Free Make Death Love Me by Ruth Rendell Page A

police you had masks on and you blindfolded me. I’ll tell them . . .’ the greatest disguise Joyce could think of ‘. . .  you were old!’
    â€˜Forget it,’ said Nigel. ‘You say you would but you wouldn’t. They’d get it out of you. Make up your mind to it, you come with us.’
    The first of the rush hour traffic was leaving London as they came into it. This time Marty got on to the North Circular Road at Woodford, and they weren’t much held up till they came to Finchley. From there on it was crawling all the way, and Marty, who had stood up to the ordeal better than Nigel, now felt his nerves getting the better of him. Part of the trouble was that in the driving mirror he kept his eye as much on those two in the back of the car as on the traffic behind. Of course it was all a load of rubbish about Nigel killing that bank manager, he couldn’t have done that, and he wouldn’t do anything to the girl either if she did anything to attract the attention of other drivers. It was only a question of whether the girl knew it. She didn’t seem to. Most of the time she was hunched in the corner behind him, her head hanging. Maybe she thought other people would be indifferent, pass by on the other side like that bit they taught you in Sunday School, but Marty knew that wasn’t so from the time when a woman had grabbed him and he’d only just escaped the store detective.
    He began to do silly things like cutting in and making other drivers hoot, and once he actually touched the rear bumper of the car in front with the front bumper of the Escort. Luckily for them, the car he touched had bumpers of rubber composition and its driver was easy-going, doing no more than call out of his window that there was no harm done. But it creased Marty up all the same, and by the time they got to Brent Cross his hands were jerking up and down on the steering wheel and he had stalled out twice because he couldn’t control his clutch foot properly.
    Still, now they were nearly home. At Staples Corner he turned down the Edgware Road, and by ten to five they were outside the house in Cricklewood, the Escort parked among the hundred or so other cars that lined the street on both sides.
    Nigel didn’t feel sympathy, but he could see Marty was spent, washed up. So he took the gun and pushed it into Joyce’s back and made her walk in front of him with Marty by her side, his arm trailing over her shoulder like a lover’s. On the stairs they met Bridey, the Irish girl who had the room next to Marty’s, on her way to work as barmaid in the Rose of Killarney, but she took no notice of them beyond saying an off-hand hallo. She had often seen Nigel there before and she was used to Marty bringing girls in. If he had brought a girl’s corpse in, carrying it in his arms, she might have wondered about it for a few minutes, but she wouldn’t have done anything, she wouldn’t have gone to the police. Two of her brothers had fringe connections with the IRA and she had helped overturn a car when they had carried the hunger strike martyr’s body down from the Crown to the Sacred Heart. She and her whole family avoided the police.
    Marty’s front door had a Yale lock on it and another, older, lock with a big iron key. They pushed Joyce into the room and Nigel turned the iron key. Marty fell on the mattress, face-downwards, but Joyce just stood, looking about her at the dirt and disorder, and bringing her hands together to clasp them over her chest.
    â€˜Next we get shot of the vehicle,’ said Nigel.
    Marty didn’t say anything, Nigel kicked at the mattress and lit the wick of the oil heater – it was very cold – and then he said it again. ‘We have to get shot of the car.’
    Marty groaned. ‘Who’s going to find it down there?’
    â€˜The fuzz. You have to get yourself together and drive it some place and dump it.