Read The Thief for Free Online Page B

good liar to make.
    Alex said in his quiet gentle way, ‘When my friend George was married to his first wife, they got a lot of phone calls from one of these silent callers. If he answered, there was no one there. When she answered while George was with her she would say ‘Who is that?’ but got no answer either. Of course he didn’t know what she said when he wasn’t with her.’
    ‘I don’t understand,’ Polly said, though she did.
    ‘Oh, well,’ said Alex. ‘Soon after that she went off with a chap she’d been seeing.’
    After they had had lunch they went to the cinema.
    Polly watched the film but after it was over she couldn’t have said what it was about or even who was in it. She was thinking about the money and Lant’s clothes and the phone call. Above all, the phone call. She had never had a phone call like it before. It must have been Lant. He hadn’t said a word, but she knew it was Lant. He might not have seen her that morning, but he had guessed it was she who had taken his case. Somehow he had found out where she lived. Not from the phone book. Only Alex’s name was in the phone book. This address was on her bags while she was waiting in the check-in queues. He must have noted it down either going to New York or coming back. But no, that must have been him in the car park. That must have been him following her. So he would know her address. Why? Because he too would want revenge?
    Her address but not her phone number . . . Directory Enquiries would have given him that. Dial one-one-eight, five hundred. Get the voters’ list online, then give Alex’s name and address. It was easy. What would Lant do next?
    Why hadn’t he been to the police? What was he doing? Maybe it was something to do with the money. It might not be his. He might have stolen it. If that was the case, the last people he would go to were the police. That must be the answer.
    She felt a huge relief. Lant wouldn’t tell the police because the money wasn’t his. But she must get it back to him. Polly thought of all the films she had seen in which gangsters had money stolen from them. Money they had stolen, but which they still thought of as theirs. The first thing they did was get revenge. Lant would do what her father called taking the law into his own hands . . .
    She must get the money back to him. But she must do it soon. She dared not wait till Monday. That would give him all tomorrow to get his revenge.
    She must do it now. Lant might come here and harm her or, worse, Alex. As they came out of the cinema Alex said, ‘I didn’t think much of that, did you? Not the way that woman acted. Real life isn’t like that.’
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, you’re right.’
    She could remember very little of it but she knew real life wasn’t like that.

CHAPTER SIX
    ‘I HAVE TO GO out again,’ she said.
    Alex said, ‘OK, I’ll come with you.’
    ‘Oh, no, I’m going to Louise’s. You won’t want to come. You don’t like her. I borrowed a pashmina from her before I went away and I ought to take it back.’
    He said, his face a blank, ‘I promise not to phone her this time.’
    Polly didn’t know what to say. She smiled, her face stiff, remembering. It had been Louise’s birthday, her twenty-fifth. Polly had sent her a birthday card but knew nothing about the party. It was Roz who had gone to the party and, thinking Polly couldn’t go, had told her about it next day. Polly remembered how hurt she had been and how angry. Not to be asked, and she was Louise’s best friend! Next time she was at Louise’s she went into her bedroom and took the handbag. On the way home – it was before she knew Alex – she stopped on the canal bridge in the dark. Holding the bag over the side, she let it slip down into the black shiny water. She could still hear the sound of the splash and feel a drop of water from the spray. Later she found out Louise had sent her a card, inviting her, but it had got lost in the post.
    ‘We’re