Thief Taker

by Alan Scholefield

  “What about her car?”

  “I can’t remember seeing anything.”

  Soon after that they left.

  Macrae finished his drink and said to Silver, “You know something, laddie? I think he thinks she might have done her husband in.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “For her freedom. Maybe he said he’d never give her her freedom without a fight. Maybe she didn’t want to fight. I don’t know, but it’s possible. I mean you heard what Harris said about Healey and possessions. He could be right there. And if Harris was drunk enough she could have gone up to London, killed Healey and been back before he knew she’d gone. That’s the way his mind’s working. That’s why he was cleaning up the place. That’s why he told us he was drunk between lunchtime and ten o’clock. That’s why he said he wasn’t sure if she was in the house. He’s giving himself escape routes. Anyway, we’ve got to go and have another little talk with Mrs Robson Healey.”

  “Mr Macrae.”

  Macrae and Silver glanced up. A hard-faced man was standing at their table.

  “What d’you want, Stoker?” Macrae said.

  “A word with you.”

  “Can’t you see I’m busy?”

  Stoker made no move.

  “Oh, Christ Macrae rose. Silver remained seated.

  “What?” Macrae asked.

  “Mr Gorman wants to see you.”

  Macrae’s face darkened. “What the hell’s that got to do with you, Stoker? You his messenger-boy now?”

  Stoker’s face remained expressionless. “That’s out of order, Mr Macrae.”

  “Oh fuck off, there’s a good lad.”

  Stoker nodded slowly. “You’ve been told, Mr Macrae.” He walked away.

  Silver was watching the other villains. Their heads had come up at the start of the conversation and their eyes had rested on Macrae. Their expressions were cold. It was a coldness that caused Silver’s flesh to creep.

  “You seen Scales, George?” Detective Chief Superintendent Wilson came into Macrae’s office.

  “Why? Does he want to see me?”

  “He’s doing his nut. He says you took a driver after he told you not to.”

  “Well?”

  Macrae had had just enough to drink feel the old belligerency begin to surface.

  “Oh Jesus, George, you just won’t be told, will you?”

  “I haven’t got time for pricks like Scales.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Listen, Les — ”

  “You listen. I don’t give a fuck, but Scales is paranoid. I told you that. He’s been buggering around all day trying to find out how much coffee we use, how much tea, how much toilet paper. Then he finds you’ve got Twyford. I thought he was going through the bloody roof. It’s going to be hard enough having him around without you making things worse.”

  The desk sergeant put his head round the door. “There’s a Lysander Goater in interview room three, Mr Macrae.”

  “A what?” Wilson said.

  “Rambo put me on to him.” He turned. “Go home, Les. Have a good night’s sleep and give Beryl a kiss for me. And stop worrying about me. It’s my arse.”

  Silver was already in interview room three. “This is Lysander Goater, guv’nor,” he said as Macrae entered. The big man only grunted. It was as much a grunt of surprise as a greeting.

  The surprise was at the sight of the small, neatly dressed black man who sat at the table, his hands demurely on his lap. His face was thin, and his eyes framed by large black spectacles. He was wearing a dark suit and a clerical collar.

  “Lysander, eh?” Macrae said. “Where did you get a name like that?”

  The young man said, “I must protest. Your people took me out of a prayer meeting. For no reason at all.”

  “Well, like the man said, we can always find a reason.”

  “But what am I supposed to have done, Inspector?”

  “Detective Superintendent.”

  “My apologies.” The voice was educated. “But you still haven’t answered my question. And I would like to see my solicitor.”

  “Why, have you done something wrong?”

  “You seem to think so.”

  “Not at all, laddie. I’ve got a few questions, that’s all. Answer them and you’re back in your prayer meeting in half an hour. We’ll even take you back by car.”

  The young man relaxed.

  Macrae said, “That’s better. Now tell me about “Lysander”, Lysander.”

  “My father was in the Grenadier Guards.”

  Macrae raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

  “Oh, not in the regiment. They didn’t take blacks then. No, he worked in the canteen as a dishwasher. He named me Lysander.”

  Macrae turned to Silver. “It’s like Round Britain Quiz, isn’t it? Give me a clue, Lysander.”

  Goater smiled slightly. “You’re the detective, Mr Macrae.”

  “Right, let’s see then. Grenadier Guards. Army. What does an army do? It goes to battle. Marches into battle. Marching song. What’s the marching song of the Grenadier Guards, laddie?”

  “I don’t know, guv’nor?”

  “They didn’t teach you that at the university, then?”

  “No.”

  “Hot or cold, Lysander?”

  “Very warm.”

  Macrae began tapping out a marching rhythm on the table and said, ““Some talk of Alexander/And some of Hercules./Of Hector and Lysander/And such great men as these…” That’s the verse, isn’t it, Lysander?”

  “That’s the verse, Mr Macrae. But you didn’t take me out of a prayer meeting to discuss army marching songs.”

  “That’s right, Lysander. It’s to discuss girls.”

  “Girls?” Goater smiled again. “I thought so. It’s a case of mistaken identity.”

  Having solved the knotty question of Lysander’s baptism, Macrae was in a sunny mood. “Now, now, Lysander, let’s not spoil things.” He took a sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. He began to read. ““Lysander Goater, twenty-nine, no fixed address…” Well, do you want me to read them ail?…Breaking and entering…armed robbery…uttering threats and menaces…extortion…Goodness me, Lysander, you’re raising the London crime statistics single-handed. Now tell me, how many Lysander Goaters d’you think are in the London telephone directory?”

  Goater looked at Silver, gave him a wide smile as though to apologise, then turned back to Macrae. “How can I help you?”

  CHAPTER XV

  “Stop!” Linda Macrae said. “It says all the files will be destroyed.”

  “Why?” David Leitman asked.

  “God knows. Let me look in the instruction book.”

  They were staring at the warning notice on the screen of his new word processor. He had bought it the previous day and had spent most of the intervening hours trying to make sense of the soft-ware instructions.

  “All I want to do is get something on disc and get it to stay there.” His voice was tightly controlled. “Now this damned machine tells me I’m going to destroy all the files on the disc. But there aren’t any files on the disc! That’s the whole point! That’s what I’m trying to do. Get files on the bloody thing!”

  She burst out laughing.

  He said, “I think they should take the people who wrote this book of instructions and make them go to school again and learn how to write English and not this terrible computerspeak!”

  “Why don’t we give it a break, David?”

  They were in his study, hypnotised by the green screen. They had spent the previous evening there as well, and a strange computer-induced intimacy had arisen between them, at least it seemed so to Linda.

  She had the feeling they were the only two people left in the world as they fiddled unsuccessfully with the various functions of word processing. So far they had managed to get, “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party,” on to the screen but had not been able to save it on disc. />
  Hours had vanished. The previous night it had been nearly one o’clock before she had got to bed and yet the time had sped so fast she had thought it was not much more than ten.

  “As I understood it,” he said, “and I’m saying this with a smile and as sweetly as I know how…but as I understood it, you took a course in word processing.”

  “I know…I know…And I feel terrible about you buying it. I thought I’d be able to figure it out in a few minutes. But I never…never…worked on anything like this!” She tapped the two-hundred-page book of instructions. “You know what I feel like doing?”

  “Hitting me!”

  “God forfend!” He took her hand, squeezed it and put it down. “I feel like throwing everything out into the street; screen, keyboard, printer, instruction book — the lot. I can always go back to using a fountain pen.”

  “David, we’ll work it out. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Why don’t you come down and have coffee and forget about it for tonight?”

  “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”

  He switched off the word processor. “My head feels as though it’s going to split open.”

  “Mine too.”

  They went down to her flat and she made coffee. From the kitchen she could see into the sitting room. He was sitting on the sofa looking at the paper. It seemed so natural that she felt a catch in her throat. This is what she had been missing all these years. Just seeing a man she liked sitting on her sofa, reading the paper. It wasn’t the great sexual moments, she thought — she’d never experienced one anyway — but the small domestic things, the myriad of tiny ordinary things that made up the fabric of life.

  “Black?”

  “With one sugar,” he said.

  She put down the cup on the low table. “Brandy?”

  “If you’re having one.”

  “Well, I don’t usually but I think I will tonight.”

  “Would you mind if I smoked?”

  “Of course not. I didn’t know you did.”

  “I gave it up about five years ago. Now I just have a cigar sometimes.” He lit a thin cheroot.

  “George smoked those all the time. I love the smell.” She curled up in an armchair. “I haven’t smelled one for a long time. Not until the other night when George — ”

  There was an uneasy moment, then he said, “I suppose one shouldn’t but I get so damned tired of giving things up. They, the great “they”, tell us all the things that are bad for us, but they never tell us what they want us to die of. Boredom, probably.”

  They chatted comfortably about ordinary things. She told him about her daughter Susan and her present trip.

  When she finished he said, “Tell me about George.”

  “George? Why?”

  “Well, he’s part of your life and I’m interested in peoples’ lives.”

  “I’m afraid mine’s pretty dull if you’re thinking of putting it in a book.”

  He smiled at her and said, “I’m not totally mercenary. I can be interested in people without wanting to turn them into copy.”

  She inclined her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t really mean it to sound like that. George and I go back a long way. We were at school together. He was a bit of a bruiser, a boxer. I don’t think I took much notice of him then. Anyway, he was a few years above me. It was only after school that we started going out. I was looking after my father. He was dying, and George used to come home with me and he’d sit and talk to Dad for hours. I was very grateful for that. That’s when he got interested in the police. Dad had been a sergeant in the uniformed branch.”

  “When were you married?”

  “Soon after Dad died. George always said I was looking for a surrogate father. Either that or someone to look after. My mother died when I was a teenager and I looked after my younger brothers and then Dad when he got ill.”

  “And did you look after George?”

  “I tried to. He’s not the sort of person you can “look after” in that sort of way. I mean he’s very independent. Doesn’t like relying on anyone. Anyway, we had Susan and I was very happy, the happiest I’d been I think. But the domesticity got him down. He’s not a homebody, if you know what I mean, and I suppose I am. I love being at home. But men are different.”

  “I don’t know that men are so different. I’m a homebody too. I had enough travelling when I was a journalist to last me a lifetime.”

  “George was restless. I knew that but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. We didn’t have much money. So home was quite dull, I think. And his work life was pretty exciting. The Murder Squad and the Flying Squad. That sort of thing. Then he met this other person, a woman PC. They started having an affair…and…well, that’s how it broke up. The marriage, I mean. I’m not sure George meant it to break up. I don’t think he thought about it George sometimes tends to act before he thinks.”

  “We all do, I suppose.”

  “Please don’t think I’m feeling sorry for myself.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Because I’m not. He did me a favour in many ways. He made me think out my life. I couldn’t do anything, you see. I wasn’t trained. And I knew, when he left me, that I’d have to sink or swim on my own. So I took shorthand and typing and bookkeeping and word processing…” She laughed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that! And I started reading books, real books. George had started me off. He loves Dickens. You wouldn’t think so but he’s quite well read. So I read Dickens and Trollope and Jane Austen. And modern writers too, of course. It was a bit like school homework at first. I mean artificial in a way. Then suddenly I started enjoying them. I mean Great Expectations? well…”

  “Great?”

  “Go on, you’re laughing at me.”

  “Don’t be absurd. How do you think anyone starts reading good stuff? That’s how I started. That’s how most people start. You hear about it…want to try…it’s difficult at first…you keep with it and then as you say, suddenly — bingo. You can’t stop. I’ve read Great Expectations two or three times. But I don’t now, except on holiday.”

  “Why not?”

  “Dickens is too influential. You find yourself writing like him. And using strange names, like Magwitch or Chuzzlewit, and making characters larger than life. He could do it, I can’t.”

  They were silent for a moment and then he said, “Some people don’t know when they’re well off.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I mean George and you. He must have been out of his mind to break it up.”

  “Thank you. What a very nice thing to say.”

  “I’m not just saying it. I mean it.”

  She studied him over the rim of her brandy glass.

  “He once said to me…”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you when I know you better.”

  They looked at each other for a moment and then he rose. “I want to stay but I won’t. You’ve got to work tomorrow, so have I. Perhaps you’d let me take you to dinner tomorrow night.”

  She hesitated, remembering what she had told herself about relationships within the same building.

  He seemed to read her mind. “See how you feel. Give me a ring tomorrow some time. I’m in all day.”

  After he left she took the cups and glasses and washed them and put them away. She was regretting he had gone. He could have stayed for another drink. But what then? Between two adults who liked and were attracted to each other there was only one logical ending.

  But did she want to go to bed with him?

  She had a good, uncomplicated life. Well…perhaps not good, but fair. Going to bed with David would change things. For her anyway, because she had never been able to have it off on a one-night stand basis. Too prudish? Or did she just want too much?

  It might make her life better, transform it, but you could never be certain and she had to be certain, because if she fell in love and got it wrong again she would b
e devastated.

  In their flat in Pimlico Leo and Zoe were in bed. He had told her about Rachel Nihill and her caravan and the name she had devised for it.

  “How do you spell it?” Zoe said.

  Leo reached for his notebook and wrote: EREWHON.

  Zoe looked at it, mystified.

  “What’s it mean?”

  “God knows. I’ll look it — ”

  Suddenly she said, “BOLTOP! Did you find out what it meant? Did you find out about him?”

  Silver’s mind went into overdrive. “I don’t know about BOLTOP,” he lied, “but as far as he’s concerned you don’t have to worry. He’s still inside.”

  “Thank God.”

  He felt her relax.

  “But — ”

  “But what?”

  “One day he’ll come out, Leo. What then?”

  “That’s what you keep me around for, isn’t it?”

  It was said lightly but he wondered if she would pick it up. She didn’t. Instead she put her arms around him. “Leo…Leopold…Leopold Silver…Give me a kiss…”

  In his small house in Battersea, Macrae was sitting in front of the television. The picture flickered in the dark room but the sound was turned down. On a tow table was a whisky bottle and the glass. One more, he thought, and then bed.

  But would one more be enough?

  He remembered his father.

  As a boy George would often sit in the Land-Rover outside the Highland pub when his father was drinking — no kids were allowed in the bar. He often waited in winter when there was snow or frost on the ground. Occasionally his father would come out with a packet of crisps and give them to him.

  “Just one more dram, George, then we’re away home.”

  Just one more…

  Macrae poured himself one more. Then he picked up the phone and dialled Frenchy. But it rang and rang and no one answered.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Rachel was chopping wood with a small hand-axe. She had collected branches earlier that morning, sawed the bigger ones into pieces and now she was splitting them. She did this deftly but slowly so as not to start her chest.

  On the long slow journey to the West Country, Chris had taught her how to do this and how to saw and how to use many of his tools — she hadn’t worried about her chest then. And she had learned a lot by watching him work. He was a good carpenter. And he was always worrying about his tools, sharpening the chisels on an oil stone, cleaning the rasps, and the planes and the spokeshaves. You’d have thought the tools were diamonds.