Hostage to Death

by Roderic Jeffries

  In rough unison the gunmen moved out of the porch on to the first step. They threw down their guns on to the pavement, then stood with hands on hips, proudly defiant in their defeat.

  “Where’s the fifth one?” said Mellon tightly.

  Chapter 5

  As he drew level with the end of the old orchard which bordered their land, Steen saw the red-grey peg-tile roof of Tudor Cottage. It was a pretentious name since the house was no more than two hundred years old, but Penelope had refused to change it because of her love of the absurd. It was these odd quirks in her nature which so attracted him. Even after three years of marriage he could never be certain how she would react to a new situation.

  He braked and turned right into the drive — they always called it ‘the drive’ for the same reason that the house remained Tudor Cottage — and stopped in front of the garage. He climbed out of the car. She’ll come into view around the thorn hedge any second now, he thought. But no one appeared. He walked to the gate in the hedge, now knowing she could not be at home and yet still trying to imagine what was keeping her. He opened the gate, which as always squeaked, walked along the brick path around the corner of the kitchen and up to the porch.

  Inside the porch, on the tile sill under the window, was a folded sheet of paper, held down by a stone. Mrs Pledge, a near neighbour who had been a nurse, wrote that Penelope had had to go into hospital the previous day because of a sharp attack of asthma.

  *

  Once they were in the bank and had released the mentally exhausted but physically unharmed Deeding the police were able to reconstruct what had happened. One of the gunmen had dressed in Deeding’s clothes and as the hostages crowded out of the bank had joined them. At such an emotional moment none of the hostages had noticed that there was a newcomer with them as they crossed the road. In the shoe shop there had been near turmoil, with hostages frantic to get away, the press asking questions, the TV teams snarling up all movement, and relations trying to speak to their kin: the gunman could have chosen almost any moment to leave unobserved.

  Mellon, his face set in sharp, angry lines, stood in the bank in front of one of the cashier’s points and said: “Why weren’t they counted. We knew there were twenty-two hostages.”

  “Twenty-two people came out of the bank, sir,” said Rook tightly.

  “I’m talking about the number who saw the doctor. If we’d known there was one short there we could’ve moved much earlier and grabbed the man.”

  Rook understood two things. Mellon had already heard about the report the sergeant had made concerning the number of people who had seen the doctor and he was going to use Rook’s failure to inform him at the time of the known discrepancy to shift as much of the blame as he could on to Rook’s shoulders, despite the fact that it was a hundred to one he would not immediately have understood the significance of the missing man.

  *

  Penelope was in a bed at the far end of the ward. Because it was so sunny a day and the ward had large picture windows, curtains had been partially drawn to leave the patients in shade and this aggravated the paleness of her face: there were dark smudges under her blue eyes, which themselves were dull.

  She gripped Steen’s hand. “Bill. Oh, Bill! …Are you all right?”

  “Never felt better.” He stared down at her and noticed how she was still having to fight for each breath. “But how are you?”

  “Feeling very stupid and useless. Of all the times to get lumbered!”

  He sat down on the plain wooden chair, still holding her hand. “Has it been a bad attack, darling?”

  “It had its moments, but it’s all over and done with now. Mary was wonderful and looked after me at home because I so wanted to be there for when you got back, but in the end she wouldn’t take the responsibility any longer and called Dr Bates. He gave me hell for not getting him before and sent me in here.”

  It must have been a very sharp attack. Without realising it, he tightened his grip.

  She gazed up and visually searched his face. “Are you sure you’re really all right? You’re not lying to keep me from worrying?”

  “I’m tired, but that’s all — considering we had to try to sleep on the floor, that’s not surprising. And I’m hungry. They sent in sandwiches — the person who originally made them has probably since died from old age.”

  “And I’m not at home to cook you a really lovely meal. Damn my stupid body. Why…”

  He leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll take a rain check on smoked salmon, coq au vin, a bottle of Château Margaux, Saint Honoré, and Tia Maria with whipped cream.”

  She smiled. “You’ll be lucky! …Bill, what did you do all the time you were in the bank? It seemed a couple of ages and I kept wondering what you were doing.”

  “At first we were all… shocked, I suppose is the word. Then when we got over that we just lay about on the floor and tried to sleep or find some other way of making time pass. I had Alan Gaitshead next to me so I had to listen to how much beer he was going to drink when he got the chance.”

  “That must have been fun!”

  “I could cheerfully have brained him — if that’s possible. The more he went on, the thirstier I got.”

  A nurse came up to the bed. “I’m sorry, Mr Steen, but you’ll have to leave.”

  “But I’ve only just arrived,” he protested.

  “I know, but it’s not visiting hours and Mrs Steen must rest. You can come and see her again this evening.”

  “Go along, Bill,” said Penelope, giving his hand a slight push as she released it. “Now I know for certain you’re O.K., I’ll get better every minute. And the moment I’m home I’m going to cook you as much of that meal as housekeeping will run to.”

  He smiled. “A kipper, a roast broiler, half a bottle of Spanish plonk, an eclair, and coffee.” He kissed her goodbye. He followed the nurse down the ward until she stopped at the sister’s desk.

  “Your wife’s doing well now,” she said.

  “Was it a very bad attack?”

  “It was certainly quite a sharp one and she should have come into hospital earlier on, but luckily we managed to get things under control. Of course, the best medicine of all was hearing that the hostages had been released unharmed.”

  He thanked her and left.

  *

  Rook stood just inside the strong-room and watched the detective sergeant and detective constable as they worked amongst the chaotic mess and searched for fingerprints. It was a hopeless task. Since the gunmen had all worn gloves and so much was imprinted by people legitimately entitled to have been in there, it was going to be a nightmare of identification and elimination by comparison. But however hopeless, it had to be carried out to try to identify, by some miracle, the fifth bank robber.

  He stared at the tens of thousands of notes which littered the floor — the two other detectives were of necessity walking on them as if they were worthless scraps of paper — and then at the valuables which stretched out from the gap in the shelving, like an overflowing cornucopia. God knows how long it was going to take to discover how much was missing. He smiled sourly. How many of the customers’ valuables were hot, in the sense that the owners would not want their possessions to be seen by the police or tax officials? His years in the force had taught him that dishonesty wasn’t the prerogative of criminals.

  He continued to watch the other two for a while, then said: “How much longer do you reckon to be?”

  The detective sergeant, a mournful man from H.Q., stood upright and eased his back. “A couple of weeks, if we’re dead lucky.”

  “Then you’re going to be dead unlucky. I want the bank staff down here this afternoon.”

  “Quite impossible, sir.”

  “Then I’ll make it late afternoon. The impossible always takes a little longer.”

  The detective sergeant looked a shade sourer.

  Chapter 6

  Originally, Tudor Cottage had been built for the younger son of a yeoman farm
er and therefore it was fairly small. But Penelope had the ability, without spending much money, of filling any house with charm and character and the inside of Tudor Cottage was now more attractive than many larger and architecturally more interesting houses.

  Steen sat in the north-east facing sitting room and stared at the painting he had done two years ago of Penelope. It was the painting of which he was most proud, yet many who saw it didn’t like it because they thought it didn’t really look like her. He’d finished it soon after she’d been rather ill and in her face was expressed both her capacity for love and her courage. It was strange, he thought wistfully, how he had been able to paint in her character when usually his work was pure ‘chocolate-box’.

  He didn’t understand or believe a tithe of the arcane mumbo-jumbo that art experts wrote or said, but he did know that all the truly great paintings offered him something more than their immediate image. He could usually paint only the immediate image because he lacked the force of creation: and if her portrait was a creative work, he’d no idea why it had been an exception.

  The phone rang. He left the room, ducking under the lintel of the door, and went into the hall which stretched up in a triangular shape because the space had once been the outshot. The telephone was on a corner cupboard, by the kitchen door.

  “Mr Steen? It’s Sergeant Raleigh of the county constabulary here. Detective Inspector Rook would be grateful if you could go back to the bank and help sort things out. There’s rather a mess in the strong-room.”

  “Right away? I haven’t cleaned up or had anything to eat yet. My wife’s in hospital and I’ve only just got back.”

  “I’m very sorry to hear that… Then could you go along as soon as you’re ready? We don’t like pressing you, but it is rather urgent.”

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  “That’s great.”

  After replacing the receiver he went through to the kitchen. In the refrigerator were a portion of veal-and-ham pie, two different sliced meats, liver pâté, bacon, eggs, and a curry left-over. He chose the pie, fried himself some chips, and ate in the kitchen.

  He ran the bath — the bathroom was downstairs — and went up to the larger bedroom for fresh clothes. Penelope’s woolly Yorkshire Terrier — inside which she kept her nightdress — was not on the double bed. In some way, for him its absence was the most poignant thing about the empty house.

  The drive back into Scranton Cross, a distance of four miles through country lanes, took just over twenty minutes because there was a traffic snarl-up at the bridge, under repair, over the river Scrant — for thirty years little more than a stream of pollution. He parked in the usual carpark, finding a space close by where his car had been earlier.

  A P.C., who stared blankly at the crowds of curious people who looked in, stood in the porch of the bank. When Steen made to enter, he focussed his gaze and said: “Bank’s closed until further notice.”

  “I work here and was phoned to come back in.”

  “That’s different. Can I have your name, please?” The P.C. took a sheet of paper from his right-hand pocket.

  “Steen.”

  The P.C. checked with the list. “That’s all right then, sir. Go ahead.” He stepped to one side.

  Steen was astonished to find how normal the bank looked: only the presence of two uniform policemen and another man in civvies suggested anything unusual had ever happened. Gaitshead invariably met trouble with the comment, “Forget it. In two days’ time no one will remember what the problem was.” For once, thought Steen, Gaitshead had a point.

  Wraight came out of his office, along the open passage, and into the general area. When he saw Steen he said: “There you are, Bill. Glad you’ve finally been able to make it.” He looked a pompous, pernickety man and quite often behaved as such, yet always about him was the air of quiet authority.

  Steen explained. “I had to go to the general hospital to see my wife before I grabbed a wash and some food. That’s why I’ve been held up.”

  “Your wife is ill and in hospital? I’m very sorry to hear that. Nothing very serious, I trust?”

  “A rather sharp attack of asthma.”

  “That can be nasty. My wife’s sister has it all too regularly. Well, I do hope she’s soon very much better.”

  “Thanks.”

  Wraight coughed, to show they must now get down to business. “The police want you to help down in the strong-room since you’re in charge — nominally — of customers’ valuables.” His voice became outraged. “There’s a terrible mess down there. Just sheer vandalism. They’ve thrown the money about and opened God knows how many cases and distributed their contents all over the place. You’ll have to sort out things as best you can and then find somewhere to put everything that’s left over so that the customers can come and try to identify their own possessions. Heavens only knows how long it’s all going to take. Head office is going to be very, very upset.” Wraight lowered his voice. “Don’t let that rather tiresome detective inspector worry you. We have a way of doing things in this bank and we’re not going to alter just for him.”

  Although Wraight’s agitated words should have warned him, Steen was quite unprepared for the degree of confusion he saw when he went down the stairs into the basement. As he stared into the strong-room, a man stepped out over the very thick, arced sill. Steen saw a humourless face, very heavily lined considering Rook’s age, with a sharp mouth and a determined chin. A nasty character to cross, he thought — an opinion he later had cause to remember. “I’m Bill Steen and I got a phone call…”

  “I’ve been waiting a long time for you to turn up.”

  “My wife’s ill and in hospital and I had to visit her before going home and changing and eating.” Steen spoke pugnaciously.

  “I’m sorry she’s ill,” said Rook, but with obvious formality. Unfortunately, he took his work too seriously to waste time over minor social conventions. He half turned and indicated the interior of the strong-room. “You can see what things are like — a goddamn mess. Two of your blokes are sorting out the money and counting it to discover how much has gone: I want you to get cracking on the valuables.”

  “How can any money be gone? You caught the gunmen.”

  “One of ’em managed to escape,” muttered Rook, his tone momentarily defensive. “I’m assuming he took as much money with him as he could. He may also have taken a handful of jewellery — a load of diamonds wrenched out of their settings, although they’d be more dangerous to him when it came to unloading them. I want you to find out.”

  “That’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know. I had a lecture from your manager. He says when you take in a container from the customer you carefully don’t ask what’s inside. All you write down are date, name, and description of container.”

  “That’s the way they want it.”

  “Seeing what some of the cases contained, I’m not surprised… How long d’you suppose it’ll take you to identify everything and find out what’s missing?”

  How long was a piece of string? “First off, I’ll have to sort things out as far as I can. Then I’ll have to wait until customers have come and identified what’s theirs. It’ll take days, at the very least. Might be weeks if some people don’t bother to turn up quickly. It could even be that some are dead and never told anyone they’d got stuff stored here. We’ve cases that have been in for years.”

  Rook swore, although it was the answer he had been expecting.

  “What could speed things up is to get the press and TV to say customers ought to come along to the bank to check.”

  “I’ve laid that on already.”

  Steen waited, but when the detective inspector continued to stare moodily down at the floor he went round him and into the strong-room. Seebring and Hodges were working at the table, sorting out the bank notes. As Steen entered, Seebring dropped a load of notes on to the table. “They’ve dragged you back as well, have they?” His tone became petulant
. “The rest of the staff can stay at home and recover, but we poor bastards get dragged back willy-nilly, regardless of how we feel.”

  Hodges said: “You should feel honoured at being chosen.” He had a mocking, ironic manner.

  “Maybe we’ll get a medal.” Steen looked at the gap between the shelving and at the valuables which had spilled out through it. He saw an elaborate tiara which, as he moved his head slightly, sparkled with icy blue pinpoints of colour. If that were genuine — and there was every reason to suppose it was — it would be worth a fortune. Near it was a diamond necklace which looked to be of the same design in the setting.

  Seebring noticed where he was looking. “Some of the family jewels — of the less intimate kind! Who d’you reckon they belong to? Old Mrs Marchton?”

  “If so, that’s the biggest waste of assets we’ll ever come across,” said Hodges, as he slipped a rubber band over a wad of two hundred five-pound notes and then tossed them on to a small pile of bundles of similar denomination on the floor.

  Steen walked over and looked closely at the tiara and necklace. The intricate settings were beautifully made and chased and he found them far more attractive than the diamonds. It was sad to think that perhaps they did belong to Mrs Marchton, widow of a millionaire, who always looked as if she needed a bath and change of clothes. How long since the jewellery had been worn? Did anyone but royalty wear tiaras these days? In terms of capital they would have been appreciating over the years, but what a useless, totally barren appreciation. Tens of thousands of pounds which were so buried away that not even the beauty was available to give pleasure. He looked beyond the ends of the shelves and saw, on top of a pile of objects, a wooden box, the lid of which had been wrenched open, in which was a porcelain kingfisher, brilliantly coloured, stretched in curving, darting flight. A Dorothy Doughty? More beauty, more capital, locked away. How much were all the valuables here worth? A million? A million pounds, owned by people who were so rich that they could afford to let it lie in the dark.