‘Perhaps, if you had, she wouldn’t have let you make the mistake.’
‘Mistake! What mistake?’
‘The one that resulted in you losing the money. Which I might yet manage to recover for you. For me, if that diamond’s fake.’
But indeed, he’d loved the word-play. Surrounded as he was by men whose accomplishments did not include conversation, he was a starved man, shrivelling on a diet of mundane inanities. He laughed. What was the odd diamond here and there? He reached into his top pocket, extracted a folded blue lawn handkerchief, and produced the diamond from it. He placed it in her left palm with grave care.
She stared at it. She picked it up between finger and thumb on her right hand, and held it up to the light.
‘It seems very dull.’
‘There’s poor light,’ he offered.
‘All the same…’
Then she tossed it with apparent contempt towards the lake. Her crisp: ‘Harry!’ led it by only a fraction of a second, but she’d admired his reactions at the wheel of the Mercedes. She admired them now. Like an annoying fly passing his head, he snatched it from the air, and held it in his palm over the water. Then he changed his mind, placed it carefully on the curved upper surface of the log rail, and held it down with a huge forefinger.
‘Gotcha!’ he said.
O’Loughlin sat with both arms resting on the table surface. Colour mounted to his cheeks, and receded, being unwelcome. The tic flickered. His lips were grey.
‘You will never know,’ he whispered, ‘how close you came to death.’
She smiled. It cost her a year of her life.
He raised both hands beneath her nose, forefingers to thumbs. ‘Snap my left fingers, and you would die. My right, and he would.’
‘And lose your stone?’
‘But if…’ Life returned to his eyes. ‘If that stone is paste, as you claim, then I’d be willing to lose it.’
‘So…as we’re still alive, that means you were telling the truth about it?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘So we’ll use it as insurance, and hope you’ll go on telling the truth.’
Behind Harry, a fish raised its head, disliked what it saw, and disappeared with a plop. O’Loughlin’s head came round. Harry felt the sweat between his shoulder blades, but managed a thin, reassuring smile, bottom lip only, and raised his eyebrows. O’Loughlin cleared his throat, and Red relaxed.
‘Nobody pressures me, my dear,’ O’Loughlin said at last. He sounded sorry she’d gone so far.
‘I needed something as a persuader.’
‘But you see…with every word you say you persuade me more and more that I’d enjoy watching you die. There could come a point where it would be worth the loss of a genuine stone.’
‘Then I’ll keep it short.’
‘I’d advise that.’
She sat back. ‘Let’s get on to the bank job, which we both know was yours. You fixed it with Charlie to do the jeweller’s, as a diversion, and to drive away in a garish car to draw off the police. Clever. You added to that by timing it so that the bags of cash could be thrown from the getaway car into Charlie’s Escort. Still clever, though it was getting a little fancy.’
He leaned forward, taking her into his murky confidence. ‘I was worried about that. Simple is best. But it was only a trial run. Lose the cash, lose a few men…’ He shrugged.
‘But not so casual a loss when Charlie out-thought you? When that happened, you lost more than money.’
‘I never guessed he’d be so damned stupid.’
‘And there’s the missing link I spoke about. You missed something out.’
‘I did not.’
‘You can’t tell me you’d allow one man, amateur or not, scared of you or not, to drive away, alone, with the complete haul. You’d have that covered. Especially you, because you never miss a detail. But you haven’t mentioned…’
‘Oh…!’ He waved it away with elegant fingers. ‘I didn’t think you’d want to know. Of course I covered it. A man to tail him. It should’ve been easy, with all those police cars chasing Charlie. But the idiot lost him.’
‘Did he, though? Did he lose him?’
‘He reported back that he’d lost him.’
‘And you believed that?’
‘I believed it.’
‘I thought we were onto the truth game,’ she snapped.
‘His name was Kieron,’ he said gently. ‘Kieron O’Loughlin. My son. My best driver. If he said he lost him…’
‘You said “was”.’
‘He died.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I don’t like to talk about it.’
‘I said I’m sorry.’
‘But to you…’ His voice was acid. ‘To you, I will. He died at Le Mans. Two years ago. Driving a car I’d financed for him.’
She hesitated a moment for thought. Her next line was obvious. His vicious eyes challenged her to use it. She plunged.
‘Which perhaps he’d have preferred to finance himself?’
‘What?’
‘If my guess is right, and he didn’t lose Charlie.’
Harry listened to the dismal drip of water from the trees into the lake. It was a cold drip. He wondered if he’d be past feeling its chill by the time his body broke its surface.
O’Loughlin’s face gathered itself. It had been crumbling, but now it returned to a grim mask. ‘Explain!’ he rasped.
The chair creaked as she shifted her weight. ‘Charlie Braine was more clever than he was given credit for. He had plans. He was going to disappear with your money. This money was last seen in canvas bags, being thrown into the back of his Escort. We know now that he intended to wash his car at the petrol station car wash, where he was discovered yesterday. By that time there were no canvas bags and no money. Just imagine how he was fixed. He had the police after him. He’d have expected that, and planned for it. Until he reached that car wash he was conspicuous. He’d want to drive to it when he knew he was in the clear, and when he hadn’t obviously got canvas bags of money in the back.’
‘Keep it short.’
‘Trying to,’ she assured him. ‘I’m trying to tell you that he’d need somewhere to hide, somewhere he could switch the money into something less obvious. I happen to know that there are about ten empty one gallon paint cans missing from his spraying shed. The shed is as he left it, except for those. It’s obvious he’d cleaned them out in order to hide the money inside. He’d go to his hiding place and switch the money to the cans, and wait until the hunt had died down. But what if your…your son hadn’t lost him? What if he saw his own chance to finance a racing sports car? What if he forced Charlie Braine into loading the cans into his own car…?’
‘It wasn’t his own car.’ O’Loughlin seemed to recognize that this was a feeble point, and explained weakly: ‘He’d stolen it for the day.’
‘Better still. He could afford to dump it. I know a place where Charlie could have driven to hide. At the same place, a car could be hidden for years, with the money safely sealed in their cans. I know such a place. The recovery would be difficult. But I can do it. Your son might well have discovered that he couldn’t. That is what I’ve come to tell you. And now that you’ve convinced me the stone is genuine, I’ll accept it on delivery.’
‘The actual bank notes?’
‘Sealed in their cans.’
‘I could force you to take me there…hold Harry as security…’
‘And not be able to recover the car,’ she assured him, not even blinking. ‘I can do it. I…you know who I am. You know who my father is. I can get him to do anything. The old fool, he trusts me. I will tell him it’s a friend’s car, or Harry’s car, some such story, and he’ll use police resources to recover it for me. And why should they think to look inside a few paint cans? Why?’
Then she smiled and sat back. After a moment O’Loughlin also smiled and sat back.
‘And I am another old fool who trusts you.’
But the smile had been evil.
Chapter Seventeen
‘It stuck to m’ finger,’ said Harry.
‘Keep your eyes on the road.’
‘When I lifted my finger it wasn’t there. The diamond wasn’t. I thought it’d gone in the water.’
‘Not too fast, Harry.’
‘My back crawled.’
He was glad to get clear of the trees and feel tarmac beneath the wheels again. ‘Why not too fast?’
‘We’re being followed.’
‘Of course we are. What’d you expect? Watch me drop him.’
‘You will do no such thing,’ she said steadily, drawing away at half an inch of brown cigarette. ‘You drive and I’ll watch. If he’s good, we’ll only get the odd glimpse or two.’
‘He’ll be good, right enough.’ His nerves were now settling down. ‘Why can’t I drop him?’
‘Because I want O’Loughlin to know where we’re heading. I want him to get a report that it’s exactly the place to fit what I told him.’
He drove another mile, overtaking a tractor with his off-side wheels up a bank. To Harry’s way of thinking, they had accomplished what they’d come for before they’d even stepped into the powerboat. But Virginia, though pale, seemed to know what she was doing. Her calmness was of confidence.
‘And where are we heading?’
‘You know. You know very well. The quarry. The brickworks.’ She was half twisted in her seat, eyes to the rear. ‘He’s still there. Speed up a bit. It’s got to look as though we’re making a genuine attempt to drop him.’
‘That’s what I’d rather do.’ He glanced at her. ‘You do know what you’re doing, I hope?’
‘Of course.’
‘Not lost touch with reality? Or somethin’ like that.’
‘Harry!’ There was excitement in her voice now. ‘It went better than I could’ve hoped for.’
‘But it was obvious, right from the start, that he didn’t have Charlie killed.’
‘Of course it was.’
‘Then why the hell go to the quarry?’
‘Language, Harry.’
‘I mean, you didn’t believe that, did you? This Kieron O’Loughlin story of yours. Your story, Virginia. You didn’t actually believe he dumped a car with money in it…don’t forget, the money’s been found. We know where it is. You haven’t forgotten that, I hope?’ he asked anxiously.
She slapped his knee suddenly, nearly finishing-off a cyclist Harry had been cutting a little close. ‘But didn’t it fit in a treat, Harry! Oh, it was marvellous. I was making it up as we went along — and he handed it to me on a plate. His son! And it was all there in the background, waiting to be used. The place Charlie could have gone, if he’d wanted a quiet place to switch the money to the paint cans. And the place a car could have been dumped, in the quarry, where it’d be difficult to recover. It was almost as though it really did happen like that. So what we’re going to do is let his…’
‘Minion?’ he put in.
‘Yes. Let his minion take back a report that it is like that.’
He was approaching the crossing by the lay-by. ‘Is he still there?’
In her delight she had not looked back for some time. She did so. ‘I don’t see him.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of O’Loughlin, and I don’t see that this is getting us anywhere.’
She made no answer for the moment. The buildings were in sight before she said, as though it could be an explanation: ‘I hate him, Harry. I didn’t know I had it in me, this hatred. I would like to see him destroyed.’
‘I’m with you there. Where d’you want me to park?’
‘In front of the main building. We’ll go inside and have a look round. It all helps to establish a background of reality.’
Harry was disturbed. It had shown itself with Angela, this tendency to become confused between the harsh realities of life and fantasy. Angela had lived in a fairy tale life, but inverted. She’d lifted the sordid background of Vic Fletcher’s life-style to an unreal level of romance. In Harry’s way of thought: she’d been a bit barmy. Now it was reasserting itself in Virginia, who seemed not to realize that O’Loughlin, with whom she was playing tricks, was a vicious and evil distortion of humanity, a man who would enjoy planning the nastiest way for her to die. Yet she’d played with him, even taunted him. And now, when she had the chance to drive as fast as hell out of his orbit, she still played the game.
She was standing beside him, and seemed to be able to read his mind. ‘He’ll never forget us, Harry,’ she said soberly. ‘You ought to realize that. We’ve got to see an end to it, and it’s time he stopped calling the tune. Let’s go and see what’s in here.’
The building was extensive, with high windows, though not high enough to have remained intact, and seemed not to have had any specific purpose. It could have been a storage shed; there was a raised portion suggesting a loading bay. But Harry could not imagine that bricks would need to be stored under cover. Another building, lower and protruding at an angle, had obviously been offices. They walked into the gloom of the larger building through an entrance that would have admitted an airliner.
‘What’re we looking for?’
‘Well…Charlie surely did go somewhere to switch the money into the cans. Why not here?’
‘After four years…’
‘We’ll look,’ she decided.
Vandals and vagrants had scoured it clear. There was barely anything but concrete floor. Their voices echoed. Whispers were taken and enlarged, then hurled back at them.
‘It’s creepy,’ said Virginia.
Rocks had been ricocheted from the walls, and graffiti had been grafted. Cans had been kicked to unrecognizable crumples of metal.
‘Cans,’ said Harry, walking over to pick one up.
It was unlikely they’d brought their own cans to kick around, particularly ones this size. He picked it up and turned it over, searching for identification in the indentations. And found it. There was the remains of a label.
MARTIN’S ACRYLIC…
‘Heavens,’ Virginia whispered, her head close to his. ‘It was a wild guess. I didn’t think…after all this time…’
‘Not so wild. He had to lie low for a while. He’d bring more cans than he found he needed.’ He frowned. ‘Informed guess, they call it.’
He threw it away, and followed her out into the daylight, where it seemed they could speak without their voices being broadcast. A wind whipped round the buildings, chasing paper scraps. The sky was low and threatening. Beneath their feet, the surface was soft and slimy. Virginia shook her foot free from a tangle of strip binding steel.
‘So that’s the third,’ she said.
‘Let’s get away from here, I can feel the eyes on my back.’
‘First Freda, then Cynthia, they both said the same.’
‘An’ fists with guns in ’em.’
‘They saw nobody. Nothing and nobody.’ She nudged him. ‘You’re not listening, Harry.’
‘I was. They saw nothing and nobody.’
She nodded. ‘And now we know Charlie drove up here, and drove away again. It’s ridiculous to think he might have headed home along the railway track, and back to Cynthia. It wasn’t on his programme. So, as the lane’s the only way out, he must have driven within fifty yards of the lay-by. Twice. And he saw nothing and nobody. Or he’d have stopped.’
‘Maybe…perhaps she wasn’t…sort of, around. We don’t know when, do we? The exact time.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Can we stand somewhere else?’
‘But think — Angela had phoned. It must have been to contact Charlie. Did she see him drive past her, or away from her, in a two-colour car she couldn’t have missed?’
‘That’d be terrible for her.’
‘But he didn’t see her, Harry. That’s the point.’
He put a paw on her arm. ‘I don’t wanna worry you, but we’re a bit exposed here. Can’t we sorta mov
e on?’
‘Well, of course. Are you quite sure we’re being watched?’ She sounded eager to have it confirmed.
‘My back’s like corrugated cardboard.’
‘Then let’s give them something to look at.’
She walked over to her car and slid behind the wheel. ‘We’ll go and pretend we’re interested in the quarry.’
‘Then keep well clear of the edge. It’ll be slippy.’
‘Round to the right, wasn’t it.’ It was not a question; she was already swinging to the right, round the bulk of the office block. ‘The advantage of an automatic gearbox,’ she explained, ‘is that you can trickle along on tickover with your foot hovering over the brake.’
‘Let me out here,’ he said, as it seemed to him they were already trickling too far.
‘If you’re scared,’ she conceded, her foot touching the brake.
‘I’ll warn you when you’re goin’ too far.’
She smiled at him. As though she couldn’t tell!
He stood very close to the top edge of the ramp, his eyes on her front wheels, waving her on. The drop to the 45° ramp seemed suddenly very close, the surface too slippy.
‘Easy!’ he shouted. ‘That’s far enough. You can walk a yard, can’t y’? Stop! For Chrissake stop!’
She did so, and climbed out grinning. He pointed out that if she’d gone an inch too far there was nowhere anybody could stand to push it out. She said she had rope in the back and they could always pull. He said that if she wanted to risk her car for the sake of showing-off, that was all right with him. She laughed and told him he was scared of his own shadow.
‘My nerves are on edge.’
‘All right. We’ll just have a stare down at the water for a minute, as though we know there’s a car down there, then we’ll go home. And this time I’ll let you lose him.’
Harry grunted. She was too confident that there was a ‘him’ to lose. They stood one each side of the car and stared solemnly at the bronze glaze of the water.
‘Another couple of inches,’ he observed, ‘and there would have been a car down there.’
That damned water could hypnotize you, he thought, draw you like a magnet. If I stare at it much longer I’ll go bloody crazy. He began to turn away from it, and a voice rang out.
The Second Jeopardy Page 20