Night Over Water - Ken Follett [27]
He would eventually be convicted, of course. The evidence against him was indisputable. The headwaiter would corroborate Rebecca’s complaint, and Sir Simon Monkford would identify the cuff links as his.
But it was worse than that. Harry had been interviewed by an inspector from the Criminal Intelligence Department. The man had been wearing the detective’s uniform of serviceable serge suit, plain white shirt and black tie, waistcoat with no watch chain, and highly polished, well-worn boots; and he was an experienced policeman with a sharp mind and a wary manner. He had said: “For the last two or three years we’ve been getting odd reports, from wealthy houses, of lost jewelry. Not stolen, of course. Just missing. Bracelets, earrings, pendants, shirt studs ... The losers are quite sure the stuff can’t have been stolen, because the only people who had the opportunity to take it would have been their guests. The only reason they report it is that they want to claim it if it turns up somewhere.”
Harry had kept his mouth shut tight throughout the entire interview, but inside he was feeling sick. He had been sure that his career had gone entirely unnoticed until now. He was shocked to learn the opposite: they had been on to him for some time.
The detective opened a fat file. “The Earl of Dorset, a Georgian silver bonbonnière and a lacquered snuffbox, also Georgian. Mrs. Harry Jaspers, a pearl bracelet with ruby clasp by Tiffany’s. The Contessa di Malvoli, an Art Deco diamond pendant on a silver chain. This man has good taste.” The detective looked pointedly at the diamond studs in Harry’s dress shirt.
Harry realized the file must contain details of dozens of crimes committed by him. He knew also that he would eventually be convicted of at least some of those crimes. This shrewd detective had put together all the basic facts: he could easily gather witnesses to say that Harry had been at each location at the time of the theft. Sooner or later they would search his lodgings and his mother’s house. Most of the jewelry had been fenced, but he had kept a few pieces: the shirt studs the detective had noticed had been taken from a sleeping drunk at a ball in Grosvenor Square, and his mother had a brooch he had deftly plucked from the bosom of a countess at a wedding reception in a Surrey garden. And then how would he answer when they asked him what he lived on?
He was headed for a long stretch in jail. And when he got out, he would be conscripted into the army, which was more or less the same thing. The thought made his blood run cold.
He steadfastly refused to say a word, even when the detective took him by the lapels of his dinner jacket and slammed him against the wall; but silence would not save him. The law had time on its side.
Harry had only one chance of freedom. He would have to persuade the magistrates to give him bail, then disappear. Suddenly he yearned for freedom as if he had been in jail for years instead of hours.
Disappearing would not be simple, but the alternative made him shiver.
In robbing the rich, he had grown accustomed to their style of living. He got up late, drank coffee from a china cup, wore beautiful clothes and ate in expensive restaurants. He still enjoyed returning to his roots, drinking in the pub with old mates or taking his ma to the Odeon. But the thought of prison was unbearable: the dirty clothes, the horrible food, the total lack of privacy and, worst of all, the grinding boredom of a totally pointless existence.
With a shudder of loathing he concentrated his mind on the problem of getting bail.
The police would oppose bail, of course; but the magistrates would make the decision. Harry had never appeared in court before, but in the streets from which he came, people knew these things just as they knew who was eligible for a council house and how to sweep chimneys. Bail was automatically refused only in murder trials. Otherwise it was up to the discretion of the magistrates. Normally they did what the police asked, but not always. Sometimes they could be