Then he thought of Sargon in his office overlooking the boxing-ring. They would all be there now, at their wits end – Cowley, Quintex, Elias the Greek – heads bowed, desperate to account for the double failure. They would try to call on Bentley’s mother, and his sister Beth. He was glad that he’d moved them to safety, though for him that was a usual precaution before a job. Then, with no other leads, they would wait in his own room next to the Spread Eagle and when he didn’t appear, trash it. Sargon would contact tougher men better trained to seek out and kill. And it would take a hard man to get Bentley.
His mother was hard like himself, and responsible for creating him in her own image. But Beth, his sister, was guileless, a teacher by vocation who never quite believed the mountain of circumstantial evidence that spoke – or rather screamed – of her brother’s fifteen years of crime. He was Uncle Ben to her fatherless child and the nearest thing either of them had to a family.
Within the church the mourners had gone, but a new set immediately invaded the space behind him. An older crowd this time, milling around a sharp voice that lectured them on city churches. As a body they marched into one of the side chapels, leaving Bentley to contemplate the piles of clothing draped over the last pew. He took off his overcoat and exchanged it for one that was colourful and loud, with a bobble hat to match. Then he found a scarf for which he had nothing to offer in exchange. More confident now, he set off to look for his car, hoping that the police had not yet traced it. Once he looked back, and in his mind saw his own name, Philip Bentley – for Philip was his name also – on a similar order of service. But the church was black and desolate and he knew of no-one, besides his sister, who would remotely wish to hand out anything that had to do with him.
An hour later he was still driving aimlessly. Then he realised that the petrol in his tank was a precious commodity that could not be wasted. Distance equated with motorway access, so he sped north, hitting the M11. Someone had once told him that he would never like East Anglia because the sort of cities he frequented did not exist there. So when the choice of the Midlands or Norwich presented itself he chose the latter. For mile after mile he saw only trees, and black spaces that were fields. Apprehensively, he was confronting the unknown. He stopped once for petrol, but the lights around him were just an oasis in a desert of darkness. Driving on, there were stars above, brighter than he had ever noticed before. Quietly, insidiously, tiredness gripped his body and stilled his mind. Sargon’s son behind the glass became no more than the soft movement of a shadow, the case lying on the seat beside him almost an irrelevance. His light-headedness encouraged him to drive on, around the outpost of the city that was Norwich, beyond the airport, eventually into deeper blackness. He negotiated tiny villages, faintly pocked with light and, linking them, narrow lanes across which bats and night owls flew. He came to a sign marked ‘to the beach’ and followed it into a car park in which stood an abandoned caravan and a cart bearing a load of waste under a tarpaulin. He drove to its furthest boundary, marked by a row of white posts, drawing up to them as far as he could go. He switched off the engine. Then he slumped over the wheel and slept.
Sargon sat behind an antique rosewood desk with his legs stretched out between the pillars. On the desk was an open and empty briefcase. The lamp that he had set up to examine its contents, of which there were just a few meagre banknotes, he now trained on Cranford’s face. Looking from behind, across the boy’s shoulder, Bentley observed Sargon’s impatiently mincing feet which, given their surroundings, resembled the maw of a predatory crab. Bentley, who had been amused by this often enough, wondered if Cranford had made the same association. But perhaps he had other thoughts on his mind right now. Bentley knew what those movements of the feet presaged; but Cranford was too new for that, and had not calculated the odds.
With a sudden thrust of his arm, Sargon swept the case forward. It crashed against Cranford’s knees and fell gaping to the floor. Bentley leaned forward and tapped the boy’s shoulder. His voice was neutral. ‘Pick it up, son, and put it back – open – on the desk.’ As Cranford obeyed Sargon rose from his seat, rounded the desk and stood beside him, placing his hand on the trembling boy’s shoulder. ‘Fill it,’ he said. Cranford squinted up at him, at first mystified, then slowly began to feel in his pockets. Into the bag he put his comb, his keys and his wallet. ‘That doesn’t fill it,’ Sargon said, at the same time delivering a vicious thrust to the side of Cranford’s head with his fist. Bentley leaned forward again. ‘He means everything – everything you possess – son,’ he said. As the case began to fill, Sargon returned to his seat behind the desk.
When Cranford had placed the last item – his underpants – in the case, Sargon withdrew from the desk a small package bound with pink ribbon, and handed it to him. He spoke over the boy’s head. ‘A fair exchange, wouldn’t you say, Philip?’ ‘Open it,’ Bentley said to Cranford, poking his shoulder.
Two minutes later Cranford stood before them, shivering, in a pair of blood red boxing shorts.
Sargon rose and looked out of the window at the ring below. ‘Heh,’ he said, ‘Connors must have read our thoughts. He’s already down there waiting for you.’ ‘You’ll find socks and boots in the ring,’ Bentley said. Sargon turned to Bentley. ‘Can we afford one more this year?’ he asked. Bentley shrugged. ‘It’s what we agreed with the fuzz,’ he replied.
Sargon looked searchingly into Cranford’s face. For several seconds the room and the people in it seemed frozen in time. Then, just for a moment, the chiselled features seemed to relax, transforming themselves into something that might have passed – at another time and in another place – for fatherly concern.
‘There’s a lock-up in Islington, green door, behind Brent’s place. I’m sorry, Mr Sargon, really sorry.’
‘Take him down, Philip,’ Sargon said, ‘but this time, use your judgement.’
When the noise had ceased Sargon looked at the clock. Twenty minutes had passed. The room, like the building, was now cold and silent. He sorted the papers on his desk and placed his pen on top of the pile. Then he went to the window. What he saw did not at first seem to please him, then he smiled to himself. ‘Philip, Philip,’ he muttered reprovingly under his breath.
With the dawn light the four white posts of the boxing-ring turned into the painted fence in front of Bentley’s car, the agitated figures outside it into the twisted trunks of young Norfolk pines planted between the car park and the sea. But something more significant, at that moment, had caught his eye and made him reach for the gun that he had hidden under the folded coat beside him. Parked alongside was a black Mondeo, just like Sargon’s. He opened his door and crept round the bonnet, close to the ground, covering the other car with his gun. But the car was empty. Moreover, it was not Sargon’s.