Sing Like You Know the Words (32 page)

-Let’s just say, Ray confided,
that Pedro wanted to buy something from me, but I’m not sure
whether he really wanted to buy it, or only to know whether I had
it to sell.

-What was he asking you for?

-Well you have an honest face,
meaning that you look like you know nothing about anything, so it’s
safe to talk to you. He said he wanted to buy supplies of something
called titadine. It’s a product used in mining. It makes a loud
bang.

-What’s so surprising about
that?

-It’s just not the sort of thing
policemen like Pedro go around buying.

Ray would not say any more on
this subject, but he made sure that they stayed in the bar long
enough for Mitchell to become hopelessly drunk.

-About time for your bed now.
I’m in a good mood tonight, almost a helpful mood. I think I’ll go
on somewhere after this, but I might grant you three wishes
first.

-The hundred and twenty

-You don’t want to go spoiling
my mood

-I need to go back with
something.

-Really? I supposed your job
would just be to find out where I was staying; check it was really
me. Isn’t that how it goes? You don’t seem like a person anyone
would send to collect money from me.

-Well that’s true enough, but
the way it works, now that we have spoken, I have to be able to say
that I tried to collect some money on account from you; and to
agree a payment schedule.

-Now you are becoming tiresome,
Ray sighed. I need somewhere with a bit more life than this place.
Come along if you want. No. Well in that case it has been very nice
to meet you.

Ray made as if to rise but
hesitated.

-Remember my story about the
Irishman. I didn’t finish it.

-I’m not anxious to hear the
ending.

Ray nodded.

-So you are not totally stupid.
It was useful for me tonight, that Pedro should think I have my
associates with me. I’d rather him not know I was on my own. He’s
more dangerous than you might guess. And then there’s myself, I can
be dangerous too. So your best bet to be out of this situation and
not even thinking about it in your own private thoughts. Am I
clear? You put it out of your mind. Good.

He reached into his chest pocket
and for a moment Mitchell felt the panic rising again. Ray pulled
out a heavy battered wallet and began peeling bank notes from it.
He put a pile of them on the beer soaked table in front of
them.

-That’s four grand there, he
announced. You can give that to the thieving bastards at the bank,
or – he paused reached into his trouser pocket and drew out another
wad of notes – there’s another two grand making six in all. You can
take both piles for having to explain that you failed to find any
sign of me.

Mitchell looked around,
concerned at seeing so much money exposed in public before
them.

-It’s real money if that’s
what’s worrying you, but it’s not a good idea to leave it on
display.

Mitchell hesitated. Derek said
that the golden rule was to take any cash on offer whatever
supposed conditions were attached. Promise anything, deny later. He
began to scoop up the cash. Ray watched for a moment smiling, but
then he placed his big hand on top of Mitchell’s own.

-Good lad. Right call. A word to
the wise though, the smile was still there, friendly as ever. I
don’t know what’s on your mind and I don’t know who put you up to
this, though I can tell you they are not your friend. I’m guessing
that whoever sent you here had a good reason for not coming
himself, which might mean that he knows more about me than you do.
This is not your normal line of work, and if I said you were taking
to it like a duck to water, I’d be lying. Leave it at that. It’s
not up to me to explain your own situation to you, but it is
important that you should have it clear in your head that, in my
world, when you pick up that money, it means you and I have a deal.
And in that world you don’t go back on your deals. You might also
want to keep it in mind that this is money I’m happy to lose. You
could call it an acceptable cost of the evening ending without
unpleasantness. Are we clear?

Mitchell nodded, pocketed the
rest of the money, and walked back to his room. When he shut the
door he noticed that his teeth were chattering, though it was warm
enough. He sat on the bed for a while, getting up two or three
times to check that the door was still locked. He wouldn’t have
slept at all but the alcohol put him out. He woke up early the next
morning, sitting in the armchair, fully clothed. He supposed that
Ray must have left already, but he made no attempt to find out for
sure.

***

Wednesday morning: back in the
office.

-How was it in London?

Like I’d tell you anything
Derek.

-No show. Duff information as
usual.

-Shame. I’ll get back on it.

Had he sounded natural enough?
What to do with the cash now? Pay it into his own account? - might
as well hand it straight over to Mrs W. Do the decent thing and pay
it into the business? - The business would be gone in a few weeks,
and besides he’d already lied about it just now. Hide it somewhere,
but where? - The safe of course: no one looked in there. There was
never anything to look at in the safe. The drawback was that Derek
knew where the key was. But under the old papers that were rotting
away in there, it should be well enough hidden. Easy enough to get
Derek out of the office, whilst he did the hiding: just ask to
speak to him about the finances.

The next morning, Sue brought
him some tea and treated him to one of her smiles that were rather
insipid when he thought about it.

-Sue, do you ever think about, I
don’t know, just leaving all this behind and starting again
somewhere new?

-Not really, do you? You don’t
seem like the type.

What was he thinking of really?
What could you do with six thousand? More than you could do with
less than nothing was the inner reply. Nothing to lose was
there?

-Anything else I can do? He’d
forgotten that Sue was still there.

-What?

-You look worried

-No, everything’s fine

-You’re not in any trouble over
that money are you?

-What money?

-That envelope in the safe. I
suppose you put it there yesterday. Derek was looking at it last
night, after you’d gone. Counted it all but put it back. Not very
like Derek, I thought.

-How did he find it?

-He didn’t say. Didn’t seem to
know quite what he was looking for, but you could see he was
looking for something, if that makes any sense. He was in your
office for a while

Cheating, deceitful, lying
bastard. He knew. He knew and he was obviously planning to take it
all for himself. Probably planning to come in the evening after
Mitchell had gone home. Cheat, cheat, but what to do about it? The
answer was obvious; get there first.

After a little thought, Mitchell
went to visit Raj and Pete later that afternoon. It was a little
difficult to persuade them to break into an office at short notice
(“we do houses not offices, and we don’t do safes”). When he’d
explained for the third or fourth time how easy it was to get in
and where the safe key would be, they seemed a little more willing,
and once he’d told them that the firm was intending to make an
insurance claim after the burglary, then it made sense to them and
they became almost enthusiastic. A dishonest motive made everything
comprehensible.

-And don’t forget, he said,
there’s five hundred in readies in that safe, just waiting for you.
But it has to be tonight, when there’s no chance of anyone being
there.

The rest of the money felt
comfortable in an envelope in the breast pocket of his jacket.

***

Mitchell was awake when the
phone rang at three fifteen in the morning. He took the call before
anyone else in the house was disturbed, carrying the phone to his
study as quietly as he could.

-You never told us there might
be someone there. If you had told us that we would not have gone
near the place. It’s your fault.

-What’s my fault? What are you
talking about? Where have you been till now?

It was clear that Raj was quite
drunk; he supposed Pete would be too. Raj admitted they’d had a few
drinks to steady their nerves before the job. His story, so far as
Mitchell could understand it, was that they’d gone to the office in
the early hours of morning, and everything went according to plan
at first. They found the key, found the safe, found the money; and
they were just having a quick look round (for anything else worth
stealing) when they heard someone coming up the stairs. They hid in
the main office, but it became obvious that this was where the
intruder was headed: they were trapped.

- Funny thing was, Mr Walcott,
whoever it was just had this little torch, like us, and he didn’t
switch on the lights, it was like he was coming to burgle the
place, like what we’d just done already.

When they realised that the
stranger would discover them, they panicked and made a run for it,
bursting through the door and flying down the stairs.

-It was so dark, Mr Walcott, we
didn’t see his face and he didn’t see ours, but the thing is, as we
were running we heard this heavy bumping like something being
dropped down the stairs behind us, and Pete looked round and he saw
that it was the man what had been at the door, so we realized then
that we must have knocked him over, accidentally, as we was
running.

-What did you do then?

-Well we couldn’t stop or he’d
have seen us, and anyway we were shit scared. You can’t imagine.
But Pete said the man was lying in the outside doorway, with the
door half open, said he could see him and that he wasn’t moving. We
didn´t know what to do when we stopped running. We could hardly go
back there. But now we´re scared someone might say we attacked this
man. That´s not us. We don’t go around hurting people.

-I’ll deal with it

-Thanks Mr Walcott.

But what could he do? He
couldn’t just happen to call round to the office at four in the
morning to check that all was well. And if were to go there, just
for a quick look, without letting anyone see him; what then?
Supposing it was Derek who´d fallen down the steps. Obviously it
was Derek. He´d been there staging his own burglary for Mitchell´s
benefit.

He might be badly injured or
worse. If it was worse than bad; well then there was nothing to be
done and best to walk away. But even if Mitchell found a body, if
Derek was just lying there; how did you check if someone was dead?
On the other hand if it was just a minor injury then Derek would
probably have called for help himself by now, but suppose he wasn´t
able to? He could be lying there till morning, maybe losing
blood.

Mitchell decided that he could
not trust his own imagination. He was panicking and most likely
there was nothing to worry about. Doing nothing was the only
sensible option: he only had to persuade himself of that. Wasn´t
inactivity what he did best after all?

His pulse was racing so much
that his head was starting to ache. Willing himself to be calm,
Mitchell tiptoed back to bed. His body moved quietly enough: only
his mind refused to follow instructions. Everyone else in the house
was still asleep it seemed, thank God.

He pulled the bed covers tightly
over his thin body, envying the steady breathing of his sleeping
wife, but the dark held no comfort. There would be a record of the
call he had received. The two idiots might be picked up by the
police at any time. Maybe Derek would even recognize them. Why had
he trusted them with the job? Why had any of this happened to
him?

The next day, when Mitchell
arrived early at the office, the police were already there. There
was a proper crime scene investigation underway and he couldn’t go
inside. They told him that his partner had visited the premises in
the night and disturbed some robbers who had attacked him and
fled.

When Sue arrived, Mitchell told
her to take an early weekend. It was Friday and they had no work in
any case. He phoned home to say that the offices had been broken
into. His wife asked if that meant he´d be late home. The police
told him which hospital Derek had been taken to and that his
injuries weren´t that serious. Mitchell raised a silent prayer to
whatever deity ruled his fate.

The officer only wanted a brief
statement from him. Just a matter of routine.

-Fairly clear it’s an
opportunistic burglary, sir. Not so surprising when you consider
the level of security you have here. You should think about
upgrading it. Did you have much of value in the offices sir?

-I er, don’t really know. I’m a
bit confused at the moment. I should check with Derek.

-Well I suppose you’ll go over
it with the insurers, but we’ll need a full list in case we catch
them, or recover any of the missing goods.

-Do you think you’ll…?

-Catch them? All depends. It’s
your basic breaking and entry, not many clues there. If we are
lucky and they have form and were too stupid to wear gloves, we may
get a print. Anyway scum like this never do just one job so we´ll
get them eventually. Then it´ll be a slap on the wrist for them and
back to the street I suppose. I must admit though, this job was a
little unusual?

-In what way? Mitchell tried not
to gulp. The fear was starting again.

-Not so many office burglaries
these days. But when they do happen, usually they take the
computers and printers. These lads ignored yours.

-Our equipment is quite old
fashioned; I expect they took the cash out of the safe.

-I expect so, but who keeps cash
overnight these days?

-Well you know, debt recovery,
it’s a cash business, working all hours.