1965 - The Way the Cookie Crumbles by James Hadley Chase

tore after her. The distance between them must be at least a hundred yards, he thought, and it was increasing. Who would have thought the little bitch could run like this? Her long legs seemed to fly over the sand. Already he was panting. His only exercise was an occasional game of golf. Running like this quickly made him breathless. He kept on, aware that she was drawing further and further away from him. Finally, she disappeared from his sight behind a high dune.
    `He ran on until he reached the dune. His breathing laboured, his heart hammering, he scrambled up the dune and stopped, his eyes smarting with sweat. He could see her, but now a distant figure silhouetted against the azure blue of the sky. She was still running with long, effortless strides, but she had changed her direction. She was no longer running blindly along the beach that stretched for several miles before it petered out into a vast, swampy cypress forest. She was heading inland now, her back to the sea. Ahead of her was a screen of oak and willow hummocks with the occasional maple tree forcing its way through the dense undergrowth.
    Algir had explored these hummocks a few days previously. Through their tangled undergrowth there was a cleared track that ran in a crescent shaped curve and finally came out onto the dirt road they had driven up from highway 4A.
    Did she know the track led to the highway? He saw at once his chance of catching her. It was his only chance. He slid back down the sand dune and raced across the sand towards the Buick. Reaching the car, he slid under the steering wheel, put the key into the ignition lock with a shaking hand, started the engine and set the car shooting back down the dirt road.
    It took him only a few minutes to reach the T-joint of the dirt road and the track from the hummocks. He drove the Buick under the shade of a willow tree, then taking off his jacket and leaving it in the car, he half ran, half walked down the track until he reached the fringe of the hummocks. He paused to look back in the direction of the Buick, but the high growing pampas grass hid it from view. Nodding, satisfied, he walked into the undergrowth for a few yards. Then selecting a thick shrub, he sat down behind it. From there, he could see some twenty yards up the track.
    There was nothing he could do now, but to wait.
    While waiting, he thought of Ticky Edris and this girl, Ira Marsh, that Ticky seemed so pleased with. The whole success of the plan revolved around the girl. If he made a mistake then Johnnie Williams, Muriel Marsh and her daughter would have been murdered for nothing. Maybe he had been crazy to have agreed to go in with Ticky on such a plan, but Ticky had convinced him.
    ‘I’ve seen her, you haven’t,’ Ticky had said. ‘She’s made for the job. You don’t have to worry about her, Phil. That doll will do anything for money.’
    He thought Ticky had been nuts to have promised a teenager fifty thousand dollars. Why give so much of the profit away? Surely, she would have come in on the job for as little as ten thousand?
    Ticky smiled his evil smile.
    ‘What does it matter? Who said she would get any of the money? Relax, Philly-boy, what’s one more body, now we have three?’
    Algir wiped the sweat from his forehead. He didn’t trust Ticky. He would have to watch out that Ticky hadn’t ideas about him. Ticky might be thinking, What’s one more body, now I have four?
    Algir suspected that Ticky was unbalanced. He had a revenge complex. Ever since he had begun working at La Coquille restaurant, so he had told Algir, he had dreamed of getting even with the rich.
    ‘You know something?’ he said, one evening when the two men were in Ticky’s apartment. It had been a Thursday, Algir remembered, Ticky’s night off. They had been drinking pretty steadily and by now, Ticky was very drunk. His face was flushed, his eyes glassy and sweat beads sparkled on his forehead. ‘I couldn’t imagine how I could hit back at these