He heard Houlder give a shout: ‘Let’s go!’ And he managed to get to his feet, and he could see the man who had used the wrench lying with his head in a pool of blood and the two other men staring at him in horror.
Houlder was already pounding off towards the gateway as fast as he could go, and Benton knew that he had to follow him. He still had the Beretta in his right hand, but he had dropped the money-bag and when he stooped to pick it up his head swam and he almost fell again. A voice inside his head was screaming at him to leave it and get to hell out of there, and he took heed of the voice, because he was not at all sure he could have carried the bag anyway, not as he was feeling just them, with his legs turning to rubber and the dizziness and all.
So he turned and headed for the gateway at a lurching run, and he was just in time to see Houlder slamming the door of the BMW before Dobie had it in gear and was accelerating down the road like a bat out of hell. A second later he knew why they had left in such a hurry, because he saw a police car come up from the other direction and start giving chase. It had probably been on patrol and happened to appear on the scene at the critical moment.
Sangster had been right about the luck running out. It was running out fast now.
His head was clearing a little and he knew that he had to get away from there; with the pistol in his hand and the balaclava on his nut he was as conspicuous as a pub sign in the Sahara. There were people about, but nobody was approaching him; which was not surprising, since the Beretta was so easily visible. So he was safe for the moment, but that state of affairs was not likely to last for long; very soon another police car might come screaming up, and when that happened he had better be elsewhere, a long way elsewhere.
He moved off in the direction of the filling-station, and he saw a white Metro standing by one of the pumps. The door on the driver’s side of the car was open and there was no one in it because the driver himself had just gone to the office to pay for the petrol he had put in the tank.
Benton shoved the Beretta in his pocket and got into the car. The keys were there and he started the engine and had the Metro on its way just as the owner put in an appearance and started yelling blue murder. Benton kept going.
He abandoned the Metro in a quiet side-street and left the balaclava on the seat. It was ten o’clock in the evening when he arrived back at the flat, and he felt ready to drop. He had approached warily, on the alert for any sign of a car with two men sitting in it who might be keeping an eye on the building. But there had been nothing to rouse his suspicions and he climbed the stairs and let himself in with his key, thankful to be back safely but sick at heart to think that he had had to leave the bag of money.
Jackie was waiting for him, and one look at his face told her that things had gone wrong.
‘What happened?’
Benton dropped wearily into an armchair.
‘We had trouble.’
‘Trouble! What kind of trouble?’
‘The worst. That stupid bastard killed another man.’
‘You mean Gus?’
‘Who else would I be talking about?’
‘Oh, my God!’ she said; and she looked frightened, probably thinking about how it might affect her. ‘That’s bad.’
‘Damn right, it’s bad.’
‘But you got away. You all got away?’
‘I did. I don’t know about the other two.’ He put a hand to his neck. ‘My head’s aching and I feel like death.’
‘What’s wrong with your head?’
‘A man hit me on the back of the neck with a monkey-wrench. He was the one Gus shot. Look, Jackie, could you find me a couple of aspirins and make a cup of coffee? I need something.’
He thought she was going to ask some more questions, but she decided to halt the interrogation for the moment and do as he asked. But as soon as he had swallowed the tablets and was drinking the coffee she came back to the attack.
‘How come you don’t know if they got away? You were with them, weren’t you?’
He told her the way it had happened, and she was looking more and more unhappy.
‘So the cops may have caught them?’
‘It’s possible. I don’t know.’
‘And you left your bag of money?’
‘I had to. The state I was in, I couldn’t have got away with it.’
‘So you’ve got nothing? All that and you haven’t got a bleeding penny?’
‘There’s the other bag. I should have a third of what’s in that. It’ll be something.’
‘If they haven’t been nabbed. And if they’re willing to share it with you after you left your lot behind.’
‘They left me. They owe me for that.’
‘Oh sure, a debt of honour. And I can just see them paying it. It’s been a cock-up, hasn’t it? You should’ve known better than to go along with anything that Gus and Dob thought up. It was bound to be a disaster. Eddie was the only one who had any savvy in that lot; those two are just boneheads, especially Gus.’
‘Leave it,’ Benton said. ‘I can’t remember you telling me all this beforehand.’
‘What good would it have done? You wouldn’t have listened to me.’
She was right about that, he thought. He would not have listened to anyone; just as he had refused to listen to the saner counsel in his own head warning him to have nothing to do with it. Because he had needed the money. And still needed it as much as ever.
He slept badly that night and woke early with a stiff neck and a lingering ache in the head. He left Jackie still asleep and went to the kitchenette and made some more strong coffee and caught the seven o’clock news on Radio Four.
There was an item about the supermarket killing. Two men involved in the raid had been arrested after a car chase and the stolen money had been recovered. A third man had got away and was still at large. He was believed to be armed and dangerous.
Benton went back to the bedroom and woke Jackie.
‘Gus and Dob were caught. They’re under arrest.’
She looked sick.
‘So there won’t be anything for us now.’
‘No.’
She sat up in the bed, staring at him; and he could guess the thoughts that were passing through her mind as she grasped the implications of the news. And there was one that floated to the surface and stayed there, overshadowing every other consideration.
‘Suppose they talk! We’d all be in it then – you, me and Eddie – all of us.’
‘They won’t talk.’
‘How can you be so sure? You think they’ll feel any loyalty to the rest of us now they’re inside? That’s a laugh!’
But she was not laughing; it was not funny. She was frightened and angry and bitter, and now there was no laughter to be found in the situation; none whatever.
Benton finished dressing and began to pack his bags. This time he would take everything, leaving nothing that belonged to him in the flat.
‘What are you doing?’ Jackie demanded.
‘What does it look as if I’m doing?’
‘You’re not going away again?’
‘It’ll be best.’
‘And leave me here alone?’
‘You’ll be safer without me. They’ll be looking for me; they know there was a third man.’
He knew it was not the true reason for leaving her; or at best that it was no more than half the reason. And she was not buying it either.
‘Horseshit! You could take me with you.’
‘It wouldn’t work. I’m on the run and I’ve got no money. And if you’re caught with me you’re in trouble.’
‘So I’m not in trouble already?’
She was still not buying it and he could almost hear her brain clicking over and coming up with some more questions, and maybe some answers too.
‘You’re going back to that place in the country, aren’t you?’
‘What place in the country?’
‘Don’t try to kid me,’ she said. ‘You weren’t travelling a
round all the time you were down there. You were holed up somewhere nice and cosy. Don’t tell me you weren’t.’
‘You’re wrong,’ Benton said.
‘So why didn’t you ever write? Why never so much as a card saying: “Wish you were here.”?’
‘I meant to but never got round to doing it. You know how it is.’
‘That’s a fine excuse. Anyway, I don’t believe you. There’s another woman, isn’t there? Down there where you’ve been. You bastard, you’ve got another woman.’ And then with a flash of intuition she added: ‘That’s why you came back, isn’t it? Not to see me; oh no. It was to get some money for her. Tired, you said! My God, I can see now why you were tired. Tired of me, that’s what. You were using me, just stringing me along because you knew you could get free lodgings here. What a scum you turned out to be, Tom Benton!’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ Benton said. ‘You’re twisting everything round. It just wasn’t like that.’
And yet he could not blind himself to the fact that it had been like that. She had got it dead accurate really; and she had a right to feel hard done by, a right to call him all the bad names she could think of. Because he deserved them.
‘Who is she?’ Jackie demanded. ‘What’s her name?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘Ah!’ she said, with a note of triumph. ‘So you don’t deny there is someone?’
‘No,’ Benton said wearily, ‘I don’t deny it.’ What was the use? She would not have believed him.
But Jackie was not satisfied yet. ‘What’s she like? What’s it that makes you want her rather than me?’
‘I can’t explain it. These things happen.’
‘Oh, I know.’ Jackie spoke sarcastically, venomously. ‘Suddenly you saw her and you knew she was the one you’d been looking for all your life. You just couldn’t go on living without her.’
He wondered whether she realised she was repeating the very words she had used about herself before he had left that previous time. Perhaps. But once again she had put her finger on the truth of the matter; because that was just about how it had happened.
‘I bet she’s a lot different from me,’ Jackie said.
‘Yes, she is.’
‘Short and fat and greasy.’
Benton went on with his packing. He knew she was trying to goad him into an angry retort, but he refused to be drawn.
‘I suppose she’s some bitch you found down on the farm, stinking of manure and taking a bath once a year.’
Benton said nothing.
In a sudden burst of spite she screamed at him: ‘All right then, go to her. Go to your bloody country whore.’
‘Don’t call her that,’ Benton said.
Jackie sneered: ‘Oh, so we have to mind our P’s and Q’s when we talk about her, do we? Well, I don’t give a damn, see? I’ll call her what I like; and I’ll bet that’s what she is; a whore, a whore, a whore …’
Benton slapped her on the cheek. ‘Now will you stop it!’
She flared up angrily. ‘You rotten sod! You’re as bad as that ape, Gus. Hitting a woman.’
‘You asked for it,’ Benton said. He regretted it now; he had lost his temper and all his frustrations had suddenly boiled over in that physical act. But it solved nothing and he ought not to have done it. He had treated Jackie badly and she had good reason to be mad at him. ‘You shouldn’t have said what you did, but I’m sorry I hit you. It’s not your fault we’re in this mess.’
‘Well, ta very much,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to think I was the cause of it all; like I made you come and live with me; like I forced you to accept my roof over your head. So it’s nice to know I’m not at fault.’
Benton laid the key of the flat on the dressing-table. ‘I’ll not be needing this any more.’ He turned and looked at her where she was still sitting up in the bed with her shoulders bare and the duvet just covering her nipples. ‘We’ve had some good times together, Jackie. Let’s just remember the good times, shall we? No hard feelings?’
She stared back at him with hatred. ‘My God, you’ve got a nerve. No hard feelings, is it? Well, that may be all fine and dandy for you, feller; but me, I’ve got some hard feelings, damned if I haven’t. You think you can treat me like dirt and then put everything right by a few sweet parting words? No way, you sod. I’ll get my own back on you, see if I don’t. If it takes for ever, I’ll get my own back.’
He saw that it was no use trying to conciliate her; whatever he said would be thrown back at him. She was thoroughly disenchanted with him and he could not really blame her; he just had to accept the fact. Of course all that stuff about getting her own back was no more than empty words; there was nothing she could do to hurt him because she did not even know where he was going.
He took a last look at her, picked up his luggage and left the flat.
11
Money
It was about the middle of the morning when he stopped the car in a small country town and parked it on what had once been the market square. On three sides of the square were old buildings that looked as if they had been erected in various periods of the past, some possibly dating back to Elizabethan times.
Though most of them might originally have been constructed as private houses, they had now become shops or offices. One of them was an estate agent’s, another accommodated a building society branch, one was a teashop and a fourth was a bank.
It was the bank that interested Benton. In that ancient building with its modernised ground floor frontage which harmonised so badly with its surroundings was a quantity of the very commodity he so urgently needed: money. And the temptation came to him to walk in and demand what he wanted. The gun was in his pocket and he might be able to get away with it if he acted quickly and with resolution. Few people when faced with the threat of an automatic weapon were brave enough or foolish enough to refuse to do what they were told to do. And who would be rash enough to stand in the way of a gunman making off with his loot?
Benton crossed the pavement in front of the bank, pushed open the glass-panelled door and went inside. There were two cashiers working at the counter, one of them a young man, the other a girl. They were protected by plate glass which he guessed was bullet-proof. In former times there used to be no more than a metal grille or merely the counter itself to separate the customer from the employees; but things were different these days; the criminal had made everybody security conscious and banks especially took every precaution to safeguard their money.
There was quite a crowd in the bank and a small queue had formed at each of the two windows where the transactions were taking place. Benton thought of joining one of the queues, waiting until he reached the head of it and then showing the gun. But how long would it take to get the money handed over? Too long. And there would be an alarm system, a button under the counter for the cashier to press. He would never get away with it; it was crazy even to imagine that he could.
There was quite a cosy atmosphere in the bank; people greeted one another as old friends. Young mothers were there with their children, the kids playing around and making themselves heard in shrill piping voices. It was no place for a robbery and he gave up the idea. Either he would have to think of something else or he would be forced to return empty handed to Pear Tree Farm and confess to Jean that his boast that he could get the two thousand had been an empty one; that he had been unable to fulfil the contract.
He turned to leave the bank and a big man in a check suit bumped into him coming in. He was carrying a bulging canvas bag, and Benton guessed that there was money in the bag. The man was possibly a shopkeeper or publican or some other kind of tradesman about to make a payment into his account.
The thought crossed Benton’s mind to snatch the bag and make off with it, but he rejected that idea also. Even if he were to get away safely he could not be certain that the bag contained enough money to serve his purpose, or indeed that it contained any money at all. It would not have been worth the risk.
As he emerged from the bank the teashop caught his eye. He walked over to it and went inside. The place seemed to be doing good business, but he found a vacant table and ordered coffee and a doughnut from the waitress who came to attend to him.
Drinking the coffee and nibbling at the doughnut, he had time to review the situation in which he now found himself. Everything seemed to be turning sour, and he could not regard Pear Tree Farm as a safe refuge if he took back no money to pay the stockfeed bill and keep things going. He recalled the parting from Jackie Fulton and how unsatisfactory it had been, and he wondered what she would do for a living now. She had her problems too, but he guessed that she would make out all right; maybe she would find another man to pay the bills for her. It was likely, because she had what it took to attract a man and was not inhibited by any considerations of strict morality.
‘It’s a scandal,’ a voice said, almost in his ear. ‘I simply don’t know what the country is coming to.’
He turned his head and saw that the voice belonged to a large well-nourished middle-aged female with a mountain of dyed hair and a double-chin, who was sitting at the table next to his. She was wearing a pair of ornate spectacles and had a newspaper in her hand.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Benton said. The woman appeared to be addressing him.
‘I’ve been reading about this latest robbery in London. A perfectly innocent man shot dead.’
‘Oh,’ Benton said.
‘What do you think of it?’ The woman stared at him like a schoolmistress demanding an answer from a backward pupil and Benton felt compelled to reply.
‘I’m afraid I haven’t seen the report.’
It was the wrong answer. The woman seemed to regard it as her duty to give him an account of the crime in which he himself had taken an active part.
‘It’s really becoming too much. These things are happening all over the place. If it’s not robbery with violence it’s mugging or rape or just plain murder. And of course the murderers know that the worst that can happen to them is a spell in prison. Even if they get a life sentence they’re likely to be out in ten years or less. It’s no deterrent at all.’
Dishonour Among Thieves Page 10