‘Miss Fulton?’ Garner inquired.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
She was doing her best to control her voice but the words came out quaveringly nevertheless, because she was scared, so damned scared. And there was no Tom Benton there to lend her moral support, to share this trouble with her; because the bastard had gone away, had left her to cope with it all on her own.
‘Is there anybody else in the flat?’ Garner asked.
‘No. Nobody.’
‘Where’s Benton?’
‘He went away.’
‘When?’
‘Two days ago.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘I don’t know.’
They searched the place to make sure Benton was not there. They looked everywhere and she could see that the policemen were armed. They had been expecting trouble perhaps.
‘You’d better get dressed, Miss Fulton,’ Garner said.
‘With you lot watching me? Maybe you’d like that. Give you an eyeful, wouldn’t it?’
Garner ignored the sneer. He said: ‘W.P.C. Dennis will keep you company in the bedroom.’
The woman police constable had followed the men into the flat. She was a well-built redhead and looked capable of handling Jackie if the necessity had arisen.
‘Come along, Miss Fulton,’ she said. ‘Let’s get on with it, shall we?’
Jackie gave her a cold stare. ‘So you’re the lady’s-maid?’
‘If that’s what you like to call it.’
‘I don’t like any of it,’ Jackie said, ‘but I suppose I don’t have any choice.’
‘I don’t think you have.’
In the interview room she was subjected to more questioning. What they wanted to know, of course, was where Tom Benton had gone, and it was difficult to convince them that she did not know.
‘I would tell you if I did, you bet I would, like a shot.’
‘Why would you do that?’ Garner asked. ‘He’s your man, isn’t he?’
‘Is that what you think?’
‘Why wouldn’t I think so? He’s been living with you, hasn’t he? Are you telling me he didn’t sleep with you? That you were not lovers?’
‘No, I’m not telling you that.’
‘So what, then?’
‘He walked out on me, didn’t he? The swine just packed his bags and left me to face the music.’
‘And you don’t know where he went?’
‘I keep telling you I don’t. He’s gone to join that bloody whore, that’s what.’
‘What whore?’
‘Some fancy woman he found down in the country.’
‘So he has a woman in the country? Do you know her name?’
‘No; he never told me.’
‘But he told you there was a woman?’
‘Oh yes. Reckons he’s in love with her.’
‘What part of the country would this be?’
‘Eastern Counties; that’s all I know.’
‘That’s a wide area,’ Garner said. ‘Can’t you narrow it down at all?’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘He didn’t mention any particular county?’
‘No, he didn’t. He didn’t want me to know. Afraid I might follow him and cause trouble, no doubt. I might have done, too. I gave him board and lodgings and all that, and this is how he treats me.’
‘Did he go in his own car?’
‘I suppose so. The last I saw of him he was walking out of the flat with his luggage.’
‘What make of car is it?’
‘A Vauxhall.’
‘What model?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Cavalier or something like that. I’m not a car expert; I just ride in them.’
‘What colour is it?’
‘Green.’
‘You remember the registration number?’
‘Give me a break, will you? You think I keep car numbers in my head?’
‘You must have seen it often enough.’
‘Maybe I did, but I wasn’t studying figures. I had better things to do.’
‘Like robbery, for instance?’
‘I never robbed nobody,’ Jackie said.
‘You were an accomplice.’
‘All I did was lay down in the road. Is that a crime?’
‘You were obstructing the traffic.’
‘I fell off my bike. How could I help it if I fell off?’
‘Personally,’ Garner said, ‘I doubt if you were ever on it. Have you got a photograph of Benton?’
‘No.’
‘Isn’t that rather strange? Most lovers exchange photos.’
‘We never got round to it.’
‘You’re sure there isn’t one in the flat?’
‘You had a good look round. Did you see one?’
‘No. But perhaps we didn’t look closely enough.’
‘Well, I can tell you there isn’t one. If I had a picture of him I’d give it to you, because I don’t owe him anything, except maybe a poke in the eye.’
‘You really hate him now, don’t you?’
‘You’re on the ball there. He ran away to that whore of his, didn’t he? And left me in the shit. Am I supposed to love him for that?’
‘It’s hardly the best of reasons,’ Garner admitted. ‘Can you give us a description of him?’
‘I can do that like I was seeing him in front of me right this very minute,’ Jackie said.
13
Temptation
On the day after Benton’s return to Pear Tree Farm he took Jean Mace for a ride in the Vauxhall. It was not simply for pleasure; they were travelling on business, and the business was the paying of the feed merchants’ bill.
It was a ten-mile journey, and the destination was a mill on the outskirts of a small country town where the firm had started its existence almost a century ago with one man and a windmill. It had grown a lot since then, but it was still a family concern, and it was one of the original miller’s great-grandsons who took Mrs Mace’s money and receipted the bill.
She explained that her husband was abroad and had told her nothing about the account that was owing before he departed; otherwise she would have attended to it without delay.
Mr Willgress, a short rotund man with gold-rimmed glasses, like a modern Mr Pickwick without the tights and gaiters, was himself full of apologies.
‘Please don’t give the matter another thought, Mrs Mace. You were in no way to blame, and had we been aware of the situation we should certainly not have troubled you. Of course the account has been running rather a long time and business is business. Nevertheless, I am truly sorry that we should have been the cause of any disquiet on your part. I trust this little misunderstanding will not effect our good relations in the future.’
Mrs Mace assured him that on her part it would not, and then she and Benton drove away from the mill.
‘They were bound to be polite,’ Benton said. ‘They don’t want to lose your custom now that you’ve paid up.’
‘I’ll have to look through the bureau and see what other unpaid bills there are,’ Jean said. ‘I’d like to get everything cleared up now I have the money.’
‘It wouldn’t be a bad idea.’
Later, when they were back at the farm, she spoke rather diffidently about the money that Benton had brought after his trip to London. It seemed to worry her, and he guessed that the reason why it did so was that she could not be sure how he had obtained so much in so little time. He could not have worked for it; and what did he have to sell?
There were, of course, three classic ways of obtaining money without working for it: you could beg, borrow or steal. Given the choice of those three, she went for the middle one.
‘The money was a loan, wasn’t it?’
‘Is that what you think? That I borrowed it?’
‘I can’t think of any other likely way you could have got it,’ she said.
He wondered whether this was really the truth or whether she had in fact con
sidered the possibility that it might have been stolen, but had shied away from that alternative because it was something she just did not want to believe. There were two things that pointed to theft: the pistol which she knew he possessed and the odd amount of the money. If he had borrowed it would it not have been a nice round figure like fifteen hundred or two thousand pounds? But it was one thousand six hundred and ninety-five, which was a pretty odd figure to say the least.
So what she was asking him to do was to assure her that the money had indeed been borrowed and not stolen. She wanted him to relieve her mind on that point.
He hesitated, torn between an impulse to tell her the truth, all of it, holding nothing back, and a fear that this might alienate her from him. From her he had accepted the confession of what she had done with the body of Fred Mace and had thought none the worse of her because of it; had indeed admired her courage in shielding Joe. But would she accept without a qualm the confession from him that he was a criminal wanted by the police for armed robbery and being an accessory to murder? Or would she recoil from him, horrified by the revelation, and refuse to have anything more to do with him?
He had asked himself this question before and he still could not be confident of the answer, still dared not put it to the test.
‘You did borrow it, didn’t you?’ she said.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘As you remarked, how else could I have got it?’
She gave a sigh and looked relieved, and he was glad he had not risked the truth. It would have been a gamble and he might have lost.
Then she said: ‘I think you should pay it back.’
‘At once?’
‘Yes, at once. We don’t need it now.’
He liked that ‘we’. It gave him a sensation of warmth around the heart. It was as much as to say that they were one now; that anything one possessed the other possessed equally.
‘You don’t need it,’ he said.
‘Neither do you; not really, Tom. I have enough for both of us.’
‘I can’t take your money.’
‘If you’re working for me I ought to pay you. I can do that now.’
Benton laughed. ‘So you can. I hadn’t thought of that. What do you think I’m worth?’
‘We shall have to talk about that. And Tom, you will really take the money back, won’t you?’
‘All right,’ he said, ‘if that’s what you want me to do. I’ll take it back tomorrow.’
On his second visit to the town where he had carried out the robbery Benton did not park the Vauxhall on the market square but left it by the kerb a few yards away from the self-service store. He was wearing dark glasses and a cap to make a slight alteration to his appearance, and he hoped that no one would recognise him when he walked into the establishment.
There seemed to be rather fewer customers than there had been on the previous occasion, which was not to his advantage; but the girl at the cash desk gave him no more than a glance and showed no particular interest in him as he went past. He was carrying the money in an old canvas holdall with a zip-fastener and he walked down between two of the rows of shelves until he came to the passageway at the far end.
This time the door of the office was shut, and he put the holdall on the floor just inside the passageway and walked back the way he had come. It had been simple, and he felt a sense of relief at having rid himself of the money, because somehow the robbery had left a nasty taste in his mouth. It was odd, because he had never felt like that about the operations he had taken part in with the rest of the gang, and no doubt most people would have failed to see much difference between the two kinds of crime.
But for him there was a distinction, and the taking of the money from a shop cashier, using the threat of the gun, was to his mind a step down the scale; and but for the pressure he had been under he would never have done it. So he was glad now to have put the matter right, and he knew he would feel all the happier for having done so.
He had almost reached the shop door when he heard a man’s voice behind him.
‘Sir! Wait a minute. You left your bag.’
He glanced back, and it was the same man in the green overall coat who had chased him a couple of days ago. It was apparent that the man had not recognised him, but he must have been somewhere around when Benton had put the holdall down and imagined he had forgotten it.
Benton ignored him and hurried out of the shop. He was in the Vauxhall but had not yet closed the door when the man in the green overall caught up with him.
‘Sir!’ the man said. ‘I believe this is yours. You left it in the store.’
‘No,’ Benton said. ‘You’re making a mistake.’
The man looked at him closely, and in spite of the dark glasses and the cap he must suddenly have realised that this was somebody he had seen before. And then it dawned on him where and when the previous encounter had taken place.
‘You!’
Benton grinned at him. ‘Keep the bag. You’ll like what’s inside.’
The man just stood on the pavement with the holdall in his hand, staring. Benton closed the door, started the engine and drove away.
He did not go straight back to the farm. Jean imagined that he would need to go to London to repay the supposedly borrowed money, and she would undoubtedly have been surprised if he had returned too early. She might even have suspected that he had decided to keep the money after all and that he had only made a pretence of returning it to the lender.
To fill in time, therefore, he made a detour to Bury St Edmunds and had a meal in a restaurant. He bought a newspaper and glanced through it without much interest until his eye was caught by a small item on one of the inner pages. It was the report of two further arrests in what was referred to as the supermarket murder case. Benton read that a man named Edward Sangster and a woman named Jacqueline Fulton had been taken into custody and were being held for questioning. The police were said to be looking for another man named Thomas Benton.
He felt sick. So now they had his name, and that made it all the more likely that eventually they would track him down. How long would even Pear Tree Farm be a safe refuge for him? Ought he not to move on, get further away, even go abroad? And leave Jean? He hated the idea of doing that, could not bear to contemplate it.
But he could not take her with him. What would they live on? The remainder of Fred Mace’s bankroll? That would not last for long. And there was Joe to consider. He felt sure that Jean would never abandon him.
And if he tried to persuade her to run away with him he would have to tell her why it was necessary, would have to confess that he was a criminal on the run. And he still hesitated to make that confession.
It was evident to him that either Houlder or Dobie had been talking, spilling it all; and he had no doubt that Gus was the more likely of the two to incriminate his former associates. And Jackie too, once the coppers had pulled her in, was pretty certain to have told them everything she could about him, if only out of spite. He remembered the temper she had been in when he had walked out of the flat. He remembered that parting threat of hers that she would get her own back on him. So now no doubt she was doing her damnedest to do just that.
He was thankful that he had not told her where he was going and had never mentioned Jean’s name to her. She could tell the police a lot about him but she could not tell them where he was. They would have to find out for themselves, and it might take them quite a bit of time. But in the end he feared they might do it.
So would it be playing the game to stay on at Pear Tree Farm? Would it be fair to Jean to go on living there until the law caught up with him? Because if the coppers came there looking for him she would be involved; and she had enough troubles of her own without that.
It was the devil of a situation and he just did not know what to do for the best. He threw the paper away and went back to his car.
As always she was glad to see him return.
‘Did everything go all right?’ she asked.
‘Ev
erything,’ Benton said.
‘So now that’s all cleared up?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Oh, good.’
She seemed to detect a certain lack of equal enthusiasm on his part, and immediately she looked concerned.
‘Something’s bothering you, Tom. What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing’s bothering me.’
But she was unconvinced. ‘I’m sure there’s something. You don’t look happy. You’re not having regrets about paying back the money, are you?’
‘Regrets about that? Oh, no; none at all.’
‘I mean you’d have had to pay it back eventually, wouldn’t you? And it was best to do it at once, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, much the best.’
‘So there must be other problems on your mind. Won’t you tell me what they are?’
‘It wouldn’t help.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘so there are problems.’
‘Well, yes,’ Benton admitted. ‘At least there is one; a small one.’ And he was thinking that if this was a small one he would really hate to be faced with a big one. He was thankful he had adopted the name of Lain; otherwise Reggie Annis or somebody else in the village might have seen the report in the paper and connected it with him. ‘It’s nothing really.’
‘And you won’t share it with me?’
‘It would only worry you.’
‘I shall worry anyway, not knowing what it is.’
But he still would not tell her.
Later, however, lying in bed with her, he said: ‘Would you mind so very much if I were to go away for a while?’
‘Mind?’ She clutched his arm tightly as if fearing that he might be proposing to slip away from her that very moment. ‘Of course I would mind. You know I would. Why do you talk about going away?’
‘It might become necessary.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t tell you why.’
‘Is this your way of telling me that you’re tired of me and want to break off our relationship?’
‘You know it’s not.’
‘How can I know it isn’t?’
‘I love you.’
Dishonour Among Thieves Page 12