The Wellington Bureau: A Quartermain Mystery

stay with Toby in the St George’s Square apartment until she could buy a place of her own. She had no thoughts about what she would do with herself once settled in her newly purchased home. She was rather afraid that the more she thought about that question the more deeply depressed she would become. Instead, she set out on a sunny Tuesday with the intention of visiting a bank and then purchasing a few parting gifts for her brother’s family, her mind fully occupied by the thorny problem of how much she could spend on the Walkers without being inappropriate.

  As Anna walked into the foyer of the bank she was dimly aware of the fact that something was wrong, although her attention was at first focused on trying to open the catch of her bag. Out of the corner of her eye she observed that a group of people were huddled into one corner. There were none of the queues so familiar in banks, and one of the cashiers was making a half suppressed gulping noise as if about to have hysterics. Anna gave up the struggle with the stubborn catch and had a good look round her. A man with a stocking over his head brandished a gun at her. She was left with the impression that he wanted her to join the huddle, and she obediently did so.

  “Now shut the bloody door!” shouted another man.

  Anna was intrigued by the extraordinary situation she had walked into. “Perhaps I'll be shot!” was her first thought. “How very timely.”

  The cashier had given herself up to a serious attack of hysterics. They seemed to be infectious. One of the women beside Anna had clasped her hands to her mouth and was saying,

  “Oh, no! Oh, no!” over and over again.

  Another of the cluster, a paunchy man in his middle thirties with glasses and a briefcase, was breathing strenuously and his hands were shaking. The other two women in the group looked pale and pinched about the lips. No one appeared to have been hurt in any way. Behind the counter there was another group and a second gunman stood guard over them. He was glancing unhappily at the hysterical woman. Her gasps and sobs seemed to unnerve him. The third man, the one who had spoken, was directing a tall man to take money out of the tills, and he was stuffing the notes into a large hold-all.

  “Will they... will they kill us?” One of the pinched-lipped women put her hand on Anna’s arm and spoke in a shaky whisper.

  Anna shook her head.

  “Shut that woman up!” the third man called to the gunman. He obligingly flourished his gun in the direction of the woman who had spoken. She gave a little half-stifled shriek and pushed behind Anna.

  It was at that moment that they heard the sound of sirens. The man whom Anna had already placed as the leader of the trio ran to the window and looked out, leaving the hold-all with the tall man.

  “Blast! They’re coming here. Some bastard must have raised the alarm!” He seemed to be at a loss for a few seconds and the two men who were standing guard glanced at him nervously.

  “What do we do?” asked the one in charge of Anna’s group.

  “Get all the hostages together. Out there where we can see them!”

  “Oh, so we are hostages now!” thought Anna.

  The group from behind the counter were ushered out to join them. Anna watched the guard. He was a slim, rather angular youth. The stocking did not conceal the fact that he had red hair. He wore no gloves and she could see his heavily freckled hands and a few wisps of the red hair where his wrist was exposed. She looked at the man whom he had joined. Naked hands, freckles, red hair. They were the same height, the same build.

  “Twins!” she thought to herself. “And mere lads at that.”

  She turned her attention to the third man. He was shorter than the twins but thick-set and muscular. He was obviously older. She had placed him as their leader, not because he had given instructions, but because the youngsters kept glancing across at him. It struck her that this was not a very professional job. She knew nothing about crime, but it was quite obvious that they had no contingency plan to cover the unexpected arrival of the police. The twins were twitching from foot to foot, paying more attention to the older man than to their hostages.

  “What are we going to do?” repeated a twin.

  “Just let me think, will you!” snapped the man.

  It was clear that they had never thought further than walking in, brandishing a gun, and then walking out with the money. The twins looked as terrified as their hostages and the thug in charge was not much better. Anna thought of the fact that they all had something to lose. The hostages were frightened of being killed and the criminals of being caught. It occurred to her that she had already lost everything she valued. Anna felt a sudden sense of release, a calmness. She actually had an advantage. She really did not care what happened to her. She found that she could actually think quite rationally with a gun pointing at her. But she realised that she mustn’t do anything rash. It is one thing to be indifferent to your own safety, but there were others who clearly wanted very much to stay alive.

  They were all standing together now in the foyer. Three girls and two men from behind the tills, the two tight-lipped women, the paunchy man and the hysterical woman. Ten, including herself. The hysterical cashier had subsided a bit. The twins stood over them. The thug, as Anna mentally named the third man, darted his head to the window and back to safety a few times. He obviously guessed there might eventually be police marksmen outside. They all stood in silence for a while.

  “It’s like being in a play without a script!” Anna thought. “We need a prompt or we’ll be like this all month.” But she feared that an incompetent gunman was more likely to shoot people than a competent one with a rational plan in mind. What would happen if the thug panicked? The twins may be younger and perhaps more impressionable, but finding themselves without a strong leader, they too might panic. Were they potential killers? Would desperation drive them to something they would regret? The longer the tension mounted in this bewildering silence of indecision, the more likely they were to snap.

  Anna ran through the possibilities in her mind. Could she try to disarm them and hope the tall man or the paunchy man would follow her up? No! Ridiculous! She couldn’t possibly take on three armed men. She’d just get them all killed. Better to do nothing. What about the thug? Could she talk sense to him? She glanced at his bulky form. A man of his age who was organising, or half-organising, an armed robbery, was not likely to be very susceptible to common sense. He wouldn’t be there if he was. That left the twins. They were young. They were unsure of themselves, she could see that. They must be impressionable or they wouldn’t be there. Perhaps they had been talked into this daft scheme by the promise of easy money. Now it had gone wrong. Perhaps they would leap at the chance of some escape from this blunder. Could she offer it to them? If she provoked the thug by speaking to them, he might kill her, but he was unlikely to be panicked into a mass slaughter. Was that the only option? Yes, it probably was. But she must go carefully.

  “Come out with your hands in the air! You are surrounded!” blared out a voice through a loud hailer, as if it were the film set of a low budget movie. The hackneyed challenge seemed to have the desired effect on the three criminals. They all looked at each other in mute terror. Then the thug appeared to gather such wits as he possessed.

  “We’ll ask for a car to take us to the airport.” He sounded pleased with himself, as if he’d thought up some clever, viable plan of escape. “We’ll take a couple of hostages.”

  Both of the women who had been hysterical started to gulp again. Anna guessed from their silence that the twins were unimpressed, but they obviously had no alternative to suggest.

  “One of them can take a message. You!” the thug pointed in the general direction of Anna. “Go out and tell them that if we don’t get a car to take us to the airport, we’ll start shooting people!” Anna had pointedly looked at the woman who stood just behind her as if she thought that the man was addressing her. The woman was willingly convinced that she was the intended messenger. She stepped forward a little timidly.

  “Not you!” exclaimed the thug.

/>   “Let her go,” Anna said, as if there had been a misunderstanding.

  “OK. You can go. Just tell them what we want. I’m not playing games. I’ll kill everyone in this room if I have to!”

  The woman scuttled nervously across to the door as if she thought she might be shot in the back. At the door she glanced back.

  “They won’t shoot? Out there I mean?”

  “GO!” bellowed the man.

  She went.

  There was no sound of gunfire, so it was assumed that the message was safely carried.

  Everyone stood waiting in a taut, nervous silence. The thug crouched beside the counter, out of sight of the window, his gun trained on the huddle. The twins stood closer, but were also wary of the windows. At last the thug told the tall man to pull the blinds down. This timely thought seemed to relax the twins a little, they felt less exposed. But time passed and there was no reply to the message.

  “You are twins, are you not?” Anna spoke in a soft but clear voice.

  “Eh?” Alarm tinged the voice of the lad who spoke.

  “Shut that woman up!” snapped their crouching leader.

  “Red-haired.” She spoke as if making a casual observation.

  The twins shuffled silently and glanced at each other.

  “Even if they give you a car, you can’t get away.”

  The thug stood up. “One more