Make Death Love Me (9 page)

‘Let's see what's in the tills, doll.'

A different voice, with a disc jockey's intonation. He heard the tills opened. His foot went back again, feeling for the button embedded in the carpet. From outside there came a clatter of coin. A thousand, give or take a little, would be in those tills. He lifted his heel. It was all very well, that plan of his, but suppose he did save the three thousand, suppose he stuffed it in the clothes cupboard before they came in, how was he going to explain to the bank that he had been able to do so?

He couldn't hear a sound from Joyce. He lowered his heel, raised it again.

‘Now the safe,' the Suffolk or Suffolk-cockney voice said.

To reach it they must pass through the office. He couldn't press the alarm, not just like that, not without thinking things out. There was no legitimate reason why he should have been in his office with three thousand pounds in his hands. And he couldn't say he'd opened the safe and taken it out when he heard them come in because he wasn't supposed to know Joyce's combination. And if he'd been able to save three, why not five?

Any minute now and they would come into the office. They would stuff the notes and the coin – if they bothered with the coin – into their bag and then come straight through here. He pulled open the door of the cupboard and flattened himself against its back behind Joyce's evening dress, the hem of which touched the floor. Madam, is there any armour in your chamber that I might cover my poor body withal . . . ?

He had scarcely pulled the door closed after him when he heard Joyce cry out.

‘Don't! Don't touch me!' And there was a clatter as of something kicked across the floor.

Lancelot's words reminded him of the questions he had asked himself on Saturday night. Would he ever have such panache, such proud courage? Now was the time. She was only twenty. She was a girl. Never mind the bank's suspicions, never mind now what anyone thought. His first duty was to rescue Joyce or at least stand with her and support her. He fumbled through the folds of the dress to open the door. He wasn't afraid. With a vague wry amusement, he thought that he wasn't afraid because he didn't mind if they killed him, he had nothing to live for. Perhaps all his life with its boredom, its pain and its futility, had simply been designed to lead up to this moment, meeting death on a wet afternoon for seven thousand pounds.

He would leave the money in the cupboard – he had thrust it into the pockets of his raincoat which hung beside Joyce's dress – and go out and face them. They wouldn't think of looking in his raincoat, and later he'd think up an explanation for the bank. If there was a later. The important thing now was to go out to them, and this might even create a diversion in which Joyce could escape.

But before he touched the door, something very curious happened. He felt into the pockets to make sure none of the notes was sticking out and against his hands the money felt alive, pulsating almost, or as if it were a chemical that reacted at the contact with flesh. Energy seemed to come from it, rays of power, that travelled, tingling, up his arms. There were sounds out there. They had got the safe open. He heard rustling noises and thumps and voices arguing, and yet he did not hear them. He was aware only of the money alive between and around his fingers. He gasped and clenched his hands, for he knew then that he could not leave the money. It was his. By his daily involvement with it, he had made it his and he could not leave it.

Someone had come into the office. The drawers of his desk were pulled out and emptied on to the floor. He stood rigid with his hands in the coat pockets, and the cupboard door was flung open.

He could see nothing through the dark folds of the dress. He held his breath. The door closed again and Joyce swore at them. Never had he thought he would hear Joyce use that word, but he honoured her for it. She screamed and then she made no more sound. The only sound was the steady roar of rain drumming on the pantiled roof, and then, after a while, the noise of a car or van engine starting up.

He waited. One of them had come back. The strange voice was grumbling and muttering out there, but not for long. The back door slammed. Had they gone? He could only be sure by coming out. Loosening his hold on the money, he thought he would have to go out, he couldn't stay in that cupboard for the rest of his life. And Joyce must be somewhere out there, bound and gagged probably. He would explain to her that when he had heard them enter the bank he had taken as much money as he had time to save out of the safe. She would think him a coward, but that didn't matter because he knew he hadn't been a coward, he had been something else he couldn't analyse. It was a wrench, painful almost, to withdraw his hands from his pockets, but he did withdraw them, and he pushed open the door and stepped out.

The desk drawers were on the floor and their contents spilt. Joyce wasn't in the office or in the room where the safe was. The door of the safe was open and it was empty. They must have left her in the main part of the bank. He hesitated. He wiped his forehead on which sweat was standing. Something had happened to him in that cupboard, he thought, he had gone mad, mentally he had broken down. The idea came to him that perhaps it was the life he led which at last had broken him. He went on being mad. He took the money out of his coat pockets and laid it in the safe. He went to the back door and opened it quietly, looking out at the teeming rain and his car standing in the dancing, rain-pounded puddles. Then he slammed the door quite hard as if he had just come in, and he walked quite lightly and innocently through to where Joyce must be lying.

She wasn't there. The tills were pulled out. He looked in the lavatory. She wasn't there either. While he was in the cupboard, hesitating, she must have gone off to get help. Without her coat, which was also in the cupboard, but you don't think of rain at a time like that. Over and over to himself he said, I was out at lunch, I came back, I didn't know what had happened, I was out at lunch . . .

Why had she gone instead of pressing one of the alarm buttons? He couldn't think of a reason. The clock above the currency exchange rate board told him it was twenty-five past one and the date 4 March. He had gone out to lunch, he had come back and found the safe open, half the money gone, Joyce gone . . . What would be the natural thing to do? Give the alarm, of course.

He returned to his office and searched with his foot under the desk for the button. It was covered by an upturned drawer. Kneeling down, he lifted up the drawer and found under it a shoe. It was one of the blue shoes with the instep straps Joyce had been wearing that morning. Joyce wouldn't have gone out into the rain, gone running out without one of her shoes. He stood still, looking at the high-heeled, very shiny, patent leather dark blue shoe.

Joyce hadn't gone for help. They had taken her with them.

As a hostage? Or because she had seen their faces? People like that didn't have to have a reason. Did any people have to have a reason? Had he had one for staying in that cupboard? If he had come out they would have taken him too.

Press the button now. He had been out at lunch, had come back to find the safe open and Joyce gone. Strange that they had left three thousand pounds, but he hadn't been there, he couldn't be expected to explain it. If he had been there, they would have taken him too because he too would have seen their faces. He looked at his watch. Nearly twenty to two. Give the alarm now, and there would still be time to put up road blocks, they couldn't have got far in twenty minutes and in this rain.

The phone began to ring.

It made him jump, but it would only be Pam. It rang and rang and still he didn't lift the receiver. The ringing brought into his mind a picture as bright and clear as something on colour television, but more real. Fitton's Piece and his house and Pam in it at the phone, Pop at the table in the dining recess, drinking tea, Jillian coming home soon and Christopher. The television. The punk rock. The doors banging. The sports jacket, the army takeover, the gas bill. He let the phone ring and ring, and after twenty rings – he counted them – it stopped. But because it had rung his madness had intensified and concentrated into a hard nucleus, an appalling and wonderful decision.

His mind was not capable of reasoning, of seeing flaws or hazards or discrepancies. His body worked for him, putting itself into his raincoat, stuffing the three thousand pounds into his pockets, propelling itself out into the rain and into his car. If he had been there they would have taken him with them too. He started the car, and the clear arcs made on the windscreen by the wipers showed him freedom.

They took Joyce with them because she had seen their faces. She had opened the safe when they told her to, though at first she said she could only work one of the dials. But when Marty put the gun in her ribs and started counting up to ten, she came out with the other combination. As soon as the lock gave, Nigel tied a stocking round her eyes, and when she cried out he tied the other one round her mouth, making her clench her teeth on it. In a drawer they found a length of clothes-line Alan had bought to tie down the boot lid of his car but had never used, and with this they tied Joyce's hands and feet. Standing over her, Marty looked at Nigel and Nigel looked at him and nodded. Without a word, they picked her up and carried her to the back door.

Nigel opened it and saw the Morris Eleven Hundred in the yard. He didn't say anything. It was Marty who said, ‘Christ!' But the car was empty and the yard was deserted. Rain was falling in a thick cataract. Nigel rolled the plastic carrier round the money and thrust it inside his jacket.

‘Where the hell's Groombridge?' whispered Marty.

Nigel shook his head. They splashed through the teeming rain, carrying Joyce out to the van, and dropped her on the floor in the back.

‘Give me the gun,' said Nigel. His teeth were chattering and the water was streaming out of his hair down his face.

Marty gave him the gun and got into the driver's seat with the money on his lap in the carrier bag. Nigel went back into the bank. He stumbled through the rooms, looking for Alan Groombridge. He meant to look for Joyce's shoe too, but it was more than he could take, all of it was too much, and he stumbled out again, the door slamming behind him with a noise like a gunshot.

Marty had turned the van. Nigel got in beside him and grabbed the bag of money and Marty drove off down the first narrow side road they came to, the windscreen wipers sweeping off the water in jets. They were both breathing fast and noisily.

‘A sodding four grand,' Marty gasped out. ‘All that grief for four grand.'

‘For Christ's sake, shut up about it. Don't talk about it in front of her. You don't have to talk at all. Just drive.'

Down a deep lane with steep hedges. Joyce began to drum her feet on the metal floor of the van, thud, clack, thud, clack, because she had only one shoe on.

‘Shut that racket,' said Nigel, turning and pushing the gun at her between the gap in the seats. Thud, clack, thud . . . His fingers were wet with rain and sweat.

At that moment they came face to face, head on, with a red Vauxhall going towards Childon. Marty stopped just in time and the Vauxhall stopped. The Vauxhall was being driven by a man not much older than themselves, and he had an older woman beside him. There was no room to pass. Joyce began to thrash about, banging the foot with the shoe on it, clack, clack, clack, and thumping her other foot, thud, thud, and making choking noises.

‘Christ,' said Marty. ‘Christ!'

Nigel pushed his arm through between the seats right up to his shoulder. He didn't dare climb over, not with those people looking, the two enquiring faces revealed so sharply each time the wipers arced. He was so frightened he hardly knew what he was saying.

With the gun against her hip, he said on a tremulous hiss: ‘You think I wouldn't use it? You think I haven't used it? Know why I went back in there? Groombridge was there and I shot him dead.'

‘Sweet Jesus,' said Marty.

The Vauxhall was backing now, slowly, to where the lane widened in a little bulge. Marty eased the van forward, hunched on the wheel, his face set.

‘I'll kill those two in the car as well,' said Nigel, beside himself with fear.

‘Shut up, will you? Shut up.'

Marty moved past the car with two or three inches to spare, and brought up his right hand in a shaky salute. The Vauxhall went off and Marty said, ‘I must have been out of my head bringing you on this. Who d'you think you are? Bonnie and Clyde?'

Nigel swore at him. This reversal of roles was unbearable, but enough to shock him out of his panic. ‘You realize we have to get shot of this vehicle? You realize that? Thanks to you bringing us down a goddamned six-foot-wide footpath. Because that guy'll be in Childon in ten minutes and the fuzz'll be there, and the first thing he'll do is tell them about us passing him. Won't he? Won't he? So have you got any ideas?'

‘Like what?'

‘Like rip off a car,' said Nigel. ‘Like in the next five minutes. If you don't want to spend the best years of your life inside, little brain.'

Mrs Burroughs phoned her husband at his office in Stantwich and asked him if he thought it would be all right for her to put Aunt Jean's money in the Anglian-Victoria Treasure Trove scheme. He said she was to do as she liked, it was all one to him if she hadn't enough faith in him to let him invest it for her, and she was to do as she liked. So Mrs Burroughs got into her Scimitar at two and reached the Anglian-Victoria at five past. The doors were still shut. Having money of her own and not just being dependent on her husband's money had made her feel quite important, a person to be reckoned with, and she was annoyed. She banged on the doors, but no one came and it was too wet to stand out there. She sat in the Scimitar for five minutes and when the doors still didn't open she got out again and looked through the window. The window was frosted, but on this, in clear glass, was the emblem of the Anglian-Victoria, an A and a V with vine leaves entwining them and a crown on top. Mrs Burroughs looked through one of the arms of the V and saw the tills emptied and thrown on the floor. She drove off as fast as she could to the police house two hundred yards down the village street, feeling very excited and enjoying herself enormously.