The Walking Stick (30 page)

‘If you need the drill again you’ll need the power.’

‘Maybe. Maybe I won’t need it—’

Ted came clattering down the stairs and pushed his way in, scattering mortar and bits of broken brick. ‘Deb, d’you know where the fuses are? Leigh’s told you – I goofed
high and big. John—’

‘Mind those wires!’ Irons snapped. ‘Maybe we can manage with this light – ’

‘We’ve
got
to find it. Any passing copper might notice there’s no lights anywhere.’

‘I think they’re in the kitchen,’ I said. ‘There are electric boxes in the corner cupboard—’

‘Show me—’

‘What’s the time, Ted?’ Irons said. ‘It must be—’

‘For Chrissake, yes . . . Wait. I’ll do that first. You go with Deb, Leigh, see if they’re what we—’

‘I want Leigh
here
!’ said Irons. ‘I got to move this ’ere safe a few inches if we’re to try to—’

‘
You
go, then,’ Ted said, grasping my arm so that I winced. ‘See if you’re right, but don’t touch
anything
.’

He went with jerking flat-footed strides up the stairs as I made for the kitchen. I was right: there were eleven fuse boxes, three meters. As soon as I knew I went back to the strongroom, found
the two men, by the light of a single pencil torch propped on a filing cabinet, heaving with crowbars at a corner of the safe, trying to shift it away from the wall. They had moved it perhaps an
inch.

‘I don’t see—’ Leigh gasped, ‘what the hell – you’re driving at.’

‘You don’t have to,’ said Irons, bunching his muscles and heaving again. ‘Now
together
!’ Another inch.

Leigh pulled off his mask and leaned exhaustedly against the safe, wiping his sweating face with the stocking. For a few seconds they both rested.

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Look,’ said Irons. ‘I told you. All safes have this anti-blowing device. If I set off that charge in the keyhole and it breaks the lock, the new bolt falls and jams the door
worse’n ever. Right?’

‘If you say so, yes.’

‘Now look. How long does it take that new bolt to fall into place? Half a second, fifth of a second, tenth? Eh? Well, supposing you just judge right and the charge of gelly is just enough
to crack the lock without jamming the handle an’ all. And someone happens to be pulling on the handle to turn it just when the charge goes off. The part of a second’d be enough to turn
it before the new locking bar falls. So then the bar doesn’t jam the door because the handle’s already been turned. The door’s open. Right?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know how they work. But any Goddam fool who had his hand on the handle when the charge went off’d lose his hand.’

‘I know, man, I know! That’s why I brought this here in my bag.’ Irons picked up the bicycle tyre.

‘I don’t see—’

‘It’s got to go from the safe handle to that shelf bracket. It’s the only thing I can see that’s strong enough and just the right height. But we’ll want to move the
safe another six or eight inches.’

Leigh still looked unconvinced, but he bent to help, and the strain and stress began again.

Ted was looking in, pulling off his stocking. ‘OK. Were you right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Show me.’

We went down the passage to the kitchen and I showed him.

‘Was it all right again – the phone call?’

‘Yes, it was another bloke at the other end.’ He took a deep breath and peered at the switches. ‘Now, the whole flaming lot of the lights have gone so it must be a main fuse.
One of these three. Can you shine the light?’

He climbed on a chair and I shone the light. As he clinked open the second box he gave a grunt and scraped around in his pocket, took out a bit of old fuse wire, switched off all the switches,
and pulled out the fuse. Three minutes and he replaced the wire, put back the fuse, shut the box.

‘Now wait for it.’

He pulled down the switches one after the other. The pilot light outside the kitchen door came on. ‘Thank Cripes for that!’

Sweating he slithered off the chair and stood a minute, then went to the sink and sluiced his head and face in tap water.

I went back ahead of him to the hole in the strongroom, from which the full light now shone. Irons and Leigh had moved the safe about another two inches. They had no more crowbars, but Ted took
over from John Irons, and slowly, with infinite stress, they made the last few inches.

Irons picked up the tyre and looped it round the built-in steel bracket that supported a shelf. Then he tried to stretch it to meet the safe. It just reached and he looped it over the safe
handle, so that the handle was being pulled round to open.

Under Irons’s directions they began to lever the safe away again so that the tension on the tyre grew until it could grow no more. Satisfied, Irons paid out the trailing ends of wire until
they were through the hole into the passage. I went out first, and the others followed, leaving Irons to fix the carpets. He did this, taking care that none of them got in the way of the handle or
the wires; then he followed us out and we all crouched down out of reach of the blast. I watched Irons fumblingly connect one of his wires to the little battery and then just touch the terminal of
the other.

The explosion in the confined space was sharp, and hit the ears like a gunshot; the basement echoed and vibrated. But none of the lights went out.

Irons led the way back in, pulled away the carpets. The tyre had slipped or been blown right off it, but the handle had turned. Irons put his hand quietly round the handle and pulled. The safe
door came open.

Of course I had seen them before in the showcases. I had seen others just as beautiful and valuable displayed, discussed, examined, auctioned. Jewels were nothing new to me. But because of what
we had done, these had come to have a special and terrible significance. All the effort of the night had been aiming at this one moment, all the preparations, all the sweat and risk and terror. A
few small glittering bits of mineral stone; to peer, to finger, to stare; it seemed ridiculous, slightly obscene. After a minute I drew back and let the three men bend over them.

Even they for a while seemed startled and without purpose, as if their ideas had not led them further than this; then Ted Sandymount picked up an attaché case, and carefully the jewels
were taken out of their boxes and dropped into the cotton wool with which the attaché case was lined. I looked at Leigh’s expression. It wasn’t triumphant yet – tension
still stretched the muscles and drew in the mouth.

John Irons was the only one who looked satisfied. While the others put away the jewels he took up a dampened cloth and began to wipe the safe door and sides and top and everywhere that could
possibly have been touched. Part of the time only he had worn gloves.

It was twenty-five minutes to four. If this trick had failed, three hours of drilling would have been running it almost too fine.

Ted Sandymount saw me look at my watch. ‘I got to do it once more. If we’re ready in ten minutes I’ll put the call through just before we skip. That’ll give us a full
half hour – thirty-five minutes – before anyone gets suspicious. Nearly through, John?’

‘Just to pack my things. Just to pack my things.’

‘You, Leigh?’

‘Ready right away.’

‘Which car shall I go in?’ I asked.

‘I’ll come with you in the Mini,’ Leigh said. ‘It’ll be safer that way.’

‘I got to deliver these,’ said Ted Sandymount, twitching as if he had a fly on his nose. ‘You come with me, John?’

‘Yes. We got to drop Len too. Do that first. Len’s had the easy street.’

‘Anything else to pick up?’ They looked at me.

‘No,’ I said quite coolly. God, was I going to become practised at this? In five hours I was due back at Whittington’s, a simple innocent girl.

Last minute searches. Anxious thoughts. Anything forgotten? A button? A fingerprint? A handkerchief? A torn coat leaving a thread of tweed behind? A cigarette end? A pencil? A footprint? A
lipstick? A laundry mark? A torch?

‘How are the two guards?’ I said to Ted.

Irons was carefully stowing his things, methodically, like a plumber at the end of his day. Ted was changing back the plug that had worked the drill. Leigh had piled the carpets in a heap, had
pushed the door of the safe shut with his boot, was now standing half out, waiting for the others, his face still stretched as if the nylon mask had pulled it out of shape.

‘Shall we go ahead of you?’ he said.

Ted screwed in the end of the plug. ‘If you like . . . No, wait. One opening of the back door is enough.’

Irons finished stowing his things. Ted sat up on his haunches, looked at his watch. ‘We’ve five minutes to wait yet. You three go up and wait in one of the showrooms while I put the
call through.’

A last look round the wrecked room. They all dragged on their masks. ‘Put something round your face,’ Leigh said to me. ‘For Pete’s sake.’

I tied the scarf round my hair so there was a piece left to go over my face. We left, went up the stairs to the ground floor. Ted walked along to the telephone office, went in. We sat on a
couple of settees in the first showroom, like prospective clients waiting for the auction to begin. The room next door was where the auction should have started in seven hours’ time.

The door opened but it wasn’t Ted.

‘You’ve not been some bloody time, you ’aven’t,’ Len said, coming up with us. ‘Two and a ’alf hours! Why, I—’

‘Shut your gob!’ said Irons.

‘Well, you can’t hardly breathe in the thing. I been half-dying in the thing!’ He put a gloved hand up inside his stocking and tried to mop his face.

We waited.

Another car in the distance, and I thought I heard a train hooting.

‘Anyone know what the fog’s like?’

‘Clear.’

‘Just our bleeding luck.’

I didn’t sit next to Leigh. Whatever we felt for each other, this was not the time to feel it.

The squeal of brakes. I looked at my watch. A quarter to four. John Irons’s cricket bag lay in the shadow like a dog at his feet. Ted had taken the all-important attaché case in the
room with him.

I heard the ting of the telephone as it was lifted. For the last time tonight the code word ‘Harrogate’ was being used. At four-fifteen there would be no call. At four-twenty the
guard at the other end would send a general alert. By four-thirty at the
very
latest the emergency squad of Safeguards would be round at the building, probably with police too. It gave us at
the most forty-five minutes – forty to be sure. No time for loitering. No time for going back for things overlooked. Pains in my stomach back now. I kept remembering I’d dropped a comb
or left my handkerchief in the strongroom; the pains got worse with each fresh twist in my brain.

Ted came out.

‘Right. Let’s go.’

Down the passage past the reception counter to the door. Ted shot the bolts back, opened it gently, peered out. A fine misty light. The faint humming noise of London even at dead of night. He
was a long time looking. Len prodded him. Ted slipped out. Len followed. Then I. Then Leigh. Then John Irons, who gently turned the door knob behind him.

Pulling off nylons. ‘I’ll thank you to keep your bleeding hands to yourself,’ Ted snarled at Len.

‘OK, OK.’

‘You go first,’ Ted said to Leigh.

Leigh took my arm. ‘All as planned for tomorrow?’

‘Sure. Sure.’

We left, stepping into the bright sodium light of Bruton Yard. Silent cars. Silent shadows, black striping the concrete. The tabby cat mewed round my legs, but I couldn’t stop to stroke
her. We walked arm in arm. Came to the narrowing mouth of the yard. Turned left into Bruton Street. A car came down, passed by us travelling slowly. Chauffeur driven. Safe. A taxi stopped at the
corner, a man paying it off. Bruton Street a mile long. The corner at last. Berkeley Square. The big showrooms and the expensive cars.
Very
bright. As light as day. Waste of electricity. We
had to walk a quarter of the way round the clock to reach the car. No word between us. We were strangers linked only by a common purpose.

Police. Two policemen stood talking at the entrance to Berkeley Street and Hay Hill.

Leigh changed sides so that he would block me from their view. ‘Cross here,’ he said.

We crossed diagonally, making for three cars still parked. The policemen had their backs to us, but at a big old car fifty yards short of the Mini, Leigh stopped.

‘Wait. I don’t want them to see us get into the car. Maybe they’ll move.’

They didn’t. They stood there talking. They stood there while the green lights went yellow, went red, went yellow-red, went green again. No traffic, but the robots worked in a dead world.
Someone was walking along the park side of the square, approaching where we were standing. Leigh put his arms round me and began to nuzzle his head against my scarved hair. A single man, walking
slowly. We didn’t look at him as he went past.

Footsteps retreated. At the same time the two policemen began to move. But they turned round and walked slowly west. We watched them go past, watched them move slowly off toward Hill Street.

‘Now.’

The last hundred yards. He went on ahead, unlocked the door of the car for me, was already whirring the starter as I came up, got in.

The engine fired, choked and stopped. It was a cold night. He tried again, and this time the engine fired and began to run.

We drove off.

Before I got home a fierce headache was setting in. When I got in I was sick, and the headache became even worse, as if my skull was opening and shutting. Leigh had it too but
not as badly. We used the last of the aspirins and lay together but it was practically impossible to sleep. I was sick again and at seven o’clock felt terrible.

Leigh was frantic because he rightly saw that the whole plan might come to bits if I didn’t turn up at nine-thirty as if nothing had happened. He cursed me for wanting to stay and cursed
himself for letting me. If I’d gone home as planned none of this would have happened: Irons had warned about the gelignite.

At seven-thirty he went out for more aspirins and gave me some in brandy, but this made me sick again. I got up at seven forty-five and had a sip or two of tea and then went back to bed
again.