Thief Taker

by Alan Scholefield

  Macrae said, “Did you have any other children?”

  “No. Only Rachel.”

  “Was there any reason?”

  “I don’t see that’s any of your business.”

  “Was your marriage already breaking down by the time Rachel was born?”

  “It happened afterwards.”

  “Did it have anything to do with Rachel?”

  “God damn it! I’ve told you over and over, don’t bring Rachel into this. She’s had enough to put — ”

  “Go on.”

  She shook her head.

  “Were you afraid of your husband?” Silver said.

  “What?”

  “Were you afraid of him?”

  “Was he a violent man?” Macrae said.

  “Did he ever attack you?” Silver asked.

  “Beat you up?”

  Her head began to move from side to side like a stunned boxer avoiding punches.

  “I don’t know what you — ”

  “It’s quite simple,” Silver said. “Was he rough with you? Did he ever hit you? Attack you?”

  She stubbed out the cigarette and her hand was shaking so much Silver thought she might not be able to find the ashtray.

  Macrae said brutally, “Have you ever had an abortion?”

  “How dare you!” Her pale complexion had become chalky. Macrae said, “If you did have an abortion after the Abortion Act made it legal and if you had it at any of the registered clinics under your married or maiden names, we’ll find out. Why don’t you make it easier for all of us?” She took another cigarette from an inlaid box on the table in front of her. Silver picked up her lighter and lit it for her.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “When was that?”

  “Six or seven years after Rachel was born.”

  Silver made a note.

  “Why?” Macrae asked.

  She leaned forward and covered her face with her hand. Silver thought she might be hiding tears but he was wrong. Almost wearily she looked up at them and said, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “Did your husband know?”

  She shook her head. “He was in Japan on business. He was away for six weeks. I didn’t tell him.”

  Macrae said in a softer voice, “You were terrified of him, weren’t you, Mrs Healey?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Is that why you were never divorced?”

  She looked up at them and then said slowly, “He said if I took him to court he’d kill me.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Oh yes. I believed him all right.”

  In the Old Vienna Zoe sipped her wine then said, “But why? Why did he threaten to kill her?”

  “I don’t know. Macrae thinks it’s because she knew too much about his business affairs. He and Collins were a right pair and he didn’t want lawyers poking about Both Collins and Harris say Healey was obsessively possessive. The point is she was terrified of him. And so was Rachel. She as good as told us. So I’m going to do a bit of probing.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Wait one little minute, sport. Tomorrow we start our holiday.”

  “This is on the way. We’ll just — ”

  “Leo. You said no work. You said — ”

  “I know…I know…”

  “Anyway, you’ve always told me that you were either on duty or off, no half measures. And that when you’re off duty you have no insurance and no back-up.”

  He told her about Jack Geddes. “I don’t want some bloody whizz-kid taking over my place with Macrae. I want to come back with something, and it’s only going to take an hour or so. Everyone seems to have forgotten Rachel’s husband Chris. But I’ve got a kind of feeling about him. And I want to check it out. We stop in Wiltshire. I ask him a few questions. Then on to the Wye.”

  “You promise.”

  “I promise.”

  “You swear on St Bartholomew’s Holy Ear?”

  “I swear.”

  “Say it.”

  He said it. Someone at the bar laughed.

  “OK,” Zoe said. “That’s a terrific oath. I can’t tell you all the things that’ll go wrong if you break it.”

  “I’m not going to break it. We’ll be at Paxham by lunchtime.”

  “Leo, is it going to be nice?”

  “The holiday? Of course it’s going to be nice!”

  “I mean the village. And the pub. I’ve never stayed at a pub before. Shouldn’t we have booked into a hotel instead?”

  “The Paxham Arms is in the guide book. It gets a star.”

  “But the food might be Swindon.”

  “The food gets a star too.”

  “What about the beds?”

  “The accommodation also gets a star.”

  “What if it’s too far from anywhere?”

  “Look, we’re going on a fishing holiday, OK? Anyway, Hereford’s only about twelve miles away.”

  Terrific! Known far and wide for its…cattle. Swinging Hereford! I’ve always wanted to go there. A week watching the cattle, and you throwing your rod or line or whatever into the water is going to be just dandy.”

  Silver ran his tongue over his lips. “Well, you’re in luck. It just might not be a week.”

  “What?”

  “Not a whole week.”

  “OK, I can live with that. How much of a week?”

  “Part.”

  “What sort of part?”

  “The smaller part.”

  “How long?”

  “We’ve always wanted to go away for a weekend haven’t we? A weekend in the country! We’ve talked about it often.”

  “Leopold,” she said in a dangerous voice. “I think we should have a little chat. I’ll do the chatting…”

  CHAPTER XXII

  Linda Macrae watched the early-evening news on television. Sometimes she saw George when he was working on a case. Soon after he had left her and gone to live with “the other woman” as she still sometimes thought of her, she had seen him on the six o’clock news and had been filled with a rage so great that she was frightened by its unfamiliarity.

  But that had passed.

  His name was often in the papers investigating this or that. She could read it now without anger. She used to dream about him a great deal. In some of her dreams he had come back to her and they were living together again.

  She wished now she had not had to go to him for the money for Susan’s trip, but there had been no other way. It had seemed to give him the idea of coming back into her life. Once, she would have given anything to have him back. Not now. She had won her right to her own life by living through a thousand lonely nights and ten thousand lonely meals.

  It was George who was lonely now.

  She decided to have a drink, make herself supper and then read. There was not much to watch on television and in any case she was suspicious of the medium, scared of becoming dependent on it now that Susan was no longer around. When the two of them had lived together the TV had been on much of the time, a kind of visual muzak.

  No, she would read. The thick paperback edition of Middlemarch had been frowning at her from her bookcase for months. It was one of the novels she had tried to read during her self-improvement phase and which had defeated her. Every time she looked at it she felt guilty. She would try to get past the first forty to fifty pages and into the story proper.

  She was pouring herself a glass of wine when the phone rang. For a second she felt a faint increase in her heart rate. David had said she should call him if she wanted to go out to dinner and she had decided that she didn’t and wouldn’t — and was regretting it. This might be him now. But it wasn’t. “Hello, George,” she said.

  She could hear the sound of clinking glasses and voices and knew he was in a pub.

  “How are you?” he said.

  “Fine.”

  “I was wondering…?”

  “Yes?”

  “I thought I’d
come over.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Just a chat. About Susan.”

  “But we had a chat the other night. There’s no more news, George.”

  “You know what I mean. A talk. Like we used to have.”

  “When was that?”

  “Well…you know…”

  “George, we haven’t had a chat in that sense for twenty years.”

  “Well…I miss them.”

  “Do you?”

  “What about you?”

  “I haven’t thought about it.”

  “Is that all right then?”

  “What?”

  “Me coming over.”

  “No, it isn’t. I’m going out to dinner.”

  Pause.

  “Out?”

  “People do go out, you know. I mean ex-wives are allowed out.”

  “With him?”

  “If you mean David, yes.”

  “Is it David now?”

  “George, for God’s sake! You don’t think I’d have someone to supper in my flat and call him Mr Leitman, do you?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll leave that to him.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “Really, George, don’t be absurd. I hardly know him. Anyway, its nothing to do with you.”

  “I don’t know what you see in him.”

  “I don’t see anything. He’s a man who lives upstairs. I’m pleasant to him, he’s pleasant to me. We meet on the stairs. We share the same house. He’s had supper with me once. I don’t owe you explanations.”

  “I mean, he’s just a bloody writer.”

  “That’s right, George. Just a bloody writer.”

  “Writing about the police!”

  “I thought that would get you.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “That’s your territory, isn’t it? The police.”

  “All that rubbish about enclosed societies.”

  “You just don’t like people trespassing, do you?”

  “Well, why doesn’t he write something he knows about?”

  “I suppose he knows about the police.”

  “Och, you know that’s nonsense. How could he know about the police? No one knows about coppers unless they’ve been one.”

  She thought of several examples she could have quoted which would have countered that argument but suddenly she felt her energy seep away. She just couldn’t be bothered arguing with him.

  “When will you be back?” he said.

  She considered the possibility of George arriving at midnight and said, “I don’t know. And if you were thinking of coming over — don’t.”

  “You were never like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “You never really cared about men.”

  “What?”

  “Little Linda Brown’s come a long way.”

  “I’m not having any more, George. Don’t phone me up if you’re going to say things like that.”

  “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Goodbye, George.”

  She put the phone down. She was shaking with anger. Little Linda Brown! Once she had tried to explain to George what had happened to her since she had been on her own, tried to make him understand that twenty years of making her own decisions, mapping out her own life, had changed her.

  But change was something he could never get to grips with. He didn’t like change. It disturbed him. And she knew that the Metropolitan Police had changed out of all recognition since he had joined. He was being left behind. He should have been a detective chief superintendent or even a commander by now. But he was like a dinosaur trapped in a world that was slowly growing colder.

  She reached for the phone, dialled.

  “Hi,” Leitman’s voice said.

  “Is the offer still open?”

  “Dinner? Of course it is.”

  “If it’s not too late to accept, then I’d love to.”

  Rawley…Rawley…Jackanory…

  How fast can your little legs run?

  He’d run all right. He’d come out from under the caravan, out from under the bumps and the bangs and he’d run.

  There’s no two ways about that.

  Oh, yus.

  But the crashes and heavings had not been what he thought they were. That’s if Rawley had thought at all.

  She’d been desperate, as desperate as ever in her short life, and it wasn’t the red rabbit — except that it may have started it long ago.

  It was within herself.

  She had known it was coming. It started with the itching, then that feeling as though two great hands were squeezing her chest.

  Then the first signs of breathlessness.

  As usual you weren’t sure whether or not it was your imagination.

  But it didn’t really matter which it was. It was coming anyway.

  Then the wheezing. Like a blocked pair of bellows.

  From the moment she had felt the itching and the tightness she had looked for the inhaler.

  Paintings were everywhere. The caravan had been turned upside down and she pulled and heaved and scrabbled and threw open drawers.

  It wasn’t there!

  And all the time the terrible itching in her chest. She scratched and scratched but she would have had to scratch through to her heart and her lungs to stop it.

  The breathing became worse because of the energy she was expending. Her chest grew tighter and tighter until she was fighting for every breath.

  Once before she had lost her Ventalin inhaler and they had taken her to hospital to the nebuliser machine and put a mask over her face and wired her up to a cylinder of pure oxygen.

  But she was in the middle of the Forest of Dean and she was frightened for herself as she had never been frightened before.

  “Rawley…” she cried. “Rawley…”

  And Rawley heard.

  He was in the bushes near the fireplace that Chris had built.

  “Rawley It was faint and hoarse. The despair and panic and fear communicated themselves easily to Rawley for they were part of his own life.

  He crept back slowly like some frightened forest animal. The door was open. He saw her sitting up trying to suck in gulps of the good forest air — and failing.

  Rawley…Rawley…Jackanory, What is she up to now?

  Something familiar. In the mists of his own life a brother wheezing and itching.

  “Oh God, it’s the bluddy asthma!”

  She’d made the gesture with her hand near her mouth and he had said, “Where is it?”

  “I don’t know.” The words had come out as though squeezed down swollen passageways.

  Then he’d found the inhaler behind a plate on the floor. She’d used it. Slowly she began to relax. She felt floaty. She lay back. She was breathing regularly. She said, “Stay with me, Rawley.”

  “I’ll stay, missus.”

  He sat on the other bunk, not lying down because it was her husband’s. He curled himself up in his two coats with his plastic bags on his lap and his head against the woodwork.

  He watched over her.

  “Hello…This is Xxxstasy…your call is costing 44p a minute and 33p a minute off-peak…My name is Cindy. What would you like to talk about?”

  “I want to talk to Barbara.”

  “I’m afraid that our rules do not allow clients to nominate — ”

  “Don’t give me that crap,” Ronnie said. “I want to talk to Barbara, otherwise I’m going to talk to your super.”

  There was the sound of muffled voices in argument and then a different voice, a frightened voice, said, “This is Barbara.”

  “This is Black Knight. I don’t like that.”

  “What?”

  “What just happened. I don’t like people saying I can’t speak to you.”

  “She’s new. She made a mistake.”

  “I know where you are, you know. I’ve stood outside the building and looked at the lights.
I could easily visit you.” He was lying. He had no idea where the building, which had once housed MR MAGIC — GAMES, was situated.

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “It was a mistake.”

  “Darth Vader destroys.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Guess where I am?”

  “In a call box?”

  “No. I’m on my bed. I’ve got it in my hand. I’ll read what it says. On one side there is a serial number. Then in a different place it says “Made In Belgium”. Funny that. With a name like Browning you’d think it would be made in England.” He held the empty gun near the phone and pulled the trigger several times.

  “Did you hear that, Barbara?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to use it, you know. On the copper I told you about. And his girlfriend too. You’re going to read about it in the papers. I’m going to be famous, only no one will know — except you and me. I’ve been following them both for days. They don’t know. He’s not a very good cop. I got so close today I could touch them. In a wine bar. Arguing. You ever heard of a place called — ” He suddenly stopped. “No I mustn’t say the name. That’s where they’re going. Somewhere in Wales, I think. But they’re going to Wiltshire first. He wants to check on someone called Chris.” He rubbed his fingers over one of the bullets that lay on his candlewick bedspread. “You still there, Barbara?”

  “You’re lying, aren’t you?”

  He felt a stab of anger.

  “This is what turns you on,” she said. “Stories like this. You haven’t got a gun. You’ll never kill anyone.”

  He sat up on the bed and looked at the gun in his hand.

  He felt a sense of outrage. He wished he did know where she was. He would go round right now and show her the gun and maybe frighten her with it.

  Instead he said, “You little bitch. You wait till you read about it in the papers.”

  She must have had second thoughts for she said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean — ”

  His mother’s voice said, “Ronnie! Ronnie, where are you?”

  He shouldn’t have phoned from the house. There was always the chance of an interruption.

  “I’ll talk to you later,” he said and put the receiver down. “What?” he called.

  “I can’t shout through a wall!”

  “Why not? Your voice is loud enough.”

  He put the gun under his pillow and went through to his mother’s room.

  “Well?”