“I’m sorry,” the man mumbled. “I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud.”
Definitely a nutter. Mrs. Davies held up her teapot like a weapon.
“More Earl Grey?”
“No, thank you. Just the bill, please. I’ll be checking out after breakfast.”
Good riddance.
Mrs. Davies had noticed the Didcot-to-London railway timetable wedged under the toast rack and had hoped as much.
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said on autopilot. “Have you enjoyed your stay in Oxfordshire?”
The man frowned, as if he didn’t understand the question. “I need to see Alexia De Vere.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said I need to see the home secretary!” He banged his fist on the table. “She’s expecting me. We’re old friends.”
Marjorie Davies backed away. The man returned to his breakfast, and she rushed out to reception, quickly printing out his bill. His suitcase was already in the hallway, a good sign. As soon as he finished eating, she returned to the table.
“I think it’s best if you leave now. We take Visa or MasterCard.”
She was surprised by the firmness in her own voice. But she wasn’t about to spend another minute in the company of a card-carrying lunatic. Certainly not in her own home.
The man seemed unfazed. He signed the bill, took his suitcase, and left without another word.
After he’d gone, Mrs. Davies looked at the signature on the credit card, half wondering whether she’d hear the name again on the news one day, linked to some awful crime or some plot against the government.
Mr. William J. Hamlin.
Hamlin.
She would have to remember that.
PRISON LIFE SUITED BILLY HAMLIN.
It was a bizarre thing to say, but it was true. The regularity, the routine, the camaraderie with the other inmates all suited Billy’s easygoing, follow-along character to a T once he got used to it.
The first year was the toughest. Having been transferred to a facility closer to his father, Billy was devastated when Jeff Hamlin died suddenly of a heart attack just three months into his sentence. Billy tried to tell himself that it wasn’t the stress of his arrest and trial that had destroyed his father’s health, but deep down he knew the truth. Guilt gnawed at him like a dog with a bone.
Meanwhile, Leslie Lose, Billy’s lawyer, would leave messages from time to time about an appeal. But as the weeks passed, then the months, and finally the years, with no date set, Billy resigned himself to the fact that he would serve his full sentence.
Twenty years was too painful to contemplate. Even fifteen with good behavior was a bitter pill. Billy Hamlin decided to focus on the one positive he had left in his life: Toni Gilletti.
When I get out, Toni will be waiting for me.
It was a sweet, addictive fantasy, and Billy Hamlin clung to it like a life raft.
When I get out of here, Billy told himself in his cold, lonely bunk each night, I’m gonna make love to Toni every night, five times a night. I’m gonna make up for lost time.
He fell asleep dreaming of Toni’s soft, sensual teenage body and woke up with the smell of her skin in his nostrils, the soft caress of her silken blond hair on his chest. As the years rolled by and he heard nothing from Toni whatsoever—no letters, no visits, no calls—he made up a series of stories to explain her absence.
Her father was keeping her from him.
She was traveling, somewhere remote—trekking in the Andes maybe—trying to put him out of her mind until they could be together again.
She was working, quietly saving money for the house they were going to buy together when Billy got out.
As the fantasies grew more ludicrous, even to himself, Billy stopped talking about Toni with his fellow inmates. Instead he compartmentalized her, packing her away in a mental box to be opened joyously in secret, once the lights were out and he was alone. Sustained by these romantic dreams, by day Billy determined to get the most out of prison life, enrolling in science and mechanics classes and working long hours on the prison farm, which he enjoyed. In normal circumstances child killers were considered the lowest of the low in jail, ostracized and often physically assaulted by fellow inmates. But there was something about Billy’s kind, relentlessly cheerful nature that the other men all warmed to.
The bottom line was that no one believed Billy Hamlin had murdered Nicholas Handemeyer. His trial had been a travesty.
The day Billy walked out of East Jersey State Prison, after fifteen years inside, nobody was waiting to greet him. His father was dead and he had no other close family. There were a few people he knew from back home, acquaintances he could call. But he realized with a pang of fear that all of his real friends were behind him, on the other side of the penitentiary’s huge, locked steel gates. Billy Hamlin wasn’t ready to face the outside world, not on his own.
So he did the only thing he could.
He went looking for Toni Gilletti.
Billy’s first stop was Toni’s parents’ mansion in New Jersey. He’d never been there before, but he’d long since memorized the address, and he’d seen pictures of the place in a fancy Dream Homes magazine.
The maid who opened the door was kind. Her brother Tyrone had spent eight years in jail for petty theft, and she knew what a long stretch inside could do to a man’s soul. But she told Billy he had a wasted journey.
“Old Man Gilletti sold this place eight years ago. My people, the Carters, been here since then.”
Billy bit back his disappointment.
“Do you know where the Gillettis moved to?”
“I don’t. Back to New York City, I think. But Walter Gilletti lost a lotta money when his business went broke. There were debts, to partners, to the bank. That’s why he sold up here. They was in real trouble.”
Billy remembered Walter Gilletti as the arrogant, bullying, cock-of-the-walk figure who’d been so dismissive toward his father at the trial. Toni’s dad was not a man who would have coped well with such a huge reversal of fortune.
With a little research and a few calls to some of Walter’s ex-employees, Billy found the Gillettis’ new home, a clean but modest apartment in a midrent part of Brooklyn. When he got there it looked as if he’d had another wasted journey. An ancient, wizened crone in a dirty velour leisure suit answered the door.
“What the hell do you want?”
It was only when her mean eyes narrowed and she rasped, “Billy Hamlin? Are you out already?” that Billy placed her as Toni’s mother.
“Sandra?”
“Mrs. Gilletti to you, boy.”
Jesus Christ, thought Billy. She’s aged thirty years. More.
“I—I was looking for Toni,” he stammered. For some reason, the old woman made him nervous.
“You and the rest of the world.” Sandra Gilletti cackled grotesquely. Billy recognized the rattle of emphysema in her chest. He hoped the old adage wasn’t true, about all girls eventually turning into their mothers. “Toni’s gone, kiddo. And she ain’t coming back.”
For a hideous moment Billy thought she meant that Toni was dead. In fact, Sandra Gilletti explained, her daughter had taken off shortly after the trial, informing