Over many days and nights of observation they discovered several important facts. The High Street lay within two beats, one covering the north side and the other the south, and because of the concentration of valuable property patrolling constables from each beat were frequently up and down it. On the face of things, so much unchartable activity made any operation at street level highly dangerous. But between 9.45 and 10.05 at night the roads seemed always to be empty of policemen. For a time, Ricard and Smith puzzled over the fact, but then Ricard realised the reason. Duty hours for uniformed policemen ran from two in the afternoon until ten at night and from ten at night until six in the morning. Human nature being what it was, the men on late turn were eager for prompt relief and therefore made certain that at the right time they were as near to their police station as their beats allowed them to be — a position known to their reliefs — and not necessarily where regulations said they should be. So for about twenty minutes it should be reasonably safe to check the TV screen.
On the last Friday in April, a warm evening with a light breeze, Ricard, wearing a P.G.’s uniform, walked up the High Street at five to ten. He stopped by the bank, turned his back on the two men and one woman who waited at the bus-stop for the last bus of the night, and lifted the flap over the TV screen. He saw a section of wall in which was a massive door, convex in shape, with a central spoke wheel. The camera was fixed. He replaced the cover and walked on, round the corner where a car waited for him.
The bank job was on.
*
Patricia, dressed in a light summer frock over which she’d put on a sweater because out of the sun and indoors there was an edge to the day, sat back on the settee. She fidgeted with the straps of her handbag, then said: “Dudley’s going over to Amsterdam for a week-end on a lawyers’ conference. It sounds rather boring to me, but he seems to be looking forward to it.”
She’d tried to speak lightly, as if she were just making conversation, but Armitage knew that what she was really telling him was that they’d be able to meet for longer than usual. Although she was a person who hated subterfuge, she could not bring herself to say outright what she meant. Her loyalty to her husband remained strong, paradoxically even whilst it was being undermined by her emotions. He remembered her last visit, when their passions had suddenly risen until it was only at the last moment she had drawn back from what had seemed inevitable. Perhaps, he thought, he should feel guilty at the pressure he was putting on her, but his emotions were as involved as were hers.
“Don’t look like that,” she said suddenly.
“Don’t look like what?”
“As if…You looked almost cruel, George.”
“Wind,” he said, turning into a joke something very far from a joke. “If Dudley’s off on the rampage, you can come and have dinner with me, can’t you?”
“Dinner? I don’t think…”
“You can’t refuse, because it’s my birthday on Saturday and I always go mad and buy a bottle of champagne and I can’t possibly drink it on my own.”
“I’ll bet you really can.”
“Not without a lot more wind.” He grinned. “Anyway, too much champagne makes me very mournful and I sing all the songs I used to sing when I was young, healthy, and optimistic. I have a terrible voice.”
“You’re talking like an old man of ninety…” She again fiddled with her handbag. “I don’t think dinner…Unless you mean…”
“I don’t mean at a restaurant, Pat.”
“Then I don’t think I should come.”
“Why not?”
“You know as well as I do. I…I just can’t trust myself. George, if you really want to have dinner here, ask someone else as well.”
“That would be like using a twizzle stick on the champagne.”
She smiled briefly. “I still think you should.”
“Very well. I’ll ask the Grumonds,” he said, naming a middle-aged couple they both knew who were totally boring in character.
She looked at him almost hopelessly. “You’re impossible.”
“Quite impossible. My form master prophesied I would come to a very sticky end. Then it’s all fixed up for Saturday and there’ll be you and me and just your shadow as chaperon.”
She still hesitated. “Only on one condition.”
“Which is?”
“That you promise not to…” She stopped.
“Not to make love to you? All right. Scout’s honour.” Neither of them believed what he said. He stood up and crossed to the small side table on which was a bottle and two glasses. “Can I insult your palate with a glass of Cyprus sherry?”
She nodded and watched him pour out two glassfuls. “I suppose you know that I’ll now spend the rest of this week staring my conscience in the face?”
He spoke softly. “Then don’t. Send it away on a long holiday. You make the world too severe a place, Pat, where the only thing you’re prepared to enjoy is a hair-shirt.”
“Stop using words to twist everything. You must know how I feel, or if you don’t, you’re not a very nice person.”
He handed her one of the glasses, bent down, and lightly kissed her cheek. “I know that you’ve got more loyalty in your little finger than most people have in their whole body. You’re a living anachronism.”
“I hate it when you become cynical.”
“How else can I save myself from despair?”
He went over to the other armchair, sat down, and lifted his glass. “Here’s to us.”
She raised her glass, but said nothing.
Some twenty minutes later, after having done all she could to keep the tenor of the conversation light, she stood up and smoothed down her frock. “I must leave. I told Hermione I’d be with her for lunch at one o’clock sharp and that cook of hers gets terribly upset if anyone’s late.”
He wondered if she always said to Dudley that she was visiting Hermione throughout the time she was away, or whether she ever admitted where she was actually going or had been? He doubted that. Dudley was clearly a man who “owned” things and would be infuriated if he thought someone was trying to deprive him of one of his “possessions”.
“Get here as early as you can on Saturday,” he said.
She nodded. “Don’t forget your promise.”
He crossed forefinger and middle finger of each hand and held them up for her to see.
They went out into the passage and down the steep back stairs to the back outside door. Beyond was an area, part loading bay for the shop, part garden, surrounded by a tall brick wall in which were two large wooden doors to allow vehicles in and out and one small wooden door for pedestrians. He knew how much she hated using this back exit because of its connotations of secrecy and duplicity, yet equally she did not want to use the front door where the chances of her being seen by someone she knew were so much greater. They said a hurried and apparently unemotional goodbye, then he opened the small door and she stepped out and left. He heard her shoes, clacking lightly on the pavement, as she walked considerably quicker than she normally did.
He returned, past one of the two raised flower-beds in which he’d planted some Sweet Williams: they looked floppy and it was odds on they’d not survive. He still hadn’t got green fingers.
If only there were a quick and painless air crash on the way to Amsterdam…He grinned, as he went back inside. The other passengers in the plane would find that a somewhat selfish attitude!
*
Saturday was fine and warm and in the large orchards to the north of Ethington the pear trees were covered with blossom while the apple trees were about to break. Bluebells carpeted woods that were relatively undisturbed and thorn hedges were in leaf, with thorns still soft, not yet having developed rapier-like points.
By circling round and coming into the town from the east, Patricia was able to avoid the holiday traffic, now clogging the roads as it returned from the coast. She reached the High Street up at the northern end and parked at the back of the Gwelf Supermarket,
open late. She went inside and bought half a pound of pressed beef, then a jar of baby beets. Dudley, who was used to the luxuries of life, had a strange liking for the plebeian pressed beef — he said it reminded him of his schooldays which, he claimed, had been very happy. As she waited in the queue to pay, she wondered why she was buying the food now when there would have been time to get it on Monday? She knew the answer, yet refused to acknowledge that she did: by worrying about feeding her husband on his return, she was reassuring herself that her loyalty to him was still paramount, even when on the way to spend the evening with another man.
She left and returned to her car and put the package on the front passenger seat. She drove out, along Taverne Road, past a memorial to some otherwise forgotten Victorian inhabitant of the town, and went into the small council car park she used whenever visiting Armitage. It had an honour ticket barrier and she bought a ticket, though few others would have bothered at this time on a Saturday night when the chances of the car’s being checked were virtually nil, put the ticket on the car’s dashboard and left after locking up.
She crossed the road and went along to the small door in the brick wall, opened it, and went in. She hated this furtive entry as much as she hated her furtive exits.
The door into the flat was open and on the way in she rang the bell twice. Armitage appeared at the head of the stairs and the warm smile of welcome on his face temporarily banished all her worries. When she reached the landing he kissed her. She quickly moved away, opened her handbag and took out of it a small packet in white tissue paper. “Happy ninetieth birthday, George!”
He undid the paper to find inside a box in which was a corkscrew, of the kind where turning the handle first drove the corkscrew into the cork and then pulled it out. The last time he’d seen her, he’d casually said his only corkscrew was worse than useless since it was breaking corks rather than pulling them. “This is exactly what I wanted and as a matter of fact I was going out tomorrow to buy myself one.”
She smiled. “That’s very clever of you since tomorrow’s Sunday and all the shops will be shut.”
“Must you be quite so literal?”
“I’m just drawing your attention to your sublime indifference to the facts.”
“Didn’t you know I was a writer?”
“Who’s only been to Bombay once?”
They went into the sitting-room, both responding to the atmosphere of sparkling fun which had sprung up immediately and which had effectively banished, or at least silenced, any uncertainties she had had.
“And now to the great moment,” he said. “I’ll tell you, I’ve worn blisters on my tongue, waiting to open up the champagne.”
He went into the kitchen and took out of the fridge the bottle of Moët et Chandon, which began to frost almost at once. Back in the sitting-room, he pulled off the foil, unscrewed the wire, and eased out the cork with his thumbs.
He poured out champagne and passed her one of the flute-shaped glasses. “Cheers.”
“Happy birthday once more. You know, George, you haven’t said which one it is yet? If it’s not your ninetieth, is it your thirtieth?”
“Now there’s a delicious sense of tact! I’m thirty-eight and all too often feeling every one of them.” He drank. “By the way, I’ve been a very lazy cook and settled for two duck in orange sauce from the deep freeze place. Have you ever tried them? — I think they’re good.”
She shook her head. “Someone told me that place has a lot of nice things, but Dudley refuses to eat anything that’s been deep frozen. Years ago, he read somewhere that freezing destroys all taste and can even be dangerous and now nobody can persuade him differently.”
“I’ll bet if you served him a portion of this duck he’d eat it with gusto and never guess.”
“On the contrary, he’d know at once. I’m such a poor cook that if it’s all that good he’d be absolutely certain it couldn’t be my cooking.”
It was odd, he thought, how often Dudley appeared in their conversation. Almost as if they deliberately kept reminding themselves that he existed.
*
Ricard, who was driving the stolen Jaguar, braked to a halt in front of the electrical appliances and motor accessories shop. Farnes and Smith climbed out. They wore caps, dark trousers, and sweaters, blue plimsolls, and close-fitting gloves, all recently bought from multiple stores. The caps were worn so that much of their foreheads were concealed, a very simple method of disguise that was remarkably effective in confusing the ordinary, untrained observer.
The door to the flat was locked. Farnes, taught by Weir, opened it with a slide of plastic. He and Smith went inside, shut the door, took off their caps which they folded and put in their pockets, and pulled nylons over their heads.
Farnes was the larger man, yet he made even less noise than Smith as they climbed the stairs. They heard the hum of conversation from the front room. Farnes waited outside, cosh in hand, whilst Smith searched the rest of the flat. When Smith returned and reported, with a shake of the head, Farnes took hold of the handle of the door with his left hand, turned it very slowly until at full tension, then flung open the door.
CHAPTER X
Patricia was talking about her last visit to the theatre in London when the door of the sitting-room slammed open and two hooded men came in, coshes in their hands. She and Armitage stared at the men with, unknown to them, similar expressions of complete disbelief: the episode was so unexpected, so contrary to their normal world, they refused initially to accept the evidence of their senses.
Farnes said: “Belt up and don’t do nothing and there won’t be no trouble.”
The words forced them to acknowledge that this was reality. Armitage looked across at the window and began to rise from the chair. Farnes reached him in two strides and hit him across the side of his head, caterwise behind the ear, and his head was blasted with a searing white light and he collapsed back on to the chair.
As the world collected itself together, Armitage suffered a stabbing pain which raced round his head from the point where he’d been hit. He saw Patricia staring at him, her face twisted with terror and shock, and his only thought was the desperate need to raise an alarm. Perhaps he could hold off the man long enough to smash a window and shout for help? He went to throw himself over the side of the chair, intending to roll across the floor, but the man seemed to read his thoughts because the cosh came down a second time, with more force, and blasted him into unconsciousness. Patricia opened her mouth to scream. A duster was jammed into her mouth and her scream became no more than a gurgle. Her hands were grabbed and viciously pulled behind her back, twisting her round in the chair and partially over the arms, and they were secured together with sticking plaster. The man came round the chair, took hold of her legs at the ankles and jerked them up in the air, spilling her back into the chair. She tried to kick and he reached over and belted her in the stomach and she gasped and thought she was going to vomit. She let him strap her legs together. Incredibly, she still knew sufficient modesty to be worried because, although she was wearing tights, her legs and thighs were exposed. He dropped her legs and she slithered off the chair, thumping her hip on something.
Armitage began to recover consciousness. A voice, seemingly from far away, told him to open his mouth. He didn’t. Something hit him on the side of his face and it felt as if his cheekbone had been shattered. He opened his mouth and a duster, tasting of fur as if it had a long nap, was thrust in. Until he frantically worked his tongue, it threatened to slide down his throat to choke him.
He lay across the chair, head stabbed with pain, and saw the larger of the two men leave the room. God Almighty! his mind cried, what was happening? Where had the world that he knew gone?
*
Farnes went down the back stairs and out in the yard, where he swung open the locking bar of the main gates — but did not open the gates until his watch showed that exactly ten minutes had passed since he and Smith had entered the flat. Their timing was perfect.
The stolen lorry, carefully chosen not to be visible over the wall, was coming slowly along the road and when Carver, one of the men taken on for muscle rather than for any particular skill, saw the gates being opened, he flicked down the blinkers. The lorry came across and into the yard. The moment the tail was clear, Farnes shut the gates and dropped the locking bar into position. He and Carver, who switched off the engine, waited. They heard nothing to suggest any sort of alarm.
Weir and two others came along the pavement and into the yard by way of the small doorway. Weir said: “Who’s inside?”
“One bloke and his missus,” replied Farnes. “They’re quiet.”
They unlashed the canvas cover, lowered the tailgate, and unloaded all the equipment, then split into two groups, one carrying the gas bottles into the house, the other going, with excavating equipment, down into the cellar. Weir went with Dunder, Ricard, and Carver, to the cellar. This was large and in two parts, one of which had obviously been used at some time to store coal, whilst the second had a large number of worm-eaten, wooden racks against part of one side and a pile of junk in the centre. Weir called for the long linen tape measure and then he and Ricard measured out, from time to time referring to the plan, the point where the tunnel must be started. The light from the single, unshaded bulb was poor and at a quick order from Weir, Carver switched on a large torch which had a wire stand enabling it to be placed in position. The floor of the cellar was made of flagstones, rendered uniformly grey by the dirt of ages and very solidly in position. It took Ricard, as strong as he was in the wrist, several blasphemous minutes before he was able to lever up the first flagstone with the aid of the flat end of a pickaxe. After that there was little difficulty in raising three more.
The earth looked plain dirt-coloured, although the geological maps had shown yellow clay for this area. “Give us a spade,” said Weir.
Dunder picked up a graft and passed it to Weir, who dug down into the hard-packed soil to bring out a clod some five inches deep: the base of this was yellow clay.
The Colour of Violence Page 7