Cain was delighted with these people. They did not intrude. They had enough to do minding their own affairs without bothering about their neighbours. Being strangers themselves, they were not particularly interested in other strangers. And they were better behaved than the inhabitants of his own Caledonian Road. They were no trouble to the police.
There was one smudge on this peaceful picture. Nightly uproars, fortunately at the other end of Grange Gardens, informed him that there was a troublesome element. He learned eventually that this was a clan of Irish gypsies, about forty of them, who were living in a dilapidated mansion. On arrival in England these people had ceased to be nomads. They had found a place to settle, and in spite of efforts to move them they meant to stay. The Welfare State was the Canaan they had been seeking for generations. Bless you, man, it was ideal for a person who did not want turkey for dinner every day. National Assistance, Unemployment pay, a nice weekly allowance for every child but the first, and a free doctor to bandage your head when somebody cracked it. All this, and no need for a man to put his hand to a shovel. And if a policeman lost his temper and broke you a few teeth, bedad the magistrates would punish him for it. And now it was legal to brew your own beer. O happy land. Let us sing a song of Erin, an isle we shall never see again.
The gypsies worried Cain in one respect only. They needed a lot of police supervision. Not only were they hooligans, they were thieves. Police cars, with and without police markings, travelled along Grange Gardens more often than Cain liked.
Two days after the break-in at Hendry Brothers a pleasant-faced young man called at 9 Grange Gardens, at eleven in the morning. Dorrie answered the door. The young man concealed his surprise. He was going from house to house in this street of un-English people because he had been told to, and he had not expected to meet anyone like Dorrie.
'Good morning,' he said, touching his hat. 'I'm looking for lodgings. Do you have a vacant room?'
She did not need time to think of the answer to that one. She smiled and shook her head, while she noted that the man had no luggage, and that he was big enough to be a policeman. She became almost certain that he was a policeman. She could not have explained how she came to make that guess: something about him, she would have said; his eyes, maybe, or the way he looked at you, or the way he stood there on the step.
The man seemed to be disappointed. 'I do need to find a place around here,' he said. 'Are you likely to have a vacancy in the near future?'
Again Dorrie shook her head, realizing that if she said the house was full the man might discard his pleasant mask and begin to ask about the occupants. 'We don't have lodgers,' she said. 'We shall be moving when we find another house. All these foreigners, you know.'
'Quite.' The young man was satisfied. In any case, he could not ask any more questions without revealing his own pretence. He touched his hat again and left her. She closed the door and dropped the latch.
Cain had been standing behind the door. 'Copper?' he asked tensely.
'I think so. I'm almost sure so.'
'You handled it just right, kid. I don't like coppers coming here, though. I'm going to watch that bird.'
He went into the front room, which had been the lounge or sitting-room of Aunt Doris's boarding house, and peeped through the side of the curtains. He watched the man call at house after house until he could see no more of him. Half an hour later, staring thoughtfully out of the window, he saw him working his way back along the other side of the street. That satisfied him. 'You can forget it, Ducks,' he told his wife. 'He's on general inquiries re lodging houses. They're looking for us, and they won't find us.'
He did indeed feel certain that his home-from-home would not be found. Now, with all his team in one house, he was better able to impose the necessary discipline. Granchester was a big city, but its inhabitants did not have the anonymity which Londoners regarded as normal. Some of them could be curious about strangers, and for that reason he did not allow his men to enter public houses at all. Only occasionally did he go into a bar himself, with Dorrie and Flo for cover. And on those outings they did not talk much, but listened a lot.
The ban on drinking in public places really was an essential measure. No one knew better than Cain that his accomplices were not normal men. Generally speaking they recognized no restraint except those of superior force and immediate self-interest. It had taken a long lecture on self-interest to convince three out of the four that they would have to stay out of pubs altogether. To offset this, he offered compensations. When they were not working, or not about to work, they could drink as much as they liked at home. They could play cards or roll dice for limited stakes. If sober, they could go to a cinema or a show or a bingo session. For relief, they could go to Blackpool for short holidays, to get exercise and fresh air. When one of them wanted to go out at night and spend some time with a woman, permission was freely granted if he went alone, and sober. They were well fed by Dorrie, and waited on by Flo. They agreed that these conditions could be borne, for a period.
'Never forget,' Cain told them more than once. 'The coppers are busting a gut trying to find us. If we play it this way, they never will.'
Cain was interested in himself in the role of property owner. Posing as Flo's agent he went to the City Surveyor's office to see exactly what would happen to her two little houses in Naylor Street. He was shown a plan. The houses were some distance along a side street, but a wide, straight road to replace the old crooked one would run right over the ground where they stood. There was no hope for these two dwellings.
Nevertheless, it occurred to him that the two houses could be furnished cheaply and let profitably for as long as they were allowed to stand. He already had the keys. He went and inspected the houses. Naylor Street was a double row of blackened brick boxes. Each house had four rooms, a single-storey out kitchen, and a tiny paved backyard. The front doors opened straight on to the street. There were no bathrooms.
Cain at once gave up the idea of seeking tenants for such houses. Anybody who could afford to pay the rent he had in mind would want a better house and a better neighbourhood. He said as much to France that evening at supper.
France said: 'I've been thinking about those houses, too. If I were you I'd go ahead and furnish. On the cheap, of course.'
'Why in hell should I waste my time?'
'You've got everything worked out very nicely for this place. But accidents can happen. Suppose, one day, we all had to get out of here in a hurry. Where would we go?'
'You mean, get those houses ready for an emergency hideout? That's a smashing idea.' Cain stopped. He frowned. There's one snag. If the cops came here for us, and found us gone, they start finding out who owned the property. They'd get on the trail of Doreen Baker, and the lawyer would tell 'em Doreen's sister inherited those houses in Naylor Street, and they'd come nosing around.'
'I'm not so sure. They might get Doreen's name, under Baker, but if that lawyer still regards the girls as clients of his, he won't say a word about Flo. And in any case it'll take them days to find the lawyer. We wouldn't be leaving anything here with his name on it, would we?'
'No. You may be right. At least if we had to run to the other place we'd have a day or two to get organized and make our ways back to the Smoke. Yes, maybe I'll put a stick or two of furniture in one house, at any rate.'
So Cain began to frequent the salerooms, picking up shoddy old furniture for little more than the cost of removing it. He was careful. He did not visit any saleroom more than once. He took the risk of being remembered, but he could not imagine any happening which would cause the police to make inquiries about the sort of stuff he was buying.
One day he arrived, not at Naylor Street but at Grange Gardens, with a grandfather clock. He lifted it out of the car and carried it tenderly indoors, as if it were a priceless antique. He set it up in the hallway and stood back with an air of accomplishment.
The household came to look at it. 'Ugh, I'm not having that thing stood there,' Dor
rie said. 'The place is bad enough as it is. I'm not having a clock ding-donging every hour of the night.'
'It looks like crap stuff to me,' Husker observed.
'It's about as antique as my Aunt Minnie's fur tippet,' Coggan remarked.
France made no comment. He opened the clock and looked inside.
'Why,' Dorrie said. 'It's got no works!'
'No,' her husband told her. 'It don't ding-dong and it don't tick-tock. But it'll brighten up the place a bit. I got it at firewood price.'
'Just about what it's good for,' Flo said.
'That's no way to talk about an antique clock case. Anyway, I've taken a fancy to it. It's going to stay on these premises a week or two.'
'In the cellar?' France suggested.
'Yes, I daresay the cellar would be best. Till we need it.'
'What about the man who sold it?'
'He wears those thick pebble glasses. When he gave me my change he held his money two inches from his nose.'
Dorrie was somewhat mollified by hearing that the clock would be put in the cellar. But she said with a sigh: 'I won't be happy till I get back to my own home.'
Cain gave her a hug. 'That won't be long, dearie,' he said. 'When we've done a few more jobs here we'll break up and go into retirement. Maybe if we make enough we'll retire altogether and buy a nice country pub.'
She sniffed. He had sometimes mentioned retirement before, always when they had been doing well. And always he had kept on doing well until the game had ended in his forced retirement—to Pentonville or Dartmoor or some similar establishment.
'You can snort,' he said. 'I'm not going to land up in the nick this time. I've got a good lot of boys and I've got 'em well in hand. And I'm taking every care. It could be we will make enough to retire altogether.'
Dorrie had heard that one before, too. They had always been good lots of boys. 'Just you mind you don't pick up no more wallets,' she said, but when she said it she was out of his reach and on her way to the kitchen. It was the end of the talk. No other comment was made because Cain looked angry enough to hit somebody.
In that household it was the two women, with their feminine ideas of the decent running of a house, who most frequently had cause for irritation. The man Husker never had a bath. He slept with his bedroom window closed, and in the mornings his room stank. Flo, the bedmaker, refused to make his bed and clean his room. That did not worry Husker. He was quite content to pig it in an unmade bed in a frowsty room. The room became a permanent offence to the women. Dorrie often made it known, to anybody who might be listening, that the very thought of that room gave her the horrors.
Husker had the table manners of a starving dog. Jolly was better, but he had habits at table which Dorrie could not bear. 'He makes me cringe,' she declared. Jolly always mixed salt and pepper into a heap on the edge of his plate, then spread it over his food with his knife. He would eat his meat first, then mix all his vegetables thoroughly as if he were mixing a small quantity of cement, adding gravy at intervals to make the mess moist enough for his taste, but not too sloppy to stay on his knife when he ate it. 'I used to mix bully and biscuit with hot water like this, in the trenches,' he would remark. 'Man, it fills yer.'
Cain ate as Dorrie had trained him. Coggan and France were inconspicuous eaters, with no noticeable bad manners. But only France ever had the grace to make a complimentary remark about the food, and this he did quietly, because the others might not understand.
Dorrie was pleased by these little attentions. Flo was aware of that pleasure. In sympathy, or in mischief, or because she liked him, she often served France with the most of the best. Both Cain and Husker had jealous appetites and sharp eyes at table. And Cain was watchful apart from the matter of food. There was grumbling. France had to tell Flo that really he did not need so much to eat. Husker overheard the remark and sneered. He and France looked at each other with hostility bare in their eyes. Husker obviously thought that France was a lah-di-dah, which he was not. France made it clear that he thought of Husker as a graceless lout, which he was.
No member of the group made amorous advances, not even in the form of joking remarks, to either Dorrie or Flo. Dorrie was regarded as a waste of time to a philanderer, and Flo was so narrowly watched by her brother-in-law that she also was considered inaccessible. It was assumed that Cain did not want the girl to become involved with a crook. No doubt he had better things in mind for her. The contradictory facts of this were not at first apparent. Cain's wife's sister was too good to associate with thieves, and yet Cain's wife had married one. On the other hand Cain's wife was a reluctant thief, while the girl Flo was a daring and expert shoplifter. She was forbidden to practise that craft in these days of affluence, but she was more effective and enthusiastic than her sister when called upon to reconnoitre with a view to robbery. She was more interested in the takings after a crime, and jubilant when she received her share.
But action, and the division of spoils, seemed to be the only things which brought Flo to life. At other times she went through the day with a sort of breezy stolidity. Her work was not easy; cleaning the bedrooms, helping in the kitchen, serving at table, running errands. She made no complaints, except an occasional sardonic word about some extra duty. As a home help, she seemed too good to be true. It was hard for others to decide whether she was a born drudge or whether she was bored to insensibility by life at Grange Gardens, and waiting more or less patiently for a change.
To Ned France she was an enigma: so attractive, and yet so seemingly passive. Once or twice he caught her watching him in narrow-eyed appraisal, much in the manner of a woman experienced in affairs. At other times she seemed to be younger than her age. But always she gave the impression of being able to look after herself. One day she entered the front room, which was the men's common room, after she had been out for some cigarettes for Cain. As she handed over the cigarettes he tried to catch her fingers, but she avoided his grip with casual adroitness. The observant France thought it was typical of her. She would be able to get out of difficult situations coolly and with apparent ease.
France would have thought no more of the cigarette incident, but he saw the way Cain stared after Flo as she left the room. The unguarded glance told him much. But he did not attach too much importance to it. There were lots of men, good men some of them, who had a secret fancy for the wife's sister.
But in the matter of discipline Cain showed that he had no favourites. The day after the cigarette incident Flo went out to look round the shops, and returned wearing a fur stole. In the kitchen Dorrie admired the fur, and Cain listened indulgently. The London embargo on new clothes was not applied in Granchester.
'How much, dearie?' Dorrie asked.
'Only twenty quid,' Flo replied airily.
Dorrie's eyes narrowed. 'You told me yesterday—' she said, and stopped suddenly.
Cain looked up, alert and suspicious. 'She told you what yesterday?' he demanded. 'Did she tell you she hadn't any cash in hand?'
'I called at the bank this afternoon,' Flo said quickly.
'Ah. What time?'
'Just before three.'
Cain rose. He reached, and took Flo's handbag from her. He opened it and emptied its contents on the kitchen table.
'No pass book, no cheque book,' he said. 'Why don't you own up and tell me you hooked that fur?'
'Well, nobody saw me. I just pulled the tag off and walked out wearing it.'
Cain's hand came up, and he slapped the girl so hard across the mouth that she fell to the floor. She sat up, but did not rise to her feet. Her expression was unfathomable as she looked at Cain.
'For the sake of a bit of bloody fur you might have ruined us all,' he thundered. 'How do you know you weren't followed out of the shop? How do you know some cute store detective didn't take your picture before he set somebody on to follow you? They have all sorts of moves these days. God dammit, we might have the coppers here any minute. Give me that fur.'
He stooped and snatched
the stole from Flo's shoulder. He turned to the big old kitchen stove, and opened the fire door. A low fire was burning. He stuffed the stole into the fire, and pushed it further in with the short rake which was kept beside the stove. He closed the fire door, and still holding the rake he turned to Flo.
'You can get up,' he said, 'and show me everything in this house that's been hoisted in Granchester.'
Flo did not get up. 'There is nothing else. I just fancied that fur, and nobody was looking.'
'They don't leave twenty-quid furs just lying about. They don't handle 'em like cheap dresses. Would the saleswoman know you again?'
'She never even saw me. There was a woman looking at stoles, and there were half a dozen on a table. I didn't linger. I just saw it and slipped it on, and worked the tag off as I walked away. I was out of the place long before they missed the fur.'
'Which shop was it?'
'Maxim's, the big store.'
'Is that the truth, the fur is the only thing you've hoisted in this town?'
'Yes.'
Cain looked at his wife. 'Is that right?'
'Yes, as far as I know,' Dorrie said.
'What about you? Have you lifted anything?'
Dorrie's chin came up. 'No, I haven't. And don't you strike my sister again.'
'Strike her? If she touches anything else I'll skin her alive. Now, we're all going along to her bedroom and we're going to look at all her stuff, and she's going to tell you where she got it. I'm not having anybody in my family acting like a common thief.'
9
As the days grew longer Cain decided that there would be no more evening robberies. For the next few weeks, according to the suitability of the premises, work would be done after dark, or in the daytime on Sundays or in the afternoons of early closing days.
With an early closing day job in mind, he spotted a big Co-operative store in Sedgeworth, a new town of council houses just inside the city boundary. It was a new store and it would probably have a new safe. He did not mind. His team had become very knowledgeable about safes. He sent Dorrie to take a preliminary look at the place. She caught a bus in the big bus station in Somerset Square, and alighted at the terminus in Sedgeworth's modern, planned, shopping square. Following her husband's precise directions, she found the Co-op only a little way from the square, which was actually a circle. Her time was right, a few minutes before 12.30 P.M. on Wednesday, early closing day. It was a fine warm day, almost, but not quite, sunny. A good day for work of this kind. Looking in shop windows, she drifted along towards the Co-op. Passing it, she saw that there was a serving staff of seven on view behind the counters, and nine customers in the shop. Before she was quite past another man appeared behind the counter. He was a brisk, wiry man who must have been close on sixty years old. He was not wearing a white overall. The manager, she decided. He was the man whose movements she had to watch today.
Two men in twenty Page 7