“I want to hear her side of it. I can’t believe she would intentionally—”
“She’s hoodwinked you the way she does every other man, including two magistrates.” Brenda pushed her cup and saucer away with the flat of her hand. “She’s probably the ringleader, Mark. I assure you, she’s a nasty piece of work.”
“Can you allow me one hour? Where’s the harm?”
“There’s none, I suppose,” Brenda said quietly, “if it shows you how wrong you can be about some people.”
At The Lion the pub was open for business. The barman told Whitman the performance had been canceled for that day. The players were upstairs in Mikeljohn’s flat. Whitman had a drink to settle him and give him time to think. His decision to bring along the jewelry was correct, he was sure of that. The police would have to find the stuff in Mikeljohn’s possession or he would simply deny everything. Leaving the ransom note with Brenda was right, too. She would have something to show the police after she called them in an hour.
As for Amanda, he would have to get her alone and hear what she had to say. Brenda could be right, the girl might be as wicked as sin. But that walk on the beach — granted, he was drunk — had contained something sweet and decent. If she had any good in her, he might be able to appeal to that instinct, to turn the girl around.
Whitman finished his drink, accepted directions from the barman, went through a devious succession of doors, and finally climbed two flights of steps through a grotty stairwell that smelled of beer and gas fires. In response to his knock Jeremy Lake opened the door. His eyes first met and searched Whitman’s, then fell to the plastic bag. “You got the stuff? Good man!”
Whitman let himself be conducted inside. The flat was more of a loft, one large room with a low ceiling, windows on two sides, a mattress on the floor, ill-assorted furniture, a couple of closed doors. They were all there, Norrie, Amanda — and a stranger, a heavy-set man in a tight suit who occupied a chair against a wall, away from the others. “Home is the hero,” Jeremy announced. “He has met Auntie Jane and she is ours!”
Whitman allowed the bag to be taken away and given to Mikeljohn who took out one of the velvet boxes, opened it, and withdrew a diamond pendant. “Here’s a pretty thing,” said the director in the whistling voice of a Punch-and-Judy man.
The stranger got up and came across the room to stand at Mikeljohn’s shoulder. His blond hair grew low on his forehead and had been combed with a lot of water. The brutish face was of the type seen by Whitman in textbooks posing the theory that by the use of cosmetic surgery such men could be diverted from a life of crime. This one had never had the benefit. He kept his right hand in his jacket pocket.
Amanda snatched the pendant and dropped it round her neck. “Let me wear it, Norrie. Just for one day.”
Mikeljohn made no attempt to retrieve the jewel but he said, “You know what this stuff is for, my dear. And it is not for embellishing your grotesque chest.”
Whitman was wondering how to get Amanda aside for the necessary conversation. He was beginning to wonder if it mattered. The stranger was asking who would be responsible for selling the stuff. Mikeljohn suggested they divide the articles now. “Our account with your organization is how much — four thousand? Surely we can agree on what will cover that. You want to continue selling to us and we need your services.”
“Best cocaine on the south coast,” Jeremy said, laying a comradely hand on the stranger’s shoulder, removing it when the man looked at him.
It was then that somebody knocked on the door and a voice said, “Police officers.” Brenda had made it a very short hour.
Mikeljohn glanced at Whitman, saw something in his eyes. “You crafty swine,” he said softly. “You’re a plant.” He snatched the pendant from Amanda, dropped it in the bag, and hid the bag under his seat cushion. As he went to the door he said, “Leave the talking to me.”
There were two uniformed men in the hall, neither of them very large, neither armed. Good old British cops, Whitman thought. They’re going to walk in here and sort everything out with a few minutes of polite conversation. As they entered the loft, he caught a glimpse of Brenda Belziel hanging back at the top of the stairs. Their eyes met for a moment; she was frightened.
“What’s the problem, gentlemen?” Mikeljohn asked. “Are we rehearsing too loud?”
“We’ve had a report that you may have some property here that belongs to—”
“It’s under the seat cushion,” Whitman put in, anxious to be finished. “I took it from Miss Reedie and brought it here. I believe Mrs. Belziel has shown you the ransom note.”
“You are a plant,” Mikeljohn said. “Thanks very much, Amanda. Well done, Jeremy.”
“Check the man in the suit,” Whitman said. “The stuff was going to him.”
One of the officers approached the stranger. Before he could reach him the man had a gun in his hand. Nobody spoke. The officer stopped in his tracks. The occupants of the room were frozen in a tableau.
Then Brenda Belziel moved forward into the doorway.
The stranger turned his head, the officer lunged forward and caught his gun hand. Whitman shouted her name and moved to push Brenda away. He heard an explosion and felt as if someone had punched him in the back. He knelt for a moment, then fell over on his side...
Whitman opened his eyes and decided he had only been unconscious for a minute or so. There was another policeman in the room now, a helmeted Bobby up from the street. The gunman was no longer in sight, Mikeljohn and friends were grouped at one side of the room. Brenda was kneeling beside him and so was the officer who had gone for the gun.
“You’ll be all right,” she said. “There’s an ambulance on the way.”
“Sorry about this, sir,” the officer said. “I had to try for the gun. I recognized our friend — he’s a very dangerous man. We’ve done well to get him in the bag.”
Whitman thought of various things to say but speech seemed like too much trouble. Where was the bullet? Unless they got him to surgery very quickly, he realized he would be in bad shape.
Amanda was bending over him. “Why all this?” she asked. “We had a chance for something really good. Auntie Jane will never do anything with these things but keep them in a drawer.”
Whitman looked into her eyes, past the paint, into depths as unfathomable as the sea. He forced himself to speak to her. It was important. “You’re too good to be a thief,” he whispered. “I see the good.”
Her expression reminded him of his daughter’s face when an emergency phone call brought him to the high school one day years ago. She had been taken to a room beside the principal’s office after being caught in the basement with several boys. He had been shocked but able to recognize in those pretty eyes values quite different from his own. And why not? His daughter, this girl, they were individuals. Why should he expect them to see the world the way he saw it?
“I’m sorry,” Amanda said patiently, “but you’re dead-wrong about me.”
Brenda came to visit Whitman in the hospital. Never mind the National Health Service, he was in a private room with a glorious view of the ocean. He could sit up now in bed, but he was due to stay for another week. After that he would need special care.
“Nice of you to open your doors to me,” he said.
“In that big empty house? You must be joking. I only hope I can persuade you to stay on when you’re all better.”
He reached out to touch her cheek. “If they were all like you,” he told her, “doctors like me would have to earn an honest living.”