’ he said, ‘and I might as well tell you now that Pearl wants John back by four. They’re having a bit of a do.’
Dolly’s lips pursed at the mention of Pearl. She had no time for John’s mother, never had. It didn’t matter how many years had passed, she refused to talk to her and even sacrificed calling John on the telephone in case it was Pearl who answered it.
Pearl had been a naive sixteen-year-old when Dolly first met her. She had been a thin, nervous, mousy little thing with huge brown eyes that seemed to take up much of her face. However she’d blossomed, ensnaring Kevin by becoming pregnant with his child. Dolly tried to prevent the marriage, to prove Pearl a tart, but then Kevin admitted she’d been a virgin. With no other choice, they had married, but Pearl then turned Kevin against her – his own mother. Dolly would never forgive her for that.
‘Dolly, did you hear what I said?’ Bernie asked.
‘Yes,’ she said, dragging her thoughts back to the present. ‘Why is Pearl having a bit of a do?’
‘It’s her mother’s fiftieth birthday.’
Nobody had made a fuss when it was her birthday, Dolly thought. Not only that Pearl’s mother, Emily Harmsworth, got to see John every day, not just once a month,