He returned to his office and searched with his foot under the desk for the button. It was covered by an upturned drawer. Kneeling down, he lifted up the drawer and found under it a shoe. It was one of the blue shoes with the instep straps Joyce had been wearing that morning. Joyce wouldn’t have gone out into the rain, gone running out without one of her shoes. He stood still, looking at the high-heeled, very shiny, patent leather dark blue shoe.

Joyce hadn’t gone for help. They had taken her with them.

As a hostage? Or because she had seen their faces? People like that didn’t have to have a reason. Did any people have to have a reason? Had he had one for staying in that cupboard? If he had come out they would have taken him too.

Press the button now. He had been out at lunch, had come back to find the safe open and Joyce gone. Strange that they had left three thousand pounds, but he hadn’t been there, he couldn’t be expected to explain it. If he had been there, they would have taken him too because he too would have seen their faces. He looked at his watch. Nearly twenty to two. Give the alarm now, and there would still be time to put up road blocks, they couldn’t have got far in twenty minutes and in this rain.

The phone began to ring.

It made him jump, but it would only be Pam. It rang and rang and still he didn’t lift the receiver. The ringing brought into his mind a picture as bright and clear as something on colour television, but more real. Fitton’s Piece and his house and Pam in it at the phone, Pop at the table in the dining recess, drinking tea, Jillian coming home soon and Christopher. The television. The punk rock. The doors banging. The sports jacket, the army takeover, the gas bill. He let the phone ring and ring, and after twenty rings – he counted them – it stopped. But because it had rung his madness had intensified and concentrated into a hard nucleus, an appalling and wonderful decision.

His mind was not capable of reasoning, of seeing flaws or hazards or discrepancies. His body worked for him, putting itself into his raincoat, stuffing the three thousand pounds into his pockets, propelling itself out into the rain and into his car. If he had been there they would have taken him with them too. He started the car, and the clear arcs made on the windscreen by the wipers showed him freedom.

6

They took Joyce with them because she had seen their faces. She had opened the safe when they told her to, though at first she said she could only work one of the dials. But when Marty put the gun in her ribs and started counting up to ten, she came out with the other combination. As soon as the lock gave, Nigel tied a stocking round her eyes, and when she cried out he tied the other one round her mouth, making her clench her teeth on it. In a drawer they found a length of clothes-line Alan had bought to tie down the boot lid of his car but had never used, and with this they tied Joyce’s hands and feet. Standing over her, Marty looked at Nigel and Nigel looked at him and nodded. Without a word, they picked her up and carried her to the back door.

Nigel opened it and saw the Morris Eleven Hundred in the yard. He didn’t say anything. It was Marty who said, ‘Christ!’ But the car was empty and the yard was deserted. Rain was falling in a thick cataract. Nigel rolled the plastic carrier round the money and thrust it inside his jacket.

‘Where the hell’s Groombridge?’ whispered Marty.

Nigel shook his head. They splashed through the teeming rain, carrying Joyce out to the van, and dropped her on the floor in the back.

‘Give me the gun,’ said Nigel. His teeth were chattering and the water was streaming out of his hair down his face.

Marty gave him the gun and got into the driver’s seat with the money on his lap in the carrier bag. Nigel went back into the bank. He stumbled through the rooms, looking for Alan Groombridge. He meant to look for Joyce’s shoe too, but it was more than he could take, all of it was too much, and he stumbled out again, the door slamming behind him with a noise like a gunshot.

Marty had turned the van. Nigel got in beside him and grabbed the bag of money and Marty drove off down the first narrow side road they came to, the windscreen wipers sweeping off the water in jets. They were both breathing fast and noisily.

‘A sodding four grand,’ Marty gasped out. ‘All that grief for four grand.’

‘For Christ’s sake, shut up about it. Don’t talk about it in front of her. You don’t have to talk at all. Just drive.’

Down a deep lane with steep hedges. Joyce began to drum her feet on the metal floor of the van, thud, clack, thud, clack, because she had only one shoe on.

‘Shut that racket,’ said Nigel, turning and pushing the gun at her between the gap in the seats. Thud, clack, thud . . . His fingers were wet with rain and sweat.

At that moment they came face to face, head on, with a red Vauxhall going towards Childon. Marty stopped just in time and the Vauxhall stopped. The Vauxhall was being driven by a man not much older than themselves, and he had an older woman beside him. There was no room to pass. Joyce began to thrash about, banging the foot with the shoe on it, clack, clack, clack, and thumping her other foot, thud, thud, and making choking noises.

‘Christ,’ said Marty. ‘Christ!’

Nigel pushed his arm through between the seats right up to his shoulder. He didn’t dare climb over, not with those people looking, the two enquiring faces revealed so sharply each time the wipers arced. He was so frightened he hardly knew what he was saying.

With the gun against her hip, he said on a tremulous hiss: ‘You think I wouldn’t use it? You think I haven’t used it? Know why I went back in there? Groombridge was there and I shot him dead.’

‘Sweet Jesus,’ said Marty.

The Vauxhall was backing now, slowly, to where the lane widened in a little bulge. Marty eased the van forward, hunched on the wheel, his face set.

‘I’ll kill those two in the car as well,’ said Nigel, beside himself with fear.

‘Shut up, will you? Shut up.’

Marty moved past the car with two or three inches to spare, and brought up his right hand in a shaky salute. The Vauxhall went off and Marty said, ‘I must have been out of my head bringing you on this. Who d’you think you are? Bonnie and Clyde?’

Nigel swore at him. This reversal of roles was unbearable, but enough to shock him out of his panic. ‘You realize we have to get shot of this vehicle? You realize that? Thanks to you bringing us down a goddamned six-foot-wide footpath. Because that guy’ll be in Childon in ten minutes and the fuzz’ll be there, and the first thing he’ll do is tell them about us passing him. Won’t he? Won’t he? So have you got any ideas?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like rip off a car,’ said Nigel. ‘Like in the next five minutes. If you don’t want to spend the best years of your life inside, little brain.’

Mrs Burroughs phoned her husband at his office in Stantwich and asked him if he thought it would be all right for her to put Aunt Jean’s money in the Anglian-Victoria Treasure Trove scheme. He said she was to do as she liked, it was all one to him if she hadn’t enough faith in him to let him invest it for her, and she was to do as she liked. So Mrs Burroughs got into her Scimitar at two and reached the Anglian-Victoria at five past. The doors were still shut. Having money of her own and not just being dependent on her husband’s money had made her feel quite important, a person to be reckoned with, and she was annoyed. She banged on the doors, but no one came and it was too wet to stand out there. She sat in the Scimitar for five minutes and when the doors still didn’t open she got out again and looked through the window. The window was frosted, but on this, in clear glass, was the emblem of the Anglian-Victoria, an A and a V with vine leaves entwining them and a crown on top. Mrs Burroughs looked through one of the arms of the V and saw the tills emptied and thrown on the floor. She drove off as fast as she could to the police house two hundred yards down the village street, feeling very excited and enjoying herself enormously.