The Criminal's Wife

After the second breakdown there was no way in which I could return
to the bear pit of school teaching, which suited me fine. As I was over
fifty, I was eligible to claim an immediate pension on the grounds of
ill health, and suddenly I had time, if not money, on my hands. So I
jumped at the chance to "help out" - council-speak for doing a
teacher's job at minimum wage rates - with the pensioners' creative
writing class which was held in a local library every Tuesday
afternoon. Maybe if I made a good fist of it they would take me on to
do a proper adult education job, with motivated people who sought real
qualifications at night school.

The creative writing class were a motley bunch; some were sprightly,
keen fifty-somethings whilst others were obviously on their last legs
and were bussed in by social services as a pleasant diversion from
their institutionalised lives. I began by reassuring them all that I
wasn't there as a school teacher to impart information with which they
had to fill their heads; quite the reverse, in fact, my job was to
tease out those creative strands which everyone possesses and help
display them for the world to see. Fanciful, I know, but uncannily
prophetic.

I asked them to start with something they knew, to write a historical
piece relating to some part of their earlier lives, and showed them
some examples from the local archives section of the library. Most of
this stuff wasn't very good, in fact it was downright tedious unless
the reminiscences matched ones own, but I wanted the class to realise
that lots of ordinary people could and, with encouragement, did write
acceptably. I promised to help with spelling, grammar and punctuation,
and to type up handwritten work, though I realised that this would be
rather time-consuming, and waited for the first efforts to roll
in.

The class were nothing if not eager; one of the ladies who I thought
was quite gaga had dictated to her carer an entertaining account of
rival churches' Whitsuntide walks in the inter-war years, and there
were quite a few reasonable tales of "my first dance/boyfriend/job"
variety. Bert had handed in a blow-by-blow account of the year in which
the darts team which he captained had triumphed in some local league;
he had a prodigious memory, it seemed, and every double top was
described in detail as the darts "whammed", "slammed" or "thunked" into
the board. I dutifully typed it up, because I had promised to do so,
but made a mental note to explain to Bert that more human interest
would be desirable. I then turned to Christine's submission; this had
been presented in a beautiful copperplate script and the first page at
least did not appear to contain a single obvious misspelling or
grammatical error. I was looking forward to this one; for once I could
concentrate on the story and not on being a sub-editor. I opened the
manuscript and began to read.

Christine had been born in the early post-war years to a respectable
Methodist family in the days when Methodism was still strict and, after
lots of confrontations in the home and school, had run away at the age
of sixteen with a man twice her age of whom her father strongly
disapproved. She described how they had travelled to Gretna Green, just
over the Scottish border, where they holed out until they could obtain
a marriage licence:

"I always knew that, despite his upbringing, Charlie would some day be
a big man. Just how big was revealed to me on the night we booked into
the hotel! For he was so unlike my puny dad and the insipid men on the
Methodist circuit, he was muscular and hairy and I almost screamed with
delight when he slipped off his Y-fronts to reveal an enormous?"

I had to go and make a cup of tea before I could bring myself to resume
the typing; Christine was a demure-looking, well-dressed lady in her
late fifties who didn't look the type to write such explicit stuff and
I doubted whether this was the kind of historical detail the library
service quite had in mind when it formed the creative writing group.
But, what the hell, who was I to censor my students' work; if their
reminiscences revolved round priapic sixties bonking rather than
maypoles or harvest festivals, so what?

I resolved to present each student with a little A4 folder containing
the whole class's work, and maybe a few for the front desk at the
library. The students were thrilled to see their work in print, and
requested extra copies for their friends and relatives; I dutifully
printed off extra copies, but declared that these would incur a 50p
charge, as I had already used up half our meagre stationery budget. No
one seemed to mind having to pay. The copies in the library
disappeared, and congratulatory notices began to trickle in. Everybody
liked and commented upon Christine's article, though I'd hidden it away
in the middle pages for fear of causing offence; I soon learned that
seasoned, worldly senior citizens don't offend as easily as I'd
feared!

The second issue involved a print run of 250 copies, and proved a great
sell. Bert had taken my hint about darts, but unfortunately was also a
dab hand at bowls, which he thought might be of greater interest by
virtue of having an outdoor theme. I had to edit his contribution
fairly severely "for reasons of space". Mary, a lively sixty-five
year-old busybody, perhaps sensing a bandwagon in motion, had roped her
fellow members of the Civic Society into compiling a historical account
of South Manchester brothels, and the part played by the aforementioned
worthies in their demise. But my prot?g? Christine was still the star
of the show:

"On our return from honeymoon we were parked in a layby on the A6 near
Shap. Charlie watched the Royal Mail train thunder past with a wistful
expression on his face; he only wished that he'd thought of the Great
Train Robbery first, he'd have put together a more professional gang
who'd still be at large. He never really made it into their kind of
fame, and died in Wakefield jail in 1998. But I remember him as a young
tower of manhood; when he had pulled a successful job he would declare
that we had earned a spell of relaxation, and then it was oysters and
champagne in the best hotels. He would slowly peel off my girdle, then
take a mouthful of iced champagne and gently ?"

Bloody hell! This was going on the first page, no messing! Once I had
typed it into my PC the scene etched itself into a rather disreputable
little corner in my mind, where it replayed regularly like an internet
pop-up.

The third issue, which now bore a picture of Christine on the front
cover, contained yet more explicit exploits, criminal and
otherwise:
"Charlie had, like everyone else, to keep up with the times. I think
the last wages snatch he did was Watkinson's Mill in 1983; he came home
with all these little wage packets each with a name on. But when we
opened them up, he'd risked his liberty for less than five hundred
pounds; he was disgusted with the mill owners and the pittances they
paid those poor girls, he swore he'd never rob them again. And, as they
were the last major employer in the area to switch to salaries paid
through the banking system, he kept his word. The banks themselves were
becoming harder to do over, what with closed-circuit television,
toughened glass, exploding dye packs and timed safes which couldn't be
opened however many shotguns you brandished. So he began to hit the
courier deliveries; these guys might look tough but they were also on
minimal wages and would never offer resistance, in fact they would
often slip an inside word on their delivery schedules in return for a
cut in the booty. He once intercepted thirty grand being delivered to
Barclays Bank in Bolton, and I knew I was in for a high time that
night. I went to Ann Summers and virtually stripped the shop - legally,
of course - Charlie nearly wet himself when he saw my policewoman
outfit ?"

The print run extended to five hundred, and we sold them for a pound
apiece in local newsagents as well as at the library counter, putting
us well into the black. But then I had an unexpected visitor.

DC Chapman introduced himself, and said how pleased he had been to read
our little efforts. When I looked blank (actually I was wondering
whether we'd broken any laws regarding the sale of pornography in
public libraries) he asked me whether, as a literary man, I was
familiar with the saying:
"The mills of God grind slow, but they grind exceedingly small".
I admitted that I'd heard it somewhere before.
"You see, Mr Phelps, that's just like the police," he explained. "All
these cases which lie 'on file'; well, that's literally true and, with
ever-increasing computer power at our fingertips, we can catalogue and
cross-reference further and further back. Our Charlie Ryan may think
we've forgotten all about that mill wages job twenty years ago that his
wife wrote about, but we haven't - or, at least, the computer hasn't -
nor that sudden rise in bank courier interceptions. Now that we know it
was him, and so does everyone else, it's just a matter of finding the
proof."

"I thought he'd died in prison," I gasped. "He must be pretty old by
now."

"Not as old as you might imagine; I'm afraid Mrs Ryan's been economical
with the truth in her enlightening tales, they ran away together when
they were both sixteen. So he's still young enough to do another
stretch inside, I'm glad to say. Now if I can trouble you for a
statement, Sir?"

I got Christine's home address from the library central records; I had
to plead the utmost urgency, literally life and death, as I was about
to contravene the Data Protection Act. I turned up at her home within
the hour; she took it quite calmly when I explained my recent visit
from the police and the inevitable judicial consequences.

"Yes, I had hoped it would come to that," she said. "You see, Alan,
this creative writing business has quite suited me; maybe you thought
the crime bits were far-fetched but actually those were the kernel of
truth in the whole thing. The police would have ignored any official
statement I might have made as unsubstantiated and vindictive gossip,
after all it's only the current crimes which count towards detection
rates, but now that Charlie's doings are in the public domain they have
to be seen to act."

"What about those fantastic sex scenes?" I asked, not without
envy.

She gave me a wry smile.

"Sheer fantasy, of course, just to boost the readership! My father was
right, Charlie was nothing more than a brutal, violent pig; charming,
up to a point, but a worthless man underneath it all. And stupid; he
trusted me to look after his stolen money because I was from an
impeccable family but I'm afraid that criminality rather rubs off; most
of it's now in offshore accounts under my assumed names."

"So why do all this now?" I persisted.

Christine stopped smiling, and her eyes now clouded with pain.

"Last year I found out that he'd got himself a young mistress. I
imagined him giving her the pleasure he'd denied me for nearly forty
years and that was the last straw. So I divorced him. But I still want
him to suffer."

"He'll kill you!" I desperately pointed out.

Her smile returned at the thought of her imminent demise.

"He'll kill US, dear! Your name is on the front of that magazine in
large letters, and I'm almost sure that publishers, rather than
authors, are always first in the firing line!"

Suddenly I was no longer the teacher, the guide, the advisor.

"What do we do now?" I asked fearfully.

"We don't let him find us, dear, not until he's put away. There's a
discreet little hotel I know of, not far from Gretna Green; we can live
there the rest of our lives if we need to. If you pack quickly we can
be there by nightfall."

I had always believed that a man should be in control of his own
destiny; mine had just turned up to drag me away, kicking and
screaming. But Christine's eyes were now entreating, and the longer I
looked into them the more I liked what I saw. The girdle was still
doing its job, and, really, fifty-seven was no great age at all for a
woman. And I needed a holiday in Scotland far more than I needed
violent vengeance in Manchester.

"Why not?" I said, "it's about time someone made an honest woman of
you!"

Her smile widened in triumph.

"I thought you'd agree, Alan, dear! The champagne's already on ice, and
you'll be pleased to know that oysters are nicely in season! And
there's a little chapel where a blacksmith officiates; tacky and
touristy, but somewhat appropriate for us, don't you think?"