The New Collected Short Stories

by Jeffrey Archer

  DS Seaton arrived at Bebbington Hall just before the gong was struck and the toastmaster bellowed out, ‘Dinner is served.’ She quickly identified Angela Forster, even before she had located her table. Although DS Seaton had to engage in polite conversation with the men on either side of her, she was still able to keep a roving eye on Ms Forster. By the time cheese and coffee were served, the detective had come to the conclusion that she was dealing with a consummate professional. Not only could Ms Forster handle the regular outbursts of Lady Bebbington, the Master of Hounds’ wife, but she also found time to organize the band, the kitchen, the waiters, the cabaret and the voluntary staff without once breaking into a gallop. But, more interesting, she seemed to have nothing to do with the collecting of any money. That was carried out by a group of ladies, who performed the task without appearing to consult Angela.

  When the band struck up its opening number, several young men asked the detective sergeant for a dance. She turned them all down, one somewhat reluctantly.

  It was a few minutes before one, when the evening was drawing to a close, that the detective sergeant spotted the man she had been waiting for. Among the red and black jackets, he would have been easier to identify than a fox on the run. He also fitted the exact description Miss Blenkinsopp had provided: a short, rotund, bald-headed man of around sixty who would be more appropriately dressed for an accountant’s office than a Hunt Ball. She never took her eyes off him as he progressed unobtrusively around the outside of the dance floor to disappear behind the bandstand. The detective quickly left her table and walked to the other side of the ballroom, coming to a halt only when she had a perfect sighting of the two of them. The man was seated next to Angela counting the cash, unaware that an extra pair of eyes was watching him. The detective sergeant stared at Angela, as the man carefully placed the cheques, the pledges and the cash in separate piles. Not a word passed between them.

  Once Henry had double-checked the amount of cash, he didn’t even give Angela a second look. He placed the notes in his bag and handed her a receipt. With no more than a slight bow of the head, he retraced his steps round the outside of the dance floor and quickly left the ballroom. The whole operation had taken him less than seven minutes. Henry didn’t notice that one of the revellers was only a few paces behind him, and, more important, her eyes never left him.

  DS Seaton watched as the unidentified man made his way down the long drive, through the wrought-iron gates and on towards the village.

  Since it was a clear night and the streets were empty, it was not difficult for DS Seaton to follow the progress of the man with the bag without being spotted. He must have been supremely confident because he never once looked back. She only had to slip into the shadows on one occasion, when her quarry came to a halt outside a local branch of the Nat West Bank. He opened his bag, removed a package and dropped it into the overnight safe. He then continued on his way, hardly breaking his stride. Where was he going?

  The young detective had to make an instant decision. Should she follow the stranger, or return to Bebbington Hall and see what Ms Forster was up to? Follow the money, she had always been instructed by her supervisor at Peel House. When Henry reached the station, the detective sergeant cursed. She had left her car in the grounds of the hall, and if she was to continue pursuing the bag man, she would have to abandon the vehicle and pick it up first thing in the morning.

  The last train to Waterloo that night trundled into Bebbington Halt a few minutes later. It was becoming clear that the man with the bag had everything timed to the minute. The detective remained out of sight until her suspect had boarded the train. She then took a seat in the next carriage.

  When they reached Waterloo, the man stepped off the train and made his way quickly across to the nearest taxi rank. The detective stood to one side and watched as he progressed to the front of the queue. The moment he climbed into a cab, the detective walked briskly to the top of the queue, produced her warrant card and apologized to the person who was about to step into a cab. She jumped in the taxi and instructed the driver to follow the one that had just moved off the rank.

  When the driver pulled up outside the Black Ace Casino, the detective remained in the back of her cab until the man had disappeared inside.

  She took her time paying the cab driver before she climbed out and followed her quarry into the casino. She filled in a temporary membership form, as she didn’t want anyone to realize that she was on duty.

  DS Seaton strolled onto the floor and glanced around the gaming tables. It only took her a few moments before she spotted her man seated next to one of the roulette wheels. She took a step closer and joined a group of onlookers who formed a horseshoe around the table. The detective sergeant made sure that she remained some distance away from her quarry because, dressed in a long blue silk gown more appropriate for a ball, he might spot her and even wonder if she had followed him from Bebbington Hall.

  For the next hour she watched the man remove wads of cash from his bag at regular intervals, then exchange them for chips. An hour later the bag was clearly empty because he left the table with a glum look on his face, and made his way towards the bar.

  DS Seaton had cracked it. The anonymous man was siphoning off money from the evening events in order to finance his gambling habit, but she still couldn’t be sure if Angela was involved.

  The detective slipped behind a marble pillar as the man climbed onto a stool next to a lady in a blue suit with a short skirt.

  Did he have enough money over to pay for a prostitute? The detective stepped out from behind the pillar to take a closer look, and nearly bumped into Henry as he began walking back towards the exit. Later, much later, DS Seaton thought it strange that he had left the bar without having a drink. Perhaps the woman on the stool had rejected him.

  Henry stepped out onto the pavement and hailed a taxi. The detective grabbed the next one. She followed his cab as it made its way across Putney Bridge and continued its journey along the south side of the river. The taxi finally came to a halt outside a block of flats in Wandsworth. DS Seaton made a note of the address and decided that she had earned a taxi ride home.

  The following morning, DS Seaton placed her report on the chief inspector’s desk. He read it, smiled, left his office and walked down the corridor to brief the chief superintendent, who in turn phoned the chief constable. The chief decided not to mention it to the chairman of the watch committee until after an arrest had been made, as he wanted to present Sir David with an open-and-shut case, one that a jury could not fail to convict on.

  Henry deposited the cash from the Butterfly Ball in the overnight vault of Lloyds TSB just a couple of hundred yards away from the hotel where the Masons were holding their annual dinner. He must have walked about another thirty yards before a police car drew up beside him. There wouldn’t have been much point in making a dash for it, as Henry wasn’t built for a change of gear. And in any case he had already planned for this moment, right down to the last detail. Henry was arrested and charged two days before the watch committee was due to meet.

  Henry selected Mr Clifton-Smyth to represent him, a solicitor whose accounts he had handled for the past twenty years.

  Mr Clifton-Smyth listened carefully to his client’s defence, making copious notes, but when Henry finally came to the end of his tale, the lawyer only had one piece of advice to offer him: plead guilty.

  ‘I will of course,’ added the lawyer, ‘brief counsel of any mitigating circumstances.’

  Henry accepted his solicitor’s advice; after all, Mr Clifton-Smyth had never once, in the past two decades, questioned his judgement.

  Henry made no attempt to contact Angela during the run-up to the trial, and although the police felt fairly confident that she was playing Bonnie to his Clyde, they quickly worked out that they shouldn’t have arrested him until he’d gone to the casino a second time. Who was the woman seated at the bar? Had she been waiting for him? The Special Crime Unit spent weeks collecting bank
stubs from casinos right across London, but they couldn’t find a single cheque made out to a Ms Angela Forster, and even more puzzling, they didn’t come up with one for a Mr Henry Preston. Did he always lose?

  When they checked Angela’s events book, they discovered that Henry had always taken responsibility for counting the cash, and signed the receipt. Her bank account was then picked over by a bunch of treasury vultures, and found to be only £11,318 in credit, a sum that had showed very little movement either way for the past five years. When DS Seaton reported back to Miss Blenkinsopp, she seemed quite content to believe that the right man had been apprehended. After all, she told the detective, a St Catherine’s gal couldn’t possibly be involved in that sort of thing.

  With the murder hunt still in progress, and the drugs stash not yet unearthed, the chief superintendent sent down an instruction to close the St Catherine’s file. They’d made an arrest, and that was all that would matter when they reported their annual crime statistics.

  Once the Treasury solicitors had accepted that they couldn’t trace any of the missing money, Henry’s solicitor managed to broker a deal with the CPS. If he pleaded guilty to the theft of £130,000, and was willing to return the full amount to the injured parties concerned, they would recommend a reduced sentence.

  ‘And no doubt there are mitigating circumstances in this case that you wish to bring to my attention, Mr Cameron?’ suggested the judge as he stared down from the bench at Henry’s Silk.

  ‘There most certainly are, m’lord,’ replied Mr Alex Cameron QC as he rose slowly from his place. ‘My client,’ he began, ‘makes no secret of his unfortunate addiction to gambling, which has been the cause of his tragic downfall. However,’ Mr Cameron continued, ‘I feel confident that your lordship will take into account that this is my client’s first offence, and until this sad lapse of judgement he had been a pillar of the community with an unblemished reputation. Indeed, my client has given years of selfless service to his local church as its honorary treasurer, to which you will recall, m’lord, the vicar bore witness.’

  Mr Cameron cleared his throat before continuing. ‘M’lord, you see before you a broken and penniless man, who has nothing to look forward to except long lonely years of retirement. He has even,’ added Mr Cameron, tugging at his lapels, ‘had to sell his flat in Wandsworth in order to repay his creditors.’ He paused. ‘Perhaps you might feel, in the circumstances, m’lord, that my client has suffered quite enough and should therefore be treated leniently.’ Mr Cameron smiled hopefully at the judge, and resumed his seat.

  The judge looked down at Henry’s advocate, and returned his smile. ‘Not quite enough, Mr Cameron. Try not to forget that Mr Preston was a professional man who violated a position of trust. But first let me remind your client,’ said the judge, turning his attention to Henry, ‘that gambling is a sickness, and the defendant should seek some help for his malady the moment he is released from prison.’ Henry braced himself as he waited to learn how long his sentence would be.

  The judge paused for what seemed an eternity, as he continued to stare at Henry. ‘I sentence you to three years,’ he said, before adding, ‘take the prisoner down.’

  Henry was shipped off to Ford open prison. No one noticed him come and no one noticed him go. He led just as anonymous an existence on the inside as he had outside. He received no mail, made no phone calls and entertained no visitors. When they released him eighteen months later, having completed half his sentence, there was no one waiting at the barrier to greet him.

  Henry Preston accepted his £45 discharge pay, and was last seen heading towards the local railway station, carrying a Gladstone bag containing only his personal belongings.

  Mr and Mrs Graham Richards enjoy a pleasant, if somewhat uneventful retirement on the island of Majorca. They have a small, front-line villa overlooking the Bay of Palma, and both of them are proving to be popular with the local community.

  The chairman of the Royal Overseas Club in Palma reported to the AGM that he considered he’d pulled off quite a coup, convincing the former finance director of the Nigerian National Oil Company to become the club’s honorary treasurer. Nods, hear-hears and a sprinkling of applause followed. The chairman went on to suggest that the secretary should record a note in the minutes, that since Mr Richards had taken over the responsibility as treasurer, the club’s accounts had been in apple-pie order.

  ‘And by the way,’ he added, ‘his wife Ruth has kindly agreed to organize our annual ball.’

  ‘HE GOT AWAY WITH murder, didn’t he?’ said Mick.

  ‘How did he manage that?’ I asked.

  ‘Because if two screws say that’s what happened, then that’s what happened,’ said Mick, ‘and no con will be able to tell you any different. Understood?’

  ‘No, I don’t understand,’ I admitted.

  ‘Then I’ll have to explain it to you, won’t I?’ said Mick. ‘There’s a golden rule among cons – never have sex with a mate’s tart while he’s banged up. It’s all part of the code.’

  ‘That might be a bit rough on a young girl whose boyfriend has just been given a lengthy sentence because then you’d be sentencing her to the same number of years without sex.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ said Mick, ‘because Pete made it clear to Karen that he’d wait for her.’

  ‘But he wasn’t going anywhere for the next six years,’ I suggested.

  ‘You’re missing the point, Jeff. It’s the code and, to be fair to the tart, by all accounts Karen was as good as gold for the first six months and then she came off the rails. Truth is,’ said Mick, ‘Pete’s best mate Brian had already had sex with Karen, but that was before she became Pete’s girl, on account of the fact that they’d all been at secondary modern together. But that didn’t count because Karen stopped whoring around once she’d moved in with Pete. Understood?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Mind you, the rule doesn’t apply to Pete on account of the fact that he’s a man. It’s only logic, isn’t it, because men are different. We’re lions, they’re lambs.’ Lionesses would have seemed more appropriate. However, I confess I didn’t voice my opinion at the time. ‘Still,’ Mick continued, ‘the code is clear. You don’t have sex with a mate’s tart while he’s banged up.’

  I put my pen down and continued to listen to the Gospel according to St Mick – another burglar who was in and out of prison as if the building had revolving doors. I decided to abandon any attempt to write my daily diary. It was clear Mick was on a roll and nothing was going to stop him – certainly not me. And as the door was locked and I couldn’t escape, I decided to take down his words. But first a little background.

  Mick Boyle was my cell mate at Lincoln, and serving his ninth sentence during the past seventeen years, all for burglary. ‘I may be a tea-leaf,’ he proclaimed, ‘but I can’t be doing with violence. Don’t approve,’ he added, clearly attempting to capture the moral high ground. He told me that he had six children that he knew of, by five different women, but had had little or no contact with any of them since. I must have looked surprised, because he added, ‘Don’t worry yourself, Jeff, they’re all taken care of by the Social.’

  ‘If you want pussy,’ Mick continued, ‘there’s quite enough going spare without having sex with your best mate’s tart; after all, most of us are in and out, in and out,’ he repeated, laughing at his own joke.

  Mick’s friend Pete Bailey – the hero or the villain in this tale, according to your viewpoint – had been charged with aggravated robbery, which covers a multitude of sins, especially if you ask the court – after you’ve been found guilty – to take into consideration one hundred and twelve similar offences.

  ‘Result? Pete gets six years in the slammer.’ Mick paused to draw breath. ‘Mind you, he still killed his best mate while he was inside and got away with it, didn’t he?’

  ‘Did he?’ I asked, showing a little more interest.

  ‘Yeah, he sure did. Mind you, he knew he’d onl
y have to serve three years on account of the fact that he was always on his best behaviour, whenever he was inside,’ said Mick. ‘Logic, isn’t it? So after fifteen months in Wakefield – awful nick – they sent him off to Hollesley Bay open prison in Suffolk, didn’t they, to finish off his sentence. Bloody holiday camp. See, the theory is,’ continued Mick, ‘an open prison is meant to prepare you for returning to society. Some hope. All Pete did was spend his time in the prison library reading through back copies of Country Life, supplied by some do-gooder, so he could work out in advance which houses he was going to rob the moment he got out. Now another rule in an open prison,’ continued Mick, ‘is that you’re entitled to a visit once a week, not like the once a month you get in closed conditions; that is as long as you’re enhanced, and not been put on report for at least a month.’

  ‘Enhanced?’ I ventured.

  ‘That’s when a con’s been on good behaviour for at least three months. When he’s enhanced he gets all sorts of privileges, like more time out of his cell, better job, even more pay in some nicks.’

  ‘And how do you get put on report?’

  ‘That’s easy enough. Swear at a screw, turn up late for work, fail a drugs test. I was once put on report for nicking an orange from the kitchen. Diabolical liberty.’

  ‘So was your friend Pete ever put on report?’ I asked.

  ‘Never,’ Mick replied. ‘Good as gold, wasn’t he, because he wanted a visit from his tart. Well, he does his three months, works in the stores, keeps his nose clean, and Bob’s your uncle, he’s enhanced. Following Saturday his tart turns up at the nick to pay him a visit.

  ‘In open prisons, visits are held in the biggest room available, usually the gym or the canteen. And you have to remember, security isn’t like a closed nick, with sniffer dogs and CCTV cameras following your every move, so you can behave natural when you’re with your tart.’ He paused. ‘Well, within limits. I mean you can’t have sex like they do in Swedish prisons. You know – what do they call it?’