The Gigantic Shadow (9 page)

On the following day he had discovered a flaw in their plans, a flaw of such dimensions that it made him doubt the whole conception. If they could fail to notice such a mistake as this, perhaps another error, equally vast, was yawning elsewhere in the plot. This was the flaw. When they left the country after collecting the money, Anthea would have to show her passport. Obviously they could not run the considerable risk that a customs official would recognise her photograph or remember her name.

When he told Anthea the problem, she said scornfully, ‘But it’s simple.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We just go on one of those day trips, Boulogne or wherever it is, the trips on which you don’t need passports. Then we skip off at Boulogne and just vanish.’

‘No,’ he said decisively. ‘You don’t understand. There’s going to be a hell of a fuss about your disappearance, even if your father doesn’t eventually tell the police. Anything out of the way is going to be checked. Two people vanishing off a day trip – not just missing the boat and coming back next day, but disappearing altogether – is something out of the way. Who were the people, what did they look like? Once they’ve got that far, it’s goodbye.’

‘I don’t see why you say that. Daddy would never prosecute.’

‘It’s no good.’

‘We could move from place to place, so that they didn’t catch up with us. We’d have enough money.’

‘No.’

They were in the hotel bedroom. She sat gloomily contemplating her legs, which were stuck out in front of her. ‘That’s it, then.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You don’t want to take the risk. I expect you’re right. So the whole thing’s no good.’

It was very much what he had been about to say himself, but that she should say it was disconcerting. It was rather as though she were saying goodbye, not merely to the kidnap plot but to him as well. He was driven to words he had not at all intended. ‘It may not be as bad as that.’

‘Why not?’

‘We might think of something,’ he said weakly. But her imagination, which was so quickly damped, just as quickly caught alight again. ‘Do you mean you could do something about it? Get mine altered – or get another?’

That was precisely, he knew, what he could do, although it was an idea that he had not previously allowed himself to consider. Ten years in prison had left him with a great deal of knowledge which he never used – where to get a burglar’s kit, which fences handled which kinds of stuff. Like most men who have done a long stretch he had also developed a special sensibility to stool pigeons. He knew that false passports could be obtained, at something between twenty and fifty pounds a time, and he could easily find out where to get them. But he did not want to admit this knowledge. Certainly he did not want to use it.

‘I suppose I could see a few people. Or we might think of something else.’

She ignored the second sentence. ‘That would be marvellous. Could I come too?’

‘Certainly not. But we shall need a passport photograph. You’d better get one taken.’

‘What fun.’ She looked at his gloomy face. ‘Isn’t it fun?’

‘No. It’s just something that has to be done. Don’t think that I like doing it.’

‘Poor Bill. But I’ll make it up to you. It will be all right when it’s over and we’re abroad, you’ll see. You do like our plot, don’t you, you think it’s clever?’ She was like a child, eager for admiration.

‘The plot’s clever, all right. It’s just that when we come to do it –’ He left the sentence unfinished. He could not say that he distrusted himself and, even more, distrusted her.

She went away chirruping like a bird, and came back next day still chirruping. When she gave him the photographs he could not refrain from laughing with her. A formidable Germanic schoolmistress confronted him, hair scraped back from her forehead and screwed into a bun, eyes staring grimly through ornamental spectacles. She took the spectacles out of her bag, blue ones with much-jewelled sides, and put them on.

‘Don’t I look just wonderful? What’s my name, do you think? Jane something? Or Mary, I think this girl’s a real good old Mary, don’t you? I suppose Ethel would be a bit too much, wouldn’t it? Aren’t you pleased with me for thinking of the spectacles.’

‘Very pleased.’ As he kissed her, he wondered what else he had forgotten.

On the next day he looked up a man named Leafy Cockerell, who had been in prison with him, and was now manager of a club in Soho. He gave Leafy two pounds, and Leafy sent him along with a note to a little tailor’s shop off the Mile End Road. In a room at the back of the shop sat an old man. He wore a thick padded red coat, with gold brocade at the collars and cuffs. A large green eyeshade concealed his face.

‘You want a book, eh? You have a picture.’ Hunter gave him the photograph of the Germanic schoolmistress. He barely glanced at it. ‘Just this one. Nothing for yourself?’

‘Nothing.’ It was possible, though not likely, that an official might recognise him. To change the name on his passport would be merely an additional risk.

The old man’s face, when he raised it to look at Hunter, was criss-crossed like the road map of an industrial area. In the map the eyes were hardly visible, their colour and expression unknown. ‘I do a lovely job.’ He handed over a passport with gold and blue cover, crisp and new. Hunter examined it with admiration, holding up the pages to the light for the watermark.

‘Very expensive, that paper,’ the old man said. ‘Fifty pounds.’

Hunter put down the passport, shook his head. ‘Impossible.’

‘This is no rubbish. The real stuff. You want to get the girl out of the country.’

‘It is too much, more than I can afford. Twenty.’ The old man tucked his hands in the sleeves of the padded coat. ‘Ridiculous. You are joking with me. It costs me more than that.’

The haggling process was familiar to Hunter. They settled, as he had expected, at thirty-five.

When he left the tailor’s shop he felt that he had done something irrevocable. He noted with wry distaste that his association with Anthea was leading, as he had expected, back into the past.

Three days later he gave her the passport. It was made out in the name of Mary Nash, spinster, of 18 Novella Road, NW2. She took it from him, exclamatory with pleasure.

‘It’s lovely, isn’t it? So much more exciting than a real one.’

‘It’s real enough to serve. At least, I hope so.’

‘Now there’s nothing to stop us.’

‘Nothing.’

‘So the sooner the better. Today’s Saturday. On Monday I’ll disappear. You send the first note that day. You should have the money by Thursday.’

‘Thursday, or Friday at the latest. You remember what we arranged.’

‘Yes. I’m to wait till Saturday.’ She ran the tips of her fingers softly over his cheek. They kissed passionlessly, their lips just brushing each other. ‘Good luck. Not that you’ll need it.’

‘Goodbye.’

‘Goodbye.’

On Sunday Anthea was to mention casually, to her father, to Roger Sennett, to anybody else with whom she happened to be in conversation, that a tall man with a slight limp was following her. Hunter had finally agreed, rather reluctantly, to the laying of this false trail. He had a feeling that she would be inclined to overdramatise the story in a way that would arouse suspicion. She had made an appointment to go shopping on Monday morning with a friend named Mary Winter. Early that day she was to telephone this friend, say that she would be along at eleven o’clock, and express vague uneasiness about her own affairs, referring again to the man with the limp.

She would not arrive at Mary Winter’s flat. Instead, she was to change her hairstyle, put on the spectacles, buy provisions, sleeping bag and other equipment, and stuff them into a rucksack. Then she was to take a train to Blanting and, an inconspicuous girl hiker with rucksack on back, make her way to the den. It was understood that she and Hunter would have no communication after that time until the money was collected.

As soon as he got the money he was to book air passages for them both to almost any European country. Anthea had been in favour of making three separate advance bookings for Thursday, Friday and Saturday, but he had rejected this idea on the ground that the necessary cancellation of two bookings might arouse suspicion. Once abroad, in Italy or Yugoslavia or Greece or Northern Africa, with thirty thousand pounds, they would – but his imagination never reached that point, it was set too firmly on what lay immediately ahead.

After making the air booking he was to go down to the den and collect Anthea. If she had heard nothing by Saturday she was to leave the den and telephone him. If the plot had somehow gone wrong she was to return home and pretend to have suffered loss of memory, so that she knew nothing of her own movements during the past few days. That was the plan, one that, she maintained, covered every possible contingency.

Nevertheless, it was with a sinking heart that, on Monday, he began to carry it out. It was less that he was afraid than that he still could not believe in the plan’s reality. If, on Monday morning, he telephoned Cavendish Square and asked for Miss Moorhouse, surely she would answer, would say in her light voice, ‘Oh,
that,
I didn’t suppose you’d really take that seriously, of course it was tremendous fun to plan but you didn’t
really
suppose that I’d do it…’

He must not telephone, he told himself. He must not permit himself to think like that. Wearing gloves, he sent off the first ransom note by the midday post on Monday. The cut-out letters stuck on thin copy paper said:

This is to tell you that we have got your daughter. Do not inform the police and she will not be harmed. Await instructions.

The comparatively mild tone of this note had been achieved at his insistence. Anthea had been in favour of something much more bloodthirsty and threatening, signed ‘The Black Devils,’ or something like that. But Hunter was convinced that the first letter should be quiet, almost reassuring in tone. It would be sufficient indication that they meant business to enclose with the letter one of her small pearl earrings.

He had expected that after putting the letter in the box he would feel somehow a different man, one engaged upon a criminal enterprise. In fact he was conscious of nothing except the vast expanse of time that yawned between the present moment and his next sight of Anthea. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, how were they to be filled? He sat for an hour in an Espresso coffee bar, ate a lunch which he hardly tasted, went to the cinema and sat through a film which he barely saw. Afterwards he went back to the Cosmos, lay on his bed and stared up at the crack in the ceiling. The bed squeaked under him and he thought of that evening which seemed so long ago, although it was a period of time to be counted in weeks, when she had first come here. As he conjured up various pictures of her, sitting cross-legged on the bed, taking off her dress, making love, a creature incomprehensibly gay and then just as incomprehensibly gloomy, it occurred to him that, whether or not things went as they had planned, she would never come to the Cosmos again. The thought made him miserable. It seemed to him that he was like a man suspended between two lives, the past with Anna which he had given up, and the future with Anthea in which he could not really believe.

That evening he was jarringly reminded of the past. At half-past seven he decided that he could not bear to eat dinner in the Cosmos. Outside in Wilton Road a light rain was falling. He put on a raincoat and went down the stairs. A man had taken refuge from the rain in the entrance. Hunter made to push past him, the man turned, and revealed the red slightly sweating face (or were those really drops of rain?) of Jerry Wilton.

‘Bill,’ Jerry said. Hunter could see Jerry summing up the situation with one quick glance back into the hotel, a sharp look at Bill himself – is he keeping a little piece here or just economising? – and then the words coming fluently. ‘Bill, you old son of a gun. This is a bit of luck. Let’s go and have a drink.’

He allowed himself to be led by Jerry to the nearest pub, drank the beer that was bought for him, bought a beer back, talked warily of trivialities. Did it matter at all that Jerry Wilton connected him with the Cosmos, could it in any way affect the kidnap plot? He decided that it could not, and yet remained uneasy, aware of something more than usually false in Jerry’s professional geniality. Leave it to Jerry, he told himself, he’ll say what it’s all about if and when he wants to. Jerry now was telling him how damned sorry he, Jerry, was that things had turned out the way they had.

‘I want you to know that, Bill. I want you to know that you did a hell of a good job, and it’s a damned shame things had to turn out this way.’

‘I saw what you said in the interview in the papers. Thanks, Jerry.’

‘No thanks about it. I just told the truth.’ Beads of sweat showed on Jerry’s face, there could be no doubt about his sincerity. But did people really say this kind of thing, Hunter wondered, and answered himself that evidently they did.

‘If it rested with me you’d still be on the job, Bill. But you know what it is, we’ve got to consider the public.’ Jerry’s voice was appropriately hushed as he spoke the holy word.

‘Naturally. I understand that.’

‘It wasn’t good publicity for anybody.’

‘No, of course not.’

‘But I still think you had a raw deal. They could have found you another job, out of the public eye you might say. I’ve told everyone what I think about it. It’s not often I stick my neck out, either.’ Brave Jerry, Hunter thought, don’t-hit-a-man-when-he’s-down Jerry. But he could not help reflecting at the same time that Jerry had not stuck his neck out very far. His own resignation was an accomplished fact, the money acknowledging it was lodged in the bank, Jerry’s defence of him was all glory and no danger. Was this too cynical a thought? Perhaps it was.

Yet in spite of the tears in Jerry’s voice, surely this was not all he had to say? Still tearful, he added now, ‘What’s happened to you, Bill?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You and the little woman. You’re not together any more. That’s a hell of a thing to happen. She’s a great little woman, Bill.’

So it was Anna! After Charlie’s reproaches came Jerry Wilton’s tears. He could hardly refrain from laughing at the thought of Jerry, with his icily respectable wife, his house at Sunningdale, his two boys at good public schools, worrying about the cutting of his illegal bond with Anna. But it would never do to laugh. Pie-faced as Jerry himself, he said, ‘It was the best way.’

Jerry shook his head. ‘I feel a bit responsible. Do you know what I’d like to see? I’d like to see you marry that girl.’

Still playing the part expected of him, yet in a way telling the truth as well, he said, ‘Sometimes you have to make a clean break. How could I ask Anna to marry me?’

‘With the shadow hanging over you, you mean?’ Jerry pushed another beer towards him. ‘Yet, do you know, I believe Anna would have done it. Your feelings do you credit, Bill, but still I can’t approve of the way you did it. She really took one on the chin when you just up and left her like that, but she hasn’t let it floor her. At the same time I don’t mind admitting, I’m worried about that girl, Bill.’ Jerry looked deep into the mystical depths of his glass. ‘And about you, too. That place tonight –’ He shook his head.

Suddenly he was sickened by the pie-faced part, it was all more than he could stand, the boozy false sincerity of Jerry Wilton, who had dealt in lies so long that he could no longer tell them from the truth, the idealisation of placid, sluttish Anna, the whole deep mess of sentiment in which Jerry wanted to embed him. He put down his glass on the counter so that a little liquid slopped over the side. ‘Shut up.’

‘Don’t think I’m trying to interfere, old man.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ He lifted his glass, let the beer roll down his throat, and spoke with a conscious effort at control. ‘Let me alone, will you, Jerry.’

Jerry wiped his face. He looked surprised, a little frightened even. ‘I’m sorry as hell you take it like that, Bill. Believe me, I didn’t mean to offend you. If I’ve said anything out of turn, I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right. I just want to be left alone.’ Less out of interest than to change the subject, he said, ‘Did you hear any more of Mekles? Threats to sue you, anything like that?’

‘Nothing. But the police – my word, we had the police round asking questions every day for a week. I must say, Bill, I think you were rather – foolhardy, shall I say?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Why, you saw the news of Bond’s suicide in the paper and tried to link it to Mekles. Isn’t that right?’

‘I didn’t know anything about Bond’s suicide,’ he said patiently. It would be impossible to convince Jerry of that, as it had been impossible to convince Inspector Crambo. ‘If it was suicide.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing.’ There was no point in telling Jerry about what now seemed that rather ridiculous interview with Tanya Broderick. ‘Will you believe it, Jerry, if I tell you that the only thing I knew about Bond was from the stuff Charlie supplied to me? He told me not to use it, but I did. I played a hunch and it went wrong, that’s all.’

‘Do you see any green?’ Jerry rolled up the corner of an eyelid and revealed the bloodshot egg of his eye.

‘No, it was a daring move, would have been a real scoop if it had come off and you’d rattled Mekles. I think it was foolhardy, but I respect you for trying it. I shall always think of you, Bill, as one of the most daring chaps I’ve ever known.’

It sounded valedictory. What would he call me, Hunter wondered, if he knew about the kidnap plot? That night he dreamed, not of Anthea but of Anna. There was a secret that she was for some reason prevented from telling him, and it was immensely important to them both that he should know it. What was the secret. ‘Don’t do it,’ Anna said to him. ‘It will bring you bad luck for seven years.’ What was he not to do, he asked her frantically? She did not answer, merely shook her head and bit into a liqueur chocolate. Drops of the liquid dribbled down her chin.