The White Mercedes

by Philip Pullman

  But Barry Springer had a conscience about drugs. He had a conscience about theft anyway, but at least money was clean. He decided privately that the Securicor job would be his last, and that he’d take his share of the money and go somewhere else, and start up a little business.

  The robbery went wrong. The Carson brothers were carrying guns, which they’d never done before, and the Securicor guards were far more alert than they’d expected. Billy Carson panicked and shot one of them; the guard died at once, and the gang fled with only a fraction of the money they’d hoped for.

  Over the next couple of days the Carsons ran wild, as if they knew they were finished. They shot and wounded a building society cashier and got away with four thousand pounds; they shot and killed a sub-postmaster and stole three hundred; and then by pure chance they got their biggest haul of all. They were driving about more or less at random when they saw another security van, this time taking money away from a bank.

  If they hadn’t been drinking, and desperate, and if they hadn’t known they were doomed, they’d never have tried it. But on the spur of the moment Frank Carson pulled the car into the kerb, and ninety seconds later they were speeding away through the south London streets with one hundred and forty-seven thousand pounds in the car and two men lying dead on the pavement behind them.

  They hid the car and the money at once in a lock-up garage in Deptford, and while Billy went home to pack, Frank went to a travel agent’s to buy tickets for Spain. He never got home. When he got off the bus he could sense that something was wrong, and as he turned the corner and saw the police marksmen outside the block of council flats, the roadblock, the megaphones, he knew that Billy was either going to be taken prisoner or shot.

  He quickly stepped back into the main street and took a bus to the lock-up. At least with the money he could lie low and get another passport, his own still being in the flat with Billy.

  But the money was gone. Frank knew that the only other person who knew about the lock-up was Barry Springer, who hadn’t been on any jobs since the first Securicor one when Billy shot the guard.

  Frank was a little cooler-headed than Billy, but not much; not enough to prevent himself from getting in the car and speeding to Barry Springer’s house in fury.

  It was too late. Springer wasn’t there, and nor were his wife and his small son. Instead, Frank burst in through the door to find himself facing armed policemen, lying in wait for him. He was arrested at once.

  By that time, Billy had been shot dead. He had wounded two policemen in the gunfight; one of them died in hospital. Frank was tried for murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The chief witness for the prosecution was Barry Springer. Because he’d turned Queen’s evidence, he was not charged himself. He was allowed to go free. He changed his name to Miller and moved away from London with his family; the police helped him to cover his tracks.

  But Frank and Billy Carson had a younger brother. His name was Edward. He had taken no part in their criminal activities; in fact he was training to be a chartered accountant. He wanted to take up that career not so much to be respectable as to have a respectable cover. He had no intention of getting money honestly, but, he thought, a chartered accountant would know ways of making stolen money look clean. He was a cleverer man than Frank and Billy; clever enough to keep quiet and to seem to know nothing about what they were up to. He was prouder and stronger, too, and quite incapable of forgiving.

  So when Billy was killed and Frank sent to prison for what would be at least twenty years, Edward Carson swore that he’d get even with Barry Springer. Barry had betrayed Billy and he’d got Frank an even heavier sentence, because the court simply hadn’t believed that Frank didn’t know where the money was.

  Carson was certain that Springer had it, and he was going to make him pay.

  Four

  From start to finish on Tuesday the job took Chris five hours. By the end of it all the old wiring was replaced with new, and there was a ring main circuit with four double sockets on it, a radial circuit for a cooker, and a lighting circuit with two ceiling roses. In addition, Chris had thought of a variation on Barry’s infra-red idea, and put in the wiring for it: a floodlight mounted on the outside of the shed, which could also be switched on or off from inside.

  When he’d finished, he checked that everything worked, that all the cable was securely tucked alongside the wooden battens that were going to carry plasterboard, that all the sawdust and odd bits of cable and flex and plastic were swept up. It was three in the afternoon and he’d finished for the day.

  He locked the shed and pushed his bike along the track. It was too rough for a good road bike; you could slam about on it with a mountain bike, but to Chris mountain bikes were clumsy, heavy things. No one needed a mountain bike in Oxford, so almost by definition anyone who rode one was a poser. Chris’s idea of cycling was the speed and courage of the Tour de France; he saved his wheels for the road.

  When he came out at Wolvercote he got on at once, head down, and rode hard for the Cowley Road. It took him fifteen minutes to get to Jenny’s house, where he found no one in. He hadn’t actually arranged to meet her, but he still felt disappointed.

  He cruised up and down for a few minutes before swinging away from the Cowley Road and heading for Rose Hill.

  This was an area of small shops and semi-detached houses at the south of the city, where his father had lived for the previous six months with Diane. Chris wasn’t sure why he was going there now, except that he didn’t want to go home.

  He was surprised to see a FOR SALE board outside the house, but when Diane answered the doorbell, he forgot it at once. She was pretty, blonde, plumpish, about twenty-three or twenty-four years old. Chris had known her since she’d come to work in his father’s office two years before.

  ‘Chris! Hi. Er—come in. Your dad’s in the garden…’

  He wished he didn’t blush so easily. It was Diane’s being so pretty, and it was her short skirt and bare legs, and the warm flowery afternoon air, and it was the way she was smiling at him, too, as if she liked him.

  He went through the narrow living room and out through the French window into the sunny little back garden.

  ‘Hi, Dad,’ he said.

  His father, in shorts and T-shirt and Panama hat for his balding head, looked up from the papers on the board across his lap.

  ‘Hello, boy,’ he said. ‘What the hell do you want, then?’

  This was a standard greeting. His father was very fond of him, and Chris knew it.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Business is booming, son. That’s why I’m sitting here doing it in the sunshine. How’s Mum?’

  ‘Fine. Mike Fairfax is living with…’

  He was going to say us, but that wouldn’t have been true. Mike Fairfax was sleeping with Chris’s mother, not living with him. His father brightened with interest.

  ‘Really? Fairfax the philosopher?’

  ‘Yes. She’s gone all political. She wears badges and goes to meetings and things.’

  He sat on the step of the patio and held out his hand to the black and white kitten playing there, which batted suspiciously at it before running away to hide under a lavender bush.

  ‘I know the type,’ his father said. ‘Fairfax, I mean. Don’t tell me, he’s Labour, isn’t he? Can’t be a Liberal. Must be Labour. Am I right?’

  ‘Even if I said no, you’d tell me I was making a mistake.’

  ‘Stands out a mile. He’s got a social conscience, I can tell. I never had one of them. Your mum was shocked when she found out. I remember, soon after we got married, the big thing then was saving the tiger. I said save the bloody tiger, good idea, we can use it for medical experiments, get a lot more experiments per tiger than per rat. She didn’t take to that. Serious woman, you see. Still, if old Fairfax is keeping her warm, fair enough. Thank you, Diane, bless you…’

  Diane had appeared with a tray of tea and a plate of greasy-looking home-made biscuits. His fath
er reached down and took one.

  ‘You’re getting fat,’ Chris said.

  ‘Fat? What’s that? Would you say I was fat, Diane?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You’re a shapeless old lump.’

  She tipped his hat over his face and went inside.

  ‘You see how she treats me?’ said his father, delighted, his mouth full of biscuit.

  ‘Did Diane make these?’ Chris asked him.

  ‘Yes. Don’t you like ’em?’

  ‘They’re very nice, yeah. Are you working from home now, Dad?’

  ‘When I can. No point in going into the office if I can sit here and do it. Not a lot of work about now, anyway. I’m doing an extension for some rich geezer out at Charlbury at the moment. I talked him into having his whole house redone. He’s made a lot of money so he wants it classical, that’s what all the yuppies like, pediments and columns and things. I can fake it easy enough, but I hate it really. I thought I’d do a kind of Florentine dome on his garage, except he’d probably spot I was pulling his leg.’

  ‘You shouldn’t do it if you hate it. That’s just prostitution.’

  ‘Pays the rent. Nothing immoral about paying the rent.’

  ‘Yeah, but…You should do what your talent tells you, not what some rich bloke decides…’

  ‘I am. My talent’s for faking. Anyway, he’s paying, he can have what he wants. I make sure it won’t fall down and the rain won’t come in.’

  He frowned, fumbled in his trouser pocket, and pulled out a tattered tube of indigestion tablets.

  ‘Flaming biscuits,’ he said, thickly chewing a tablet, ‘always give me gip. She’s a wonderful girl, you know, Diane. Tremendous talent.’

  ‘Talent?’

  ‘For architecture.’

  ‘Really?’

  He hoped he didn’t sound sceptical. He didn’t mean to.

  ‘Yeah,’ his father went on, ‘she’s wasted as a secretary. She’s going to do the Polytechnic course. What about you? What are you doing with yourself?’

  Chris told him about Barry Miller and the job. He wondered if he should mention the hideaway, and thought it wouldn’t matter as long as he didn’t say where it was.

  ‘Gangsters after him?’ his father said. ‘He’s having you on. What he wants is a love nest.’

  ‘He’s not like that!’

  ‘Betcher. Somewhere to take a girlfriend. That’s why he didn’t want you to tell his wife. We don’t have gangsters running around, not in Oxford.’

  ‘He’s not like that,’ Chris said stubbornly. The idea of Barry deceiving Sue and Sean, breaking up that close and loving family, was horrible.

  ‘Oh, well, I suppose I can talk,’ said his father, sighing. ‘Oh, I know what I was going to ask you. We’re going away, me and Diane, just for the weekend. Friday to Sunday. You couldn’t pop in and keep an eye on the cat, could you?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure.’

  ‘Little bastard shits everywhere, eats everything, and bites. It’d suit me if you could get him run over, but Diane’d be upset, you better not. Just feed him and water him. I’d ask the neighbours, but we had words the other day; they’re a dodgy bunch. We’re not going to stay here long.’

  ‘Oh yeah! I saw the “For Sale” board outside. Where are you going?’

  ‘Out Long Hanborough way. We’ve got a place already. Filthy dirty old cottage—the outside toilet’s the only thing holding it up. I got Mike Lovell working on it now. He did the kitchen extension, remember him? As soon as it’s ready we’ll move out there so this’ll be vacant for a buyer. Here, you could stay here over the weekend, if you wanted. Give Mum and Fairfax a run of the house on their own. Have some mates in here, if you like. Make a noise and annoy the neighbours.’

  ‘Yeah! Right, I will.’

  Chris knew instantly what he was going to do that weekend. He said goodbye to his father, having arranged to pick up the key on Friday afternoon, and went back through the French window. He looked around for Diane, to say goodbye, and found her coming downstairs. She looked past him and shut the living room door so that they were alone in the hall together.

  ‘Chris,’ she said quietly, ‘your mum…Is she all right?’

  ‘He kept asking that,’ Chris told her. ‘Yes, she’s fine, honest.’

  ‘Because she’s such a nice person. I’d hate it if she was, you know, unhappy or anything. I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘Well, she was at first. But I think she’s OK now. She’s actually got this boyfriend, so probably she’s not going to commit suicide or anything.’

  She gave him a complicated look and twisted her mouth. She looked even younger than Jenny. She was so close that he could smell the soap she’d been using.

  ‘I couldn’t bear it if everyone thought, you know, I was just…’

  ‘Course they don’t,’ said Chris vaguely. ‘Dad says you’re going to do an architecture course at the Poly.’

  ‘Yeah. It was his idea really. It looks interesting…’

  They stood awkwardly for a second or so, two people closer in age, personality and manner to each other than either was to the man outside, the father, the lover. Then Diane gave a rueful little smile and opened the door for him to leave.

  Five

  Chris’s mother was quite happy for him to stay at his father’s house at the weekend. He hadn’t known what her reaction would be; she’d become unpredictable since taking up with Mike Fairfax, or else Chris had become less good at guessing. He’d been afraid that she’d make a scene, treat it as desertion, taking his father’s side against her, and so on. In fact she seemed pleased.

  ‘How is he?’ she said that evening as the three of them sat at supper.

  ‘He kept asking how you were. He’s fine. He’s getting fat.’

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Well, if he’s not worried about getting fat, he won’t do what that man in Switzerland did.’

  ‘Man in Switzerland?’ said Mike Fairfax.

  ‘The year before last,’ Chris told him, ‘when we were on holiday, there was this middle-aged bloke in the hotel with a really young girl, she was half his age. And he was obviously trying to impress her with how fit he was. Everywhere we went we’d see him jogging or swimming or doing press-ups, and she was trailing along behind looking dead bored. They have these exercise runs marked out in the forest, with wooden apparatus set up, so you run a bit and then do bench-jumps and chin-ups and then run a bit more. Anyway, he was out one morning impressing her and he had a heart attack and snuffed it, just like that.’

  Mike made a non-committal reply and helped himself to some grapes. He went running every morning himself, which was why Chris had told the story. He was a good man, Chris could see that; he was concerned and committed and energetic and kind and decent. He was particularly keen to involve Chris in things, to defer to him politely as an inhabitant of the house of longer standing, to treat him as a sensible intelligent adult. It was one of the biggest mysteries in the world, Chris thought, how someone who did all the right things could be so irritating.

  However, he wasn’t important. The only important thing was Jenny, and the fact that Chris was going to see her the following evening.

  Some of Barry Miller’s lighting equipment was on hire to a theatre group who were performing Romeo and Juliet in one of the college gardens. Chris had asked Jenny to come to it with him, and she had agreed. Chris had bought the tickets and washed and shaved and dressed in his sharpest casual clothes, and by the time he was standing outside the college lodge, where they’d agreed to meet, he was shaking with nerves.

  He had no idea why, except that this was a formal kind of date, something he’d never done before. But when she turned the corner into the narrow medieval street, looking so fresh and sweet and wise, his heart nearly burst with pride and love, and he found his hands reaching out for her of their own accord, almost. Hers responded. They stood for a silly second or two smiling at each other, and he thought This
is the first time we’ve touched.

  The stage was a wooden floor under the trees, with the seats built up in tiers around it. They sat high up and watched the story unfold, a little patch of tragic light in the gathering darkness. Chris hardly noticed it. All his attention was focused on Jenny, on her hand in his, on the delicate curve of her bare neck, on the fresh freesia-like smell of her perfume, the same one he’d smelt on the ball gown in the boathouse.

  During the interval she said, ‘I’ve never seen a Shakespeare play before. We did this at school, but I never paid any attention. It were all mixed up with West Side Story, and we had to do our own modern version with punks and that. I didn’t know it’d be like this.’

  ‘Don’t you like it?’

  ‘It’s wonderful!’

  At the end she cried. At least, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed. Chris found himself more moved by that than by the play itself.

  They walked out through the lamplit garden, holding hands, and a tense expectation seemed to be hanging in the air, like heavy fruit on the trees all around.

  Outside the garden, in the narrow cobbled lane with the high garden wall on one side and the ancient stone of a college on the other, she said ‘I was wondering…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was wondering if you were ever going to get round to kissing me.’

  He let his bicycle fall and put his arms around her. He’d expected warmth and softness, but never in this degree, and never combined with a lithe and sinuous strength that seemed to quiver like a flame in his arms.

  Dazed with it, he hardly knew how much time had passed when they drew apart. They were standing a little way from an old street lamp mounted on the college wall, and her half-shadowed face looked strong and mysterious, like an Aztec sculpture.