Beyond the Realms Read online

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  About the Books

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  BEYOND THE

  REALMS

  GILL MATHER

  About the Book

  THE LAST TWO stories Reasonable Doubts and Beyond the Realms were originally published as a single volume in two parts and under the pen name of Julie Langham.

  The two stories fill much of the same timeframe and dovetail like the first two novels in the Colchester Law World series. But they cover different events and have different central characters. And they bring the saga to an end so that the reader can be in no doubt what happens to the characters.

  It's sad to end a series of stories, but they can't go on forever and remain fresh and original. And the characters in the stories have to be allowed to get on with their lives without the interference of an author. So they will live on in their make-believe world while we get back to the real world.

  To Mary

  Again For Her Kind Encouragement

  All rights reserved

  © Gill Mather 2016

  The right of Julie Langham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This book is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact and actual place names, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead or to locations or places mentioned in the book is purely coincidental

  CHAPTER 1

  THE MAN, DR. SUTHERLAND, sitting opposite Orielle interviewing her for a job was aged about forty, very good looking if you liked men with softer slightly feminine features and he was going over her CV with her with a fine tooth comb and warning her that criminal work was no walk in the park. She would have to become an accredited Police Station Representative and be prepared to turn out at any time of the day or night to attend clients or potential clients at the police station, for which she would be provided with a firm vehicle in due course, and not just sit in a back office doing paperwork, she would be paid a little over the equivalent of the previous minimum salary for trainee Solicitors and she could start next week if she was able and willing.

  “You mean you’ll actually give me a training contract?”

  “You’ll have a two month probationary period and if we get along all right and your references pan out OK, then yes, we’ll give you a training contract.”

  Orielle was practically speechless. She had only come to Colchester to stay with her cousins for a few weeks while her parents and brothers were away visiting relatives in Australia and she had rung round some firms of Solicitors on the spur of the moment. She hadn't wanted to go when the trip to Oz was arranged ages ago, being in the middle of final law examinations and heavily into a relationship with an advertising executive. But a week before her family were due to go away, the executive had dumped her for a colleague. She suspected that they had been consorting for some time. The signs were there but she’d tried to ignore them. More fool her as usual. But the cousins were showing her the sights and sounds and night life of Colchester, and she was starting to come round.

  “You give your address as Newcastle-upon-Tyne Ms. Banks. Or can I call you Orielle? So you’d have to find accommodation in Colchester. Would that be a problem?”

  “No Dr. Sutherland…”

  “Hugh, please.”

  “Hugh. I’m staying with family here and I can stay a little longer. Obviously I’ll have to get permanent accommodation. Probably a house share. My cousins’ll probably know someone. Or know someone who knows someone.”

  Just then Hugh had been called out of the room for something and she sat for a few minutes twiddling her thumbs and then stood up and moved over to the window to look out at the passing traffic and pedestrians. Most people had coats on now that it was getting towards the end of October. If she leaned to one side she could just about see the Castle opposite. As she turned away to go and sit down again, her eye caught a framed document on the back wall. It didn't look like a practising certificate and she went and took a closer look. It was a poem! “Ode To Hugh” it was called. She read it with a broadening smile. He’d seemed a bit straight laced but this painted a different picture. As Hugh walked back into the room she was learning that “He sows his seed from coast to coast” and she hurried back to her chair.

  He obviously caught her looking at him since he said vaguely: “Oh my girlfriend wrote that. Years ago. Anyway…..”

  “Er,” she hurried on trying to be serious, “does the practice do anything other than crime?” she asked.

  “No not really. At one time I toyed with the idea of introducing civil rights as an additional field of interest, but…er… it didn’t work out.” Hugh looked determinedly distant and impenetrable and Orielle felt she really shouldn't enquire any further.

  “But,” Hugh continued, “I have a quite good relationship with a firm I was previously a partner in and I’m sure they’d give you a few weeks here and there in other fields. They’re called Patterson Watts & Trimble. They’re only just along the road in fact.”

  Orielle brightened. She didn’t want to put all her eggs in one basket too early on in her legal career if she could help it. Diversity and breadth of experience was very important.

  “Good. So you’ll start next Monday? Good,” he said to her nod. “I’ll show you round then and introduce you. They’re mostly in at this time.”

  Orielle tried to concentrate as Hugh took her around the office. She noticed he seemed to be having trouble concentrating too some of the time. She left her local contact details with the office junior and said goodbye until next Monday.

  Hugh watched her leave. Taking her to meet everyone, he’d suddenly and unexpectedly been sharply reminded of the arrival at Patterson Watts and Trimble ten years ago of his now divorced wife Ali. Impressions started to bombard him. All sorts of memories in ultra high definition. How his heart had missed a beat when she was brought into his room by Sandra the senior partner’s secretary. She would have been about the same age as Orielle was now. With her long dark hair and blue eyes, she was a vision of loveliness. Hugh had been bowled over and had had to work hard not to show it for the next few months. Having previously had his share of difficulties with women he had no intention of starting anything, added to which it would hardly have been PC for a partner to go chasing after a new recruit. But they had ended up having a passionate affair and….He stopped himself at this point. What had promised such delights and a life of love and harmony had all too soon delivered deep, unfathomable misery. This girl had fair hair, almost golden, and looked nothing like Ali but still she had stimulated these memories, especially having drawn his attention to the poem, written during that wonderful time all those years ago.

  He had these slips sometimes even now that he was happy again in a burgeoning new relationship with Amanda, an old friend who had come back into his life at just the right time, when the previous anguish had started to fade and the rough edges had already started to be chipped off the armour coating that he’d grown t
o hide it. It had actually only really been a week or so with Amanda but he felt justified in referring to her as his girlfriend. They were after all living together now. At least for the time being.

  It was too late now. He’d promised the girl a job. He hoped he wouldn't regret it. He mentally kicked himself back into shape, got on with the rest of his day and looked forward to going home to Amanda.

  ORIELLE’S COUSINS DID indeed know someone who was looking for a second person to share her house which she had just bought, and help with the bills. So Orielle went round one evening the same week and met Georgina for the first time. They hit it off immediately and Orielle moved in that weekend taking with her various items of furniture donated by the cousins’ family which they hadn't wanted and which the house needed as Georgie hadn't had the time or money to furnish the place properly yet. Luckily the day of the move was a fine autumn day and the cousins borrowed a trailer from someone and hitched it to the family car. They helped her haphazardly pile a sofa, bed, table, chairs and miscellaneous other items into the trailer and, squeezed in the back of the car between a bean bag and a feather mattress with the furniture bouncing around in the trailer behind, Orielle was borne to her new home.

  They were exact opposites in many ways. Georgie was quite tall and though not fat she was big boned with dark brown curly unruly hair whereas Orielle was petite, fair, graceful and sleek. Georgie was loud and cantankerous in a funny way but kind with it, where Orielle was sweet and gentle though firm and resolute when she wanted to be. When they watched telly or went out together, although they liked the same programmes and places to go, their tastes in men were completely at odds. Georgie went for tough, muscular he-men types. Orielle favoured arty types, slim and dreamy and sophisticated. Orielle told Georgie about the advertising executive and showed her the photo she still kept at the back of her purse. “Hmm,” said Georgie, “not my cup of tea but still.” Georgie was still waiting for Mr. Right to come along. So they determined that together they would take Colchester by storm, doing the rounds of the clubs, with and without the cousins, and romance was bound to materialise.

  Like sisters, they found it easy to engage in good-natured badinage right from the start.

  Orielle was a sucker for strays and hard luck stories and to Georgie’s exasperation was soon feeding a number of apparently homeless cats that turned up on the doorstep of the little house off Cowdray Avenue, not to mention the budgie that flew in and out of the garden, chased by wild birds, that Orielle was trying to capture and give a proper home to.

  IT WAS ORIELLE’S first day and she’d turned up on the dot of nine, nervous and slightly uncomfortable wearing the suit, blouse and shoes she’d bought from charity shops being all she could afford.

  “Sorry. Hugh’s away at a trial in Leeds. Er I’ll see what the others are doing,” said Deidre the receptionist.

  Thus she got to go out with Peter, an older man, very jolly and easy-mannered. He took her to Chelmsford for a half day preliminary hearing on a couple of issues in a fraud case. In the car he told her about everyone in the office and chatted about his own career. He was fairly near retirement having, he said, brought up and educated their daughters, and was now coasting. He said he wasn’t quite ready to hang up his robe and wig however and he liked working for Hugh much better than traditional chambers.

  “Typical of Hugh to forget he wasn't going to be here on your first few days. Never mind. There’s plenty you can be doing.”

  “I can't believe I’m actually going to get a training contract at last,” Orielle confided. “It’s almost a miracle.”

  “Well you caught the boss at the right time. He’s just started to get his leg over his new bird by the look of things. Not that I’m suggesting you didn't get the job on your merits. But he is tending to be more optimistic and positive now than he was. Before that he could be a bit morose.”

  “Oh. Well if that’s the reason, I’m delighted to be a beneficiary of his improved love life.”

  And he told her about the case and she read what she could of the file. She had an interesting morning and Peter kept her entertained on the drive back with anecdotes and gossip telling her all about the office.

  BACK AT THE OFFICE, she was given some files to look at and appeal applications to draft. She also started to look into the Police Station Representative accreditation scheme. Hugh was back on the Thursday but out again on Friday and she spent most of the rest of the week seeing clients of his and taking statements.

  CHAPTER 2

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  NUMBERS, EVERYTHING is made of numbers, astronomically huge numbers and minute fractions, considering mathematical problems, having some intellectual fun with others, weaving in and out of their own fields, thinking what they thought, posing conundrums for them, solving those put by others and sharing one’s own thoughts, travelling instantly to the far reaches of the universe, vast distances and back in no time, taking much longer sometimes, taking aeons and then none, without eyes watching and being aware of other beings in other parallel places but not being affected by them, passing through them, through the same space and out again and in again, all sorts of beings of different shapes and sizes but not judging, not labelling just experiencing, not being male or female or any other sex, not being troubled by any physical sensations or impulses, matter in any event being mostly an illusion, perceiving everything there is to perceive everywhere in the universe, any universe, this existence going on and on endlessly, feeling an odd sensation never felt before, something not within the realms of normality, a pull but more than that, a building of something around one’s essential being, layer by layer, organ by organ, a heaviness, a weight, a wrenching somehow from one’s own universe coupled with actual violent pain never before known, a bolt of something hugely powerful passing through one coupled with a deafening noise, resisting, realising what was incredibly happening and resisting making the pain worse, far worse beyond anything bearable, pain being an unfamiliar never before experienced sensation, being sucked, being devoured by the force, being dragged down to the ground by another bolt and another, being a form writhing on and having to stay on the ground, subject to gravity, not able to fly to any height or destination, a physical merely three dimensional shape around one pulling one to the ground, having to balance on two legs or fall over in an uncontrolled way, crying out, having a voice, a voice, vocal cords, having physical three dimensional brain tissue directing thoughts and movements and speech, being unable to go through solid objects or travel like a light particle to anywhere in the universe in milliseconds, being merely physical in a strange physical body, feeling disgusted by it, by its hair and teeth and saliva and bones and tissue and blood, disgust itself being a new and incomprehensible sensation, being naked and cold on the hard cold ground with loud thunder and violent bolts of lightening coming to earth and fizzing and crackling all around one. Eventually the scene calming and coming to rest, curling up in a naked ball on the ground. Wanting badly to go back.

  THE WEATHER WAS vile for October. All Friday afternoon the sky had been dark and foreboding, the air sizzling and uncomfortable. Suddenly a massive thunderstorm blew up. Having left the office, Orielle had to she
lter in a shop doorway. She waited there as long as she could for the rain, wind, thunder and lightning to die down before walking home through the park, marvelling at the force of the storm. At six fifteen there was an almighty clap of thunder and the fiercest most spectacular almost biblical flash of lightning she had ever seen. She thought the building she was sheltering under must have been struck and would fall down on her any second. But then the storm suddenly subsided, the rain abated and it became calm and tranquil within seconds. So she clutched her coat more closely around herself and rushed off impatient to get back home to get ready for a girls’ night out.

  BEING NEAR A BODY of water, dirty water with a slick oily covering in a wide band snaking through the land. Hearing noise, loud and constant and persistent, seeing lights somewhat above one’s head. The noise coming from there. Getting up and putting one leg in front of the other and again and again, walking towards the noise and lights, climbing up to the higher level. Feeling fear for the first time ever, fear not of the unknown, these things were known about in detail, but fear of the uncertainty what to do oneself, what would happen to oneself. Feeling cold, terribly cold, an unfamiliar sensation. Getting up to the higher level and seeing cars race past noisily, being frightened to go near them, big solid unfriendly fast-moving objects, being unable to pass through them. Watching them from the pavement. Soft feet hurting on contact with the hard surface. Looking down at one’s genitals, actual genitals, people walking past staring, gasping or tutting or, being girls, giggling.

  Blue flashing lights coming towards one, the car slowing down, stopping and traffic building up behind it, uniformed men getting out and coming towards one. Policemen. Talking to one, telling one to get in the car and come to the station, that one couldn't walk around the streets stark naked, with no clothes on, that they’d had reports, that it was an offence. Feeling instantly suspicious of the men, not wanting to get into the car, backing away, the men trying to manhandle one into the car, putting up more resistance. Slipping from their grasp and running, the policemen being overweight being unable to keep up. Running back down to the water and running along by the side of it into the dark, continuing to run in the dark, getting one’s feet cut and bleeding, running as far as one could then walking towards some old buildings and curling up in their shadow in the dark in a foetal position until one was sure the policemen were nowhere around. Being very cold. Waiting and waiting for an indeterminate period but knowing, measuring every second. Retracing one’s steps, seeing a large brightly lit building and hiding in the dense shrubbery in its grounds, watching, seeing what people were doing in the early morning, still dark, few people around, watching some people put bundles of stuff through holes in large containers, going to look when there was no-one around and pulling out bags of stuff, pulling out the contents and seeing clothing. Looking at the labels on the containers, and taking bags from each and taking them back to the bushes.