FRAMED

by Lynda La Plante

  “What?” Larry stared at him.

  “Was he unconscious? We didn’t hear a word, Jackson, just a lot of static… .”

  “In the ambulance?” Larry blinked. “You said you got it on tape. I’ve got the mike taped to—” He touched the front of his shirt and shot to his feet. “Shit …”

  McKinnes stared as Larry frantically patted his shirt and pulled it out of his trousers.

  “Shit! Aw shit" He looked helplessly at McKinnes. “It’s got loose, I … Christ …” He threw up his hands. “I don’t know where it is.” He stood there with his shirttails hanging below his jacket, trying to think. “I put it on, I remember, Frank was there. Then we helped carry Von Joel out of the bedroom to the stretcher …” He looked at McKinnes, distraught. “It must have come loose around about then. I just don’t know where it is.”

  Larry turned and stared at Von Joel, a thought occurring to him. Von Joel’s eyes remained closed.

  “He was unconscious when you took him out of the flat,” McKinnes said, standing up and facing Larry. “So I take it he didn’t say anything in the ambulance. Is that right?”

  Larry bit back his panic, wondering which way to jump.

  “I had the cuffs on him, Mac . .

  McKinnes sniffed, dismissing that as irrelevant guff.

  “Did he say anything in the ambulance? Or do I have to go and bloody ask the ambulance attendant? Did he or didn’t he?” McKinnes’s color began to rise. “Was he or wasn’t he unconscious?”

  “Yes,” Larry blurted. He swallowed hard. “And no, he didn’t say anything.”

  McKinnes nodded. He turned and walked away. Larry glanced into the room. The pale head turned slowly on the pillow until it was facing the door. The eyes opened, staring eerily. And then Von Joel smiled.

  21

  At lunch time the following day, a Saturday, Larry had another informal meeting, in a pub, with DCI McKinnes. The first chance he got, Larry made an admission of defeat. His statement was plain and unequivocal: this case was too much for him, he was not the man for the job. He waited for a response as the barmaid brought a I portion of leaden shepherd’s pie and put it in front of McKinnes. No answer came. For the moment McKinnes seemed more interested in attacking his lunch.

  “Myers twists my head around,” Larry said, making the point a second time. “I keep on fouling up.”

  “That’s an understatement, McKinnes told him. “Pass the HP sauce.”

  Larry handed over the sticky plastic container. “I’m being honest, Mac. I can’t tell when he’s lying.”

  “So.” McKinnes forked shepherd’s pie into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “You want off it? Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what about the court case?” McKinnes shook sauce liberally across his plate and thumped the dispenser down on the bar. “I’ll tell you something—what with the bleeding marijuana, then screwing Myers’s girlfriend, you’re lucky to be still on the job.”

  “I don’t want to quit the force, Mac, I just—”

  “You just want to get out from under your involvement in this case, right?” McKinnes reamed his teeth with his tongue and pushed his plate away. “You think you can pick and choose, do you? I want Myers, Larry. I’ve got two weeks to get him before I lose him to Reading. If I have to get him via you it’s still okay, even if you make me sick to my stomach.” He shook his head wearily. “You want out, yet half the lads in the Met would give their eyeteeth for this caper.”

  Larry swirled his beer, realizing he could have saved his breath.

  ‘Take twenty-four hours and pull yourself together,” McKinnes said. “I’ll forget what you just bleated to me.” He nodded at the door. “Go on. Hop it, before I change my mind.”

  Larry finished his drink and left. McKinnes caught the attention of the barmaid.

  “Give us a Scotch, love. A double. It’ll make up for your shepherd’s pie. I think they left his crook in it.”

  Larry went home. The house was empty. He went upstairs, got undressed, and climbed into bed. Within five minutes he was asleep.

  At ten-fifteen that night Susan went into the bedroom. She undressed, put on her nightdress and dressing gown, and watched Larry slowly wake up. She asked him if he would like a cup of tea. He said that would be nice. She came back ten minutes later, carrying a tray with two mugs of tea.

  “Larry,” she said, pushing the door shut behind her, “we really need to talk. I don’t think I can take much more.” She looked at the bed. He was flat out, facedown, the pillow over his head. “Larry?”

  She put down the tray, sat on the edge of the bed, and lifted the pillow. He was fast asleep. She looked at him for a while, wondering if she would wake him. Finally she decided against it, and took the tray back downstairs.

  Early on Sunday morning McKinnes was waiting on the pavement outside the safe house when a plain patrol car brought Von Joel back from the hospital. A covering car drew up sharply behind them as DI Falcon, handcuffed to Von Joel, pushed the prisoner out of the car ahead of him. DI Shrapnel climbed out of the front passenger seat. McKinnes smiled coldly as Von Joel paused beside him.

  “Jefferson’s been wittering on about you wanting exercise, Eddie. You’re only just out of hospital. Fit for the morning jogs, are you? Is that what you want?”

  “Anything for fresh air, Mac,” Von Joel said, grinning. “Where’s Jackson?” McKinnes nodded to Falcon. “Get him out of my sight.” Shrapnel came forward as Von Joel was hustled away. He looked at the boss uneasily. “What about Jackson? Is he in or out?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” McKinnes said, getting into the patrol car.

  “We just lost two days, Guv.”

  “You’re telling me!” McKinnes yelled through the open window. “You think I don’t know? Sod off!”

  Shrapnel watched the car move away. He turned and walked toward the apartment block, looking to left and right as he went.

  At approximately the moment Shrapnel shut the safe house door behind him, Larry Jackson was climbing out of the bath at home, feeling wide awake and more alert than he had for days. He stood on the mat, toweled himself, then wrapped the towel around his waist. At the basin he soaped his face and began shaving. He had done one side when the telephone rang. It rang several times before the front door opened and he heard Susan pick up the receiver.

  “Larry …”

  He carried on shaving, removing the lather from his cheek in tidy strips, rinsing the razor after each stroke.

  “Larry! It’s the phone for you! Larry!”

  He was still shaving when Susan burst into the bathroom. She was still wearing her coat.

  “Didn’t you hear me? It’s the phone for you. It’s Mac.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you answer it?”

  She flounced out again. Larry put down the razor and dabbed his face dry. He tightened the towel around his waist, followed Susan downstairs, and picked up the phone.

  “Dad.” Young Tony was standing at the open front door. “Will you come to football practice? Dad?”

  “Mac?” Larry pressed the receiver to his ear. “You were right. I was just tired out. I want back on him. This time I won’t—” He paused, listening. “What? Have I been jogging? What? Oh, I see. Yeah, sure, yeah, I’ll pack em. Okay.”

  The two boys were now hurtling up and down the length of the hall, kicking a ball. Susan came stomping out of the kitchen.

  “I told you not to kick that around in the house!” she screeched. “Take it outside! Not in the street—the garden! Go on!”

  “Hey!” Larry yelled, as the boys continued to play with the ball. “Shut it! I want none of that when I’m on the phone! Get them out,” he told Susan. “Go on.”

  Susan, glaring at him, pushed the boys toward the door.

  “Sorry, Mac,” Larry said, his mouth close to the receiver again. He listened, nodding. “Right. Fine. Will do. And Guv, thanks. I won’t let you down.”
/>   He put down the phone and went back upstairs to get

  dressed. A few minutes later Susan came and leaned on the door frame as he stood by the mirror combing his hair.

  “You seem very happy,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “Well, I’m glad one of us is.”

  Larry picked up his small weekend bag and laid it open on the bed.

  “Have I got any clean shirts? I need some socks, too, and my tracksuit, and my good trainers.”

  Barely containing herself, Susan yanked open the wardrobe and began tossing shirts out onto the bed.

  “You treat this place like a hotel,” she snapped. “I don’t know when you’ll be home, or when you’re going—and one minute you’re biting everyone’s head off and the next it’s all smiles.” She came and stood close to Larry, forcing him to pay attention. “One of these days you’re going to waltz back here and—”

  “And?” Larry tried to embrace her but she pushed him away. “Oh come on, Sue—you know how important this case is to me.”

  He turned away and started packing the bag.

  “And me and the kids?” Susan said. “How important ; are we? Don’t try and tell me you’re doing this for us. God!” She put her hands to her temples. “I’m beginning to sound like a tape recorder.” She glared at Larry. “Do you think I like being this way? If it wasn’t for Colin I wouldn’t know what the hell is going on.”

  “Colin?” Larry stiffened. “You mean Frisby? What’s he j been saying?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes, it does!” Larry grabbed her by the shoulders. “What’s he told you?”

  “Larry!” Susan jerked herself free. “You see? Look at you! ‘What’s he been saying?’” Again, as so often, she imagined she had performed an accurate impersonation. “This is me, your wife! You don’t speak to me as if I’m under interrogation!”

  “Sue, listen …” He had his hands up. “I’m under a , hell of a lot of pressure. I mean, last night I tried to quit. I did. But I can’t, not even if I wanted to… .”

  “Why not?”

  Larry tried to stay calm. With two words Susan managed to convey her belief that packing in this case—perhaps even the job—would be a good move.

  “Eddie Myers interacts with me, he refuses to talk to anyone else but me. I have to—”

  “Larry! There’s police hanging around the kids’ school. They’re parked outside the house. I’ve been told not to let the boys play in the street. I mean, how long is this going to go on for? Do you ever think what I’m going through? Does it occur to you that maybe I need you at home?”

  Larry closed his bag and picked it up. He tried to put his arm around Susan and kiss her. She backed away.

  “Just go, Larry.” Her voice was cold—even colder, he thought, than her premenstrual snarl. “Go on, get out!”

  He paused at the bedroom door.

  “If it’ll make you feel safer, I’ll have a word with Frisby. Okay? It’s just two more weeks, I swear… .”

  He went downstairs. Susan heard him talking from the hall.

  “John, Tony, come and say good-bye.” The boys mumbled and she heard him kiss them. “Now, be good boys and look after your mum, okay?”

  A great bubble swelled in Susan’s chest. She ran out of the bedroom and hurried down the stairs.

  “Larry. Larry, wait . .

  The front door slammed shut.

  f

  As the week started and time began to tick down toward the zero point where McKinnes would have to part with Von Joel, the Superintendent began to see this stage of the operation as an all-or-nothing exercise in expectations that were not, by any sane measurement, justified. He told no one he thought this, of course, and in his heart hewished the best for the long shot, because success here could be good for him as well as McKinnes. It could be a formidable professional boost, the kind that would not be forgotten—the kind that could yield a lot of mileage.

  In his imagination he saw himself and McKinnes in fanciful terms, as two astute seismologists waiting for a particular boulder to roll off a ledge and start a landslide against which every advance precaution had been taken; the problem, the hellish big maybe was that the boulder, poised on the edge as it undoubtedly was, might never budge. For all their expert knowledge and accumulated experience, they just couldn’t be sure it ever would.

  The cost of the operation was crippling. Men and vehicles were deployed on standby in numbers and on a scale which was unprecedented for a crime that no one could say was going to happen. McKinnes had Von Joel for another two weeks, but the Superintendent knew the manpower backup would not be available for anything approaching that length of time.

  “Pray for a result at the earliest,” he told McKinnes, “before the odds against success get steep enough to break your heart.”

  On Tuesday morning, at an open-air cafe in Regent’s Park, Sydney Jefferson conducted business with Lola del » Moreno and Charlotte Lampton. It was a brief meeting, as always, and the real business was conducted with Charlotte alone, acting as a signatory on Von Joel’s behalf. She signed several legal documents and initialed amendments to others; Jefferson checked everything carefully, then put the papers in his pocket. From another pocket he took something wrapped in a yellow cloth and passed it to Charlotte. She quickly pocketed it. Throughout the meeting Jefferson’s eyes kept darting around the park. When the transactions were completed he seemed anxious to leave.

  “That’s it,” he told Charlotte. “I don’t want to see either of you again.”

  Lola arrived at the table with two cups of tea and a sausage roll. Jefferson looked about him again.

  “No more calls,” he said, “not at home, not at the office, understood? I’m out, until the trial. If there is one,” he added, smiling tightly.

  Without a good-bye or even a wave, he turned and walked away, leaving his briefcase on his chair. Lola watched him go, slowly munching her sausage roll.

  “Jefferson reckons he’s still in the same place,” Charlotte said eventually. She picked up the lawyer’s briefcase. “He’s allowed to go running early mornings, every morning.”

  “Did he give you a shooter?” Lola said.

  Charlotte sighed. “Why don’t you say it louder? Maybe somebody didn’t hear you.” She leaned forward across the table. “Yes,” she hissed, “he had it in his pocket.”

  “Oh,” Lola said, rolling her eyes and doing her Mae West impression, “I thought he was just pleased to see us!” Charlotte wasn’t amused. Lola nodded at the briefcase. “Is that all the money?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte snapped, “all we’ll get, anyway.” She glanced at her watch. “Come on, we’ve got to get moving. He’s a slimy sod, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d bought us out.” “Well,” Lola said, “I guess at least we’ll be rich.”

  f

  Von Joel and Jackson ran stride for stride. They were up to five miles—they’d started at two, upping to three, and on the last two mornings it had been five. They were well matched, almost identical in size. The pair of them were over six feet tall, both wore tracksuits, and apart from the handcuffs that bolted them to each other at the wrists, they looked to anyone watching like innocent joggers, both ever eager to hear the fat Mars Bar-sucking Shrapnel give them their timing from a stopwatch. No one approached them, no one even attempted to pass on a message, a signal. No car tailed them, no cyclist, nothing happened apart from two men taking a very early morning

  jog.

  f

  On Thursday morning McKinnes had a brief, anxious meeting with the Superintendent. For their separate but deeply linked reasons, neither of the men could quite look at the other.

  “It’s been four days,” McKinnes said. “Nothing doing. Short of driving them to the bloody bank, I don’t know what to suggest.”

  “We can’t keep all these men and vehicles on standby forever, Mac.” The Superintendent stared glumly at the map of Regent’s Park on his office wall. “They’r
e screaming at the cost as it is.” It was short-fuse time, and it had come sooner than the Superintendent had expected. “This is a waste of time and money—get him over to the Secure Unit at Reading.”

  That was not an order. Not yet. But it was time to start making peremptory noises.

  “Why the hell doesn’t he make a sodding move?” McKinnes demanded of thin air. “Why? What’s he waiting

  for? I’ve made it easy enough for the bastard… .”

  f

  At seven o’clock on Friday morning, under the eyes of more official observers than an outsider would have believed, Larry Jackson jogged around the Inner Circle at Regent’s Park with Von Joel cuffed to his right arm. They kept up a good measured pace around the virtually empty park, and near the end of their circuit Frank Shrapnel put through the same radio message he had been transmitting since Monday.

  “Fifth day, no contact. Myers just runs with Jackson, over.”

  On this particular morning, on the other side of the park wearing a tracksuit with the hood up, Lola del Moreno was running toward a car parked by the trees. She got in and pushed down her hood. Charlotte, behind the steering wheel, lowered her binoculars.

  “It was him!” Lola panted. “It was definitely him! Now what do we do?”

  “We wait,” Charlotte said. “We just keep on coming. Hire a different car tomorrow. We’ll tail them again.”

  “But maybe he don’t know we’ve traced him,” Lola protested. “Can’t we give him some kind of signal?”

  “No,” Charlotte snapped. “We can’t.”

  Activity that evening at the safe house was as low-key as it had been all week. The official drill now was that Von Joel simply be supervised and offered recreation; serious interrogation was at an end, since all but the most trivial loose ends, in prosecution terms, had been tied up.

  At ten-thirty Larry was in the kitchen reading his chess book while Von Joel cleared up. Among the detritus on the worktop was an ashtray full of cigarette and cigar stubs, and on top an empty matchbox. Von Joel palmed the box as he tipped the other rubbish into the swing-top bin.

  Across the way, the late shift was preparing to take over in the surveillance flat. The senior surveillance officer made his customary radio contact with control before handing over.