At this point he made the mistake of blustering, obviously believing he had a way out, that I’d actually listen to his bullshit, or that I gave a bubbly wet shit, so I hauled off and smashed a looping overhand right into his face just to watch his nose break and spray blood all over that fine Turnbull & Asser Egyptian cotton dress shirt my mother had paid for.
Then I kicked him in the balls again, hard, to tighten his focus on me, grabbed him and backhanded him, hard, just the way he’d hit my little sister, and down he went again, only this time I think me pulverising his balls with a steel-capped work boot kept him down there.
You may think at this point that I was just being a bully, that he was already finished. Well, so what? The little prick had been drugging and beating my mother, he’d attacked and tried to rape my baby sister, right then all I wanted to do was stamp him into a red, stringy stain on the floorboards; he was getting off lightly, believe me.
I glanced at Georgy and she nodded; she’d dialled 999 and the police were on their way, so I stood over him, daring him to move. She’d requested an ambulance too, because my mother was not looking good at all. Georgy held her up, helping her to breathe, while I stood over that disgusting puddle of diarrhoea with my foot on his neck until a knock at the door told us the law had arrived.
Twenty minutes later Maxie was in handcuffs, my promise to him before the law arrived that if he didn’t roll over then someone was going to visit him and split him like a Christmas wishbone obviously having its effect, because he admitted everything when they cautioned him. When the paramedics arrived they took one look at my mother and bundled her off to the hospital, disco-lights and sirens going full volume.
*****
Max was held on aggravated criminal assault, theft, fraud, and attempted murder charges. The Crown Prosecution Service, the CPS, wanted to throw the book at him and dig him the biggest, deepest hole possible and then it all became academic, because Mother passed away.
The drug and alcohol combination he’d been feeding her caused her to slip into a coma until her kidneys failed catastrophically, dropping her blood pressure so drastically that her poor heart was unable to keep beating and went into shock.
Georgy was distraught, I was in a killing rage, I wanted to drag that bastard out of his cell, get his blubbery neck in the crook of my arm and just squeeze ’till his fucking head exploded, but no, he got to live and my mother paid the price for his greed.
Max tried to recant his confession, but the CPS changed-up the charges; now he was up on premeditated murder charges, not negligent manslaughter. They refused to entertain even a hint of any kind of limited plea-deal that British law might allow, and they were especially in no mood to talk it down to manslaughter, involuntary or otherwise; they wanted blood, and Max was in their gun-sights.
As far as the CPS were concerned he’d recklessly, and with malice aforethought, with full knowledge and understanding of the inevitable outcome of his actions, endangered and incapacitated my mother, a vulnerable woman unfortunate to be wealthy enough to attract a predator like him, thereby causing her death through the reckless administration of banned toxic substances while attempting to defraud her.
Premeditated murder, in their view, no matter which way you cut it, carried out with ruthless planning with full foreknowledge of the consequences of his actions. From his internet search history the police were able to prove that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his actions could have had no other outcome, and yet he’d still shown callous indifference to Mother’s suffering.
He’d subjected my mother to a catalogue of brutal assaults and ever-increasing doses of toxic agents, she had paid with her life, now he was going to pay for his actions.
Georgy sleepwalked through this whole period, barely eating, barely sleeping, always restless, her mind and concentration shot to pieces. I was in no better state; with endless consultations with the CPS dredging it all up again and again, my mind was close to breaking point too, but I had to hold it together.
I had to hold us together, because Georgy was lost and wandering and I could barely function with the constant self-recriminations, memories of seeing what he’d done to my mother, and guilt torturing me over whether I could have done more to prevent what had happened.
The only thing I could do to stop myself going insane was go back to my house and try and lose myself in the work there; I think I reasoned that if I had enough to keep me occupied, the reality of the impending trial and the drama and trauma that went with it could be compartmentalised, and maybe I could find some kind of normality, some way to escape my guilt.
In my mind, I’d taken my eyes off the ball, and now we were here, and I couldn’t get past that…
I took Georgy with me to my house, and kept her there with me, mostly so I could keep an eye on her, but also hoping I could get her to possibly help me around the place; if I could keep her engaged and occupied, if we could find some kind of distraction, just maybe it would jar her out of the listless, apathetic state she’d fallen into.
Max was on remand in Belmarsh Prison in London, waiting on a court date; he’d be tried at The Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court, where guilty verdicts in capital cases almost invariably got full-sentence minimum tariffs; if he got sentenced to 30 years, he’d only be considered for release on license after he’d served a minimum of 30 years.
Needless to say, this is what we were hoping for; with no death penalty, it was the closest thing to payback for my mother’s murder we were likely to get. My only consolation was that in most prisons, criminals like him were held in contempt: helpless women and children were beyond the pale, and he’d callously, brutally murdered an incapacitated elderly woman simply because he could.
One way or another Max Preece was a marked man; the other inmates, violent offenders all, had little time and even less mercy for vermin like him; he was going to be a lonely, frightened man in prison, always one step away from an ‘accidental’ death in full view of everyone, and it served him right.
****
Meanwhile, poor Georgy was just a shadow of her former self; she used to be a bright, noisy, mischievous girl before all this, ever-ready to take on a dare, prank me, or tweak my nose with the parade of boys calling her up hoping for a date, a kiss, just a few minutes of her time.
Now she was a ghost, a silent, hollow-eyed, forlorn figure who drifted from room to room, always in eyeshot of me, always watching me with that intensity that was such a “Georgy” trademark. I’d try and jolly her along and jokingly ask what she was staring at, and I’d get a soft “Nothing, Will…” as she averted her eyes.
When I was still living at home, back in the days when we still had a family, she’d entertained herself by dragging boys in to meet me, knowing full well they were going to get the voodoo word and the sour, gimlet-eyed stare from me. Those days seemed far away, from a whole different universe to the nightmare one we were living in now.
Georgy had always known how to have fun with me, taunting me with the boys who were besotted with her. As far as I was concerned, not one of those spotty, scrawny, tongue-tied jackasses was fit to breathe the same air as my sweet, innocent little sister, let alone date her, and she was too young anyway, so they were on a hiding to nothing.
Just the thought of any of those idiots actually laying hands on my sweet, innocent kid sister had me reaching for the nearest blunt instrument. If any of them had tried to kiss her in my presence I would have yanked their bottom lip up over the top of their head and stapled it to the back of their neck, and Georgy knew it.
Now those fun times were a distant memory, if they’d ever really existed at all, and our present reality was that we were alone, my dad was gone and mother had been murdered for her money by a sociopath. All that was left were Georgy and me, the shattered fragments of our once happy family.
******
The day I left home to attend Sandhurst, the Royal Military College, she cried like there’d been a death in the family; she was fifteen, I was eighteen, and she actually tried to physically block me from getting in the car, and then tried to yank me back out of the car to stop me leaving, and to be honest, I nearly let her. I loved my baby half-sister, she was three years younger than me but she was still my best friend, my truest confidante, my partner in crime, and the one person in the world I’d trust with my life.
The thought of her fretting alone at home while I was locked-down at the other end of the country nearly did me in. Leaving her alone at home when I left to begin life at Sandhurst was literally the toughest, most heartbreaking thing I’d ever done.
Life at the military college was interesting, involving, and utterly absorbing. I wanted to serve in both my father and step-father’s regiment, The Blues and Royals, who, together with the Life Guards, made up the Household Cavalry, the monarch’s personal guards, and the two most senior regiments of the British Army. Three years of officer training, military etiquette, man-management and command training, ordinance and weapons, tactics, and combat training followed.
I rarely came home, training schedules being what they were, but it was always Georgy I hunted for as soon as I ran in the door. I even kept our last picture taken together on my night-stand, she and I dressed in overalls laughing together as we mucked-out her new horse on her eighteenth birthday, intriguing my roommates no end. They all thought she was my girl, and would rag on me about having such a hot girlfriend.