I did believe it, and I was sorry, because I saw that whatever had happened to Jacob would have hurt Sally deeply, and therefore Sandra.
‘Did Sally want to meet Jacob?’
‘No. It would have hurt her too much. And she thought it would upset him. But I showed her photographs, and she was very proud of him. And when she knew he knew about her, she wanted him to have his rightful money from Malise. He was his son, after all.’
‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘If Sally was one of your working girls?’
Sandra shook her head violently. ‘She wasn’t like that. She isn’t like that. She was confused, but she never – she wasn’t – Malise was the only—’
She stumbled to a stop.
‘OK,’ I said, to lower the temperature. ‘So Jacob decided to take the money. Which was his right. And this was late September, last year?’
‘Yes.’
‘So from September to early November he waited in London. For Sally to raise the money? A million in cash is a lot.’
‘For Malise to make the arrangements. And Jacob wanted to think, I told you that, to make decisions about his life.’
All that time, he kept out of touch with Jams, I thought. Was it to keep her safe? He could have written, secretly. But Tubbies protected their women: maybe he didn’t want to take a risk, however small, because he wouldn’t have trusted Sandra. And he was a loner by nature, and perhaps he was savouring his big surprise for her. Look, we’re rich.
‘Sally gave the money to you to hand over?’
‘Into my charge. I used Derek and Dennis.’
‘Wasn’t that a bit of a risk?’
‘Oh, no. They’re old friends of mine, very loyal. We were at school together They’ve often done little jobs for me, over the years. When friendly persuasion was called for.’
I smiled. She smiled.
‘And the handover was where?’
‘In London.’
‘Where exactly? And who chose it?’
She hesitated, so I prompted her. ‘Jacob chose it, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where was it?’
‘Most odd,’ she said, ‘Waste ground, near railway sidings, just west of Paddington. After dark. He insisted it was after dark.’ ‘And that was when it went wrong,’ I said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘There we are,’ said Nanny handing out the last mug, ‘nothing beats a nice cup of cocoa.’ She left, and closed the door behind her.
We sat in the office and looked at each other. In the corner near the door, Sandra, flanked by Cot and Nappy who were more formally dressed than at our previous meeting, in jeans, boots, cheap shirts and bilious green anoraks. In the corner opposite, Carl, Nick and me. In a third corner, Abraham Master in his security uniform, arms folded and head sunk aggressively on his chest. All of us clutched thick mugs, blue for the boys and pink for the girls, each with our names freshly painted in large black letters. Cot and Nappy’s mugs were mostly engulfed by their huge simian paws.
They were drinking the cocoa and their gulps were all that broke the silence. This room was sound-proofed too.
Not such a normal office after all.
‘Champion, that,’ said Cot, putting his ‘Derek’ mug down on the desk.
‘Ay. I’m reet partial to cocoa,’ said Nappy.
Master looked at me. ‘You had better have the right,’ he said. ‘I left my work. And I should be leading evening prayer.’
‘Shut your cakehole till summat useful comes out,’ snapped Sandra.
I ignored them. ‘There are some details you can all help me with, about what happened to Jacob last November.’
Cot and Nappy looked at Sandra. She patted them soothingly. ‘I trust her,’ she said.
‘What about them?’ said Cot, jerking his head at Master and Carl.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said.
They settled down.
‘Derek and Dennis met him on a railway siding near Paddington, to hand over a very large sum of money,’ I went on.
Carl exclaimed in surprise. I looked at him, and he smiled.
I didn’t smile back.
‘And to get the film,’ said Cot. ‘The loop, like.’
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Now, I’ve got to know Jacob quite well, since I’ve been on his case. I think I understand how his mind worked.’
‘That is a privilege reserved to the Lord,’ said Master. ‘Arrogance is the mark of the beast.’
‘He was intelligent, but isolated and supercilious and distrustful. And particularly he wouldn’t have trusted Sandra. Not with so much money involved. So he asked for advice from someone who had military training, and experience of security work.’
‘That is so,’ said Master smugly. ‘And I advised him. Meet in an open space. Secure your retreat: have several exits. And take reinforcements.’
‘Did you help him choose the place?’
‘Yes. He was a civilian. He knew nothing of such matters. I reconnoitred, I chose, and I selected a hide.’
‘Did he reconnoitre with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then on the night of the meeting, he took you with him.’
Master clicked impatiently. ‘I went ahead, of course. To lay up before the other parties arrived.’
‘We didn’t see him,’ said Cot.
‘He worn’t there,’ said Nappy.
Master looked at them scornfully.
‘And maybe you weren’t just there as a bodyguard,’ I said to him. ‘Maybe Jacob was going to pay you the Tubbies’ fifty-one per cent share of the million: five hundred and ten thousand pounds. If he was still a Tubby. But his allegiance was wobbling, wasn’t it? He’d already abandoned the Tubby teachings on the pleasures of the flesh. He’d lived in the world too long, and his mother was dead. He was going to make a new life.’
‘He was studying the work of the first Master. He was searching his heart for the true way,’ said Abraham defensively.
Sandra cleared her throat.‘Four hundred and fifty-nine thousand, actually,’ she said.
Nick laughed. ‘Sandra must have taken ten per cent off the top,’ she said to me.
‘So good with figures,’ said Sandra admiringly to Nick. ‘If you want a job, come to me, my dear. On the financial side, of course.’
I went on, talking to Master. ‘However, Jacob didn’t quite trust you either, did he?’
‘My yea is yea and my nay is nay,’ he said.
‘But they are your own yeas and nays, aren’t they? Take this loop copy on the cassette, for example. You told me you didn’t know what was on it. I think you did. I think you watched it. And then I think you wiped it, to get rid of the temptation.’
His wet lips wobbled. ‘An abomination,’ he said.
‘Anyway, Jacob didn’t quite trust you either. And he was a methodical, obsessive man, who’d ask someone for professional expertise and advice, but would trust his own judgement and make his own plans. So he asked someone else to come along too. His first real friend. Carl.’
Carl shifted in his chair. ‘I won’t betray his confidence,’ he said.
‘You told me that before. I don’t see why not, since you’d betray anything else,’ I said.
‘You don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Never mind. So Carl arrived first, and waited, hidden himself and knowing where Master would hide, because it was all planned—’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Carl interrupted.
‘And then Master came, and then Jacob met Derek and Dennis. He counted the money, and gave Derek and Dennis the film. What happened then?’
‘We went back to the car, didn’t we, ’bout three hundred yards away, it wor. When we got there we heard a noise, so we went back.’
‘And now I need to go back quite a way,’ I said. ‘Master, Jacob didn’t go into the Army. Why was that?’
‘He had a thin skull,’ said Master. ‘So the mumbo-jumbo men said, when they x-rayed him as a child. He was healthy but h
e could not afford injury to the skull. The Lord had decreed it so.’
‘So any blow to the head could kill him. And you knew that. And when you fought with him for your share of the money, and you hit him, you knew that.’
‘He was in the hands of the Lord. And I fought not for my share, but for the church’s share.’
‘What could the Tubbies do with half a million pounds?’ said Sandra.
‘The work of the Lord,’ said Master.
‘And it wouldn’t hurt your chances with the girl from the chippy, either,’ I said.
He glared at me.
I looked at Cot and Nappy. ‘Was Jacob alive when you got back to him?’ I said.
They looked at Sandra. She nodded. ‘No. He wor dead, and the money gone,’ Cot said. ‘Messy, like. We couldn’t leave a mess for Sandra, so we took him home.’
‘And put the body where?’
‘Some of uz mates wor pouring concrete on the M18 extension. We popped him in there. Donny’s got a reet good motorway system. Thirty minutes to Hull.’
‘Twenty-five minutes to Sheffield. Champion,’ said Nappy.
‘Meanwhile Master had taken the money and run away.’
‘I extracted from an untenable position,’ said Master pompously.
Cot snorted. ‘We were shit-scared an’ all, but at least we cleared up uz mess,’ he said.
‘And Master ran away from Derek and Dennis, presumably,’ I said.
‘I made a tactical withdrawal, yes.’
‘And you ran into Carl.’
‘I never—’ began Carl.
‘Do shut up,’ said Sandra. ‘Never met such a big girl’s blouse.’
‘I don’t know who I ran into,’ said Master. ‘I was hit from behind, and knocked unconscious.’ He sounded embarrassed.‘When I recovered, the money had gone. I looked for it, obviously, but—’
‘But Carl had taken it. In Jacob’s holdall. The holdall I searched in his room in Chicago.’
‘That was empty,’ Carl said.
‘Not quite. It had a small round black plastic disc in it.’ I fished something out of my pocket and held it on my palm to show him. ‘Like this one.’
‘A button,’ said Carl.
‘No. You switched it for a button. And I’d never seen it but I’d felt it, and my fingers remembered it wasn’t a button. It doesn’t have holes, but it has raised writing on it, which says Haig Fund.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ said Carl.
Cot and Nappy got up and moved to stand in front of the door.
‘In November is Remembrance Day. A big commemoration of all the fighting men who’ve died for Britain. And for two weeks before, the Haig Fund collects money for ex-servicemen. You give money, they give you a poppy to wear to show you’ve contributed. A red nylon flower with a black plastic centre, like this. Half the adult population of this country wear poppies. Especially Tubbies or ex-Tubbies, to show respect to the generation they lost in the First World War. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row”.’
‘That’s crap,’ said Carl.
Nappy crossed the room faster than I would have thought possible for him, though it still wasn’t very fast, picked Carl up and hit him on the nose.‘That’s poetry,’ he said,‘and it’s champion.’
Then he dropped Carl back into his chair and returned to the door.
I went on. ‘Jacob was wearing a poppy. And in the struggle with Master the flower part must have torn and the centre fell into the holdall. Where I found it.’
Carl put his hand on my arm. I pulled my arm away. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hey, Alex—’
I looked at Sandra. ‘I’m handing Carl over to you,’ I said. ‘Ninety per cent of what you recover goes to Jams.’
‘Of course, dear,’ she said confidently. ‘We’ll sort it.’
‘What about the church’s share?’ said Master.
‘You killed him. Be grateful I’m not handing you over to the police,’ I said. ‘Don’t expect money too.’
‘Forgiveness is the Lord’s,’ said Master. ‘I have faith in his mercy. I will discuss it with Emily Treliving.’
‘Alex, I thought we were really close,’ said Carl. ‘Look at me.’
I looked at him. He had wonderful hair, terrific skin and eyes like the young Robert Mitchum. ‘Abroad doesn’t count,’ I said.
‘What? What do you mean?’
‘Plus Jacob trusted you. He took you along as back-up, to protect him. You did nothing, and he was killed, and you stole his money. You’re a coward and a thief. Come on, Nick.’
We crossed to the door I opened it. Nanny was standing in the doorway. ‘I’ve come for the mugs,’ she said brightly.
Carl hurled his mug at a filing cabinet and made a dash for the door. Nappy caught him and tossed him to Cot, who wrapped his arms around him and held him, kicking, clear of the floor.
‘Careless,’ said Nanny, ‘you’ve broken your nice mug. Shall I come back later, Sandra?’
‘Do,’ said Sandra warmly. ‘We’re just going to have a friendly chat with a naughty boy.’
‘Help,’ Carl shouted. ‘Help.’
‘Temper, temper. There’ll be tears before bedtime,’ said Nanny.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
I was still in the bath at half-past seven, when Polly came in. I’d been soaking for thirty-five minutes and I was wrinkling like a prune.
‘You’ve been in there too long,’ said Polly. ‘Get out this minute.’ She looked tired and cross, and old, for her. She closed the lavatory seat and slumped down on it.‘D’you want a takeaway, this evening? We could watch Death in Venice.’
That was a sop: she didn’t like the film, I did. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m having a Very Significant Dinner with Barty.’
‘Oh,’ she said, life stirring. ‘What are you going to wear?’
‘The outfit you brought me from Hong Kong,’ I said.
‘The Donna Karan? Yes, that’ll do, but it’s a bit informal, where are you going?’
‘Alberto’s.’
‘Fine for Alberto’s . . . Tell you what, I’ve got some great shoes – are you going to marry him? No, don’t tell me, he should be the first to know, he’ll be so happy—’
‘Towel, please,’ I said.
She passed me a towel. ‘Come downstairs, I’ll do your face.’
‘Do it up here.’
‘With this?’ she said, peering contemptuously at the sparse contents of my small make-up bag. ‘Did Michelangelo paint with four crayons?’
‘I don’t know, did he?’
‘That outfit needs earrings. And bracelets, I think.’
‘Not bracelets. They always catch on things, when I wear them.’
‘What things?’
‘Plants. Tables. Waiters.’
‘I’m going down. You’d better follow me,’ she said. ‘Now.’
We both looked at my face in her mirror. Michelangelo couldn’t have done a better job, I had to admit. I wished she’d do her own, next, and stop looking so unhappy.
‘Is it Magnus?’ I said.
‘Yes. He’s perfect.’
‘He is rather.’
‘I can’t bear him,’ she said. ‘And I can’t bear not bearing him. And if I have to go round one more perfect house I’ll spit.’
‘Has it occurred to you that he’s gay?’
She met my eyes in the mirror. ‘Gay?’ she said, horrified. ‘Why?’
‘Barty and Nick and Grace all think so. Because of his response to the film this morning.’
‘Gay,’ she said. ‘The film? What about it? I thought his manner was a bit off, actually.’
‘Probably put on to cover his interest in Big Dick Tracy.’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘They did. I wasn’t there.’
‘Gay,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘If he’s gay he’s not perfect, is he? Not as a husband, I mean, though he’d be perfect for another gay, of course, if he came out of the closet, th
at is. Which means . . .’
She was smiling.
‘Which means you can keep on bonking your boss,’ I said briskly.
She blushed. ‘Richard,’ she said.
‘If that’s his name.’
‘I told you.’
‘So you did. The married misunderstood bald one. You didn’t tell me you were bonking him, however.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t tell you because I thought you’d be cross, and how do you know he’s bald?’
I started to laugh. Soon, so did she.
‘Lovely wine,’ I said.
‘Good,’ said Barty. ‘As this is a special occasion, I won’t tell you what it is.’
He seemed relaxed. Pleasantly tired, perhaps, after Grace. We had a good table, tucked away in a corner at the front, not too close to the other tables and with a good view of the street through the wide window.
‘Case wrapped up?’ he said, when we’d ordered.
I explained, very briefly. He nodded, unsurprised. ‘Clever of you to spot the poppy clue,’ he said. ‘I’d no idea that anything was written on the black bit in the middle.’
‘Whatever that black thing in the holdall was, it wasn’t a poppy middle. It was perfectly smooth. The point was, he’d switched it. Looking back, I was sure he’d switched it, whatever it was. Nothing, I expect. But it’s the sort of spurious evidence that shakes your nerve if you’re guilty.’
He laughed. ‘Was Nick pleased?’
‘Very. She didn’t like him.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Spending the evening with Grace,’ I said.
Silence. I watched the street and thought about Jams. I hadn’t told her yet. Tomorrow would be soon enough.
Barty coughed. He was beginning to look tense. This was up to me. ‘I’ve been thinking. About what you said. And I agree with some of it, I am selfish and narrow and ungiving. Some of the time. But I’ve always been that, and you picked me, I didn’t pick you. So it must suit you somehow.’
‘It did,’ he said. ‘You’re right. It did.’
‘But less now?’
‘Less now.’
I fished down my bra for the list I’d made the night before. ‘So you want to share your feelings with me?’
The Loop Page 20
