I glared at him but did as he asked. I hooked my fingers in the slit and brought it down about level with my mouth. He gave a short laugh.
“For Chrissake, Rodge! Your own mother couldn’t recognize you again from that much. I certainly couldn’t.”
“The security video—”
“The camera’s trained just in front of the counter, Rodge. If it picked you up at all when you cased the branch you’ll be a small figure somewhere in the background, apparently making a phone call. There’s no way she could recognize you again from that. And that’s assuming they haven’t recorded over it by now. Now, you said you hit her. Where? How hard?”
I thought about it, seeing for a moment the crumpled body, blood streaming from the right side of her head where I hit her the first time. The second blow had been heavier. I know I hit her as hard as I could but I wasn’t at my usual strength and the gun was only half its normal weight.
“On the head,” I said quietly. “Quite hard.”
“Did you knock her out?”
“Yes.”
He grimaced. “Okay. By now, that branch will be crawling with police. In a few more minutes they’ll be loading her into an ambulance and carting her off to hospital—probably the A & E at Charing Cross.”
“I’ll go there, then—”
“Will you wait a moment? Now listen. She’s a material witness so they’ll certainly give her a police escort. They’ll have a quiet word with someone and she’ll be whisked away to a private room with a police guard on the door.”
“If we found out where, you could project me—”
“Let me finish. You say you knocked her out. She’s got concussion. In all probability she’ll have no memory whatever of what happened in the few minutes before you hit her. Even if she does remember, she hasn’t seen enough of you to be able to recognize you again. At some stage, forensic may scrape under her fingernails. They won’t find anything there either because every bit of you came back together when we killed the resonance, including the skin and blood she scraped off your face. So, Rodge,” he said it slowly, with heavy emphasis, “what in fuck’s name are you worried about?”
I bit my lip. Mike was still looking at me, one eyebrow raised. It was easier for him to think logically; he hadn’t just been through what I’d been through. That’s why I’d over-reacted. Normally I wouldn’t have let him take charge of me like that. I took a deep breath and expelled it slowly.
“All right.”
“Now listen, Rodge.” His voice was more conciliatory. “Let’s not take our eye off the ball. We’ve put a lot of effort into this. We’re ready to roll. All we need to do is hit Suzy’s branch tomorrow morning. It’ll be nice and easy. They’ll all be round the back, doing the book-keeping, so there’s no risk of something like this happening again. Now, are you up for it or not?”
I considered it for a moment. It was true I’d lost sight of the bigger picture. The important thing was to make sure that slime Meredrew was well and truly shafted. Nothing must deflect me from that.
“It shook me up a bit, Mike, that’s all. I’m all right now.”
“So we’re going in as planned?”
“Yes.”
“Good man. Tomorrow’s the day we put the final pieces in place.”
28
The “string of daring bank robberies” had hit the national press by now, and of course they’d all been talking about it in the bank. Suzy was quite excited when she came home that evening. They’d been told to tighten up on security, but everyone was focusing on points of entry, of course, so it didn’t affect our plan in the slightest. Suzy didn’t seem to connect the robberies with us. That wasn’t surprising. Her imagination would never have stretched to the sort of technology Mike and I were using, and she wouldn’t have guessed in a million years that her two nice flatmates were a couple of hold-up artists.
She’d brought home a Daily Telegraph and Mike and I had a quick look through it while she was changing out of her working clothes. The news coverage of the robberies was brief and factual but there was some additional comment in one of the columns, written in a faintly humorous vein. It ended:
…What the police and everyone else will be wondering is: why? Why set up an elaborate armed robbery, with all the risks involved, for the comparatively small amount of money in a bank till? It’s possible the thieves thought they would get away with more. If so this must be one of the most incompetent gangs in criminal history.
Mike gave a derisive laugh but I was irritated.
“Who the hell are they are calling incompetent?” I demanded.
“Shh, Rodge!” he hissed. “Don’t let Suzy hear you. Look, don’t take any notice of these idiots. They’re treating it like a conventional crime. They’ve got no idea what they’re dealing with.”
We worked on Suzy again that evening, making sure she understood precisely what she had to do the following morning and how important it was. She soon lost patience with us.
“For God’s sake, you two, will you stop treating me like some kind of idiot! I said I’ll do it and I’ll do it. I don’t know why I did, and it’s against my better judgement, but I said I would, and I will. Now, leave me alone!”
We left her alone.
*
In the morning we were out of the flat before she was, but she would see nothing unusual in that. Mike had already covered it by pretending to complain about my long-winded experiments.
At the lab we switched on the equipment and went through what we’d come to refer to as our “flight checks”. By eight-thirty I was in the cage with the duffel bag. I gave Mike the nod.
The moment I landed behind the counter I could see that Suzy had done her stuff: all three till drawers were very slightly open. I transferred the money in the drawers to my duffel bag, being careful to close each drawer afterwards. It took just a few minutes and nobody saw me. I gave the signal and I was back in the lab.
We took the money out of the bag and dropped it straight into the bank safe deposit envelope that Suzy had got for us. I was about to lick the flap to seal it down when Mike stopped me.
“Don’t lick it. Forensic may be able to analyse the saliva.”
“So what?”
“They’ll check it against Meredrew’s, and it won’t match.”
“Ah, I see what you mean. What then? Sellotape?”
“No, it’ll take fingerprints. Use tap water—here, use a tissue to wet the flap. Okay, now stick it down.”
Next we set the coordinates for Meredrew’s house. We’d put in some preparation for this bit. I’d been down there once, by public transport, at night. I found it easily enough. It was a typical suburban house in a row of typical suburban houses. It was certainly a far cry from my family home. I remember standing there on the pavement, thinking that this pathetic life style must be what bank managers aspire to. I had the GPS receiver and ultrasonic tape measure in my pocket and it only took a moment or two to record the position and the compass reading and the distance from where I was standing to the front bay. Later I added a couple of metres to extend the distance into the front room and we had the coordinates for the projection.
Mike had also been down there the two previous Fridays, getting there early in the morning to watch the house. The routine was the same each time. The manager left for work at eight sharp, carrying a briefcase. He was obviously walking to the Underground. At eight-thirty the automatic garage door opened and a car backed out. Mike said it was a Mercedes 4X4. The garage door closed and the car drove off. He said there was a driver and a passenger, both women he thought, but he couldn’t see them clearly. It was probably Meredrew’s wife doing the school run because at nine o’clock the car returned with just the driver. Based on that information we thought it would be best if I arrived there at nine-thirty. Risky as it was, I had to do this thing with someone in the house; otherwise the burglar alarm would be set.
So at nine-thirty I was standing in the cage again, equipped as usual except
that this time I was wearing a pair of rubber gloves to make sure I didn’t leave any fingerprints behind. Mike pressed the button and I landed smack in the middle of Meredrew’s front room. It was sparsely furnished as an occasional lounge. A couple of soft armchairs and a sofa were arranged on three sides of a glass coffee table. They faced a gas simulated coal fire set in a tiled fireplace with a mirror over it. The mirror reflected a not-very-good oil painting on the opposite wall. Under the painting there was a sideboard with a dried flower arrangement in a crystal glass vase and some photographs in frames. I strolled over and glanced at the photos without much interest. One was a portrait of a girl of about twelve—his daughter, probably. The next was a black-and-white wedding picture of Meredrew with his bride. The last was a colour photo, a bit faded, of the three of them on holiday somewhere. The daughter was a bit younger then. I looked away—the mere sight of him turned my stomach. This room was presumably used for entertaining. I found it hard to imagine that Meredrew had any friends. Perhaps they were just as odious as he was. More likely it was his wife who had the friends and they had to put up with him. I was wasting time: this room was clearly unsuitable for my purposes.
Somewhere not far away I could hear sounds of movement. I opened the door carefully and peeked out. To the right was the entrance hall and the front door. To the left, towards the back of the house, was a short corridor, at the end of which a door was open. The noises seemed to be coming from in there. I crept towards it. I could see a counter-top, cupboards, and a stone-flagged floor. Clearly this was the kitchen or breakfast room. A sudden noise made me jump; then I realized it was a dishwasher starting up. Immediately to my left was another door. It creaked slightly as I opened it but I didn’t think that would be audible over the steady purr of that dishwasher. I put my head round the door; the room was empty. I went in.
It was a sitting-room with a French window to the garden. There was a television and a small stereo system, with speakers in the corners. On the wall there was a set of mahogany shelves, which were stacked with books, videotapes and CDs. It was perfect. I opened the duffel bag, took out the brown envelope with the money, reached up to the top shelf, and tucked it in behind some large books. Then I stepped back to make sure it wasn’t visible. It wasn’t.
My job was finished. I transferred my awareness back to the cage and signalled for Mike to detune and power down.
“Well done, Rodge.” Mike greeted me. “All okay?”
“Yes. Shame to leave all that money there, though.”
“But worth it.”
“Every penny.”
“Well, there’s only one thing more to do and you can’t do that till tomorrow morning so you may as well relax.”
*
We switched off all the equipment and returned to the flat. Mike bought a Daily Telegraph as we were walking back and we looked through it while we were having our coffee. There was an account of the violent attack on a bank teller the previous morning, which had left the victim unconscious. A statement from the hospital said the woman was suffering from serious head injuries, but that she was now recovering from her ordeal. Her condition was given as “comfortable”. My guess was that it was anything but.
Mike’s voice was flat. He said, “No funny remarks in that column today, I notice. Suddenly it’s no longer a laughing matter.”
“She’ll be all right.”
“It shouldn’t have happened, Rodge.”
I tried to steer him away.
“They seem quite certain this robbery was connected with the others,” I said, “but it looks like that’s just their opinion. The police spokesman says they’re ‘keeping an open mind’.”
“He would say that. A policeman always keeps an open mind when he doesn’t have anything to put in it. I’ll tell you something though, Rodge. The banks are going to be taking this a whole lot more seriously now. A few thousand missing from the till is one thing but this is quite another. It’s not their money they’ll be worrying about; they’re going to have a big job on, trying to reassure their employees and their insurance companies. I bet every branch will get extra security and they’ll have their guards making the rounds of the premises each morning before the staff come to the counters. Whatever else you’ve done, clobbering that woman yesterday has put paid to this kind of caper for the foreseeable future.”
“Well then, it’s lucky we finished in time.”
*
The following morning I phoned the manager of the Bank’s Security Division. I used a soft Irish accent. His secretary tried to block me but I wasn’t having any. Eventually she said she’d see if he could speak to me and shortly after that there was a click and he came on the line.
“Cubbins. Can I help you?”
He sounded irritated, as if helping anyone was the last thing on his mind.
“I wanted to have a word with you about these bank robberies the last two weeks, sir. I have some information I think will interest you.”
“Oh yes?” He sounded mildly interested. “Who am I speaking to, please?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. D’ye want the information or not?”
“Go on,” he said cautiously.
“For all I know, sir, some of these robberies were the genuine article, sir, but I’m thinkin’ this last one on Friday was not that at all.”
“Oh? Why do you say that?”
“Last evenin’ I was at a house in Richmond. Doesn’t matter what I was doin’ there so don’t ask me that if ye don’t mind. Now it so happens the house belongs to that there manager chappie from the bank in Cromwell Road.”
“And…?”
“And didn’t I see him, sir, with a very large amount of money?” I pronounced “large” as “lairge”. I was really getting into this. “Stuffin’ it into a brown envelope he was. A very large amount of money indeed. And he put it behind a bookshelf, so he did.”
“And you saw him do this?”
“That I did, sir.”
“Behind a bookshelf?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So what?”
“Ah, well that’s what I thought meself, sir, until I heard the news this mornin’ about the robbery at his bank. And I was thinkin’ how convenient it might be if he removed that money hisself, and only pretended it was a robbery. It seemed like an awful big coincidence to me now.”
“Well coincidence or not—who did you say you were?”
“I’m not tellin’ you that, sir, for me own good reasons, and begging your pardon if you ax me again I’ll have to put this here phone down.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do?”
“Well, you might go down this day and ax the gentlemen if he keeps large amounts of money at his house. And if he says he does not, you’ll know what to do now, won’t you? And you and your people will have quite a success on their hands.”
“I can’t do that. The man’s a branch manager. The company trusts him completely. I’m not ready to ransack his house on an… some anonymous tip-off.”
“Well, sir, now that’s for you to be decidin’. But I know what I saw with my two eyes and if you don’t do some investigatin’ then I’ll have to contact the police, and then it’ll be out of your hands. And when it all comes out I think your company might want to know why you didn’t do sump’n’ about it yerself.”
There was a pause as this sank in.
“Where are you speaking from?”
I put the phone down. “That’s enough of that,” I said in my normal voice.
Mike was grinning at me. I grinned back. I thought I’d done quite a good job of the accent. I had cousins in County Mayo, and I holidayed with them for a few weeks when I was about twelve. I never forgot the lovely music of the local accent.
“Do you think he took the bait?” Mike asked.
“Yes, I think so. He’s ponderous but he’s not stupid.”
“They’re going to wonder who this Irish, or fake-Irish, gent is, and how he came to see what went on.�
�
“Yes, but only afterwards. If they find that envelope we’ve stitched him up properly. They’ll drive themselves mad about the anonymous tipster but the evidence is solid, so it won’t change anything. Mike, should we tell Suzy about any of this?”
“No,” Mike said quickly. “Don’t breathe a word of it. The less she knows the safer it will be—for her and for us.”
29
On Monday, Suzy came back from work brimming with excitement.
“Guess what!” she said. “Mr. Meredrew’s been suspended! Isn’t it fantastic?”
Rodge and I made “fancy that” kind of noises.
Suzy looked at us and her eyes narrowed.
“You did this, didn’t you? How did you do it?”
I opened my mouth but Mike got in first.
“Trust me on this one, Suzy, it’s better if you don’t know. Who’s taken his place?”
“Owen Hughes is acting up; he was assistant manager.”
She was still eyeing us suspiciously.
“I think I met him once,” I said, trying to divert her from asking more. “Is he a bit portly? Has one of those lovely melodious Welsh voices?”
“That’s right, that’s him. Totally different personality to Meredrew. Still efficient but much more laid back. He likes to give people responsibility. All the staff like him. He’ll probably get the job permanently.”
Suzy was on cloud nine for the rest of the week but when she came home the following Monday she was in an altogether more sombre mood. She had a newspaper folded back to an article, which she shoved at us. I sat down to read it, with Mike looking over my shoulder.
BANK MANAGER DIES
Morton Meredrew, former manager of the Cromwell Road branch of the National Central Bank, was found dead yesterday at his home in Richmond. The police are not looking for anyone else in connection with the incident.
The Man in Two Bodies (British crime novel): A Dark Science Crime Caper Page 15