Free Fogarty: A City of London Thriller by J Jackson Bentley Page B

the corners of her mouth turning up and her high cheekbones becoming more noticeable.
    “My dear Benjamin, you have alr eady met May Fogarty.”
    Ben looked puzzled for a moment and then realised the implications of her statement. She no ticed his reaction, and nodded.
    “Benjamin, I am May Burchill, formerly May Fogarty. I am your grandmother. I remarried when your granddad died. You look shocked.” She paused; there was now laughter in her eyes, even if it had not reach ed her vocal cords yet. “Were you expecting some old blue rinsed granny with a moustache, happily knitting away in her housecoat and slippers?”
    “Well, no,” spluttered Ben. “I mean, yes, probably,” he admitted warily, unsure of how to greet one’s grandmother, having not seen her for over twenty years. May Burchill resolved his dilemma by standing and coming around to his side of t he desk. Ben stood to meet her.
    “C ome give your grandmother a hug,” she said, her eyes glassy with tears. Ben leaned in and they hugged. He expected it to feel uncomfortable, but it didn’t; it felt right. She smelled of clean hair and a light citrus perfume.
    “I never thought this day would come,” May said. “I t hought I had lost you forever.”
    For the next hour May Fogarty repeated the tragic story of their life in Trafalgar House Flats, Siobhan’s subjection to Dennis Grierson and his exploitation of May’s lovely daughter. May spoke openly of her daughter’s drug use, and of her abuse and sexual exploitation at the hands of Psycho Den. She cried when she spoke of her husband’s beating when he stood up to Dennis Grierson and refused him access to a recovering Siobhan. Naturally, Den did not put Roy Fogarty in hospital himself. The beating had been carried out by a number of his lackeys, and even then the police were reluctant to intervene in an internal Trafalgar House Flats dispute. May believed that Den had contacts in the police force, then and now, and that they would tip him off if action was going to be taken against him. Nonetheless, even his contacts could not keep him out of prison when he was caught red handed in the past, as he had been again.
    “What I don’t understand, Gran, is why you kept your distance all of these years.” Ben’s voice was quiet but emotional.
    “Benjamin, we made tremendous sacrifices to keep you and your mother safe from Dennis Grierson. We cut off all contact, once we got her off the estate; we let it be known that she had run away. I even slapped Dennis Grierson across the face in public, accusing him of driving my daughter away from her family. He just grinned, but my point was made and he left us alone, for a while. You were happy, Siobhan was deliriously happy and you looked set to have a good life away from The Farm with a new dad. Then a scumbag lowlife called Trevor Pannell, who worked for the social services, sold your mother’s new job details to Den Grierson.” May Burchill was now May Fogarty again, and she choked up as she spoke.
    “Grierson stole a car from Tottenham High Street and waited until your mother was almost home, and he ran her down. She was so badly injured that she survived for only a few minutes after the crash. The police could never link Grierson with the car or the murder, but we all knew who did it. He wanted us to know, that was why he stole a car locally. He was sending us, and everyo ne else in the flats, a message: ‘You can never escape Den Grierson’; but we did.
    You were coming up to eleven years old, your granddad and me, we were still only forty five, so we left for work one morning and never returned. A neighbour arranged for our personal belongings to be kept safe in her flat before she had them sent to a storage unit in Hendon. We picked them up later, but by then we were back living in Liverpool amongst friends and relatives who would have cheerfully killed Grierson on sight. We changed our appearance. I lost over three stones in weight and changed my