He swallowed what remained in the cup and then brought out from under a pile of clothes on the mattress an object which he put into Nigel’s hands. It was a small, though heavy, pistol, the barrel about six inches long. Nigel put his finger to the trigger and tried to squeeze it. The trigger moved but not much.

‘Do me a favour,’ said Marty, ‘and don’t point that weapon at me. Suppose it was loaded?’

‘You’d have to be a right cretin, wouldn’t you?’ Nigel turned the gun over and looked at it. ‘There’s German writing on the side. Carl Walther, Modell PPK Cal 9 mm kurz. Then it says Made in W. Germany.’ The temptation to hold forth was too much for him. ‘You can buy these things in cycle shops, I’ve seen them. They’re called non-firing replica guns and they use them in movies. Cost a bomb too. Where’d you get the bread for a shooter like this?’

Marty wasn’t going to tell him about the insurance policy his mother had taken out for him years ago and which had matured. He said only, ‘Give it here,’ took the gun back and looked at the pair of black stockings Nigel was holding out for his inspection.

These Nigel had found in a pile of dirty washing on the floor of the commune bathroom. They were the property of a girl called Sarah who sometimes wore them for sexy effect. ‘Timing,’ said Nigel, ‘is of the essence. We get to the bank just before one. We leave the van in the lane at the back. When the polone comes to lock up, Groombridge’ll be due to split. We put the stockings over our faces and rush the polone and lock the doors after us.’

‘Call her a girl, can’t you? You’re not a poove.’

Nigel went red. The shot had gone home. He wasn’t homosexual – he wasn’t yet sure if he was sexual at all and he was unhappy about it – but the real point was that Marty had caught him out using a bit of slang which he hadn’t known was queers’ cant. He said sullenly, ‘We get her to open the safe and then we tie her up so she can’t call the fuzz.’ A thought struck him. ‘Did you get the gloves?’

Marty had forgotten and Nigel let him have it for that, glad to be once more in the ascendant. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘and that finger of yours is more of a giveaway than any goddamned prints.’

Neither affronted nor hurt, Marty glanced at his right hand and admitted with a shrug that Nigel was right. The forefinger wasn’t exactly repulsive to look at or grotesque but it wasn’t a pretty sight either. And it was uniquely Marty’s. He had sliced the top off it on an electric mower at the garden centre – a fraction nearer and he’d have lost half his hand, as the manager had never tired of pointing out. The finger was now about a quarter of an inch shorter than the one on the other hand and the nail, when it grew again, was warped and puckered to the shape of a walnut kernel.

‘Get two pairs of gloves Monday morning when you get the van,’ snapped Nigel, ‘and when you’ve got them go and have your hair and your beard cut off.’

Marty made a fuss about that, but the fuss was really to cover his fear. The idea of making changes in his appearance brought home to him the reality of what they were about to do. He was considerably afraid and beginning to get cold feet. It didn’t occur to him that Nigel might be just as afraid, and they blustered and brazened it out to each other that evening and the next day. Both were secretly aware that they had insufficiently ‘cased’ the Childon sub-branch of the Anglian-Victoria, that their only experience of robbery came from books and films, and that they knew very little about the bank’s security system. But nothing would have made either of them admit it. The trouble was, they didn’t like each other. Marty had befriended Nigel because he was flattered that a doctor’s son who had been to college wanted to know him, and Nigel had linked up with Marty because he needed someone even weaker than himself to bully and impress. But among these thieves there was no honour. Each might have said of the other, He’s my best friend and I hate him.

That weekend the thought uppermost in Nigel’s mind was that he must take charge and run the show as befitted a member of the élite and a descendant of generations of army officers and medical personages, though he affected to despise those forbears of his, and show this peasant what leadership was. The thought uppermost in Marty’s, apart from his growing fear, was that with his practical know-how he must astound this upper-class creep. He got a pound out of Nigel on Sunday to buy himself a bottle of Sicilian wine, and wished he had the self-control to save half for Monday morning when he would need Dutch courage.

On Sunday night Joyce Culver steamed and pressed the evening dress she intended to wear on the following evening. Alan Groombridge broke his resolution and re-read The Playboy of the Western World while his family, with the exception of Jillian, watched a television documentary about wildlife in the Galapagos Islands. Jillian was in the cinema in Stantwich with a thirty-five-year-old cosmetics salesman who had promised to get her home by ten-thirty and who doubted, not yet knowing Jillian, that there would be anything doing on the way.

John Purford, with fifty other car and motor-cycle fanatics, was taking off from Gatwick in a charter aircraft bound for New York and thence for Daytona, Florida.

5

The fine weather broke during the night, and on Monday morning, 4 March, instead of frost silvering the lawns of Fitton’s Piece, heavy rain was falling. It was so dark in the dining recess that at breakfast the Groombridges had to have the unearthly, morgue-style, lymph-blue strip light on. Wilfred Summitt elaborated on his idea of an army takeover with a reintroduction of capital punishment, an end to Social Security benefits and an enforced exodus of all immigrants. Christopher, who didn’t have to be at work till ten, had lit a cigarette between courses (cereal and eggs and bacon) and was sniping back at him with the constitution of his own Utopia, euthanasia for all over sixty and a sexual free-for-all for everyone under thirty. Jillian was combing her hair over a plate of cornflakes while she and Pam argued as to whether it was possible to put blonde streaks in one’s hair at home, Pam averring that this was a job for a professional. They all made a lot of irritable humourless noise, and Alan wondered how he would feel if the police came into the bank at ten and told him a gas main had exploded and killed all his family five minutes after he left. Probably he would be a little sorry about Pam and Christopher.

He left the sandwiches in the car because it was his day for going out. Along with her coat, Joyce had hung an evening dress in the cupboard. It was her parents’ silver wedding day, and she and Stephen were going straight from work to a drinks party and dinner at the Toll House Hotel.

‘You’ll be having your silver wedding in a few years, Mr Groombridge,’ said Joyce. ‘What’ll you give your wife? My mother wanted a silver fox but Dad said, if you don’t watch out, my girl, all you’ll get is a silverfish, meaning one of those creepy-crawlies. We had to laugh. He’s ever so funny, my dad. He gave her a lovely bracelet, one of those chased ones.’

Alan couldn’t imagine how one bracelet could be more chaste than another, but he didn’t ask. The bank was always busy on a Monday morning. P. Richardson was the first customer. He asked for two portraits of Florence Nightingale and sneered at Alan who didn’t immediately guess he meant ten-pound notes.

Marty showed Graham Coleman’s driving licence to the girl at Relyacar Rentals in Croydon and gave his age as twenty-four. She said she’d like a ten-pound deposit, please, they’d settle up tomorrow when they knew what mileage he’d done, and if he brought the van back after six would he leave it in the square and put the keys through Relyacar’s letter box?