his tongue with an effort.
“You’ll get your instructions on the plane from a man called Tom Luther.”
On the plane! What did that mean? Would this Tom Luther be a passenger, or what? Eddie said: “But what do you want me to do?”
“Shut up. Luther will tell you. And you’d better follow his orders to the letter, if you want to see your wife again.”
“How do I know—”
“And one more thing. Don’t call the police. It won’t do you any good. But if you do call them, I’ll fuck her just to be mean.”
“You bastard, I’ll—”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER THREE
H arry Marks was the luckiest man alive.
His mother had always told him he was lucky. Although his father had been killed in the Great War, he was lucky to have had a strong and capable mother to bring him up. She cleaned offices for a living, and all through the Slump she had never been out of work. They lived in a tenement in Battersea, with a cold-water tap on each landing and outside toilets, but they were surrounded by good neighbors who helped one another through times of trouble. Harry had a knack of escaping from trouble! When boys were being thrashed at school, the teacher’s cane would break just before he got to Harry. Harry could fall under a horse and cart and have them pass over him without touching him.
It was his love of jewelry that had made him a thief. As an adolescent he had loved to walk along the opulent shopping streets of the . West End and look in the windows of jewelers’ shops. He was enraptured by the diamonds and precious stones glinting on dark velvet pads under the bright display lights. He liked them for their beauty, but also because they symbolized a kind of life he had read about in books, a life of spacious country houses with broad green lawns, where pretty girls with names like Lady Penelope and Jessica Chumley played tennis all afternoon and came in panting for tea.
He had been apprenticed to a jeweler, but he had been bored and restless, and he left after six months. Mending broken watch straps and enlarging wedding rings for overweight wives had no glamour. But he had learned to tell a ruby from a red garnet, a natural pearl from a cultured one, and a modern brilliant-cut diamond from a nineteenth-century old mine cut. He had also discovered the difference between an appropriate setting and an ugly one, a graceful design and a tasteless piece of ostentation; and the ability to discriminate had further inflamed his lust for beautiful jewelry and his longing for the style of life that went with it.
He eventually found a way to satisfy both desires by making use of girls such as Rebecca Maugham-Flint.
He had met Rebecca at Ascot. He often picked up rich girls at race meetings. The open air and the crowds made it possible for him to hover between two groups of young racegoers in such a way that everyone thought he was part of the other group. Rebecca was a tall girl with a big nose, dreadfully dressed in a ruched jersey dress and a Robin Hood hat with a feather in it. None of the young men around her paid any attention to her, and she was pathetically grateful to Harry for talking to her.
He had not pursued the acquaintanceship right away, for it was best not to seem eager. But when he ran into her a month later, at an art gallery, she greeted him like an old friend and introduced him to her mother.
Girls such as Rebecca were not supposed to go unchaperoned to cinemas and restaurants with boys, of course; only shopgirls and factory workers did that. So they would pretend to their parents that they were going out in a crowd; and to make it look right, they would generally begin the evening at a cocktail party. Afterward they could go off discreetly in pairs. This suited Harry ideally: since he was not officially “courting” Rebecca, her parents saw no need to look closely into his background, and they never questioned the vague lies he told about a country house in Yorkshire, a
“You’ll get your instructions on the plane from a man called Tom Luther.”
On the plane! What did that mean? Would this Tom Luther be a passenger, or what? Eddie said: “But what do you want me to do?”
“Shut up. Luther will tell you. And you’d better follow his orders to the letter, if you want to see your wife again.”
“How do I know—”
“And one more thing. Don’t call the police. It won’t do you any good. But if you do call them, I’ll fuck her just to be mean.”
“You bastard, I’ll—”
The line went dead.
CHAPTER THREE
H arry Marks was the luckiest man alive.
His mother had always told him he was lucky. Although his father had been killed in the Great War, he was lucky to have had a strong and capable mother to bring him up. She cleaned offices for a living, and all through the Slump she had never been out of work. They lived in a tenement in Battersea, with a cold-water tap on each landing and outside toilets, but they were surrounded by good neighbors who helped one another through times of trouble. Harry had a knack of escaping from trouble! When boys were being thrashed at school, the teacher’s cane would break just before he got to Harry. Harry could fall under a horse and cart and have them pass over him without touching him.
It was his love of jewelry that had made him a thief. As an adolescent he had loved to walk along the opulent shopping streets of the . West End and look in the windows of jewelers’ shops. He was enraptured by the diamonds and precious stones glinting on dark velvet pads under the bright display lights. He liked them for their beauty, but also because they symbolized a kind of life he had read about in books, a life of spacious country houses with broad green lawns, where pretty girls with names like Lady Penelope and Jessica Chumley played tennis all afternoon and came in panting for tea.
He had been apprenticed to a jeweler, but he had been bored and restless, and he left after six months. Mending broken watch straps and enlarging wedding rings for overweight wives had no glamour. But he had learned to tell a ruby from a red garnet, a natural pearl from a cultured one, and a modern brilliant-cut diamond from a nineteenth-century old mine cut. He had also discovered the difference between an appropriate setting and an ugly one, a graceful design and a tasteless piece of ostentation; and the ability to discriminate had further inflamed his lust for beautiful jewelry and his longing for the style of life that went with it.
He eventually found a way to satisfy both desires by making use of girls such as Rebecca Maugham-Flint.
He had met Rebecca at Ascot. He often picked up rich girls at race meetings. The open air and the crowds made it possible for him to hover between two groups of young racegoers in such a way that everyone thought he was part of the other group. Rebecca was a tall girl with a big nose, dreadfully dressed in a ruched jersey dress and a Robin Hood hat with a feather in it. None of the young men around her paid any attention to her, and she was pathetically grateful to Harry for talking to her.
He had not pursued the acquaintanceship right away, for it was best not to seem eager. But when he ran into her a month later, at an art gallery, she greeted him like an old friend and introduced him to her mother.
Girls such as Rebecca were not supposed to go unchaperoned to cinemas and restaurants with boys, of course; only shopgirls and factory workers did that. So they would pretend to their parents that they were going out in a crowd; and to make it look right, they would generally begin the evening at a cocktail party. Afterward they could go off discreetly in pairs. This suited Harry ideally: since he was not officially “courting” Rebecca, her parents saw no need to look closely into his background, and they never questioned the vague lies he told about a country house in Yorkshire, a
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