"The Thief" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rendell Ruth)

CHAPTER FIVE

ON THE WAY HOME she thought, suppose I find the police waiting for me? I can explain, she thought. I can tell them he gave it to me. Or I can say I know nothing about it. And if they want to search the house? I’ll say it’s my money, I’ll say those are Alex’s clothes… Alex opened the front door to her before she got her key out.

‘I phoned Louise,’ he said. ‘I wanted to pick you up, take you out to dinner.’ He looked hurt. ‘There was something I was planning to ask you.’

Polly thought, he was going to propose to me. He was going to ask me to marry him. For once, she didn’t know what to say. It was too late to go out now and she was so tired she thought she could fall asleep standing up.

‘You left me a note saying you’d be there.’

‘I know. I meant to go.’ She was so used to him trusting her, believing everything she said, that the look on his face shocked her. But she was a good liar. She had had plenty of practice. Coming up close to him, she looked him straight in the eye. ‘I got on the bus, the one that goes to Louise’s road. It’s only two stops. But I was so tired I fell asleep and when I woke up I was in Finchley.’

He believed her. His face had cleared and he laughed, but gently. ‘You should have waited for me and I’d have taken you in the car.’

‘I know you would.’ She had to find out. ‘What were you planning to ask me?’

He smiled. ‘Don’t worry about it. Another time.’

‘I really need a drink.’

As she said it she thought of Trevor Lant saying she drank too much. Why had she ever spoken to him? Why hadn’t she just kept silent when he spoke to her? Alex brought her a glass of wine.

‘Have you eaten?’ he asked.

‘I don’t want anything. I just want to go to bed.’

Suppose he had looked inside the washing machine? Before she went to bed, while Alex was watching the news on TV, she took out Trevor Lant’s clothes. She put them in a bag and put the bag in the bottom of her wardrobe. Tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep. How to get away on her own for an hour or two in the morning? Just to go back to Bristol Road, see it in daylight, maybe talk to someone next door and find out who lived there. Alex slept beside her, still and silent as he always was. He wants to marry me, she thought. We’ve never really talked about it but I know he does. He’ll ask me sometime this weekend. I shall say yes. Of course I will. And when we’re engaged I’ll make a vow to tell no more lies and never, ever steal anything again. The wine I drink at my wedding will be the last I’ll ever drink.

She slept badly, and woke up to find him gone. She thought, I could tell him. I could tell him now. But no, she couldn’t. Tell him she had stolen a man’s case? Taken money and clothes out of it, brought them here, hidden them and gone to find where he lived? And it’s not the first time, she would have to say. I took my aunt’s book. I took a man’s Walkman and threw it under a truck. I took Abby Robinson’s watch and smashed it and gave myself this scar. And I took other things, I took them to get back at people, a handbag from Louise once because she didn’t ask me to her party. I threw it over the bridge into the canal. Alex would tell me I’m mad. Perhaps I am mad. He wouldn’t want to be married to a woman like me.

Alex came in with tea for her. He was smiling. ‘Had a good night?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said.

He seemed to have forgotten her note and the things she had said. ‘I thought we could go out this morning and buy those books I need.’

I once stole a book and cut the pages to pieces because my aunt smacked me. Look at my finger. That’s the scar where I cut myself… What would he do if she said that?

‘You go,’ she said. ‘You won’t need me.’

No bus this morning. He had taken the tube and left the car behind. She could say she had taken it to go shopping. On the way back from Bristol Road she could go shopping, make her lies true. She felt safer inside the car. Turning the corner into Lant’s street she saw his car on the driveway before she saw the house, it was such a bright colour. A bright peacock blue, the kind of blue that hurts your eyes. And the front door, in daylight, was a sharper yellow than egg yolk.

So it was his house. It seemed to be. He liked bright colours, orange cases, yellow door, peacock blue car. Because she was in the car she wasn’t wearing the scarf, the long coat and the sunglasses. She drove round again, slowly this time, on his side of the road. And saw just inside the rear window of his car his small carryon case. His orange carry-on case.

That told her all she needed to know. He lived there. It was his house. All she had to do now was get it all back to him, the clothes – she would wash and iron his clothes – and the money. Driving away from Bristol Road, she thought of sending it by post. The post had been bad lately. Suppose the money got lost in the post? Find another way then, of getting it back. Someone at the wheel of a passing car hooted at her. What had she done? She didn’t know. Anyway, it wasn’t him, it wasn’t Lant. The driver who had hooted was in a black car. She drove into the Tesco car park and went in, pushing her trolley between the fruit and vegetable racks.

If only I can get the money back to him, she thought, and not be seen, I will never take anything again. No, not ‘take’ – ‘steal’. Use the proper word, she told herself. I stole that money just as I stole Tom’s Walkman and Louise’s bag. But this has cured me. I will never do it again. It was funny how when you saw something unusual like his car, you soon saw others like it. She’d never before seen a car quite the colour of his but there was one in the Tesco car park, bright peacock blue.

Driving home, she tried to think of ways to get the money back. If his car was there, he was in. If it wasn’t, he was out. That might not always be so. The car might be away being serviced or lent to a friend or in a lock-up garage somewhere. She would have to watch the house until she saw him go out. Put the money into small envelopes and once he was gone, put the envelopes through the letterbox in that yellow front door. And his clothes, neatly ironed, the yellow shirt and the red one and the orange T-shirt.

Why hadn’t he told the police? That puzzled her. He must guess it was Polly who had taken his case. She had been flying club class so he would know she had got off the aircraft before him. When his case couldn’t be found the first person he would think of would be her. And then when they found his case in the ladies’… They would tell him that, and he would go straight to the airport police. So why hadn’t they phoned or come here? Perhaps they had. Another peacock blue car was behind her, two cars behind her, and for a moment she felt afraid. But once she was home it had gone.

The look on Alex’s face when she went in scared her. He was hardly ever angry but he looked angry now. She thought, he has been to my desk and found the money. Or the police have been here. But she was wrong. It was only that his computer had crashed and he had to call for help. Smiling now, pleased to see her, he helped her in with the bags of shopping.

‘You didn’t tell me we’re going to see your parents tonight.’

She had forgotten. ‘I forgot,’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to? I can put them off.’

‘No, I’d like to go. It’s just that we said we’d go and see that film. I suppose we could go first. Shall we?’

She must keep watch on Lant’s house. She had meant to go back this afternoon, see if his car was gone or stay there until he came out and drove away. Then she could put the money through his letter box… It would have to wait, that was all. Wait all through Sunday? She wasn’t due at work until midday on Monday but must she wait until Monday morning?

‘Did you get a paper?’

‘I forgot,’ she said again. ‘I’ll go out again.’

‘No, I’ll go.’

Never before had she been so glad to see him go out. To leave her on her own. Always, in the past, she had wanted him with her. She had felt lonely and lost without him. Now his going out was a relief. She ran to her desk and opened the drawer where the money was.

She called it ‘her’ desk because she used it but in fact it was Alex’s. Almost everything in the house was Alex’s, the carpets, the curtains, the tables and chairs and beds and the kitchen things. It was just as it had been when she moved in with him. She had brought only a radio with her, a lamp or two, and some china and glass. The desk she had taken over because she was the one who sometimes worked from home. As far as she knew, he never went near it.

And he had not been near it that morning. The money was just as she had left it. Why had Lant wanted it in pounds, dollars and euros? It didn’t matter. She found some envelopes, ten of them, and put the money into them, five hundred pounds in each one. Alex might never go near the desk but still the money wasn’t safe there. She took the ten envelopes upstairs and put them in her underwear drawer. Then she checked on Lant’s clothes. They were where she had left them, at the back of her wardrobe. If she did the washing now, his with hers, Alex might see Lant’s yellow shirt and the orange T-shirt when she took them out of the machine. Better wait till tomorrow…

He was back with his paper just as she was coming downstairs. As they walked together into the living room the phone rang. Again she thought, it will be the police. Or Lant himself. Lant. He knows. He must have seen me this morning. She picked up the phone and said, ‘Hello?’

Alex was standing behind her. She said into the phone, ‘Who is that?’ There was silence, no heavy breathing, just silence. ‘Who is it?’ Her voice sounded strained, panicky. There was no answer and she put the phone down.

She turned to Alex. He had sat down, the paper on his knees.

‘Who was that?’ he said. ‘Was it someone you knew?’

‘I don’t know who it was,’ she said, her eyes meeting his. ‘He didn’t speak.’

‘He?’

‘He, she, I told you I don’t know. They didn’t say anything.’

That had been a mistake, a bad mistake for a good liar to make.

Alex said in his quiet gentle way, ‘When my friend George was married to his first wife, they got a lot of phone calls from one of these silent callers. If he answered, there was no one there. When she answered while George was with her she would say ‘Who is that?’ but got no answer either. Of course he didn’t know what she said when he wasn’t with her.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Polly said, though she did.

‘Oh, well,’ said Alex. ‘Soon after that she went off with a chap she’d been seeing.’

After they had had lunch they went to the cinema.

Polly watched the film but after it was over she couldn’t have said what it was about or even who was in it. She was thinking about the money and Lant’s clothes and the phone call. Above all, the phone call. She had never had a phone call like it before. It must have been Lant. He hadn’t said a word, but she knew it was Lant. He might not have seen her that morning, but he had guessed it was she who had taken his case. Somehow he had found out where she lived. Not from the phone book. Only Alex’s name was in the phone book. This address was on her bags while she was waiting in the check-in queues. He must have noted it down either going to New York or coming back. But no, that must have been him in the car park. That must have been him following her. So he would know her address. Why? Because he too would want revenge?

Her address but not her phone number… Directory Enquiries would have given him that. Dial one-one-eight, five hundred. Get the voters’ list online, then give Alex’s name and address. It was easy. What would Lant do next?

Why hadn’t he been to the police? What was he doing? Maybe it was something to do with the money. It might not be his. He might have stolen it. If that was the case, the last people he would go to were the police. That must be the answer.

She felt a huge relief. Lant wouldn’t tell the police because the money wasn’t his. But she must get it back to him. Polly thought of all the films she had seen in which gangsters had money stolen from them. Money they had stolen, but which they still thought of as theirs. The first thing they did was get revenge. Lant would do what her father called taking the law into his own hands…

She must get the money back to him. But she must do it soon. She dared not wait till Monday. That would give him all tomorrow to get his revenge.

She must do it now. Lant might come here and harm her or, worse, Alex. As they came out of the cinema Alex said, ‘I didn’t think much of that, did you? Not the way that woman acted. Real life isn’t like that.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you’re right.’

She could remember very little of it but she knew real life wasn’t like that.