The Vengeance Man (17 page)

Vomit dribbled down his front. 

"Then open the safe. It's up to you, Varley."  I twirled the sock,  back in control of myself and the situation. I'd nearly lost it there for a moment.  The Varleys of this world can do that to you. He made me feel cheap,  like some kind of bully, a man who hits his woman.    But he'd deserved it.  

This time he nodded dumbly and tried to move the picture. One handed it was hard, but I let him try. The contact alarm was underneath it sure enough and I dashed any ray of hope he might have had by saying, "And you can switch the alarm off first, too.  We know where it is." Broken-spirited, he shuffled off to the hall and switched off a key on a control panel under the stairs. I hadn't seen
that
on my recce.

When we got back to the living room,
Varley clawed at the picture one handed, and pulled it down. It fell from his hand and the corner split. He looked at it blankly. "Get on with it, Varley," I hissed. "Open the safe!"

Pale and dishevelled, he looked up at me, despair in his eyes; then wordlessly turned to open the safe. I watched him like a hawk, but I needn't have bothered. Varley was a broken man. After a couple of minutes knob-twirling, he stepped back and half collapsed into an armchair, ignoring me completely. His face was white with pain and shock; he was totally preoccupied with himself and his injuries. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he began to wipe his face and ear. I left him - he was past harming me - and turned to the safe.  I risked a glance inside.

It was disappointingly empty except for a couple of fattish A
-
4 envelopes and some documents. I took them all, watching for Varley's reaction. There was none; the room was silent except for his painful breathing and the crackle of the papers. I slid a finger underneath the flap of one of the big envelopes and ripped it open. At least four plump bundles of used £50 notes were stuffed inside. I reckoned I was probably holding £10,000 at a guess. Or more. I glanced up at Varley, who still hadn't reacted and looked as if he was about to faint.   His earlier vomit lay in a stinking puddle in the fire place. He gawped up at me.

"Why?" he breathed. "Why me?"

I let him have it as I'd rehearsed it, in best Scots. "Because you're a fuckin’ bastard, Varley, and we've a contract on you. We've been hired to make you pay for everything you've done. It's revenge; to teach you a lesson you'll no' forget. Have you got that?"

He nodded, ashen faced. I ripped the other envelope open and found it contained, if anything, rather more money than the first. I couldn't make head nor tail of the documents. Varley spoke up, more strongly. "I've got to have a drink. I think you've broken my ribs as well." He groaned and retched slightly, panting at the pains in his side.

I nodded, careless and successful,  "OK. Go ahead pal.   But don't do anything silly. The phone’s out." He supported himself across the room, one hand on the wall, and I addressed myself to shoving the papers and the bundles of money into my pack and planning my exit.

I suppose I underestimated him. Or over-estimated his injuries.

The next thing I knew, a heavy whisky tumbler shattered on the Regency striped wallpaper above my head, showering me with shards of splintered crystal glass. Instinctively I ducked, half crouching and preparing to spring. Then, to my amazement, I saw Varley had pulled a gun from a sideboard drawer, what looked like a large blue-black automatic.

I could hardly credit my eyes. Where the hell had he got an automatic pistol from? Without thinking, I scooped the poker from the fireplace and lunged hard at his middle, two-handed, as the unarmed combat instructor had taught me long ago, while Varley painfully waved the gun in my direction.

The poker hit him just below the sternum, going upwards, and I felt a slight resistance as if I'd winded him. He screamed with pain, as I pushed heard, and dropping the pistol clutched at his chest. I pulled the poker back to club him with it, but, to my asto
nishment, it wouldn't move. It
was stuck.  Varley staggered back, the poker protruding from his middle, a look of surprise on his face.

The bloody thing had gone in - I'd stabbed him. Deep.

We stood there for a second, looking at each other. "Oh, no," he said softly, wide-eyed with shock. "Oh, no."

We both looked down at the obscene spike of the black and brass poker sticking out of his middle.  His eyes came up to meet mine, wide with fear.  "Oh, my God," he choked. "Oh, no!”   Then he sat down very suddenly on the floor.

“You’ve stabbed me…” he said with an air of astonishment and began to choke and cough.   Bright blood splattered from his mouth as he gasped and his hands were slippery and red from the spot where the poker had gone in.   He pulled at it with his good hand, then screamed. The poker waggled and he went on a1ternately screaming and bleeding and choking. I've seen enough men die to recognise the symptoms.  Scooping up my backpack and the envelopes, I fled, Varley's keening screams pursuing me. At the door I looked back. He lay on his side kicking feebly, the poker waggling obscenely. "Don't leave me," he pleaded from a blood drenched mouth. "Please help me. Don't go. Please."  He sounded more like a lover calling to his mistress than to the agent of his doom. I grabbed my kit and ran.

And ran, and ran and ran.

I don't know how I got out of the house. I remember the door of the utility room, and leaning against the outside wall for a moment. Then I ran as if the hounds of hell were after me, until I was back at the car.  All my training, all my experience, disappeared for a blank couple of minutes as I hurtled across the lawn in the darkness, breath rasping, then the trees whipping against me. It wasn't terror, it was - well, anyway, I just ran.  Like some primitive animal, I fled through the night.

Back at the car I stopped, chest heaving and shaking like a leaf. I stripped off the overalls and stuffed them into the backpack, leaving it bulging, before throwing it underneath the back seat. Then I started the engine and switched on the lights. The green bough blocked my exit where I had left it. Cursing, I flung myself out of the car to pull it away; the light from the open door combined with the headlights illuminated me like a beacon, slithering furiously on the muddy grass as I pulled the dripping branch away.

Then I was back in and gunning the engine to pull away. To my horror, the back wheels spun uselessly and the car slid sideways. The drizzle had turned the bridle path into mud. I stopped, panicking and ready for a terrible second  to run.

Then reason, training and common sense flooded in. Carefully, I put the car in second and delicately revved the motor. For a heart-stopping moment the wheels spun, then she bit and slithered forward, shaking herself like a dog coming out of the river as the tyres found firmer grass on the ride and then the road. I had to stop for a moment as a car's headlights flashed by in the rain; then I drove away down the lane, heading west, away from the motorway and any obvious escape routes, good Kentish mud clattering against the underside of the  car.

At the first telephone box I stopped and dialled 999. In broad Glaswegian I told the tale, gave the startled girl the address and told her to send an ambulance – fast. Then I put the phone down. Gloves. No prints. Get out. I hadn't meant to stab Varley. The least I could do was give him the fucker a chance, however remote.

By the time I came out of the box I was thinking hard. I drove steadily back to London, watching the wipers smear the growing rain on the screen. By swinging wide to the west into Surrey, I would avoid any Kent police roadblocks on the M2 or M20 routes into London. Then I drove through an all night car wash before leaving the car on the forecourt of the
hire firm
and pushing the keys through the door. I'd paid the deposit in cash, so I'd lost that.

Then I caught what must  have been the last late night cab, carrying my pack suitcase style and dropped off near the flat.  I didn't want curious cabbies remembering where they had dropped me. The final four hundred metres on foot were the worst.  At 2 a.m. lone pedestrians with packs are objects of intense interest to beat policemen. Fortunately the Metropolitan Police had long discarded such mundane methods of policing. The walk seemed to take for ever. My footsteps echoed hollow on the walls and my shadow lengthened and receded as I passed the streetlights in the night.  But no curious policeman was there to see
me. With
a sigh of relief I let myself in.

I drank a tumbler of whisky almost neat, but not before I'd dumped the pack in the bath. The stereo went on to Bach, straight away.  I stood in the middle of the room, clutching the tumbler and staring blankly at the walls.  Only later did I shower myself scrupulously clean before emptying the pack, being careful to keep it all inside the bath. The money and documents went under the floorboards for the moment. The rest, including my black trainers, went into a black plastic waste sack, mud and all, ready to go back to my lock up garage. By three o'clock I was in bed, exhausted. It had been a long day.

In my sleep, Varley was stabbed a hundred times, until I woke at six, bathed in sweat and with my heart pounding.

Never again. Never. At least it was over.

London 

But it wasn’t over. It was worse.

By the time I made it into the office, I was already picking up the drift of the story from the paper. There had been nothing on the radio, which was hardly surprising. The morning radio team were more interested in making laboured jokes about the state of the motorways and interviewing some excitable American Foreign Affairs Committee representative on the state of Iran and the Middle East to worry about obscure crimes in Kent. But the newspaper had an interesting spot, on the inside page:

'
CITY MAN STABBED
'

I sighed with relief and put the paper down. At least I hadn't killed him, although how he'd survived, God alone knew. In an obscure way I felt pleased that I'd saved his life by telephoning from that call box. I turned to the rest of the day with renewed enthusiasm, despite my sandpaper eyes and drooping lids.

Later on
Mallalieu looked by. "Go
o
d God! You look
shattered," he said, swinging the door to my office shut with a careless back flip of the foot. "Heavy night?"

I rubbed my face and tried to brighten up. "You know how it is ..." I trailed off, hoping to indicate lots of work. Mallalieu mistook it for sexual innuendo and looked even more surprised. "I didn't know that the action was in Peterborough. What a place! Maybe I should visit?"

"Peterborough?" It was my turn to be surprised.

"Yes." He sounded irritable. "That's where you went yesterday afternoon, wasn't it?    Have you got the answer?"

"Oh, yes, of course." I was sweating now. "Yes; got back last night and had a late night reorganising the flat."

"Oh" Mallalieu looked at me, baffled and indecisive. Then he shook his head and abruptly walked away.

After that I was glad to escape from the office. On the way home I bought an evening paper. To my horror, Varley had made the front page. He was dead.

Now I was a murderer.

To say I was shaken
rigid
would have been an understatement. Of course I've killed before, but always by intention. It's one thing to fire a rocket launcher into a Comcen and blow a machine gun team away. I've even cut down a terrorist at point blank range as he went for a pistol.   He was so close I could smell him, and I've never, ever, had a qualm about it.   He's gone to the hell he deserved. When it's like that, it's him or you.  To tell you the truth I’ve even enjoyed it: but I'd never killed by accident before.  I've never before blundered stupidly into a meaningless death with a stupid amateur like Varley.

I walked back to the flat and had a slow drink and tried to think carefully. I forced myself to think like a murderer. Had I left any clues? The evidence of the stories was 'no'. Had I left any clues which could link me with Varley?   Yes; at least two: one with Barbara, and secondly, with the evidence in my flat.  And I didn't like that 'SAS
style raid
.'   I decided to
deal
with Barbara last and to clear the flat first, as it presented the more immediate threat.

I turfed out the contents of the plastic bag.  It was a shame, because there was a lot of good and useful stuff there.    But I really should ditch it. After a struggle, I decided against that, although the stinking sockful of sand went out of the window into the garden. The sock itself went into the dustbin. The expensive things I cleaned up scrupulously, and walked round to the hidey hole behind the loose breeze block in the lock up garage.  If things ever went wrong I might need those clandestine tools as never before.

Then I turned my attention to the cache under the bathroom floorboards. Leaving the money to one side, I quickly scanned the documents.

Sure enough there were a couple of insurance policies, as the hapless Mrs Varley had said. I wondered if she had known about the money.   I expect Varley kept her in the dark about that too, as he did on so many other things. There were twenty bundles of a hundred £50 notes - £50,000, plus three fat bundles of £50 notes, all well used; another £50,000. I sat back and whistled - Varley had had £100,000 stashed away in cash, presumably against a rainy day. I'll bet his wife didn't know about it - and I'll bet the Inland Revenue didn't either.

I went back to the documents. Underneath the insurance policies was another envelope, containing two ornately engraved certificates. They looked like graduation scrolls. To my astonishment they turned out to be bearer bonds, one for $250,000, drawn on the ' First Grand Canyon Bank, Inc.' and the other for £100,000, drawn on the 'Federated Banque of Zurich AG.' Excited, not so much by the money as by the growing evidence of Varley's secret finances, I dragged the other papers onto the floor.

A cascade of grainy black and white photographs and a few black, shiny negative strips scattered before me. Most of the pictures were the sort you see in cheap sex magazines; fuzzy, unlovely slabs of humanity; half-focussed flesh vying with blurry pictures of faces distorted by passion. Uncomprehending, I picked up a photograph at random. An attractive but skinny young woman sprawled, half supported on one arm on a sofa, one leg cocked invitingly.
A man’s
hand gripped her breast and her head was inclined back to kiss him as he leant forward over the back of the sofa. With a start of recognition I realised that the photograph was of a junior cabinet minister, but taken some years ago, with his bald spot - and much else - revealed.

Blackmail!   No wonder Varley had been doing so well. I rapidly skipped through the rest
of the
pictures
. None of them
was exactly 'Playmate of the Month' stuff, but I recognised at least two of the other players. One of them I noticed was a well known right wing newspaper columnist who was for ever ranting on about morality and the family. Apparently he enjoyed a little firm discipline himself, if the camera didn’t lie.
He certainly looked as if he was enjoying himself.
Varley had clearly been a busy little soul, and any vestiges of conscience I had about his death disappeared on the spot. As I contemplated the sprawl of pictures of the floor, buttocks mixed with breasts, limbs slackly entwined, I realised that I had probably done a lot of people a favour. I wondered just how he had
managed to
get photographs. In vain I hunted for a notebook or record of payments, but Varley had been too careful for that. There was nothing for it but to burn the lot. I didn't need them and their very existence threatened me. Mind you, I could probably have sold them to the Sunday papers for a small fortune.

Once I'd done that, I took the bearer bonds and money and shoved them back under the floorboards. Then I settled down to work out how to push the cash to Barbara. She didn't need it all and the bearer bonds were far too risky to move, but £100,000 in cash would go a long way to helping the family. But how? Over a slow salad and a worn
out bit
of steak, the answer came.

After supper I phoned an old acquaintance in the stamp business, who'd done me favours in the past.

"Michael, how would you like to sell me a stamp
collection
?"

"Sure, that's my business.  Stamp collections I sell. Now,
you
I
never had
you
down as
a philatelist.  What sort of stamps would you like?"

"The sellable sort."

Michael snorted with laughter. "How much did you want to buy?"

"About a hundred grand."

There was a pause. A hundred thousand pounds to a stamp dealer like Michael Tilling was not a big deal, but it wasn't exactly chicken-feed, either.  "Hmmm. That’s quite a lot of stamps. How quickly would you want to sell them?"

"At any time from the moment I walked out of your shop."

Michael digested this, again in silence. I could almost hear his brain working. "OK, how small a collection would you like?"

Now it was my turn to be silent. "Small? How do you mean?"

"Well," he explained patiently, "Would you like a collection in a nice big shiny leather album or just one stamp?"

I was stymied.    "I don't know, Michael. What do you advise?"

"Portability can be an issue with some clients.  There’s nothing like a stamp in the wallet for moving money round the world. Are you going overseas again? Have you got a buyer in mind?"

"No, not yet. But I'd prefer to take it into a big dealer. Stanley Gibbons for example."

Michael snorted again. "You'll lose if you deal with the big boys"

"How much?"? "

"On a hundred K." He pondered. "They'll take you for at least ten on a straight sale, I reckon. Minimum."

"One hundred thousand to ninety thousand - just by crossing the Strand?" 

"Yes. If you’re lucky,
even. That’s
the stamp game.  How do you think the big boys got big?"

Another silence.   Michael broke it. "Are you trying to turn some ready cash round, by any chance?" The voice was dry, mocking. " ‘Cos you can always do that at a gaming club. That's what casinos are for.   Nice girls too.  Or buy a consignment of those mobile phones; you know, GSMs. Razors. Illegal black market cigarettes. Ah, the possibilities are endless. That's what the Mafia do to launder money, you know. "

"No, no, Michael - I'm just looking for a good investment."

Michael bellowed with laughter. "Investment? Listen, alright. Come and see me, tomorrow lunch time. I'll give you some nice clean stamps for seventy five grand ...
“I
started to interrupt, but he cut me short.
"Seventy five on the
receipt,"
he emphasised
, “
Then you and I both benefit. Right?   Then I'll fix it for you to go round and sell
them
to a friend of mine off Covent Garden later in the day.
Eighty five k?
" It sounded reasonable.   "Very discreet chap. That way everyone's happy, aren't they?" added Michael patiently. "I'm happy, you're happy and my mate in the Garden's happy."   He assumed my deal was a tax thing. "Why, even the Revenue's happy. You’ve got to be careful these days. You can’t even buy a house without saying that your not a money launderer and show ‘em your passport.”

I tried to work it out. "So you get £100,000 in cash, but say
its
£75,000 for the tax man. I get stamps and flog them for £85,000." I thought about it. "How do I benefit?"

"Effectively you pay fifteen grand for the privilege of turning the hundred K you want to turn round into a reputable bank cheque - money you could put in the bank. Straight away. Even tell the Revenue about it.   Cheap at the price."

"How do you benefit?"

"I make some pocket money, without bothering the Revenue, and move some stock for a normal margin."

"But the stamps?" I persisted.

Michael sighed. "They'll be worth a hundred grand. Good stamps. I'm just glad to make the sale."

"So your friend gets £100,000 worth of stamps for £85,000?"

"That's it - you're getting it now."

I contemplated the deal. It seemed very reasonable. Michael added the clincher. "And it's all as legal as your original cash stake."  Again the mocking laugh.

"OK, Michael: see you tomorrow." As I put the phone down I felt a twinge of unease. I detest exposing my security to any third party, even using the cut out principle.

Glumly muttering to myself, 'no man in an island,' I went to bed to the strains of Rameau - again. I really must put on the softly crashing waves tomorrow night.