Make Death Love Me by Ruth Rendell

he was thinking, she’s seen our faces, she’s seen us. But he closed the oak door behind him and locked and bolted it. He closed and locked the glass door and walked up and stood in front of Joyce. Marty took his hand from her mouth but kept the gun where it was. She looked at them in silence, and her face was very pale. She looked at them as if she were studying what they looked like.
    From the office Alan Groombridge heard Joyce shout and he heard Marty’s threat. He knew at once what was happening and he remembered, on a catch of breath, that conversation with Wilfred Summitt last Wednesday. His hands tightened on the bundle of notes, the three thousand pounds.
    The Anglian-Victoria directed its staff to put up no resistance. If they could they were to depress with their feet one of the alarm buttons. The alarms were on a direct line to Stantwich police station where they set in motion a flashing light alert system. If they couldn’t reach an alarm, and in Joyce’s case it was perhaps impossible, they were to comply with the demands of the intruders. There was an alarm button under each till and another under Alan’s desk. He backed his right foot and put his heel to it, held his heel above it, and heard a voice say:
    â€˜We know you’re on your own. We saw the manager go out.’
    Where had he heard that voice before, that curious and ugly mixture of cockney and Suffolk? He was sure he had heard it and recently. It was a very memorable voice because the combination of broad flat vowels with slurred or dropped consonants was so unusual. Had he heard it in the bank? Out shopping? Then the sense of the words struck him and he edged his foot forward again. They thought he was out, they must have seen him get into his car. Now he could depress the alarm without their having the faintest idea he had done so, and there-by, if he was very clever, save three thousand of the bank’s money. Maybe save all of it once he’d remembered who that strange voice belonged to.
    â€˜Let’s see what’s in the tills, doll.’
    A different voice, with a disc jockey’s intonation. He heard the tills opened. His foot went back again, feeling for the button embedded in the carpet. From outside there came a clatter of coin. A thousand, give or take a little, would be in those tills. He lifted his heel. It was all very well, that plan of his, but suppose he did save the three thousand, suppose he stuffed it in the clothes cupboard before they came in, how was he going to explain to the bank that he had been able to do so?
    He couldn’t hear a sound from Joyce. He lowered his heel, raised it again.
    â€˜Now the safe,’ the Suffolk or Suffolk-cockney voice said.
    To reach it they must pass through the office. He couldn’t press the alarm, not just like that, not without thinking things out. There was no legitimate reason why he should have been in his office with three thousand pounds in his hands. And he couldn’t say he’d opened the safe and taken it out when he heard them come in because he wasn’t supposed to know Joyce’s combination. And if he’d been able to save three, why not five?
    Any minute now and they would come into the office. They would stuff the notes and the coin – if they bothered with the coin – into their bag and then come straight through here. He pulled open the door of the cupboard and flattened himself against its back behind Joyce’s evening dress, the hem of which touched the floor. Madam, is there any armour in your chamber that I might cover my poor body withal . . . ?
    He had scarcely pulled the door closed after him when he heard Joyce cry out.
    â€˜Don’t! Don’t touch me!’ And there was a clatter as of something kicked across the floor.
    Lancelot’s words reminded him of the questions he had asked himself on Saturday night. Would he ever have such panache, such proud courage? Now was the