Hostage to Death

by Roderic Jeffries

  They dragged him a little way up the bank and bound his wrists and ankles with electric-light flex. Chase then stamped on his stomach and as he opened his mouth to cry out, jammed a duster in it.

  They worked with care, using a couple of gas-filled lighters. From time to time they ungagged him and asked him where the money was, but all he did was to croak out the same terrified, pain-racked, desperate denial that he hadn’t the slightest idea where it was.

  As their frustrated anger grew, their methods became cruder and after a couple of hours Keen died. They pushed his body under the scummy water and weighted it down with stones.

  Chase cursed as he tried to dry himself. “Who’d of thought he’d the guts to keep his trap shut?”

  “Haven’t you yet realised he didn’t know what happened?” asked Thomas scornfully.

  Chapter 13

  Thomas poured himself out a heavy whisky.

  “If Dutch didn’t know nothing…” began Chase.

  “Belt up.”

  There was so much hair-trigger anger in Thomas’s voice that Chase, who seldom bothered about other people’s feelings, shut up.

  Thomas drank. From the start he’d wondered why Keen had been so stupid as to stay around after nicking a fortune and now he knew the answer: Keen hadn’t nicked anything. All he’d got out of the job had been a grand and a messy death.

  Who had the money? The press and TV had highlighted the theft of the three hundred thousand pounds from under the noses of the police and there had been several cartoons, including one of a P.C. making an arrest and the arrested man picking the P.C.’s pocket. Since the police’s image had taken such a knock, it was certain they’d have spread the news far and wide if they’d recovered the money.

  After the prison break, he and the others had examined the suitcase before opening it to check that the seals were intact. They had been. Yet the case had been opened. So one of the bank staff must have made the switch.

  Whoever had the money now would be living it up rich and therefore would be identifiable as the thief. But how could they find out which one of the staff was living it up? None of the four of them dared to be seen around and Drude couldn’t do the job on his own.

  He suffered a longing to smash something. Months of planning had gone west when a woman screamed. Now a last-minute stroke of genius had gone sour because of some miserable little bank clerk.

  He poured himself another drink. There had to be some way of finding out who’d nicked the money… After a time he began to realise there might be a way, provided only that he was ready to risk everything in one move.

  *

  Penelope had caught a summer cold and this turned into bronchitis and asthma. At first it seemed the attack was going to be a severe one, but then just in time the antibiotic gained control of the bronchitis and they both knew that for once luck had been with her.

  “I wonder what it was like in the old days,” she said, as she lay on the settee in the sitting room. “When one reads of someone suffering from asthma — or anything else — one forgets how much worse things must have been for them.”

  The attacks were becoming more frequent, Steen thought. So the timetable must be speeded up. After all, there were not now the potential risks which he had originally envisaged.

  “I had an aunt who used to suffer from asthma quite badly. She had a puffer with a powder which smelled like a clothes drawer which hadn’t been opened for a long time and she wheezed. I used to try and imitate the noise she made… Isn’t one cruel when one’s young?”

  “At least it’s not deliberate cruelty,” he replied. “By the way, did I show you the letter this morning from Uncle Silas?”

  She shook her head. “You didn’t mention it, but that’s not surprising, is it? With me hors de combat you had a terrible rush before you left for work. How is he?”

  He searched his coat pocket and found the typewritten letter. “I’d say he’s quite a bit worse than when I saw him. Wants me to go out again as soon as I can.” He passed the letter across.

  She read it through. “He’s become a bit muddle-headed in the middle, hasn’t he? You know. Bill, I do so hate to think of him living on his own, getting iller and iller.”

  “I’d say he’d prefer to be on his own until the last moment. Rather like the way an animal will creep away to die.”

  She shivered. Being so warm-natured, when she was ill she needed contact with someone she loved.

  “You read that bit about keeping the garden weeded and watered so that everything will be in order when it’s mine?”

  She nodded as she put the letter down in her lap. She nibbled her upper lip, then said uncertainly: “Bill, I know you’re eager to inherit the house so we can live there and my health will be better and it’s not because you’re greedy… But don’t rush to step into a dead man’s shoes. That’s bad luck.”

  He smiled.

  “All right, you can laugh at me for being superstitious,” she said, “but it’s fact. You always have to pay for what you get.”

  “Penny, if Uncle Silas was a fit man I’d wish him years of life in that finca and I’d never stop to think what it would be like for us to live there. But he’s ill and, as he told me, in quite a lot of pain. When things reach that stage, I always hope for a quick end for the person concerned to stop the suffering. So I can honestly hope entirely for his sake that it’s quick and yet at the same time work out what that would mean for us.”

  She turned to stare through the window. It was another cloudy day, with only the odd patch of blue sky: it had rained the previous night, rain was forecast for tomorrow, and the temperature was several degrees below normal. A thousand miles south the sun was shining, the sea was a dazzling blue, the cicadas were chirping day and night, bougainvillaea was providing slashes of brilliant pinks, reds, and mauves…

  “When it does come to me,” he said, “I’ve no idea how much capital there’ll be. Life won’t be all roses.”

  She looked back at him. “Bill, stop worrying. If we ever do go there I’m not expecting half a dozen servants. Just so long as we’ve enough to eat and we’re happy.”

  “Maybe I’ll find a regular market for my paintings.”

  “Last time you talked about it you were quite certain you would. Why are you now being rather pessimistic?”

  “Because my latest painting isn’t doing very well.”

  “Well of course it isn’t, not with you worried about me and tensed up over Uncle Silas. But when everything’s settled one way or the other you’re going to start painting really good pictures, I know you are.”

  “If I could sell a couple a month, that would make a difference.”

  “Remember that painting you did of me? One day, all your paintings are going to be as good as that and people will queue up to buy them.”

  He laughed. “From poverty to fortune in double quick time.”

  “And why not? Let’s build hundreds of Spanish castles in the air.”

  He stood up, crossed to the settee, and kissed her.

  “There’s only one castle I’m really interested in. That’s the one you live in in the sun.”

  She ran her forefinger down the side of his cheek. “I wonder why I’m so lucky as to have you as a husband?” What would she ask herself if she ever learned even part of the truth? He wondered.

  *

  Ever since the drive to overcome the inherent disadvantages of having separate and autonomous police forces in the country had led, among other things, to the regional crime squads, a small department at New Scotland Yard had been collating the facts of major unsolved crimes in the whole country, summarising those facts, and sending out a news sheet twice a week to all metropolitan and county forces — this was in addition to, and not instead of, other means of communication. The Summary of Current Crime had the effect of bypassing inter-force rivalries or even sheer bloody-mindedness: important information now passed automatically from one force to another.

  Rook sat at
his desk on the second Monday in August and glanced through the latest Summary of Current Crime. As he stared at the close-typed pages, photographically reproduced, he thought about his summer holiday which had, for the third year in succession, had to be postponed. Mellon had said there was too much work outstanding for him to go away for a fortnight on the dates arranged. There was a lot of crime on the books of the division, but none which Young could not have handled for the time he was away. But Mellon, contrary to his appearance of bluff camaraderie, was vindictively minded, especially when someone else’s actions touched his own career. Rook sighed. Amy had appeared to accept the news of the holiday cancellation philosophically, but her disappointment had been obvious.

  He jerked his attention back to the present and read with more concentration. Murder, rape, extortion, attempted kidnapping, maiming, bombing. When one knew what inhumanities had happened one had to be a supreme optimist not to believe that the human race was beyond redemption… He came to an entry which immediately cut short his woolly philosophising and sharpened his interest. Dutch Keen had been found, tortured to death, floating in a disused gravel pit. There was no known motive and enquiries had uncovered no suspects. He had a record of small convictions, mainly for confidence tricks. He had been an alcoholic. The final entry was a physical description.

  Rook dropped the report on to his desk. People of Keen’s background didn’t get tortured to death unless they had information to give or were believed to have informed on someone, and in the latter case death was usually quick rather than prolonged because revenge made for hasty tempers. What information could he have had that was worth his death? His description suggested one possible answer.

  Rook phoned the investigating force and spoke to a detective sergeant who gave him a fuller description than had been printed. Fiftyish, tall, well-built and lean, long face tanned, brown eyes, bushy eyebrows, Roman nose, full lips, false teeth, cleft chin, ears slightly winged, greying hair well-tended… After ringing off, Rook tried to call Young on the internal phone, but there was no answer. Typical of the bloody man, he thought sourly.

  *

  “There’s a couple of hundred nicker,” said Thomas, as he pushed the slim bundle of notes across the dining room table.

  “I don’t like it…” began Drude.

  “I don’t remember asking you to.”

  “If I chat up one of the civvy broads working for the coppers someone may begin to wonder.”

  “You and me’s never worked together before, so there ain’t no tie-up. And when you joined the team you dropped out of sight like the rest of us so there ain’t no nark can fink you. No one at the bank got a butchers at you.”

  “There could be a copper knows my mug.”

  “When you ain’t never worked that part of the country?”

  “They move around.”

  “So what if someone looks at you and says to himself, Paul Drude? …You ain’t wanted because no one knows the identity of the fifth bloke. You can spit in any copper’s eye.”

  “But my wife…”

  “She’s great. But you ain’t going to feed me with the fairy story that you ain’t humped anyone else since you was married.”

  That didn’t prevent his loving his wife and children. But it was impossible to explain his feelings.

  “What’s the real trouble, Paul? Things getting a little strong for you?” Thomas spoke with contempt. He stood up, kicked the chair backwards and crossed to the sideboard where he poured himself out a whisky.

  Drude spoke angrily. “All I’m saying is, it could be tricky.”

  With a quick switch of emotion, Thomas suddenly sounded amused, not contemptuous. “Tricky? With your technique?”

  “It’s got to take time, though. I can’t rush it.”

  “You’re the expert.”

  Drude fidgeted with the money. “Val, a couple of centuries don’t go far.”

  Thomas, with calculated generosity, brought more money from his pocket and counted out another two hundred pounds. “Don’t splash it too hard, Paul — there ain’t all that much left in the kitty now.”

  Drude gathered up all the money. “You don’t think you could be wrong and it weren’t no one in the bank made the switch?”

  “No.”

  “All right. But what if the coppers don’t understand that Dutch was the bloke what got the suitcase from the bank? Then I ain’t going to get anywhere with any broad.”

  “The average split ain’t a genius, but likewise he ain’t a fool. They know Dutch was worked over before he bought it so they’ll be asking themselves why. And they’re going to come straight up with the answer that he’d information some villain wanted. That’ll lead ’em to the bank job. The Scranton Cross splits will start asking. Dutch picks up the suitcase and takes it off and six weeks later gets himself murdered: what’s the silly bastard been up to? Nicking all the lovely lolly for himself? But then they’re going to think a bit harder. Dutch wasn’t no hero — ten seconds with the cigarette lighter and he’d have sung like he was in Covent Garden. So it begins to look like there was a switch of the money and it was done by someone in the bank… That’s when they’re going to start checking on who’s spending hard. And when they’ve got an answer, I want to know what it is, bloody quick.”

  “It’s a hell of a gamble.”

  “So’s life. Look, you work hard until she can’t see Richard Burton for your lovely mug and she’ll give you everything you want, including the news.”

  “But the splits’ll find out what’s been going on as soon as you take out the bastard who did the switch. Then they’re going to nail me for who I am.”

  “Just like the four of us are nailed, Paul.”

  Drude saw there was no way out of it, even though there was every probability that he would eventually be identified as the fifth bank robber.

  *

  Wraight rested his elbows on the desk and joined his fingertips together, then ran his thumbs backwards and forwards across his lips. ‘Doing his Shylock imitation,’ was how Gaitshead described it. He finally spoke. “It’s only a short time since you had several days off to visit your uncle, isn’t it?”

  “It was about a month ago, Mr Wraight,” said Steen, “and as a matter of fact I was owed the extra days I had off… As you can read in his letter, he’s worse now than he was and he does ask me very strongly to go and see him. I’m afraid this may be the last chance.”

  Wraight picked up a statement and studied it. “I note that you’ve hardly begun to pay off the overdraft I allowed you for that first trip.”

  “There’s hardly been the time.”

  “I asked you to clear the overdraft in six months, but you have not reduced it by one sixth.”

  “Things are so expensive…” Steen sounded miserable. Then he cheered up. “I could ask him to pay my expenses for this trip. I don’t think he’d mind.”

  “But clearly you won’t be able to do that before you go so that inevitably you have to continue to ask to be temporarily allowed to increase your overdraft.” Having established the situation in its plainest terms, Wraight relaxed. He lowered his arms, and looked again at the statement before him. “Very well, I will increase the limit to allow you to purchase a return fare to Mallorca. But I expect you to try and persuade your uncle to refund the amount.”

  Chapter 14

  Puerto Llueyo brooded under a hot sun with a timelessness that reduced all clocks to impotence. Steen looked across the restaurant table at his dining companion. “You were right about this restaurant.”

  “The food, señor, is good and the scene is beautiful.” Vives was small and thin and his olive skin and very dark eyes suggested that more Moorish blood ran in his veins than in most Mallorquins.

  Steen looked through the nearby window at the bay, stretched about them since the restaurant stood on the western harbour arm. He saw a power boat start up at full throttle to bring a water-skier upright, leaving gashes of white across the vivid blue. “My wife’
s going to love living here.”

  “But of course,” murmured Vives.

  “And I reckon it’ll do my painting a lot of good. There’s so much colour.”

  Vives scooped out the last two mussels from their shells, added some sauce to the spoon, and ate them. “I will be very pleased, señor, to observe whatever you paint. But you will understand that I am not able to say that I will put in my gallery your paintings until I have seen them.”

  “Obviously, you have to be fairly certain of selling what you show.” Vives, thought Steen, looked as sharply interested in money as Cifret. “Suppose you could be certain every painting of mine would sell, would you hang it whatever you thought of it?”

  Vives looked curiously at him, then lifted up his glass and drank some of the white Binissalem wine. “It is so difficult to be sure a painting will sell.”

  “But if you could be certain?”

  Vives finished his wine and Steen refilled their glasses.

  “May I explain something? My wife has an exaggerated belief in my ability as a painter. Because I’m vain enough to wish to justify her belief, even though I know it’s unjustified, I want to make it appear that my paintings sell almost as soon as they reach the market. So suppose from time to time I gave you a painting and you hung it in your gallery for a short while and then took it down and reported it had been sold and paid me the selling price less your full commission, would that be a business proposition?”

  “Señor, it would, but for one question. If the painting does not really sell, where does the buying price arrive from?”

  “Me.”

  Vives fidgeted with the stem of his wineglass. “You will bring me paintings which I will cost, perhaps for ten thousand pesetas? After they are showing for some days I take them down and say they sell? You give me two thousand. Is this what you say?”

  “Exactly.”

  Vives was torn between the feeling that nobody could be quite so stupidly affectionate towards his own wife therefore this was far more complicated than it seemed, and the greedy desire to make money so effortlessly. In the end, his greedy desire won. “Señor, it will be a pleasure to hang your paintings in my gallery.”