Sunday passed very slowly, beginning and ending in fog with hot spring sunshine in between. Nigel thought Marty would phone in the morning, would be bound to, if only to go in for more bloody silly nonsense about having a toothbrush brought in. And when he did he, Nigel, would find out just what hospital he was in, and then he’d phone for a mini-cab and send it round to fetch Marty out. He couldn’t believe that Marty would defy him.

When it got to the middle of the afternoon and Marty hadn’t phoned, Nigel’s stomach was roaring hunger at him. The bookcase cupboard was bare but for the four bottles of whisky and the eighty cigarettes. For the sake of the nourishment, Nigel drank some whisky in hot water, but it knocked him sideways and he was afraid to repeat the experiment in case he passed out. Most of the time he stood by the window, no longer watching for Marty but eyeing the corner shop which he could see quite clearly and whose interior, with its delicatessen counter and rack of Greek bread and shelves and shelves of cans and jars, he could recall from previous visits. Pointing the gun at Joyce, he forced her to swallow some neat whisky in an attempt to render her unconscious. She obeyed because she was so frightened of the gun. Or, rather, her will obeyed but not her body. She gagged and threw up and collapsed weeping on the mattress.

Nigel had been thinking, when he wasn’t simply thinking about the taste and smell and texture of food, of ways to tie her up. He could gag her and tie her hands and feet and then somehow anchor her to the gas stove. ‘Somehow’ was the word. How? In order to begin he would have to put the gun down. Nevertheless, late in the afternoon, he tried it, seizing her from behind and clamping his hand over her mouth. Joyce fought him, biting and kicking, tearing herself away from him to crouch and cower behind the sofa. Nigel swore at her. She was only a few inches shorter than he and probably as heavy. Without Marty’s assistance, he was powerless.

Bridey went out, old Green went out most days. Nigel thought of telling one of them he was ill and getting them to fetch him in some food. But he couldn’t cover Joyce with the gun while he was doing so. If he left Joyce she would break the windows, if he took her with him – that didn’t bear considering. He could knock her out. Yes, and if he went at it too heavily he’d be left with a sick girl on his hands, too lightly and she’d come to before he got back.

The shop was so near he could easily have struck its windows if he had thrown a stone. His mouth kept filling with saliva and he kept swallowing it down into his empty stomach.

By Monday morning Nigel knew Marty wasn’t going to phone or come back. He didn’t think he would ever come back now. Even when they let him out of hospital he wouldn’t come back. He’d go and hide out with his mother and forget about his share of the money and the two people he’d abandoned.

‘What are we going to do for food?’ Joyce said.

Nigel was forced to plead with her. It was to be the first of many times. ‘Look, I can get us food, if you’ll guarantee not to scream or try and get out.’

She looked at him stonily.

‘Five minutes while I go down the shop.’

‘No,’ said Joyce.

‘Why don’t you fuck off?’ Nigel shouted. ‘Why don’t you starve to death?’

20

Alan happened to be in the hall when the phone rang. Una was in the kitchen, getting their lunch. He picked up the phone and said, Sorry, you’ve got the wrong number, when a man’s voice asked if he was Lloyds Bank. Maybe if he’d been asked if he was the Anglian-Victoria he would have said yes out of force of habit.

‘Who was that on the phone?’ said Una.

‘Alison.’

‘Oh.’

‘She wants to see me . . .’ It was the only excuse he could think of for getting himself up to Cricklewood without Una. Wherever he went she went, and he wanted it that way, only not this time. ‘She was quite all right, nice, in fact,’ he said with an effort. ‘I said I’d go over and see her this afternoon.’

Una, who had been looking a little dismayed, the flow of her vitality checked, suddenly smiled. ‘I’m so glad, Paul. That makes me feel real. Be kind to her, won’t you? Be generous. D’you know, I pity her so much, I feel for her so. I keep thinking how, if it was me, I couldn’t bear to lose you.’

‘You never will,’ he said.

He had dreamed in the night of the boy with the mutilated finger. In the dream he was alone with the boy in the room at the bank where the safe was, and he was desperately trying to make him speak. He was bribing him to speak with offers of banknotes which he removed, wad by wad, from the safe. And the boy was taking the money, stuffing it into his pockets and down the front of his jacket, but all the time remaining silent, staring at him. At last Alan came very close to him to see why he didn’t speak, and he saw that the boy couldn’t speak, his mouth wouldn’t open, for the lips were fused together and cobbled like the kernel of a walnut.

When he awoke and reached for Una to touch her and lie close up against her, the dream and the guilt it carried with it wouldn’t go away. He kept telling himself that the boy in the pub couldn’t be the same as the boy who had come into the bank and who later had robbed the bank, the coincidence would be too great. Yet when he examined this, he saw that there wasn’t so very much of a coincidence at all. In the past three weeks he had wandered all over London. He had been in dozens of pubs and restaurants and cafes and bars. Nearly all the time he had been out and about, exploring and observing. Very likely, if that boy was also a frequenter of pubs and eating places, sooner or later they would have encountered each other. And if the boy turned out to be a different boy, which was the way he wanted it to be, which was what he longed to know for certain, there would be no coincidence at all. It would be just that he was very sensitive to that particular kind of deformity of a finger. What he really wanted was for someone to tell him that the boy was an ordinary decent citizen of Cricklewood, out doing some emergency Sunday morning shopping for his wife or his mother, and when he spoke it would be with a brogue as Irish as that barmaid’s.

It was just before the phone rang that the idea came to him of going back to the Rose of Killarney and asking the barmaid if she knew who the boy was. Just possibly she might know because it looked as if the boy lived locally. Surely you wouldn’t go a journey to do Sunday morning shopping, would you, when there was bound to be a shop open in your own neighbourhood? Even if she didn’t know, he would have tried, he thought. He would have done his best and not have to feel this shame and self-disgust at doing nothing because he was afraid of what might happen if Joyce were found. He should have thought of that, he told himself with bravado, before he hid and left her to her fate and escaped.

It was half-past one when he walked into the Rose of Killarney. There were about a dozen people in the saloon bar, but the boy with the distorted finger wasn’t among them. All the way up in the bus Alan had been wondering if he might be, but of course he wouldn’t, he’d be at work. Behind the bar was the Irish girl, looking sullen and tired. Alan asked her for a half of bitter and when it came he said hesitantly:

‘I don’t suppose you happen to know . . .’ It seemed to him that she was looking at him with a kind of incredulous disgust. ‘. . .  the name of the young man who was in here last Sunday week?’ Was it really as long ago as that? The distance in time seemed to add to the absurdity of the enquiry. ‘Early twenties, dark, clean-shaven,’ he said. He held up his own right hand, grasping the forefinger in his left. ‘His finger . . .’ he was beginning when she interrupted him.