The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  ‘Well, one thing I’m pretty sure of—he’s not in this country. How do you feel about footing first-class travel expenses all over the place? And my fee?’

  ‘What is your fee?’

  ‘It might be a long job, so I’ll give you the monthly rate which comes a little cheaper. One thousand pounds a month.’ I pitched it very high.

  ‘That’s all right.’

  It’s nice to be rich.

  ‘My secretary,’ I said, ‘is flying on Monday to Cairo to spend a holiday with her fiance. She could go via Tripoli, spend a few days there and check whether your brother is around. I’d only charge you half expenses for that since she’s going out to Cairo anyway.’ Wilkins always paid her own fare so there was no reason why I shouldn’t do her some good. Whether she would take it on, of course, was another matter.

  Gloriana nodded, and said, ‘And what are you going to do?’

  ‘The police,’ I said, ‘are going to find that body in the cottage. I thought I’d hang about for a day or so to see if they issue an identification. Could help. Then I’d like to see Monsieur Duchêne in Paris, and then Signore Leon Pelegrina in Florence. After that I’ll play it by ear, according to whatever my secretary turns up.’

  ‘That seems reasonable. But I’d like you to keep in touch with me. You can always phone. I’m usually here between seven and eight at night.’

  ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t be tonight.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I was hoping you’d have dinner with me. I’ve got a much better suit than this at home. And I won’t let you down with my table manners.’

  She smiled, which I hadn’t expected, and said, ‘Just for the pleasure of my company?’

  ‘Absolutely. I won’t give a thought to the million stacked up behind it.’

  ‘I’d be delighted. Would you like another martini?’

  ‘Not unless you and your maid are prepared to carry me to the lift. I’m a whisky man, really.’

  She nodded understandingly. I got up, patted the antique Buddha on the head, gave her my little bow and went, saying, ‘I’ll pick you up just before seven.’

  In this business it is important to establish cordial relations with clients. It gives them the feeling that you have their interests exclusively at heart. It has other side-effects too—not always pleasant.

  *

  I had trouble with Wilkins. I knew I would. She was very much a creature of habit. This was her holiday. Why should she spend it working?

  ‘All right. You can add an extra week to your leave. And don’t forget you’ll be getting your expenses.’

  ‘But Olaf wouldn’t like me to be alone in a town like Tripoli. He fusses, you know.’

  The idea of anyone fussing over capable Wilkins was novel —but who was I to argue? I know what love can do to people.

  ‘You’ll probably be safer in Tripoli than you are in Greenwich. But if you want the anxious Swede to stop from worrying ask him to join you there. It must be less than an hour’s flight from Cairo. All you have to do is send him a cable, fix rooms at a Tripoli hotel—and I suggest the Libya Palace—and change your air ticket. I tell you this Stankowski thing could be a big job. With luck I can string it out to a month. That means a thousand quid in the bank and you could have that electric typewriter you want.’

  ‘Well . . .’ It was very grudging, but I knew that I had won.

  ‘Thanks. Anyway, you ought to do more field work. You’re miles better at it than me.’

  She liked that. Not that it was news to her. She had a firm conviction that she was miles better than me at everything, except a few activities which anyway she wouldn’t have touched with a barge-pole.

  After that I went round to Miggs’s place and fixed up for a chauffeur-driven Rolls for the evening. He gave me tea out of a quart-sized enamel mug, a five-minute dissertation on the state of the second-hand car market owing to the Labour Government squeeze, flipped to a quick run-down of the present state of the Roman Catholic Church and its attitude to the Unity of Christian Churches, which—if he’d had it printed—would have gone on the Index right away and which, since he was a Catholic, didn’t surprise me because they’re always the best value when it comes to running down their religion or making jokes about it, and finished by asking what the hell I wanted a Rolls for.

  ‘I’m taking a million out to dinner. Name of Stankowski, Mrs, widow, formerly Gloriana Freeman. I’m looking for her brother.’

  ‘If that was the Stankowski who was in the scrap-metal business, watch out that she isn’t like him. He was as bent as a bedspring.’ Going down the stairs, I ran into Manston at the bottom, arriving for another work-out with Miggs. He was wearing a bowler hat, dark suit, and carried a rolled umbrella, and he looked as usual like a coiled steel spring, and God help you if you were in its way when it went zing!

  He said, ‘Busy?’

  ‘Moderately.’

  ‘We could always give you a job. Permanently, if you like.’

  ‘We’ meant his Service, and occasionally they had roped me in to work for them and not once had I spent a happy moment on their payroll. ‘I like a quiet life.’

  He grinned. ‘You’re getting old. Sluggish too, I’ll bet.’

  As he spoke he raised his umbrella and swiped at the side of my neck with it. I ducked and let it go over my head. Then I went forward and got my right shoulder under his raised right arm, grabbed his wrist and let myself fall back so that I could use his moment out of balance from the umbrella blow to send him over my shoulder. It should have worked, would have done with most people, but in some odd way I found myself spun round, my face pressed against a wall and my right arm twisted up behind my back.

  Still holding me, he said, ‘You used to be better than that.’

  ‘You’ve got it wrong. You used not to be so good.’

  He released me, straightened his Old Etonian tie, and then offered me a cigarette. I lit it with a shaking hand. He saw the shake and said, ‘You’ve been leading too sedentary a life. You really should join us and see the world. Also you get a pension at sixty.’

  ‘Send me a telegram,’ I said, ‘the first time any of your blokes live long enough to qualify for one.’

  As it was a nice spring evening I walked part of the way home, from Lambeth Bridge along Millbank and past the Tate Gallery. The sky was an even duck-egg colour, and the tide was coming in fast, making up towards Vauxhall Bridge, an even brown-soup colour. A handful of gulls hung over it, scavenging. I had a growing feeling that any moment now I might feel good to be alive.

  Mrs Meld was hanging over her front-garden gate, taking the air, and watching her dog take its hundred-yard-evening stroll down the pavement.

  ‘’Evening, Mr Carver.’

  ‘’Evening, Mrs Meld.’

  She jerked her head upwards to my place. ‘You’re going it a bit, aren’t you?’

  ‘You’ve got to be clearer than that, Mrs Meld.’

  ‘There’s another one up there.’

  ‘A woman?’

  ‘What else?’

  ‘Why do you let them in?’

  ‘What you told me, weren’t it? Women can go in—not nobody else. Want to alter it, Mr Carver?’

  I thought for a moment and then shook my head.

  It was Jane Judd. She was wearing a light raincoat and yellow beret and was standing at the window, watching Mrs Meld who still stood at her gate.

  ‘When that woman speaks about you,’ she said, indicating Mrs Meld as I went and stood at her shoulder, ‘there’s reverence in her voice. Also I got the feeling that she would have liked to search me to see if I had any hidden weapons.’

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Only this.’

  She handed me a copy of the Evening Standard.

  I said, ‘Let’s have a drink before we settle down to the crossword. And anyway I haven’t got much time. I’ve an appointment at seven. So chat away. I presume this isn’t a social call?’

  ‘No. It isn
’t. I just decided that I’d been less than honest with you.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. It puts you in the main category of my visitors and clients. Gin or whisky, or a glass of white wine?’

  ‘Whisky, Straight.’

  I poured it, straight and generous. She was putting on a good act but there was the suggestion of a shake somewhere in her voice. ‘How did you get my address?’

  ‘I phoned Mrs Stankowski.’

  ‘And she gave it to you, just like that?’

  ‘She did when she heard what I had to say.’

  ‘Then let me hear it.’

  She sat down on the arm of a chair and toasted me briefly with the whisky.

  ‘I should have told you that Martin Freeman is my husband.’

  I said nothing, letting it sink in. This Martin Freeman was quite a number. The more I learned about him, the more intrigued I became.

  She said, ‘You don’t seem surprised.’

  ‘Oh, I am. But I’ve learned not to show it, otherwise I’d be going round all day with my eyes popping. Why don’t you wear a ring?’

  ‘It was a secret wedding, nearly two months ago, at a registrar’s office. In Acton.’

  ‘Nice spot. What about the fiance? P.R.O. at Shell-Mex?’

  ‘He doesn’t exist.’

  ‘Why did you get married?’

  ‘On an impulse.’

  ‘No question of love?’

  ‘Oh, that. Yes, I suppose so. But chiefly, well . . . I like him. He’s charming. Good company. Makes a woman feel good and pleased with-herself. And I was tired of hotel work and just the odd dates that don’t develop beyond a tatty weekend in the country. I’m thirty-five, you know. You begin to think about security, home, kids. God, it sounds conventional, but that’s what all women are at heart.’

  ‘Freeman doesn’t sound the security-giving type. Pinching from his sister, and a few others; a spell in stir for some City company swindle. I wouldn’t have thought you’d have been taken in.’

  ‘I’m impulsive. That’s why I’m here. I trust you.’

  ‘Carry on then.’

  ‘He said he was on the point of a really big deal. Something that would make his fortune. The idea was to keep the marriage secret. He didn’t want publicity and he might have got some. He’s a bit of a name in Fleet Street. He told me he was going off for two or three months, but he would send for me. We’d live abroad for the rest of our lives.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He didn’t say. I was just to trust him and wait for his call.’

  ‘Well, why not carry on and do that?’

  She got up and helped herself to another whisky.

  ‘Because, frankly, I’m frightened. For two reasons.’

  ‘Number one?’

  She nodded at the Evening Standard on the table at my side.

  ‘I’ve put a mark around a news item in the paper.’

  She had. It was on the back page. Just a few lines, announcing the discovery of the body of an unknown man, strangled, at Ash Cottage, Crundale, near Wye in Kent.

  I said, ‘He was in the chemical closet when I got down there. The type with the London-Scottish tie.’

  ‘God.’ She breathed the word quietly but there was all the feeling in the world in it.

  ‘You don’t like being mixed up in murder? Particularly if you fancy Freeman might be involved?’

  ‘You’re bloody right.’ There was a flash of the forceful, competent manner I’d known at the hotel.

  ‘Point number two?’

  She hesitated, took a sip of her whisky, and then said, ‘This afternoon I had a phone call at the hotel. Some man, foreign, I think, who wouldn’t give his name, but said he was a close friend of Martin’s. He said that if I heard in any way that Martin was dead, I wasn’t to believe it. He was speaking for Martin, and said that Martin would, as he promised, eventually send for me.’ She looked hard at me. ‘I really am frightened, you know. I don’t want to get mixed up in anything . . . well, as I said, one of the chief reasons for marrying him was this security business. But I don’t want that at any price.’

  ‘So you came to me?’

  ‘Who else? I mean, you struck me as being a decent sort. You’re already looking for Martin . . . I just had to have someone to tell this to.’

  ‘You told all this to Mrs Stankowski?’

  ‘No. Only that I was married to Martin. What am I going to do?’

  ‘Go home, take three sleeping pills and get a good night’s sleep.’

  ‘But what about the police?’

  ‘If they get round to you—about the cottage, I mean—then tell them everything you’ve told me if you want to be out in the clear. Mind you, if you’re stuck on waiting for Martin Freeman to send for you, then you’ll have to make your own decision how much you tell.’

  ‘And do I tell about you?’

  ‘Why not? I didn’t murder old London-Scottish, and I’m just trying to trace Martin Freeman. However, if they happen to catch on fast to you, you might stall mentioning me until after midday tomorrow. Not that I think they will be so fast.’

  ‘Why midday tomorrow?’

  ‘Because I’m going to Paris on professional business and don’t want to be delayed.’

  I stood up and took her arm and led her to the door.

  ‘Don’t fuss. You’ve done nothing wrong. Just speak the truth and shame the devil. And, anyway, you’ll have a new wad of material for the book Why I Sometimes Don’t Like Men.’

  She paused at the open door, smiled and just touched my arm.

  ‘You’re a good guy. Thank you.’

  ‘If you get time, put that in writing and sign it. I’m often in need of a reference.’

  She grinned, adjusted her beret with that nice little movement woman have with hats, and I knew she was recovering fast. Then she held something out to me.

  ‘Would you let Mrs Stankowski have this sometime? You needn’t say where you got it.’

  I had the gold ring with the jade stone in my hand.

  ‘I’ll give it to her tonight,’ I said.

  *

  I didn’t. I drove, or rather was driven, in the Rolls around to Upper Grosvenor Street just after seven. I wore a midnight-blue dinner jacket, onyx cuff-links my sister had given me, and one loop of my back braces was held on to my trousers with a safety pin because the button had gone.

  I went up in the lift feeling like young Lochinvar coming out of the West—S.W.1, actually. This Freeman thing was developing nicely along the therapeutic lines I needed. Could be, too, that there might come a moment when in addition to my Stankowski fee, there might be a chance to pick up some side money. Oh, yes, I was recovering fast.

  The Scots number on opening the door to young Lochinvar soon put paid to any nonsense about so faithful in love and so dauntless in war, and she didn’t care a damn that through all the wild Border his steed was the best. She’d have known the Rolls was hired anyway.

  She put a photograph in my hand.

  ‘I’m to give you this and her apologies for being called away for the evening.’ That’s a translation. I worked it out while looking at the photograph—of Freeman—which I’d forgotten to take with me that morning.

  ‘Where’s she gone?’

  ‘The devil knows. I’m not told anything in this house.’ Practice made the translation of that faster.

  I went back down the lift, wondering if it were some other man, some laggard in love and a dastard in war. Frankly, I didn’t care over much. Gloriana was high-flying game, too high for me in my present off-peak condition.

  I got in the Rolls and had the chauffeur drive me around for an hour. Then I went home, opened a tin of ox tongue, made myself some sandwiches and coffee and sat and contemplated a bunch of mimosa that Mrs Meld had arranged in a vase on the sideboard. I considered Freeman.

  For my money he was too impulsive, too careless, too given to friends making anonymous phone calls about his welfare ever to last long in the big league.
He might, with luck, get away with some small racket. But I didn’t read his character as closed, discreet and contained enough to engineer anything that would give the forces of law and order more than a temporary headache.

  I was in the office the next morning at half past nine—early for me. In the outer office Wilkins said, ‘I’ve got a hair appointment at half past ten. Is that all right?’

  I nodded, hoping it would be, though what anyone could do with Wilkin’s hair I couldn’t imagine.

  She went on, ‘When I got in this morning I put a call through to the Libya Palace Hotel in Tripoli.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t see why Olaf and I should go there if a simple query could be settled by a telephone call.’

  ‘Freeman?’

  ‘Yes. They said there was no one staying there of that name.’

  ‘He could be at some other hotel. What about the Uaddan?’

  ‘I’ve got a call booked through to them. If it comes while I’m out you can take it.’

  ‘He might not be using his own name.’

  I tossed the Freeman photograph on to her desk. She examined it and handed it back. She had a trained memory. If she ever saw Freeman now she would recognize him.

  I said, ‘See if you can get me a booking on an afternoon plane to Paris.’

  She nodded and then handed me a newspaper cutting. It was the paragraph about the dead man at Freeman’s cottage.

  ‘Why,’ she asked, ‘does everything you touch start getting involved and unpleasant?’

  ‘Which part don’t you like? The involvement or the unpleasantness?’

  She didn’t answer, because at that moment the telephone began to ring. I went into my office. She came in ten minutes later and said, ‘That was the Uaddan Hotel. I got the same answer. No one called Freeman known to them. And Mrs Stankowski is outside, wanting to see you.’

  ‘Show her in. Don’t forget that Paris flight.’

  Gloriana was wearing a beautifully cut black silk suit, a mink wrap round her shoulders, a tiny little black hat with a black veil that came just below her eyes, and a different scent. She sat down on the other side of my desk and I reached over and lit a cigarette for her. The pearls round her neck were as large as fat garden peas, all perfectly matched, and evidence of the handsome profit margins in the scrap-metal business. One day, I promised myself, when I got tired of the high excitement of the struggle for existence, I would find a young rich widow—beautiful, of course—and marry her.