A Dreadful Past, page 21
‘So … I assume that you are pleased with the outcome of the trial?’ The woman began to massage her feet.
‘Pleased?’ The man put his suitcase down and shrugged his shoulders slightly. ‘Pleased? Well you know it was always going to be a foregone conclusion … all three going “G”, as my son would say, to four serious assaults and twelve premeditated murders. The two men, the prime movers, were always going to get life without possibility of parole … the whole life tariff. “Mad Molly” Silcock was the only one to benefit. She came clean and was arrested and placed in custody before German and Hayes could silence her, so she escaped with her life. The Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges against her daughter – a sort of tit-for-tat, you scratch our back and we’ll scratch yours arrangement – and she escaped the whole life tariff because her barrister painted a picture of her being a hanger-on, a second fiddle. She’ll be eligible for parole after twenty-five years, by which time she’ll be pushing three score and ten, so she’ll most likely breathe free air again. German and Hayes never will, and poor old vicious little Womack won’t be breathing any more air at all. So, it’s still only three o’clock,’ George Hennessey continued. ‘We have time for a gentle five-miler before it gets dark; it’ll loosen us up for the fifteen-miler tomorrow, then back to the hotel for dinner and an early night. Shall we?’
‘Yes.’ Louise D’Acre smiled at Hennessey. ‘Yes,’ she said warmly, ‘that sounds ideal … just the ticket … just what the doctor ordered.’
Peter Turnbull, A Dreadful Past
