The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  *

  In my business one should always listen carefully to what people say. Very carefully. I didn’t know it then, but I was going to make this mistake twice. Listen, don’t interrupt, and then do a lot of careful thinking. After all, I wasn’t selling soap or potatoes—I was selling expertise. Now, hours later, seeing this same woman sitting opposite me, I had the tardy conviction that maybe I would have done better with soap and potatoes. She had her hands cocked up on her crossed legs, and the right hand held a gun—a gas gun; no noise, deadly effective within two yards and we were less than that apart. ‘Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?’ And, to continue with the borrowing, it was no consolation to think that while ‘every dog has his day, and mine has been a fine one’, I was content for it all to end then and there. And all for the want of a little thoughtful listening.

  But first there had been Olaf at the airport. I didn’t tell him about Wilkins’s letter. There would have been no holding him. We got bookings on a direct jet flight to Ibiza for early the next morning. Normally one had to go to Palma, Majorca, and make a change to a local flight to the island, but now the airfield on Ibiza had been lengthened and strengthened to take jets. That suited me; every hour saved could be important. Olaf stormed a bit about the mystery, but I told him that I would put him in the picture on the plane. Until then he was to go to our hotel and keep sober for the next day’s trip.

  Just tell me there is some hope for us to get Hilda—then I’m content.’

  ‘There is some hope. All you have to do is to stay in your room and don’t drink more than half a bottle of rum.’

  I had dinner with him, and left him about half past nine and went along to Letta’s flat, deep in thought, but all along the wrong lines. I had decided that I would put a call through to Manston from the airport the next morning just before we took off. I wasn’t going to run the risk of any of his Paris men blocking me from getting on that Caravelle.

  I fixed myself a whisky and sat in a chair near the window and planned what I would do. It was simple. The moment I had established where V.V. was—and I was sure that Wilkins and Bill Dawson would be there—then I would call up the cavalry. I was really quite happy and pleased with myself, and full of admiration for Wilkins’s cleverness. What the hell would I do without her if she ever got round to marrying Olaf?

  And now here, sitting in a chair a few feet from me, was Gloriana Stankowski smiling, self-composed and dedicated to the business in hand . . . her right hand.

  I’d left the apartment door unlocked and she had walked in and taken a seat opposite me. She was wearing a smart black tailor-made, with black velvet trimmings on cuffs and neck and a white silk blouse with an antique silver brooch of some Indian god with about six arms—Siva, probably, representing the destructive principle in life. She was always very studied in her dress. And she’d fooled me completely.

  I said, ‘I presume whatever that thing in your hand holds, you mean business with it?’

  ‘Unfortunately, yes, but—’

  ‘Please,’ I interrupted, ‘don’t say you hope I won’t take it personally.’

  ‘I don’t care how you take it. I’m only thinking of myself. I was given a promise that I wouldn’t have to take part in active operations of this kind. The promise has been broken twice since Jan died. Now, because of Wilkins’s letter and the fact that you are still alive when you should be dead, they say—’

  ‘Saraband Two or Duchêne?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Not really. I’m beginning to see light.’

  J. was Jan, of course.

  She shifted her hand a little, and said, ‘I don’t even know what chemical it contains. But it’s effective. I’ve used it before. I had to do a course after I married Jan.’

  She must have known damn well what was in the pistol. You don’t take courses without being told. It was probably potassium cyanide. Maybe she just didn’t want to confuse me with science. Maybe she just didn’t want to think too much about what she was going to do.

  I said, ‘Was Jan very fond of your brother Martin?’

  ‘Yes—oddly enough. Although Martin never knew the truth behind it, they had this thing to kidnap Dawson fixed up over two years ago. There was no Pelegrina in the picture then. Jan saw it as a way of fixing up Martin with some money. They would do the kidnapping between them—it arose because Martin was so friendly with Dawson and had the opportunities—and then Jan’s real lot, mine, too, of course by then, would take over. Martin would think the take-over genuine and would go off happy with his money. Unhappily Jan died.’

  ‘Martin had no idea that you and Jan worked for Saraband Two?’

  ‘No. Nor does now. You like her? She gives me the creeps. In fact, I’ve wanted to get out of the whole thing since Jan’s death, but I wasn’t allowed. Anyway, you can see that you have to go. It’s most important that this deal goes through on the terms already agreed.’

  I moved one hand, just a fraction, hoping I might be allowed a last cigarette. She stopped me with a gesture of her hand and a shake of the head.

  I said, ‘But your brother, after Jan’s death, still nursed the idea of kidnapping Dawson, said nothing to you about it—because right from the start he had never known that you were in on the original idea, or even that you and Jan were agents?’

  ‘That’s right. The whole thing was called off officially. But Martin went on nursing it. When he disappeared, stealing from me, I knew what he was after. I went down to his cottage—oh, I knew about that—and saw the letter from Dawson inviting him to Tripoli. So I was instructed to make a fuss with the insurance company, knowing you would be called in. They were very clever. They thought Martin would try and set it up some time on his own, so they made me transfer my insurance to the London Fraternal—just so that it would be you on the job.’

  ‘Flattering.’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘All they wanted was for you to do their work—that’s all they ever want. Somebody to do their work . . . somebody expendable or docile. I’m fed up with it. I only went in because Jan persuaded me, and with him it was fun. Nothing’s been fun since. I really loved him.’

  ‘You’re breaking my heart.’

  She gave a ghost of a smile. ‘I like you. But you don’t begin to compare with Jan. Nevertheless, I like you . . . I suppose that’s why I’m talking so much, working myself up to it. The other two times I really disliked the people involved.’

  I said, ‘Why ever did you show me Wilkins’s letter?’

  ‘They said I was to make sure you hadn’t received one and passed it on. I knew you wouldn’t tell me if you had unless I showed you mine. And now—I’ve got to kill you.’

  I said, ‘Why not put that stupid thing away and have a drink? Maybe we could work something out? Why not?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Jan’s gone, but I still like living. If I disobeyed, I wouldn’t live long.’

  ‘Maybe we could fix something up. Look, other people are involved. Wilkins—and, could be, your brother. They might not let him off the hook. You wouldn’t like to see him go under.’

  Her face stiffened. ‘I don’t care what happens to him. He was worse to me than my father when I was young. He did some terrible things . . . a really terrible thing when I was fifteen, so terrible that nothing was ever right afterwards until I met Jan, and he was so sweet and understanding and then, thank the Lord, it all came right. . . .’

  Believe it or not, there was the wet glint of a tear in one of her eyes. But it wasn’t breaking my heart that her brother had messed about with her as a girl. I wanted to get out of this room alive. Wanted to—but how? One move from me and that thing in her hand would go off in my face, and that would be the end of me and Wilkins. I cursed myself then for not telling Olaf about the letter. At least he could have carried on. Thank God, she didn’t know about Olaf or she would be leaving here to finish him off in his rum-sodden sleep at the hotel.

  She stood
up suddenly and stepped sideways to the window. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said contritely, and she stretched her right arm out, taking aim, an awkward yet very feminine movement that possesses them all when they aim a gun or shape up to throw a ball. If there had been bullets in the gun I would have taken a chance on her aiming badly and missing me as I jumped for her. But this stuff would spray wide, enveloping me as I moved.

  Her lips firmed up, there was still the glint of a tear in her cornflower blue eyes, and she was all set to kill me. Vaguely, for there is no controlling the mind at such moments, I wondered who the other two had been, wondered why I hadn’t paid more attention to Miggs once telling me that her husband had been as bent as a bedspring, and wondered why I’d been so dumb as to miss that J. could have stood for Jan.

  Vaguely, too, I thought I ought to say something, something significant to haunt her for the rest of her life, some last, dying words; Anaxagoras, the old schoolmaster-philosopher saying, ‘Give the boys a holiday’; Rabelais with his ‘Let down the curtain, the farce is over’.

  Well, the curtain had something to do with it. From high above her head at that moment came the faint jingle of brass curtain rings. I glanced up and saw, too, the faint movement of her head following mine. Lilith was up there still, from this morning, and finally bored with sulking. I saw the slow movement of her grey-silver coils and then she dropped in the lazy, clumsy Siamese cat way, aiming for the chair below.

  She missed it, struck Gloriana on the shoulder, and knocked her back into the chair, the twelve-foot length of the python sprawling over her like a hose pipe. Gloriana screamed, then kicked and beat at the snake with her arms and legs. Suddenly Lilith wasn’t sulking and bored; she was irritated, nervous and angry at the treatment, and with smooth swiftness the coils went round an arm, the flat axe-shaped head weaved upwards and, before I could do anything, the long length of her body was coiling and constricting around Gloriana’s neck. If she had stayed still, fought down her panic, Lilith would have eased up, lost her fear at the threshing movement of Gloriana, and slid away.

  I ran to the sideboard and picked up a bottle for a weapon and charged back to the sprawling mass of woman and snake in the chair, but Gloriana’s right hand came up, holding the spray gun, and it was pointed at me. I backed off, and then saw that it had only momentarily been aimed at me. She was choking and breathing hard, trying to locate Lilith’s head. She grabbed at it with her left hand and brought the right round but as she fired—a long, soft hiss of sound—the python’s head jerked, forcing her hand aside and I saw the quick spread of vapour envelop the tousled red-gold hair and obscure her face.

  They went, both of them, woman and snake, within three seconds, collapsing, both of them, into the chair, and perhaps for another five seconds there was a slow dying ripple of movement along the length of Lilith’s coils, but no movement from Gloriana. She lay there with her blue eyes seeing nothing.

  *

  I got a taxi and went to Letta’s club and met her. I took her back to my hotel and got a room for her. She wanted more explanations than I was prepared to give but in the end—knowing about Gloriana lying dead in her apartment —agreed not to go back until Manston got in touch with her at the hotel. Manston had people in Paris who would clear up the situation smoothly and without publicity.

  CHAPTER 12

  Trio in a Flat

  I told Olaf the full story on the plane—and then it took me an hour to convince him that the best way for him to help Wilkins was to stand by at Ibiza airport as a contact for Manston when he arrived.

  His parting words to me were, ‘You make a mess of this, Mr Carver, and I break your neck. Hilda is the world to me.’

  I took a taxi from the airport to San Antonio. It was about a twenty-mile drive from the airport. It was hot with the promise of real baking summer days to come. Old ladies in black sat under the olive trees, knitting, and keeping an eye on their goats and sheep. The earth had that dry, reddish colour and was the kind that the wind breaks down to fine dust and spreads over everything. The hills were green with scrub and, here and there, a pair of buzzards circled high in some air current over the crests. I didn’t look at the scenery much. I kept telling myself that what I was doing was right, I had to get more definite information. I wanted to have enough information to be sure that Manston would have to take action on it. Bill Dawson was going to be returned anyway. But I wanted Wilkins back.

  San Antonio was spread around the shores of a wide lagoon on the north-west of the island. One side was packed with new hotels for the tourist trade, and the other side held the old town, sloping gently uphill from the waterfront, a maze of narrow alleys and streets. It was all pink and white and ochre, and fast being spoiled and modernized. Buildings were going up everywhere, and every other shop was a tourist trap—postcards, beach hats, sandals, sunglasses, pottery and trashy jewellery. It was a miniature Brighton or Blackpool under a hot sun. Every holiday resort in Europe was getting to look more and more alike, a babel with a twenty-four-hour developing service, fish-and-chips and beefsteak and middle-aged mums wearing shorts or holiday outfits that they wouldn’t have dared to sport at home. Well, good for them.

  The taxi took me into the town, up the hillside through a maze of crowded little streets, and finally dropped me at the end of the Paseo Maritimo. It was a narrow passageway running parallel to the hillside. Number 7 was wedged in between a butcher’s shop and a carpenter’s workshop. An old man in faded blue shirt and trousers, barefooted, was sitting on the doorstep contemplating his dirty toes.

  I said, ‘Por favor, José Bonifaz?’ That practically exhausted my Spanish.

  He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the hallway and stairs behind him. I went into a gloom that smelled of frying fish and tobacco smoke. At the top of the first flight of stairs a small girl was sitting, cuddling a doll and crooning to it. I gave her a big smile and repeated my Spanish. She got up, still crooning, and went along the landing to one of three doors and knocked on it for me. I heard a voice say something inside and I went in.

  José Bonifaz may have been a student but he certainly wasn’t studying. The place, I realized now, was some sort of pension. This was a bed-sitting room. There was a table, crowded with books, under a small window, a chair with an opened can of peaches on it, a wardrobe with a cracked mirror front, and an iron bed with José Bonifaz on it. He was reading an English paperback with a lurid cover and, although it was long past midday, was still wearing pyjamas, the jacket open to show a thin chest as brown as a berry from the sun. His hair was as black as coal and needed cutting, his eyes were almost as dark and were the twitchy kind, never still for a moment in their sockets. He had a thin, birdy little face with a tiny tuft of baby beard right on the end of his chin. My first sight of him didn’t warm me to him.

  He rolled slowly off the bed to a sitting position and said, ‘Senhor?’ Then before I could answer, he called something in Spanish to the small girl who was standing in the open door behind me. She answered. He put out his tongue and she retreated, leaving the door open. I shut the door with my foot and said, ‘I’m from Mrs Stankowski.’

  He didn’t get it at first. He just looked at me, puzzled.

  ‘Mrs Stankowski,’ I said. ‘You wrote to her sending the letter you found in a beer bottle.’ I put my hand in my pocket and brought out a pile of Spanish notes and tossed them to him. I’d got them at the airport exchange bureau.

  He caught them and the dark eyes flickered with sudden interest and understanding. He sat there, staring at the notes as though they had just fallen out of the blue into his hands, which in a way they had, and I knew that he was having a struggle not to start counting them. Some lingering trace of Spanish courtesy made him decide against it.

  He said slowly, ‘But it is unbelievable. I think it all a joke.’

  ‘It’s no joke,’ I said. ‘Apart from the one for Mr Carver—have you found any other letters like it since?’

  He stood up. ‘No, sir.’ He looked
at me and then at the notes in his hands and shook his head.

  ‘You can count them later. Tell me, would you have any idea who had returned the beer bottles?’

  ‘No, sir. I am not in the shop when they come in. Only the evenings I am working to wash them.’

  It looked as though I wasn’t going to get much from him.

  I said, ‘Is there a Bar Tristan in this town?5’

  He sat down on the bed, put the notes at his side and then looked at me, cocking his head like a thrush listening for a worm, and it was a good ten seconds before he said, ‘Yes, sir.’

  I thought it was a bit too long for such a simple answer.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘It is around the corner from the supermarket. I shall show you.’

  He began to fish under the bed for his shoes. When he came up with them he said, ‘You stay somewhere in this town, senhor?’

  I didn’t like that. I was the one who had come to ask questions, and I didn’t think he was just making polite conversation. José Bonifaz had something on his mind.

  I said, ‘We’ll leave that for a bit. Tell me—have you mentioned this letter business to anyone else? Your mother or father, for instance.’

  ‘No, sir. I live alone here. They are out in the country. A farm, you understand? I am here for my studies and to work.’

  ‘What about your friends? You tell them?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He stood up and wiggled his feet into his loose sandals. ‘If you like I show you the Bar Tristan now.’

  I moved a little nearer him, and I could see that he was nervous about something. His eyes were flicking as though they were full of grit.

  I said, ‘You usually walk around the town in your pyjamas?’

  He looked down at his pyjama trousers and was genuinely surprised. Then he gave a nervous laugh and began to move towards the wardrobe.