With the piece of carpet fibre, which was not from the Jordans’ Renault, and with the hair from the false beard, they might get him. The fibre could have come from his own car, and though by now he would probably have got rid of the beard and the other items, he might not have been thorough enough and hairs or other traces might be found among his possessions. There was the dust, too, which might be matched.
Thomas turned into the street where Wendy Lomax lived. It had been pleasant drinking coffee in her room. She might offer him some more.
She was out. Thomas sat outside in his car for quite a time, hoping she would return.
The leak might have come from the hospital, he reflected, waiting there. A nurse might have casually talked about Helen Jordan in some bar; or one of the injured woman’s friends could have let it out.
In the end, he gave up.
On Sunday evening, Herbert Green told the Overtown police that he had been walking his dog along the streets of Overtown late on Tuesday night. He had seen a man with a beard, wearing a raincoat and a tweed cap, walking along at a brisk rate. He had noticed the man because it wasn’t raining and he had thought it strange that he should be wearing the raincoat, which wasn’t a warm one but one of those light ones for travelling. And he’d been wearing dark glasses. He hadn’t seen the man get out of a car, nor was he near the bank when observed by Mr Green. This was the only definite statement that the Overtown police could produce, and it had not come in answer to the radio appeal, which Mr Green had not heard. He had just seen the plea in the local paper, which he never got around to reading until Sunday, asking for witnesses.
There were several other replies to both appeals, and all had to be thoroughly checked, but none was precise enough to be taken into account.
Mr Green said that his man had a carrier bag in his hand. He showed the Overtown policeman, on a map of the town, just where he was walking at the time.
‘Can I help?’ came Beryl’s voice as she climbed the stairs.
Isabel stood in Robbie’s room staring at the things she had found in the drawer. Quickly she thrust them back under the sweaters and pushed the drawer to.
Without waiting for an answer, Beryl came into the room.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘How chaste. No pin-ups of nudes. It’s like a monk’s cell.’
Jocularity and scorn were Beryl’s two ways of reacting to Robbie in his absence. When they met, she was rather embarrassed, particularly as Robbie always treated her with courtesy that seemed to her to be overdone. His bank manners, she supposed. She hadn’t been into his room before, and found it stark.
Isabel simply shrugged.
‘He’s a schoolboy,’ she said. ‘Look,’ and she opened the top drawer to display the soldier and the other toys. ‘He gives them to that child he’s so friendly with next door,’ she added.
Isabel had not understood what she had found. There must be other items – that was why the cupboard was locked. The stockings were the clue; there would be other women’s garments. He must have a partner with whom he indulged his horrible fantasies, who wore the beard. It was vile. And Beryl must not find out.
‘Shall we pack up his things?’ Beryl suggested.
‘No. He can do it himself,’ said Isabel, and anxious to get Beryl out of the room, added, ‘But we might have a look at his shed. There won’t be room for all that junk of his at the new house.’
The shed was locked, but that did not hinder Isabel. She fetched a large stone and pounded at the chain. Beryl, watching, was uneasy as she looked at Isabel’s expression, frowning, intent, her face flushed, concentrating wholly on what she was doing. Eventually the hook holding the chain to the doorpost gave, splintering away.
‘Shouldn’t we leave it for him to do?’ Beryl timidly suggested. She would never have violated anyone’s privacy like this.
‘It’s locked to keep vandals out, not me,’ said Isabel untruthfully as she struck the severing blow.
She burst into the shed, and Beryl followed. On a pegboard before them hung chisels and screwdrivers, spanners and other tools. There was a vice clamped to the workbench, and a stack of wood, pieces of varying sizes, stood against one wall. More wood was stacked on shelves. In one corner were ranged the gardening tools, and there was a wheelbarrow up-ended in the corner. A mower, covered with a polythene sheet, occupied more space. It was all very neat.
On the bench, upside down, was a nearly complete table.
Isabel lifted it down. One leg had yet to be fitted.
‘A coffee table,’ said Beryl. ‘It’s going to be lovely when it’s done. He is clever, Isabel.’
‘It’s all rubbish,’ Isabel said. ‘We must get it out of here. Come along, Beryl, help me.’
She pulled forward the wheelbarrow and began piling into it the sections of plank.
‘What are you going to do with it?’ asked Beryl, half appalled, wholly amazed, as Isabel, with demoniac fury, loaded the barrow.
‘Burn it,’ said Isabel.
‘But wood like that costs a fortune,’ Beryl protested.
‘He bought it with my money,’ said Isabel shortly. ‘Who do you think pays for everything here? He wouldn’t have it to spare for nonsense of this sort if it weren’t for the shop.’
As she spoke, she tipped another pile of wood into the barrow.
Beryl had heard Isabel say that Robbie’s woodworking occupied him at weekends and kept him out of her way. She seemed to have forgotten these advantages now as she picked up the wheelbarrow and strode off down the garden to the spot where Robbie burnt rubbish, and tipped out her load. Beryl had never seen her in such a fury.
‘Fetch some newspaper and matches from the house, Beryl,’ she ordered. ‘You’ll find them in the cupboard in the kitchen – by the back door.’
Beryl made a protesting gesture with a hand, but she obeyed.
Isabel made four journeys from the shed to the bonfire site. She piled crumpled newspaper under the wood and she split some with an axe, to make it kindle more easily. Her hands, wielding the axe, were red and strong. Everything was very dry, but she added some paraffin to her pyre, and when it was built, she put a match to it. It flared up in a most satisfactory manner.
As soon as it was going well, Isabel put the coffee table on top of the flames.
They were different gloves, Wendy told herself, gripping her hands together to stop them from shaking as Robbie got back into the car. It’s sheer coincidence, she went on in her head: they’re very similar – old brown gloves, with a stain across the knuckles. But she could hear herself telling Detective Inspector Thomas that she would know those gloves again anywhere.
Robbie drove on, seeking a pub he had marked down for their lunch where the restaurant was very good. Wendy watched for road signs on their way; she had become their map reader.
He’d have thrown them away – burnt them – somehow got rid of them, if those were the actual gloves, she thought.
They ate roast beef for lunch, and as Wendy looked at Robbie across the table, she tried to imagine him in a wig, dark glasses and a false beard, holding a gun. She could not do it; the whole thing was fantastic.
‘You’re very quiet, dear,’ he said. He found uttering endearments difficult, he was so unused to them, but he called her ‘dear’ quite a lot now.
‘You’ll have to be careful not to say that in the bank,’ Wendy said.
‘Two personalities, that’s what I’ll have to have,’ Robbie said. ‘One in the bank, and one when we’re alone.’
Two personalities.
A personality that was a kind, unambitious bank clerk, and the personality of a ruthless robber: could they exist together in one man?
There were cases in the paper of men being arrested for various crimes when their wives knew nothing about what had been going on. Major deceptions took place every day, and crimes were committed by people who went about for most of the time looking perfectly ordinary.
Why should he do it, though, if it was Robbie? He w
ould know that the amount in one till on a Wednesday afternoon wouldn’t be great. And he had given the money back – whoever had committed the crime.
If Robbie had robbed the bank, giving back the money and using a toy pistol were the only parts of the deed that seemed in character. He couldn’t have done it. She must be wrong.
When he tried to arrange a night for their next meeting, she prevaricated.
‘Let’s leave it for now, Robbie,’ she said, and when he looked bleak added quickly, ‘It’s been lovely, I’ve had a wonderful weekend and you’re sweet. But please don’t pin me down.’
‘I’m too old for you,’ Robbie said mournfully.
‘You aren’t at all. You’re a darling,’ Wendy said, and she meant it. ‘But I’ve got packing to do for the weekend, and – and I’m going out tomorrow night and on Tuesday,’ she hastily invented.
He could have walked into the bank in disguise, done the raid, and reappeared in time for his normal lunch hour return. It was possible. He would have had to put the disguise on somewhere – in his own car, perhaps – and then remove it again. Would he have bothered, in that case, to steal the Renault? He wouldn’t need it.
But it had been found close by, near the recreation ground. Detective Inspector Thomas had told her that.
She looked at his lined, pale face, the greying hair at the temples, the brown eyes behind his glasses now gazing fondly at her. He was falling in love with her, she knew, and whilst part of her was pleased, the other part sighed with the responsibility of it. She had done that to Terry – loaded him with the burden of a love he did not want and could not cope with. There was always a moment, with these things, where you decided to go on and let the relationship work itself out, one way or the other, or you decided not to and drew back before it was too late and she had not reached the point of no return.
But Robbie was speaking.
‘It’s over, isn’t it?’ he said drearily. ‘I just know it.’
What if she challenged him – said, ‘Robbie, those gloves in the car – you were the robber, weren’t you?’ She knew he would not suddenly go mad and attack her; he would destroy the gloves, and he would be at her mercy. But suppose she was wrong – that it was just some freak coincidence – all trust between them would be gone, his that she should think such a thing, and hers that she could imagine he might do it.
‘No, of course not,’ she answered him. ‘I’m just going to be busy for the next week, and then I’m going away. And you’ve got your move.’
She would ask for a transfer. It might all be managed very quickly. Then she need not have it out with him.
Wendy realized that her thinking did not seem to include telling the police what she had discovered. How could she do that to him? No lasting harm had been done: the money was back and Mrs Jordan not badly hurt. Their interlude together had been happy for them both, but Wendy knew that Robbie had not exploited her at all, while she had used him to comfort herself, in the aftermath of her broken romance.
‘Well, we’ll see how things are after that, then,’ said Robbie. He’d rushed her; that was the trouble. When she was back from Scotland, and he was installed in a flat somewhere, he would court her.
Wendy put the gloves out of her mind during the afternoon and set herself to be a good companion as they toured a castle full of suits of armour. They had dinner close to Blewton, and when they stopped outside Wendy’s building she took her case from him and kissed his cheek. Even if she was wrong, and he was innocent, something important was lacking between them. Wendy wanted more than patient, defeated Robbie.
And he looked defeated, leaving her.
He drove off with the picture he had bought for her still in the car.
14
Robbie did not go straight home. He called at a pub on the way and sat there until closing time drinking whisky, something he did only on rare occasions such as after an evening spent singing or with Wilfred Hunt. Through his mind, like a film, ran a series of blurred images: the moments of the raid in the bank were so few compared with all those hours spent with Wendy; it was easy to forget them. But he could never forget Wendy, and because of her, he realized just how empty his marriage had been. He had been cheated.
He went home at last. As he got out of the car, not bothering to lock it, he caught a whiff of woodsmoke on the air, as if someone had been having a bonfire, but he paid it no attention. The house was dark; Isabel was not about, which was as well.
He was very tired, and he was a little drunk: so much emotion followed by alcohol had its effect and he reached his room in a daze. He saw a pack of polythene bags on his bed and wondered vaguely how they had got there, but he did not try to work it out. He was barely able to stay awake long enough to take off his clothes.
In the morning there was a thump on his door.
‘Aren’t you getting up? You’ll be late,’ came Isabel’s voice.
Robbie had never before overslept in all the years of their marriage. Heart thumping, he got out of bed and blundered into his yellow-tiled shower room. His head ached and his mouth seemed full of fur. He stood under the shower, with the water as cool as he could endure it, hoping to revive, and gradually managed to pull himself into some sort of order. Downstairs, coffee was percolating, and Isabel, casting him a wary glance, poured him out a strong cupful, without speaking.
It must be late if she was down and dressed, Robbie thought, glancing at the clock. He’d just about get to the bank on time if he left at once. He gulped the coffee down, scalding his throat.
Isabel decided not to mention the polythene bags left for his packing; he looked awful. He must have been away with whoever his fearful partner was, she supposed. His rebellious weekend had done him no good at all. Well, perhaps he’d learned something and would come to heel again. She’d have to watch him, though; she would not stand for one breath of scandal.
Wendy had not slept well. Once she was in bed, she had begun to think again about the gloves. She tried to remember the day of the robbery, to see if Robbie had done anything unusual, but she had taken his actions so much for granted that she would not really have noticed. She saw him in her mind’s eye walking away with his green carrier bag, in which he put shopping, she knew, and carried his lunch. He had been empty-handed when he returned after the raid, when the police were there. But it would have been perfectly normal for him to leave his carrier in the car. She knew he parked near the recreation ground.
It was all circumstantial: except for the gloves.
She ought to telephone Detective Inspector Thomas now, or at latest in the morning, and tell him about the gloves. It could soon be proved whether or not Robbie was guilty; there was the bit of fibre, to start with, from the carpet of a car. She supposed, if he were the raider, he would have got rid of the beard by now, but they might find a hair somewhere.
It couldn’t have been Robbie. What possible motive could he have had for doing such a thing? He didn’t need money.
At last Wendy fell into a troubled sleep.
As she arrived at the bank she saw Robbie running along the road and she hurried so that they should not meet in the doorway. He came in rather out of breath and Betty Fox teased him.
‘Nearly late, Robbie. Well, my – that would be a first,’ she said.
Robbie was thinking, one thing at a time: let me take one thing at a time; it’s work now, and if I’m not careful I’ll make some slip, with my head in this state. Later, I’ll think. He managed to smile at Betty and reply tritely that there had to be a first for everything. As the morning went on, his headache eased and some strong instant coffee provided by the typist improved things. By lunch time he was feeling more normal; he had a lot of work to do and habit took over.
‘But if matey is local, he might come from anywhere in Blewton – not just close to that branch of the bank, guv,’ objected Detective Sergeant Briscoe.
‘Right,’ said Thomas. ‘But let’s start near. Everyone in the area would know the bank wouldn’t be
as busy on half-day closing as through the rest of the week. People working in the other shops would have the afternoon off and time to do the job – and the thief could disappear round the back of the buildings to get into his own place afterwards. Let’s ask them all what they were doing at the time of the raid.’
Briscoe sighed.
‘Yes, guv,’ he agreed.
Thomas looked at the list of bank employees. Those who were in the building at the time of the robbery were above suspicion. Four people were away at lunch at the relevant time, and three of those were women.
Mr Robinson, the first securities clerk, was having his lunch and strolling in the recreation ground. Mr Robinson had been employed by the bank for more than twenty-five years. Mr Robinson had not reached the highest branch of his profession.
‘And we’ll find out a little more about Mr Gilbert Robinson, aged forty-five, chief securities clerk,’ said Thomas.
Briscoe raised his eyebrows.
‘Middle-aged. Frustrated, maybe. An up-yours gesture,’ said Thomas.
Briscoe went off to make the necessary arrangements.
Just before one a detective constable was sitting in a car in the service road near the bank, pretending to read a newspaper. He saw Robbie emerge, carrying his green carrier bag, and walk along the street. He went into the chemist’s shop, a few doors away from the bank, and the plain clothes officer slipped out of his car and into the shop after him. Robbie bought aspirins.
The plain clothes man bought a tin of Elastoplast and hurried off after his quarry who had vanished when he came out on to the pavement. The Copper Kettle was next door, and peering through the window, the officer saw Robbie sitting in there. He returned to his car and ate some sandwiches.
Half an hour later, Robbie came out of the café and went into the supermarket; he left there five minutes later and his carrier bag now clearly contained some shopping that weighed it down. Robbie walked on towards the corner, and the detective followed on foot. He saw Robbie go up to a black 1100 that was parked beside the recreation ground and open the boot. He put his shopping inside. Then he locked the boot and walked away, along the path through the recreation ground.
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