Mrs Gillingham, eyeing them with satisfaction, went on enlighteningly. ‘Jessica makes tapestries, Mr Hayward. You’ll have to go and look at her work,’she added archly. ‘It’s just the sort of thing you’re going to need for that house of yours.’
Jessica gritted her teeth at this piece of arch manipulation and hoped that Daniel Hayward would realise that this arrant piece of salesmanship was not at her instigation.
It seemed he did, because he gave her a warm, reassuring smile and then said ruefully, ‘Unfortunately, before I can hang any tapestries on them I’m going to have to have some walls. This…’ he touched his hair gingerly ‘…is the result of an unsafe ceiling collapsing on me this morning.’ His face suddenly went grim and Jessica shivered, recognising that here was the real man, the pure male essence of him in the hard, flat determination she could read in his eyes.
‘I’ve sacked the builder I was using for negligence, and I was hoping you might be able to give me the names of some others from whom I might get estimates…’
Mrs Gillingham pursed her mouth, trying not to look flattered by this appeal. ‘Well, there’s Ron Todd. He does a lot of work hereabouts…and then there’s that man you had to do your kitchen, Jessica. What’s his name?’
‘Alan Pierce,’ Jessica informed her, helplessly being drawn into the conversation, wanting to stay and bask in the warm admiration she could read so clearly in Daniel Hayward’s lion-gold eyes, and at the same time wanting desperately to escape before she became helplessly involved in something she sensed instinctively was dangerous.
‘Oh, yes, that’s it…Well, he’s very good. Made a fine job of Jessica’s kitchen. You ought to see it…’
Numbly Jessica recognised that she was being given a very firm push in the direction Mrs Gillingham had decided she was going to take.
No need to enquire if Daniel Hayward was married or otherwise attached. Mrs Gillingham was a strict moralist, and if she was playing matchmaker then it could only be in the knowledge that he was single.
Helplessly, torn between anger and a strange, sweet stirring of excited pleasure, she found herself stumblingly inviting Daniel to call round and see how Alan Pierce had transformed her two small, dark rooms into her large, comfortable living kitchen.
‘But, of course…you must be busy…and…’
He started to say that he wasn’t, when suddenly the post office door banged open.
A man came in, masked and holding a gun. He motioned to them all with it and said gutturally, ‘Over there, all of you!’
Mrs Gillingham was protesting shrilly. At her side, Jessica was dimly conscious of Daniel Hayward’s protective bulk coming between her and the man, but he couldn’t protect her! Nothing could. It was her worst nightmare come back to haunt her. She started to tremble, dragged back into that time in the past—that awful, unforgettable day that had changed the whole course of her life…
CHAPTER TWO
JESSICA had left for work at eight o’clock as she always did. She liked to arrive at the bank at the same time as the other staff. Her father arrived later, his chauffeur dropping him off outside the bank’s premises at about nine-thirty.
There was nothing remarkable about the day. It was late March, cold and blustery still, with no real hint of spring. She was wrapped up against the cold wind in the navy wool coat which seemed to be the uniform of ambitious, career-minded young women, her hair styled sleekly in the expensive bob that her parents liked so much, its colour subtly enlivened by monthly visits to an expensive Knightsbridge hairdresser.
Beneath her coat she was wearing a navy businesslike suit and a striped cotton blouse which more resembled a man’s shirt than a woman’s.
On her feet she had good quality, low-heeled leather pumps, and when she got on the tube she mingled anonymously into the crowd of similarly dressed young women.
The bank, like others of its kind, was situated inside that part of London known as the ‘City’, several streets off Threadneedle Street, taking up a prominent corner position in a small square.
The commissionaire greeted Jessica with a smile that held just that hint of knowing deference. She was acutely conscious of the fact that, while she was supposed to be treated just as any other junior member of the staff, she was in fact being handled cautiously with kid gloves not just by her fellow workers, but also by her superiors, all of whom were very conscious of the fact that she was the chairman’s daughter.
It wasn’t an enviable position, despite what some of her contemporaries thought—she had overheard one of the other girls making catty remarks about her in the cloakroom. She felt set apart from the other girls, alien to them, all too aware of their muted hostility.
Not that being her father’s daughter actually afforded her the type of privileges they seemed to think. In the evening, when they were out discoing and enjoying themselves, she was at home being catechised by her father as to what she had learned. Her degree did not exempt her from sitting all her Institute exams, and she was all too conscious that he was expecting her to do well.
The pressure on her, well-meant and proud though it was, kept her weight a little under what it ought to be for her height. Even now, early in her working day, she was conscious of an unhealthy tension across her shoulder-blades.
Tonight was the night she went to advanced evening classes for embroidery; the one bright shining pleasure in her otherwise tension-filled week.
She knew that, no matter how much she strove, working in the bank was never going to be anything other than a duty, and a reluctant one at that, but she just couldn’t bring herself to disappoint her parents—especially her father—by telling them that she could not fulfil their ambitions for her.
This particular morning there was no commissionaire on duty, but when she turned the handle on the door of the back entrance to the bank, which the staff used on arriving and leaving, she found that the door was unlocked.
She walked into the familiar Stygian darkness of the narrow Victorian passage that led to the offices and cubby-holes at the back of the banking hall proper.
The first thing that struck her as she emerged into the general office was the silence…the second was the group of masked, armed men, one of whom was advancing grimly towards her, the rest holding the other members of the staff in a silent, threatened group.
‘Get over there and keep your mouth closed.’
Her body trembling with shock, she did as she was instructed. It took several seconds for it to fully dawn on her that this was that most dreaded of all events within the banking community—an armed bank raid.
In such events, all bank staff were instructed not to try to do anything that might risk either their lives or those of others.
As she joined the silent group, Jessica saw that her father’s second in command was among them, his normally highly coloured fleshy features a shade of old tallow. As her father’s second in command he was in charge of one set of vault keys, while the bank accountant held the other. Together every morning they would unlock the vault so that the cashiers could collect cash for their tills.
Whenever necessary, and never normally on a regular basis, fresh supplies of cash were delivered from the nearby Bank of England. Only yesterday, late in the afternoon after close of banking hours, they had received an exceptionally large consignment of cash, and Jessica realised in sick fear that somehow the thieves must have known of this.
In retrospect, the ordeal of waiting while each member of staff arrived and was duly imprisoned with his or her colleagues seemed to be dragged out over a lifetime of unimaginable terror and shock.
None of them had any way of knowing what was to happen to them…whether they would all emerge unharmed from their ordeal.
On this particular day, Jessica knew that her father was not due into the bank until after lunch, having a morning appointment with an important customer. It seemed the thieves knew it as well, because just as soon as they were sure that all the staff had arrived they took them
all at gunpoint to one of the large safes beneath the branch and shut them in it under armed guard.
Still forbidden to speak, and under the silent, masked threat of the gunmen facing them, they felt tension fill the room like a sour taste in the air.
All of them were close to breaking-point, but still it came as something of a shock when one of the other girls, the one who had been so catty about her working in the bank, suddenly called out frantically to their guard, ‘She’s the one you ought to be concentrating on. She’s the chairman’s daughter. She’s far more use to you than we are.’
Jessica held her breath, her chest painfully tight with anxiety and fear as the gunman turned slowly in her direction. Through the slits in his mask, she could see the icy glitter of his eyes. He motioned to her to step forward. When she hesitated, John Knowles, the accountant, bravely stepped in front of her, saying quickly, ‘She’s just a girl. Let her be.’
When the gunman hit him on the side of his head with the butt of his gun, a massed audible breath of shock rippled through them all.
Shaking with tension, Jessica obeyed the gunman’s instruction to step forward. He walked slowly round her, the sensation of him standing behind her making the hairs rise in the nape of her neck.
So this was terror, this thick, cold sensation that bordered on paralysis, freezing the body and yet leaving the mind sharply clear to assimilate the vulnerabilities of her position.
The sound of the safe door opening took the gunman from behind her to join his fellow members of the gang. In the low-toned conversation they exchanged Jessica caught her own name, but not much else, and then to her horror she was being told to walk towards them. Flanked on either side by a gunman, she was escorted from the safe.