by Ian Rankin
Hepton’s smile returned. Yes, ten minutes ago, Villiers had held a knife to his throat. Yet now he could smile about it, could brush it aside and get on with whatever action was necessary. He felt changed inside, in some profound way. He felt stronger.
‘Sanders is here.’
‘Sanders?’ Parfit recognised the name. ‘He’s a good man. Take him with you when you go to see Devereux. Any sign of Villiers?’
‘I think he’s escaped.’
‘Hmm. Well, he can’t get far. Put Sanders on, would you?’
‘Sure.’ Hepton held the receiver out. ‘Parfit wants a word,’ he said.
Sanders looked at the telephone as though it might be about to bite him. Hepton didn’t know who or what Parfit was, but he knew he was important enough for the mere mention of his name to scare Sanders half to death. He jabbed the receiver towards the young man, who licked his lips and stepped forward to take it from him. Gingerly, the way someone might handle a snake for the very first time.
‘Hello?’ Sanders said.
Hepton went over to Jilly and quietly filled her in on the details of his conversation with both Dreyfuss and Parfit. She listened sporadically, still shocked from the earlier struggle.
‘I should have clouted him,’ she said, replaying the moment over and over again in her head. ‘I should have helped you, Martin. But instead I just stood there, yelling into the bloody telephone. Asking someone in America to help. Isn’t that crazy?’ And she gave a tiny, nervous laugh.
He hugged her, and felt her arms pull him inwards, and the feel of her brought back such memories …
‘Er …?’ The voice was Sanders’. ‘Miss Watson?’ She relaxed her hold on Hepton. ‘Major Dreyfuss would like a word.’
Hepton couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy at Jilly’s reaction. She let go of him, a schoolgirl grin appearing on her face, and almost skipped to the telephone.
‘Mickey? Hello there. How are you? Did you get my flowers? You did! I tried telephoning the hospital but I could never get through.’
Sanders seemed embarrassed as he approached Hepton, his eyes everywhere but on Hepton’s own. His voice when he spoke was muted.
‘Look, about Mr Villiers …’
‘Villiers is a maniac,’ hissed Hepton. ‘You people have known that all along, but he was useful to you so you conveniently ignored the fact. What’s more, he’s working with another bloody maniac called Harry.’
‘But I don’t understand. What has he done?’
Hepton considered this. There was no way of knowing, not without apprehending Villiers himself, or perhaps talking to the American, Devereux. He shrugged.
‘What was Parfit saying?’
‘You’re to be given twenty-four-hour protection. Meantime, we’ll put out a full-scale search for Mr Villiers. Well, not exactly we, since it’ll have to be handled by the other lot.’
‘The other lot?’
‘You’d probably call them MI5.’
‘What about Parfit?’
‘He’s MI6.’ Sanders was perking up now. ‘That’s who I work for.’
‘And presumably who Villiers works for too?’
Sanders stared at him. ‘Yes, well …’
Hepton heard Jilly laugh, and glanced across to where she was sitting, perched on the edge of the desk, looking relaxed and with the telephone cord playfully twisted around one finger. Funny how people could change from moment to moment … She was ending her conversation. She dropped the receiver back into its cradle and hugged herself, looking radiant.
‘He sounds fine,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ Hepton agreed.
‘I just wish …’ But she didn’t finish the sentence. Hepton was looking sad, and right now she felt like cheering up the whole world. She came to him and hugged him to her. Then pulled away to examine his face. ‘We’re going to be all right too, aren’t we, Martin?’
‘Of course we are,’ he said, sounding more confident than he felt. He reached into his pocket and brought out the kitchen knife. ‘As long as we’ve got this,’ he said. Jilly recognised it.
‘That’s from my kitchen!’ she cried. Then she laughed and hugged him again. ‘What were you going to do with it? It’s as blunt as my editor’s sense of humour.’
‘I don’t know,’ Hepton said. He was still studying the knife, trying to answer her question. ‘I think I was going to kill Villiers with it.’
‘Ugh!’ said Jilly, giving a little shiver. ‘What happened to him anyway?’
‘He can’t be found in the building,’ Sanders explained, his voice taking on a tone of apology. ‘We’re still looking.’
‘But how hard?’ asked Hepton. ‘How hard are you looking? Who else is in on this thing besides Villiers and Harry? It seems to stretch halfway around the world as it is!’
Sanders’ voice became a monotone. ‘You can trust me,’ he said. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be back in a few minutes. Would you like anything? More tea? Something stronger?’
‘I could murder a gin,’ said Jilly.
Hepton realised that his own throat was dry. He nodded.
‘Two G and Ts then,’ said Sanders, opening the door. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’
True to his word, two dusty glasses were delivered by a bemused security man a few minutes later. Hepton sank his in two gulps, then sucked on the tiny slice of lemon. Jilly savoured hers, reclining in Villiers’ chair, her feet on the desk.
‘Cheers,’ she said.
‘And don’t we deserve it,’ observed Hepton.
The door opened again and Sanders re-entered, looking pleased with himself.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘It’s about that knife of yours.’
‘The Sabatier?’ Jilly’s face was quizzical.
‘That’s right,’ said Sanders. He was unbuttoning his jacket. ‘Anyway, you won’t be needing it now.’ He tugged the left side of his jacket open. Strapped beneath his shoulder was a brown leather holster, from the top of which peeped the butt of a small, fat handgun. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is what we need. Especially when dealing with Harry. Now, shall we go?’
23
On the way to the Park Lane Achilles Hotel, Sanders told them about Harry.
‘It was four or five years ago. I’d just joined the department …’
What department? Hepton was tempted to ask.
‘I remember meeting Mr Parfit for the first time. He struck the fear of God into me.’
Sanders seemed excited. Hepton decided that the secret agent hadn’t seen much action in his musty set of offices. He didn’t appear to be over-experienced either, driving a little too fast, potentially attracting attention. And now that he had been assigned to protect Hepton and Jilly, he was much less reticent, much more talkative, much more like a human being.
Hepton wondered why it was, then, that he liked him less this way.
‘Mr Parfit had spent months on the case. There was going to be an assassination attempt.’ He turned to them. ‘I won’t say on whom. But the identity of the assassin was what we couldn’t uncover. We were looking for a regular, you see, a Carlos the Jackal or whatever. But it turned out to be a woman, a young and good-looking one at that.’
Hepton could feel Jilly bristling at this.
‘The beautiful Harriet, in other words,’ Sanders continued, unaware of Jilly’s glowering face. ‘She was the assassin.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Oh, Parfit tracked her down, or at least his team did. She did a runner and was never heard from again. Until now.’
‘What about Villiers?’ Hepton asked, his voice as neutral as an idling engine. Not that the Cavalier’s engine was idling. Sanders pulled past some evening traffic and cut into the stream again just ahead of a purring Jaguar.
‘I’ve worked with Mr Villiers for two years. When I started with him, I was told he was a bit … well, that he might be prone to … outbursts.’
‘What did his job entail?’
‘Nothing very
much. He just waited. When advice was needed on one of his specialities, he’d be called for.’
‘That must have been tedious.’
Sanders nodded. ‘He hated it. Desk-bound after years of combat training. God knows, I’d hate it too in his position. They say he was a great soldier.’
‘You mean good at killing people?’ Jilly asked. Sanders reddened, but didn’t answer.
‘Did you ever suspect he might be involved in something?’ Hepton asked him. ‘Something you weren’t allowed to know about?’
Sanders shook his head. ‘Mr Parfit asked me a similar question on the telephone back there. I’ll tell you what I told him: I didn’t suspect anything. I’m still not sure that I do … I mean, it could all be some ghastly mistake, couldn’t it?’
‘No,’ said Hepton flatly. ‘No mistake.’
The car had reached the top of the Mall. Buckingham Palace lay directly in front of them. Hepton watched intently as a slow-moving line of army trucks approached from the other direction and drove past, heading in the direction of Trafalgar Square.
‘There’s a lot of troop movement at the moment,’ said Sanders, attempting a change of subject. ‘To do with the pull-out, I suppose. I’m against it myself. The pull-out, I mean. I think most people are.’
‘Not me,’ said Jilly. ‘I’m glad they’re going.’
Sanders stared at her in his rear-view mirror but kept his thoughts on her politics to himself.
‘What about Harry?’ asked Jilly. ‘What else do you know about her?’
‘We don’t know much,’ Sanders admitted. ‘But there was plenty of speculation at the time. Fifteen years ago, a brigadier general’s unruly daughter went missing in Germany. She left a note saying she was running away. She was fifteen, rebellious. A lot of anarchist literature was found in her bedroom.’
‘And her name was Harriet?’ Jilly suggested.
‘No,’ said Sanders. ‘Her name wasn’t Harriet. But her mother’s name had been. Her mother was dead. The story went that the general used to get roaring drunk and hit his wife, made her life hell. She committed suicide when the daughter was eight or nine.’
‘Well, well,’ said Hepton, very quietly, filing this information away.
Hyde Park Corner came next, and then they were sweeping into Park Lane itself. Sanders entered the right-hand-turning lane and cut across the oncoming traffic, bringing the car to a stop outside a flat-fronted hotel of marble and smoked glass, which seemed very similar to the other hotels clustered around it. Three steps led to a line of six glass doors, behind which lay tantalising glances of a marble reception hall lit by sparkling chandeliers. In front of the steps stood a liveried doorman, and above him was a large canopy proclaiming the single word Achilles.
Sanders got out of the car and locked his door. When Hepton closed his own door, he watched the button on the inside of the window slide neatly into place of its own accord.
‘A wonderful thing, central locking,’ he mused.
Jilly was staring at the hotel’s frontage. ‘The things I’d do for a long, hot bath,’ she said.
The doorman was coming towards them. ‘You can’t leave it there, sir,’ he called, gesturing towards the Cavalier.
Sanders reached into his inside pocket and brought out a wallet, which he flipped open.
‘A security matter,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t be too long.’
The doorman studied the ID carefully. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘I suppose that’ll be all right then. Want the manager, do you?’
‘That’s quite all right.’ Sanders beamed back at him. ‘We’ll manage.’ He moved past the doorman and up the steps.
‘I thought he was supposed to be our bodyguard?’ Jilly whispered as they followed, leaving the bemused doorman staring at their backs.
‘He is.’
‘Well he’s not doing a very good job then, is he?’
‘He’s a bit too keen on playing the spy,’ Hepton agreed. ‘We can’t afford to relax, Jilly. I think we’re going to have to cover our own backs, rather than depending on Mr Sanders to do it for us.’
‘Well, as long as we’ve got the kitchen knife, we should be safe,’ said Jilly.
They entered the hotel lobby. The doorman was looking at the car now, checking colour, make and registration. Then he walked briskly up the steps and pushed open the doors. The car’s occupants were at the reception desk, their backs turned to him. He went to a bank of public telephones along the wall nearest the door, picked up a receiver, inserted a ten-pence piece and dialled seven digits. He had to wait seconds only for a response.
‘Achilles,’ he said, identifying himself. ‘I need to speak to Mr Vitalis.’
‘Mr Devereux, please,’ Sanders said to the woman behind the reception desk. She was wearing an identity badge and a well-worn smile.
‘Room two-two-seven,’ she said. ‘Can I call him for you?’
‘No thanks. That’s floor two, room twenty-seven?’ Sanders checked. The woman nodded, not about to waste a spoken answer. ‘Thank you,’ he said, turning from her. He stood for a moment, seeming to be deciding between the lift and the stairs. ‘Stairs,’ he said finally.
‘You take the stairs,’ Jilly objected. ‘I’ll take the lift. It’s been a long day.’
Sanders stared at her. ‘A lift is a trap, remember that. Once you’re inside, there’s no way out.’ He started walking towards the pink-carpeted staircase. ‘I’ll see you up there,’ he called.
Jilly looked to Hepton for a decision. Hepton shrugged his shoulders. Wearily they began to follow Sanders. He was right, though, that was the annoying part. He had obviously had some training in this sort of thing, while they were amateurs.
They climbed, counting the seventy-two steps to the second floor. The corridor was vacant, little noise coming from the rooms themselves. This was a hotel for the wealthy – businessmen as well as holidaymakers. And the wealthy had gone out to play in the London evening. Two things struck Hepton at the same time. The first was that Devereux might not be in; the second was that someone of his standing shouldn’t be able to afford the Achilles. Hepton had seen the three-figure room charges displayed beside the desk.
They passed an ice machine, a drinks dispenser and an electrically operated shoeshine, then stopped outside a door.
Room 227. Sanders paused, listened, then knocked. There was silence. He knocked again. Nothing. He rested his hand on the door handle and checked that the corridor was still empty. As he was about to turn the handle, the door was opened from within. A man in shirt and trousers stood there, hair unkempt, the shirt rumpled, socks but no shoes on his feet. He had obviously been awakened from a nap, and was trying to stifle a yawn. When he saw that the three figures outside his door were not members of the hotel staff, he widened his eyes a little, trying to rouse himself.
‘Yeah?’ he said.
‘Mr Devereux?’ Sanders had fixed a sympathetic smile to his face.
‘That’s right.’ His voice was American. There was an innocence to it that Hepton had noted before with American accents.
‘Mr Devereux, my name’s Sanders, I’m from the Foreign Office. We’ve come to talk to you about Major Michael Dreyfuss.’
‘About Mike?’ Devereux was wide awake now. A note of anxiety crept into his voice. ‘What’s wrong? Jesus, don’t tell me he’s up and died?’
‘Oh no, he’s quite fine. But he did telephone from America. He wanted us to talk with you.’
Devereux took in all three faces individually, wary still. Then he threw out an arm and pulled the door open to its fullest extent. ‘You’d better come in,’ he said. But looking into his room, at the sprawl and untidiness there, he seemed to change his mind. ‘No, wait, on second thoughts, let me meet you in the bar in five minutes.’
Sanders seemed disapproving, but managed to keep the smile more or less intact. ‘Right you are,’ he said.
The door closed, leaving the three of them out in the corridor, much as they had been before.
‘Sounds good to me,’ Jilly said. ‘One of you men can buy me a very large drink.’ She was already heading back towards the stairs. Hepton began to follow, but saw that Sanders was staring at Devereux’s door, his bottom lip clasped between upper and lower teeth.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘How do we know he’ll come to the bar?’ Sanders whispered. ‘I mean, he could do a runner.’
‘He didn’t look the running type,’ Hepton offered, turning to follow Jilly.
Sanders watched him go, in an agony of sorts: should he stay and wait for Devereux, or follow his charges? A low growl left him, and he stalked back down the corridor after them.
It took Jilly less than a minute to finish her first gin. She examined the tall glass, still half full of unmelted ice.
‘Better make it a double next time,’ she said. She caught the waiter’s attention and he walked smilingly towards her, knowing a potentially good customer when he saw one. Jilly ordered her double, but Hepton and Sanders shook their heads. Hepton was nursing a half-pint of lager, Sanders a tomato juice. They were seated at a corner table – at Sanders’ insistence – from which they could watch the door to the hotel lobby and still have a view of the other occupants of the cocktail lounge. Not that there were many occupants to watch. The resident pianist was playing to a table of four well-dressed women, their clothes younger than their years. They applauded every tune, but quietly, politely, and he bowed his head each time, accepting gracefully, as he hoped to accept their drinks and their tips.
Two businessmen stood at the bar, slowly smoking cigars, sipping whiskies. They glanced around the room occasionally, looking first at the table of women and then over towards Jilly. They weren’t hopeful; just looking.
‘This is nice,’ Jilly said without much attempt at sincerity.
Then Sanders, who had been the most subdued of the three, almost leapt from his seat, waving frantically towards the door, where Cam Devereux was standing. Devereux saw him and approached the table. Sanders sat down again, looking relieved and more animated again. Devereux squeezed into the booth beside Hepton. He had washed, changed his clothes and combed his hair. He had also had time to think, and was more wary than ever, as his first question showed.