Putting it like that, Sangster made it sound almost legal, no worse than evasion of income tax or a bit of small-time smuggling at the end of a continental holiday. It was sophistry of course, and Benton knew it was; but he found himself accepting it, going along with Sangster’s reasoning because he wanted to.
‘It’s easy money,’ Sangster told him. ‘You like money, don’t you?’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘You’d like to be rich, wouldn’t you?’
‘Are you rich, Eddie?’
‘I would be if I didn’t spend so much. Easy come, easy go. But I’ve got a bit put by. And I’m enjoying life. I’m having a whale of a time. Are you? Be truthful, now.’
‘Well – ’
‘Of course you’re not. What are you doing? Drudgery for peanuts. Is that the style for a hero who caused a hundred thousand dee ems of damage with a tank? You bet it’s not. So what do you say, Tom?’
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘You do that and let me know what you decide. But you’d be a fool to pass up the opportunity. And Tom – ’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t take too long making up your mind, because if you don’t come in we’ll have to look around for somebody else. I’d like it to be you; I know the kind of guy you are and I’m pretty damn sure I can sell you to the others. But, like I said, don’t hang around.’
Benton promised not to hang around. And in fact he could have given his answer there and then, because he knew in his heart what it would be. He was sick of serving pints of ale to a lot of morons, humping crates of bottles, washing dirty glasses, sweeping out barrooms reeking of beer and stale tobacco smoke. It was time for a change, and Sangster had shown him the way to a glittering future.
He really would be a fool not to take the chance that had been offered.
That had all been a couple of years ago. And Sangster had been right about the money; there had been plenty of it coming in. But he had never put any of it in a bank, never saved for a rainy day. He had lost a lot on the horses and gambling, and there had been holidays with Jackie in the South of France and Spain and even the Bahamas, which really drained the purse.
And the trouble was that he could never be sure he was truly enjoying the life, because deep down he despised himself for what he was doing. Perhaps it was that old inherited puritanical honesty showing through, nagging at him, stirring his conscience, telling him that what he was doing was wrong and he would surely be punished for his misdeeds in the end.
Yet for two years everything had gone smoothly enough. True, there had been one or two narrow squeaks, but they had got away with it each time and he had begun to believe they always would. But increasingly there had been that doubt about Houlder, the fear that he would do some crazy thing and land them all in the cart.
And now he had done it; he had killed two men and things could never be the same again.
‘Damn Gus Houlder! Damn him to hell!’
4
Parting
Jackie stayed in bed until midday. Then she got up and spent nearly an hour in the bathroom.
‘Do you want to go somewhere for lunch?’ Benton asked, when she had finally completed her toilet. ‘Or would you rather stay in and cook up something here?’
‘Oh, let’s go out for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘I can’t stick around here all day. It’d drive me crackers.’
So they went out.
‘How much do you think there’ll be?’ Jackie asked, launching an attack on a chocolate sundae.
‘I don’t know,’ Benton said. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. And keep your voice down. We don’t want everyone in the place to hear.’
‘They wouldn’t know what we were talking about if they did,’ she said. But she lowered her voice all the same. ‘It should be a nice lot, I’d think. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Maybe.’
It had been the first time she had taken part in an operation and qualified for a share of the take. Previously she had always had to be content with what he chose to give her. He could tell that it excited her, and this excitement was enough to push into the background the misgivings she undoubtedly had because of the killings; at least for the present.
‘So you haven’t any idea how much it’ll be?’ she asked, still harping on that subject.
‘It’ll be enough.’
‘Oh no, Tom,’ she said, ‘not enough. Whatever it is it won’t be enough. It couldn’t be.’
‘At least it’ll keep us going for a while.’
‘You know what I’d like, Tom?’ There was a dreamy faraway look in her eyes, as though she were gazing at some distant vision of untold bliss.
‘No,’ he said. ‘What would you like?’
‘I’d like for us to get a really big windfall one of these days, so that we could buy a place in the West Indies or somewhere like that. Then we could go and live there in that lovely tropical climate with a marvellous white beach to laze on, and there’d be bathing and water-skiing and maybe our own yacht. It’d be paradise.’
Benton was not so sure it was what he would have settled for. He was not sure he wanted to share a tropical island paradise with Jackie Fulton. In fact he was pretty certain he did not. If he had really been in love with her things might have been different; but he was not; and he had been thinking for quite a while that maybe it was about time he made the break and got clean away from her. He had been finding her company and her habits less and less to his taste, but he knew she would raise hell if he told her he was walking out on her, so he kept putting it off.
And of course if he did move out of the flat he would have to find somewhere else to live, so when it came to the point he just took the easy line and veered away from making a decision. But a tropical island with Jackie! No, that was clean out of the question, even if they had the money.
‘What do we do this afternoon?’ she said. ‘We’ve got to kill the time somehow.’
‘We could go to the National Gallery.’
She stared at him, baby blue eyes opening wide. ‘The what?’
‘The National Gallery. You know, that big building on the north side of Trafalgar Square. You must have seen it. It’s got a portico with Greek columns.’
‘Of course I’ve seen it.’
‘Have you ever been inside?’
‘No, I haven’t, and I don’t want to. Are you seriously suggesting we should go and look at a lot of mouldy old pictures?’
‘You look at old pictures on TV,’ Benton said, ‘and a lot of them are as mouldy as they come.’
‘Oh, very funny. You’re so sharp you want to mind you don’t cut yourself.’
‘How about a theatre matinée, then?’
‘I don’t like theatres. I’d rather see a film.’
So they went to a cinema and saw a bad film and went back to the flat and had a snack and waited for it to be time to set out for the meeting.
‘It had better be a nice big dollop of money,’ Jackie said. ‘I just hope they’re not going to cheat us. I mean they could have counted it yesterday and handed themselves a good fat bonus before ever we got a look in. How would we know?’
‘They wouldn’t do that.’
‘Why not? No, don’t tell me. Honour among thieves. Bullshit.’
‘Eddie wouldn’t let them do it. I’d trust Eddie with my life.’
‘What you’re saying is you wouldn’t trust the other two?’
‘Maybe not. Not all the way. But Eddie, yes.’
‘Me,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t trust any one of them.’
Sangster’s place, where the meeting was being held, was a run-down old property in North London which he had bought with some of his ill-gotten capital. There was a wilderness of a garden which nobody looked after, but an elderly woman took care of the household chores.
She was a widow, a Mrs Ellis, who had a great respect for her employer and believed he had some kind of job in the City. He paid her well and she asked no questions. If, arriving f
or work in the morning, she found him in bed with a young lady she made no remark. She had the admirable quality of discretion and considered it none of her business how Mr Sangster occupied his spare time.
Whether she would have been quite so discreet if she had known by what means he obtained the money to pay her wages was a matter for conjecture; but since he himself was never likely to tell her it was improbable that she would ever be forced to make the choice between her loyalty to him and her regard for the law.
Benton drove out to the house in the Vauxhall with Jackie by his side and arrived just five minutes before nine o’clock. It was already, on that day in early summer, beginning to grow dark and there were two other cars there. Benton identified them as Dobie’s little blue Metro and Houlder’s white Mercedes.
Sangster opened the door to them, and Benton got the immediate impression that he was not in the best of spirits; his greeting was low-keyed and he looked tired.
‘Hello, Tom,’ he said. ‘Hello, Jackie. Come in. The others are here.’
‘Yes,’ Benton said. ‘I saw their cars.’
They went into the hall, and Sangster closed the front door and locked it. They found Dobie and Houlder in a large room which looked as though it had been furnished with bits and pieces collected haphazardly. There were some good armchairs and a chesterfield, but nothing matched; it was apparent that Sangster was not bothered with questions of décor.
The heavy velvet curtains were drawn and the two men were sitting in armchairs, smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky. There was a sideboard against one wall, and it was loaded with bottles and glasses. Dobie had a bandage round his head and he looked sick; neither he nor Houlder appeared to be any happier than Sangster.
‘What’s wrong?’ Benton asked. ‘You look like mourners at a funeral.’
Houlder gave him a sour look. ‘You think we should be dancing for joy?’
‘I think you should be more cheerful than you seem.’
‘What have we got to be cheerful about?’ Dobie asked.
‘Well, you didn’t get taken by the cops, did you?’
‘So?’
‘So that’s good, isn’t it? And you got away with the money. So that’s good, too.’
‘What money?’ Houlder said.
‘What do you mean, what money? The money from the security van. What else would I be talking about?’
‘There ain’t any,’ Dobie said.
Benton suddenly felt sick. Suddenly he could see why they were all looking so down in the mouth. It was a funeral; a funeral of great expectations.
Jackie let out a screech. ‘No money? You mean you lost it? You went and lost it all?’
‘Well, we sure ain’t got it,’ Houlder said. He sounded angry and bitter and he glared at the girl. ‘So shut your trap or maybe I’ll shut it for you.’
She ignored the warning and raised her voice to a higher pitch. ‘You’re lying. I don’t believe you. You’re trying to cheat us.’ She turned to Benton. ‘I told you so. I told you we couldn’t trust these bastards.’
‘Now cool it, Jackie,’ Benton said. ‘Let’s hear what they have to say before jumping to conclusions.’
‘Hear what they have to say? You know what they’ll say. You heard already; they haven’t got the money. That’s a likely story. They’ve got it stashed away somewhere.’
‘Now wait a minute.’
‘Wait a minute? Why should I wait a minute? I want my share and I want it now. I earned it, didn’t I? I played my part and I’m entitled to my percentage. Are you going to let them get away with this? Are you going to be so gutless that you’re going to sit back and let them cheat us blind?’
‘Tommy,’ Houlder said, ‘why don’t you make that stupid bitch shut up?’
Jackie turned on him. ‘Who are you calling a stupid bitch? Why, you fat moron, it was you was the cause of the trouble in the first place; you with your bloody gun, you trigger-happy brainless sod.’
Houlder’s face darkened and he heaved himself up from the chair and hit her on the side of the face with the flat of his hand. The blow staggered her, and if the chesterfield had not been in the way she might have fallen to the floor. It broke her fall and she came to rest sprawled across the padded seat, fingering her cheek and moaning.
Houlder returned to his chair. ‘Maybe that’ll learn you. Now hold your yap.’
Jackie, with tears in her eyes, looked at Benton in a kind of mute appeal, but he had turned away and was speaking to Sangster.
‘What happened? How did you lose the money?’
‘It got burnt in the Jag,’ Sangster said.
‘You’d better give us the whole story.’
Sangster gave it briefly. After dropping Benton and the girl he had driven on with the others in the Jaguar. They had come to a police road-block but had crashed through it. There had been a chase but he had shaken off the pursuit and got the Jaguar on to a side-road. They had gone about two miles further and were travelling fast when they came to a sudden bend in the narrow road. There had been no way the car could get round the bend at the speed it was going; it went off the road, smashed through a wooden fence, rolled down a slope, turning over three times, came to rest on its side and burst into flames.
‘There was no chance of getting the stuff out of the boot. Gus and me, we’d got seat-belts on and they saved us from injury. Dob was in the back with no belt on. He got a crack on the skull. We had to drag him out because he was knocked silly. We were all lucky not to get fried alive, but there was no way we could get the cash.’
‘How’d you get back home?’
‘We did a bit of walking. Then we had a slice of luck. There was this car parked by the side of the road. Some farmer must have left it there, I’d say, while he went to take a look at his crops or some such. So we borrowed it and drove to where we left the Volvo.’
Benton did not doubt the truth of the story. Jackie might not believe it, but he did. The fact of the matter was that Eddie had made an error of judgement; he had been driving far too fast on a narrow country road which had not been familiar to him. And there had been no need; they had already shaken off the police who had been chasing them and he should have driven with more care.
But it was easy to say that now; one could make a cool assessment after the event, but in the heat of the moment it was not such a simple matter. Anyway, it was done now, and no amount of thinking of what might have been was going to bring the money back to them. Jackie could say goodbye to her slice of the cake now, because there was no cake.
He glanced at her. He wondered whether she would accuse Sangster and the other two of cooking up the story he had just related; but she was silent. She just sat on the chesterfield, gently rubbing her cheek and looking glum. Perhaps she believed it after all; there had been that report on the radio of the finding of the burnt-out Jag, so it fitted. And so a meeting that should have seen a sharing out of the loot had degenerated into a post-mortem instead.
‘Now what do we do?’
‘For the present,’ Sangster said, ‘I’d say we lie low, wait till the hue and cry over the killings has died down. It’d be crazy to set anything else up for a while.’
‘I think you’re right,’ Benton said. He looked at Houlder. ‘What do you say, Gus?’
‘And what do we live on while we’re lying low?’ Houlder asked sourly.
‘We live on our fat,’ Sangster told him.
‘That may be all very fine for you. Maybe you’ve got a nice little nest-egg stowed away. But me, I’m down on my uppers.’
‘Too bad,’ Sangster said. He appeared to have little sympathy for Houlder in his financial straits. ‘How about you, Dob?’
Dobie shrugged. ‘I’ll manage.’
Apart from the half-hearted dissent on Houlder’s part there appeared to be unanimous agreement that, despite the failure of the security van operation, there should be a period of inaction. When they had come to that decision there seemed to be nothing else to discuss and the m
eeting broke up. Sangster accompanied Benton to his car and looked in at the window for a parting word or two.
‘Any plans, Tom?’
‘I don’t know,’ Benton said. ‘Maybe I’ll get out of town for a time; make a break with all this.’
‘Not thinking of getting out for good, are you?’
‘Would it be such a bad idea? We’ve really come a cropper this time.’
‘That’s the way it goes. Some you win, some you don’t. Doesn’t necessarily mean the next one will go wrong.’
‘With Gus in the team I think there’ll always be an even chance of that. Personally I’d like to stay out of the nick.’
‘Who wouldn’t? Maybe we could make some changes, ease the bastard out.’
‘He’d make trouble. He’s as mean as they come.’
‘I know, I know.’ Sangster looked worried. Benton had never seen him so depressed. Perhaps he could see things cracking up, the luck running out. Benton himself had a feeling that they had had the good times and that the way ahead was going to be increasingly rough.
He started the engine. ‘Have to leave you, Eddie.’ Dobie and Houlder had already gone. ‘Look after yourself.’
‘I’ll try,’ Sangster promised. ‘So long, Jackie.’
Benton turned the car and got it out of the jungle that passed for a front garden. They were well on their way when Jackie said:
‘What was all that about getting out of town?’
‘It was just something that came into my head. I think it might be worth a try.’
‘You might have asked me what I thought.’
‘How could I? It only just came to me.’
‘I don’t believe it. I think you’ve had this in your mind for some time. You don’t tell me everything.’
She was right about that, he thought. There were a lot of things he kept from her. And perhaps she kept a lot from him; so maybe they were quits on that score.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ve told you this now. So what do you think of it?’
‘Where are you proposing to go?’
Dishonour Among Thieves Page 4