Devil's Choice Read online

  Devil’s Choice

  Book 3

  Old Balmain House Series

  Novel by

  Graham Wilson

  Copyright

  Devil’s Choice

  Graham Wilson

  Copyright Graham Wilson 2014

  BeyondBeyond Books Edition

  Published by Smashwords

  ISBN

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the many people of Balmain who continue to tell me their stories and share their memories which give a foundation for this book. Also thanks to those who have commented on earlier books in the series and encouraged me to keep writing.

  Prologue

  The room has windows with iron bars, a metal door and four empty chairs facing a metal table.

  The door opens. A man walks in, hands shackled together, dressed in prison uniform. He looks middle aged, dark hair with flecks of grey, powerful shoulders and hard features. The softening of age is starting to round his body. A warder follows close behind, baton at the ready. The warder points to the seat. The man sits down, wordless.

  The door opens again. A second warder enters, baton also in hand. He moves to stand beside his colleague at the end of the table. A few steps behind comes a slip of a girl. She walks inside and looks around nervously, her face taking in the seated man with a searching look. She is small and slender. She first looks like a teenager, but she is older, perhaps mid twenties.

  The man leers at her; it is a long time since he has seen a pretty girl even if her face is drawn and white. The man speaks, unbidden. “Well, look what the fairy godmother had brought me; a luscious crumpet for my pleasure.”

  The girl recoils as if struck. She steadies herself then takes a chair opposite and sits down. She stares at the man intently, loathing and desperation in her eyes. She wrings her hand together, as if to gather courage. Finally she speaks.

  “Please, I need to know if you are my father?”

  The man leers again. “Who knows or cares about that. I am happy to father to any brats you want me to sire. Is that what you are looking for, a new stud?”

  She is silent so he continues. “I have fucked many sluts in my time; perhaps your mother was one of them. Most could not wait to spread their legs for me. A few needed serious persuasion.”

  The girl’s face struggles for control, expressions of outrage, loathing and fear swirling around. She closes her eyes and puts her hands to her face. It seems she is willing her hands to mould control back into her features. At last her face becomes is blank.

  She regathers her words. “You are one of three men who raped my mother more than twenty years ago. I am the result of that rape. Now I have my own daughter. I need to find my own father, my daughter’s grandfather. He is the only person who has a chance to save her life. I hoped you would help me.”

  The man looks at her, face inscrutable, appearing to think. At last recognition comes into his eyes. “Yes I see it, the face of little Lizzie, Luscious Lizzie. It is true; she spread her legs for me. She was a good if unwilling fuck, less of a slut than many.”

  He pauses. The silence continues. The girl keeps her face blank.

  At last he speaks, “I will consider your request. But I have a condition of my own to any help. You must visit, with your own mother, Lizzie, and your daughter, only you three. Then I will decide.”

  Now anguish comes over her face. “My daughter is in hospital, fighting for her life. She cannot be moved. But I will ask my mother to come and bring my daughter’s photo. Do you agree?”

  A longer silence ensues, then, “I agree.”

  The girl stands up. “I will ring my mother now and ask her to come at once. Time is short.”

  She walks from the room. The door slams closed.

  William

  Ten Years Alone

  William sat alone in his cell. It was what he did most hours of every day. Twice each day he would do push-ups on the floor and chin-ups on the cell bars, though of late he could feel his motivation flagging. Once each day he had an hour to exercise and walk around a small yard on his own. He was deemed too dangerous to be left alone with other inmates so mostly he was left alone by himself. That suited him just fine. Since he had got rid of Martin and turned Dan into a blathering idiot he preferred his own company. Not that he had ever really liked either of them, truth be told. But he had gone along with them over the years and enjoyed the fruits of their success.

  But one day he had woken up, knowing he had lived enough of the slime and lies. So he had decided to give evidence against them. The lawyers had promised a light sentence if he named them, particularly Martin, as the instigators of several rapes. They had suggested he could just say he had gone along for the ride, which was part true.

  But that was not the reason he had turned against them. It was that the bullshit and deception had finally got to him. They thought they were having a great time screwing underage school girls, taking advantage of those who were weak and could not complain. And he had gone along with it for a while and enjoyed the element of danger.

  But it was really a game for rich toy boys, those with too much money, those who could buy their way out of trouble. Not much courage there. He had found himself sickened when they had tried to wriggle off the hook on those first three trials and had got away with it for a while. It had cost them all, cost them plenty. The company Martin had set up had folded and they were all out of work. But for Martin it was only a paper loss. Martin and his family had plenty of money salted away, money that the shareholders could not get to.

  So other people had taken a haircut for Martin’s deeds. Most of them were scum, like Martin, so he did not feel real sorry for them. But there were some decent people too, people like his mother, amongst them. She had worked hard all her life and, thinking this business that her son was part of was a good investment, she had bought shares, more than ten thousand dollars’ worth, bought into bits over a decade from all her spare cash, marvelling at her son’s success.

  So, when the company had gone belly up, she had taken more than a haircut, she had lost all her nest egg, money which she had saved for the time coming when she would be on a pension. It was not much money to rich person like Martin, but to her it mattered. It would have given her a decent life in retirement; now she could barely afford to eat baked beans.

  He had said it to Martin, hoping Martin might help his mother out. Martin laughed and said times were tough for lots of people, so who really cared. Then Martin had said that William could make it up to her from all the money the business had given him over the good years, if it bothered him enough.

  William had blown his money on good living as it came in. So he did not have much of his own to help his mother with, whereas he knew that Martin had millions he could afford to give away.

  But what really pissed him off was that Martin did not give a toss about people like his mother, there were plenty of other battlers like her who had done all their cash and Martin treated it like a school boy joke. He had even heard Martin joking about it with Dan later that day and Dan had thought it was a great joke too. Which just proved what a scum slime ball Dan was too.

  In that moment it was as if his eyes were opened. He felt disgust towards these people he had thought were his mates; it was disgust at them and all they represented, and disgust at himself for his part. He had always felt a bit cowardly at the way they had preyed upon school girls, not that he minded using force to get what he wanted and they had been sweet young things to fuck. But for him it was about him being a man who took what he wanted, not bravery. Whereas Martin and Dan gloated as if these actions were somehow courageous.

  But until the thing with his mother and the money he had never thought enough about it to act. In a flash, on
that day, he realised their whole life together was one sick joke. It shamed him they had come to a place where they could steal from poor people without caring.

  So he had named them and they had both got twenty years. Despite lawyer promises to go easy he had still got fifteen years, for which he was a bit pissed off. But what had pissed him off totally was when Martin decided they would get their own back in prison, to nail him for being a snitch, to turn him into a bum boy.

  William had never asked for protection because he knew the two of them were really cowards underneath and would not dare touch him on their own. He was not as big and strong as Martin though he was a match for Dan. He had let it be known that if they came after him he would play dirty, real dirty and, if they hurt him, they would get hurt real bad in return. So Martin took the typical coward’s way, getting others to help with the dirty work, no doubt it was for money or other favours.

  So one day, Martin, Dan and three other big guys who were in on it, grabbed him. Four had held him. The others, Martin first, had fucked him up the arse like a chook, each taking a turn. They were rough and had hurt. When they finished they promised more was to come, day after day. He guessed they meant to frighten him talking tough. But, instead, that place inside him which hated them from before, when he snitched, got a whole lot bigger.

  Afterwards he was madder than he had ever been; he could feel the rage burning a hole inside his guts, he would get even, no matter what happened to him. But he had not let on.

  He found an old piece of steel rod, the stuff used for concrete reinforcing. It was almost a foot long and as thick as his index finger, with rough ridges along its length. He had spent two days carefully sharpening one end to a point, grinding it against the concrete floor of his cell.

  A week later Martin was lording it over him in the shower; having self importantly told him, William, to wash his back. So he had come up behind him, the steel rod out of sight. He had grabbed Martin around the waist with one arm to stop him running away. With the other hand he had arse fucked him with the steel rod, jammed it in with all his strength. He had felt the tearing and ripping as it went in, loving the feel as it tore its way through Martin’s soft flesh.

  Martin was bigger and stronger than him. But William held him in a vice grip from behind and, even though Martin squirmed like a stuck pig, he could not get away. So, while one arm kept his grip tightly around Martin’s waist, his other hand had shoved the metal rod backwards, forwards and around, several times, feeling it tear its way through lots of places.

  Martin was screaming by then. Within a minute the others had pulled William away, leaving Martin lying on the floor, half whimpering, half howling. Then the guards had come and dragged him away and locked him into a cell by himself. He could still hear Martin’s screams coming down the corridor as they pulled him along. It had sounded so good and still made him smile inside.

  Two days later Martin was dead, peritonitis they called it. They tried to sew the mess he had made back inside Martin together, but it was futile. Martin died hard and bad. William was glad.

  So he had been tried for murder, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

  After that, whenever he saw Dan, he would call out to him. “Your turn next.”

  Dan was already coming apart at the seams in prison; he was everyone’s regular bum boy. Twice, since his murder rap, William had managed to get close enough to Dan to stick him with the sharp skewer which he used for his own protection, once into his bum and once into his leg.

  William had made the weapon out of a fragment of a broken hacksaw blade when he worked in the workshop. Now it lived out of sight, pushed into a hole in his boot sole. It was three inches long and a quarter inch wide. It had razor sharp edges which would cut through if you gave it a twist. One quick stab would barely leave a skin mark but inside would be a mess of damage. By the time people realised what was done it would be hidden again. He had it still. One day he would put it into one of those guys eye’s just to see what happened. His mouth watered at the thought.

  After that he had only to look at Dan and tell him his eye was next and Dan would become a mass of terrified blubbering jelly. Finally, nearly five years ago, Dan was taken to the looney bin. Last he heard Dan was kept tied to his bed all day in a padded room, crazy, crazy.

  With a bit of luck Dan would find a way to top himself one day and that would be that. He must think how he could help him do it, the sooner dead the better.

  He never felt a moment of regret over what he had done to those two miserable bastards. But he still felt he had let his mother down even though she disowned him once the rape then murder charges came in, unable to bear the shame of what her son had done.

  So he had never seen her or any of his family since he had gone to jail, but he understood that. He knew he could never mend the pain he had caused her, but that only made him madder and madder. Still, in his heart, he was glad he had taken one small step towards setting things to rights, even though it was no help to his mother and never would be.

  Boredom

  At first, after the murder rap, William had lived his life fuelled by rage. It had driven him to keep fit; it had been kept alive by the desire to fix up Dan and the other three blokes who had joined in when they took turns screwing him.

  So after Martin was gone he spent many hours, days and weeks making plans to get at them. His first desire was to injure, incapacitate or kill them, whatever caused pain. But now that they were warned that was easier said than done. Until this chance came he made plans to terrorise them instead, thinking of any way he could to instil fear and the more unpredictable the better.

  Dan had never dobbed on him for what he had done, the fear was too powerful. Instead he walked half crippled for months after each time. If William could have got closer maybe he could have put the skewer into Dan or another one’s guts or face, but the bum and leg stabs had worked well enough and had been easier to get a shot at.

  Since then Dan and the other three blokes had hung together whenever William was around. They all kept themselves at least two body lengths away from him. So he dreamed and schemed endlessly about how to catch them out and get close. If he could get within range he really would take out someone’s eye or rip a hole in their guts.

  But then he had watched as Dan had gone to bits and been taken away to the prison hospital. William knew, deep down, that the others had only been Martin’s patsies as well; they did not have it inside them to do real stuff on their own. So his anger slowly slid away, replaced by something much flatter, apathy.

  He knew he was in this prison for life and would not be broken, would not kowtow. He would keep reminding people how dangerous he was every chance he got, that was his main source of pride. But he was starting to find it hard to care.

  The days had begun to drift by in a meaningless maze. Then one day he realised that ten years had gone by since he had come inside. That day it was like a red light went off in his brain. I need to do something more than this before a second ten years goes by.

  Ten years for anger and hatred was fine but he needed the next ten years to be different or he would go crazy too. Perhaps he could try to go back to school and learn something new.

  The next week he got permission to visit the jail library and look up courses of study, like TAFE Courses. Some places had lessons they would send to people in jail. He would have liked to do a University Course but he had left school at fifteen and needed his HSC to enrol in one. The TAFE Courses only half interested him, they taught manual skills, things like woodwork and metal work. He needed to learn something that would force him to use his brain.

  When he was a little kid he did good at school and people had always told him he was smart. But when he had dropped out of school the lessons got left aside. So while he could read and write he had fallen out of reading much except girlie magazines, and they were all crap really.

  Finally he settled on the idea of doing his Higher School Certificate. This would all
ow him to enrol for university courses. It was supposed to take two years, but time was one thing he had plenty of and he could not see anything that said he could not try and fit it into one year. He reckoned he could fit the subjects into one year and he sure as hell intended to give it his best shot.

  So he enrolled and began his year of study. Now he could read the lessons and text books in his cell and twice a week he was allowed to the library for an hour to look up things. He had even almost stopped trying to frighten all the other prisoners. Not that he liked them any better but he figured his study would be a bit easier if he did not spend almost all his life locked away.

  He was not sure what he would study at University but courses like law and medicine appealed to him. He found he had a thirst for knowledge and a sense that he had wasted the first half of his life. He realised study would only be mental exercise; parole was at best a remote distant possibility in a decade or more. He could not find a place inside himself where there was regret or remorse for what he had done, and he was too proud to pretend something he did not feel. So he would not become a good behaviour boy, no medals for prisoner of the year.

  But still, if he could gain a University Degree doing something of interest, that would be an improvement on the last decade of his life, and it would make the passage of time more enjoyable. His only concern was that he did not want the guards or other prisoners to think he had gone soft.

  So he needed to maintain an edge of crazed terror to keep others in the jail in line, just enough fear to keep respect alive. There was still a hard angry part buried deep inside which could easily break out in a murderous rage if he was pushed. That part had become so essential to his sense of self that he could not bear to lose it.

  For now he decided he would only exercise it now and then with random acts of rage, violence and verbal abuse, but he would not really hurt anyone, at least not enough to kill or cripple anyone. That would keep everyone fully on guard and nervous of him. He grinned at the thought.