23

My phone rang at the office and, after a small click which seemed to infect the telephones I used at work and at home, a voice said, ‘Is that Miss Purefoy? My name is Henry Parkinson.’

‘I’m Lucy Purefoy,’ I told him. ‘But who are you?’

‘I go under the nickname of Screwtop. I’ve been instructed to meet you concerning the lady coming out of the bath.’

‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I’ve been expecting a call.’

‘We better have a meet. Shall we say 6.30 tomorrow in the Brummell Club?’

‘Is that safe? My friend Terry goes there. I wouldn’t want him to know.’

‘He won’t be there tomorrow evening. I can promise you that. He’ll be out at another job. I’ll be at the bar. Red hair, stocky build, sweet smile. You’ll recognize me.’ And he rang off.

As I put the phone down Julian at the next desk said, ‘Who’re you going to meet? Sounds as if you have a rather complicated love life.’

‘You can say that again,’ I told him.

In the days that followed, the fear and the excitement seemed to die away, and I remembered my date at the Brummell Club as though it was just another meeting with a client to discuss a campaign for an organic hair shampoo.

So I walked down Harrowby Street and passed the muscular chuckers-out with the feeling that I was going to just a routine meeting. But of course I couldn’t go into that place without thinking about Terry, and it was as if I was going back into a world I knew and where I felt at home, whereas I felt a sort of stranger in Robert’s palace or at drinks with the Smith-Aldeneys. I was in a place of deep shadows with pools of light over the gambling tables and from the ceiling over one end of the bar. There I saw a small hunched-up figure with red hair and a cheerful smile. As I got nearer he straightened his back and said, ‘You must be Lucy.’

I had to admit it. I had no choice in the matter.

‘Sit down then. We don’t want to shout about this, do we?’

I sat down on a high bar stool beside him. ‘And you must be Screwtop,’ I told him.

‘The governor likes to call me that.’ He smile died. ‘But I can tell you my brain’s 100 per cent when it comes to driving.’ He fell into a resentful sort of silence and, as he gave no signs of buying me a drink, I got myself a glass of white wine and a Bacardi Breezer, which Screwtop finally told me was his ‘usual poison’.

‘The governor says you’re to come along with us on the job.’ He looked doubtful. ‘We don’t usually take them with us. Not amateurs.’

‘I’m not exactly an amateur.’

‘Why, you done jobs before?’

‘One or two so far, yes.’ I didn’t tell him what Terry thought of my efforts at stealing. I was keen to get down to the details of my most ambitious project. ‘Anyway, I know where the owner keeps what we’re after.’

‘So where are we going then?’

‘It’s called God’s Acre Manor. It’s near Aldershot.’

‘How far out of London?’

‘About an hour if there’s no traffic.’

‘There won’t be much traffic at two in the morning.’

‘Is that when we’re going?’

‘Take your average house. Everyone’s asleep around three. Big family, is it?’

‘Only one.’

‘Single gent?’

‘You got it!’ I congratulated Screwtop. ‘Oh, and a man-servant, a sort of butler.’

‘Sleeps in the house?’

‘He drinks a lot of whisky. With any luck, he’ll be out for the count.’

‘Ground-floor kitchen, is there?’

‘Yes, at the back of the house.’

‘Sash windows?’

‘I think so. It’s an old manor house.’

‘And you say you know where the gent keeps - whatever we’re after?’

‘Oh yes. I know exactly where he keeps it.’

‘We’ll take Ozzy Desmond along with us. He knows his burglar alarms and he can act as a peterman.’

‘A what?’

‘Specialist in opening safes.’

‘It’s not in a safe.’

‘All the same, Ozzy’ll be useful. He knows his silver so we might pick up all we can, if you don’t mind.’ Screwtop asking my permission was definitely sarcastic. All the same, I said I didn’t mind.

‘All right then.’ Screwtop pulled out a Filofax and looked for a date in his diary. ‘Next Friday, 21 July, if that suits you?’

‘I’m sure it will.’ I hadn’t though it would be so soon.

‘Be in your car. What is it by the way?’

‘A Polo. A bit beaten up, I’m afraid.’

‘Don’t worry. Always best to have an anonymous-looking motor. Be parked in the underground car park at Charing Cross. We’ll pick you up there at two. Don’t be late or anything.’

‘I won’t be.’

‘Wear dark clothes. Jeans and a sweater. Trainers on your feet not to make a noise. Gloves. You got all that?’

‘Oh yes, I’ve got it. I just wonder . . .’

‘What do you wonder?’

‘What I’m going to tell Terry about the night of the 21st, that’s all. It’s all come a bit soon.’

‘You’ll think of something, won’t you? You’re so clever.’

‘I don’t know about that. Will you have another drink?’

‘Better not.’ Screwtop suddenly felt the call of duty. ‘Better report to the governor. I think we’ve covered everything.’

‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘I think we did.’

Then he was gone and I was alone in the Beau Brummell Club finishing a glass of white wine. I was aware of a figure leaving the shadows further down the bar and moving to sit next to me.

‘Ishmael!’ I said. ‘Is Deirdre with you?’

‘No. When I come to this place, I don’t bring Deirdre. It’s not her sort of thing at all.’

‘No, I suppose it isn’t.’

‘You came here with a friend. I saw you.’

‘Not a friend. It was business. My advertising business.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he said, ‘that’s what it must have been. For a moment I thought I recognized him. Must be mistaken.’

‘Sorry, Ishmael,’ I told him, ‘I’ve got to get back to Terry. I hope you understand.’

‘Yes, of course. Of course, I understand.’

I’ll say one thing for Deirdre’s Ishmael. Although he seemed to bob up everywhere, he was perfectly polite.

 

I told Terry I was going to a hen party in Aldershot. I know it was a lie but I’d planned that he’d know the truth soon enough, a truth that was going to bring us closer together than ever. ‘It might go on till quite late, so don’t wait up for me.’

‘I wasn’t going to.’ He didn’t seem exactly pleased, but that was because he didn’t know what I was really going to do. ‘Who are these girls anyway?’

‘Oh, just people I used to know. Some of them I went to school with.’

‘And where’s this party taking place?’

Oh, if only he knew, I thought, he wouldn’t be cross-examining me as though he was some sort of police officer or magistrate or something. But I still wasn’t going to tell him until it was all safely over. If he even got a hint, I knew he’d be trying to stop me. But he went on looking at me suspiciously and he said, ‘You’re not going to see that Robin Thirkell, are you?’

‘Why do you ask me that?’ His question had made me a bit nervous.

‘You were all over him one time. Kissing, that’s how I remember it. And you had that lucky escape last time - or at least that’s what you told me!’

‘Well, I’m not going to see him, I hope. He’ll hardly be invited to a hen night.’ What I really meant was I hoped he didn’t see me. Anyway, I was getting tired of all these sulky questions about what was intended to be just a great night for both of us. I said, ‘You don’t mind me going out with the girls, do you?’

‘Of course not. You can come and go as you please.’ But he didn’t sound exactly sure about it.

‘Well,’ I said, ‘thank you very much.’ I pretended to be quite upset that he was questioning me about my movements. ‘Just you wait,’ was what I didn’t say, ‘until you see what I’m going to bring you back.’ Instead I turned the questioning on him. ‘So what are you doing this evening?’ I asked.

‘Staying in, I suppose.’ He did seem a bit sulky. ‘Perhaps read a book.’

‘Really? What are you going to read?’

‘Mr Markby gave me a book. All about the Probation Service. It’s about reforming people.’

‘You don’t want to read that, do you?’

‘I might have a look at it.’

‘I won’t be gone long. And then we’ll have more interesting things to discuss than the Probation Service,’ I promised him.

And then he smiled and said, ‘I’ll miss you,’ which was all I needed to speed me on my way.

 

The difficulty was knowing how to fill in the evening. You see, I had to leave Terry at what might be a reasonable time to set off for a hen party in Aldershot and my actual date wasn’t until two o’clock in the morning. Well, we were going to meet up and leave London about two o’clock in the morning.

I went and sat in the darkness of a cinema, watching car chases and shootings in a film with a story which I had too much else to think about to understand.

When I came out, I tried to feel the excitement Terry had described to me, but all I could think of was the long light July evening, which seemed to stretch out like a lifetime before me. I parked near the Close-Up Club and took my suitcase from the boot of the Polo. In the lavatory, I changed from my wrap-around dress, suitable for a hen night, into the jeans, black sweater and trainers that Screwtop had recommended. There was no Deirdre or Ishmael, in fact no one in there I knew at all. I had ordered a plate of pasta and thought that crime was rather like the National Health Service. There was a great deal of hanging about attached to it. I almost gave it all up then, but I remembered that by the morning I would truly have understood Terry, I would know exactly what he felt and we would be together completely, absolutely and for always. I finished the bottle of Valpolicella that came with the spaghetti and drove to the underground car park.

There was nothing to do but go to sleep in the car. I’d turned on the radio and bits of news from all over the world, war, death, skulduggery and starvation, drifted into the Polo. I switched it off and, suddenly tired, wondered what I was doing, alone in an underground car park, until I fell asleep.

I was woken up by someone knocking on the window. I turned my head and opened my eyes to see Screwtop’s grinning face on the other side of the glass. I opened the window and felt the first tingle of excitement that would grow on me during the night.