Hit and Run

I

PUTTING the driving permit in my pocket, I turned my back on the weeping girl and made my way into the bathroom. I ran the water into the toilet basin and bathed the scratches on my neck. They were pretty deep and painful. I stopped the bleeding. Staring at myself in the mirror, I saw it was pretty obvious that I had been in a fight.

I went into my bedroom and changed my pyjamas for an open-neck shirt and slacks, then I went into die lounge and sat down and looked across the sands at the sea and the distant palm trees.

I was thinking and smoking when I heard a movement behind me and I looked around. Lucille stood in the doorway.

We stared at each other.

‘Ches…’ Her voice was a thin quaver. ‘I can explain… really I can…’

‘Well, come on in and explain,’ I said. ‘This should be worth hearing. You’ve proved to me you are a pretty fluent liar, but now this is where you can win an Oscar if you take the trouble.’

She moved towards me and sat down in a chair near mine.

‘Please, Ches… I know how angry you must be, but I haven’t ever lied to you. I really haven’t.’ There was now a saintly expression on her face that made me itch to haul her over my knee and belabour her with the nearest weapon I could lay my hands on. ‘If you had asked me for the permit, I would have given it to you. There was no need for you to have behaved like that.’

‘Look, don’t try me too far.’

She touched her lips with her tongue and the saintly expression gave way to alarmed weariness.

‘I’m sorry, Ches. I didn’t mean to annoy you,’ she said meekly. ‘If you don’t believe me when I say I have never lied to you…’

‘Oh, skip it,’ I said impatiently. ‘Let’s have your explanation. This business about wanting to learn to drive was just a gag?’

She began to walk the first and second finger of her left hand along her thigh to her knee. This was to convey a little girl’s embarrassment, but it cut no ice with me.

‘You see, Ches, I fell in love with you the moment I saw you,’ she said in a low voice and she looked up, her eyes large and starry.

That cut no ice with me either.

‘And when was this moment?’

‘When I saw you watching me that night—the night you first came to the house.’

I thought back on that moment: it seemed a long, tong way back into the past.

‘When you were admiring yourself in the mirror? Was that the time?’

‘Yes.’ She walked her fingers back from her knee along her thigh, then examined them carefully to see if they had suffered damage during the walk. ‘I was lonely, Ches. You can’t imagine what it is like to be married to an old man. Roger is so dull. I wanted to get to know you. I was sure you would be fun. So I thought it would be a good idea if I pretended I couldn’t drive and asked you to teach me. I only did it so I had the excuse to get to know you.’

I flicked my cigarette butt out into the garden.

‘Well, that’s really something,’ I said admiringly. ‘So you just wanted an excuse to get to know me?’

She looked at me, then modestly looked away.

‘I would never have told you this, Ches, only I feel you should have an explanation. It’s something a girl doesn’t like to admit.’

‘I can understand that. So you fell in love with me the moment you saw me?’

She bit her lip, looking away from me.

‘Yes.’

‘But I remember when we were on the beach together and I asked you if you loved me, you not only seemed surprised at the idea, but you even seemed angry.’

She moved uneasily.

‘I –I thought it might be dangerous to admit I loved you. I –I didn’t want to…’ Her voice died away.

‘Well, I won’t embarrass you, Lucille. But I must get this straight. You pretended you couldn’t drive only because you wanted to have some fun with me. Is that right?’

Again she moved uneasily.

‘Well, not exactly. I wanted to get to know you. I thought you would be interesting to know.’

‘Well, now you know me, do you find me interesting?’

She flushed a little.

‘Of course. It’s nice to know a man is in love with you. Love is an important thing in a girl’s life. Roger doesn’t love me.’

‘Did you discover that before or after he married you?’

She looked up, and for a brief moment, her eyes glittered, then she remembered the role she was playing and her expression changed to hurt bewilderment.

‘It was after I married him. He just isn’t interested in me any more.’

‘I wonder why?’

She shifted in her chair, frowning.

‘He’s old. We don’t have the same interests,’ she said, looking away from me.

‘That I can understand. So naturally you looked around to find someone who would be interested in you and you picked on me.’

She flushed angrily.

‘I know how you must be feeling, Ches,’ she said, trying to speak gently. ‘I would probably feel the same if I were in your place. I don’t blame you for feeling bitter. I’m sorry. A lot of this is my fault. I was so lonely. You made my life come alive.’

‘Well, you certainly managed to shake up my life, too,’ I said. ‘Now I’ve had your explanation for what it is worth, let’s examine it a little more closely. So you have been driving for two years?’

Her hands suddenly turned into fists.

‘Oh, no. I haven’t. I have had a permit for two years, but I haven’t driven much. Roger wouldn’t let

me use his cars. I only drove for a week or so, then he said I drove too fast, and he wouldn’t let me drive again.’

I smiled at her. She had been quick enough to have seen the trap and avoided it.

‘So you were really starting again when you asked me to teach you?’

Her hands relaxed. ‘Yes.’

I tossed the driving permit into her lap.

‘I hope you can prove it. I hope your husband’s chauffeur will be ready to perjure himself if he is asked if you ever use your husband’s cars. I suspect you do, Lucille. It is one thing for a beginner to kill a cop, and another thing for an experienced driver to kill one. When the judge takes a look at your permit, he will need a lot of convincing.’

She stiffened.

‘Don’t talk like that! You know you’re only trying to frighten me!’

I stared at her.

‘I wish I could frighten you, Lucille. You’re so sure you are getting away with this, aren’t you?’

For the first time her eyes showed she was losing confidence and she began to look irritated.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said sharply.

‘Don’t you? Do me a favour, will you? Will you take your frustrations, your interests and your difficulties out of here? Will you remove your sex appeal, your little-girl attitude and your attractive body out of my sight and temptation? I’ll admit I fell for you when you were displaying yourself in your nice little nightie. I also fell for you when I found you waiting for me in my car. I fell again when you lay on the sand and seemed to be offering yourself to me, free, gratis and for nothing, but since those moments I have got wise to myself. I’m no longer interested. I think you are a cheat. I know you are a liar. I am equally sure you are in need of money for some reason best known to yourself, and I am certain you’re not going to get it from me. So go away. Find some other sucker. There must be thousands of men who will fall for you as I did. Try again, but pick a guy who hasn’t much intelligence. Take my advice and give me up as a dead loss. If you work fast, you’ll find someone else and I wish you luck. Now, take your nice little body out of here and leave me in peace.’

She sat motionless, staring at me, her hands gripped between her knees, her face suddenly white, her eyes hard and glittering.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said finally, and her voice was now breathless and hard. ‘How can you talk to me like that? We are being blackmailed! You are in this as much as I am! I have explained why I have a driving permit. But that doesn’t alter anything. This man wants thirty thousand dollars or he’ll tell Roger about us, and he will go to the police and tell them about the accident! How can you speak to me like this?’

I got to my feet.

‘Tell me something, Lucille,’ I said, moving over to her and squatting down by her side. I looked directly at her. ‘How long have you and Oscar been working together? How many suckers have you taken for a ride? Tell me that before I take you by your lying little neck and throw you out of here!’

Her face twisted into an expression of savage rage. Her hand in the shape of a claw swung at my face, but I was ready for her this time. I caught her wrist, jerked her out of the chair, and twisted her arm behind her.

She gave a little squeal of pain as I pulled her up on her feet. I spun her around, let go of her wrist, then caught hold of her arms while I stared down into her furious, glittering eyes.

‘Well? What’s the answer?’ I said, giving her a little shake. ‘How long have you two been working together?’

She tried to break free, but I tightened my grip.

‘You’re making a mistake,’ she gasped. ‘I’m not working with that man! How could you think such a thing?’

I let go of her.

‘You’re not kidding anyone,’ I said. ‘It sticks out a mile. You trapped me into going down to that lonely beach. There was no one there. I went and looked the place over yesterday. There are no footprints except yours and mine, and that told me Ross couldn’t have been there. He knew what happened because you told him. You two are after the twenty thousand I’m putting in your husband’s business. He told you about it, didn’t he? That’s why you were so interested in asking questions about it when we first met. You told Ross, and you two planned to get it from me by blackmail. When I called you on the telephone and told you I had found a way out, you weren’t pleased. I spotted that in the tone of your voice. As soon as I hung up, you called Ross and told him. He came down here fast to see what I was up to and he brought a flashlight camera with him. Now lie yourself out of that little lot if you can!’

She slumped down in her chair and hid her face in her hands and began to cry.

I crossed the room and mixed myself a highball with lots of ice in it. By the time I had carried the drink to my chair and had sat down, she had stopped crying and was wiping her eyes on the shirt sleeve like any little gutter child who has had a hiding and now feels sorry for herself.

‘Ches…’

‘Here we go again,’ I said, leaning back in my chair and looking at her. ‘Now what yarn have you cooked up?’

‘Ches, please be kind to me,’ she said and wrung her hands. This was something new, and if I weren’t sick to death of the sight of her, her despair might have moved me a little—not much, but maybe a little. ‘I couldn’t help it. He—he’s been blackmailing me for months.’

I drank a little of the Scotch. It tasted fine: strong enough and cold enough and with just the right bite in it.

‘You mean Oscar has been blackmailing you for months?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you thought it would be a bright idea if he blackmailed me as well?’

‘I couldn’t help it.’ Again she wrung her hands. As a repeat performance it wasn’t quite so convincing. ‘He found out you had all this money…’

‘You mean you told him?’

‘No, I didn’t. I swear I didn’t!’ She stared at me, tears still on her pale face, her eyes wide and miserable. ‘He found out.’

‘Look, don’t give me that stuff,’ I said angrily. ‘For heaven’s sake, try to make your story convincing. He couldn’t have found out. Only you and Aitken knew how much I was going to put into the business. Aitken wouldn’t have told him, so you must have.’

She squirmed in her chair as she tried desperately to keep ahead with her lies.

‘I—I didn’t mean to tell him, Ches. You’ve got to believe me. We were talking together, and I said I knew someone who had a lot of money and I wish I had it. I never thought he would… It just happened… it slipped out. I didn’t intend to tell him.’

‘But you told him?’

She went back to the trick of squeezing her hands between her knees.

‘Yes, but I didn’t meant to.’

‘Why has he been blackmailing you for months?’

She hesitated, looking away, moving uneasily. ‘I can’t tell you that, Ches. It—it’s private. It was something I did…’

‘Like taking some interesting man down on a lonely beach?’

‘Of course not. I—I’ve never done that before.’

‘Well, all right, let it ride. So he was blackmailing you, and in spite of that you used to have little chats with him like telling him about your husband’s employees and how much money they have.’

‘It wasn’t like that at all…’

‘I bet it wasn’t. Okay, don’t look so indignant. Anyway, I bet it was his idea for you to persuade me to teach you to drive and to take you down on the beach.’

‘Yes.’

She lifted her hair off her shoulders. That was a trick she hadn’t tried for some time.

‘And you have no idea why you were persuading me to go down to the beach?’

‘No. He—he didn’t tell me.’

‘And because he blackmails you, you do what he tells you?’

She fidgeted with her hands, blood rising into her face.

‘I have to do what he tells me.’

‘Do you pay him money?’

She flinched.

‘No—I haven’t any.’

‘He extracts his blackmail by making you do what he tells you?’

‘Yes.’

‘After you had acted out your little scene with me,’ I went on, watching her, ‘you drove off and somehow managed to kill a policeman. You promptly drove to the nearest telephone and called Oscar and told him what you had done. He saw this was a much more powerful weapon to use against me and instructed you to go to my place and stage another little scene, persuading me to take the responsibility, then he assured you he would move in and collect the money. You, because you have to do what he tells you, followed his instructions to the letter, even trying to persuade me by threats of telling your husband if I didn’t pay up.’

She began to beat her fists together again.

‘It didn’t happen like that at all, Ches! I didn’t telephone him. I came straight here.’

‘I don’t believe you, Lucille. I don’t believe Ross is blackmailing you. I think you and he are working on this thing together.’

‘You’re wrong, Ches! I swear we’re not,’ she said. ‘It is exactly as I told you.’

I studied her, convinced she was lying.

‘Okay. I’ll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll go together and talk to Ross. I’d like to hear what he has to say if we come on him unprepared. You wait here. I’m going to change, and then you and I will go and talk to him.’

I went out of the lounge, shutting the door before she could protest, walked down to my bedroom, opened the door but didn’t go into the room. I slammed the door shut, then stepped quickly into the spare bedroom, pushing the door ajar and listened.

I heard the lounge door open gently. Looking out, I saw Lucille step into the hall and stare down the passage at my closed bedroom door, then she stepped back into the lounge again and shut the door. A moment later I heard the faint tinkle of the telephone bell as she began to dial.

I had set the trap for her and she had walked into it.

I crept down the passage and listened against the door panel.

I heard her say: ‘What shall I do? I don’t think he’s going to pay. No… I can’t handle him any more. You’ll have to do something…’

I turned the door handle and walked into the room.

Lucille hurriedly replaced the receiver and moved quickly away from the telephone.

‘All right, all right,’ I said, ‘don’t look so guilty and embarrassed. I heard you. Now will you admit you’re working with him?’

She turned slowly and stared at me. Her face was white and her eyes showed her hatred of me. She was no longer young nor fresh nor beautiful. She looked older, defeated and trapped.

‘You think you’re smart, don’t you?’ she said, her voice stifled with hatred. ‘Well, all right, I admit it. But you’re going to give us the money! You can’t prove I was with you! You can’t prove I was driving! We’ve got a picture of you and the car. That’s something you can’t do anything about! If you don’t pay up, we’ll send the picture to the police. If you try to bring me into it, it’ll be your word against mine and you have no proof. I’ve got an alibi. I’ve got people who will say I was with them when he was killed. There’s nothing you can do but pay up and that’s what you’re going to do!’

I stood looking at her hard, vicious little face, and my mind jumped to the bloodstains on the off-side rear wheel of the car and I felt a cold chill snake up my spine.

Those stains had baffled me, but I realized now what they meant. This hadn’t been an accident. O’Brien had been murdered as Dolores and Nutley had been murdered.

‘You and Ross murdered him, didn’t you?’ I said. ‘The crash was faked. You knocked him on the head and you ran him over with the rear wheel of the Cadillac. You were jittery enough to make a mistake. You killed him with the wrong wheel. You should have run him over with your on-side wheel and not your offside wheel, Lucille. It’s a mistake like that that lands a killer in the gas chamber.’

She backed away from me, her face suddenly grey.

‘I didn’t kill him!’

‘You and Ross did,’ I said. ‘You planned to kill two birds with one stone, didn’t you? You planned to get rid of O’Brien and get thirty thousand dollars out of me.’

‘It’s not true!’ she said hoarsely. ‘You can’t prove anything! I didn’t kill him! If you don’t give me that money…’

‘You’re not going to get it,’ I said and I moved over to the french windows, undid the two curtain cords and pulled them free. ‘I have a busy afternoon ahead of me,’ I went on, looking at her. ‘I want to find out why you had to kill O’Brien. I don’t want you in the way. I’m going to tie you up, Lucille, and keep you here, until I find out what I want to find out.’

Her eyes opened very wide and she began to back away.

‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’re not keeping me here!’

‘You will either submit gracefully or you will get hurt,’ I said, moving towards her. ‘Don’t kid yourself our little scrap just now meant anything because it didn’t. This time if you get rough, I’ll get rough too.’

She whirled around and bolted towards the open french windows, but she had started a shade too late. I reached out, grabbed her arm and spun her around. I was now past the stage of chivalry. As she tried to rake my face with her nails, I knocked her hands aside, and hit her on the side of her jaw. Her eyes rolled back and she slumped into my arms.

Then, moving quickly, I fastened her wrists behind her and then tied her ankles together. I picked her up and carried her into my bedroom and laid her on the bed.

Then going to my wardrobe, I put on a tie and jacket and changed my shoes. By the time I had finished dressing, she began to move.

I went into the kitchen and got a length of clothes line, returned to the bedroom and fastened her securely to the bed.

I went over to her and looked down at her.

After a moment or so, she opened her eyes and stared up at me, her eyes dazed.

‘I’m sorry, but you asked for it,’ I said. ‘I’m also sorry to leave you like this, but there is no other way. You may have a long wait. I’ll get back as soon as I can. Just lie quiet and you won’t come to any harm!’

‘Let me go!’ she said furiously, struggling to get her hands free. ‘I’ll make you pay for this! Let me free!’

I watched her for a moment or so to make sure she couldn’t break loose, then, satisfied, I moved to the door.

‘Don’t leave me!’ she screamed out, struggling frantically. ‘Come back!’

‘Take it easy,’ I said. ‘I’ll try not to be too long.’

I went out and shut the bedroom door.

As I hurried down the passage and into the hall, I heard her scream out after me: ‘Ches! Don’t leave me! Please, don’t leave me!’

Ignoring her cries, I locked the bungalow and then ran down the path where I had left the Buick.