No Comebacks

Mr Nutkin swallowed several times. 'I'm not a rich man,' he pleaded. 'How much do you want?'

'One thousand quid,' replied the man down the phone, without hesitation.

Samuel Nutkin was appalled. 'But I haven't got one thousand pounds,' he protested.

'Well then, you'd better raise it,' sneered the voice on the phone. 'You can raise a loan against your house, your car or whatever you like. But get it, and quick. By tonight. I'll ring you at eight this evening.'

And again the man was gone, and the dialling tone buzzed in Samuel Nutkin's ear. He went upstairs, gave Lettice a peck on the cheek, and left for work. But that day he did not board the 8.31 to Charing Cross. Instead, he went and sat in the park, alone on a bench, a strange solitary figure dressed for the office and the City, but sitting gnome-like amid the trees and flowers, in a bowler hat and black suit. He felt he had to think, and that he could not think properly sitting next to old Fogarty and his endless crossword puzzles.

He supposed he could borrow £1000 if he tried, but it would raise a few eyebrows at the bank. Even that would be as nothing compared with the bank manager's reaction when he asked for it all in used notes. He could say he needed it to pay a gambling debt, but no one would believe it. They knew he didn't gamble. He didn't drink much beyond a glass of wine now and again, and did not smoke either, except a cigar at Christmas. They would think it was a woman, he surmised, then dismissed that too. They would know he would not keep a mistress. What to do, what to do, he asked himself over and over, rocking backwards and forwards in his mental turmoil.

He could go to the police. Surely they could trace these people, even through the false names and rented flats. Then there would be a court case and he would have to give evidence. They always referred to the blackmailed person as Mr X, he had read in the paper, but the man's own circle usually discovered who it wa3. One could not keep going to court day after day and no one notice, not if one had led a life of unvarying routine for thirty-five years.

At 9.30 he left the park bench and went to a telephone kiosk where he rang his office and told the chief of his department that he was indisposed but would be at his desk that afternoon. From there he walked to the bank. On the way he racked his brains for a solution, recalling all the court cases he had read about in which blackmail was concerned. What did the law call it? Demanding money with menaces, that was the phrase. A nice legal phrase, he thought bitterly, but not much use to the victim.

If he were a single man, he thought, and younger, he would tell them where to go. But he was too old to change his job, and then there was Lettice, poor fragile Lettice. The shock would kill her, he had no doubt. Above all, he must protect Lettice, of that he was determined.

At the door of the bank his nerve failed him. He could never confront his bank manager with such a strange and inexplicable request. It would be tantamount to saying, 'I am being blackmailed and I want a loan of a thousand pounds.' Besides, after the first £1000, would they not come back for more? Bleed him white, then send the pictures? It could happen. But at any rate he could not raise the money at his local bank. The answer, he decided reluctantly, for he was an honest and gentle man, lay in London. It was thither he went on the 10.31 train.

He arrived in the City too early to present himself at his office, so to fill in the time he went shopping. Being a careful man he could not conceive of carrying a sum as large as £1000 around unprotected in his pocket. It would not be natural. So he went to an emporium for office equipment and bought a small steel cashbox with key. At a variety of other shops he bought a pound of icing sugar (for his wife's birthday cake, he explained), a tin of fertilizer for his roses, a mousetrap for the kitchen, some fuse wire for the electrical box under the stairs, two torch batteries, a soldering iron to mend the kettle, and a number of other harmless items such as every law-abiding householder might be expected to have about the house.

At two in the afternoon he was at his desk, assured his department head he was feeling much better, and got on with his work on the company accounts. Fortunately the idea that Mr Samuel Nutkin might even think of making an unauthorized withdrawal on the company's account was not to be entertained.

At eight that evening he was once again in

front of the television with Lettice when the phone rang in the hallway. When he answered, it was Foggy Voice again.

'You got the money, Mr Nutkin?' he said without preamble.

'Er ... yes,' said Mr Nutkin, and before the other could continue he went on, 'Look, please why don't you send the negatives to me and we'll forget the whole thing?'

There was a silence as of stunned amazement from the other end.

'You out of your mind?' queried Foggy Voice at last.

'No,' said Mr Nutkin seriously. 'No, but I just wish you could understand the distress this is all going to cause if you insist on going ahead.'

'Now you listen to me, Nutcase,' said the voice, harsh with anger. 'You must do as you're bloody well told, or I might even send those photos to your wife and boss, just for the hell of it.'

Mr Nutkin sighed deeply. 'That was what I feared,' he said. 'Go on.'

'Tomorrow during the lunch hour take a taxi to Albert Bridge Road. Turn into Battersea Park and walk down West Drive heading away from the river. Halfway down turn left into Central Drive. Keep walking down there till you come to the halfway point. There are two benches. There won't be nobody about, not at this time of year. Put the stuff, wrapped in a brown paper parcel, under the first bench. Then keep walking till you come out the other side of the park. Got it?'

'Yes, I've got it,' said Mr Nutkin.

'Right,' said the voice. 'One last thing. You'll be watched from the moment you enter the park. You'll be watched as you place the parcel. Don't think the cops can help you. We know what you look like, but you don't know me. One hint of trouble, or the fuzz keeping a watch, and we'll be gone. You know what will happen then, don't you, Nutkin?'

'Yes,' said Mr Nutkin feebly.

'Right. Well, do what you've been told, and don't make mistakes.'

Then the man hung up.

A few minutes later Samuel Nutkin made an excuse to his wife and went into the garage at the side of the house. He wanted to be alone for a while.

Samuel Nutkin did exactly as he was told the following day. He was walking down West Drive on the western side of the park and had reached the left turn into Central Drive when he was hailed by a motorcyclist sitting astride his machine a few feet away, studying a road map. The man wore a crash helmet, goggles and a scarf wrapped round his face. He called through the scarf, 'Hey, mate, can you help me?'

Mr Nutkin paused in his stride but being a polite man he covered the two yards to where the motorcycle stood by the kerb and bent to peer at the map. A voice hissed in his ear, 'I'll take the parcel, Nutkin.'