The Green Flash

by Winston Graham

  Thursday Shona was not yet back from Vienna. It had been a busy day because the firm had gone in for extensive advertising over a free gift of a beauty pochette with every two or more Shona purchases, the pochette to contain Satin lipstick, handbag mirror, and Bio-E cream, ‘especially created to feed dehydrated skins’. Some of the big stores in the provinces were moaning that the advertising had been too successful and they were running dry of the Special Offer. It would, only have meant more emergency supplies being ferried around by our reps except for the fact that the handbag mirrors hadn’t all come in, so there might be a shortfall for a couple of days. Anyway we did our best and I was still able to get home early, carrying a bag with a black sweater in it and a skullcap and a black silk stocking. These and a pair of old evening trousers and fencing shoes would make a reasonable fancy dress.

  Erica was in a mood again. She had been reading about the departure of the various teams for the Moscow Olympics. I knew bloody well that for the next month there’d be practically nothing else to read in the papers.

  She didn’t ask what was in the bag, but when I came back from the spare room she said: ‘ There’s a letter for you. Came by this afternoon’s post.’

  The postmark was Ross and Cromarty. It was from, of all people, my aunt:

  Dear David,

  You will perhaps be surprised to receive a letter from me, for we have not seen eye to eye on the majority of important subjects since we met. But now that you are married and have a charming wife and will no doubt soon have children, I felt I should bring up the subject of the family medals. There are, as I expect you may appreciate, since we have taken part in many wars over the last four centuries, quite a number of these – including one VC – and of course not only medals but battle souvenirs of many kinds. They make an impressive and historic array which I think cannot fail to move anyone with any pride of family in their blood.

  When first Malcolm died and then your uncle, who willed no other disposition of them, I had thought of leaving these souvenirs to one of the museums in Edinburgh. When I met you first, you made it plain you were not interested in the family as such; but it could be that you would eventually like them – when I die – to hand on to your son. The unfortunate circumstances of the quarrel in our family will not concern him, and he might come to treasure them for all the history and the bravery and the sacrifice that they bring to mind.

  If you are at Wester Craig sometime, you and Erica might call to see them and then let me know. There is, I imagine, no hurry.

  Erica was helping herself to another vodka and tonic, but I put the letter on the table and she read it while sipping her drink.

  She said: ‘What have you done about that offer for Wester Craig?’

  ‘Turned it down.’

  ‘You don’t really want to sell the place, do you?’

  ‘Not to give it away, no.’

  ‘You can still have the money for the repairs if you want it.’

  ‘Thanks. You’re very generous about that.’

  She put the drink away in record time. ‘What you can’t have, you know, my pet, is an heir.’

  ‘Who said I wanted one?’

  ‘I got the feeling that you were thinking, now the little woman has been cheated out of her fancy sport she can settle down into a comfortable Hausfrau, breeding and feeding children and spreading her hips and smelling of milk and nappies. It’s what the chauvinist man wants, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ll make a note of it in my diary.’

  She said: ‘Come and fence for a bit, get the cobwebs out of your hair.’

  ‘Not with you in that mood. You’d prick your bottom sitting on the point.’

  ‘You think I’m drunk?’

  ‘Not really. But over the breathalyser limit.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ She stared at me for a long moment. ‘How’s Shona?’

  ‘She’s in Vienna.’

  ‘Didn’t take you this time?’

  ‘Didn’t take me.’

  ‘You don’t care for me at all now, do you.’

  It was half joke, half serious, the way people in their cups can get, even slender pretty girls with clean limbs and fine features. You don’t know which of two people you’re talking to.

  In the end I said: ‘I like you better off the booze.’

  ‘I meant what I said, you know.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Not giving you an heir. First, I don’t want children. Who’d want to bring children into this lousy world? Having babies these days is a form of pollution … Anyway from your latest performances I doubt if you could produce one … But second you couldn’t ever produce one on me.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I had a steamy affair with a layabout called Edward Cromer. Remember? Well, I became pregnant. Horror of horrors, just when I was building up my fencing points. So I decided to lose it. I lost it. Something went wrong. With the op, you know. Result: I can’t have any more. It doesn’t worry me, of course. But I just thought I’d tell you in case you were having the same thoughts as Auntie.’

  I took the vodka bottle out of her hand, ‘Scout’s honour?’

  ‘Scout’s honour. If you want the dreary details ask Shona. She knows all about it.’

  IV

  It was a draughty night, with a cold wind blowing up the Thames and an occasional spat of rain. After the hot weather of last week it didn’t feel like summer.

  But maybe better for nefarious purposes. If you want to break into a seedy warehouse you don’t need a nightingale singing over the Dagenham mudflats. As it happened, in my chequered career as a public enemy, this and the little foray we’d made into Bickmaster’s flat were the only times I’d ever done any breaking and entering. I was stepping out of my league. Conmen don’t climb fences.

  Which is what we were preparing to do now. Wire clippers might be easier; but I knew the whole foray would be a much greater success if no one knew we’d been in. Although there was no sign of any wired alarms, there might be some sort of signal relayed to the warehouse if the fence circuit was broken. My own bet was that they were wary of alarms because alarms go off in error sometime or another and they didn’t at all want packs of flatfoots arriving in patrol cars. You try to read the mind of the enemy, and that was the way I read it.

  So we’d brought rope ladders.

  Van had done a good bit of looking around in the last two nights, and he said that there were two guards who spent most of their time in the warehouse in a room at the back, and who came out as regular as clockwork every hour on the hour and paced the perimeter. So just after three o’clock would do nicely. I’d never worn a stocking mask before, but Van advised it.

  Three days ago I’d bought a small but expensive Japanese flash camera and had annoyed Erica by trying it out around the house. It bulged now in the back pocket of my evening trousers.

  The fence was about ten feet high and bent outwards at the top. Van had chosen a place near the corner of the perimeter where a black shadow from the arc lights was cast by a tree. He threw the first ladder up a couple of times and it soon caught. With the other ladder under one arm and carrying his small professional bag, he clambered wobbling to the top and threw the end of the other ladder into the compound. He went down. I followed him and pulled the first ladder up to the top, rolled it up there and propped it against a stay where it would unfurl easily when we needed it to return.

  Stocking masks are stuffy things. We went up to the tree. From there it was about fifty feet to the door of the building. We crossed the semi-darkness and came to the door.

  There had been no way of knowing beforehand what the lock was going to be. Van peered at it and grunted and fiddled a bit.

  ‘Five minutes,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll look in at one or two of the windows,’ I said.

  ‘Watch your torch.’

  I slid round the building, peered in, flicked, the torch a couple of times. ‘Ask Shona,’ she said, ‘if you want t
he dreary details. She knows all about it.’ You could see boxes in here, some open, but it all looked more like machinery than perfume. ‘She knows all about it. Scout’s honour.’ Another window. Workbench studded with bottles, but too big for our stuff. More the size of lung tonic, hair restorer, etc. ‘ Scout’s honour.’ You’re telling me.

  A couple of cars droned past, and I flattened against the wall. I tried a third window but this had Venetian blinds and they were down. Back to Van.

  ‘Progress?’

  ‘Yeah. Take a bit longer than I was reckoning.’

  Three fifteen. Plenty of time if the guards kept to routine. Stand against the wall and think of your wife. Think of an elegant blonde girl, tense, excitable, full of fun and full of spite. Jolly, vital, jokey, tongue barbed like an adder. Think of the Russian bitch, planning everything, influencing, suggesting, knowing the ultimate end of the mésalliance, the darkness and the frustration. Think of your broken-down inheritance and of the general nastiness of human nature.

  ‘These locks get ever so fancy,’ said Van. ‘Thank Christ there’s no chain.’

  Stand against a knobby wall, its bumps pressing into your back, dressed like a bank robber, like a clown, like a gatecrasher at a fancy-dress party. What the hell are you doing it for? Not for anybody you could name. Certainly not for the Russian bitch. Maybe you’re not here, it’s just an illusion, like those damned dreams of locked cupboards and drunken men with straps. Are you growing out of that or growing into something worse?

  ‘OK,’ said Van, and we were in.

  Corridor, doors, divisions. This was machinery all right, nothing to do with Shona or Chanel. Might have come out of a car – or be going into one. Gears, time switches, air valves; you could hazard a guess. The cases in here looked well travelled – as if they’d contained the machinery, not that they were going to contain it.

  ‘Where are the guards?’

  ‘First floor back.’

  I took out the camera; four snaps of the machinery.

  ‘Flashes’ll show through the windows,’ said Van.

  We went into a longer room, probably used in the daytime for making up stuff. This was more like it. Benches, pulleys, labels, cartons, a printing press in a corner. Labels all blank but I found some unattached ones marked Lancôme. Click, click. Were Lancôme a group that ever farmed out their products?

  Next room half empty. Cases of whisky in a corner. Proprietary brands: White Horse, Haig, Teacher. My father’s dream room. In the corridor outside, stacks of Best Friend Dog Foods.

  Stairs.

  ‘Look around down here,’ I said to Van. ‘If there’s anything you can pocket easily, grab it. I’m going to see what’s up here.’

  ‘The guards for one thing,’ said Van.

  On the first floor were the offices. From under one door a light showed. I crept across and listened. Silence for a bit and then a snore. Comforting. Let sleeping dogs … Then someone coughed and struck a match. No doubt they took it in turns, one dozing while the other sat up. It was nearly half an hour before they would take their next promenade. We ought to be out of here in fifteen minutes.

  Another room, empty except for some broken boxes. Then a room with what looked like word processors. A couple of snaps recording the brand names. It might still all be perfectly legal.

  Out of this room and across the corridor, into a largish room that reminded me of the old Shona workshop in Isleworth. On a slab on the far wall two or three score of boxes of the familiar silver-faced pattern of Faunus and another lot of Charisma. I didn’t need to see any more or even to take photographs. These perfumes had no business here. No one had farmed anything of ours out to this company.

  Of course the workforce who came in every day would continue filling the bottles and sealing the boxes, unaware anything was wrong. They’d probably been doing Rubinstein last week – maybe quite legitimately. How would they know or care?

  Camera back in hip pocket, take a sample box of Faunus and one of Charisma, stuff them into my other pockets. The lights came on.

  A big square-shouldered ugly type. Sweater and slacks. Belted. In one hand the sort of truncheon that used to be laughingly known as a life-preserver. The biggest surprise was I knew him from Pentonville.

  He’d been in the same time as me. Charley Something. Charley Elton or Ellis. A right bastard. One of the top four-letter men in the whole of that nick, which had more than its share.

  Going straight. Or a different sort of crooked.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Got you, me little buddy-boy.’

  I crouched and said in a whining voice, ‘I was only looking round.’

  ‘You’ll come and look around in my office,’ he said. ‘What are you, a little nancy boy? Wait while I get the bulls.’

  ‘I’ve never been a hard man; my joustings with the law had never included street-corner thuggery; I’d done more fighting at Loretto than all the rest of my life; but things hadn’t been sweet with me recently.

  I went for him. I went head down and fists up. The truncheon thumped on my raised forearm; my weight took him back against the wall with a slam. I hit him with the torch, breaking it to splinters over his head. He collapsed but grabbed me round the waist; we rolled across the room and I came upwards, got him by the throat, bashed him again and again with the remnant of the torch. Blood on his head. Both hands now to his throat. I was losing the use of the left arm. His life-preserver was rolling on the floor, his eyes turning up in his head. He tried to knee me; I kicked back. His struggling began to stop.

  A hand on my shoulder: ‘ Hey, guv! Creeping Jesus, that’s enough! You’ll croak the son of a bitch!’

  Lights began to return to normal. Van pulled and pulled until my hands came away; helped me to my feet. Charley Ellis rolled over moaning but didn’t try to cause any more annoyance.

  ‘I was ’alfway up when I heard the racket. Out of here double-quick!’

  As we turned to the door the other guard showed up.

  He was a shorter, fatter character than the first. He looked at us, both tall and masked, then at his partner rolling on the floor; he turned about very sharp and made off at speed down the corridor to his office. Van ran after him but the door slammed and the key turned just in time.

  Van put his ear to the door. ‘Telephoning for ’elp. Les go.’

  We went. My arm was numb now from shoulder to wrist, and Van had to steady me down the stairs. There was blood on my gloves but it wasn’t mine. The camera must be broken, the way we’d rolled over on it, but the film should be all right.

  ‘It all depends, don’t it, guv,’ said Van as we got to the outside door.

  ‘What on?’

  ‘Whether they ring the roz or whether they’ve got more pals of their own nearby.’

  I stumbled a couple of times on the way to the fence, but I realized from the way he was breathing that Van was the more afraid.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I

  I took Van home and had coffee there and bathed my arm and did a few other running repairs – all, thank God, without waking Coral, who was ‘a light sleeper’; then I put my feet up on a chair and tried to rest my arm for an hour before going back to Dagenham. Van wanted to come with me, but for all his reformed life he still looked such an ex-lag to an expert eye that he’d have been a dead liability in any contact with the police.

  Old antipathies don’t die easy, and it was an effort even for me to push open the door of the station and ask for the officer in charge. Bud wanted things done and done at the double.

  Detective Inspector Chalmers had just come on duty, and he saw me right off. Immense help to be a baronet! – suddenly you realize – it’s as good as money in the bank. I was Sir David Abden, manager of the distinguished firm of Shona and Co., not some dissolute ex-public schoolboy frequenting a shady nightclub. And I’d come to provide evidence of a large-scale forgery business being carried on in their patch. Tactfully explain the provocations the firm had been suffering for
months; as a result, two of my employees had taken the law into their own hands last night and broken into a warehouse nearby. This was unknown to me – clearly I wouldn’t have sanctioned it – but the outcome had been a bull’s eye. Exhibits: roll of film, two boxes of forged perfume, a Lancôme label and some consignment notes mentioning a number of other proprietary goods which it seemed unlikely this firm would be dealing in on a valid basis.

  Chalmers was a stout chap, a bit short of breath – and likely short of temper if the need arose – but he cottoned on quickly. The roll of film was whisked away while I completed a statement and signed it. He did some telephoning and offered me more coffee, and the film came back developed and printed, and we looked at the results together.

  He said: ‘Of course you know, Sir David, what we’d like to do now is keep the warehouse under observation for a few days.’

  I said: ‘If they know the place has been broken into they’ll rupture their guts trying to hide the evidence.’

  The inspector’s eyes flickered to what must have looked like a flowering anemone on my cheekbone. ‘Did you – did your men have to make the break-in evident? You were not able to cover your tracks?’

  ‘Afraid not. The alarm was given as they left.’

  ‘Too bad. By going in right away we stand much less chance of catching the principals.’

  ‘I see that.’

  ‘Also one other thing, sir. You do appreciate that yours is … well, call it a luxury trade, in which prices are somewhat artificially maintained by the top companies such as yourselves. We have to look on this not just from the point of view of stopping an alleged forgery but of bringing the forgers to book. Are you, for instance, absolutely certain that these boxes you brought out are forgeries and not copies? A different wording, a different spelling of a name and the magistrates would dismiss the charge out of hand. There’s no crime in making fair copies. We would get rapped over the knuckles ourselves if we raided some firm which was doing a legitimate business.’

  I said: ‘These are the same boxes we’ve found up and down the country during the last few months. The boxes are pretty exact copies, the perfume is a forgery.’ He was going to say something but I went on: ‘But apart from that, look at these photographs. This one is a bit blurred, but I can tell you those are brake linings of some sort – probably from Taiwan. This case you can see here is full of consumer jeans – famous names – maybe made in Korea. And these – I wouldn’t swear to it but they look to me like helicopter rotor hub bearings. It’s much more a mixed bag than I ever dreamed. You may say it’d be hard to get rid of all this with the police watching, but I do know one man – I suspect he’s got a hand in this somewhere – and he has a Houdini gift for spiriting things away when the police walk in.’