“Get going,” she said softly. “We’ve wasted enough time already.”
“But tell me why!”
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“Later. Are you going to change clothes with him ?” There was a fixed, awful little smile
on her lips now, and her knuckle showed white as she took in the slack of the trigger. I was
one heart-beat away from being shot. I knew it, and she could see I knew it.
“Yes.”
She relaxed, and the smile went away.
“Hurry, Johnny.”
With cold sweat on my face I walked over to where he was lying and began to strip him.
Apart from his broken neck he wasn’t hurt and hadn’t bled. I changed into his clothes while
she watched me, the gun covering me. Then I got my clothes on him. It was a gruesome job,
but I did it. But when I came to put my shoes on his feet, I gave up.
“I can’t do it.”
“Throw them in the car,” she said, and her voice was as unsteady as mine. “It’s all right.
They’ll think they came off in the crash. Get him in and put him behind the steering-wheel.”
I dragged him over to the car. He was no light weight, and it was all I could do to get him
into the car. I propped him up against the driver’s door. He fell forward across the wheel.
“Loosen the carburettor pipe,” she said, “then tie your handkerchief over the leak and touch
it off with a match.”
“They could send us to jail for this,” I said, breathing heavily. “Get on with it! The tool
case is clipped inside the hood. You want a spanner … hurry!”
I loosened the carburettor pipe, burning my hand against the cylinder head as I did so. I was
working in a trance. My head kept expanding and contracting, and my legs felt as if they were
made of rubber. I did exactly what she told me to do. I tied one end of my handkerchief
around the leaking pipe.
“Now set fire to it.”
I struck a match. A moment later a long tongue of flame shot out of the car’s engine, and
spread in a hot, glaring mass to the coachwork.
I jumped back just in time.
She came running towards me.
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“Come on!” she said. “Before anyone comes.”
I went with her because there was nothing else to do.
We moved fast, and in silence, until the glare of the burning car died away in the distance,
and we came out on to the soft white sand of the beach.
“Wait, Johnny,” she said, and stopped.
I turned to look at her. She still held the gun, but it was no longer pointing at me.
“There’s not much time, but I have to talk to you,” she said. “I wish I knew more about
you. It’s fantastic we should meet like this, and be in this position together. Do you realize
that from now on you and I have got to trust each other, work with each other, and stay with
each other as if we had known each other for years? What sort of nerve have you got? Just
how ambitious are you? I wish I knew what kind of man you are.”
“And do you realize they could send us to jail for what we’ve done?” I said. “Have you
gone crazy …?”
“Don’t worry about that. They won’t find out. Do you want to get your hands on some
money? Real money, Johnny? If you have the right kind of nerve we can help ourselves to
half a million dollars: half for you and half for me.”
I stiffened. A quarter of a million dollars! That was the kind of money I had always
