The Bank Job (2 page)

‘
You
fit that description,’ he hissed between uneven little teeth. ‘And now the police want to speak to you.’

He didn’t want to do this.

‘It’ll be all right,’ the police officer assured him, clapping a heavy hand on Kevin Patterson’s shoulder. ‘Just walk along slowly, take your time. There’s no need for a snap decision.’

Kevin took a crumpled handkerchief from his jacket pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. His shirt was sticking to his back, its armpits soaked through.

He had already been shown the sports bag. ‘I . . . I really can’t be sure,’ he’d stammered. ‘It
might
be that one. I didn’t really take too much notice.’

The police officer had smiled encouragingly. ‘Don’t worry about it, Mr Patterson. It’s easy to forget details when you’re under that sort of pressure.’

But they
wanted
him to remember, Kevin knew that. What if he got it wrong? What if he couldn’t correctly identify the man they had arrested for the robbery? Would he track Kevin down?

‘You need to look closely at every man in the line-up, Mr Patterson,’ the policeman told him. ‘When you are certain that you know the right one, simply tap him on the shoulder. Can you do that?’

He was a coward. Kevin knew that even as he nodded.
I’ll never forget the look in his eyes
, he’d told them afterwards. And they had written that down, asked him to sign the statement.

And it was true. He’d woken up several times in the darkness, that nightmare figure looming over him, the shotgun close to Kevin’s face.

There were five men already standing in a line, all staring straight ahead, when William Lorimer was escorted into the room at Police Headquarters. The student rubbed sweating palms against his trousers as he took the vacant space between two of the men.

They thought he was the bank robber! William’s stomach lurched uneasily. How could this be happening? He stared curiously at the others, dressed in two-piece suits, just like himself. They would be police officers or ordinary men brought in off the street – wasn’t that how it worked? He hadn’t a clue, really. Just what he’d seen in TV dramas. Not one of the others in the line turned to look his way. Was that a bad sign? Did
they
all think he was guilty of the robbery?

‘Please keep looking straight ahead, arms by your side,’ a voice commanded and William stared at the glass wall in front of him, wondering, even as his heart thumped within his chest, if it was actually a two-way mirror, unseen people watching his every move.

A door on his left opened and he resisted the temptation to turn his head. Somebody was walking slowly past the assembled men and, as he passed by William, the student saw the man hesitate, staring into his face as though searching for something.

For a moment their eyes met and William could see fear in the older man’s eyes.

It wasn’t me!
he wanted to blurt out.
You’ve got the wrong man!

Then an unexpected sense of pity came with the sudden thought: what a terrible ordeal this poor soul must have suffered in that armed raid.

The old chap blinked and moved on.

William held his breath. Would he come back along the line? Pick him out once he had looked at all the others?

Time seemed to stand still as the man walked out of his vision.

‘That’s the man!’

William’s heart leapt. Was he pointing at him?

He tried to swallow but his mouth was dry.

‘All right, sir.’ The CID officer who had brought him into the room was suddenly holding William by the elbow, hustling him quickly away.

‘What? Where are we going?’ William tried to turn and look at the older man who had walked past him, wanting to explain, but he was taken firmly by the elbow and led round a corner, away from the room with the glass wall. He heard the sound of a door closing behind them and shivered. Was it releasing him or shutting him in?

‘Well done, Mr Patterson!’

Kevin felt the clap on his shoulder. He rummaged for his handkerchief to blow his nose, a sudden urge to burst into tears now that it was all over.

‘So pleased you managed to identify him,’ the officer beamed at Kevin. ‘Such a difficult thing to do when he’d been wearing a balaclava.’

Kevin nodded. It hadn’t been as easy as he’d expected it to be but once he spotted the tall man with the ice blue eyes he knew.

‘Cup of tea, sir?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ Kevin replied, though what he really needed more than anything was to sit down somewhere before his legs gave way beneath him.

‘Think that manager of yours had you tried and convicted already,’ the plain-clothes police officer told William as he ushered him along a narrow corridor, past a row of interview rooms and round a corner. The student glanced as a uniformed officer passed them by, a bunch of keys dangling from his belt. Was this where the police cells were located? Was that his destination? William hesitated, gripped by a claustrophobic fear of being enclosed in a tiny dungeon.

‘Just along here, sir.’ The man by his side held out a hand indicating a set of double doors.

William looked at the men and women he could see sitting around tables. Several were in uniform, many dressed in suits or even jeans and T-shirts. Off-duty cops? Undercover officers? William Lorimer’s eyes were everywhere, seeking out some clue as to who these people were.

‘Sorry you had to go through that, Mr Lorimer. The description our witness gave . . . ’ The officer smiled and shrugged, ushering William to a table.

‘You mean there was a bank robber who looked just like me?’ William’s eyebrows rose in astonishment as he sat down in the police canteen.

‘Well, we had a pretty good idea who it was when we brought him in for questioning,’ the man chuckled. ‘Can’t say more than that.’ He tapped the side of his nose.

William returned his smile, the tension ebbing away.
What an idea
, he thought.
I look like a bank robber, or a bank robber looks like me. Appearance and reality
, he mused. And, as he looked around him, the student understood that this was what these ordinary-looking men and women must do for a living: identifying and seeking out criminals who preyed on the innocent folk in society. Studying History of Art suddenly seemed tame stuff compared to the sorts of work these people undertook on a daily basis.

‘What’s it like?’ William asked, his curiosity aroused. ‘Being a police officer, I mean?’

The detective looked amused by the question. ‘Do you really want to know?’

He turned slightly and pointed at a recruitment poster on the wall.

‘There’s one way of finding out, young Lorimer,’ he grinned. ‘Ever thought about it?’

Now return to the present with an extract from the latest Lorimer case, out in hardback, trade paperback, epub and audio in March 2015:

T
hey called it ‘the splash’; though the boat that crept silently, oars dipping lightly in and out of the water creating myriad bubbles of phosphorescence, made little sound at all. It was vital to keep quiet; the time for frightening the fish would not come until the net was properly laid across the mouth of the burn. After that the oars would be raised high and brought down with force, driving the sea trout from their shadowy lairs straight into the trap. It was illegal, of course, had been for decades, but that did not stop more intrepid poachers sneaking in at dead of night and lying in wait for the fish. Unfair, unsporting, the fishery bodies claimed, though most folk here, on the island of Mull, recognised the thrill of rowing under the stars and risking some wrath from the law enforcers.

Ewan Angus Munro glanced back over his shoulder to see his son playing out the last of the splash net; the ancient cork floats now in a perfect arc across this narrow neck of water. Young Ewan looked towards his father and nodded; the first part of the deed was done and now all that remained was to ensure that the fish would be scared out from their hiding places by the sudden noise of oars thrashing on the surface so that they would rush towards the net.

The old man turned the boat with an expertise that came from many years of practice, then headed back towards the shallow channel. He raised the oars, resting them in the rowlocks, water dripping like molten rain from their blades. The small craft was allowed to drift a little before Ewan Angus turned to his son again, the eye contact and nod a definite signal to begin the second stage of their night’s work.

Young Ewan Angus stood, legs apart, perfectly balanced in the centre of the boat, one oar raised high above his shoulder as the older man watched him, eyes full of approval. The boy had been given more than just his father’s names: his flair for the splash, too, had been passed down from father to son.

Across the marshy strand full of bog cotton and sweet-smelling myrtle sat a small white cottage. A swift glance showed him that there was no light on anywhere; the holiday folk were doubtless sound asleep, oblivious to the small drama being played out yards from their front door.

The sound of the splash seemed magnified as it disrupted the stillness, echoing over the bay. The young man heaved the oar again and again, each whack making his body stiffen with fear and a sort of bravado. If they were caught they’d lose both the net and the boat, a heavy price to pay for a night of fun and a good catch of sea trout, fish that fetched a decent price at the back doors of the best hotel kitchens.

Several times the boat was rowed up and down, followed by a series of splashes until the old man raised his callused hand to call a halt. Now it was time to wait and see if the fish had indeed been scared witless enough to swim towards their doom.

Once more the old man rowed along the line of corks, his son lifting the net to see if anything lingered below.

‘A beauty,’ the boy whispered, raising the net to reveal a good-sized sea trout struggling in the brown mesh.

‘Ten pounder at least!’ he went on, freeing the huge fish where its gills had caught and hurling it into a wooden box below his feet.

‘Be-wheesht and get the net up,’ his father hissed, though the grin on his face showed how pleased he was with their first catch of the night. The old man bent towards the struggling fish, his fist around the priest, a wooden club that had been in the family for generations. One swift blow and the fish lay lifeless in the box, its silvery scales gleaming in the night.

One by one, others joined the fated sea trout as the two men made their laborious way along the edge of the net.

‘My, a grand haul, the night, Faither,’ Young Ewan Angus exclaimed, his voice still hushed for fear of any sound carrying over the water.

‘Aye, no’ bad,’ his father agreed, a contented smile on his face. One of the middling fish would be wrapped in layers of bracken and left in the porch of Calum Mhor, the police sergeant. A wee thank you for turning his continual blind eye to the nocturnal activities taking place down the road from Craignure. Mrs Calum had guests staying and she’d be fair pleased to serve them a fresh sea trout for their dinner. It was universally acknowledged here on the island that the pink fish was far superior in flavour to the coarser salmon, particularly those that had been farmed.

‘My, here’s a big one!’

The young man staggered as he tried to haul in the final part of the splash net. ‘I can hardly lift it!’ he exclaimed.

‘Must be caught on a rock,’ the old man grumbled, his mouth twisting in a moue of disgust. If they had to tear the net to release it then it would take hours of work to mend, but the operation depended on being in and out of these waters as quickly as they could manage. Hanging about was not an option in case the Men from the Revenue had decided on a little night-time excursion of their own.

Suddenly the young man bent down in the boat, hands gripping the gunwales as he peered into the depths below.

His brow furrowed at the rounded mass swaying beneath the surface, rags of bladderwrack shifting back and forwards with the motion of the waves. Then, as his eyes focused on the ascending shape, Ewan Angus Munro saw pale tendrils that had once been fingers of flesh and one thin arm floating upwards.

He screamed, and covered his mouth as the sickness rose in his throat, then stumbled backwards. The boy flung out his arms, desperate to grasp hold of something solid to break his fall but all he felt under his hands were the wet bodies of slithering fish.

‘What the . . . ?’ Ewan Angus turned, an oath dying on his lips as the boat rocked violently, small waves dashing over the bow.

Wordlessly, his son pointed to the waters below.

Then, as the old man peered over the side of the boat, he saw the body rising to the surface, its passage out to sea impeded by their net.

Later, Ewan Angus was to feel shame, but then, under the eyes of twinkling stars, all he felt was a blind panic and a need to get away as fast as they could.

His son had blubbered a little, protesting as they’d manhandled the corpse over the side of the boat, his groans silenced by a wrathful look from the old fisherman. They had laid the boy on the grass, far enough from the water’s edge so that the incoming tide could not draw it back beneath its cold waves.

‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ Young Ewan Angus had whispered, looking up at his father who had simply nodded, the sigh of regret stifled on his closed lips.

Then, as he’d pulled hard on the oars, putting distance between the land and their boat, he tried to assure himself that they had done the right thing after all. Someone would find him in the brightness of the morning light, he’d told the boy.

And what good would it do them to call the polis? They’d lose everything: fish, net, boat, the lot.

Yet, as Ewan Angus Munro made for the safety of his mooring several miles along the shoreline, his son still looking stubbornly astern, refusing to meet his father’s eye, he knew he had lost something far more precious.