The Second Jeopardy Read online

  ‘Come on, Harry. It ought to be fun.’

  Harry smiled. ‘Yeah. Could be. When do we start?’

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

  Chapter Three

  ‘Tell me once more, Harry,’ she said, like an excited child demanding a fairy story.

  ‘For Chrissake! Not again!’

  Harry was uncomfortable in the car’s passenger seat. This was no reflection on the expertise of Mercedes, only in so far as they’d clad their seats in tan leather, and because he was aware that his jeans and denim jacket had long since ceased to be merely dirty. The luxury of a 380SL sports car was not part of Harry’s lifestyle. He feared to soil the seats, aware that leather would absorb oil or grease, and she was beginning to impress herself on him as a woman who wouldn’t hesitate to buy a new car if the seats were soiled.

  ‘Again!’ she said. ‘And do stop wriggling. Every time you tell it, new details creep in, and you never know when they could mean something.’

  ‘If you’ve got covers for the seats…’

  ‘Stop worrying. We’ll get you a new suit…’

  ‘No!’

  She glanced sideways. ‘If you say not, Harry.’ She powered round a tight corner. ‘Or perhaps you’re nervous?’

  ‘I’d feel better behind the wheel,’ he admitted.

  ‘Then we’ll make it a chauffeur’s uniform, and everybody’ll be happy.’

  Harry wriggled again, but this time with genuine unease. Virginia (and he still could not bring himself to call her that) was beginning to unsettle him with her personality. She overpowered him. She completely took for granted his involvement with her plans, and seemed to expect to draw him into her existence with a casual snap of the fingers. Clearly, her existence was better than his, so what had he got to complain about? This she did not say aloud, but her attitude shouted it. Her awareness that he might be hesitant was evident only in the occasional ribbing she used when he indicated reluctance. But Harry was impressionable. She impressed him with her energy and enthusiasm, and her boundless confidence. Impressed and disconcerted him, because she was clearly impetuous. She might even have meant that crack about the chauffeur’s uniform.

  ‘I don’t like driving with an automatic gearbox,’ he countered.

  ‘It’s all they fit on this model. Tell you what. We get the uniform and we’ll let you pick your own car. Match the colours.’

  ‘I’m not having you spending…’

  She was smiling when she turned to glance at him. ‘But Harry, I didn’t mean buy. You, an expert with the wire coathanger and the hot-wiring, and you’re talking about buying!’

  ‘Watch the road.’

  ‘I am. And the rearview mirror. He’s still there.’

  ‘Let me drive, and I’ll drop him in a couple of minutes.’

  ‘Don’t be so impatient, Harry. Why drop him? We’re only going to see Cynthia. Perhaps Vic Fletcher knows Cynthia. D’you think so?’

  ‘Maybe. Look, don’t you think we ought to be serious about this?’

  She said nothing, concentrating on the road. Vic Fletcher, tooling along at a reasonable distance behind in a battered Metro, could have been left standing by the Merc. But Fletcher was uninteresting to her. Harry was the interest, and she was aware that they were not yet at ease with each other. If he’d only known it, her flippancy was a sign of nerves. Very few people knew that. But she was nervous of Harry, afraid of his basic self-reliance and his independence, which might well come between them. So far, she hadn’t worked out how they could meet at a mutual point that satisfied both.

  As arranged, she had picked him up in the square that morning. She was wearing grey tailored slacks, a pink jacket over a white blouse with a frilly neckline, hardly any make-up, and with her own hair chestnut and loose over her shoulders. He’d barely recognized her, and had been reluctant to get in the car. He’d been more at home with the slut of the previous evening, and she wondered whether she’d now made a mistake by springing it on him. But he would have to learn that there was money behind her, and influence. The sooner he accepted it the better, because they would probably need both.

  It came as a surprise to her to realize that she was already considering their relationship in a context of continuity.

  So she drove in silence as she worked out what tone to use that would relax him. It was he who broke the silence.

  ‘You were kidding about your father being the Chief Constable?’

  ‘Assistant. And I wasn’t.’

  ‘And Sergeant Tranter…your…’ He gulped. It was beyond his imagination.

  ‘Godfather? Yes. Paul Tranter and my father are old friends. The only difference is that daddy bounced up the ladder and Paul didn’t. Paul’s a street policeman, and proud of it. Daddy’s a politician. You know what I mean?’

  ‘No. You’ve turned the wrong way if you want to meet Charlie’s wife.’

  ‘On purpose. Driving around. We’ve got to work out how we’re going to operate.’

  ‘But for God’s sake…I’m an ex-con.’

  ‘I know it.’

  ‘Does your father know about…this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And approves?’

  She laughed. Her nose crinkled, and her head went back. ‘No. Nor does Paul Tranter. But we’ll keep ’em guessing, you and me.’

  Harry bored on, getting it clear in his mind. ‘They’re thinkin’ I’ll get you into trouble?’

  ‘Harry, you’re marvellous. Paul said it for both of them. He said you’d been led into trouble all your life, and he didn’t want me leading you astray again.’

  ‘And that’s what you’re doing?’ asked Harry solemnly.

  ‘I’ve got a feeling that something like that might happen. If so, I’ll feel better with you around.’

  Harry threw back his head and laughed. The car rocked round a corner. He shouted: ‘Steady!’ She eased her foot from the throttle.

  ‘Now tell me again how you met Cynthia.’

  ‘Cynth,’ he said. ‘That’s what I always called her. You’d need to get to know Cynth.’

  ‘It’s what I intend to do. Tell me how you met her.’

  She slid the Merc through the S-bend created by a humped-back bridge, and slowed in order to drift into a lay-by. With the engine cut, she leaned back, eyes half closed.

  ‘The disco, Harry. From there.’

  They were ten miles out of town. With the car silent, the only sounds were the rustle of the stream behind them and the distant thrum of a harvester. To the left the hedges pushed close, weeds rampant at their feet. It was a small lay-by, with barely room for two cars, and intended to provide a passing place in this narrow, high-sided lane. A hundred yards ahead a more important road crossed it. The stop sign was just visible.

  Harry glanced round, but Vic Fletcher’s car did not appear. He settled down to tell it again.

  He’d been chucker-out at a disco, where things had a tendency to roughen up. In this capacity he’d heaved out a lanky drunk, and the woman he was with went at Harry with a spike heel in one hand and claws in the other.

  ‘Had to give her a bit of a tap to quiet her down,’ he said, ‘but I’m not too good with the women-folk, so it sorta put her outa circulation, so we took her into the office and when she came round there was a right mouthful she gave me, so I said I’d take her home. The trouble was she’d come out with a woman friend, and now they’d split up, and her husband wouldn’t be pleased to know she’d picked up with a feller. So I took her home, me driving her car, ’cause of the spike heels, and when we got there — this place of his, twelve miles outa town — it was all a bit of a washout, ’cause hubby had been spraying a Granada and didn’t know she’d been out. That was Cynth.’

  ‘And that was Charlie Braine, with the spray-gun?’ She knew it by heart, and was only waiting for any new detail.

  ‘Yeah. But o’course, she’d still come home with a feller. Me. So Cynth covered, sayin’ something about look who I brought to meet yo
u, Charlie, as though I was a gift from heaven. So what, says Charlie, eyeing me up and down, and she says he can drive, Charlie, really drive, and he can handle himself.’

  Virginia had noticed that, in the telling, he’d slipped back into his natural vernacular. ‘But you didn’t know what you were getting into.’

  ‘Not straightaway. Cynth’d got me caught. That was Cynth for yer. Like a spittin’ cat at the disco, and a purrin’ one then. Independent as a cat, too. But you could trust her, providin’ you didn’t cross her. Then…whoo-hoo! Ever tried holdin’ a spittin’ cat? That was Cynth. The clip on the jaw, mind you, she’d forgotten it. Standin’ there, rockin’ on her heels — which was somethin’ in those shoes — with her hands behind her and her bottom lip in her teeth, nothin’ but mischief in her eyes…she handed me over to Charlie, who said he reckoned he might have somethin’ for me. And you know what that was.’

  ‘Stealing cars for him.’

  Harry nodded. He was now well set into his story and absorbed with the narrating of it. In concentrating, he attempted to recall his impressions of that time.

  ‘O’ course, I’d figured he wasn’t legal. I mean, that place of his…you’ll see it. A big shed with a corrugated iron roof and a back way out that used to be a railway line. Kinda secret, that back way. Yeah, it was hot cars. I pinched ’em and he sprayed ’em, and he had some weird character I never met who worked the garages and supplied log books to fit. I did that for three flamin’ years, and got to like it. Pride in the job, that was it. High-class stuff we were on. Charlie got the log books from his soft-footed contact, got the orders from somebody or other, and sent me out to pick up the heaps. To order. Not any old unlocked car, y’see. It’d gotta be the right car of the right year. Took some doin’, I can tell you.’

  She drew on her cigarette, nodding. ‘I can understand your pride, Harry. Get to the jewel robbery.’

  ‘Well yeah. Will do. That was Charlie movin’ up in the world, with big ideas. Reckon his cough was gettin’ worse, him with a spray-gun in his hand all day. Look at him and you wouldn’t see it, but Charlie’d got grand schemes, and you couldn’t know it behind them overalls, all stiff wi’ paint, and the knitted hat on his curly hair, with a bit of a tinted fringe round the edges. But then he comes out with it. He was fed to the eyeballs with cars. Him and me was gonna do a jeweller’s, he says, so there I was with a gun in me hand again, but not a real one this time.’

  ‘Hold it,’ she said crisply, grabbing his wrist. ‘That’s new. Again, Harry? Not a real one this time. When was it a real one?’

  ‘You don’t wanta hear …’

  ‘Oh, but I do.’

  He stared out at the tangled hedges. ‘That was way back. Some fellers raked me in. A warehouse. Stuck a gun in me hand and said look ugly, so we didn’t haveta rehearse, and in walked the fuzz, and the top man says drop it, which I did, only I never got the hang of the safety catch and it went off and blew me big toe to hell and gone, so I could hardly hoof it away into the distance. That got me my first stretch inside, and what we gotta talk about it now for I dunno.’

  ‘Background,’ she said comfortingly. ‘No need to get worked up.’

  ‘Sure. So now you know. You’ll have noticed the limp…’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘So you’ll know why I told Charlie no guns for me, and I finished up with a plastic thing, feelin’ a right idiot.’

  ‘But you went along with it, all the same?’

  ‘Sure. We were mates, weren’t we? Mind you, I was more friendly with Cynth than with Charlie, though not quite mates, if you get what I mean.’

  ‘Precisely, Harry.’

  ‘Though it’d come close now an’ then,’ he said with fierce pride.

  ‘She wouldn’t be able to resist you.’

  ‘If you don’t wanta listen…’

  She turned a solemn face to him, a whisp of hair shading one eye. ‘Of course I do. The jeweller’s, Harry, please.’

  ‘In the High Street…you know that. We went to have a look at it. Case the joint, said Charlie. High Street! That was a great idea, to start with, crowds of people, cars, buses, traffic lights…oh, great. And we hadda go an’ see it on early-closin’ day, when it was quiet. But Charlie said that’d be great, just see if it wasn’t, and we went in and did it on the Friday. I wanted to do the drivin’, but no says Charlie, ’cause the driver’d have to run out first an’ get the car goin’, there bein’ only two of us and me, I’m no good with the running, so Charlie said he’d drive. So on the Friday we did it, me with a bit of plastic in me fist, just to look frightenin’.’

  He stopped, seeming to be depressed by the memory. Virginia said nothing. This was the third time he’d been through it for her, and there, every time, he paused. She knew what it was. Until she’d pointed out the coincidence of the bank robbery at almost the same time, he’d not examined his memory with any criticism, but now he was realizing that there had been something out-of-phase, even farcical, in the jeweller’s shop set-up.

  ‘We parked,’ he went on, slapping his knee. ‘Edgin’ along the kerb in the traffic, on double yellows, and before we got to the shop door the horns were goin’, and Charlie hadda stop and give ’em the sign, ’cause Charlie was always a right clown, and there were two of ’em in there, this old geyser and the girl, rigid as soon’s they saw me, and it was only plastic. Charlie had this white plastic bag with his shooter in it…’

  ‘You said a real gun, Harry? You’re sure of that?’

  ‘So he said. A real gun, that this feller who pinched the log books had found on one of his jobs. Sure. Why not? Charlie wasn’t gonna shoot anybody, but they didn’t know that, so they shovelled the stuff in, sparklers all over the floor and Charlie crunchin’ his feet on layers of plastic watches, and then he says that’s it, an’ runs outa the door, me backin’ up and him headin’ round to the driver’s seat…’

  ‘Seven thousand, two hundred and forty pounds, Harry, that was the insurance assessment. Your Charlie might’ve fenced it for two thousand. He’d make more than that re-spraying a single Jag you’d stolen for him. Think of that.’

  ‘You said it before.’ His voice was harsh and impatient.

  ‘Just wanted you to realize.’

  He had realized. The whole job was a screwball, and he’d been taken, lumbered. ‘And this ten per cent of the big job you spoke about, the bank haul. Twelve thou’, that’d be. How much of this car we’re sittin’ in would that buy? A third? Oh, I know cars. I’ve pinched everythin’ that runs on four wheels. Had you realized?’

  She was silent. Nothing in her expression changed, simply the sharp chin rose, stretching the line of throat and neck into a smooth, progressive curve. Harry glanced away quickly. She was watching the vapour trails of a superjet, heading for a home landing at Birmingham International. Straight as a…straight as Harry, she thought, Harry who was either silent or honest. He didn’t understand deceit. That was why he was angry when each repetition of his story destroyed more completely his faith in friendships and his belief in Charlie. She knew that. She was ashamed to know it, because she had not been fully honest with him herself. As Harry had sensed. Feeling it, he was reluctant to go on.

  Eventually she spoke with encouragement. ‘You stood in the doorway, with your back to the street, and Charlie ran out…’

  ‘It was all hell out there,’ he said. ‘Traffic backed up and stuck, and way back somewhere a police siren goin’, and I heard the engine fire and Charlie’s door slam and his howlin’ tyres. O’ course, in front he’d gotta bit of a clear run, so he was away, and me standin’ there like a fool, listenin’ to him go. He was using this Escort XR3 I’d picked up for him. Picked it out special. Gotta be that car, and black, but he’d done it up in two colours, red an’ green, to confuse the fuzz he said…’

  ‘Harry, I didn’t understand this before. How was two colours going to confuse anybody? Lots of cars are two colours.’

  ‘But not down the middle.’ He was eage
r to display Charlie’s ingenuity. ‘One side red, the other side green.’

  ‘You mean…meeting in the middle?’

  ‘Yeah. Meetin’ over the bonnet, over the top, down the boot.’

  ‘And that was supposed to confuse the police!’

  ‘You see, people one side o’ the road would see a red car, and people the other side a green un…’

  ‘But Harry…oh, Harry, it would shine out like a homing beacon. It’s crazy. Now wait…think…did you see which way Charlie went? He’d get to the traffic lights at Trinity Street…’

  ‘Well left, o’ course. We’d planned that. Whatever the lights, he could’ve forced his way inta the stream.’

  ‘And turning left, he’d go uphill past the Mercantile Bank on the other side of the street, at around the time three men and a driver were heading away from the bank downhill with three canvas bags of currency, and every police car in the area would be chasing a red and green Escort that couldn’t be missed! Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say? The two jobs must have been co-ordinated. The jewellery job was a fake, Harry.’

  She had clutched his arm. He looked down at her fingers, surprised at the strength of her grip, surprised too at the delight in her eyes, the life in her face.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Well yeah, I suppose so.’

  ‘And haven’t you thought… Harry, I’m getting to know you, and I bet you wouldn’t let yourself think Charlie had deliberately abandoned you. Go on, admit it.’

  ‘Mates, we were.’

  ‘No, that was you and Cynthia.’ Her eyes sparked. ‘Harry, it was deliberate. He didn’t want you in that car. He was a decoy for the bank job, running a big risk, in a car he’d deliberately made noticeable, and he didn’t want you with him in that. He thought you’d simply turn, and disappear in the crowds.’

  ‘What…me with my six feet three and the limp and this face?’