Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 51, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2006

You Have to Hand It to Them by Neil Schofield

It must have been about a quarter past eleven when the doorbell of Gerald’s house rang. Gerald stopped pouring the brandies and stood without moving for what seemed to me like a long moment. He shouted into the house where Cassie was clattering about, putting the dishes into the dishwasher, “We’ll get it.”

Her voice came back, “Thanks, sweetie.”

Then he looked at me and said, “Would you mind, Pete? See who that is and tell them to bugger off.”

“Right,” I said, clambering off the lounger.

We were on the patio outside of the giant picture window that comprises one wall of Gerald’s lounge and in front of the pool, which is yet another of Gerald’s insane extravagances. Me, Gerald, Paula. And the Claverhouses, Ernest and Maureen, a nervous, wispy couple from across the road. I still didn’t understand why they had been invited, and from the look of them, twitchy all through dinner, neither did they.

Gerald finished off the drink he was constructing and handed it to Paula. “Don’t mind if I use your husband as a footman, do you?”

Paula looked coolly at me and then carelessly rearranged her Versace. “Not at all,” she said, “I’m glad to know someone’s found a use for him.” In a tone that said, I’m joking, but not really. The Claverhouses giggled weakly in unison.

Gerald grinned. “Meow,” he said. I stood up and went to answer the door. I looked back. Gerald was standing there, bottle in hand, staring after me. I walked through the huge lounge and out into the vast hall, with its high ceiling and the curved staircase, and I thought not for the first time what an idiot Gerald was to have bought this pile. He and Cassie rattled round it like peas in a drum. What on earth did he need six bedrooms for? Neither of them had any family worth speaking of, and they never had people to stay. Whenever I asked him, he just shrugged and shuffled his feet like the idiot he was. An idiot with a crippling mortgage. Which is partly why we were here in the first place. Gerald’s mortgage, and Paula’s Versace with all its little brothers and sisters, Cassie’s Dior and her BMW cabriolet, Paula’s Merc and yes, all right, thank you for reminding me, my love of three-legged horses. As I went to the door, I felt as though I were dragging all this after me, this intolerable weight of things, possessions, stuff. Jacob Marley lives.

I opened the door. At first I thought there was no one there, the blackness was so complete, and then the man in the black overcoat and ski mask opened his eyes and smiled.

“Good evening,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt your dinner.”

“What the hell is this?” I said, talking not so much to him as to the huge revolver he was carrying very casually down by his side where I would be sure to see it.

“This,” he said, “is what is known in the trade as a robbery.”

And now the revolver with its one great eye came up and stared me in the stomach.

“No,” said the man, “don’t put your hands up. Just laugh and step aside so that I can come in.” In case any of Gerald’s neighbors should be idly watching.

I tried a laugh, but I couldn’t, I really couldn’t. In the end, all that came out was a sort of insane cackle, then I stepped out of his way, and now I could see that there were two of them. The second one was slightly smaller and thinner, but he was also wearing the same uniform of black topcoat, roll-neck sweater, and ski mask. They both moved past me. I could, at that moment, have bolted out into the night, calling for help. But I didn’t. I thought of Paula and Cassie and Gerald.

I stepped back into the hall and closed the door. The two men stood and watched me. They seemed in some bizarre way to be absorbing most of the light, so that the hall, with its huge chandelier, seemed somber and drained of brightness.

“You,” said the first man, the bigger one of the two, “You’re Peter Fellowes.”

“Yes,” I said. “How did you guess?”

“The other one, the flabby one, that’s Gerald Hawthorne, right?”

I didn’t argue with the “flabby” part, although Gerald probably would have, and would have got himself into trouble for his pains.

“All right, Peter,” said the man, “this is what’s going to happen. We’re going to go into the lounge, and you’re going to get everyone else in there.”

“We’ve just finished eating,” I said idiotically. “We’re having drinks.” Why on earth did I tell him that?

“I know that,” he said. “We’re not stupid, and don’t interrupt me again when I’m talking or I’ll hurt you.”

I shut up.

“Now,” he said, “turn round and walk very calmly and normally into the lounge.”

My knees felt awkward, as if I had forgotten how to walk properly. I walked into the lounge. Gerald and Paula were still on the patio with the Claverhouses.

“Go and call them in here,” said the man. “Don’t shout or do anything silly like that. Just speak to them normally.”

I went to the french window. Gerald looked up and saw me. Then he looked past me and saw the two men in the lounge. His eyes opened very wide. The Claverhouses looked puzzled but calm.

I said, “Could you come into the lounge, everybody, please?”

Paula, who was facing away from me, heard something unnatural in the overnatural tone I was using. She put down her glass and turned to face me.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“We’re being robbed,” I said. “Or rather, Gerald is, seeing as this is his house. Now, can you please come inside?”

Maureen Claverhouse gave a tiny shriek and put her hand over her mouth. Her husband went very white.

“Some sort of joke, surely,” he said.

“I wish,” I said. “Now can we all come inside, please.”

Gerald stepped aside to allow Paula to come in first. A strange moment to behave like a proper gent, I thought, but Paula seemed to find it completely natural. My wife, I thought. You can take her anywhere.

“Thank you, Gerald,” she said, stepping through the door as gracefully as if she were stepping into a cocktail party. And Gerald followed her, followed by the Claverhouses.

The man with the gun looked at them. “Who are these two?” he said.

“Friends,” said Gerald.

“We’re neighbors, actually,” said Ernest, as though he were quite sensibly trying to put a little distance between Gerald and himself.

“Right,” said the man with the gun. “Everybody sit down. And you,” he pointed it at Gerald, “go and get your wife from the kitchen.” Which meant that he knew where Cassie was. Which told everybody that they’d been watching the house quite thoroughly. Casing it, I suppose they’d say. And more, they knew our names, and they knew that Gerald was the flabby one, which told everybody they knew a lot about us.

Gerald came back with Cassie trailing behind him. She came into the room and saw the two men and her mouth dropped open — prettily, of course, like everything Cassie did, she did it prettily. And she knew it.

“What — what the hell is all this?” she said. To my ears it sounded a little false — as if she were saying the sort of thing people she thought were supposed to say in that situation. But then, I wasn’t doing any better than she was. She went over and stood next to Paula. That was odd, I thought. It was as if she felt safer with my wife than with her husband. And the two of them standing together was the same shock as always. Cassie’s white blondness contrasted spectacularly with Paula’s black hair and olive skin.

“What this is,” said the man with the gun, “is a robbery.”

Gerald stepped in front of Cassie.

“I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed,” he said. “I never keep large sums of money at home. There’s a bit in my wallet, and I’m sure the others could chip in; but as these things go, I’m afraid you’ve drawn a bit of a blank.”

The man simply stood there and let him run on.

Then he said, “You could end up irritating me, you could. When I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you. There’s nothing here, we know that. It’s the shop that interests me.”

The shop. I could see the shock suddenly appear on Cassie’s face and on Paula’s. Shock and a little relief too, I thought. What my face was showing, I had no idea.

Gerald’s face dropped. “The shop?” he said a little stupidly.

“That’s right,” the man said. “The shop.” He said it in a good imitation of Gerald’s rather idiotic tone. “And this is the way we’re going to do it. You two are going to come with me down to the shop. In the meantime, my friend here will stay here with the others. As insurance. When we get back, we’ll go and you can ring the law. As soon as you can get free, that is. You’d want to give us a bit of a head start, I know.”

He looked round us all. “Now, is that clear enough for you? Nothing too difficult? Any questions?”

Nobody spoke.

He looked at the Claverhouses. “You two can go home. We don’t need you.”

They stared at him.

“Go home?” Ernest said as though the words had been spoken in Urdu. The man nodded.

“Go home. But don’t get any ideas. My partner here will be staying behind, and he’s an edgy type. If he sees so much as a Boy Scout uniform or a baker’s van, I won’t be able to answer for him. I just don’t know what he’d do in a situation like that. What would you do, as a matter of interest?” he asked the second man.

The other spoke for the first time since they had entered the house. “Something violent and over the top. I dunno. Kill both the women, I s’pose. I dunno. Depends.”

“So,” said the man with the gun to the Claverhouses, who were both strangely leaning forward a little as though they were straining to hear him, “don’t do anything clever. Don’t ring anybody. Don’t do anything. The best thing you can do is go straight to bed, and when you wake up in the morning, it’ll all be over. No fuss. No problems. No sieges. No blood. Just a quiet, civilized, little jewel-shop robbery. Now, off you go.”

The Claverhouses looked round at the rest of us, their heads rotating almost in unison. I wondered vaguely and irrelevantly if they did everything like that. Ernest Claverhouse seemed to want to say something, something reassuring, something brave, but he couldn’t find anything.

“Well,” he said, “we’ll be off, then.” Even he seemed to find the words ridiculous.

“Safe home,” I said. “Don’t worry. I think everything will be all right. Just do what he says.”

They both nodded quickly at me, glad to have something to do. They left the lounge, and I could hear them whispering together in the hall as they put on their coats.

“Keep it down out there,” called the big man. “Can’t hear ourselves think in here.” The whispering stopped immediately. Then we heard the door open and close. The big man looked round at the rest of us, and then looked at his watch.

“Right,” he said. “You two,” he pointed at Cassie and then at Paula, “sit down there.” And he pointed at the white leather sofa. Cassie and Paula looked at each other quickly, and rather appraisingly it seemed to me, then they sat, Cassie quickly, Paula with rather an insolent and deliberate slowness. She flicked her black hair back over her shoulder as she did so and looked the big man straight in the eyes. He returned her look.

“Watch this one,” he said to the other man. “She’s the one. Show her your gun.”

The second man took his hand out of his overcoat pocket. He was clutching a large automatic.

“Right,” the big man said to the women. “Just so’s you know. Shoot something,” he said to the other man. The second man aimed negligently at the sideboard and fired the pistol. There was a flat bang and the porcelain vase that up to then had been holding some flowers disintegrated. A piece of the vase landed next to my foot.

Cassie looked at the man. “You utter pig,” she said. “There was no need for that.”

“Yes there was,” he said. “Just so that you know. Get your coats,” he said, with no change of tone or movement, so that it took a moment for Gerald and me to realize he was speaking to us. Gerald lumbered toward me, his face red and his eyes bright with — what? Rage, fear — I couldn’t tell.

We went into the hall. Gerald handed me my overcoat. I fully expected him to hold it so that I could put my arms in the sleeves, but he simply half handed, half threw it at me. We put our coats on in silence. There was a murmur of voices from the lounge. Then the big man came out.

“We’ll take your car,” he said to Gerald, and opened the door.

We climbed into the BMW, me in the back, Gerald at the wheel, and the man next to him. Gerald started the motor and rolled down the drive. Before we had reached the road, the big man clawed the ski mask off his head. He had a hard angular face, and his hair was cut so short he looked almost bald.

“Bloody hell, these things make me itch,” he said, and then he looked at Gerald. “What’s all this nonsense with the neighbors?” he said. “You never told me there’d be neighbors.”

Gerald turned to me and said, “This is Carl.”

Like most ideas of Gerald’s, it was simple, yet with an enormous potential for disaster. Like his other idea, when I was made redundant by the electronics company where I was marketing director. They decided, one fine day, quite simply to delocalize to Peshawar, where the manufacturing costs were a minute fraction of those in the U.K.

Gerald had come up with the idea that I invest my redundancy payment, which was not unsubstantial, in his family jewelry business, which he had taken over after his father had suffered the fourth and fatal coronary.

Gerald’s business was in the center of town in the huge Benfield shopping precinct — a prime position, it seemed to Paula and me, a good solid enterprise with a good solid clientele. I knew nothing about jewelry, we acknowledged to each other, but I knew about marketing. I was a good salesman, which is what Gerald said he needed. A front man, he said, a smooth someone to front the business. He had showed me the books, and based on my admittedly scanty knowledge of bookkeeping, the figures looked healthy enough. So, I plunged. And once the money was in the bank, Gerald showed me the other books, the real books, the books that showed the debt that my money was, even at that moment, helping to pay off.

“But,” said Gerald the day I found out the belated truth, “with you to help, we can really make this business take off.”

No, we couldn’t. In fact, no one could have. Not with the inroads Gerald was making into the treasury to pay for his house and the trinkets that, she had made plain, Cassie had to have if Gerald was to keep her. And not with the two, count them, two cut-price shops that opened up within half a mile of us. The Rhinestone Cowboys, Gerald called them, or The Zircons, when he was in his Captain Kirk mode. Cut-price everything: an engagement ring for two quid, a tiara for a fiver. I exaggerate, but not much. And a year after I had done the deed, it was clear that we were in the messiest of messes.

I told Paula some of this, but not all, because she had not really recovered from my being made redundant, which she took not only as a personal slight, but also as a sort of social cataclysm. Before we had held the occasional dinner party; now we entertained as though it were going to be outlawed tomorrow. Before she had dressed well but reasonably, going on a big bender every spring and autumn; now she became what I can only describe as a Serial Shopper.

So things went from bad to worse and worse to abysmal. What with the competition cutting our throats, the gigantic rents we were paying, the vast amounts we were each taking out of the business, the increasingly sour meetings we were having with the bank, I suppose we were technically insolvent.

I was sitting in my cubbyhole of an office one morning, reading the appalling cricket news and scanning the runners and riders at Aintree, when Gerald came in and sat down heavily in the other chair. He had been for a meeting with the accountants.

“Well?” I said, knowing what the answer would be.

He shook his head.

“England all out for a hundred and eighty,” he said, reading the paper upside down. “Typical.”

“No,” I said, a bit irritated, “with the accountants.”

“Bunch of dismal jimmies,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to sack them for ages.”

“They say?”

“They say we should put the keys under the door and call it a day. That we cannot cover our liabilities and that therefore we are technically insolvent. ‘And as you know, Mr. Hawthorne,’ ” he mimicked savagely, “ ‘to continue trading while insolvent is a serious offence.’ Blah, blah, blah.”

“Right, then,” I said. “We’re belly up.”

“Not as long as I’m still standing up,” he said. “All we need is a shot in the arm, a breathing space.”

“Yes,” I said, without much conviction.

“What we need, Pete,” he said, “is a robbery.”

“How would that help?” I said. “Unless you’re thinking about the publicity.”

“Nah, bugger the publicity,” he said. “What we need is a robbery.” And he waggled two fingers of each hand in the air as he said “robbery.”

I stared at him. “You’re mad,” I said.

“Not mad at all, dear old thing. Just being practical, that’s all. Just an idea.”

“You’re actually suggesting that we stage a — a what — a smash and grab?”

“Nothing so dramatic,” he said. “A simple, well-conducted robbery is all.”

“And how would that help?” I said. “If it came off — if — we’d get the insurance. But that’s all.”

“Not if the really good stock was in my safe back at the house. You see?”

I saw.

“And afterwards, you do what, you flog the stock?”

He nodded.

“Willi Leppers in Bruges would handle it. I know for a fact he’s well bent. But he’s quiet.”

I considered for a bit, and that was probably my big mistake. I should have turned him down straightaway.

“And who’s going to do the dirty deed? You have anyone in mind?”

Gerald smirked.

“That’s the easy part. I could find half a dozen blokes who’d be up for a doddle like this. For a flat fee, of course, no shares.”

I was sure he could. Gerald’s acquaintances included several people I wouldn’t give house room to.

So there it was. Gerald’s answer to our problems. There was no doubt it was an answer, or would be. If, of course, he could find someone who would do it. If he could sell the story to the insurance company. If they believed it. If he could get rid of the stock. Actually, that was the part I had the least problem with. Gerald’s contacts abroad, particularly in Belgium, were excellent. He had a little black book at home with literally hundreds of names in it, merchants, buyers, little two-man firms he’d done business with once.

I blew out my breath.

“You do realize,” I said to him, “what we’d be in for if they caught on?”

“They won’t,” he said. “There’ll be just the three of us. You, me, and whoever. Nobody else gets a whisper. But the important thing is that it rings true.”

And he told me his plan, or rather the broad outlines of his plan, because there were, at the beginning, some glaring holes big enough to drive a police car through.

“It’s foolproof,” he said. “And it’s a classic M.O. Works every time.”

M.O. He was talking like a character from John Creasey now. He was really enjoying himself, was Gerald, doing the criminal mastermind, the Planner.

But I had to admit that the wives-as-hostages part of the idea was quite good. It seemed to be a well-established technique. I had read only weeks before about a gang who had done the same thing to a Barclays Bank manager. And using the CCTV cameras to back up our story was also neat. Gerald had had them installed nine months before, and I had squawked a bit at the cost, but in fact they were going to help the plan along, if the plan went ahead. I wondered a bit belatedly if Gerald had already had this in mind when he installed the system, if he’d been planning this for the last nine months. I wouldn’t have put it past him.

“If you can find somebody we can depend on,” I said, “I’ll think about it.”

“Trust me,” he said. “I’ve got a bloke in mind.”

Of course he had. He’d had somebody in mind even before he opened his mouth to me. Trust Gerald. Well, yes, as far as it goes.

I suppose that I allowed myself to be dragged along by Gerald. At any rate, I agreed to discuss the thing with him, the “job” as he called it, in the following week. Then one day, he came back after lunch with a self-satisfied look on his face.

“I’ve found him,” he said.

“Who?”

“The bloke who’s going to do the job.”

And now suddenly it was real. I felt that things were going too fast for me.

Gerald said, “You and Paula come round for dinner on Thursday.”

“This Thursday?” I said. This was much too fast for me.

“’Course this Thursday. No point in hanging about. My bloke’s up for it and he wants to get on with it as well. And,” he said, “guess what? Old Mother Bellingham’s brought her diamonds in for cleaning and a bit of resetting work. It couldn’t have happened at a better time. Even broken up that stuff’s worth a good hundred grand.”

Old Mother Bellingham, as Gerald called her, was the widow of a former Lord Mayor, who had also inherited her defunct husband’s textile business. She was an old client of Gerald’s father, and reading between the lines, I suspected that she might have been more than a client. She was now in an advanced state of decomposition, but she still owned a fortune in jewels, and she came in regularly, loyally, to have them cleaned.

I could see with the Bellingham diamonds in the strong room, it was a good time to act. “But,” I said, “shouldn’t I–I mean, don’t you want me to meet him, this bloke of yours?”

“No point,” Gerald said briefly. “You’ll be seeing him soon enough. It’s all set up. He’s going to have a walk around the shopping center, have a gander at the shop.”

“Listen,” I said, “are we really sure we want to go ahead with this?”

“I am, squire,” he said, “and you’d better be sure too, because on Thursday the balloon goes up. Dinner at eight thirty, you and Paula, right?”

But what I hadn’t expected was the Claverhouses. And neither had the big man.

“I thought we needed a bit of independent corroboration,” Gerald said.

“I hope there aren’t going to be any more nasty little surprises like that,” the man called Carl said. “I’m not keen on them.”

Gerald looked sideways at him and nodded at the ski mask in Carl’s hand.

“You are going to put that back on, aren’t you?”

“When it’s time,” Carl said.

I suddenly had the feeling that Gerald wasn’t quite as in charge of the situation as he’d like to be. And that the man knew more about what he was doing than Gerald. Gerald had the same feeling apparently because he changed gear viciously to start the descent into town. He said, “I hope your mate is as competent as you are.”

“He’s as competent as he needs to be. Don’t you worry about him. You just worry about us and what we’re doing.”

“I just want to be certain he won’t do anything — well, anything stupid.”

“Anything stupid? What’s that supposed to mean?”

Gerald lifted one hand from the wheel and made a peculiar little gesture.

“He’s alone with two defenseless women.”

Carl looked at him for a long moment. Then he said, “You’re conning the insurance for a small fortune, committing God knows how many different crimes, and you’re worried about Georgie. You want your head examined, you do. You’d do better to worry about me and what you’d do if I decided to take everything and not just the small stuff.”

I could see Gerald’s smirk in the rearview mirror, and I knew what was amusing him. There was nothing but the small stuff at the shop. Gerald had taken all the good expensive items home in his case that afternoon.

That was the part that had given us the most trouble. For Gerald’s plan to work, we were depending on the cameras in the shop. But for Gerald’s plan to work, he needed to get the valuable stock out of the strong room before the robbery.

“Why?” I had said to him. “Why doesn’t your man take the lot and then we divide it up in the car, or in a bus shelter or whatever?”

Gerald had a problem with explaining. And out of all his half-baked stammering came the clear idea that he was afraid — certain — that his man, this man he trusted, faced with a heap of very expensive and fenceable jewelry, would suddenly change his mind about the fake robbery and turn it into a real one.

So given that the cameras turned all the time, how was Gerald going to get the jewelry out of the strong room once it had been put away for the night? He couldn’t be thinking about a fortuitous power cut. That would look slightly odd, to say the least.

“How are you going to manage it?” I had asked him. “You’ll be on camera, don’t forget. That’s going to be a bit suspicious to say the least when you show your holiday video to the police, if you and Sheila put the stock away, and then five minutes after the staff have left you go back into the strong room and come out with your hands full.”

He didn’t like that. He didn’t like to think that there was something he hadn’t planned for. But he came up with the answer, I’ll give him that. He came into the office with his coat on and said, “How’s this?”

“How’s what?” I said.

“Notice anything?”

No I hadn’t, I said. He took his coat off, unbuttoned everything, down to and including his shorts, and there was this sack thing hanging down over his stomach. He’d bought a sort of backpack made of light material. Not the sort of thing you go up Everest with, more your tourist’s bag for carrying light personal things. And he was wearing it backwards, or rather frontwards.

“That should do it. I’ll put my coat on, I often do that; Sheila and I will put the stock away, then I’ll stay in there for five minutes tops and Bob’s your uncle. I come out with nothing in my hands, lock the strong room, and off I go. Ingenious, or what?”

Well, it seemed as ingenious as anything else in this whole rickety business. And the feeling got stronger and stronger that Gerald was making it up as he went along, adding a little tweak here, ironing out a little wrinkle there.

So why didn’t I get out? Because in spite of everything, I was convinced it was going to work, and the thought of my investment going down the toilet as the only alternative didn’t please me. And truth to tell, secretly, I really didn’t believe we were going to go through with it. I thought it was another Gerald scheme, wild and surreal, but ultimately unrealizable.

But here we were, in the car, heading for town and the shop, with Gerald trying his best to explain the Claverhouses to a man who didn’t appear in the best of moods.

Gerald said, “I thought it would be more convincing to have some independent witnesses. I mean, how much weight would they give if it was just our wives. They could easily be in on it. At least, that’s how I’d think if I was a loss adjuster.”

Carl grunted, unconvinced, looking out of the window at the passing town. He seemed to have lost interest.

“Just don’t give me any more surprises,” he said, “they make me nervous. And when I’m nervous, I get naughty.”

“No more surprises,” said Gerald, clearly getting a little of his confidence back. “It’s just as we said from now on.”

Carl grunted again.

Gerald parked the car near the pedestrian precinct, not too near and not too far. We all got out. It was raining slightly, a chilly rain with a little wind behind it. It was miserable, but the good thing was that it seemed to be keeping people off the streets. There were no strollers, no window shoppers.

Gerald locked up and we set off into the pedestrian precinct, with our heads down against the rain, Gerald and I in front, Carl a pace behind us. I looked back and saw that he had pulled on his ski mask again and that he was carrying a bag, a large leather affair. He kept the other hand in his pocket. He obviously didn’t mind what people thought, if there were people around to think anything. And anyway, a man in a ski mask on a night like this might seem odd, eccentric, but not immediately suspicious. But we met no one.

When we arrived at the shop, Gerald already had the keys out and ready. He unlocked the door and we went in. The alarm went off, as usual. Gerald went to the little cupboard on the right and silenced it. Then he switched on the main lighting panel, which also switched on the cameras and the recorders. He hesitated then, looked around as if he were uncertain. Carl gave him a sharp prod with the hand in his pocket. A little bit of business for the camera. I had a hard job not to look at it, squatting there high up near the ceiling with its blank, incurious eye.

We threaded our way through the empty display cases to the back of the shop and the corridor, which led to the workrooms and the offices. We went through, Carl immediately behind us. We stopped in front of the strong room, under the eye of the second camera, and Gerald selected the keys. He swung open the heavy steel door, and stepped back to let Carl go in.

Then we just stood about, trying to look helpless, which wasn’t hard. Then Gerald stepped into the strong room.

“Everything there’s yours for the taking,” I heard him say.

Then I heard Carl say, “Not a lot here. This is rubbish, this is.”

Gerald said, “The envelope there on the shelf. That’s for you.”

I could hear even outside in the corridor that Carl was riffling the notes in the envelope.

Then Gerald said, “All right?” and got a grunt for an answer. He seemed to like grunting, did Carl.

Finally, after letting enough time pass for him to have taken everything from the trays, Carl came out, carrying his bag in front of him, well in view. Gerald locked up, and we filed down the corridor, back through the shop where Gerald set the alarm again. I wondered why he bothered, seeing that we had just been cleaned out, but I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t said anything since we left the house, it occurred to me.

We walked through the precinct to the car. Carl took off his ski mask.

“Right,” he said. “Sweet as a nut.”

Gerald nodded, and we got into the car. We didn’t speak on the way back to the house. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. I was picturing the interviews with the police and the insurance people and trying to decide what face I ought to pull when talking about a robbery that had cleaned us out of hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of jewels.

Gerald turned into the drive. The lights were still on in the lounge. I don’t know why I was surprised. I had unconsciously expected everyone to have gone to bed. But of course not. Georgie was keeping everyone up.

But when we went in, we found that Georgie was in fact sitting with his head in his hands, bleeding copiously onto Gerald’s white leather sofa. Carl cursed. Georgie looked at us.

Gerald said, “What the hell happened?”

Georgie said, “I let one of them get behind me. The blond number said she had to go for a pee. The other one was taking off her blouse.”

Paula taking off her blouse? I don’t know what my expression looked like, but if it looked anything like Gerald’s, it must have been ludicrous.

Carl said, “Right. How long ago was this?”

Georgie said, “I dunno. The blond one hit me with something, I been out for a bit. I dunno how long.”

Carl said, “Right. Up.” He jerked Georgie to his feet. Georgie moaned. “Out. Now.” He didn’t even bother to look at Gerald or me, but snatched up Georgie’s ski mask from the sofa and marched him to the door.

Then he turned and said, “I don’t need any grief, but if I get any, I cough. All right?”

Gerald said, “Right,” as though he was having trouble making his lips work. “Right,” he said again. And then Carl and Georgie were gone. We heard the door slam.

“Well,” I said, “there’s a turn up. Nice one from the wives there.”

“Oh shut up,” he said. “I’ve got to think. All right, so they’ve gone for help.”

“Why didn’t they just phone?” I said

“How the hell should I know?” he said irritably. “Wanted to get a breath of air. How do I know?”

He was pacing the lounge.

“The thing is,” he said, “nothing’s changed. We got a look at Georgie, and so did the girls probably. But that’s nothing.”

I went and poured myself a stiff brandy from the drinks table. Gerald came over and did the same.

“All we have to do is wait for them to arrive with the cops,” he said, “and tell our story.”

“Right,” I said. “Right.” I sat down.

After two hours, at about one in the morning when it was clear that no one was coming, I looked at Gerald. He was sitting holding his glass hanging between his knees, staring at the carpet.

“Gerald,” I said.

“What?” he said.

“Open it up,” I said.

He remained still for a moment and then sighed deeply and got heavily to his feet. I followed him upstairs to the bedroom. He went to the large mirror that hung on the wall and swung it aside. He worked the dial. I could see from where I was that his fingers were trembling.

“What’s the combination?” I said. “Your birthday? Hers?”

“Hers,” he said shortly. I closed my eyes. Not for long, just long enough for him to swing open the safe and show us what was inside, which was a lot of nothing.

Afterwards, back in the lounge we were trying to work out how much of the plan was left without the wives and decided that there wasn’t much, even with the bloody Claverhouses.

Gerald said with a sort of gloomy flippancy, “Well, you have to hand it to them, don’t you?”

“Well,” I said, “yes, yes you do. Because if you don’t, they’ll find a way to get it anyway.”

He nodded.

“Gerald,” I said, “you told her, didn’t you?”

“Not as such,” he said.

“You told her.”

“I just—” he waved his hands about, “I just said she shouldn’t be worried if something happened.”

“You told her. And you and Cassie were going to disappear with the lot and leave poor old Pete to oversee the liquidation of a bankrupt jewelry business.”

He shook his head miserably. There was nothing he could say.

Of course he had told her. Because she’d told me. About how they had planned their own little wrinkle, Cassie disappearing, Gerald shrugging his shoulders, Sorry Pete, but there’s nothing I can do, what can I tell you, Cassie’s gone off with the lot. Then, after a decent interval, him going to find Cassie at the prearranged rendezvous. The two of them free to start up somewhere else, Spain maybe, for choice. It was a good plan as far as it went, and Cassie and I hadn’t had to modify it much, simply replacing Gerald with me.

But Cassie and Paula had obviously decided that they had an even better idea and now, given the time we’d wasted, easily enough for them to drive to the airport, they were loose somewhere in Europe with the jewelry and Gerald’s little black book of addresses. I sighed. I couldn’t blame Cassie for preferring Paula to Gerald. But what did rankle a bit was that she clearly preferred Paula to me.

I wondered idly whether if I phoned the Rembrandt Hotel in Amsterdam I would still find Cassie booked in under the name of Botham, a name we had decided was easy to remember, being the name of her maternal grandfather and also of one of my all-time favorite cricket players.

I decided that, on balance, all things considered, I probably wouldn’t. Paula and Cassie have never liked cricket.

Copyright 2006 Neil Schofield