Ken Follett - Paper Money

The girl went out and shut the door.

Laski exploded. "What the devil are you doing here? Nothing could be more dangerous! I've already had the newspapers on, asking me about you and about Fitzpeterson-did you know he tried to kill himself?"

"Calm down. Keep your hair on," Cox told him.

"Calm down? The whole thing is a disaster! I've lost everything, and if I'm seen with you I'll end up in jail-"

Cox took a long stride forward, grabbed Laski by the throat, and shook him. "Shut your mouth," he growled. He threw him backward in his chair. "Now, listen. I want your help."

"No way," Laski muttered.

"Shut up! I want your help, and you're going to give it, or I'll make bloody sure you do go to jail. Now you know I done this job this morning-a currency van."

"I know no such thing."

Cox ignored that. "Well, I've got nowhere to hide the money, so I'm going to put it in your bank."

"Don't be ridiculous," Laski said lightly. Then he frowned. "How much is it?"

"Just over a million."

"Where?"

"Outside in the van."

Laski jumped to his feet. "You've got a million pounds in stolen money, outside here in a fucking van?"

"Yes."

"You are insane." Laski's thoughts were racing. "What form is the money in?"

"Assorted used notes."

"Are they in the original containers?"

"I'm not that daft. They've been transferred to packing cases."

"Serial numbers out of sequence?"

"You're getting the idea slowly. If you don't get a move on they'll tow the van away for parking on a yellow line."

Laski scratched his head. "How will you carry it into the vault?"

"I got six of the boys out there."

"I can't let six of your roughnecks carry all that money into my vault! The staff will suspect-"

"They're in uniform-Navy surplus jackets, trousers, shirts and ties. They look like security guards, Felix. If you want to play twenty questions, leave it till afterward, eh?"

Laski decided. "All right, get moving." He ushered Cox out and followed him as far as Carol's desk. "Ring down to the vault," he told the girl. "Tell them to prepare to take in a consignment of cash immediately. I will be dealing with the paperwork personally. And give me an outside line on my phone."

He strode back into his office, picked up the phone, and dialed the Bank of England. He looked at his watch. It was three twenty-five. He got through to Mr. Ley.

"It's Laski here," he said.

"Ah, yes?" The banker was cautious.

Laski forced himself to sound calm. "I've sorted out this little problem, Ley. The necessary cash is in my vault. Now I can arrange delivery immediately, as you suggested earlier; or you can inspect today and take delivery tomorrow."

"Um." Ley thought for a moment. "I don't think either will be necessary, Laski. It would rather throw us to have to count so much money this late in the afternoon. If you can deliver first thing in the morning, we'll clear the check tomorrow."

"Thank you." Laski decided to rub salt in the wound. "I'm sorry to have irritated you so much, earlier today."

"Perhaps I was a little brusque. Good-bye, Laski."

Laski hung up. He was still thinking fast. He reckoned he could drum up about a hundred thousand in cash overnight. Cox could probably equal that from his clubs. They could swap that cash for two hundred thousand of the stolen notes. It was just another precaution: if all the notes he delivered tomorrow were too worn to be reissued someone might wonder at the coincidence of a theft one day and a deposit the next. A leavening of good-condition currency would allay that suspicion.

He seemed to have covered everything. He allowed himself to relax for a moment. I've done it again, he thought: I've won. A laugh of sheer triumph escaped from his throat.

Now to supervise the details. He had better go down to the vault to provide reassurance to his no doubt bemused staff. And he wanted to see Cox and his crew off the premises fast.

Then he would phone Ellen.

Ellen Hamilton had been at home almost all day. The shopping trip she had told Felix about was invented: she just needed an excuse for going to see him. She was a very bored woman. The trip to London had not taken long: on her return she had changed her clothes, redone her hair, and taken much longer than necessary to prepare a lunch of cottage cheese, salad, fruit, and black coffee without sugar. She had washed her dishes, scorning the dishwasher for so few items and sending Mrs. Tremlett upstairs to vacuum-clean. She watched the news and a soap opera on television; began to read an historical novel, and put it down after five pages; went from room to room in the house tidying things that did not need to be tidied; and went down to the pool for a swim, changing her mind at the last minute.

Now she stood naked on the tiled floor of the cool summerhouse, her swimsuit in one hand and her dress in the other, thinking: If I can't make up my mind whether or not to go swimming, how will I ever summon the willpower to leave my husband?

She dropped the clothes and let her shoulders sag. There was a full-length mirror on the wall, but she did not look in it. She took care of her appearance out of scruple, not vanity: she found mirrors quite resistible.

She wondered what it would be like to swim in the nude. Such things had been unheard of when she was young: besides, she had always been inhibited. She knew this, and did not fight it, for she actually liked her inhibitions-they gave to her lifestyle a shape and constancy which she needed.

The floor was deliriously cool. She was tempted to lie down and roll over, enjoying the feel of the cold tiles on her hot skin. She calculated the risk of Pritchard or Mrs. Tremlett walking in on her, and decided it was too great.

She got dressed again.

The summerhouse was quite high up. From its door one could see most of the grounds-there were nine acres. It was a delightful garden, created at the beginning of the last century, eccentrically landscaped and planted with dozens of different species of trees. It had given her much pleasure, but lately it had palled, like everything else.

The place was at its best in the cool of the afternoon. A light breeze set Ellen's printed cotton dress flapping like a flag. She walked past the pool into a copse, where the leaves filtered the sunlight and made shifting patterns on the dry earth.

Felix said she was uninhibited, but of course he was wrong. She had simply made an area in her life where constancy was sacrificed for the sake of joy. Besides, it was no longer gauche to have a lover, provided one was discreet; and she was extremely discreet.

The trouble was, she liked the taste of freedom. She realized that she was at a dangerous age. The women's magazines she flicked through (but never actually read) were constantly telling her that this was when a woman added up the years she had left, decided they were shockingly few, and determined to fill them with all the things she had missed so far. The trendy, liberated young writers warned her that disappointment lay in that direction. How would they know? They were just guessing, like everyone else.

She suspected it was nothing to do with age. When she was seventy she would be able to find a lively nonagenarian to lust after her, if at that age she still cared. Nor was it anything to do with the menopause, which was well behind her. It was simply that every day she found Derek a little less attractive and Felix a little more. It had reached the point where the contrast was too much to bear.

She had let both of them know what the situation was, in her indirect manner. She smiled as she recalled how thoughtful each had looked after she had delivered her veiled ultimatums. She knew her men: each would analyze what she had said, understand after a while, and congratulate himself on his perspicacity. Neither would know he was being threatened.