it, Tony would have slit my throat, he thought. He shuddered. Tony Cox
was a hard bastard. He had a bit of a kink about punishment.
Jesse zipped up the overalls. He knew about eyewitness descriptions.
The police would by now be looking for a very big, vicious-looking
character with desperate eyes, wearing an orange shirt and jeans.
Anyone actually looking at Jesse would just see a mechanic.
He picked up the trade plates. The string had gone-he must have dropped
it. He looked around the floor. Damn, there was always a piece of rope
floating around on the floor of a van! He opened the toolbox and found a
length of oily string tied around the jack.
He got out and went to the front of the van. He worked carefully, afraid
to botch the job by hurrying. He tied the red-and-white trade plate over
the original license plate, just as garages usually did when taking a
commercial vehicle for a road test. He stood back and examined his work.
It looked fine.
He went to the rear of the van and repeated the job on the back plate.
It was done. He breathed more easily.
“Changing the plates, then?”
Jesse jumped and turned. His heart sank. The voice belonged to a
policeman.
For Jesse it was the last straw. He could think of no more wrinkles, no
more plausible lies, no more ruses. His instincts deserted him. He did
not have a single thing to say.
The copper walked toward him. He was quite young, with ginger sideburns
and a freckled nose.
“Trouble?”
Jesse was amazed to see him smile. A ray of hope penetrated his
petrified brain. He found his tongue. “Plates worked loose,” he said.
“Just tightened them up.”
The copper nodded. “I used to drive one of these,” he said
conversationally. “Easier than driving a car. Lovely jobs.”
It crossed Jesse’s mind that the man might be playing a sadistic
cat-and-mouse game, knowing perfectly well that Jesse was the driver of
the hit-and-run van, but pretending ignorance so as to shock him at the
last minute.
“Easy when they’re running right,” he said.
The sweat on his face felt cold.
“Well, you’ve done it now. On your way, you’re blocking the road.”
Like a sleepwalker, Jesse climbed into the cab and started the engine.
Where was the copper’s car? Did he have his radio switched off? Had the
overalls and the trade plates fooled him?
If he were to walk around to the front of the van and see the dent made
by the bumper of the Marina.
Jesse eased his foot off the clutch and drove slowly along the service
road. He stopped at the end and looked both ways. In his wing mirror, he
saw the policeman at the far end getting into a patrol car.
Jesse pulled into the road and the patrol car was lost from view. He
wiped his brow. He was trembling.
“Gawd, stone the crows,” he breathed.
EVAN JONES was drinking whiskey before lunch for the first time in his
life. There was a reason. He had a Code, and he had broken it–also for
the first time. He was explaining this to his friend, Arny Matthews, but
he was not doing too well, for he was unused to whiskey, and the first
double was already reaching his brain.
“It’s my upbringing, see,” he said in his musical Welsh accent. “Strict
chapel. We lived by the Book. Now, a man can exchange one Code for
another, but he can’t shake the habit of obedience. See?” “I see,” said
Arny, who did not see at all. Evan was manager of the London branch of
the Cotton Bank of Jamaica, and Arny was a senior actuary at Fire and
General Marine insurance, and they lived in adjoining mock-Tudor houses
in Woking, Surrey. Their friendship was shallow, but permanent.
“Bankers have a Code,” Evan continued. “Do you know, it caused quite a
stir when I told my parents I wanted to be a banker. In South Wales the
grammar-school boys are expected to become teachers, or ministers, or
Coal Board clerks, or trade union official–but not bankers.”
“My mother didn’t even know what an actuary was,” said Arny