FRAMED

by Lynda La Plante

  He opened the closet to hang up his pants. A soft white terry cloth robe was laid out on one shelf, soft white towels on another. Larry hung up the M&S underpants and shut the door.

  At the bathroom door he heard a low, penetrating hum, its source uncertain; at first he thought it might be coming from the communications room. He stepped into the passage, listening. The hum was louder now, lasting ten to fifteen seconds, trailing off, then beginning again. He moved slowly along the passage and stopped, realizing the sound came from Von Joel’s bedroom. For a moment he was unsure about violating the man’s privacy; then he reminded himself this was a prisoner he was worrying about, a grass at that. Moving stealthily, he grasped the door handle, turned it, and pushed the door slowly inward. When it was open almost a foot he slid his head cautiously around the side.

  The room was unnervingly tidy. The bed had been dismantled, the headboard, footboard, and base stacked against the wall. Von Joel, wearing a loose, beautifully cut white shift shirt, sat cross-legged on the mattress, which was on the floor. His eyes were closed. He appeared to be doing breathing exercises, his hands lying loosely at his sides, incense burners smoking at either side of the mattress. As he released the air from his lungs in a slow stream he emitted the curious humming sound.

  Larry drew the door shut slowly, glad he hadn’t been seen, completely unaware that Von Joel turned his head toward the closing door, opened his eyes, and smiled.

  Larry settled down in bed with a couple of the files McKinnes had given him. But he couldn’t focus his mind. It was all too new, too different; concentration was out of the question. He would need time to assimilate the turn of recent events and the consequent change in his working circumstances. Then, he was sure, he would get back to his normal functioning mode.

  He punched his pillow a couple of times, put out the bedside light and lay down, drawing the bedclothes close around his neck. With eyes lightly closed he tried to think of nothing at all, especially not the fact that he was in bed alone. Involuntarily he thought of Susan, tucked up alone in their bed. He sighed and turned on his other side.

  He began to drift. The day’s surprises and novelties had added up to fatigue. He began to dream about a light shining up toward him from the bottom of a deep, dark-sided pit. He leaned over, farther and farther, trying to see where the light came from. All at once he was out too far and falling. As he waved his arms he came awake with a jolt.

  He heard himself panting. As his breathing subsided he could hear something else besides. Music. Loud music. It came from Von Joel’s bedroom on the other side of the wall. It was a remastered recording of Enrico Caruso singing Celeste Aida, a fact entirely lost on Larry, to whom it was no more than an assault, a castigation of his ears and nerves that he hoped was not a foretaste of the days—maybe weeks—to come.

  He finally slept, hardly dreaming at all this time, except for a few minutes when he found himself in a concert hall, alone, tied to his seat while a fat Italian tenor sang at him.

  Next morning he wandered into the kitchen to find Von Joel squeezing oranges by hand into a glass. Sleep appeared to have restored him. To Larry he looked as fit and alert as that time he had seen him at his gallery in Puerto Banus, charming the crowd. He turned with half an orange in his hand and smiled.

  “Good morning. Sleep well?”

  “What time is it?” Lawrence squinted at the walls, j looking for a clock.

  “Tough to tell in this dungeon, isn’t it? It’s just after eight. Did I wake you?”

  Larry got the kettle, not bothering to answer. Civilized exchange at this time of day was an area of deficiency with him.

  “You want a cup of coffee?”

  “No.” Von Joel was standing by an open cupboard, staring balefully at the contents of the shelves. “No herb tea?’ He sighed. “This is all crap, you know that? Look at this —corned beef hash. Can you imagine what chemicals have got to be in this to keep it edible?” He held up the packet and read the instructions, a look of extreme disgust on his face: “Slit along line as directed and place in a frying pan. Use a little oil as required and fry to a crisp golden brown …”

  He groaned and dropped the packet. Beside him Larry took the lid from the teapot and dug a packet of teabags from the cupboard.

  “Where’s the bread?”

  Von Joel nodded to a large plastic container with bread printed on it. Larry opened it and pulled out a white thin-sliced loaf. He tore open the wrapper.

  “You want toast, ah …” Larry paused, holding the loaf. “What do I call you? Eddie?”

  Somehow he felt that was wrong, even though it was the name on all the documentation. Edward Myers. Eddie to everybody. That was once upon a time. This man wasn’t Eddie. The other name was much more him, it fitted like a glove. Philip Von Joel. It rang better in the head, too, and it even looked special written down… .

  “Call me whatever you like,” Von Joel said, shaking Larry from his reverie.

  Larry put two slices of bread into the toaster, watching as Von Joel sat down at the table with his glass of orange juice. From a transparent dark plastic packet he tipped out tablets and capsules, large and small, sixteen all together. He popped one into his mouth and took a sip of orange juice. Larry came across, frowning, suspicious. He put his hand over the colorful spread.

  “What’s this?” “Supplements,” Von Joel said calmly. He pointed.

  “That’s vitamin C, one gram. Linseed oil, always has to be kept in a dark bottle, otherwise it loses its potency to the light. Take these every day, with the C, and it’ll add twenty years to your life.” He touched a red-brown capsule. “This is beta carotene, gives a healthy glow to your skin. You should always start taking these—in small doses —before you go on vacation. You wouldn’t burn up so easily and it’d help you to work up a tan—your nose took a beating, didn’t it? It still looks red… .” He popped a tablet into his mouth and sipped some juice. “Ginseng and B6 and lift your hand! See this one?” He held up a large pill. “This is to counteract the lead poisoning. You ever been tested? Living in London, you should.”

  He looked up at Larry, annoyed suddenly at the suspicious way he was still peering at the tablets and capsules.

  “They were given the okay by McKinnes.”

  The toaster clanged and the bread popped up, burned dark brown. Larry retrieved it.

  “You know that has no goodness in it whatsoever,” Von Joel warned him. He pointed at the butter. “You should get a nonfat spread too. If you have to have a sweetener, use honey instead of sugar, it’s much better for you.”

  Over the next three minutes, as Larry got together the meager components of his breakfast, Von Joel regaled him with nutritional advice, citing his own dietary practices as the ideal path to a healthy spirit in a healthy body.

  Larry, sorely miffed by now, banged out his chair from the table and sat down. He began pouring the tea.

  “Do we get a newspaper delivered?” Von Joel asked pleasantly. “I don’t mean in the conventional way, of course—”

  “What d’you think this place is?” Larry demanded. “A frigging hotel?” Pointedly he spooned sugar into his tea. “By the way,” he added, spreading butter thickly on a slice of toast, “do me a favor tonight—no music.”

  Von Joel finished taking his supplements and stood up.

  “I’ll go and do my exercises—if that’s okay with you.”

  As he reached the door Larry called him.

  “Eddie. Like I said, this isn’t a hotel and I’m not waiting on you. You wash up after yourself.”

  Von Joel nodded. He came back to the table, picked up the orange juice glass, and took it to the sink. Larry, keeping up the hard front, announced they would have their first session at nine-thirty. At the door again, Von Joel paused.

  “What do I call you? Sergeant? Larry? Lawrence? Mr. Jackson?”

  “Larry’s okay. The relief guy brings the newspaper, by the way.”

  “Fine.” Von Joel nodded. “Bet it w
on’t be the Times though. Can you arrange that for me? I like to check my shares in the financial section.” He smiled, watching Larry glare. “Joke,” he said, walking out.

  At eight forty-five, while Von Joel was still in the gym, DI Shrapnel appeared in the kitchen with a paper sack crammed with items from the shopping list. Larry, washed and dressed by then, unpacked the fresh fruit, vegetarian breakfast cereal, pure yogurt, rice biscuits, and salt substitute while Shrapnel fished out the odd packet and jar and read the labels.

  “Scottish heather honey, natural maple syrup—but no bread!”

  “He said he doesn’t eat wheat because it creates acidity, which creates bad moods.”

  Shrapnel tutted softly. He looked at his watch and sighed in the unconscious way overweight men do when exertion, any exertion, is imminent.

  “I’ll be on my way in a minute.” He waved his hand at the shopping. “Tell him I got most of his list, apart from the yannis thing, they’ll have to ring around the health shops for that. His one hundred percent buckwheat pancakes are there, and the rice cakes—I tried one of them. Like chewing cotton wool …”

  Von Joel came in, smiling faintly. He wore sharply creased slacks, a cashmere sweater, and soft leather slippers. He moved with scarcely a sound.

  “I am trying to get the wild rice,” Shrapnel said, looking at Von Joel with open dislike, “and the coffee substitute, but the rice in one shop was seven pounds for a pound—that can’t be right, can it?”

  Von Joel had begun preparing his breakfast, spooning yogurt over a mixture of nuts, bran, and raisins. He flipped through the herb teas a couple of times and settled on mint. The door buzzer sounded and Shrapnel hurried out. Von Joel turned to Larry.

  “Seven pounds is overpriced,” he said. “It should be around three pounds for a pound. In the U.S. you can buy it for under two dollars.”

  As Larry turned to leave Von Joel held out his bowl.

  “You want to try some?”

  Larry shook his head, flustered by charm and civilized behavior where he had a right to expect the manners of a thug. He was still standing by the door when McKinnes walked into the kitchen. He was carrying a bacon sandwich smothered in tomato ketchup. A newspaper was stuffed into his pocket.

  “I just came in to tell you your wife is fine,” he told Larry. “Oh, you want this morning’s paper?”

  He took it from his pocket and tossed it on the table. It was the Sun. Von Joel laughed out loud. Larry couldn’t help smiling.

  “What?” McKinnes looked from one man to the other, mystified. “Did I say something funny?”

  8

  Larry was ready at nine-thirty, seated in the lounge with pencils, pens, and notepads lined up and the condenser microphone in position. Von Joel appeared at nine thirty-three. He was carrying a bottle of mineral water and a pair of white underpants.

  “You want to wear these?” He tossed the pants to Larry. “I noticed your smalls were still wet.”

  Larry let the pants lie where they were on the chair beside him. He checked his watch pointedly as Von Joel put his bottle of water on the table.

  ‘They’re handmade for me in Paris, Larry. I don’t know why there isn’t a company in England that designs decent underwear for men. I see these disgusting Y-fronts in the shops here—worse, stretch bikinis. And the colors … oh, man … But those, you can wear linen pants over them, they don’t make that line at the sides. Try them— you’re medium, aren’t you?”

  “You want to shut the door?” Larry said. Von Joel nodded pleasantly, closed the door and came back. He took the cushions from the couch, put them on the floor and sat on them.

  “One good thing,” he said. “You don’t smoke. McKinnes and his sidekick in there, they make me sick to my stomach. Fifty a day or more. Chain-smoking. McKinnes used to cough his guts up every morning. Man, I thought, why do you do it to yourself? Why? He’s addicted to nicotine, of course—”

  “You know the routine,” Larry said briskly. “When I set the tape on, you will be recorded. Everything you say will be transcribed, all details fed—”

  “I know the score.” Von Joel leaned on the coffee table. “Have you smelt his breath? McKinnes? The thought of having to sit in close proximity to his stench was—”

  “You need notebooks, pens? No?” Larry pressed a switch on the base of the mike. “Say a few words, just to see if we’ve got a decent level.”

  Von Joel nodded, thought for a second, then began singing If You Want to Make a Fool of Somebody. Larry stopped him after a couple of lines. The intercom squawked for a second, then Shrapnel’s voice came on. He told Larry the level was fine.

  “I’m all set,” he said. “Ready when you are.” Larry wet his lips and began to speak. “I am Detective Sergeant Lawrence Jackson. The time is oh-nine-thirty-five am. I am”—he coughed, cleared his throat—“situated in room 4d secure unit provided by the Metropolitan Police, St. John’s Row station. This is a recorded interview, recorded information to be used by the Metropolitan Police.” He cleared his throat again. “Would you please state your real name, age, and address at the time of your arrest… .”

  In the radio link room DI Shrapnel sat by the master recorder with a cup of coffee. On the table beside him were sandwiches and a Mars bar. He eased down in the chair as Von Joel began to speak and the needles in the level meters danced.

  “Right,” he breathed, “here we go again. All yours, sunshine …”

  Several floors above them, the incident room was packed with uniformed and plainclothes officers, plus Flying Squad, Robbery Squad, and Drug Squad personnel. At the table in front of the blackboard DCI McKinnes briefed them.

  “The most important part of the operation,” he said, “is coordination. You each have separate sections of Edward Myers’s statements. You will each be allocated your suspect. We go on one swoop. Arresting officers look for cash, but collect any evidence of apparently legitimate spending—receipts, car log books, hire-purchase documents, mortgage agreements.”

  He paused to suck hard on his cigarette and blow out a long blue plume of smoke at the ceiling.

  “We’ve got five teams and we’ve been allocated four armed marksmen. Rut treat it quietly—it’s imperative we take precautions. Use your special channel radio network and check the coded call signs. We must at all times conceal the scale and nature of the operation. They’ve got VHF receivers and scanners to listen in on our network. Remember that and act with appropriate caution.” He ran his gaze along the rows of intent faces. “Okay? I’m on the big fish, George Minton, because I’m the Guv’nor.”

  As the operation got under way, Von Joel sat relaxed in the safe house, his voice soothingly confidential as he beguiled Larry Jackson with more stories from the hoard he carried in his head.

  “Willy Noakes arrived in Marbella early summer 1987. June. He approached me because he had been given the tip-off that I was semi-interested in financing deals. To be more specific, Willy was a small-time con artist who on occasions carried messages to Spain from certain other parties. He acted as a money courier and contact man for George Minton.”

  In 1988, according to Von Joel, Willy Noakes was in Spain to set up a jewelry robbery at Christie’s, an operation that eventually netted 2.3 million pounds. Noakes approached Von Joel to see if he wanted to be involved, but he declined, mainly because too many people were needed; the more personnel involved, the more danger there was of something going wrong before, during, and even after the event.

  “They had to have one driver to block the access,” Von Joel explained. “That meant hiring a big furniture van. They had to have someone inside, maybe two men, acting as possible buyers. They needed a big fence to deal with the stones, and it was at the very least a four-man raid. So all in all you’re looking at nine, ten bodies involved. So I passed on it.”

  Kenny Greason, Donald Lather, Roger Fairclough, and Doreen Angel, he added, were the money.

  “But the guv’nor of them all, the main man, was Min-ton
. George Minton.”

  “He financed the robbery?” Larry asked.

  “He assisted in setting the robbery up,” Von Joel replied, speaking carefully, underlining the fact that he knew Larry was new to the investigation of crime at this heady level. “They all got a cut of the profits. Main slice went to Minton, next cut to Freddy Farmilow, who fenced it. They were in Switzerland the same night the robbery took place. The stones were carried by …”

  He paused, closing his eyes, pressing his fingers to his forehead.

  “Stones were carried by … ?” Larry prompted.

  “Girl,” Von Joel said, opening his eyes. “Can’t remember her name. Worked at Christie’s until six months after the robbery. She had a boyfriend, a rock musician. The stones went over in the band’s equipment. The band didn’t know. The girl was paid ten grand.”

  “You’ve not mentioned this girl before?”

  “Like I said, I can’t remember her name.”

  “Can’t remember her name.” Larry played up the scepticism, running his tongue along the inside of his cheek.

  “No,” Von Joel said flatly.

  “Going back to your previous answer, you said this girl, the one you cannot recall the name of, was paid ten thousand …”

  Von Joel’s recall was operating at a different level from Larry’s line of inquiry. He was fishing deep, dredging for names.

  ‘The drivers,” he said, snapping his fingers softly, encouraging the flow of memory. “Little Harvey Hutchinson, his brother Tommy—and Willy carried the shooter. It was a fake.”

  Larry was impressed. He looked at the notes he had scribbled.

  “Can we just go over each name again?”

  “Sure.” Von Joel bowed his head, concentrating. “Kenny Greason, Donald Lather, Roger Fairclough … ah … Doreen Angel, Harvey Hutchinson, Tony Avis, George Minton …”

  f

  As Von Joel continued to lay the foundations for further police action, a few miles away George Minton was standing in the hall of his comfortable home, the telephone receiver pressed to his ear, listening to a Spanish housekeeper trying to explain in her basic English that her employer was not available.