by J F Straker
“Not quite up to the Hilton, perhaps,” Cooper said, “but the main guest-room nevertheless. And at least you’ll have company. Sinclair you’ve met before. The woman’s his wife.” He pointed to the hessian screen. “The loo’s through there. Only an earth closet, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t apologize, please,” Johnny said. “One doesn’t expect modern plumbing from troglodytes. But I’d like a carpet. I suffer from cold feet.”
Cooper chuckled. “So do most of our guests. But no matter. You won’t be staying long.”
“Really? You slay me.”
“That’s the idea,” Cooper told him. “The wages of SIN, eh?”
6
“So the kids were right,” Sinclair said, as the door closed behind Cooper and the guards. They heard the key turn in the lock. “You’re a dick. But no clever Dick, eh? Look where you are now.”
“Clever enough to fool you,” Johnny retorted. “And look where you are now.”
He sat down. The hard chair did little to ease the aches in his body. But he was tired physically and mentally, and any form of rest was better than none.
“You didn’t fool me,” Sinclair said. “Not all the way. What you said made some sort of sense, but I wasn’t taking it for gospel. I didn’t argue while you were there, but soon as you’d gone I checked.”
“How?”
“I rang the number they’d given me. You were a phoney, they said. No-one had been sent to watch me. But not to worry, they said; I was to make the meeting as planned. If you tailed me they’d know how to cope.”
“Hence the reception committee, eh?” Johnny lit one of his three remaining cigarettes. “Well, you can’t win them all. Did you know I was following?”
“I wasn’t sure. Not until I met them, and we saw you turn off. After that I didn’t see anything. They blindfolded me.”
The woman still lay with her back to them. She had not moved, and Johnny wondered if she were asleep. It seemed strange that anyone could sleep in such circumstances. Cooper had left him in no doubt of the fate planned for him, and presumably that went for the Sinclairs too. Didn’t they realize that? Maybe it hadn’t been spelled out for them as it had for him, but they must know that the gang could not afford to release them. They hadn’t even the comforting knowledge that the police were already investigating the farm.
Or maybe it wouldn’t be so comforting to them. The Sinclairs were unlikely to view the police as buddies.
“Nice, trusting friends you’ve got,” he said. “How did they react when you arrived empty-handed?”
“They weren’t pleased.”
“I bet they weren’t. So what happens to you now?”
Sinclair dropped his cigarette on the floor and ground it out with his shoe. The space around his chair was littered with butts.
“They didn’t say. I imagine they’ll keep us here for a few days, and then let us go. What else can they do?”
Didn’t he know? Johnny wondered again. Didn’t he really know? Or was the poor devil trying to kid himself into security? Despite Cooper’s threat, Johnny too had a feeling of security, of indestructibility. He had always had it, right from the age when he had first begun to ponder on the strange finality of death. To Johnny it seemed impossible that he must one day cease to exist, that life would go on and that he would not be part of it. Other people, yes. But not him. He did not consciously consider himself to be immortal, and would have laughed incredulously had someone suggested that possibility. He simply could not envisage his complete extinction.
Did others feel that way? Did Sinclair?
“You know Gislap?” he asked. Sinclair shook his head. “It seems he’s the big noise around here. He’s been telling me about your organization, and how you and your friends tried to double-cross them. Did you hear what happened to Wheeler and Goodwin?”
“I know they’re dead.”
Johnny gave him the Gislap version of how they had died. “You don’t think something like that may happen to you?”
“Me?” Sinclair frowned at him, his round face lined. “Why should it? All right, so I broke the rules. But I wasn’t like Jess and Charlie, I didn’t fight them later. I handed over my share of the money, and I tried to get them Jess’s. It’s not my fault it wasn’t where they said. What’s more, I tipped them off about you. That showed them whose side I’m on, didn’t it?” His voice had gradually risen, perhaps through eagerness to convince himself. It dropped as he looked across at his wife’s back. “You keep your horror stories to yourself, Sergeant. She’s upset enough as it is. I don’t want you making it worse.”
Johnny wanted to do just that. He wanted to frighten them both into the conviction that death was just around the corner, that the only alternative was to fight. They were not ideal as allies. But the woman was big, and Sinclair, although flabby, had guts of a sort.
“Prefer to shut your eyes, eh?” he said. “Okay. So what do we talk about? Your bank job? Or do we just sit?”
“I’m not in the mood for a confession.”
“I didn’t ask for one. Anyway, I couldn’t use it. You know that.”
Sinclair nodded and lit another cigarette. He stared at Johnny through the smoke, the spectacles well down his nose.
“It’s an idea,” he conceded. “Bit of a giggle, really, handing a copper stuff he can’t use.”
‘Giggle’ sounded out of place, both for the man and the occasion. “Then let’s have a giggle,” Johnny said. “I reckon we both could use one.”
It had been Charlie Goodwin’s idea, Sinclair said. Neither he nor Jess Wheeler had known that Charlie was a member of Crime Co-operative until an occasion when Charlie’s watch had slipped from his wrist and they had seen the initials on the back. Most members carried the initials on them somewhere, although it was not compulsory. Charlie had said he was fed up playing gigolo to the Bollender woman. There was a girl he wanted to marry, only she wouldn’t play because he hadn’t got a nice fat sum in the bank; and although C.C. was profitable enough in its way, it didn’t provide the sort of capital he needed. That called for a big job, done outside the Co-operative. Were Sinclair and Wheeler prepared to join him?
“He had it all planned. Anything from fifteen to thirty grand apiece, he reckoned there’d be, and dead easy.” Sinclair smothered a cough. “It was against Co-operative rules, of course. He knew that, and he knew they’d act real nasty if they rumbled us. But why should they? he said. C.C. isn’t the only mob that does banks.”
“You thought it was worth the risk?”
“Not at first. But Jess was a sharp spender, and I — well, there were a lot of things I could do with that kind of money.” He looked across at his sleeping wife, and sighed. “Thinking it over, we got to feeling greedy. Anyway, the next day Jess said he’d go in with Charlie — it was too good a thing to miss — and I said I would too if Beryl was agreeable. She’d known for some time that I was with C.C.”
“And she approved?”
“Oh, yes. Beryl would do anything for money. Anything within reason, that is.” Did robbery, then, come within Beryl Sinclair’s idea of what was reasonable? “Not that she’s grasping, mind you. It’s just that she can’t bear anything second-rate.”
There was no bitterness in his voice. It was a statement without apology or blame.
Perhaps because of the repeated use of her name, the woman stirred on the bed. Both men watched her. Still with her back to them, she brought her knees up, pushed her plump bottom outward, and straightened. The back of one thigh was left exposed, and Sinclair got up and went to pull down her skirt. The woman grunted, and pushed his hand away.
Johnny got up too, and went to the loo. When he returned Sinclair was back on his chair, polishing his spectacles with a grubby handkerchief.
They had chosen Sunday, he said at Johnny’s prompting, because of the advertised power cut. They had broken into the off-licence in the small hours, leaving Beryl installed with a transmitter in Goodwin’s flat above the garage. F
rom there she could watch the street at the rear of the bank. Shortly after half-past nine she had radioed that the electricity was off, and they had cut their way into the vault. That had been the hardest part of the job. The safe itself was a pushover.
“Why burn it?” Johnny asked. “Why didn’t you blow?”
“We knew this new alarm system had been installed — not the system, just that it was new — but we didn’t know the safe. Charlie said some safes can’t be blown — the lock jams, or something. And it’s noisier than burning. Besides, Charlie had the burner in the garage.”
The job done, they had returned to the cellar to wait; with all their equipment, and the cases stuffed with banknotes, they could not leave in daylight. They had waited until midnight; then, with Beryl’s assurance that the street was empty, they had left. The garage was little more than a hundred yards away, but Sinclair had sweated blood until it was reached.
“We split the money three ways and got the hell out,” he said. “I don’t know what Jess and Charlie did with their lot, but Beryl and I took ours out to a disused chapel in the woods and buried it. Just in case.”
“In case what?”
Sinclair passed a hand over his bald head.
“We were local men, we’d been trained to the job. It was just possible the Co-operative might decide to look us over. If they searched the house and didn’t find the money we reckoned we’d be in the clear.”
“Man, were you wrong!” Johnny said. “Do you know how they rumbled you?”
“No.”
Johnny told him, omitting his own visit to Whisper Pratt. It was not greatly relevant, and it might antagonize.
“Charlie Goodwin, eh?” Sinclair said. “Damned fool! He —”
Further comment was interrupted by the sudden activity of his wife. She rolled slowly on to her back, swung her legs off the bed, and sat up. Heedless of her unbuttoned blouse, of the magnificent bosom straining to escape from its confining brassiere, she glared at her husband.
“Charlie Goodwin!” she stormed. Her cheek was red from pressure during sleep. “It was Charlie who dragged us into it, who said it was easy, that there wasn’t any risk. And now look where we are! And all because of your precious Charlie.”
She fumbled at the buttons on her blouse. Her eyes were red, and Johnny wondered if she had been crying. She did not look like a woman who sought refuge in tears. The Amazon type. But then one never knew with women.
Sinclair said, “We thought you were asleep. Er — this is Sergeant Inch.”
He sounded apologetic. For disturbing her? For Johnny’s presence? For the spot they were in?
“I know,” she snapped. “I heard.”
She could be attractive, Johnny thought, to someone partial to massive blondes. But devoid of make-up, her hair uncombed, skirt and blouse badly creased, she looked a mess. He realized she had probably been without her handbag since she left home. It was enough to make any woman irritable.
Feeling sorry for her, he scraped up a smile.
“Sorry about this, Mrs Sinclair,” he said. “Your husband and I worked our passage, so to speak, but I’d say you’re unlucky to be here.”
She shrugged. “They tricked me.”
“I know.” He repeated what Gislap had said. “Didn’t you realize the driver wasn’t Wheeler?”
“Not until I was in the car.” It seemed that her spirit had flared only temporarily, for her voice was apathetic.
“So what did you do?”
“Nothing. What could I do?” With your build, plenty, Johnny thought. “He made me show him where Mark and I had hidden the money, and then he brought me here.”
“Made you?”
“He strong-armed her,” Sinclair said angrily. “Show him your neck, Beryl.”
Frowning, she lifted her chin. Her throat showed faintly red, but there were no weals, no bruises.
“Give me a cigarette, one of you,” she snapped.
With only two left in his packet, Johnny sat tight, leaving it to her husband to oblige.
“And you?” he asked, as Sinclair returned to the table. “How did they get their puds on you? More trickery?”
Sinclair hesitated before replying. Not so much trickery, he said, as applied psychology, and spoke of the note that Nicodemus had found in the grate. It had given him moments of agonizing indecision. “Naturally I didn’t believe the — the insinuation about my wife,” he said quickly, with a glance at the woman to observe her reaction. But she gave none. She was staring morosely at the stone floor, the cigarette drooping from her lips. “My car had gone from outside the pub, and I thought at first, when I found she wasn’t home, that Beryl had taken it. That was before I found the note. But then a neighbour said she’d seen Beryl leave in a red Mini with a man who looked like Jess — and I didn’t know then that Jess was dead —” He sighed, reliving his agony. “I was completely at a loss. But the note had said they were taking the money, and at least I could check on that. So I borrowed a van from Charlie Goodwin and drove out to the chapel.”
“To find them waiting for you, eh?”
“Yes. They’d guessed that’s what I’d do. That’s why I said it was more psychology than trickery. Or isn’t psychology the right word?”
Johnny said he thought it was.
“Yes.” Another sigh. “But even if I’d known they were there I’d probably have gone. Because of Beryl, you see.”
An odd mixture of toughness and sentimentalism, thought Johnny. He experienced again a feeling of pity for the man, quite unconnected with their present danger. Sinclair was so obviously devoted to his wife, and she as obviously completely out of sympathy with him.
It had been Sinclair’s idea to contact Brown about the dogs. That was after they had told him where Wheeler’s share of the money was hidden, and how they had been unsuccessful in their attempt to recover it. He had made the suggestion in the hope of re-establishing himself in their favour, but with no expectation of being detailed for the task. “I didn’t want to go,” he said. “I didn’t like leaving Beryl. But it had to be me, of course. They realized that. On account of Judith, you see. She’d have been suspicious of a strange man grubbing around the kennels.” He lit another cigarette, did not offer one to Johnny. “I hoped that when they had the money they’d let us go,” he added sadly.
“Did Mrs Wheeler know her husband was a member of the Co-operative?”
“No. Jess never told her, and she’s not the inquisitive type. Judith accepts things.”
“She’s dumb,” Beryl said scornfully. “Any other woman would have guessed what was going on. But not Judith. She can’t see further than her own nose.”
Johnny wondered whether it was her own liaison with Wheeler, rather than Wheeler’s criminal activities, which prompted her scorn.
For some minutes now there had been the sound of activity in the chamber outside. Johnny looked at his watch. It was close on midnight, and he wondered if the Boozer was still at the farm, or if Gislap had managed to allay whatever suspicion had brought him there. Or maybe it wasn’t the Boozer. Maybe it was just a routine visit by the local copper on a matter unconnected with Crime Co-operative.
Sweating at the thought, he lit one of his two remaining cigarettes.
“What do you honestly think will happen to you now, Mrs Sinclair?” he asked. It was the woman he had to convince. Where she went the man would follow.
“Happen?” Startled out of her lethargy, she stared at him. “How do you mean, happen?”
Break her in gently, he thought. Shock her, and she may crumble.
“Were you awake when they brought me in?” he asked.
She shook her head. When he explained the threat implicit in Cooper’s parting words she was unimpressed. Intimidation, she said. A threat they had no intention of carrying out.
“Oh, but they have,” he assured her. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have been so free with their information.”
“Well, I’m sorry.” It was a conventional
response. She was too selfish to feel sorrow at the fate of a stranger. “Though I still think you’re wrong. But even if you’re right — well, we’re different from you. Mark’s one of them, and I’m his wife. You’re a policeman.”
“They won’t kill me because I’m a policeman.” Was she being deliberately blind? “They’ll kill me because I’m here, because they know damned well that if I’m released they’re finished. The same applies to you and your husband. You know as much, if not more, than I do; and you have a personal, not merely an official, reason to — well, shop them. They’ve murdered your friends, taken your money (it wasn’t yours, of course, but we’ll let that pass), searched your house in your absence, frightened and threatened and imprisoned you. If anyone has a grudge against them you have. Do you think a mere promise to keep your mouth shut will persuade them to let you go? Do you, Mrs Sinclair?”
She shivered. “You mean — you really think they might kill us? Oh, no!”
“It’s a possibility you have to face.”
Sinclair said sharply, “How do you know they searched our house? It’s the first I’ve heard of it.”
Johnny realized that he had been indiscreet. Not that the truth mattered now. But he was still a policeman, and he said smoothly, “Your neighbour told us. She saw a man letting himself in with a key Wednesday night. The assumption is obvious.”
“But why? And how did they come by a key?”
“They took mine,” Beryl said.
“Oh!” Sinclair paused to consider. “But what were they after? They’d got the money. Did they say?”
She shook her head. But Johnny was too good a policeman not to know when a witness was lying, and he said gently, “Not all the money, I fancy. Eh, Mrs Sinclair?”
“So what?” she snapped.
Sinclair stared at her. “You mean you took some of it home?”
“Just a few thousands. And why not? There were things I’d needed for years. I didn’t see why I should go without any longer. Not when we were rich.”
She sounded in no way contrite. Only defiant. Her husband shook his head in incredulous dismay. But he did not reproach her.