Benton gathered that the woman was one of that large section of the British public who believed in bringing back the rope. Perhaps she would even have been willing to take on the job of official hangman – or would it be hangperson?
‘At least they’ve caught two of the culprits in this case, I see. But one of them got away. He’s armed and dangerous, so it says.’
‘You shouldn’t believe all you read in the papers,’ Benton said. ‘They exaggerate.’
The woman snorted. The pupil was answering back, having the audacity to question her authority. Benton wondered how she would have reacted if he had informed her that he was the armed and dangerous criminal who had got away. But of course she would not have believed him, unless he had shown her the gun. And he had no intention of doing that.
When he left the teashop he still did not return to his car. A little further along the street from the square there was a fairly large self-service store which attracted his attention. He went inside and found that it was crowded; people were drifting round the shelves with wire baskets or trolleys, and near the entrance was a girl sitting at the check-out desk with the cash-register. Benton could have pulled the gun on her and demanded the contents of the till, but he felt sure there would not have been enough in it to serve his purpose and he rejected the idea out of hand.
He made his way past the stacks of cans and bottles and packages to the far end of the store and saw that there was a passageway leading possibly to storage space at the rear. On the right-hand side of the passageway there was a door standing ajar, and it was possible for him to see a woman sitting at a table and counting money. There were a lot of bundles of notes in front of her; fives, tens and twenties; and there were also some transparent bags full of coins, but even without these it was apparent that the total had to be a considerable amount; quite possibly thousands.
There was on the table what appeared to be a bank paying-in book and it was not difficult to deduce that the woman was getting the money ready to take to the bank. Possibly it represented the takings of the previous day.
A man in a green overall coat came along the passageway carrying a couple of cardboard boxes. Benton stepped aside to let him pass and he disappeared down one of the corridors between the shelves, apparently going to replenish some of the stock.
Benton stepped into the passageway and slipped into the room where the woman was counting the money. He closed the door behind him and stood with his back to it.
‘Don’t make a sound,’ he said.
The woman stared at him. She was middle-aged, thin, a trifle austere in appearance. She did not look the type who would panic easily.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’
‘The money,’ Benton said. He had the Beretta in his hand now and he showed it to her. ‘Don’t call for help or I may have to shoot you. Do just as I say and you won’t get hurt. Understand?’
She nodded. She had turned a little pale but she was not going to faint and she was not going to have hysterics.
There was a polythene carrier bag lying on the table.
‘Put the money in the bag,’ Benton said. ‘Just the notes. Leave the coin.’
She did as she was told. Her hands shook slightly but she was being sensible. After all, it was only money, and no amount of it could buy back a human life.
The bag was filled very quickly. Benton took it from the woman. She was giving him a hard steady look and he felt sure she was trying to etch his features on her mind so that she could give a good description of him to the police when they questioned her. He would have felt happier if he had been masked, but that had been impossible in the circumstances. Nothing had been planned; he was just taking advantage of an opportunity that had presented itself and he had to take the risks that went with it.
‘Don’t follow me out,’ he said. ‘Stay here for five minutes. You don’t want to make me do any shooting, do you?’
He doubted whether she would give him five minutes, but perhaps she would. He put the gun in his pocket, opened the door, saw that no one was in the passageway and stepped outside, closing the door again behind him.
As he emerged from the passageway the man in the green overall was coming back with the empty boxes. He shot a questioning glance at Benton and seemed inclined to ask what he had been doing, but he said nothing. Benton walked past him and down between the rows of stacked shelves to the entrance.
The girl at the pay-desk was busy with a queue of customers waiting to check out and she did not even glance at him. He was out on the pavement when the hue and cry broke out.
Someone was shouting: ‘Stop him! Stop him! That man with the bag! He’s a thief! Stop him!’
Benton crossed the street and walked rapidly in the direction of the square where his car was parked. He had hoped to get there without running before anyone started chasing him. A running man was always conspicuous.
He glanced back and saw the man in the green overall come out of the shop and peer one way and then the other. It took him a second or two to spot Benton, and as soon as he had done so he began running. Benton saw with satisfaction that no one else was joining in the chase.
He got to the Vauxhall before the man in the green overall, but he was delayed by having to unlock the door. He was getting into the driving-seat when the man grabbed him by the shoulder.
Benton took the Beretta from his pocket, twisted round and shoved the muzzle into the man’s stomach.
‘Get away from me or I’ll blow a hole in you.’
The man looked down at the gun and his jaw sagged. He stepped away pretty sharply, almost tripping over backwards in his haste to put some distance between himself and the pistol.
Benton got into the car, put the gun and the carrier bag on the passenger seat and started the engine. He had to back out of the space where the Vauxhall was parked and then drive round the perimeter of the square to get on to the road; but nobody made any attempt to block his exit and the man in the green overall watched him go. Benton wondered whether he was memorising the registration number and hoped he had a bad memory for figures. Most people had.
In a very short time he was out of the town and on a road heading in a northerly direction. No one appeared to be following. Soon after that he took the Vauxhall off on to a minor road, and after travelling about ten miles stopped in a quiet spot and counted the money.
The total came to one thousand six hundred and ninety-five pounds.
It was not enough to pay the stockfeed bill in full, but it would help. There would be enough to clear a part of the account and get the merchants off Jean Mace’s back. With that amount she could fob them off for quite a while and maybe pay off some of the smaller creditors as well.
He was still not happy with the way things had turned out; it would have been infinitely better if the London business had gone according to plan, but that was all down the drain and there was nothing to be gained by thinking about what might have been. At least this last job, off the cuff though it had been, had gone with reasonable smoothness and no one had been hurt.
He put the money away and started the car again. By early afternoon he had reached Pear Tree Farm and felt as though he were coming home.
Joe was first to see the car arrive, and he came running up as Benton got out, grinning from ear to ear and almost beside himself with delight. Benton gave him a slap on the shoulder, and then Jean came out of the house and her expression was a mixture of relief and joy.
‘It’s wonderful to have you back, Tom.’
‘I said I wouldn’t be away for long.’
‘It seemed long.’
Benton took the carrier bag out of the car. ‘Let’s go inside. I’ve got something for you.’
They went into the house and Joe made no attempt to follow; he seemed to have some intuition that he would not be wanted just then. He was happy enough in the knowledge that Benton had come back.
Once inside the house, they went through into the kitchen and Benton put the ca
rrier bag on the table.
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t manage to get the whole two thousand, but there’s nearly seventeen hundred in there. It should be enough to see you through.’
‘Oh, Tom!’ she said. ‘I’m so grateful, and please don’t think I’m not; but I don’t want it now.’
He stared at her in astonishment and disbelief. ‘You don’t want it? But why not, for God’s sake? Why not?’
She looked apologetic. ‘Please don’t be angry with me, Tom.’
‘Angry with you? I’m not angry with you. Why should I be? I just don’t understand what you’re getting at, that’s all.’
‘Wait here,’ she said. She went out of the kitchen and was back in half a minute carrying a large black metal cash-box which she put on the table.
Benton looked at the cash-box and had a premonition of what was coming.
‘I found this after you’d gone,’ she said. ‘It was under a loose floorboard in the dining-room. I’d rolled the carpet back so that I could get at the board to put a nail in it, and then I found it would lift up easily and there was this tin in a cavity underneath.’
‘What’s in it?’ Benton asked. But he knew.
‘Open it,’ she said. ‘It’s not locked.’
Benton opened it and saw that it was tightly packed with banknotes, thick bundles of them crammed in.
‘You’ve counted it?’ he asked.
‘Yes. There’s over thirty thousand pounds.’
‘Jesus!’
It was Fred Mace’s bank; it could be nothing else. He must have put the money away, a bit at a time, like a miser piling up his hoard of gold; though in this case it had been paper and not metal. So why, if he had all this money, had he not paid the bills? The answer was simple: he hated parting with his money, and like many farmers he kept his creditors waiting until they would wait no longer. No doubt if he had lived he would have paid the stockfeed bill before being taken to court; but he had died and the bill had remained unpaid.
And then another thought came into Benton’s head: he need never have gone up to London, need never have got involved with Houlder and Dobie in that disastrous supermarket raid, need never have stolen the cash from the self-service store on his way back to Pear Tree Farm. The irony of it made him wince as if with a sharp physical pain.
Jean seemed to have an inkling of what was passing in his mind and she touched his hand.
‘I’m so sorry, Tom. If only I’d known …’
‘How were you to know? He never told you, did he?’
‘No. He kept so many things to himself. In a way he always treated me as an outsider, not to be trusted with anything of importance.’
‘Well,’ Benton said, ‘you’ve got no financial worries now, and that’s something to cheer about.’
But somehow he did not feel like cheering. He had a sense of anticlimax. There was no doubt in his mind that the fates were mocking him. And maybe there was more of that mockery yet to come.
12
Names and
Addresses
On the third day after his arrest Gus Houlder began to sing. And once started he sang loudly and very clearly, much to the satisfaction of the police officers who were putting the questions to him; especially one, Detective Superintendent William Garner, a tall lean man with greying hair and a world-weary look about him.
It might have been that Houlder believed the information he was now prepared to give would earn for him somewhat more lenient treatment than might otherwise have been the case; though with a total of three murder charges against him he could scarcely have hoped for much in the way of clemency.
It was more likely, therefore, that the true reason for his burst of song was nothing more nor less than bloody-minded spite. He probably resented the fact that, while he was languishing in jail, his companions in crime, with the sole exception of Dobie, were still free to come and go as they pleased. He had never liked Benton, or for that matter Benton’s girlfriend; and Sangster had put his back up by refusing to have anything to do with the supermarket job. Sangster thought he could pull out and make a new life for himself, did he? Well, he would find that other people might have something to say about that.
So Houlder sent a message from his cell to Superintendent Garner stating that he wished to make a clean breast of things, and in no time at all he was facing the superintendent across a table in a small bare room and laying it on the line. There was a detective sergeant named Peters also in attendance, a younger man, spruce and rather handsome, who put in a word now and then but for most of the time remained silent.
‘I’m glad you decided to come clean,’ Garner said. ‘You wouldn’t gain anything by holding out on us.’
‘And it might do me a bit of good?’ Houlder asked. ‘I mean if I help you maybe you’ll help me?’
‘I’m not making any promises,’ Garner said. ‘It’s up to you whether you talk or not. All I’m saying is it won’t do you any harm to tell us what you know.’
Houlder would have liked rather more than this, but he could see that Garner would not, and probably could not, go any further. It would not be his decision what sentence to hand out to the wrong-doer; the most he could do would be to state that the prisoner had been co-operative.
So Houlder had to settle for that; he became co-operative and gave a full account, not only of the supermarket job, but also of the security van affair. He told how the van had been stopped by Jackie Fulton lying down in the road with a bicycle to feign an accident, and he was frank enough to admit that it was he who had shot the two guards.
‘But we didn’t get anything out of that job either, because the money was all burnt with the Jag we was using for the getaway.’
Houlder went on to name names and give addresses, and it was all highly satisfactory from Superintendent Garner’s point of view. With this help from Gus Houlder there was little doubt that the other members of the gang would soon be under lock and key.
‘And this Tom Benton; he’s got a gun, you say?’
‘Yes. It’s a Beretta thirty-two automatic.’
‘You think he’d be likely to use it to resist arrest?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past him. You better mind your step when you go and nab the bastard.’
Garner lifted an eyebrow. ‘You don’t like him?’
‘Why should I?’
‘No reason. Perhaps you don’t like criminals – as a class?’
Sergeant Peters laughed at the super’s little joke. With Houlder it failed even to raise a smile.
‘How about Sangster?’ Garner asked. ‘Is he armed?’
‘Never saw him with a gun. Don’t think he’s got one.’
‘And Miss Fulton?’
‘Oh, she’s just a tart. You won’t have no trouble with her.’
‘It’s been my experience,’ Garner said, ‘that young women of that description can give you as much trouble as the next person, and maybe more. But I hope you’re right.’
‘Give her a clip round the lughole if she tries to get smart with you. That’ll soon make her see reason.’
‘Maybe you’ve tried it?’
Houlder gave a leer. ‘Maybe I have.’
Sangster was in bed when the police came to arrest him, and he knew he could say goodbye to any hope of becoming a tycoon. He guessed that it was Houlder who had shopped him. He had read about the abortive supermarket raid in the paper and had suspected that Houlder might talk; he had no faith in Gus’s sense of loyalty or honour; the man was just not in the market for those commodities; he would do anything that might in any conceivable way be to the benefit of number one and would not give a damn for the welfare of old pals. And maybe they had never been pals anyway; just partners in crime.
Sangster had had thoughts of clearing out, getting well away while there was yet time; but he had done nothing, had just let things slide, hoping for the best. But it had been a vain hope and the worst had happened instead.
He put up no resistance; where would h
ave been the sense in making trouble? The police were there in force and he had no chance of getting away. He had had a good run, but it had come to an end now and the luck had petered out.
He was given the statutory caution with regard to anything he might say and was allowed to get dressed and use the bathroom under supervision.
‘Acting on information received?’ he asked.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think I’ve been shopped,’ Sangster said. ‘And I think I know who did the shopping.’
‘You ought to be more careful who you choose to associate with,’ the police officer said. ‘Bad company can lead you into evil ways.’
‘You should have told me that years ago,’ Sangster said. ‘It’s a bit late in the day now.’
He wondered whether it had been worth it; whether what must surely happen to him now was too high a price to pay for all the good living he had enjoyed. Perhaps. But when you accepted the devil’s gifts you had to be prepared to foot the bill he presented in the end; it was inevitable.
‘I shall have to let Mrs Ellis know.’
‘Who’s Mrs Ellis?’
‘The woman who chars for me.’
‘That will have to wait until later. You must come with us now.’
‘To help you with your inquiries?’
‘That’s right,’ the officer said.
It was Detective Superintendent Garner himself who was in charge of the party who paid an early call on Miss Jackie Fulton. Like Sangster she was in bed, and she took so long to come to the door that they lost patience and forced it open and walked in.
She was just coming out of the bedroom in the pink dressing-gown and the fur-trimmed mules, and her hair was a mess because all she had done to it was to push it back from her forehead with her fingers. The sleep was still in her eyes and they were half closed, but they opened wide enough when she saw the men coming in and Garner showing his warrant card.
It was what she had told Benton she was afraid of; the police thumping on the door and shouting: ‘Open up!’ But in fact they had done more than that; they had broken the lock and shoved the door open and here they were, three of them and maybe more outside.
Dishonour Among Thieves Page 11