The Count of Eleven (43 page)

In a moment Jack had grasped the clown’s head. As he pulled out the keys the one he needed appeared to gleam. He unlocked the rear doors in the same swift movement and ducked in to grab the briefcase, which had slid towards the doors when he was driving home, as though it had made itself ready for him. The Count was still wanted, and it was a mercy he hadn’t got rid of his weapon. He shook the front door key forwards as he dashed up the path. He would leave the key in the lock, take out the blow lamp and drop his briefcase, find the lighter in his pocket, and then If the man had dared to harm Julia or Laura, he would But when he flung the front door open, he was too late.

The stairs were strewn from top to bottom with passports and traveller’s cheques and aeroplane tickets and the balance of the money sent by the anonymous benefactor. Julia was at the foot of the stairs, pale-faced and shaken, holding onto the phone and saying “Police.” Where the stairs bent near the top, a man in his late teens was sprawling on his stomach. He was grey-skinned and scrawny, with painfully prominent veins, made more prominent by the way Laura was locking his arms in the small of his back as she knelt on his spine. “Fucking get off me, you little whore,” he was snarling. “I’ll fucking kill you. Fucking let me up.”

Jack dropped the briefcase on the doorstep and squeezed Julia’s waist before charging upstairs. “It’s all right, Dad,” Laura said, though she was flushed and somewhat breathless. Tve got him.”

Julia was speaking their address rapidly into the phone. “Can you be quick? He’s here now. I don’t know how long we can hold him.”

“Stay still,” Jack warned in the Count’s voice as the man started to kick the wall at the bend of the stairs. He climbed over the man’s legs and stayed within reach, though Laura seemed to be in control. A few minutes that felt loaded with more seconds than he was able to count dragged by. He heard a police siren, and grew tense as he saw the man stiffen until Laura redoubled her grip on his wrists. The police arrived with a screech of brakes and a stampede of boots on the path, and Julia pushed the door wide. Top of the stairs,” she said in a pinched voice.

Two policemen came thundering upstairs while a third stayed with Julia. “Is this yours, madam?” he said.

“No.”

Jack hovered anxiously while the two policemen took over from Laura. He had difficulty in breathing until they’d got hold of the burglar and she was out of the man’s reach. He saw the other policeman stoop outside the door and pick up the briefcase, saw his finger and thumb closing around the lock to snap it open. “Yes, that’s ours. Mine,” he said.

He hadn’t spoken loud enough. The policeman hadn’t heard. He was standing on the stage of light from the hall, his heavy face lowering over the briefcase. In a moment he would see within, and then his face would rise and catch sight of Jack. “Excuse me Julia said as if it hardly mattered under the circumstances.

“Just one moment, madam.”

“My husband says that’s his. I didn’t know.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” the policeman said, and handed her the briefcase.

His colleagues were urging the burglar none too gently down the stairs, and there wasn’t room for Jack to sidle past them. He saw Julia take the briefcase and stare at it and move her other hand towards it, then she stepped aside to let the policemen usher their captive out of the house. “I wonder if it might be convenient for me to take your statements now,” their colleague said.

“We’re supposed to be going away on holiday tomorrow,” Julia said as though the breakin might have changed her mind, and dropped the briefcase by the stairs with a thud which contained a dull resonance of the blow lamp

Jack went downstairs, restraining himself from running, and having reassured himself that the briefcase hadn’t snapped open with the impact, refrained from picking it up. The back door had been forced, he saw along the hall. “I’ll ring Andy to fix it,” he told Julia.

He hadn’t much to tell the police. He was glad that Andy was round in ten minutes; talking to him kept Jack’s mind off the briefcase and its secret. By the time Andy had fixed heavy bolts at the top and bottom of the door, the interviews were finished. “That’s all, sir,” the policeman said to Jack. “Try not to let it spoil your holiday. You must be proud of your daughter.”

“I’d wish the media could get hold of this except we’ve had enough of them. People would be better off copying her instead of the Mersey Burner.”

Only Jack Awkward could have said that. He was aware of being heard by the policeman and Andy and Julia and Laura, and he thought he sensed them recoiling from him. Then the policeman grinned wryly. “You won’t hear me arguing.”

Jack saw him down the path and closed the door. Andy was making coffee for everyone while the others sat in the front room. Laura looked exhausted but pleased with herself, Julia as though the shakes might be about to catch up with her. It was almost eleven o’clock, but it felt later. As Jack made to pass the open door of the front room, Julia gestured him to stop. “Whose is the briefcase?” she said.

That night none of the Orchards slept much. Whenever Jack’s plans came apart in his head as he drifted towards sleep, Julia’s restlessness beside him brought him back to himself. She must be suffering from some of the thoughts that were troubling him, though for different reasons: if they went to Crete now … if they didn’t go to Crete … Being unable to discuss his reasons with her drove him deeper inside himself, where he might have sought the Count’s advice. But his instinctive reaction to the burglary had shown him that he’d been nervous for days not because he was afraid the Count might fail on his last adventure but because he was unwilling to relinquish him, which brought the Count too close to the family, close enough to lie beside Julia in the dark.

Shortly after dawn Jack got up. His eyes and brain felt smudged with smoke. He’d heard Laura moving about, and met her coming out of the bathroom. She looked as sleepless as he was, and as though she was trying unsuccessfully to prepare to be disappointed. “Are we still going?” she said.

It was one plan or the other, though he couldn’t foresee either in detail. “Of course we are,” he said, and at once was convinced this would work; he couldn’t bear to think otherwise when he saw her face light up. Julia trudged out of their room just then. “You two finish in the bathroom while I make us all coffee,” Jack said, leaving them to talk.

By the time they were out there were only a few minutes left for him to use the bathroom. He shaved and brushed his teeth and ducked under the shower, and was dressing when the doorbell rang. That’ll be Andy. I’ll pack my stuff from the bathroom,” he called, and fetched the razor and foam and deodorant. As he heard someone opening the front door he grabbed the briefcase from beside the wardrobe and hid it under the beach towels in the larger suitcase, which he locked. “I think we’re just about ready,” he announced.

While Andy loaded the suitcases into the boot of his car and then waited outside with Laura, Julia toured the house to check that everything which could be locked was locked. When she set out on a second tour Jack thought she might refuse to leave after all, and so he diverted her nervousness towards ensuring that she had the passports and tickets and traveller’s cheques and Greek money in her handbag. At last she sighed, and closed and locked the front door and made certain it was locked. They climbed into the car, and as it pulled away he told himself there was no turning back.

The motorway was almost clear. Usually when he was a passenger Jack found himself mentally driving the car, but now he was content to feel he had no control. As he dozed, signboards blue as the sky promised to be sailed past Bromborough, Helsby, Runcorn, Warrington like names in a dream, none of which seemed meaningful enough to waken him fully. Then Andy was trying to do so, and the air was laden with roaring. “Manchester Airport,” Andy said.

The Orchards clambered out of the car, and Laura ran to find a baggage trolley. Julia was blinking at the throng of passengers beyond the automatic doors as if she wasn’t sure that the family ought to be here. “I’ll wire up an alarm in your house the moment I get back,” Andy promised. “Don’t worry, Mrs. O. With your luck the house would be safe as houses even if it wasn’t alarmed. Look how you came home last night just in time to catch the villain.”

Julia nodded a little reluctantly, watching for Laura. “I’d better be off,” Andy said, but Jack stopped him with the question which he could tell Andy knew he’d provoked. “What do you know about our luck?” he said for Andy alone to hear.

“I’d really better be going, old pip. They fine you if you park here too long.” Andy gave him a wink and an apologetic grin. “You’ve guessed, haven’t you? I sent you that weird letter months ago.”

“Sent it to me and who else?”

“Only you. You and the family were the only people I knew whose luck needed a leg up. I hope you didn’t take it seriously. I just wanted to cheer you up, seeing as you always enjoy a joke.”

A taxi flashed its headlamps at him, and he waved to the driver and climbed into the car. “I’ll be seeing you,” he shouted to Jack. “You needn’t worry about anything. Just remember to come round for your alarm keys before you let yourself into the house.”

Jack stared after him as the brake lights ignited and the car left a shimmer of fumes in its wake. He felt as though he had yet to awaken. What did it mean that Andy had simply passed on the letter to him? He was still struggling to understand when Laura returned with a trolley. “They’re checking in our flight,” Julia said.

Jack loaded the trolley and pushed it through the automatic doors, which flinched away from him. There were queues at three desks for the flight to Heraklion. Julia appended herself to the shortest queue, and Jack found himself wishing she’d chosen the longest so that he would have more time to finish thinking about Andy and prepare to seem innocent when he reached the desk, or should he take the suitcase to the men’s room on some pretext and hide the blow lamp behind a cistern? How long might it stay there without being noticed, and would the police be able to deduce when it had been hidden? “We’re next,” Julia told him.

The entire queue in front of the Orchards had consisted of a single party who were moving away from the desk. No doubt the airport police checked the toilets frequently -perhaps even monitored them with hidden cameras. Leaving the blow lamp in the case was safest, he reassured himself: bombs were smuggled onto planes that way. “Morning. Hot this morning,” he said to the young woman behind the counter, and wiped his forehead.

She took the tickets and passports and leafed through them, glancing up at the family. As Jack hauled the larger suitcase onto the weighing platform the handle seemed to grow uncomfortably warm. “Did you pack your luggage personally?” the uniformed young woman said to him.

Julia laughed. She was going to deny it, thinking it was a joke, and the uniformed woman would sense disagreement between them and insist that he open the suitcase. “We both did,” he said hastily.

“That’s what I like to hear,” the woman said with an approving grin at Julia, and asked Jack the rest of the security questionnaire. He watched the suitcase containing the blow lamp advance hesitantly towards the conveyor belt, topple onto it, bump into a carton of disassembled furniture and pursue it through an opening half-concealed by trailing strips of plastic. He saw a hand grasp its handle, and then it was gone. “Can you put your other luggage on for me?” the woman said.

“Sorry. This is all new to me,” Jack said, quickly enough to head off any doubts she might have had, he hoped.

She sent the other suitcase on its way and consulted a screen for details of seats. “Smoking or not?”

“Not. Very much not, thank you.”

She presented him with the boarding passes and a standard smile. “Enjoy your flight.”

“I will when it’s over,” Jack almost said.

A rubber carpet carried the family up to the next level, a large hall so crowded that they made for the departure hall at once. First came another examination of their passports, followed by a security check. As he watched Julia’s and Laura’s handbags being conveyed through an X-ray, he imagined the briefcase revealing the silhouette of its contents. The panic he experienced at the thought seemed unnecessary and somehow more distressing because it was. He followed Julia and Laura through an electronic archway which had let them pass unmolested, and set off the alarm.

It didn’t matter, he told himself as he stepped forward to meet the security guard who was beckoning to him. The lighter or the keys on the clown’s head must have caused the alarm to sound, but he was carrying nothing that could incriminate him. The guard couldn’t tell how badly his palms were sweating, though wouldn’t he be trained to look for signs of nervousness?

The guard had him raise his arms as though he was about to be crucified, and Jack felt his sodden shirt peel away from his cindery armpits. The guard crouched in front of him, passed his hands along the insides of Jack’s thighs as Jack tried not to stiffen them too obviously nor to let them shake, rose until his bland efficient face was level with Jack’s. Jack was yearning to swallow to ease his dry throat, afraid to swallow in case the guard noticed. He saw Laura giggling at the spectacle of her father being treated like a criminal, and managed to wink at her, though it felt like the beginning of an uncontrollable twitch, especially when the guard fixed his gaze on it. The alarm sounded again behind Jack. “Thank you, sir,” the guard said, and stepped aside.

Jack succeeded in walking away without drawing more attention to himself, though his feet were sweating so much he thought the guard must be able to hear them un sticking themselves from his sandals at each step. “Did they think you were a terrorist, Dad?” Laura said.

“There must have been too much change in my pocket,” Jack said, too loudly. “Let’s go and spend some on a drink.”

“It’s a good job you didn’t bring that poor man’s briefcase by mistake,” Julia said. “That might have taken some explaining.”

Last night he had simply told her that he’d picked up a reader’s briefcase without thinking as he’d left the library but hadn’t wanted to say so in front of the police. There was nothing in it, he’d explained, and so returning it could wait until they came home. “Never mind,” Julia said now as he tried to suppress his anxiety. “We know you didn’t mean to take it. It’s more like the Jack we know and love.”