CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
"It's dangerous," said Sally. "I don't think you ought to do it."
They were lying on Winner's bed.
"I thought I'd just done it," said Winner.
"Not that, silly. I mean trying to get access to the bank box. If there really is a bank box, that is."
"I'm pretty confident about it. The evidence all seems to point in that direction."
"What's the procedure at these places?"
"How should I know? The only ideas I've got come from watching Goldie Hawn in 'The Heist', and to be honest, I was concentrating more on Goldie Hawn than the bank vault."
"So you go into the bank and you say 'I'd like to put something in my box'. Then what?"
"They say 'Certainly, sir' and ask for your name, and maybe the deposit number. Then they take you to a private room or cubicle and bring in the locked box and leave you alone until you've done what you want. Then they take it away again and you leave."
"You'd probably have to sign a register."
"Probably."
"So what's your name?"
"Barry said that Nigel was calling himself Johnson at the bank in Gorston."
"There's no guarantee he'd have used the same name at the vaults."
"Maybe not, but he would have had to produce some sort of proof of identity at both places before they would let him open an account or rent a box. One false identity's hard enough to create, let alone two."
"Sounds fair enough, but I don't know how interested they would have been in identity for the vaults."
"They must be on their guard against harbouring stolen property. I should think they'd be very careful. Wait a minute. I've had an idea."
Winner slipped down off the bed and disappeared into the hallway. He was back after a minute with two slips of paper.
"I'd forgotten these. They were in Nigel's desk, tucked in a paperback."
"I think this one's a receipt for a pair of shoes," said Sally, squinting at the washed-out ink by the light of the bedside lamp.
"This one's not a shop receipt. It's some sort of deposit slip. And this isn't a scribble, it's a signature. It could even be Johnson."
"Isn't that the same number at the bottom as on the spreadsheet?"
Winner held the slip directly in the light from the lamp. The printing was faint, but it was the same number.
"So, let's go right through this," said Sally, selecting a chocolate caramel from the box on the bedside table. "You go into the bank. What if they knew what Mr Johnson looked like?"
"I'd have to look as much as possible like Nigel did in the bank security picture. I don't want to be recorded on the security cameras in the vaults in case the police learn about the deposit box, so it would be just as well if I was a bit disguised."
"You still wouldn't look like Nigel."
"I'd go on a different day from the days he went on. Could be different staff. There is a risk, but I wouldn't have thought Nigel would have done anything which might help them to remember him."
"Then you give them your number and you sign in the register."
"I can practise that, using the receipt as a guide."
"If you get that far, I suppose it might work. What if the name's wrong, or the number?"
"I'd have to try and bluff my way out. Say I'd forgotten switching to a vault in Bristol. Make a quick tactical withdrawal."
"I still think it's dangerous."
Three days later, Sally was sat in her Citroen in a one hour parking zone in a side street diagonally across from the entrance to the bank. Winner had taken the afternoon off and Sally had left work complaining of a migraine headache. At Winner's flat she had treated his hair with a dark brown colouring that was supposed to wash out, and they had set out for Petermere, armed with the deposit slip and key, an Oxfam raincoat and a pair of old heavy-framed reading spectacles that he could just about see out of.
It was ten past three. Sally had been waiting in the car for twenty minutes. Why was it taking so long? The minutes ticked away. They had argued for a while about coming, but in the end Winner's theory had seemed best. He had said that if he was detained he would simply say that he had found the receipt in Nigel's desk and had thought he'd do a bit of amateur sleuthing on behalf of the Council. Even if they didn't believe him, what crime would he have committed? Whatever happened, it still didn't give away the secret of the cash.
She could see a traffic warden in the rear-view mirror, slowly working his way along the line of parked cars towards where she was sitting. Things were going badly. If he reached her car the number would go in his book and it could later be used to prove that she had been there. It looked as though he had stopped to write out a ticket.
Another five minutes gone.
Out of the stream of passing cars, a police car pulled up outside the bank and Sally found herself sinking lower into the seat. Should she drive away? A policeman got out and walked up the steps and she knew they must be holding Winner. A moment later, through the blur of tears that were forming in her eyes, she saw the policeman stop at a hole-in-the-wall cash dispenser. Perhaps he had just stopped to draw some spending money? Surely Winner should be out soon? The traffic warden was getting closer.
There was a sudden rap on the passenger door window. Sally jerked around and saw Winner looking in. She pulled up the door-lock catch and he dived into the seat.
"Let's get out of here, pronto."
Sally started the engine and pulled out into the traffic, seconds before the warden would have recorded her number. "What happened? You were so long and then a police car pulled up. I was sure they must have caught you."
Winner pulled off the old raincoat and threw it onto the back seat.
"Never again. It all went OK, I suppose, except that the vault guard was on tea break and they kept me hanging about for ten minutes until he came back. It's the longest ten minutes I've ever spent. They'd already taken my number and asked me to sign, so I didn't know if the absence of the guard was real, or just a ploy to delay me when they detected my false credentials. I was being careful not to look in the direction of the security camera, but there could have been another one, for all I know. Anyway, after that it all went much as we imagined."
"Well? Was there anything in the box?"
"Oh yes," said Winner, patting his briefcase, which was tucked between his legs. "I'll show you when we get home."
Winner sat in the bath, using the spray attachment to wash the shampoo from his hair. This being the third time that he had lathered up his head, the rubber duck had almost disappeared in the brown tinged foam.
"I don't think anyone will be able to tell now," Sally assured him. "The grey bits might just look a bit beige for a week or two."
She was sat on the bathroom floor, with neat little piles of twenty pound notes arranged in front of her.
"How much then?" asked Winner.
"Exactly eighteen thousand pounds. If we allow for him spending two, that means we've accounted for the whole fifty thousand."
Winner pulled out the plug and attacked the suds with the spray attachment.
"We're going to have to rent bank boxes for ourselves," he said, as he reached for a towel. Not in Petermere, though."
Sally stacked the money up in two equal piles. "Can I open the envelope yet?" she asked.
"Let's save that until we've had something to eat."
Sally went and found two Tesco carrier bags to put the bank-notes in while Winner got dressed. They sat down to micro-waved lasagne, with the pale brown envelope lying on the table in front of them.
"What do you think's in there, Dave?"
"I almost don't want to look. It could be the reason Nigel Stewart died."
"We don't have to do anything with it if we don't want to."
Winner got up and went into his kitchen. Sally could hear the rattling of glasses and dishes. A few moments later he appeared with a bottle of Champagne and two glasses in one hand
and a familiar carton and dessert bowls in the other.
"I thought we ought to celebrate a successful afternoon," he said, gently squeezing the cork out of the bottle.
"It's nice to know we can afford a few of life's little luxuries," she said, her hands already reaching out for the Haagen Dazs triple-choc icecream.
They spun out the anticipation for as long as they could, not touching the envelope until they had cleared up and were sitting on the sofa with an after dinner coffee. Winner let Sally tear it open. A grey soft covered book like a school exercise book and a cassette tape slid out. Nothing else.
Winner opened the book. On the first page were the same company names, but this time each one was accompanied by an address. On the next page was an address for a property in River Heights and a number with initials against it, possibly a telephone number. Folded into the back of the book was an estate agent's details for a parcel of land on the northern edge of Sharmouth. Sally opened up the sheet and read through it.
"Cameron Peters. That's one of the companies listed at the front. This sounds like the land for the superstore they want to build."
"It doesn't make much sense to me," said Winner. "Some company names, a sales brochure. Let's see if the tape can tell us anything."
He got up and slipped the cassette into the player. There was a short silence while the blank leader tape ran through, then some clicking and clattering noises. The voices that followed were distorted and faint, but the words were clear enough.
"Who is this speaking?"
"Never mind. This is rather a delicate matter. You probably won't want anyone else to hear what I have to say, so I hope you're alone."
"Yes, I'm alone. Spit it out man."
"I have certain information that would be damaging to you if it were to become public knowledge. There are documents that I feel you may be interested to purchase."
"Rubbish. I have no skeletons in my closet. You're wasting your time."
"Perhaps if I were to mention the purchase contracts for the Prince of Wales housing estate, or maybe your failure to declare an interest when certain land matters are being dealt with by the Council."
"You're bluffing."
"Far from it. Think about it."
The tape went quiet again, and Winner was just at the point of wondering if the one conversation was all that was on the cassette, when there was a rattling noise and the voices could be heard once more.
"You've had a chance now to consider your position. I shall send details in the post of what you must do."
"Wait a minute. If I make any payments to you for information, how do I know you're not going to keep coming back for more?"
"There won't be any further demands. This is a strictly commercial transaction."
"I'll need some proof that the goods you are offering are genuine. You mustn't send anything through the post. I wouldn't want to involve my secretary."
"You'll be hearing from me."
The tape went quiet again, though Winner left it running in case there was more to follow.
"Blackmail," said Sally.
"But against who? And for what?"
"It was definitely Nigel on the tapes. I've spoken to him enough on the phone to recognise his voice."
"This is his writing in the notebook, I think. Who do you suppose the other person was?"
"Well it must be a councillor or a top member of staff, because Nigel said something about a failure to declare an interest."
Winner looked at the addresses again and glanced at the property brochure. "As I see it," he said, "we have maybe four or five options now. We could call the police, who would want to know where we had obtained the tape and book. Or we could send them the stuff anonymously and leave it up to them."
"We can't go to the police ourselves. It would draw too much attention in our direction, and I want to be able to enjoy my ill-gotten gains peacefully. I don't think we ought to send the stuff to them anonymously, either. If they work out that Nigel was a blackmailer, they might link him to the theft and then his wife might lose her pension. She's hardly to blame for all this."
"There are other options. We could burn the stuff and forget all about it, but I still feel a certain loyalty to the Council. Mind you, that would probably be the safest course of action. That leaves us with the final main option, which is to find out everything we can ourselves and then decide what to do about what we discover."
"So what happened to Nigel after these phone calls?"
"We still don't know. Either the proposed victim discovered that it was Nigel and arranged the accident, or it was a genuine accident and the victim is still wondering why he hasn't had any more demands."
Sally got up and went out to the kitchen to refill her coffee mug. When she came back into the living room, the cassette clicked to a halt and Winner got up and turned it over, just to make sure that there was nothing on side two.
"I was thinking," said Sally. "If Nigel was going to reveal that the Council had been cheated, then if we could expose the circumstances and maybe save them further losses, we would have made a sort of moral repayment in respect of the cash."
"I must admit, I'd like to get to the bottom of all this."
"It's decided then. We'll find out everything that we can, but discreetly."
"Very discreetly," said Winner. "If Nigel really was killed, we'll be up against very dangerous people."