He rang off before Mr Groves could reply. Would it work? He’d read somewhere that bank managers were instructed to pay up at such times – to risk no one’s life – although certain alarm routines had to be followed. It was a pity he’d never asked Hazel more about security measures; he knew that she was not meant to disclose what precautions were operated and until now he hadn’t been interested. He had tried to turn the conversation that way at the weekend, but she’d wanted to talk only about the wedding.
Alan had already telephoned his own firm to say he wouldn’t be coming in, pleading a stomach upset. There were jokes and quips about first-night nerves.
After making the call, Alan got straight into his ramshackle old Fiat, which Hazel had long since condemned, and drove to Heathrow. He left the car in the short-stay park and crossed to Terminal Two, where he noticed a boy wandering around without apparent purpose. Alan said he was late for his flight and asked the lad to deliver a note to the information desk. He gave the boy a pound and, skulking among the shifting people, watched to see his commission executed. Inside an envelope addressed in capital letters to Mr Groves were instructions to place the bag beside the nearest newspaper stand. Alan intended to walk rapidly by, collecting it as he passed and vanishing into the crowd before he could be detected. He felt certain that by now the police would have been alerted in some manner. As soon as she reached the hospital, Mrs Groves would have discovered that her husband had not been admitted, but she was sure to be confused. She might telephone the bank, but by then Mr Groves would have left with the ransom if he were to reach the airport by noon. He would have had no problem in finding the actual cash; now Alan wondered with misgiving whether there might not be some bugging device attached to its container. If Mrs Groves was known to be safe, the police might be close behind her husband, waiting to pounce when Alan claimed the ransom.
He began to feel uneasy. What had seemed a perfect plan now revealed flaws.
Mr Groves was, in fact, almost at Heathrow before his wife learned that the call to her had been a hoax. She spent some time telephoning other hospitals before she rang the bank, and in the interval Mr Groves had parked his car in the short-stay park near a small, shabby Fiat which looked very like one he had seen outside his own house that morning.
Awaiting his prey, but with waning confidence, Alan tapped his pocket. The previous day, he had withdrawn all the money that stood to his credit with the building society. It was not fifty thousand pounds, but it was enough to keep him for some time and it was all rightfully his own. He had his passport, and a small case in which he had planned to transport his booty out of the country.
As suddenly as Wendy’s words had earlier opened his eyes to the future, Alan saw that if he went ahead with his plan he would never be free from fear of detection. Here was another moment of decision, and there was no need for any theft; he could simply walk away from the rendezvous and disappear. No one would connect him with a dumped case of bank notes.
Alan went to the Air France desk, where he bought a ticket to Paris. His original plan had been to drive to Dover, sell his car there for whatever it would fetch, and catch the ferry to Calais. He had been afraid, if he flew, that the security inspection at the airport would reveal the wads of money in the case, but now he had nothing to dread.
He’d spend a few days in Paris, then hitch south, maybe to Rome. Perhaps he could pick up some work as he went along. He’d stay away at least while his money lasted, possibly for good, depending on what opportunities arose.
At the airport post office Alan mailed, second-class, a package to Hazel. It contained the tickets for the honeymoon in Corfu; she could still use them, taking Linda or Maeve with her. He attempted no explanation beyond a note saying he was sorry to upset her but he wasn’t ready to settle down just yet and it was better to find that out now rather than when it was too late. Luckily, he hadn’t bought the bridesmaids’ presents.
Alan sat in the plane waiting for take-off. To the other passengers he was just a young man on a business trip with the minimal luggage of a small bag and his raincoat; only he knew that at last he was starting to live. He could always come back one day; even if the hoax telephone calls were attributed to him, such a minor offence wouldn’t merit much of a punishment. At the moment he felt that a journey to freedom now was worth a few months in jail later on.
In another area of the same plane sat an older man on his way to adventure.
Mr Groves was six months short of retiring. He did not look forward to spending more time with his wife, who was one of life’s cosseters and would fuss over him much too tenderly, making him old before his time. She had turned down his suggestion that they should go on a trip to Australia; even a cruise did not appeal to her. A stay-at-home girl was Doreen, and their holidays, apart from a weekend in Venice, had been spent in either Scotland or Cornwall. She’d made him into her child, perhaps because they had none of their own.
If they had, he couldn’t have done what he was doing now. On the way to Heathrow he had called in at his home. The cleaning woman did not come today, and it had been odd to find the breakfast dishes still in the sink. There were, however, no signs of struggle.
Poor Doreen! How terrified she must have been, he had thought, and, on impulse, collected his passport from his desk; who knew where the trail might lead?
On the way to the information desk in the main concourse at Terminal Two, another impulse had turned Mr Groves towards a telephone, from which he had called the bank. They might as well know he had arrived. The police might have some instructions for him – if they were shadowing him, they could not come forward now, just as he was about to ‘make the drop’, wasn’t it called?
Mr Groves had been told that his wife had telephoned and, though distressed, was unharmed. She had been to look for him at the hospital as the result of a hoax telephone call; the whole thing was some prank.
Mr Groves had replaced the receiver, relieved beyond measure to know that Doreen was safe. Then he had realised that here he was, as the result of someone’s idea of a joke, with fifty thousand pounds of the bank’s money.
What a chance! But the police would be watching him and he mustn’t waste time.
He had collected the envelope left for him at the desk – there had been one; the hoaxer had clearly meant business – opened it and read the message. Then he had turned and gone, as if instructed, to the Air France counter where he had bought a ticket to Paris. The police would reason that, having discovered his wife was safe, he intended to lead them to the perpetrator of the hoax kidnap. It would be some time before they would suspect him of having fled himself. Interpol might have to be invoked, and by then he would be on his way to Australia. If he were to be traced, he could be extradited from there but there might be time, before he was apprehended, to move on to Spain, where barons of crime still lived in safety, although he thought plans were afoot to end that.
Mr Groves mingled confidently with the other travellers at Charles de Gaulle Airport. He noticed a pretty woman, perhaps thirty-five years old, walking ahead towards passport control. The world was full of pretty young women with broader views than those of his wife. Hitherto a strictly moral man, Mr Groves’ thoughts dwelt happily on the delights that might lie ahead.
Thus enjoying his future, he saw a young man who seemed vaguely familiar going through customs. He carried only a case and a raincoat, and he looked eagerly confident, the world at his feet. Ah, youth, reflected Mr Groves, and his mind turned to Doreen. She would be very upset and she would never forgive him. No matter what happened now, he could not go home because he had stolen the bank’s money. Well, at his age it was easy to resolve that he would not be caught alive. He would seek present pleasure, and if capture threatened he would take the final escape.
Hazel wept when the holiday tickets arrived. How dreadful of Alan to behave like this! She could not understand what had got into him; it was all so humiliating.
Her mother was furious, but it see
med that Hazel had, in the nick of time, been saved from wrecking her life. To think that that quiet young man could be so deceitful!
She drew comfort from the troubles of others, however, when she learned that Mr Groves at the bank had apparently set up a fake kidnap to lure his wife from home, then pretended to receive a ransom demand so that he could obtain a large sum of money and flee the country. The police had found his car at Heathrow. Oddly enough, Alan’s car was found there too, in the very next bay. It was almost as though the two had conspired.
Anniversary
It was a special day.
Mrs Frobisher had made careful preparations. A bottle of champagne was on ice and she had bought smoked salmon, asparagus, and a plump partridge.
In the living-room of her comfortable flat all was arranged. The table was laid with the best silver and cut glass. There were spring flowers in a small vase.
She would celebrate alone, for next to the money her tranquil solitude was, after so long, a prize. For three years she had steadfastly carried out her daily duties – fetching and carrying, wheeling Matthew out in his chair, placing his tweed hat tenderly on his pale bald head, wrapping his soft wool scarf round his throat (though she longed to pull it tight against his windpipe), tucking a mohair rug round his knees and his bony old ankles. Because of her his last years had been spent in great comfort – and, indeed, he owed them to her nursing skill.
They met when the agency sent her as his special nurse to the nursing home where Matthew was recovering from a stroke. She was accustomed to caring for the elderly, and she had found him an easy patient. He was light to lift and determined to regain his powers of speech and movement. Aiding his rehabilitation had been a challenge to her skills. After months in the nursing home, he was well enough to leave but required full-time home care, and he suggested to her that she should become his permanent attendant.
This might be her only chance: she had resolved not to let it pass. She was a plain, sturdy woman with a sallow complexion and glasses. Her legs were stout and her ankles thick – though her feet were small, and often, for this reason, ached as they carried her heavy body about her duties. Mr Frobisher was a widower, and wealthy. His visitors at the nursing home had been his former business associates – he had retired from active work before his illness but was still on the board of several companies. He had no children.
Once home in the flat overlooking the esplanade he became demanding, and she worked hard complying with his wishes. She kept him physically spruce and arranged bridge evenings for him with former cronies, for he had recovered enough to enjoy a few rubbers once or twice a week. She would slip out, then, for a couple of hours at the cinema, returning in time to serve drinks and sandwiches to the men. Otherwise, apart from shopping and trips to the library, she went out only with Matthew, pushing him in his chair along the esplanade when the weather allowed.
She had expected it to be for just a few months – a year at the most – for Mr Frobisher was old. The excitement of marriage, she had thought, when it came (as she knew it would) would hasten his end.
‘You must be cared for, my dear,’ he told her, patting her hand. ‘You care for me so well.’
When they were married he no longer paid her a salary. He was mean with money. She had discovered this in the nursing home and had known he would think of marriage because it would cost him less, though why he guarded his funds so carefully when he had no one to leave his fortune to was hard to explain. It was characteristic of the elderly rich, she had noticed before. Now she had to account for every penny she spent when shopping, and Matthew saw no reason to keep the woman who had come twice a week to do the cleaning.
As the months went by, Mrs Frobisher was instructed to practise still more thrift by frugal catering. He ordered her to serve mince, rice pudding, and custard instead of salmon, crême caramel, and fruit out of season. She began to adjust her housekeeping accounts to extract enough money for splurges in cafes when she was shopping. Then she would drink coffee or chocolate topped with rich cream and eat cakes and pastries before hurrying home to Matthew, who would be reading the Financial Times.
The doctor, who called regularly, praised her care of her elderly husband. He’d got rather difficult, Mrs Frobisher once confessed, but she knew it was simply his health that made him pernickety about details.
‘A trust fund, my dear,’ Mr Frobisher had suddenly said one day. ‘You are not used to handling money. You’ll be at the mercy of fortune hunters when I’m gone. I must protect you.’
Mrs Frobisher was dismayed. She wanted her fortune, when she received it, to be her own, to handle as she desired. She had earned it, after all. She would travel. She planned to go on a cruise round the world, perhaps meet romance on a boat deck under the moon. She secretly read brochures, picked up on her shopping trips, and daydreamed over them when Matthew slept. She was still only forty-six years old and she had never known love. A young man resembling a God, she romanced, might woo her in Greece. An Italian with deep brown eyes, perhaps, would serenade her in Venice.
While her husband slumbered, Mrs Frobisher escaped to a world of dreams. She read magazines, and romantic novels she borrowed from the library without Mr Frobisher’s knowledge. And she watched television, too, until late at night. She had formed an attachment in her mind to a handsome middle-aged actor who featured in many plays. He often played rather sinister roles and was suave. Mrs Frobisher, alone in her bed while Matthew snored nearby in his, would imagine the actor whispering to her, his lips on her neck, herself at last responding to physical passion, something that had eluded her in her life thus far.
Mr Frobisher, after their marriage, had requested intimate contact. He was capable only of touch, and that, he indicated, was his right now that they were husband and wife.
‘It’s not good for you, dear. You’ll send up your blood pressure,’ Mrs Frobisher had said, avoiding compliance, promising it as a treat for one day in the future when he was better. But his hands, increasingly, reached for her as she dealt with his needs; he would watch her with narrowed eyes as she moved about their bedroom.
Mrs Frobisher had grown to hate her husband before he threatened to curtail her future liberty by means of a trust and acted in time to prevent him.
It had been carefully planned.
At first she had thought of demanding money for personal spending, making him angry, and leaving his physical wants untended so that bedsores and other problems developed, but pride in her profession, finally, would not permit the use of these means to make his blood pressure rise and bring on another stroke – which he might have at any time. Though again, since his heart was strong, he might survive.
In the end, she had been more subtle. She had done it with frozen chicken, thawing it imperfectly and ceasing its cooking too soon, leaving it in the warm kitchen where it could begin to go off even if there were no risk of salmonella. It didn’t work the first time, but the second attempt, when she’d made a chicken risotto and added lamb from the weekend joint which she had kept exposed until it started to smell rather nasty, did the trick.
She ate a little herself, so she could tell the doctor, truthfully, that she too had felt ill, but she disposed of all that was left down the lavatory, flushing it thoroughly.
He had lingered for twenty-four hours after the dreadful vomiting, his breathing harsh in the quiet room. She would not have him taken to the hospital. ‘I am a nurse,’ she said with pride.
For some hours she had feared he would recover again. She was tempted to lay a pillow over his face or pinch his nostrils, but suppose betraying signs resulted? She could wipe away any froth that might be exuded, but she couldn’t disperse petechial haemorrhages if they occurred, and the doctor might observe them. He would look at his patient’s eyes.
But such action was not needed.
Just before he died, Matthew opened his eyes and glared at her, seeing her clearly.
He knew. She and the doctor had discussed the possible ca
use of his food-poisoning while Matthew lay there, and perhaps he had understood their conversation. He had known how careful she was in the kitchen, how unlikely the chance of contaminated food being served under her charge.
Well, he could do nothing now: it was too late. She stared back at him until it was over.
She had affected grief for a year, only slowly emerging in becoming, elegant clothes – in muted hues as first the executors advanced her funds and finally the estate, which was in perfect order, was settled. And tomorrow she was leaving on a world cruise. Her bags were packed and labelled. The porter in the block of flats knew of her plans. She had no intimate friends, but she told her few acquaintances that she was going away.
During her year of widowhood, Mrs Frobisher had put on weight, for she had made amends for the years of rice pudding and mince – but she could carry it off, she thought, regarding herself in the mirror. She had had her hair rinsed a rich honey blonde and had bought a mink coat. Her spectacles had been exchanged for contact lenses. She felt sure she would find romance on her voyage, though perhaps not of a durable kind. When she returned, she would open an expensive eventide home where rich elderly people could end their days in her experienced care and be off the hands of their families.
That evening, after her celebratory meal, a further treat awaited Mrs Frobisher – the perfect way to round off the day. The final instalment of a television drama series in which her actor hero played a leading role. She had arranged her cruise for after the end of the series, not willing to miss any appearance he might make. And now, in this last episode, the chain of spellbinding events would be tied off.
Mrs Frobisher ate her smoked salmon with wafer-thin brown bread and butter. She had learned to cut it like that for her patients. She ate her succulent partridge, and to follow, she had two chocolate éclairs bought at the new patisserie in town.
Pieces of Justice Page 15
