Final Witness

by J F Straker

  ‘I don’t think you’re wicked,’ he assured her, smiling. Judy Garland’s lush beauty and gay, uninhibited nature had appealed to him greatly, but he had reluctantly decided she was not for him. He could not see her as the wife of a senior police officer. ‘Lumsden knew what he was about. He was due to be married in two days time; to admit to having been out with another girl that night might have wrecked all his plans. So he kept his mouth shut. Yours too.’

  David sank back on the pillows. Now he was really confused. ‘Where was Wilhelmina, then?’ he asked weakly. ‘And how about Nora? Why should she spy on Judy and Lumsden? It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’ Morgan fished for an acid-drop, then changed his mind. ‘Nora Winstone mistrusted Lumsden, she had no wish for him to marry her daughter. If she could prove to Wilhelmina that he was interested in someone else it might disillusion the girl.’ He shrugged. ‘Or maybe she recognized Lumsden’s red hair, and automatically assumed his companion to be her daughter. Miss Garland and Wilhelmina are about the same height and build.’ He favoured Judy with an intimate smile. ‘I grant you that otherwise there’s no resemblance, but in the dark it was a mistake easily made. As for Wilhelmina — as she said, she went to the cinema and then for a walk. Lumsden had told her he would be busy, and she did not fancy spending the evening at home. She was excited at the prospect of her marriage. It might not be easy to conceal her excitement from her parents.’

  David reached for a cigarette and lit it. In his confusion he did not think to offer one to the girl. As Morgan had said, it made sense. It explained why Wilhelmina had said nothing of the shooting to her parents, as she surely would have done had she witnessed it; after all, her father had been seriously injured in the raid. It explained too why she had made no mention of it in the note she had left for her mother before departing on her honeymoon; to the girl it had been only a honeymoon, with nothing sinister behind it.

  Presumably the switch in names had first suggested itself to Lumsden when the gang had picked him up on the Friday night; it protected Judy, and at the same time promised to dispose of an unwanted wife. From then on, however, he had to ensure that the deception was maintained. Perhaps that accounted for the elaborate arrangement he had devised for his wife’s death. Had he merely told the gang her name and left them to choose the time and place and manner of it, they might have questioned her first. It explained too why he had been so anxious at Pendwara to keep David and his wife apart. A few words from Wilhelmina then, and everything could go wrong for him.

  Well, it had gone wrong — although not as Lumsden had feared. Lumsden had died, and Wilhelmina, thanks to him, was alive. The glow of complacency began once more to creep over David, only to fade as he realized that now even that consolation was denied him. He had saved a life — but not the life. Wilhelmina was of no interest to the police. He had not given Morgan his vital witness. Morgan had found her for himself.

  He was silent for so long, lying back on the pillows with his eyes closed and the cigarette smouldering unheeded in the ashtray, that Morgan, who had been talking quietly to Judy, said suddenly, ‘By Themis, I believe the lad’s asleep! We’ve worn him out. Or I have.’

  David kept his eyes firmly shut. He had had enough of his godfather for one afternoon, and he was too dispirited to be able to enjoy the girl’s company.

  Judy said softly, ‘Poor boy! He looks very pale. Do you think he’s all right?’

  ‘Of course he’s all right.’ The ashtray rattled on the cabinet as Morgan stubbed out the cigarette. ‘However, we’d better go before he wakes.’

  ‘Would he like me to come and see him again, do you think?’

  Morgan contemplated her gravely. Attractive as he found her, he was thinking of Susan. Susan was in love with David, she would not thank him were he to encourage a friendship with a girl as seductive as Judy. And he was fond of Susan. He could not understand what she found in his irresponsible young godson to appeal to her; but if David was what she wanted...

  ‘Better not, my dear.’ His tone was confidential. ‘Susan — his fiancée, you know —she might misunderstand.’ David heard the sound of the superintendent’s bowler being tapped into position on his head. ‘Come along. We’ll have a cup of tea somewhere, and then I’ll run you home. It must be a deadly journey by bus.’

  You old lecher, thought David, as he heard the door close — wishing Susan on to me just to obviate competition! There ought to be a law prohibiting policemen from fraternizing with beautiful witnesses. Or perhaps there’s one already. I must look into that. It might provide material for a little refined blackmail.

  He drifted gently into sleep.

  If you enjoyed reading Final Witness, you might be interested in Death on a Sunday Morning by J F Straker, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Death on a Sunday Morning by J F Straker

  1

  With her wrists bound behind her back and her ankles tied to the legs of the chair, Rose Landor sat at her husband’s desk and strained her ears in an attempt to make sense of the muffled sounds and voices that filtered through to her from beyond the closed door of the office. She was more worried than frightened, for neither she nor Brian had been treated roughly and the men had curtly apologised for tying her up. She was also tired and physically distressed. Bound as she was, she could not relax her body against the chair or rest her head, and for what seemed like time interminable but was probably little more than half an hour she had been forced to sit upright. Her limbs ached, her eyes were hot and the lids heavy. Spasms of cramp attacked her soles and her thighs; and although her ankle bonds were sufficiently loose for her to dispel some of the pain by standing up, without the use of hands and arms the struggle to lift herself off the chair became increasingly hard.

  Her main fear was of the dark. Since childhood she had suffered from claustrophobia, and the longer she sat the more menacingly the darkness seemed to close in on her. To overcome her fear, as well as to ease the increasing stiffness in her neck, she kept turning her head from side to side in an attempt to locate familiar objects and so make the gloom seem less opaque. She knew the room well: modest in size, but high-ceilinged and with a noble cornice, with a good Wilton carpet on the floor and an attractive yet unobtrusive paper on the walls. The furniture was functional rather than decorative, although the tubular-framed chairs were comfortable and the large flat-topped desk was admirable for its purpose. Yet she could remember when the room had looked very different. Only a few years back Brian had constantly complained about its appearance. It gave a bad impression, Brian had said, for the manager to receive his customers in an office with rusting filing cabinets and stained wallpaper, with large cracks in the ceiling and worn carpet on the floor. But then in those days Westonbury had been something of a backwater, a small country town where the Tuesday market was the main feature of practically every week except Race Week. And even Race Week could be something of a non-event. The meeting was too insignificant to attract the big stables or the heavy punters. We’ll pretty you up in time, the Bank had told Brian. But right now our resources are fully stretched and Westonbury is low in priority.

  It was the arrival of Turnbull Motors that had changed the Bank’s attitude. Turnbull Motors were big, and with them had come a host of subsidiaries. New housing estates had sprung up on the periphery of the town to accommodate the influx of workers, new shops and services had opened to cater for the workers’ needs. Westonbury had become prosperous, and the Bank had reacted to its prosperity by starting work on larger and more suitable premises in the town centre. The new premises should have been ready the previous year, but there was still no firm date for completion. In the meantime the existing building, a converted Victorian dwelling-house, had been given a hasty facelift. Extra staff had been engaged and, although cramped for space, had so far managed to cope. Only during Race Week had the pressure become really excessive, for with the town’s new prosperity the meeting had grown in importance. In Race
Week business was terrific.

  It was Race Week now. Or the end of it. And that, Rose Landor supposed, was why she was sitting in the dark in her husband’s office, bound hand and foot, waiting for Brian and the men to return and wondering what was to follow when they did.

  They had been watching the late night movie on television when the bell rang. She had opened the front door and there they were: two menacing figures in boiler suits, with wooden staves in their gloved hands and stocking masks over their heads. But despite their appearance their manner had been brusquely polite. They had urgent business at the bank, they told Brian, and needed his assistance; would he and his wife please get ready to accompany them? They hoped he would be cooperative, they said, because although they had no wish to get rough, rough was what they would get if he wasn’t. Brian had complied without argument; apart from the knowledge that resistance would have been futile, only a few months previously the Bank had issued instructions to all branches that under such circumstances they wanted no heroics from members of their staff. He had, however, queried the order for her to accompany them. Was that really necessary? They could lock her in a room without a telephone if they feared she might raise the alarm. But the men had insisted. They had their instructions, they said. The woman was to go with them.

  They had gone in two cars: Brian driving his Austin, with her beside him and one of the men crouching in the back, and the second man following in the car in which the two had come. The house was some distance out of town, and as they drove she had wondered what the men would do if there were people on the street when they reached the bank — a possibility that was by no means unlikely, for although the bank was situated in a side street life did not die early on a Saturday night in the new Westonbury. Even if the men removed their masks even if Brian went unrecognised would not the sight of four people entering the bank at that hour arouse suspicion in an onlooker? But the hope that this thought had engendered vanished as they approached the bank. ‘Drive on past,’ the man in the back said, when Brian started to brake. ‘Take the first turning right and then right again.’ ‘Right again’ was a cul-de-sac that served the rear of the row of buildings in which the bank was situated, their back yards screened by a high brick wall; the buildings on the other side were in the process of being demolished to make way for a shopping complex. As the Austin stopped behind the bank two other masked men, also in boiler suits, emerged from the shadows. No one spoke. The man in the back motioned them to get out, whereupon they were grabbed by the newcomers and hustled through a gap in the brick wall. Moments later they heard the two cars being driven away.

  At one time the back yard had boasted a lawn. Now it was little better than a sea of mud, the mud made sticky by a week of heavy and persistent rain. As they ploughed their way through it Rose wondered why Brian had done nothing to have it cleaned up. She never used the back entrance herself, but she knew that Brian did so regularly. The Bank had wanted to brick it in on grounds of security; it was a relic of the past, they said, when the building had been a private residence, and was out of place in a bank. But Brian had pressed for it to remain. With double yellow lines outside the front entrance and the nearest parking lot some distance away he preferred to park the Austin in the cul-de-sac and use the ‘tradesmen’s entrance’, as he called it. The Bank had not insisted. Perhaps at the time they had reasoned that such an insignificant branch was unlikely to attract the attention of bank robbers. And had then forgotten.

  A man’s voice, louder than before and quickly hushed, interrupted her uneasy musing. Then the door opened and Brian and the men were back. Though her eyes were now more accustomed to the dark she could not distinguish them as individuals, but as they approached the desk she saw that three of them were carrying suitcases. Another, the tallest of the four, switched on a torch. The beam lit her face, and she blinked and turned her head.

  ‘Sorry we had to neglect you, Mrs Landon’ the tall man said. ‘But business had to come first, I’m afraid. All right, are you?’

  ‘No.’ The quiet tone, the polite inquiry, dispelled all fear of what might be in store for them. She felt free to vent her anger. ‘I am far from all right. I have sore ankles and sore wrists and a blinding headache. I have also suffered severely from cramp.’ Her throat was dry, and she swallowed. ‘Are you all right, Brian? They haven’t harmed you in any way?’

  ‘No, dear. I’m perfectly all right.’

  The controlled precision of his voice was reassuring. ‘Well, that’s something to be thankful for,’ she said. ‘I suppose they’ve taken all the money?’

  ‘I hope so, Mrs Landor,’ the tall man said. ‘That’s what we came for, and we pride ourselves on being thorough. Now, let’s get you out of that chair, shall we?’

  Her bonds gone, she sat for a few moments, wiggling her feet and rubbing her chafed wrists to restore the circulation. Then, steadying herself against the desk, she stood up. Confident now — what did it matter that the bank had been robbed so long as she and Brian were safe? — she said tartly, ‘Well, what happens next? Do you drive us home? Or are we expected to walk?’

  ‘Neither, I’m afraid. You will be staying here for a while. But not in the office. We’re going to leave you in the vault. For security reasons, you understand.’

  ‘In the vault?’ Landor was shaken out of his calm. ‘Good God, man! Why?’

  The other did not answer immediately.

  ‘Off you go, then,’ he said to one of his companions, and watched the man leave. ‘Why? I would have thought that was obvious, sir. I mean — well, what’s the alternative? If we released you, you would immediately contact the police. You might promise not to do so, but we both know you would. Promises made under duress are seldom kept. So we would leave here to find police checks on all the roads out of town. We could, of course, rip out the telephone and tie you up, but you would find that most uncomfortable. In the vault you’ll be free to move around.’

  ‘And how and when do we get out?’ Landor asked.

  ‘I’ll ring the police as soon as I consider it safe. A few hours start is all we need.’

  ‘Suppose you forget?’

  ‘I shan’t.’ His tone was suddenly curt. ‘I’m meticulous in such matters, Mr Landor. Now — shall we go?’

  He led the way with the torch. The vault was open and the lights switched on, and as Rose paused in the doorway she saw that most of the space was filled with steel shelving laden with deed boxes and ledgers. There were no windows and the air smelt stale, and for the first time since leaving home she experienced a pang of real fear. Brian would be with her, they were not to be left in the dark. Yet below ground — and in such a confined space — and once the heavy door closed on them, how long before it would open again? Suppose, as Brian had suggested, the man forgot? Suppose that in fact he had no intention of remembering?

  She shuddered. ‘No!’ she said, her voice shrill. ‘I can’t! I’m sorry, but I just can’t!’

  ‘Oh? Why not?’ The tall man drew her aside as his companions carried in a couple of chairs. ‘All the comforts, you see. And no lack of reading material, by the look of it. And it won’t be for long, I promise you. A couple of hours at the most. You can stick it that long, can’t you?’

  ‘No,’ she said hysterically. ‘I can’t. If you shut me up in there I’ll die of fright.’

  ‘Oh, come now! That’s an exaggeration, isn’t it? Of course you won’t.’

  Gently but firmly he propelled her into the vault, her struggles and her husband’s protests unavailing. Landor followed, angrily shrugging off a hand from one of the other men. As the door started to close the woman screamed. Frowning, the tall man slammed it shut.

  ‘Claustrophobia, I imagine,’ he said. ‘Nasty, poor thing. Still, her old man will look after her. She’ll be all right.’

 

 

  on Archive.