He left the café at nine and returned cautiously to the alley. The Ford Escort was still there and no other car was. He got quickly into the car and drove off, this time crossing the river by Wandsworth Bridge.

It took him nearly an hour to get out to Woodford, and he had some very bad moments when a police car seemed to be following him after the lights at Blackhorse Road. But the police car turned off and at last he was approaching the Boltons’ house which was down a sort of lane off the Epping New Road. The place was as remote and lonely as he remembered it, but right outside the garage, on the miserable little bit of pavement that dwindled away into a path a few yards on, four men were digging a hole. They worked by the light of lamps run from a generator in a Gas Board van parked close by. Nigel thought he had better back the car out and pretend to be using the entrance to the lane only as a place for turning. It was only the second time he had got into reverse gear, and he bungled it, getting into first instead and nearly hitting the Gas Board van. But he tried again and managed a reasonable three-point turn, observing exultantly that there was no lock on the garage door and no padlock either. But he couldn’t park on the Epping New Road itself which was likely, he thought, to be a favourite venue for traffic control cars.

He drove a bit further, stuck the Escort under some bushes off the Loughton Road, and went into a phone box to phone Marty.

The receiver was handed to Marty by the pale red-haired girl who looked as if she were permanently kept shut up in the dark. She passed it to him without a word. He didn’t say anything to Nigel except yes and no and all right and see you, and then he went back to do as he was told and untie Joyce.

She was cramped and cold and stiff, and for the first time her spirit was broken. She said feebly, ‘I want to go to the toilet.’

‘OK, if you must,’ said Marty, not guessing or even wondering what it had cost her to lie out there for hours, controlling her bladder at all costs, hoping to die before she disgraced herself in that way.

He went out first, making sure there was no one there, and brandishing the gun. He stood on the landing while she was in the lavatory. Bridey was out, and no light showed under Mr Green’s door. He always went to bed at eight-thirty, besides being deaf as a post. Marty took Joyce back and locked the door again with the big iron key which he pocketed. Joyce sat on the mattress, rubbing her wrists and her ankles. He would have liked a cup of coffee, would have liked one hours ago, but something in him had baulked at making coffee for himself in front of a bound and gagged girl. Nor could he make it now and keep her covered with the gun. So he fetched in a half-full bottle of milk and poured it into two cups.

‘Keep your filthy milk,’ Joyce mumbled.

‘Be like that.’ Marty drank his and reached for the other cup.

‘No, you don’t,’ said Joyce, and swigged hers down. ‘When are you going to let me go?’

‘Tomorrow,’ said Marty.

Joyce considered this. She looked around her. ‘Where am I supposed to sleep?’

‘How about on here with me?’

The remark and the circumstances would immediately have recalled to Alan Groombridge’s mind Faulkner’s Sanctuary or even No Orchids for Miss Blandish, but in fact Marty had said what he had out of bravado. Being twenty-one and healthy, he naturally fancied pretty well every girl he saw, and in a different situation he would certainly have fancied big-busted long-legged Joyce. But he had never felt less sexy in his adult life, and he had almost reached a point where, if she had touched him, he would have screamed. Every sound in the house, every creak of stair and click of door, made him think it was the police coming. The sight of the unusable radio tormented him. Joyce, however, was resolved to sell her honour dear. She summoned up her last shreds of scorn, told him he had to be joking, she was engaged to someone twice his size who’d lay him out as soon as look at him, and she’d sleep on the sofa, thanks very much. Marty let her take two of the four pillows off his bed, watched her sniff them and make a face, and grab for herself his thickest blanket.

She lay down, fully clothed, covered herself up and turned her face to the big greasy back of the sofa. Under the blanket she eased herself out of her skirt and her jumper, but kept her blouse and her slip on. Marty sat up, holding the gun and wishing there was some wine.

‘Put the light out,’ said Joyce.

‘Who’re you giving orders to? You can get stuffed.’

He was rather pleased when Joyce began to cry. She was deeply ashamed of herself but she couldn’t help it. She was thinking about poor Mr Groombridge and about her mother and father not having their party, and about Stephen. It was much to her credit that she thought about herself hardly at all. But those others, poor Mum and Dad, Stephen going to announce their engagement at the Toll House that night, Mr Groombridge’s poor wife, so devoted to him and ringing him at the bank every day. Joyce sobbed loudly, giving herself over to the noblest of griefs, that which is expended for others. Marty had been pleased at first because it showed his power over her, but now he was uneasy. It upset him, he’d never liked seeing birds cry.

‘You’ll be OK,’ he said. ‘Belt up, can’t you? We won’t hurt you if you do what we say. Honest. Get yourself together, can’t you?’

Joyce couldn’t. Marty switched the light off, but the room didn’t get dark, never got dark, because of the yellow lamps outside. He got into bed and put the gun under the pillow and stuffed his fingers in his ears. He felt like crying himself. What the hell was Nigel doing? Suppose he didn’t come back? The room vibrated with Joyce’s crying. It was worse than the traffic when the lorries and the buses went by. Then it subsided, it stopped and there was silence. Joyce had cried herself to sleep. Marty thought the silence worse than the noise. He was terribly hungry, he craved for a drink, and he hadn’t been to bed at this hour since he was fifteen.

At the point when he had almost decided to give up, to get out of there and run away somewhere, leaving the money to Joyce, there came a tapping at the door. He jumped out of his skin and his heart gave a great lurch. But the tap came again and with it a harsh tired whisper. It was only Nigel, Nigel at last.

Joyce didn’t stir but he kept his voice very low.

‘Had to hang about till the goddamned gasmen went. The car’s in the garage. I walked to Chingford and got a bus. Christ!’

Nigel dropped the bunch of Ford keys into the carrier bag with the money. He found a bit of string in the kitchen and threaded it through the big iron key and hung it round his neck. They turned off the oil heater. They put the gun under the pillows and got into bed. It was just after midnight, the end of the longest day of their lives.

8

When Alan woke up he didn’t know where he was. The room was full of orange light. Great God (as Lord Byron had remarked the morning after his wedding, the sun shining through his red bed curtains) I am surely in hell! Then he remembered. It all came back to him, as Joyce would have said. The time, according to his watch, was five in the morning, and the light came from street lamps penetrating a tangerine-coloured blind which he must have pulled down on the previous evening. He had slept for eleven hours. The money, now dry and crinkly, glimmered in the golden light. Great God, I am surely in hell . . .

He got out of bed and went into the passage and found the bathroom. There was a notice inside his bedroom door which said in strange English: The Management take no responsibilities for valuable left in rooms at owners risks. He put the money back in his raincoat pockets, afraid now of walking about with his pockets bulging like that. All night he had slept in his clothes, and his trousers were as crumpled as the notes, so he took them off and put them under the mattress, which was a way of pressing trousers advocated by Wilfred Summitt. He took off the rest of his clothes and got back into bed, listening to the noise outside that had begun again. The noise seemed to him symptomatic of the uproar which must be going on over his disappearance and Joyce’s and the loss of the money, the whole world up in arms.