Twice Shy Read online

  He agreed to come. He hadn’t much choice. I pulled the cases for the tapes out of my pocket and showed him the labels, Oklahoma!, The King and I, West Side Story. Then I ejected the cassette which was still in the recorder and put all three of the tapes into their cases. “And we’ll take these,” I said, “to prove to Angelo that you have them.”

  He agreed to that also. He came out with me to my car, slamming his own front door behind him, and sat in the front passenger seat.

  “I’ll hold the tapes,” he said.

  I put them however on the dashboard out of his immediate reach and told him he could have them once we got to Norwich.

  It was a strange journey.

  He was a far more powerful man than I would normally have thought of opposing, yet I was discovering that I had probably always thought of myself as being weaker than I was. For the whole of my life I had gone in awe of headmasters; as a pupil, as a student, as a teacher. Even when I’d disagreed or despised or rebelled, I’d never tried actively to defeat. One could easily be chucked out of school and out of college and out of the better jobs in physics.

  Harry Gilbert couldn’t chuck me out of anything, and perhaps that was the difference. I could face his belief in his own superiority and not be intimidated by it. I could use my wits and my muscles to get him to do what I wanted. It was heady stuff. Have to be careful, I reflected, not to develop delusions of grandeur of my own.

  Angelo, I thought suddenly, feels just as I do. Feels the spreading of the wings of internal power. Feels he can do more than he realized. Sees his world isn’t as constricting as he thought. Angelo too was emerging into a new conception of ability—but in him there were no brakes.

  “There is someone there with Angelo,” I said. “My wife said ‘they.’”I spoke neutrally, without aggression.

  Gilbert sat heavily silent.

  “When Angelo came to my house,” I said, “there was another man with him. Very like Angelo in looks. Did what Angelo told him.”

  After a pause Gilbert shrugged and said, “Eddy. Angelo’s cousin. Their mothers were twins.”

  “Italian?” I said.

  Another pause. Then, “We are all Italian by descent.”

  “But born in England?”

  “Yes. Why do you ask?”

  I sighed. “Just to pass the journey.”

  He grunted but gradually a good deal of his resentment of my behavior subsided. I had no idea whether or not he considered it justified.

  Anxiety on my part didn’t need to be acted. I found myself drumming my fingers on the steering wheel when stopped by red lights and cursing long trucks which delayed my passing. By the time we got to Norwich it would be over the four hours I’d warned Angelo to expect, and of all things that I didn’t want, it was Angelo ballooning into premature rage.

  “Will you pay Mrs. O’Rorke anything for these tapes?” I said. A pause. “No.”

  “Not even without Angelo knowing?”

  He gave me a fierce sideways glare. “Angelo does what I tell him. Whether I pay or don’t pay Mrs. O’Rorke is nothing to do with him.”

  If he believed all that, I thought, he was deluding himself. Or perhaps he still wanted to believe what had so far been true. Perhaps he truly didn’t see that his days of domination over Angelo were ticking away fast.

  Just let them last, I thought, for another two hours.

  10

  The long lingering evening was slowly dying by the time we reached Norwich, though it wouldn’t be totally dark for another hour. I drove into the Keithlys’ road from the direction that would place Gilbert nearest to the house when I pulled up at the curb: Angelo had seen my car at his father’s house as I had seen his, and the sight of it would alarm him.

  “Please get out of the car as soon as I stop,” I said to Gilbert. “So that Angelo can see you.”

  He grunted, but when I pulled up he opened the door as I’d suggested and gave any watchers from behind the curtains a full view of his lumbering exit from the front seat.

  “Wait,” I said, standing up on my own side and talking to him across the top of the car. “Take the tapes.” I reached across the top of the car and gave them to him. “Hold them up,” I said, “so that Angelo can see them.”

  “You give too many orders.”

  “I don’t trust your son any more than he trusts me.”

  He gave me a bullish stare of fully revived confidence, but he did in fact turn and lift the tapes, showing them to the house.

  Behind his back I leaned down and picked up the towel-wrapped rifle, holding it longways with the stock to my chest and the flap of my jacket falling over it.

  Angelo opened the front door, shielding himself half behind it.

  “Go in,” I said to Gilbert. “This street is full of people watching through the curtains.”

  He gave an automatically alarmed look at being spied on and began to walk toward his son. I slid around the car fast and walked close behind him, almost stepping on his heels.

  “Explain,” I said urgently.

  His head lifted ominously, but he said loudly to Angelo, “Your telephone’s out of order.”

  “What?” Angelo exclaimed, opening the door a fraction wider. “It can’t be.”

  Gilbert said impatiently, “It is. Don’t be a fool. Why else would I come all this way?”

  Angelo turned away from the door and strode into the sitting room, which was where the telephone was located. I heard him pick up the receiver and rattle the cradle, and slam the instrument down again.

  “But he brought the tapes,” Gilbert said, walking to the sitting room door and showing the bright cases. “I tried them. All of them. This time they’re the real thing.”

  “Come in here, you, creep,” Angelo called.

  I propped the wrapped rifle, barrel downward to the carpet, against the small chest of drawers which stood within arm’s reach of the sitting room door and showed myself in the doorway.

  The sitting room furniture was all pushed awry. Sarah and Donna sat back-to-back in the center of the room, with their wrists and ankles strapped to the arms and legs of two of the chairs from the dining room. To one side stood Angelo, holding the Walther, with, beyond the two girls, his look-alike, Eddy. There were glasses and plates sprinkled about, and the smell of long hours of cigarette smoke.

  Sarah was facing me.

  We looked at each other with a curious lack of emotion, I noticing almost distantly the dark smudges under her eyes, the exhausted sag of her body, the strain and pain round her mouth.

  She said nothing. No doubt she considered I was showing too little concern and was too calm as usual: the message on her face wasn’t love and relief but relief and disgust.

  “Go home,” I said wearily to Angelo. “You’ve got what you wanted.”

  I prayed for him to go. To be satisfied, to be sensible, to be ruled by his father, to be approximately normal.

  Harry Gilbert began to turn from his son back toward me, saying, “That’s it, then, Angelo. We’d best be off.”

  “No,” Angelo said.

  Gilbert stopped. “What did you say?” he said.

  “I said no,” Angelo said. “This creep’s going to pay for all the trouble he’s put me to. You come here, creep.”

  Gilbert said, “No, Angelo.” He gestured to the girls. “This is enough.”

  Angelo pointed his pistol with its bulbous silencer straight at Donna’s head. “This one,” he said viciously, “has been screaming at me for hours that they’ll report me to the police, the stupid little bitch.”

  “They won’t,” I said quickly.

  “Dead right they won’t.”

  Even to Gilbert his meaning was clear. Gilbert made movements of extreme disapproval and active fear and said, “Put down the gun. Angelo, put it down.” His voice thundered with parental command and from long long habit Angelo began to obey. Even in the same second he visibly reversed his instinct; and I knew that for me it was then or never.


  I stretched out my right arm, thrust my hand down into the towel and grasped the stock of the rifle. Swung the towel off the barrel and in the same fluid movement stood in the doorway with the barrel pointing straight at Angelo and the safety catch unlocking with a click.

  “Drop it,” I said.

  They were all utterly astounded, but perhaps Angelo most of all because I’d twice played on him the same trick. The three men stood there as if frozen, and I didn’t look at Sarah, not directly.

  “Drop the pistol,” I said. He was still pointing it toward Donna.

  He couldn’t bear to drop it. Not to lose that much face.

  “I’ll shoot you,” I said.

  Even then he hesitated. I swung the barrel to the ceiling and squeezed the trigger. The noise crashed in the small room. Pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling. The sharp smell of cordite prevailed over stale cigarette, and all the mouths were open, like fish. The rifle was pointing back at his heart with the next round in the breech almost before he’d moved an inch, and he looked at it with dazed disbelief.

  “Drop the pistol,” I said. “Drop it.”

  He was still undecided. I’ll have to hit him, I thought despairingly. I don’t want to. Why won’t he drop the bloody thing? There’s nothing he can gain.

  The air seemed to be still ringing with the aftermath of explosion, but it was into silence that Sarah spoke.

  With a sort of sullen ferocity, which seemed as much directed at me as at Angelo, she said loudly, “He shot in the Olympic Games.”

  Angelo’s eyes developed doubt.

  “Drop the pistol,” I said quietly, “or I’ll shoot your hand.”

  Angelo dropped it.

  His face was full of fury and hate, and I thought him capable of flinging himself upon me regardless of consequences. I looked at him stolidly, showing no triumph, showing nothing to inflame.

  “You’ve got the tapes,” I said. “Get in the car, all three of you, and get out of my life. I’m sick of your faces.” I stepped back a pace into the hall and nodded with my head toward the front door.

  “Just get out,” I said. “One at a time. Angelo first.”

  He came toward me with his dark eyes like pits in the olive face, the light too dim now to give them wicked life. I stood back a few steps further and followed his progress to the front door, as in my own house, with the black barrel.

  “I’ll get you,” he said.

  I didn’t answer.

  He pulled open the door with the force of rage and stepped outside.

  “Now you,” I said to Harry Gilbert.

  He was almost as angry as his son, but perhaps it was fanciful of me to guess that there was also some recognition that I’d been able to stop Angelo where he couldn’t, and that that had been a good thing.

  He followed Angelo out onto the driveway and I saw them both opening the doors of Angelo’s car.

  “Now you,” I said to Eddy. “You pick up Angelo’s gun. Pick it up by the silencer. Do you know how to unload it?”

  Eddy, the carbon copy, nodded miserably.

  “Do it, then,” I said. “Very, very carefully.”

  He looked at the rifle and at Angelo getting into the car, and shook the bullets out of the clip, letting them drop on the carpet.

  “Right,” I said. “Take the pistol with you.” I gestured with the rifle barrel and jerked my head toward the open front door, and of the three of them it was Eddy who left with the least reluctance and the most speed.

  From inside the hall I watched Angelo start the engine, slam the gears into reverse and make a rough exit into the road. Once there he deliberately sideswiped my car, damaging his own rear fender in the process, and accelerated down the street as if to prove his superior manhood.

  With a feeling of terrible tension I closed the front door and went into the sitting room. Crossed to Sarah; looked at the rubber straps which fastened her wrists and unbuckled them. Unbuckled those around her ankles. Then those around Donna.

  Donna started crying. Sarah shoved herself stiffly off the chair and collapsed onto the softer contours of the sofa.

  “Do you realize how long we’ve been sitting there?” she demanded bitterly. “And before you damned well ask, yes they did untie us now and then for us to go to the bathroom.”

  “And to eat?”

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “I really wanted to know.”

  “Yes, to eat. Twice. He made me cook.”

  Donna said between sobs, “It’s been awful. Awful. You’ve no idea.”

  “They didn’t ... ?” I began anxiously.

  “No they didn’t,” Sarah said flatly. “They just sneered.”

  “Hateful,” Donna said. “Called us mugs.” She hobbled across the carpet and lowered herself gingerly into an armchair. “I hurt all over.” Tears trickled down her cheeks. I thought of Angelo’s description of “wet chick” and stifled it quickly.

  “Look,” I said, “I know you don’t feel like it, but I’d be much happier if you’d stuff a few things into a suitcase and we all left this house.”

  Donna helplessly shook her head, and Sarah said “Why?” with mutiny.

  “Angelo hated having to go. You saw him. Suppose he comes back? When he thinks we’re off guard . . . he might.”

  The idea alarmed them as much as me and also angered Sarah. “Why did you give them the pistol?” she demanded. “That was stupid. You’re such a fool.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “You can’t expect us . . .” Donna wailed.

  I said to Sarah, “I have to make a phone call. I can’t do it from here.” I indicated the dead telephone. “I’m going away in the car to do it. Do you want to come or not?”

  Sarah took stock of that rapidly and said that yes, they were coming, and despite Donna’s protests she drove her stiffly upstairs. They came down a few minutes later carrying a hold-all each, and I noticed that Sarah had put on some lipstick. I smiled at her with some of the old pleasure in seeing her resurfacing briefly, and she looked both surprised and confused.

  “Come on, then,” I said, and took the hold-alls from them to put in the trunk. “Best be off.” I fetched the rifle, once again wrapped loosely in the towel to confuse the neighbors, and stowed it in the suitcase. Checked that Donna had brought the door keys; shut the front door; drove away.

  “Where are we going?” Sarah said.

  “Where would you like?”

  “What about money?”

  “Credit cards,” I said.

  We drove a short way in a silence broken only by Donna’s occasional sniffs and sobs, going along now with lights on everywhere and the long soft evening turning to full dark.

  I pulled up beside a telephone booth and put through a collect call to the Suffolk police.

  “Is Detective Chief Superintendent Irestone there?” I said. Hopeless question but had to be asked.

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Jonathan Derry.”

  “One moment.”

  I waited through the usual mutterings and clicks, and then a voice that was still not Irestone’s said, “Mr. Derry, Chief Superintendent Irestone left instructions that if you telephoned again, your message was to be taken down in full and passed on to him directly. Chief Superintendent Irestone asked me to say that owing to, er, a hitch in communications he was not aware that you had tried to reach him so often, not until this afternoon. I am Detective Inspector Robson. I came to your house with the chief superintendent, if you remember.”

  “Yes,” I said. A man nearing forty, fair-headed, reddish skin.

  “If you tell me why you rang, sir?”

  “You’ll take notes?”

  “Yes, sir. And a recording.”

  “Right. Well . . . the man who came to my house with a pistol is called Angelo Gilbert. His father is Harry Gilbert, who runs bingo halls all over Essex and northeast London. The man who came with Angelo is his cousin Eddy—don’t know his last name. He does what Angelo tell
s him.”

  I paused and Inspector Robson said, “Is that the lot, sir?”

  “No, it isn’t. At this moment all three of them are traveling from Norwich in Angelo’s car.” I told him the make, the color, the number, and that it had a bashed-in rear fender. “They are probably going to Harry Gilbert’s house in Welwyn Garden City. I think Angelo also lives there, but perhaps not Eddy.” I gave him the address. “They should arrive there in about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half. In the car there is a Walther .22 pistol with a silencer. There may or may not be bullets in it. It may or may not be the pistol which Angelo waved at me, but it looks identical. It might be the pistol which killed Christopher Norwood.”

  “That’s very useful, sir,” Robson said.

  “There’s one more thing . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t think Harry Gilbert knows anything at all about Chris Norwood’s death. I mean, I don’t think he even knows he’s dead. If you go to arrest Angelo, Harry Gilbert won’t know why.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “That’s all,” I said.

  “Er,” he said. “The chief superintendent will be in touch with you.”

  “All right, but—” I hesitated.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I’d be glad to know—”

  “Just a minute, sir,” he interrupted, and kept me hanging on through some lengthy unintelligible background talk. “Sorry sir, you were saying?”

  “You remember I sent Angelo some computer tapes with games on them?”

  “Yes, I do. We went to Cambridge main post office and alerted the man whose job it was to hand out letters-to-be-called-for, but unfortunately he went for his tea break without mentioning it to anyone, and during that short period your package was collected. A girl clerk handed it over. We didn’t find out until it was too late. It was . . . infuriating.”

  “Mm,” I said. “Well, Angelo came back with more threats, demanding the real tapes, and I’ve just given them to him. Only ...”