Tremor (5 page)

‘Support the Red Cross?' she said, rattling her tin and smiling.

They took not the slightest notice of her until Big Smith, stepping back to open the rear door, trod on her toe and nearly upset her tray of flags.

‘Well, really!' she shouted. ‘Some people! Some people haven't got the manners of pigs!'

Johnny Carpenter was driving, and as he saw a gap in the traffic he prepared to pull out. Big Smith was sliding into the back, and as Miss Wardle was somewhat in the way he gave her a shove in the chest.

‘Go stuff yourself, dear,' he shouted.

Make towards Houndsditch, then south with the flow, cross Aldgate and turn into a car park in the Minories. There they changed cars for a Mark 9 Jaguar, thoughtfully provided by Mr Artemis, and left the Zodiac in its place. Mr Artemis had insisted that all the cars they used should be ‘clean', so there was no risk of being held up at some embarrassing juncture. In the Zodiac they left masks, some clothing, what was left of the rope, rubber gloves, etc. The guns were too precious to abandon. Greg Garrett, who had provided them, said he could cope with them. It was not as if any of them had been
fired
.

They crossed the river at Tower Bridge, made for the Old Kent Road, stopped again in a side-street near the Thomas à Becket. Here on wasteland two more cars were parked; their own.

Greg went off first in his MG, the guns wrapped in sacking in the boot. He was giving Joe Rooney a lift to Borough, where he would take the Northern Line to Camden Town. Johnny Carpenter was to drive Big Smith as far as Waterloo and then take the money bags to Mr Artemis's respectable home in Hampstead. There a safe would be waiting open for him to put in the money. When it closed it could only be opened by Big Smith, who had last night chosen his own private combination and set the numbers. (There was honour among thieves, but everyone was being careful not to put it under too great a strain.)

Cautious telephone calls would be exchanged tomorrow, and if there were no alarms they would assemble after dark tomorrow evening, the safe would be opened in the presence of all, and the haul examined, estimated, divided. Mr Artemis had various channels for laundering or making the best of the less negotiable bonds and securities. Anything too risky would be burnt. It was a good plan.

It was a good plan but it had its flaws. When Big Smith disappeared into the Waterloo tube Johnny Carpenter looked at his watch, licked his lips and took a deep breath before lighting another cigarette.

This was the moment of decision. Either he crossed the Rubicund or he didn't. (Was it Rubicund? Something like that. For him it might well be the River Styx.) He had made all his plans, but the job had taken at least half an hour longer than he had estimated. Since then he had made up a few minutes on his calculated schedule. But it had been cutting it fine even to begin with.

All his private arrangements could be cancelled. He would have wasted a few quid, but so what? There'd be a nice little pay-off from this job. Why not be content? Wait till next time.

But would there ever be a next time? He had listened, hardly able to believe his luck, when the plans were made. Of course he'd known Big Smith and Greg Garrett for years. And everybody knew him, Frère Jacques. A clean slate since he was twenty-odd. Always around, Frère Jacques, always up to something but always able to keep out of trouble. And Samuel Artemis he'd known on and off, at the ringside, on the racecourse, on and off where there were dealings.

As soon as his cigarette was alight he pulled out into the traffic. His uneasy mind, the timid streak in his mind, told him he could put off a decision another half-hour, see how long it took him to get to the West End and his own flat in Bulstrode Street. It could still be yes or no up to that moment. Though not a moment longer than that.

Although he quailed at the thought, something told him he was going ahead.

He was driving an old Sunbeam Alpine he'd had a couple of years. Shabby but fast. Traffic was not heavy for a Friday. Cross Waterloo Bridge, dodge round Aldwych and up Kingsway into New Oxford Street. Quicker than he'd hoped. Ten minutes saved now from the original plan.

Flat was over a shop. Two journeys for the six bags, upstairs, fish for the key. In.

This is it. The damned river, whatever it is called, crossed now, no return. Open the bags on the floor, everything in a great pyramid, bundles of notes sticking out here and there. Not hard picking the wheat from the chaff. Artemis, no doubt, would have wanted to sort the stuff carefully; with time you could assess what could be made profitable use of. The one thing he had not got was time. It would be an hour at least, maybe two, before anyone began to worry.

Lovely stuff here: English, French, German, Italian, American currency. All could be packed safely in one small suitcase. Regretfully he left the rest behind. Three copies of
The Times
to lie on the top lest someone flipped the case open.

Change of suit, grab up two passports, air tickets to Marseilles and Bordeaux. To catch the second of these he had to be at the West London Air Terminal by noon. The Marseilles alternative left him another half-hour's leeway but didn't have the ongoing flight he wanted. (He had given up his earlier idea of driving or being driven to Heathrow, because he thought it would be more conspicuous.)

Pause, look around the room; the empty bags, the mountain of tumbled paper scattered over the floor; spectacles on, old trilby hat, raincoat, cigarettes, all as anonymous as you could get.

He knew he also had to fear the police. Collecting woman might give description, but more likely to be of Big Smith, who had pushed her. He himself was not a man with characteristics easy to remember; it had been an advantage all his life.

Taxi to West Brompton, leaving his too easily identifiable Sunbeam outside the flat. Check in, board the bus, which was nearly full, sit next to tall, rather loose-jointed, handsome young chap who seemed to be travelling alone. Suitcase containing his clothes in the luggage compartment of the bus, the other case comfortingly between his knees.

Well, that Rubicund was crossed finally now. No going back. Onwards Frère Jacques, who was tired to death of the small-time robbery, the small-time con; enough to live well off for maybe three months; then all the stress and hassle of planning and the risks of carrying out something new. This, this Benson job, had been the biggest of his life. Now he wanted to live off it – in South America, or maybe Australia or the United States – for a nice piece of the foreseeable future. One big coup, and this was it: and all in one pocket, not split five ways. To hell with his friends and comrades. Let them stew.

Traffic was slow, but plenty of time now. Plane for Bordeaux did not leave until 13.40. Having carried his two cases as far as Manchester Square, to make it more difficult for any bloodhounds who came sniffing and asking questions, he had again been tempted to tell the taxi he hailed to go to Heathrow. But caution prevailed.

Now the worst tensions were over he felt a great need to talk to someone. He always had been a chatterer, and was known for it. Just talk. Meaning nothing. No time to change his under-clothes. The sweat of the morning had dried on him, broken out and dried again. Nothing to read, so he kept glancing at his companion's
Daily Mail
. Nothing new. When would news of the robbery break? Later editions of the
News
and the
Standard
. Big headlines or small? Stop Press or Front Page? No one had been killed or hurt. Not too much of a sensation. Depend on what competition there was.

Would the police already be at airports and stations? It figured. But with no descriptions to go on, they could hardly hold up the arteries of the world while every passenger was stopped and searched. It was the last big risk. You took your chance.

The young man next to him was probably going on holiday somewhere. (Certainly not everyone in the bus was going to Bordeaux.) Johnny could not see the name on the BEA travelling bag. Ah, yes. Morris. M. J. Morris. Looked comfortably off. Good cuffs. Good links too. Johnny always noticed good cuffs. For a short time he had worked in a tailor's in Wolverhampton in his youth, before going into the motor industry. No shirt sleeve showing meant socially dispossessed; too much meant socially insecure.

What would the lads be doing now? Greg Garrett no doubt would be back at his farm, leaving the guns in the boot of the car until after dark. Johnny had seen his place once, and very nice too. Greg was smart: happily married, two boys at prep school, two hundred acres, better spoken than most of his kind, mingled with the gentry, shared their shoots, fussed over their wives, no one had the slightest idea that he had gunned down the doorman in cold blood at the jewel robbery last November.

Joe Rooney would be busy at his garage in Bromley, changing brake pads or adjusting clutch travel or whatever. Respectable man too; his wife a bit of a shrew who ordered him about, four kids all at the council school, noisy, unruly lot of little bastards. Joe was the only quiet one in the family. But he wasn't as slow as he looked. You never did to underestimate him.

Big Smith had been a boxer and couldn't keep away from it. Ten to one he'd be up at Haverstock Hill, where the weigh-ins took place, getting seen about there so people'd remember. Or maybe he'd go back to the Thomas à Becket, which had a gym on the first floor, and hang around in the hope of seeing Henry Cooper or one of the other top heavyweights.

And Samuel Artemis, always with money, the perfect manager, womanizer, four wives; third one in the witness box in the Divorce Court had said: ‘When my husband was circumcised they threw away the wrong piece' (shocked the judge); a backer, a promoter, a fixer, not lightly to be crossed.

None of them lightly to be crossed. They wouldn't take kindly at all to thin, nervy, chain-smoking, talkative Frère Jacques letting them down, double-crossing them, playing the three-card trick twice in one day, now off to the sun with the proceeds of a job they had all risked their liberty to do. The unforgivable sin of the underworld; one degree worse than grassing.

The bus had been on the move about twenty minutes when the driver stamped on the brakes and they were all jerked forward. Johnny bumped his head on the seat in front as there was a jarring of metal and they came to an abrupt stop. Shoutings at the front. A taxi slewed across the road.

The passengers, till then passive like sheep on the way to market, were standing up, rubbing bruises, picking up bags, talking to each other and to the other passengers as if the jolt had loosened their tongues. The driver had climbed down and was shouting at the taxi-driver.

‘My cripes!' said Johnny to the young man. ‘That's torn it. We'll miss the bleeding plane.'

The young man was licking his knuckle which he had cut on a window ledge. ‘Hope not. What time's your plane?'

‘13.40.'

‘Same as mine. Are you going to Bordeaux?'

‘Yep.'

‘I've a connection to make too,' said the young man.

‘On to Morocco?'

‘Yes. Agadir.'

‘Same here. Name of Frazier. Jack Frazier.'

‘Mine's Morris. Matthew Morris.'

They talked for a few minutes. Johnny suddenly wanted to go to the lavatory and could not. His bowels were turning to water.

The taxi had come out of a side-street and tried to squeeze into the flow of traffic: he'd expected the bus driver to ease off to give him room, and the bus driver had expected to be given the right of way. A policeman now came, and the taxi, with a badly buckled wing but its yellow light still bravely shining, was reversed into the side-street. But something was wrong with the left front wheel of the bus. The steering rod had been put out of true, and when the clutch was let in the bus steered into the kerb.

More consultation.

The bus driver climbed back into the bus. ‘ Laze and gennelmen, regret to say because of mishap this vehicle is now unserviceable. The police are telephoning to the terminal for a relief bus, which should be along very shortly. Thank you.'

‘That'll be half an hour,' said a short stout man standing in front of Johnny. ‘At least. My flight goes at one twenty-five. Not a hope.'

‘Laze and gennelmen,' said the driver, ‘please return to your seats to await the relief bus. It should be along very shortly.'

People began to sit down, in various attitudes of impatience or resignation. A light rain was falling, and nobody wanted to stand outside on this dismal February day.

Matthew looked at his watch. ‘Hm. Well, it'll be a close call. We might just make it.'

Johnny thought not. He felt sure his number had come up. A thousand-to-one chance had ditched his scheme. By now, or very soon, not only would the police be looking for him but his friends too. Mr Artemis would have rung Big Smith. The others would have rung or been rung. They would ring his flat and get no reply. When would suspicion become a certainty? As soon as someone went round to his flat and forced the lock.

‘Excuse me,' he said to Matthew. ‘I'm getting out. Mother nature calls. One of them shops over there'll oblige, I expect. Then when I come out I'm going to see if I can get a taxi.'

‘Doubt if you'll get one in this rain. But good luck.'

When Lee Burford's wife left him he felt it was almost the end of the world. They had been married for thirty-five years, and it had been an unblemished union. Completely opposite in temperament, they had yet become kindred spirits, sharing differences of opinion as if they were an excuse to come closer together, reacting to troubles and pleasures with a sort of family unity which could hardly have been greater if they had had children.

She had shared and always been interested in his cases. He often took briefs home when he might as well have dealt with them in his office: her sharp, intuitive but totally unlegal mind would sometimes go straight to the heart of a problem and point him in a direction he might not have taken. He himself had a practical level-headed mind which served him well in the law. But although successful he was not a flier, and he was passed over once before becoming head of the old-established firm of Thorogood, Cohn & Levinson, of Milk Street, Boston.