The Colour of Violence

by Jeffries, Roderic

  Gwen at last discovered a way of continuing to vent her ill humour. “Mrs. Broadbent ought to have more sense.”

  “More sense than what?” he asked wearily.

  “To have coffee with a married man.”

  “I’ve never before heard that coffee’s quite so incriminating. Or d’you think it’s the passport to a quick lay?”

  “You’re so crude,” she said, almost triumphantly because now it was he who was at fault.

  What kind of a lay would Patricia make? he wondered.

  *

  The house was in a row of mean, but clean, terraced houses which had no gardens at the front and only small dirt yards at the rear. The door was opened by an elderly woman, almost crippled by arthritis, whose clothing was patched yet immaculately clean. She told Weir and Farnes that Healey was in his room, downstairs next to the kitchen.

  Healey’s surprise at seeing them gave way to fear and he kept fiddling with his glasses as they sat, Weir on the only chair, Farnes on the bed.

  Weir fitted a cigarette into the ivory holder and lit it with his gold lighter.

  Healey stared from one to the other of them. “What…like what…” His voice was thick because his mouth was dry.

  “We was in the market in the nick and you said you knew a good mark, worth a million.” Weir suddenly looked up at Healey.

  “Yes…Yes, that’s right. It’s the bank in the High Street in Ethington.”

  “No bank usually has a million in it in straight notes,” said Weir.

  “But this one does and that’s why they had the new strong-room built. It’s to do with the way they move money around. Instead of each branch drawing from London, now there’s a central cash holding bank in each area and all the other local banks draw from that and send to it their used notes for pulping. That way, when money’s shifted to or from London there’s only one big movement instead of dozens and like you know, Lofty, London’s the big danger point for money snatches. A bloke at the bank was telling me they’d get close to three million in notes at times when a lot of money was being used, like holidays and Christmas.”

  Three million, thought Weir. The man who stole that sort of money was telling the world that he was the greatest. “And you know a way into the bank?”

  Healey again fiddled with his glasses. “Yes. I mean…It’s like this, Lofty. When I said in the nick…I was doing the plans for the new strong-room and I noticed the way the ingoing electrical mains and the outgoing alarm wires ran in a conduit which was only an inch and a half from the bottom of the concrete of the floor. And I got to thinking that if all the wires were cut…” He tailed off into silence.

  Weir was so surprised it was several seconds before he said: “That ain’t the lot?”

  “Yes. You see, I…”

  “You went on about a job worth a million and all you know about it is that the alarm wires run through a concrete floor?”

  “But if you could immobilise the alarms?”

  “What kind of alarms are there? How many? How thick are the walls?”

  “I…I don’t know.”

  “What’s under the floor of the strong-room?”

  “Well, nothing. I mean, it’s the earth.”

  “Jesus! The earth!” Weir said to Farnes. “Wally. Show the silly bastard.”

  Farnes got off the bed. Shoulders slightly hunched, he grabbed the neck of Healey’s sweater with his left hand and twisted, his knuckles pressing into the throat. He hit Healey three times, in the body so that there would be no obvious damage, down in the gut because that was the most painful for little risk of serious damage. Healey’s spectacles fell to the floor and one of the lenses fractured.

  Farnes released the sweater and Healey fell back on to the bed where he dragged air down into his lungs with a rasping sound which changed dramatically as he vomited with explosive force.

  Weir, smoking quickly to try to keep away the stench, stared down at the crumpled figure on the bed and saw only a vanished fortune.

  Healey, frightened stupid, his body afire with pain, began to babble. There were ways of finding the thickness of the walls because the plans would give it. And the specifications would give the names of the firms who’d supplied the strong-room door and frame, the alarm systems…

  Weir stared down at the blubbering man and told himself there was no job here. But it was difficult to forget three million pounds.

  CHAPTER IV

  When they returned from the cocktail party on Sunday both Gwen and Armitage had drunk enough to be affected: in his case he felt slightly deflated, as if the party had stupidly been stopped at half-time, and she began to be argumentative. By the time they’d had supper, on trays in front of a good fire, and gone upstairs to go to bed, she was accusing him of having deceived her.

  “You knew that Patricia woman was going to be there, didn’t you?” she said accusingly.

  He hung his suit, eight years old and possibly looking older, on a hanger and put this in the wardrobe.

  “Didn’t you? Admit it.”

  “I’d no idea she was to be there,” he answered irritably.

  “And you expect me to believe that? From you? The man who hates cocktail parties so much you usually can’t get him to one however hard you try? Yet when I said at first I’d got a headache and didn’t think it was worth going, you said you were going whatever happened.”

  He took off his shirt. “After Angela had rung up especially to make certain we went, I thought it would be too rude if we both called off at the last moment.”

  “You’ve never before bothered about being rude.” She undressed so quickly she was in bed before he. She lay back and stared up at the ceiling. “If it’s not too embarrassing, what did you talk about all evening?”

  “Your “all evening” was roughly ten minutes. For most of that time, Dudley expounded his views on politics in general and creeping socialism in particular.”

  “Then why were you and she laughing together.”

  “Listening to Dudley, you either have to laugh or weep tears of desperation.”

  “Why can’t you ever give a straight answer?”

  He finished undressing and put on pyjamas. “And why can’t you take life a bit less dramatically? Meeting Patricia was a pleasant surprise, nothing more, and all the time I was with her Dudley was close by. In those circumstances, in the middle of a cocktail party, even Casanova would have had a job to get anywhere. I’m no Casanova, so I didn’t even try.”

  She seemed to accept this. “She ought to have had more self-respect than to spend all the time with someone else.”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “She’s much younger than he is.”

  “That’s fairly obvious,” he said, as he climbed into bed. She moved a little, as if to increase the distance between them.

  “She’s looking around for someone who’ll give her you-know-what.”

  “No, I don’t know what.”

  She didn’t explain, being surprisingly embarrassed about putting some things into words. “It’s because her husband’s so old.” Her voice was slightly muffled because she’d pulled the bedclothes right up and the sheet was half over her mouth.

  “He’s only around fifty, whatever he sounds like.”

  “But he’s not very strong at…you-know-what.”

  “How in the hell can you possibly know anything about that side of his life?” But even as he said that he wondered if she could be right: women had an uncanny instinct over such matters. One thing was for sure. If he were fifty and married to Patricia, she wouldn’t lack for you-know-what.

  “You’d no right to leave me on my own as you did.” He lay on his back and stared up at the beamed ceiling.

  “You weren’t on your own for ten seconds. Fred raced over like a starving man.”

  “Don’t be disgusting.”

  “Isn’t sauce for the wife, sauce for the husband?”

  There was a short but bitter row. When it finished, because he
became silent and refused to be upset further no matter how provoking she was, they each read for a while, then switched off the bedside lights without speaking again.

  *

  From inside his small dressing-room Dudley Broadbent said in measured tones: “She is a charming woman.” That was not quite how she’d describe Laura Relton, thought Patricia, as she lay in the right-hand, single bed.

  “I suppose you know she’s directly connected to the Westcotts of Theston Manor?” A gentle cough. “I must admit, dear, I would have preferred you to have been a little…warmer in your manner.”

  He’d wished she’d shown more deference, but this was something she found very difficult to do. If she liked a person it mattered not what was the other person’s background, if she disliked a person she found it virtually impossible to simulate an emotion.

  “She is an important client of the firm’s.”

  Laura Relton had come over to talk to Dudley — showing sufficient bad manners to ask him for some legal advice, which he’d hurried to give — when George had been with them. George had whispered a story concerning her that had been as scandalous as it had been amusing. Their laughter had annoyed Dudley.

  He came out of the changing-room, as always in a dressing-gown, and went to his bed. He took off the dressing-gown, folded it up, and placed it exactly in the centre of his bedside chair. He did everything very precisely. Sometimes she longed for him to do something in a slovenly manner.

  “She has very kindly invited us to dinner next week. I have noted down the date.”

  She’d feared an invitation had been given and accepted. Why, she wondered, did he show Laura Relton such deference? Women of her nature were only spurred on by it to even greater imperiousness. It wasn’t as if he had to keep her business with the firm — his private income was large enough that if he lost every client on the firm’s books he’d still be very well off. It was odd how he, born into wealthy security, should show such respect for money and so-called rank while she, born into a home-made poor by her father’s long illness, should respect neither. Or was she to some extent deceiving herself? Did she only not respect wealth now because she enjoyed it? She’d certainly envied those with money before she’d married Dudley.

  He switched off his light, rubbed the lobes of his ears several times as he always did, settled down, and in a very short time began to breathe deeply, then to snore gently. He always fell asleep very quickly. There were times, when she could not get to sleep because of mental restlessness, that she resented this happy knack of his.

  She felt more dissatisfied now, without being able to pin down the cause, than she had for a long time. His snoring increased in volume. Did all men snore? Or only corpulent men, in early middle age, who’d drunk too well? She wondered if George snored, then hastily jerked her mind away from such a question.

  *

  The architect’s office, just off the High Street in Ethington, had a back door that was secured by only a cheap mass-produced mortice lock. Weir, who was an expert with the twirlers, forced the lock in six seconds. He checked for alarms, though not expecting to find any, because he knew of no one who’d gone to prison for taking too many precautions, then called the other two in from the parked car in which they’d been waiting.

  Farnes, for so large a man, was amazingly quiet. Healey, obviously scared, was not and even as he passed through the doorway he slipped and raised a clatter. Weir silently cursed, then shut the door and locked it — in case of patrolling constables — and harshly ordered Healey to lead the way.

  They went down into the basement, thirty feet long, twenty wide, with an atmosphere that was dry yet stale, and switched on the strip lighting because down here they were quite safe. There were wooden racks along two of the walls, divided into small, numbered compartments, and many filing cabinets, each with a roughly painted letter on it.

  Healey muttered something about there having been a reorganisation and then searched round for, and found, the cabinet containing the index. From this he discovered the number of the wall compartment in which were the copy plans, made five years ago, of the vault and strong-room of the bank. He took the plans and spread them out on a table and explained them to Weir. “This is the master drawing which shows the whole thing.” He began to trace out with his forefinger the areas he des-scribed. “This line marks the actual strong-room. Here are the stairs up to street level and this is the general banking area with the manager’s office here.”

  “What’s the thickness of the walls of the strong-room?” Healey took a small plastic ruler that was on the table and checked the scale, then read off the thickness of the walls. “They’re three feet, all round.”

  Even Weir could not hide his surprise and it was several seconds before he said: “How are they made?”

  “It’ll be in the detailed specifications.” Healey went over to one of the cabinets and came back with a file. He quickly checked through the papers inside. “The walls, ceiling, and floor of the strong-room are three foot concrete of high-quality mix — that’s a high proportion of cement and no beach over a quarter of an inch in diameter — with double rod reinforcing, set a foot apart, of inch rods in a two-inch grid pattern.”

  Weir leaned over the plan and jabbed his finger down on a straight line. “What’s this?”

  “The conduit I told you about. The mains electricity comes through it and one lead feeds the alarm systems within the strong-room and the other carries up through the wall to feed the rest of the bank.”

  “So unless the main lead is cut there’s no way of breaking the strong-room’s alarm system?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How near the dividing wall does this conduit run?” Healey used the ruler to take a measurement off the plan. “Just on four feet.”

  “And then there’s three feet of wall?”

  “Yes. And on top of that you’ve got the ordinary brick wall of the cellar next door which is under a shop, as far as I can remember. You’ll see that better in one of the more detailed blueprints.” He pulled out a smaller plan which showed only the western end of the cellar, the dividing wall, and a little of the main banking area.

  “What’s this mean?” Weir pointed to a thick line.

  “That’s the double bricking which was built in originally, forty years ago, when the building was first converted into a bank.”

  “Then the whole bank’s got one protection and the strong-room’s got a sight more?”

  “Yes. But as I said, cut the alarm wires…”

  Weir stared down at the plans which he now understood sufficiently well to appreciate that the job was impossible. Double-thickness brickwork, three-foot, reinforced, extra-strong concrete, a strong-room door built to withstand the worst man or nature could do, an alarm system that couldn’t be knocked out without digging down through the pavement outside the bank…There could be fifty million quid down there and it was going to stay right there. He turned and walked away from the table.

  “Shall I bring the papers?” asked Farnes.

  What for? he wondered savagely, even as Farnes collected them up. His greatest and most dangerous fault was an inability immediately to overcome failure.

  *

  Weir stopped the car and switched off the lights. They all climbed out, to be chilled almost at once by the keen wind. From somewhere near came the call, seemingly pain-filled, of a vixen. To their left, the glow of Ethington lightened a segment of the otherwise overcast and black sky.

  “Where are we?” asked Healey, his voice jerky because he was shivering so hard.

  Weir didn’t bother to answer, but merely said: “O.K., Wally.”

  Despite the darkness, Farnes accurately whipped the loop of thin manila cord up and over Healey’s head and pulled it tight around the neck. He forced Healey down to a sitting position and rested his right knee in the small of the back to gain an even stronger purchase. For a time, Healey writhed violently and his fingers clawed so desperately at the rope that he
tore off a nail, but then he gave one last shudder, voided, and died. The vixen called again, nearer this time.

  CHAPTER V

  With typical unpredictability, the latter part of March suddenly produced fine weather with several sunny, balmy days in succession. Optimists spoke of the beginning of spring, pessimists of the certainty of a rotten summer because unseasonal weather always had to be paid for. Daffodils and forsythia bloomed, woods were carpeted in primroses, and the trees showed their first light greens.

  Hermione Grant looked across her sitting-room, remarkable because of its brash mixture of the shoddy and the antique. “How’s Dudley?” she asked, in her slightly croaky voice which often made people think she had a cold.

  “He’s fine, thanks,” answered Patricia.

  “And twice as pompous as ever?”

  Patricia could not hide her embarrassment at the question — which a woman of different character might have found amusing.

  Hermione stared at her, a bitter, enquiring look in her light brown eyes, then she crossed the room and sat down. She opened a heavily chased silver cigarette case. “Will you have a fag?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “You’re surely not still trying to cut down on your smoking?”

  “I am, but without much success.”

  “Why?”

  Patricia looked up. “Why what?”

  “Why are you trying to cut down? — as it is, you don’t smoke enough to get even a doctor worried.” Hermione prided herself on her direct manner. Others found in it little cause for pride.

  “Dudley said I ought to try.”

  “I can imagine the tones of earnest piety. And I’ll bet he was puffing one of his big fat cigars when he said it.” Patricia smiled briefly.

  “He’s very good at telling other people what to do.” Patricia said nothing and after a while, finding she could provoke neither argument nor criticism of the absent Dudley, Hermione relaxed and took out a cigarette from the box. She was a large woman, large in the wrong places. Had she wanted to, she could have made herself far less remarkable by smartening up, but it seemed she was careless what she looked like or what people thought of her. Although she could easily have afforded to, she seldom bothered to wear (anything especially tailored to her by someone who knew how to hide a lumpy figure, but instead wore clothes as unsuitable as slacks. She lit the cigarette and drew heavily on it. “There’s no point in dying of boredom, so if you’re not going to smoke, what’s your poison?” Automatically, Patricia looked at her watch.