FRAMED

by Lynda La Plante

  “See, what you’re not doing is carrying the punch through,” Larry said, panting, shining with sweat as they broke and stood back from one another. “If you hit like this …”

  He threw a punch at the air, putting his bulk squarely behind it, letting the centered mass of his upper body be the driving force behind his arm.

  “Weight has always got to be forward, see? It means your punch is carrying the whole body weight. Feet apart, that’s important. Come on now, let’s see you again.”

  Von Joel took up his stance in front of the bag and asked Larry if he was doing it right. Larry nodded, told him to go for it. Von Joel launched a powerful punch, sending the bag swinging.

  “That’s it!” Larry said. “Feel the difference!” He took the bag between his hands, beginning to imagine himself every inch the coach. “Don’t swivel your hips, keep the feet apart … and again!” He took the shock as another punch landed on the bag. “Good one! Yeah!”

  Von Joel stepped back, wiping sweat from his face. He grinned.

  “Tell you what, Larry—you work out with me half an hour a day, and I’ll teach you how to play chess. Deal?”

  “Okay.” Larry nodded, pulling himself back, still trying to keep the semblance of a proper distance, the copper-villain divide. It was becoming harder. “I better get some sleep,” he said uneasily, moving to the door. “Homework to do, as well …”

  At the door he half turned, gave Von Joel a shy smile and walked out. Von Joel held the big black leather punching bag as if it were a woman. Hugging it to him, he brushed his lips against the leather; he was breaking through, he knew it, could feel it, and he planted a kiss on the hard leather and chuckled. Then he stepped back and gave a perfect punch, a hard single uppercut, that dented the bag and sent it swinging … that punch he would

  save for the right time, the right place.

  f

  Early that morning DCI McKinnes, in a buoyant mood, had stepped out of a patrol car near the front of an elegant house in Totteridge and paused, standing back to admire the house, the neat garden, and the immaculate Jaguar standing by the front door.

  As he stood there two children came out wearing school uniforms and carrying satchels. They were accompanied by an attentive, attractive woman who was obviously their mother. She got into the driver’s seat of the Jaguar and the children climbed in the back. A moment later they drove away.

  “Well, now,” McKinnes said expansively, turning to the patrol car and tapping the windshield with a rolled-up warrant, “that’s the wife, so we got the right sodding place this time.” He bent down and looked at the officers in the car. “We all set? Let’s go then. Two around the back.”

  Two officers ran to the rear of the house and McKinnes marched up to the front door with two others. He rang the bell, waited, then rang it again. They waited for a count of thirty, then McKinnes gave the signal to break down the door. It was a strong door and it had to be smashed to pieces before they could get into the house. When finally they did get in, they found no one there.

  That had happened before nine o’clock in the morning. At ten to eight in the evening McKinnes was again driven up to the front door. A police van was visible at the side of the house and a second patrol car, DC Summers leaning against the hood, was parked in front beside the Jaguar. McKinnes wound down his window.

  “He showed up yet?”

  “No.” Summers shook his head glumly. “Not a sign of him. His wife’s giving us an earful. We got his passport and a wad of money. If he took off, he can’t get far.”

  “Did he play golf today like she said?”

  “He had a game booked for nine-thirty this morning, but he never showed.”

  “Anyone check his locker?” McKinnes registered the empty look on Summers’s face. “At the bloody golf club!” he explained. “They have lockers, maybe he’s got gear stashed there.” He opened the door and struggled out of the patrol car. “Go on,” he told Summers, “do it now, I’ll have a word with his wife. I could do with a cup of tea.”

  “She’s not offering,” Summers said.

  The front door was open. McKinnes let himself in and immediately saw Mrs. Minton standing in the hallway, sobbing into a handkerchief. There were sounds of heavy, serious movement from the region of the kitchen, where police officers were removing the fittings and methodically using hammers to tap lengths of pipe as they were uncovered. When Mrs. Minton spotted McKinnes her eyes hardened. She clutched the handkerchief against her breast.

  “I’m telling you again,” she said, a tremor behind her voice, “I don’t know where he is. He went out to play golf early this morning and I’ve not seen him since. How many more times do I have to tell you?”

  Three officers came past carrying bags and boxes. McKinnes stood by the front door, watching them go out. He turned to Mrs. Minton again, his face almost sad.

  “The thing is, love, he didn’t play today,” he said. “So we’re just going to have to hang around until he comes back, or you can tell us where he’s gone.”

  “I don’t know where he is!” Mrs. Minton screeched. There was a rumble, then a crash from the kitchen. She looked behind her fearfully. “You bastards!” She glared at McKinnes. “They’re bloody pulling down my new kitchen units! What d’you think he’s done, eh? Swum down the frigging drain?”

  “What about making a pot of tea?” McKinnes suggested. His pager buzzed. He took it out, canceled it. “Can I use your phone?”

  “No, you bloody can’t!”

  McKinnes leaned out the open front door and waved to catch the attention of the officer in the squad car.

  “See what the Guv’nor wants, will you?”

  Two more officers emerged from the kitchen carrying wooden panels. Mrs. Minton rounded on McKinnes again.

  “I want you and your lot to sod offl” she yelled. “I’m keeping a record of every scrap of damage. They broke the door down. If you’d waited I’d have been home. That’s a solid wood door, made to measure, and you can get it replaced—that’s five hundred for bleeding starters.”

  DI Falcon appeared from the kitchen. He held up two thick wads of banknotes.

  “Guv? We hit the jackpot. Fake pipe.” He handed the money to McKinnes. “I’ll get on to HQ,” he said, heading for the front door, “we’ll need some photos… .”

  There was a flicker of uncertainty in Mrs. Minton’s eyes. She swallowed visibly and folded her arms, keeping up her front.

  “I know nothing about that,” she told McKinnes.

  “Tell them back at base we’ll hang on here,” McKinnes was telling his driver outside. “We just struck lucky.”

  Somewhere upstairs a child began to howl. McKinnes listened straight-faced, looked pointedly at Mrs. Minton, then turned and examined the alarm by the front door.

  “This working, is it?”

  “Yeah.” She moved to the stairs. “It’s connected to the local police station. All right if I go up to see my kids? They already turned their bunks upside down this morning”

  “You didn’t have it on this morning?” McKinnes said. “The alarm, that is.”

  “I was only taking the kids to school!”

  An officer came forward and handed over another bundle of bank notes. McKinnes took them. Mrs. Minton, halfway up the stairs, stopped in her tracks and watched.

  “How much more is there?” McKinnes murmured, weighing up the bundle. “A lot?”

  “I’d say so, sir,” the officer said, nodding.

  “Good. Keep at it then… .”

  He lightly thumped the stair paneling with the side of his fist, turned to walk into the kitchen, then stopped. He moved further along the paneling, struck it again, and frowned. He turned to the officer in the kitchen doorway.

  “Get this down.”

  The man set to the job at once with a claw hammer and a chisel. DI Falcon came back carrying a roll of plastic bags.

  “The Super’s a bit edgy about us not finding Minton,” he said. He jerked his head
toward Mrs. Minton, who was watching stiffly as the stair panels were prized away. “Her local police station called in …”

  McKinnes watched as a complete section of panel came away. There was a door behind it. McKinnes looked up at Mrs. Minton.

  “You know you’ve got a cellar, love?”

  Her face had frozen.

  McKinnes paused long enough to tell DI Falcon the business with the Superintendent could wait until morning, then he crossed to the door and turned the handle. The door opened. A light filtered up from the cellar. McKinnes smiled.

  Five minutes later Mrs. Minton stood in the hall, crying as she watched her husband being handcuffed. Officers emerged from the cellar carrying bundles of papers and bulging plastic bags.

  George Minton was shaking with anger. As the cuffs were tightened on his wrists he glared at McKinnes.

  “Who put the finger on me?” he demanded. “Come on, you bastard, you wrecked my house, what’s it to you?”

  McKinnes waved to his men and they took Minton away.

  “You tell whoever it is,” Minton shouted, “he’s a dead man! You hear me, you son of a bitch? He’s a dead man!”

  McKinnes looked over Minton’s drawing room. Ready to go back to the station, he half turned, crooked a finger to a uniformed officer, and pointed to a photograph.

  “I want that; get Mrs. Minton to give us the okay.“It was a framed photograph of two men seated in what looked like a bar, somewhere like Bermuda. A row of boats could be seen behind the bamboo and ferns. Both men were suntanned, both wearing evening suits. Min-ton’s was black, Edward Myers’s jacket was white, and he had one arm around Minton, smiling to the camera. Minton was laughing.

  10

  ^^hortly before ten o clock on Thursday morning, a police patrol car drew up outside the small terraced home of Phil and Moyra Sheffield. DI Jimmy Falcon got out of the car, checked the address with his notebook, and walked up the path. He rang the doorbell. A moment later Phil Sheffield opened the door; DI Falcon showed him his ID card and was then invited into the house.

  Forty minutes later DI Falcon left the Sheffields’ house. He hurried out to the patrol car and got in beside the uniformed driver. The car moved off.

  Inside the house Phil Sheffield turned away from the window. He was a big man, gaunt-eyed, blunt in his speech and manner. He looked at his wife, sitting on the sofa twisting a damp tissue between her fingers. Her eyes were rimmed with red.

  “Well? You going to tell me what all this is about? Moyra?” He came closer, bending forward, trying to make her look at him. “Moyra? “She was on the point of saying something, then she began to cry, losing control, her shoulders heaving. Phil sat beside her and drew her close.

  “I’m sorry, love… .” He smoothed her honey blond hair, hooked a finger under her chin. “Moyra. Look at me. What did he say?”

  She turned away and began to sob harder. Phil stared at the back of her head, exasperated, clenching his fists to keep himself under control. After more sobbing and snuffling, Moyra finally blew her nose and was able to speak.

  “I told him about the phone call,” she said.

  “Well, I bloody know that—I told you to call them. Did they know who it was?”

  Moyra shook her head.

  “So what did the copper say? Is it somebody playing silly buggers? Moyra, for Christ’s sake tell me what the bastard said!”

  “He’s alive, Phil,” she said huskily, swallowing hard. “They—they picked him up in Spain.”

  Phil sat back, staring at her. His mouth was open a clear inch.

  “He seemed more interested in the phone call, asking me if the caller told me his name.”

  Moyra stood up by the mantelpiece, her shoulders hunched. She stared balefully at her collection of Capo di Monte and Lladro figurines.

  “I told him how the man kept on asking about Eddie,” she said, “kept on asking if I knew where Eddie was. I said I couldn’t take it in, because all I could think of was, I’m scared, I’m so scared… .”

  Phil had been staring at the carpet as if he couldn’t understand where it had come from. He stood up suddenly.

  “That cop told you? Moyra, did he actually tell you Eddie is alive?” He watched her nod. “Jesus Christ. What about Italy? Did he ask about us?”

  “Oh, God.” Moyra groaned. She hadn’t heard his question; her head was filled with confusion and turmoil.

  “He’s been alive all this time.” Her arm shot out and swept the ornaments off the mantelpiece. “The bastard!”

  “You missed one,” Phil snarled, knocking the remaining figure flying. He looked at Moyra. “I’ll bloody kill him.”

  He could hear her sobbing her heart out as she ran up the stairs, heard the bedroom door slam shut. He went into the kitchen for a pan and brush to sweep up the broken china. He tipped it into the bin outside, then went back into the spotless kitchen and sat at the pine table, sat on the pine chair with the blue and white frilled cushion that matched the curtains. She was still crying, he could still hear her and he wanted to go up to her, but knew it was best to let it all come out.

  He had taken her to Italy, it was a real tough journey, she hadn’t seen or heard from her husband in years, not until the call to say his body had been found. All the way there she had clasped Phil’s hand tight, chewing her lips, sighing, and repeating over and over that she was glad, glad they’d found him … it meant they could get married.

  Phil had been with Moyra for three years before that Italy trip. He adored her and wanted to marry her, had wanted to after the very first date. Moyra had been the pampered only daughter of a wealthy builder and she had been just seventeen when she met Edward Myers. They had married six weeks later. Myers had just appeared one night, she told Phil, in a pub her crowd used to go to, and she had no memory of anyone even introducing them. Phil had had to coax the background of her marriage out of Moyra. She found it hard to discuss, harder still ever to come to terms with Myers’s leaving her. Her parents had been against the marriage but had bought them the house as a wedding present.

  Phil looked around the kitchen he’d redecorated. In fact, he reckoned there wasn’t much left of the bastard, it was their home now, but while he could throw out all the objects, the furniture that had been part of Myers’s life with Moyra, what he had never been able to do was rid the house, or Moyra, of her memories. Phil had even made her put all the wedding photos in the trash, and she had agreed, but what he didn’t know was that she had retrieved them later, and hidden them. She couldn’t part with them, and even though she had married Phil, there was some part of her that had never let Eddie go, some part of her that always hoped he would come back. But that had ended after Italy.

  After the Italy trip, after seeing the body, it was easier, she had no hope, and she had agreed to marry him. Phil made a pot of tea and fetched a tray, which he carried up the stairs. He stood outside the bedroom and listened. She was still crying, so he went back to the kitchen and drank the tea alone. He didn’t know what to do, how to comfort her, he knew it must be a terrible shock. It was to him. Christ, they weren’t even legally married. He shook his head, wishing he could have just ten minutes with the bastard. He’d like to squeeze the life out of Eddie Myers, thump the living daylights out of him, not just for himself, but for his Moyra.

  Moyra never knew, would never know how tough it had been for him. It had taken so long for her to forget Eddie, so long for her to admit that she loved Phil, but even when she had said it, it wasn’t quite what he had wanted, or hoped it would be like. She was so beautiful, like a perfect china doll, and that bastard had broken her heart. Her parents had told him she’d had a nervous breakdown after he’d walked out, she’d refused to eat, would stay up all night waiting, sure he was coming home again.

  “How can you still love him, Moyra, after what he did to you?”

  She had given that sweet soft smile, turning away from Phil, and he had gone to her, put his arms around her tightly. “I love you, Mo
yra, you got to forget him, if you don’t we don’t stand a chance together.”

  Moyra had turned in his arms, rested her head against his big wide chest, and it was as if he held a fragile bird, her whole body quivered and shook. “I will love you, Phil, I do love you, but don’t ask me about Eddie, don’t keep asking me, because every time I hear his name, something happens in my heart. It’s like somebody punches me all the time, and it hurts, no matter how long ago, you just say his name and … and I hurt inside… . Oh, Phil, I loved him so very much, it was like he had some kind of magic.”

  Phil had tried to make a joke of it, saying he was no competition for a magician, he was just an ordinary bloke, a plumber, and all he had was his love… .

  Moyra had reached up and touched his face. “I don’t want magic, just honesty, I want to care for you, and I want … I do love you, Phil.”

  He had contented himself with that, it was enough, but it had taken the body in Italy to make her agree to marry him. They would get through this scene, get over that

  bastard coming back from the dead.

  f

  At the interrogation session that same morning—conducted with both men sitting cross-legged on the floor, Larry looking particularly crisp in a borrowed cotton shirt —Von Joel confirmed the details of three more robberies with which he’d had a slender connection, all of them committed over a fourteen-month period. He also mentioned an incident concerning a shotgun, bought by George Minton for use in a robbery, which turned out to have been used earlier to kill a security guard during a raid in Hounslow. Minton had thrown a fit when he found out the gun was hot, and eventually he threw it into the Thames at Tower Bridge. The story was important and as the lunch break drew close Larry went over it again. He was curious to know if the gun might still be recoverable from the water.