by Roland Moore
But a meaty hand grabbed her wrist.
Connie was so shocked she found the air trapped in her throat, making it impossible to scream or make a sound. But for good measure, the man placed his right hand over her mouth. His hand was roughly bandaged and before he spun her around, Connie knew who it was.
Vince Halliday looked at her with steely intensity, his eyes wild with nervous energy. He waited until he was sure she wouldn’t shout out and then he slowly released her mouth. Connie touched her lips, sore from the rough treatment.
“What you doing here, Vince?” she hissed.
“I couldn’t stay caged up all day,” Vince hissed back at her. “Besides, we needed to talk.”
“Great. Yeah, come and see me at work. It’s always quiet enough for a good old chin-wag here.”
“If this two-bit village had a Lyons’ Corner House, I’d take you there. How about that?”
“That would have been nice,” Connie said softening.
“Eclairs.”
“What?”
“They were your favourites, weren’t they?” He smiled. “I bet you’d have had an eclair.”
“Blimey. I haven’t had one of them in years,” she mused. “We had four in that Corner House off Earl’s Court, didn’t we?”
Vince smiled, the happy memory cracking his features and filling his eyes with longing for lost days. Connie glanced back towards the door, suspecting that Dolores and Iris would be wondering why she was taking so long. “Anyway, as nice as this little catch-up is –”
“Yeah, sorry.” Vince composed himself and looked her straight in the eye. “I don’t have a lot of time. I need you to do something. There’s something I need.”
“There’s something I need first,” Connie said. “I want to know what the deal is with Amos Ackley. Is he alive? Is coming to get us?”
Vince weighed this up. He nodded slowly.
Connie sighed. At least she knew where she stood now. There was a very dangerous man – even more unpredictable and ruthless than the one standing in front of her – who was out there looking for Vince. A very dangerous man, who Connie had conned back in the day.
“I need you to tell me everything,” she said. “But wait here.”
Connie sauntered outside. Vince could hear her talking to her colleagues, telling them that she was going to tidy up the tool shed. She’d be about ten minutes. Connie came back inside, closing the door behind her. “Well? What happened on Barnes Common?”
And then Vince told Connie about what had happened during the last moments of the scam on Barnes Common. About what happened to Gloria Wayland. Connie listened with new interest.
She knew she could easily have been Gloria.
“I called her Glory,” Vince said. “I took her under my wing shortly after you disappeared. She weren’t keen on being involved in all my schemes at first. But when she saw that she was making money, some of her reluctance disappeared.
“She weren’t as worldly as you. Barely more than a kid. She always wore this cloche hat and looked a bit like a string bean. So I couldn’t use her in blackmail scams as easy as you done ‘em.”
Connie felt saddened. She had always felt that – at whatever age – she could look after herself, by and large. But this Glory sounded naive and vulnerable. Connie didn’t like the thought of how Vince had used her.
“What happened to her, then?”
“There was a man holding Glory. She was trying to pull away, but he had her gripped round the neck.”
“What did you do?”
“Told Amos to let her go.” Vince was burdened with sorrow. “But Amos just shook his head. None of us were going anywhere. Glory looked scared. The thug was gripping her arm above the elbow. The poor cow looked at me for guidance.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It gets worse.”
Connie took a deep breath. She had to know what happened. She braced herself and nodded for Vince to continue.
“I wish I could have done something. I was watching Amos like a hawk, waiting for him to make a move. Waiting for it all to start. He was trying to break my nerve. I was trying to break his. But it was like one of those things in a chess game.”
“A stalemate.” Connie helped him find the words, feeling empty inside. “And what happened?”
For the first time, Vince Halliday winced as he wrestled with troubling, unsettling memories. He spoke slowly and deliberately – as if taking time to unravel the exact sequence of events in his mind. Events that must have happened in a matter of seconds. With Glory at the mercy of a man with a knife and Vince facing Amos and two other heavies, Vince had had to think fast and act even faster.
“I saw the handle of his gun poking out of his lapel. He had a shoulder holster. It was my one hope.”
What happened next took five seconds. But each moment had been pored over endlessly by Vince since they happened. His own private, hellish movie.
“I lunged for Amos, pushing him backwards, pulling the gun free at the same time. One of the thugs tried to grab me, but I used my momentum to spin round, firing the gun. Didn’t have time to aim or nothing. It was a desperate shot, but the bullet smacked into the man’s arm, sending him flying backwards onto the ground. One of the other men came forward, but I whacked him in the face with the gun.” Vince looked at Connie for a reaction. But she was still ashen-faced and waiting for the end of Glory’s story.
“Behind me, Amos had recovered his balance and came lumbering forward. So I tried to spin around to face him, but I suddenly felt this sharp pain in my hand. Amos had stabbed me.” Vince raised his bandaged hand, as if Connie might need reminding of it. “I lashed out, batting Amos away with the gun. Then I took a step forward, over the grass, towards where Glory was being held. The thug seemed to be holding her arched backwards over his knee, as if they was two ballet dancers. His knife was moving towards her throat.” Vince slumped down in the tool shed.
“Did you save her?”
“Before I could get there, a bullet whizzed past my ear. It was so close it stopped me hearing for a while. And that’s when I made a big decision. ‘Cos I knew I had to make a choice. Run or save her.”
“So you ran?” Connie said, sadly.
Vince gave an imperceptible nod, full of shame and remorse. “We’d both have died.”
Connie nodded. In a strange way, she could understand. She placed a consoling hand on his big shoulder and he brought up his hand to touch hers.
“And she died, did she? This Gloria?”
The late-afternoon sun was sending him into shadow, so Connie couldn’t see his face clearly. He looked away, embarrassed perhaps. “I don’t know.”
Connie moved her hand away. She knew that she’d have to go back soon – Dolores and Iris would be wondering why she had taken so long to tidy up. They’d think she was shirking. Keen to escape the claustrophobic tool shed, Connie moved towards the entrance.
“Wait.” Vince’s gravelly voice made her stop in her tracks. “I haven’t told you what I want you to do.”
Connie felt disgust. It was as if Glory Wayland’s death meant nothing. Here he was asking for favours, probably expecting Connie to risk her neck for something.
“She wasn’t like you,” he said.
“So, what, she deserved to be left on that Common?” Connie spat.
“I’ve made loads of mistakes. Things I wish I could put right,” Vince admitted. Connie couldn’t tell whether this was genuine or an act for her benefit. “Most of all, I wish we could still be together.”
Connie felt a wave of emotion come over her. She couldn’t cope with this. She’d spent so long trying to fit together with a man who was so different to her, she knew it would be so easy, so comfortable to go back to being with someone like Vince. A waspish voice in her head crowed: “That’s your station in life. That’s where you belong.” She knew how a relationship worked with someone like Vince or with Danny. Unstable, volatile and with so many ups and downs. But that was th
e world she knew.
Wouldn’t it be so easy to give in? The voice in her head goaded.
“I’m married,” Connie found herself saying. “I’m married and I love Henry. Now, I want you to go.”
Vince weighed this up. I love Henry. The words taunting him like a late-evening mosquito. He thought about how Connie had reacted when he’d arrived. She had nursed him back to health, stolen him medicine when he’d needed it. She’d saved his life. And he remembered too about when they were in London together – no more than two years ago, her dressed to the nines and smiling with all her teeth as they pulled off another successful scam and ran off to celebrate at some gin joint into the early hours. He assumed life here was transitory, hitching her wagon to Henry through happenstance and a need for a calming and anchoring figure in her life.
“I’m serious, Connie,” he said softly.
“So am I,” she said, but her eyes looked haunted, uncertain. “Now what is it you need?”
Vince turned his attention to what he needed. “The key to my future.”
“What’s that when it’s at home?”
“I mean it. There’s a key. And if I can get it, then I’m sorted for the future. I can go away from here. Escape Amos Ackley. And if I’m not here, he won’t find you.”
Suddenly Connie was listening. The first indication that he would go. Then she’d have a chance to see what she could salvage with Henry.
Vince told her that there was a key in his bedsit – kept in an old metal tin under the floorboards. The key would open a safety deposit box in which Vince knew there would be a fortune.
“Why haven’t you used it before, then? Could have saved you a lot of grief,” Connie asked.
“’Cos I don’t know which deposit box it opens. It’s one at Hatton Gardens.” He admitted he’d stolen the key off someone a few months back, when Glory had managed to distract a jeweller at a Lyons’ Corner House. As the man tried to dance with the gangly girl in the cloche hat, Vince was rifling the man’s coat pocket and, hey presto, he found the key.
“How are you going to find out which box it opens?” Connie asked.
Vince got to his feet and fixed her with a frown, tired of her questions. “That’s for me to worry about. I’ll try them all if I have to. But the main thing is – I need that key from under the floorboards. And I can’t go back to London, can I?”
“But Amos would recognise me too,” she protested.
“Put a headscarf on. I dunno, disguise yourself.” He smiled softly, holding her shoulders. “Please.”
Connie took the sieve. She was already shaking her head – unwilling to be party to such a stupid and dangerous idea. But she had forgotten one thing: Vince was a dangerous man. A dangerous and desperate man.
“I’m not asking you, Connie. I’m telling you.”
“A moment ago you were asking me to come away with you? And now you’re giving me orders?”
“If you’re not with me, you’re against me. Aren’t you?” Vince’s logic was simple and terrifying.
“I’m not against you. But I’m saying no.” She extracted herself from his grip and made for the door.
Vince smiled an unnerving smile. “Think it over. Carefully.” Connie knew a threat when she heard one. And she also worried that it wouldn’t be her who suffered but her Henry.
A cloche hat was on the bedside table. It was one of the few personal items recovered from the patient when she was brought in to Fernley East Hospital in South London. The patient was lying on the corner bed of a six-bed ward in the large Edwardian building as a doctor examined her.
The doctor – a young man of Indian descent – had a gap in his teeth that was only visible when he smiled. He was smiling at the moment because he was pleased with the progress that his patient had made. The young woman had recovered well since her operation. The surgeons had successfully stemmed the bleeding from her wounds and even managed to remove a bullet from her neck. It had been touch and go as to whether she would survive. And yet here, she was on the road to recovery lying on her bed in Fernley East hospital as the dappled late-evening sunlight flickered through the leaves on the trees into the French windows at the end of the room. The details had been sketchy when she had been brought in, and the doctor knew better than to worry about the whys and wherefores. His main concern was to treat the patients and get them out of the hospital.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
The girl turned to him and smiled awkwardly, as if it hurt her to move her face. She touched the bandage around her thin neck. She hadn’t spoken since she had regained consciousness, and tonight looked like being no exception. The medics wondered if she would ever be able to talk again. But at least she had some colour to her cheeks and her dull eyes were beginning to sparkle with a little life once more.
“Al –” she croaked, attempting to reply.
“All right?” the doctor said, helpfully. “Don’t try to speak.”
The woman nodded. The doctor smiled and said that he would check on her again tomorrow. But by all accounts, the nurses had reported that she was doing well and that her strength was returning. One factor still concerned him, though, and it was always better to confront such concerns head on.
“We’re wondering if you’ll talk again,” he said.
The girl looked worried. Her large eyes suddenly doleful.
“The trouble is that the bullet may have damaged your larynx. The vocal chords. And that means you might not regain the ability. But we’ll see what happens over the next couple of days. But whatever happens, we think you may be strong enough to leave hospital soon.” He smiled as encouragingly as he could manage. He knew that she was probably a homeless young woman with no place to go. How had she obtained her injuries – a bullet through the neck and bruises all over her body? She was found on Barnes Common by a man walking his dog. She had been lying in the cold night air for some hours, probably left to die. And even since she’d been brought to Fernley East, she’d just shaken her head at the police officer who had come to her bedside to ask her about it. But whatever reason had brought her here, and wherever she had to go, the doctor knew that she couldn’t stay in the hospital indefinitely. He just had to make her well enough to leave.
As he consulted the notes at the end of the bed, the girl looked at her feet.
All Glory Wayland had known since meeting Vince Halliday was the life of a scam artist – and that involved being able to talk and charm your way into situations. How could she do that if she couldn’t even speak? She wondered if she had any future outside these four walls – where at least she could get three square meals a day and a bed to sleep in at night. She had no family, no friends. What would she do? How could Vince have left her like this? It was such a mess. Maybe Vince would come back for her.
Glory Wayland felt her shoulders shaking as she was taken over by silent and desperate sobbing. The fact she couldn’t make a noise while she cried disturbed her even more, adding a further sense of stinging indignity and injustice.
The doctor touched her shoulder, offered a small conciliatory smile and walked away.
Connie walked over the bridge into Helmstead. A headache had meant that Dr Channing had allowed her to go home early from her shift at the military hospital at Hoxley Manor. She hadn’t argued, more than happy to head home. Maybe she could see Henry. But a small figure caught her eye. Margaret was sitting on a wall in the village square, wearing her school uniform and looking at her feet as she scuffed her shoes over the gravel. As Connie got closer, Margaret looked up. A dark bruise ran the length of her right cheek bone. Connie was shocked.
“Oh my God, who did that?” she asked.
“No one,” Margaret said, getting up and moving away. Suddenly it seemed she was keen to get home.
“Did Michael do that?” Connie shouted. But she got no reply. Margaret was running over the bridge. Connie felt dreadful. Had she caused Michael to go over the edge by riling him at the cottage? Her mind racing, she
knew that she had to do something. She had to stop the awful things that were happening to that young girl.
Henry had spent the late afternoon pacing the dining room, waiting for Vince to return from wherever he had gone. He pored over the options about what might have happened. Maybe Vince had finally just got up and left. No, that would be too good to be true. Maybe this Amos man had turned up and taken Vince away. And yet there was no sign of a disturbance. Or maybe Vince had just gone out and got lost. He thought about the shotgun. Henry also busied himself praying, mumbled, anxious prayers. He asked forgiveness for what he planned to do. As a follower of God, Henry felt uneasy about brandishing a weapon that could kill a man, so he consoled himself by knowing that he only planned to scare Vince – to threaten him enough so that he would leave. The biggest debate that he wrestled with was whether to load the shotgun or not. If it was loaded, he might accidentally hurt or kill Vince, and that would be something that would devastate Henry. However, if it was unloaded and then Henry had to defend himself, then it would be he who would be in deep trouble.
Why had Connie brought this upon them? He let out an annoyed grunt.
Henry glanced at the clock. It was nearly seven o’clock in the evening. Connie would be back from her evening shift at Hoxley Manor just after eight. He hoped that Vince would come back before then so he could get this over with.
He walked into the kitchen and checked, for the umpteenth time, the shotgun leaning at the side of the stove.
Then he heard the front door latch. Henry moved quickly to the front of the house, leaving the shotgun where it was for now. Vince stumbled into the hallway, knocking one of the framed pictures with his shoulder. He was swaying and slightly red faced, the bandage on his hand dirty and frayed. He’d been drinking. He scowled at Henry and pushed past him, plonking himself down in the armchair nearest the fire. Something was uncomfortably digging into his thigh, so Vince pulled out the pistol that was tucked into his waist band.
He placed the gun on his lap, and ushered forth a deep sigh before fixing Henry in his blinking sights.
“Bet you wonder where I’ve been, eh?” he sneered, before rambling on in a drink-fuelled stream of consciousness. “Well, I’ve been celebrating that I might be on my way soon. That’s good news, isn’t it? But before you get too pleased – cock-a-hoop – about it, I should say that Connie is probably coming with me.”
