There’s Always A Price Tag

Chapter Seven

Helen came down the stairs, her eyes bright and a half smile on her lips. She moved across the hall to me.

‘So you were successful. I thought I had better leave him to you as you were so confident.’

‘Did you hear him beg me not to send him a cheque?’

‘The others may not be so easy.’

‘I’ll handle them. Come into the lounge. There’s still things to do.’

As she walked with me to the lounge, she asked. ‘Did you get the money?’

‘I’ve raised five thousand six hundred. It’s not as much as I want, but with any luck, it’ll do.’

I went over to the liquor cabinet and made two drinks, then I sat down opposite her.

‘How far do you trust your nerve?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look, what we are planning to do will need pretty good nerves. Sooner or later we will have to take him out of the freezer and plant him somewhere. I won’t be able to do that on my own. You will have to help me. It’s not going to be easy. When his body is found and the murder hunt is on, the first person the police will suspect will be you. They’ll suspect you because you come into the insurance money. You may come in for some tough questioning. Some smart dick may try to jump a surprise on you. If you keep your nerve you will be all right. We’re going to fix this so that they will be convinced you couldn’t have killed him although you had the motive. But while they are being convinced, you may have a rough time.’

‘My nerve is all right,’ she said quietly. ‘You don’t have to worry about me.’

‘I guess that’s right, but you may as well know what’s ahead of us. We may get into a jam that looks bad. I’m not saying we will but we may. That’s the time when a steady nerve pays dividends. If we get in a panic, lose our heads, we might easily throw our hands in before we need to. You mustn’t forget we can go to the limit because if things go wrong we have always the letter to keep us out of real trouble.’

She looked at me, her green eyes searching.

‘Is your nerve so very good?’

‘I can stand up to anything with three-quarters of a million as an incentive. What we’ve got to keep clear in our minds is that we haven’t killed him. At the worst, we can get ten years in jail for fraud. If we remember that they can’t panic us. Okay. Now we’ve got to take care of the next step. Is there anyone who will want to know where Dester is? Has he any friends?’

‘No. At one time, of course, there were always people here, but when he began to drink, they dropped him.’

‘What about Burnett?’

‘He’s Erle’s attorney. They never meet. Erle writes or telephones him. Burnett doesn’t approve of him.’

‘So there is no one? You’re absolutely sure? No relations who could suddenly appear and ask questions?’

‘There is no one.’

This seemed too good to be true, but I had to take her word. It had been the one thing that really bothered me.

‘We’ve got to be careful. This guy Hammerstock will spread the rumour that Dester is handling a big deal. We want him to do that, but at the same time we don’t want the rumour checked. Burnett might hear about it and make inquiries. We’ve got to have a tale for him. When the showdown comes, we’ve got to be able to convince the police that we didn’t start the rumour. We’ve got to convince Burnett that the reason why we didn’t contradict the rumour was because it gave us time to raise money to meet Dester’s debts. You’ll have to see Burnett and tell him there’s no truth in the rumour that Dester is going into television.’

She nodded. ‘But he will want to know where he is.’

‘Yes. I’ve got that angle taken care of. How do you get on with Burnett?’

She smiled. ‘Very well. He likes me.’

I could understand that.

‘Here’s what you do: call him on Monday and ask him over. Tell him Dester has had an attack of D.T.‘s, and you’ve persuaded him to take a cure. As soon as you can arrange it, he is going into a sanatorium. Tell Burnett there is a rumour going around that Dester is going into television. You must tell him there is no truth in the rumour, but as Dester is up to his eyes in debt, you are not contradicting the rumour as it is holding off his creditors. You feel sure that if he comes through the cure, he will get back into the money and will be able to pay off his debts. You are keeping his going into a sanatorium a secret.’

She was listening intently, her eyes staring into mine.

‘He will want to know where he is going.’

‘You can tell him. There is a sanatorium for alcoholics just outside Santa Barbara,’ I said. ‘I’ll get you the name. It’ll be in the telephone book.’

‘He might check up.’

I smiled.

‘He won’t have a chance to do that. We’ll have to take this one step at a time. First, you have to fix Burnett. We’ll see how he reacts. This plan has got to be flexible. We only move forward when we know each step we take will be safe. If Burnett seems convinced and not likely to ask too many questions then bring me into it. Tell him Dester has taken a fancy to me. I started off as his chauffeur, and now he has turned his private affairs over to me. He gets me to handle his mail, his taxes and uses me as a buffer between himself and his creditors. Then call me in and introduce me.’

‘Must we bring Burnett into this?’

‘Yes. If we don’t, he’ll be the first to make trouble. The police will want to talk to him and he has to know the background. He’s got to accept me. When the showdown comes, it’s essential we have him behind us.’

‘All right: I’ll call him on Monday. But suppose the police find out Erle hasn’t been to the sanatorium? They’re certain to check.’

‘Don’t worry about that. You can leave me to fix it. There is one more thing. Tomorrow you must get a servant. There’s an agency on 35th Street that provide staff at short notice. Call them up tomorrow and ask them to send a girl who can help you run this place.’

She stared at me.

‘I can run it myself. I don’t want anyone.’

‘Use your brains. Can you imagine what the police will think if they find out that you and I are living under this roof on our own? They’ll know we’re lovers and that’s something they’ve just not got to know. When they start their investigation they will find you and a servant and Dester sleep here, and I sleep in the apartment over the garage. I come over during the day when the servant is about. We never close a door. We never have a chance of making love. Do you understand? We must do it or we’re heading for trouble.’

‘I don’t like it, Glyn. It’s dangerous.’

‘Not half so dangerous as not having her. When she arrives you must take her into your confidence. You must tell her Dester isn’t well. He’s in his room and he mustn’t be disturbed. You are hoping to get him away for a change in a day or so. On Wednesday, he’ll go to the sanatorium, providing I am satisfied we can go ahead. She must see him get into the car so she will swear she did see him leave the house.’

‘You mean you’re going to let her see his dead body?’ Helen said, her voice shooting up.

‘No. For the love of mike, don’t be so goddamn dumb. She’ll see me come down the stairs wearing his hat and coat. We’ll fix it so the light is bad. She’ll see a man come down. With any luck she will never have seen Dester so she won’t know the difference.’

‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘It’s not dangerous at all. I’m fixing it. Don’t keep raising objections. Get the girl. That’s all I want you to do. I’ll do the rest of it.’

‘I hope you know what you are doing,’ she said uneasily. ‘If she’s in the house how are we to get him out of the deep-freeze?’

‘That’s something I’ll have to work out. One thing at a time.’

‘She could look in the deep-freeze.’

‘Yes, she could do that, but she won’t. I’ll fix something about that tomorrow before she comes. Right now I’ve got a lot of thinking to do. I’ve had a tough day. You’d better get some sleep.’

‘Are you sleeping here?’

‘No. We’re going to start right now as we will have to go on.’

‘You’re leaving me alone here?’

I moved to the door. ‘You don’t have to worry about him. He won’t get up and bother you in the night.’

I went into the hall, opened the front door and walked out into the cool, dark night.

As soon as I got into the apartment above the garage and had locked myself in, I undressed and got into bed. I lit a cigarette and began to grapple with my main problem: the foolproof, safe murder plan.

Sooner or later I would have to get his body out of the freezer, and put him somewhere where the police would find him. Having a servant in the house would complicate things, but I knew we had to have her. It would be quite an achievement to get the body away from the house to some place without anyone seeing me, even if they didn’t see the body which could be hidden under a pile of rugs at the back of the Buick. It couldn’t be the Rolls: that was too well-known.

At least I had time to concoct a plan. I had also to fake an alibi while I was planting his body, and the alibi had to stand up.

I had to think for Helen. I had to make sure she was also covered. I didn’t kid myself that she would accept the situation if she slipped up and was caught. She would pull me in too. I was sure of that.

So I wrestled with the problem.

Soon after nine o’clock the next morning, I went over to the house and up the stairs to Dester’s bedroom. As I reached the door, Helen appeared in the doorway of her room. She was still in her nightdress, over which she wore her oyster-coloured wrap.

I was tempted to dally: she looked pretty good in that getup, but there was work to do. I pushed the temptation behind me.

‘You’d better get dressed. We have a lot to do,’ I said, and went into Dester’s room. I took from the bottom of his wardrobe the two suitcases in which I had brought back the whisky, put them on the bed and then taking down the bottles of whisky from the top of the wardrobe I put them into the suitcases.

Helen came to the door. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Sealing up the deep-freeze cabinet,’ I said.

‘You’re what?’

I turned to look at her.

‘I’m demonstrating to you that I have a few brains. That cabinet has got to stay closed, but at the same time, it mustn’t be locked. Okay. The safest way to keep the lid shut is to put something on top of it that will cause an effort to remove. I’m stacking all these bottles on top of it so it will stay shut.’

‘It wouldn’t be all that difficult to remove those bottles.’

‘That’s right. It wouldn’t be difficult, but no one in their right mind would do it. You’ll tell this girl the deep-freeze is empty. Make it sound casual. She’s not going to shift all these bottles to prove you are a liar. No one would be that dumb.’

‘It would be safer to lock it.’

‘That’s what you think. It would make her curious. Ever heard of Pandora’s box? It’s the same setup. Why lock an empty freezer? This is the way to do it, and this is the way it’s going to be done.’

By the time I had carried the bottles into the kitchen and set them out on top of the deep-freeze cabinet, Helen had put on a sweater and slacks and had joined me. She stood looking at the rows of bottles and at the cabinet. I saw the tenseness go out of her face. She could see now I was right.

‘Did you look inside?’ she asked.

‘Yes. I looked inside. He’s fine. You don’t have to worry about him,’ I said. ‘Now come on, we’ve got things to do. We’ve got to put this house in order. When this girl comes, she’s got to find a normal house in working order.’

We slaved until midday. We cleaned, polished and aired the rooms. I went out into the garden and collected an armful of flowers. I left them with Helen while I went upstairs and got the room ready for the girl. I intended to put her in the room at the other end of the corridor because it was away from Helen’s room, and the window looked out on to the east side of the garden away from the garage. While I was making up the bed I heard the telephone bell ring. I went to the head of the stairs, my heart thumping.

Helen came out of the dining-room and looked up at me, her face pale and set.

‘Go on — answer it,’ I said.

She went into the lounge.

I lit a cigarette and waited. I heard her talking, but I couldn’t hear what she said. As I started down the stairs, I heard her hang up. She came out of the lounge.

‘That was the Hollywood Recorder,’ she said as I joined her in the hall. ‘They wanted confirmation about the television job. I told them he was out of town and I knew nothing about his business.’

‘That’s right.’ I thought for a moment. Hammerstock had certainly started to shoot his mouth off ahead of the gun, but that didn’t matter so long as we knew. ‘Don’t kid yourself they’ll be content with that. They’ll come out here. The rest of the Press will come too. I don’t want them to find me here. You’ll have to handle them. I’m going to take the Buick and clear out for the rest of the day. I’ve things to do. Get on to the agency now and get a girl. Call Burnett and fix a date for tomorrow. Call the Belle View sanatorium and ask them if they can take your husband. If they say they can take him right away, stall. We don’t want to start anything until the end of the week. Will you do that?’

She said she would.

‘Then I’ll get off. I’ll be back some time tonight. You’ve got it all clear?’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Never mind what I’m going to do. You look after this end. I’ll look after my end. If you get a girl, tell her Dester is in his bedroom. Take her into your confidence. Tell her he is ill and no one must know because it may upset a deal he is putting through.’

‘She’ll probably tell all her friends,’ Helen said sharply. ‘We can’t do that.’

‘Her friends don’t count. So long as she doesn’t tell the Press or his creditors, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, with any luck, she won’t have the chance to tell anyone until we’ve taken the next step, and then it doesn’t matter, but she’s got to know he is upstairs in his room and ill. She’s got to know that.’

‘Why don’t you tell me what you are planning?’ she asked impatiently. ‘Why be so damned mysterious?’

‘I’m not being mysterious. I’m taking it one step at a time. I don’t even know myself how it’s going to be worked, but I’ll have an idea by the time I get back.’

I left her, went over to the garage, got out the Buick and drove out on to the avenue. I headed through Glendale and on to Highway 101. I took it easy. It was a hot, clear day without a hint of smog, and by that time, there was a lot of traffic on the highway. I stopped at Ventura for lunch, then, around three o’clock, I pushed on through Benham to Santa Barbara. I took a look at the Belle View sanatorium that was tucked away with its own bathing beach and its own ten-foot-high walls. I had a feeling, looking at those walls, that once a drunk was inside, he would have a lot of trouble getting out again.

I turned the car and pottered around the district like any lonely business man taking the Sunday afternoon air, but I kept my eyes open, got used to the locality, spotted two State police points about four miles apart before which sat troopers on their motor cycles, watching the traffic with cold, alert eyes. About fifteen miles out of Santa Barbara, just beyond Carpinteria, a narrow, dirt road, leading off the highway, attracted my attention. I swung the car on to it, and after driving a mile I came out on to a forestry station. There were three large wooden huts and twenty acres or so of young pines and firs under cultivation. I parked the Buick, pushed open the barbed-wire gate and had a walk around. The place was deserted. I peered through the windows of the huts: one of them was a lab, the other two were offices. I imagined they would be full of industrious workers during the week, but on a Sunday, it looked like the place I had been hunting for.

I had nearly got it right now: the forestry station was the clincher.

It was after nine-thirty when I drove through the gateway and parked before the garage. Looking across at the house I could see lights on in the lounge. I wondered how Helen had made out while I had been away. I wondered if she had got the girl and how she had handled the Press. I got out of the car and walked over to the house, opened the front door and entered the hall.

I stood for a moment, listening: I thought I heard someone turn the page of a book. I moved across to the lounge and stood in the doorway.

A girl sat in one of the lounging chairs, a book in her hand, the light from one of the standard lamps falling fully on her. She was dark; her black, glossy hair had brown tints in it, and it fell to her shoulders in long, natural waves. She was perhaps twenty-three or four, and pretty. She looked up and I saw her eyes were Wedgwood blue.

All the women I know and have known came under the category of floozies, smarties, diggers and come-on girls. They all knew their way around. If the word ‘virgin’ was mentioned, they thought it was in connection with the condition of the soil. I had seen plenty of nice girls coming out of college, at the movies and walking the streets, but I had never bothered with them. I was sure I wouldn’t get what I wanted from them, and they were so much waste of time. So I let them alone.

This girl, sitting in the lounging chair, looking at me, came under the category of a nice girl. I could tell that not only by her open, natural expression, but by her frock, the shoes she wore and the way she did her hair.

‘Hello there,’ I said. ‘I guess you must be the new help.’ I came down the three steps into the lounge and went over to the bar. ‘I’m Glyn Nash: did Mrs. Dester mention me?’

‘Oh, yes, Mr. Nash,’ the girl said, putting down her book. She got to her feet. ‘I’m Marian Temple.’

‘Glad to know you.’ I sloshed whisky into a glass. ‘Would you like a drink, Miss Temple?’

She smiled and said she didn’t drink. She had a nice, bright, friendly smile: nothing subtle about it; no come-on, no sex.

I squirted charge water on top of the whisky, fished out an ice cube, stirred the mixture and took a long drink.

‘Is Mrs. Dester around?’ I asked.

‘She’s sitting with Mr. Dester.’

I lit a cigarette, carried my drink to a chair near hers.

‘Sit down, Miss Temple. I didn’t mean to interrupt your reading. Got something good there?’

She sat down.

‘I’m on the third volume of Gibbons’ Decline and Fall,’ she said. ‘Have you read it?’

‘Not the third volume,’ I said gravely. ‘You mean the Roman Empire stuff?’

She said that was what she meant.

‘Isn’t it a little solid? I go for pulp magazines myself. Raymond Chandler is about the highest I aim at.’

She laughed. ‘I’m planning to go to Rome next fall. I wanted to get the background.’

‘You are? Why Rome?’

‘Oh, I’ve always wanted to go there — and Florence too.’

‘What’s the matter with Paris? There’s more excitement in Paris so I’m told.’

‘I’ll settle for Rome.’

I finished my drink and sat nursing the glass, looking at her. It occurred to me she wasn’t what I imagined a help to look like. This kid was like someone just out of college.

‘Is that why you’ve taken this job? Saving up for Rome?’

She nodded. ‘I’m going to be an architect. I have my finals at the end of next year. I thought this job would give me that little extra while I complete my reading.’

‘Yeah.’ I didn’t quite know what to make of this. I wasn’t sure if Helen had made a mistake or not. I would rather have had a dumb cluck with no brains than a girl like this who was obviously nobody’s fool.

‘Well, I don’t think Mrs. Dester will work you to death.’

She shook her head and laughed.

‘She’s just wonderful. She told me I could use this room when she wasn’t using it herself. I feel quite at home already.’

I stretched out my legs. ‘She told you about Mr. Dester?’

‘Yes. Isn’t it a shame? I’ve seen all his pictures. I think he is the best director of them all.’

‘That’s right. Have you ever seen him?’

She shook her head.

‘Only pictures of him. Why do you ask?’

I pulled a face.

‘Well, you know: he’s been working too hard. He’s changed a lot. His nerves are all shot. She told you he’s going to the sanatorium as soon as they can take him?’

‘Yes.’

I gave her an out-of-the-corner-of-my-eyes stare. She fascinated me. We had been talking now for six or seven minutes and she hadn’t once tried to show me her knees nor flutter her eyelashes at me.

‘Well,’ I went on, getting to my feet, ‘I guess I’ll go up and see how he is before I go back to my apartment. I live over the garage.’

‘Yes, Mrs. Dester said you did.’

She was looking up at me, her big blue eyes interested.

‘Sorry if I took you away from Gibbons.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. I have to work at it: it’s not easy reading.’

‘I can imagine.’

She smiled, then as I started across the lounge, she opened her book again and bent her glossy head over it. I paused in the doorway to look at her. It crossed my mind that the difference between her and Helen was the difference between a pearl and a diamond. Helen had all the hard, glossy glamour of a diamond; this kid had the soft, smooth beauty of the pearl.

She looked up and caught me staring at her and she blushed. That knocked me. No girl I had ever been around with knew how to blush. I grinned at her, turned and went up the stairs, three at a time.

Helen was in her bedroom, smoking, and going through a stack of documents, bills and letters that she had spread out on the bed. She looked up as I came in.

‘Going over old love letters?’ I asked, closing the door and leaning against it.

‘I thought you said we weren’t to be alone together when she was in the house?’

‘That’s right, but right now she and Gibbons are keeping each other company, and I told her I was going to sit with Dester. What’s all the junk?’

‘What do you think? I’m trying to find out how much he owes.’

‘You’ve got a sweet job. Did you start the list with Hammerstock’s four thousand?’

‘I’ve got up to twenty-two thousand and there are still more.’

‘You don’t have to worry. If we get the insurance money, we’ll still have something left. What’s been happening?’

‘Burnett is coming to see me at three o’clock tomorrow. Four newspaper men have been here. Luckily Marian arrived before they did and I let her handle them.’

‘You let her handle them?’

‘Yes. She told them Dester was out of town and I was out. They didn’t get anything out of her. I was listening in the lounge. She was good.’

‘I’m not sure if you’ve picked the right one. That girl’s got brains.’

‘I had no choice. She was the only one the agency sent. I had to take her. Anyway, she may have brains, but she’s only a kid.’

I went over and sat in a lounging chair. ‘How about the sanatorium?’

‘They can take him any time. I said I would call back.’

‘Tell them he’ll arrive around eleven next Sunday night.’

She stared at me. ‘Sunday night? Why not before?’

‘I won’t be ready before.’

‘What are you planning to do?’

‘Maybe we’d better not talk here.’ I looked at my strap watch. ‘Come over to my place when she’s gone to bed. It’s after ten-thirty now. She won’t stay down there much longer. Have you got a good road map of the district that takes in Santa Barbara?’

‘I think so.’

‘Bring it with you. Don’t forget to take a meal up to Dester’s room before you go to bed. He’s got to eat or she’ll begin to wonder what it’s all about.’

‘I’ve already done that.’

That was one of the important things about her. She wasn’t dumb.

‘What did you do? Eat it yourself?’

‘I flushed it down the toilet.’

‘Well, okay, just so long as she doesn’t think you are starving him.’ I moved to the door. ‘Did you tell her about the deep-freeze?’

‘Not yet. I’ll tell her when I show her the kitchen tomorrow.’

‘I’ll be waiting for you.’

I half opened the door, listened, then hearing no sound I stepped out into the corridor and walked to the head of the stairs. As I began to descend them, Marian came out of the lounge. She looked up at me.

‘Mrs. Dester has gone to bed.’ I said. ‘You going too?’

‘Yes.’

I came down and stood beside her.

‘You and Gibbons?’

She blushed a little and then smiled.

‘Well, I don’t think I’ll read in bed.’

‘I’ll turn off the lights. Good night.’

She said good night and ran up the stairs. I turned slowly and watched her. She had lovely, slim legs, boyish hips and square shoulders. She didn’t look back as she went along the corridor to her room. I was still standing there, seeing her in my mind, when I heard her door close.

I went into the lounge, took a bottle of Scotch from the rack behind the bar, turned off the lights and walked over to the apartment above the garage. Some kid, I was thinking. She and Gibbons. Some kid.

Around twelve-thirty, Helen came into my bedroom. I had changed into pyjamas and I was lying on the bed, smoking. She came to the foot of the bed.

‘Now, tell me,’ she said.

I looked at her. There are moments when a diamond can look a lot more exciting than a pearl. This was one of them.

‘Come here,’ I said and stretched out my hand.

She came around the side of the bed and sat down near me.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘now let me explain the setup to you. Between now and Sunday the rumour that Dester is once more in the money is going to strengthen. The columnists won’t want to be left out in the cold. Even if they don’t get any confirmation, they’ll hint that Dester is after a big job. That’s just the situation we want. No one knows where he is, but they have an idea he is back in the money again. If it doesn’t work out that way, I’ll have to fan the flames. There are two reasons why we must create the idea he is back in the money: one is to hold off his creditors and the other is that he is going to be kidnapped.’

She stiffened. ‘Kidnapped?’

‘That’s right. No one would kidnap him unless he was back in the money, would they?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Relax: I’ll explain it to you. We want to create the impression that Dester is still alive. We want it known when the showdown comes that Dester left this house on next Sunday night around ten o’clock in the evening with you to take a cure at the Belle View sanatorium. That’s where Marian comes in: she’s going to be our witness. She’ll think she’ll see Dester leave this house, but it won’t be Dester, it’ll be me, impersonating him. I’ll wear that camel-hair coat and the big hat he has in his closet. We’ll go into details later, but this is the plan. Marian must see me as I go out to the Rolls. We’ve got to fix it so she only sees my back. We drive down to the gates. You stop and I take off the hat and coat. You wait there while I rush back to the house, making out to Marian that I’ve arrived just too late to say good-bye to Dester. I’ll talk to her for a few minutes, then I’ll tell her I’m going back to my apartment. You’ll have told her you’ll be back soon after midnight, but she is not to wait up for you. I’ll go over to my apartment, turn on the fights and the radio loud enough for her to hear from her bedroom. Then I’ll leave the apartment and join you. We’ll go to a place I’ve found. The idea we want the police and Maddux to get hold of is that while you are driving Dester to the sanatorium, two hoods hold up the car, take you both to this place, tie you up and then kidnap Dester.’

Helen stared at me.

‘Tie me up — what do you mean?’

‘What I say,’ I said impatiently. ‘How much plainer have I got to make this before the nickel drops? You can’t expect to get your hands on three-quarters of a million and not work for it.’

‘I still don’t follow what you mean. Where is this place you’re talking about?’

‘Did you bring the map?’

She gave me the map and I found the forestry station and showed it to her.

‘It’s the ideal place,’ I said. ‘There’s not a soul around on a Sunday. You can stay in one of the huts and you’ll be found first thing on Monday morning. You’ll spend an uncomfortable night, but so what?’

‘But why should I?’ she demanded, frowning at me.

‘For the love of mike! We’ve got to create the impression that Dester has been kidnapped!’ I exclaimed, raising my voice. ‘Can’t you get that into your thick skull? Look, there has been no major kidnapping in Hollywood for years. When the news breaks every cop will be on his toes. The heat will be on. Now just suppose he had really been kidnapped by two hoods. They find the cops closing in. What do they do? Turn Dester loose so he can give the police a description of them? No, they lose their heads. They kill him and dump him somewhere and vanish. This is the only angle I can figure to make his murder make sense. Otherwise the police will look for a motive, and you and I are the only two who have a motive. To make us safe, this has to be a motiveless murder, and kidnapping supplies the answer.’

She drew in a long, slow breath.

‘I want to think about this. It sounds too complicated.’

‘It isn’t. It’s going to work.’

‘We could so easily make a mistake when it’s this complicated.’

‘We have the whole week to get the details lined up. If we’re not happy about it at the end of the week, we’ll drop it. We can do this job, step by step, watching every move, waiting to see how the cops react before we show our next card. Then if the cards fall right, we dump his body and collect the insurance money. It’s going to work. I have a feeling about it.’

‘I want to think about it.’

‘Sure, think about it, but this is the plan. We can’t lose too much time. Sooner or later, someone will really want to know where Dester is. We’ve got time, but not all the time in the world.’

She began to get to her feet.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I asked, staring at her.

She stood up, her green eyes expressionless.

‘Back to my room.’

I shook my head. ‘Not just yet.’

I grabbed hold of her arm, but she broke my grip and moved out of reach.

‘I’m not your chattel,’ she said in a low, fierce voice. ‘Keep your hands off me!’

She went out of the room and slammed the door.

Automatically I reached for the whisky bottle, then, as my hand closed around it, I realized what I was doing, I snatched my hand away. If there was one thing she wasn’t going to do, she wasn’t going to turn me into a rumdum like Dester.