Nemesis

by Rory Clements

  From Petty Cury, he cut westwards across the edge of the market, striding at a brisk pace. Suddenly he stopped. Among the market square crowd he spotted a familiar figure, small, slender, dark-haired and with a bronzed complexion, unusual in this pale eastern England market town. He had seen her in France; he had seen her confront Marcus Marfield outside the Vanderbergs’ Chelsea house; and he had seen her speed off when he approached her van in Histon. Rosa.

  She was walking fast along the west of the market place, and he followed her. He put a hand to her shoulder. She froze.

  ‘Rosa,’ he said. ‘You are Rosa, yes?’

  Slowly she turned. ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she hissed, her English accurate but her accent plainly Spanish.

  ‘You were with Marcus Marfield in Spain. Please, spare me five minutes at least. I’d like to know more about him – and I might be able to help you.’

  She pursed her lips and he thought she would spit in his face, but she gave a scornful ‘puh’ sound.

  ‘I mean you no harm,’ said Wilde. ‘I promise you.’

  ‘Men and their promises. Why would I talk to you – you are his friend. You are all the same.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, that’s not true. You know nothing about me – but I am willing to answer any questions you have. Won’t you come and have a cup of tea with me. Or just sit down by the river? Five minutes, Rosa. I beg you.’

  She was wearing a dark ankle-length skirt and a short blue jacket, perhaps a little too warm for the balmy September weather. She slipped her hand in her pocket. Wilde thrust out his hand and gripped her arm.

  ‘No weapons,’ he said. ‘That really isn’t necessary. Look – I am a professor here at the university. That’s how I know Marcus Marfield. My name is Thomas Wilde. We were in France on vacation and his plight in the camp was brought to our attention, so we agreed to bring him home. That’s all. Please, come and talk to me. I may be able to help you – and you may be able to explain one or two things to me.’

  ‘He is the devil, and you are his friend, that’s all I need to know about you.’

  She wrenched her hand away from his grip and pulled it from her pocket. There was no gun. Then she turned away from him and continued to walk towards Market Street. At the corner, she stopped and turned back to gaze in his direction. She raised her chin dismissively, as though to say, ‘I despise you.’ Even at a distance of a hundred yards he could feel her antipathy.

  And then, once again, she was gone. Wilde began to run after her. At the corner of Sidney Street, he saw her again, heading north. Just past Sidney Sussex, he caught up with her. She didn’t stop, so he walked at her shoulder, firing questions at her. ‘Why are you here? Why were you at Histon in that van? Who sent you? Who do you work for? Why do you call Marfield the devil – what did he do to you?’

  His questions were met with silence and a mouth set in grim defiance.

  Ahead of them, coming in their direction, was a uniformed policeman on his beat. Wilde had seen him around town, often passing a word or two in greeting. ‘Rosa – if that really is your name – you should talk to me,’ said Wilde. ‘If I stop that police officer now and lay a complaint, you will be arrested and taken into custody. You will be either interned or expelled from the country. Do you want that?’

  She stopped. Her eyes swivelled from the looming constable to Wilde and then back. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll talk.’

  The officer arrived, halted and gave them the once over. He knew every house in the streets on his beat and he seemed to know every face in town. ‘Morning, Professor Wilde.’

  ‘Good day to you, Constable Gates.’

  ‘Is everything all right, sir?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Just giving this young lady directions to Jesus Lane.’

  ‘What is she, new scholar?’

  ‘I believe she’s Spanish, staying with friends. Got a little lost.’

  ‘Ah well, sir, I’m afraid we have to take note of foreigners. Orders of the Chief Constable.’ He turned his gaze to Rosa. ‘Might I have your name, young lady?’

  ‘Cortez. Rosa Cortez. As this kind gentleman said, I am from Spain, staying with friends.’

  ‘I take it you’ve signed the Aliens’ Register, madam?’

  ‘Indeed, yes.’

  The policeman hesitated, then tipped his helmet. ‘Well, good day to you, I’m sure the professor here will see you right with his directions – and don’t let me see either of you out again without your gas mask boxes.’

  They watched him depart, walking with firm, unhurried steps on his circular route.

  ‘Well?’ Wilde said at last. ‘Are we going to talk now? My rooms in college, perhaps.’

  ‘We go to the river. Marfield will be at your college and I don’t wish to see him. He is your creature, is he not? It was you who sent him to Spain after all.’

  ‘Is that what he told you? I promise you I did no such thing. I was as surprised as anyone when he left Cambridge.’

  *

  The market square was crowded with Saturday morning shoppers. They walked slowly. Rosa spoke softly of her time on the Madrid line with Marfield: the fighting and the fear and the utter lawlessness of the various factions. As she talked, men and women jostled and pushed. Wilde was the best part of a foot taller than this woman and had to bend his head to listen to her as they walked side by side.

  ‘I thought he was perfect,’ she said. ‘But then . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Little things he said, disappearances for days on end, his contempt.’

  ‘You tried to kill him in France. You shot him.’

  ‘Yes, I wanted to kill him. But now I want to shame him – expose him.’

  He was just about to ask her why, when a squadron of Spitfires flew overhead, so low he could see the pilots. They tipped their wings to the crowds, who all waved back. He looked back down at Rosa and was surprised to find her on her knees.

  ‘Rosa?’

  She fell forward on to the hard paving. Had she tripped? Had a sudden seizure or heart attack? Wilde knelt down beside her. There was blood everywhere, soaking her long dress, pouring out on to the ground, blood on her blue serge jacket, blood on his hands. Dear God, what had just happened?

  CHAPTER 24

  The door to the interview room opened and Philip Eaton was standing there, leaning heavily on his stick. It was one o’clock in the morning. Wilde had never thought he would be so pleased to see the man.

  ‘Well, well, professor, what have you got yourself into now?’

  ‘I think you know a great deal more than I do, Eaton. Where’s Rowlands? Has he let you out on your own? I was beginning to think you were lashed together like mariners at the mast.’

  ‘Otherwise engaged down in London. I had to use a ministry driver. Actually, I feel rather liberated. Now, tell me exactly what happened and then we can get you out of this place and remove ourselves to somewhere that serves Scotch.’

  Wilde told him about his fruitless visit to the Samovar, his encounters with Rosa Cortez, and finally her fatal stabbing in broad daylight in the market place in the centre of Cambridge.

  ‘A deep wound under the ribcage, into the heart, I believe?’

  ‘The police haven’t given me the details, but that would make sense,’ Wilde said.

  ‘Did you see the attacker?’

  ‘No. One moment we were all looking up at a squadron of Spits, the next moment she was crumpled on the ground. For several seconds I didn’t even know she had been stabbed. There was a mass of people. I saw nothing suspicious and I saw no weapon.’

  ‘But there was a pistol in her pocket?’

  ‘So I believe. As I told you, she had one in London, so it was probably the same one.’

  ‘This is a can of worms, Wilde.’

  He nodded. He had been held here, pending inquiries, all day long. Was he being accused of anything? No, Detective Inspector Tomlinson said, but they would like him to stay all the same. They would rather
not invoke defence regulations to keep him there, but well, if that proved necessary, so be it.

  Wilde didn’t fight his incarceration. Instead he gave the officer Lydia’s number and insisted she be called. He learnt later that she had hurried to the police station, but was kept away from him. Finally he demanded they call Philip Eaton.

  And now here he was, back in Cambridge, standing with the support of a stick in the doorway to the interview room. He looked at Wilde with something close to amusement. ‘Come on, Wilde, let’s get out of this place.’

  ‘You mean I can go?’

  ‘I pulled rank.’

  ‘Thank you. A whisky would go down well. Where are you staying?’

  ‘The Bull again. The bar will be closed but we’ll force the concierge to find us a bottle. A ten-bob note usually works wonders.’

  *

  The ministry driver had made his way to a guest house for a night’s sleep, so Eaton and Wilde hitched a lift in a police car through the dark, empty Cambridge streets. At the hotel, the concierge blinked as though he had been asleep and informed them that the bar was closed.

  ‘We know that,’ Eaton said. ‘But we want a bottle of Scotch whisky and we’ll pay good money for it. Cash in hand.’

  The concierge did not need further prodding. ‘Yes, sir, of course, sir.’

  ‘And I want to use your phone,’ Wilde said.

  ‘As you wish, sir.’

  Eaton tutted. ‘Surely you’re not going to call your girl now, Wilde? She’ll be asleep.’

  ‘She’ll be awake.’

  *

  Lydia had spent most of the day worrying about Tom. At first when he didn’t contact her, she went to the Samovar and spoke to the waitress, who said that, yes, Professor Wilde had been there. And had she heard news of the awful event in the market? A woman had been stabbed . . .

  Later there was a phone call and she went to the police station in St Andrew’s Street, but was told that she couldn’t see Professor Wilde. It was Rupert Weir’s arrival in his role as police surgeon that gave her the first inkling of what was going on.

  Lydia was appalled. ‘They don’t think Tom’s in any way involved, do they?’

  ‘Well, he is involved, of course – but no, they don’t think he’s the killer. They have, however, been asked to keep him in their charge until the identity and intentions of the dead woman are confirmed.’

  ‘Can they do that – keep Tom without charge?’

  ‘As an alien, they can do what they want with him. At the moment, they just want to cover their backs. But they’ll let him out soon enough. It might help if they could locate your chum Marcus Marfield, as he’s the only other person around here who knew the victim. Seems he’s absented himself.’ He didn’t mention what he had been told by Tomlinson – that Wilde and the woman had been seen by a police constable on his beat shortly before the murder, and that Wilde had lied to the officer. He had told him he was showing the young woman the way to Jesus Lane, but at the time of the incident they were walking in the opposite direction. Nor had he been at all truthful about his relationship with the young woman. The implication had been that they were strangers, but subsequent statements made it clear that they had met, however briefly, on three previous occasions.

  There were questions to be answered and Weir suggested to the detective inspector that this was probably a matter for higher authorities. There was a gun involved and police were searching for a missing green van.

  ‘What about the woman?’ Lydia had said. ‘Have you performed the post-mortem, Rupert?’

  He nodded. ‘As far as I can tell from my initial examination, it was a single thrust with a long thin blade, beneath the rib cage and a full inch into the heart. She had no chance. I’ll do further tests, but I’m not expecting to find much else.’

  ‘What can I do now?’

  ‘Very little except wait. Look after yourself.’ He nodded towards her belly. ‘Don’t do anything to jeopardise our new young friend.’

  But of course, she couldn’t just take things easy, eat supper, read, go to bed. And so she had stayed up, waiting for news. Now at last the phone was ringing.

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘I’m out – and I’m with Eaton down at the Bull. I’ll be home in half an hour.’

  ‘Come to Cornflowers, won’t you? I’m wide awake.’

  ‘Of course.’

  *

  ‘Everything all right?’ Eaton asked as Wilde came back from reception.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Then grab the bottle and two glasses. You pour – you’ve got more arms than me.’

  Wilde managed a smile, but he wasn’t fooled by Eaton’s jest. They made their way through to the lounge where the concierge switched on a dim wall light in a red sconce. The window was blacked out, of course. Wilde poured two whiskies and both men took a minute or two in appreciation.

  ‘God, that’s good,’ Wilde said.

  ‘A fine way to start Sunday. Now then, I need to know everything you know about Miss Rosa Cortez. Everything she did, every word she spoke. But first, I have a bit of news for you.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘You mentioned that in France you were approached by a man who told you that Marfield was incarcerated in Le Vernet and you told me that he called himself Honoré. Someone of that name has just crossed the path of our cousins across the channel. Information from the French security services suggests a man called Honoré is an agent of the Comintern – the Communist International. He ordered the assassination of America’s ambassador to France.’

  ‘Are you serious? Why has no one heard of this?’

  ‘Because it failed – and it has only just come to light.’

  ‘Why would the Reds want to kill Bill Bullitt? I always thought he was well-disposed towards the Kremlin.’

  ‘He was, but not in recent years. In fact, during his time there as ambassador, he developed a deep antipathy towards Stalinism. I think he made enemies.’

  ‘Do you think the attack on him has some relevance to what’s going on here?’

  ‘The appearance of your chum Honoré must make one wonder. It certainly makes me yet more certain that Marfield and those associated with him are up to no good. We’ll get back to that, but first things first – I want to know about Rosa Cortez. Chapter and verse.’

  Wilde went through his encounters with the woman, ending with the knife thrust in the market place. ‘One moment we were walking side by side, the next she had collapsed. It shocked me to the core, Eaton.’

  ‘Of course it did. But who killed her? Was it Marfield?’

  ‘No, I’m certain not. I would have spotted him, either before or after the event. He’s a difficult man to miss, even in a crowd.’

  ‘But he is the connection to the woman. We need to talk to him urgently. I want him under lock and key. Guy Rowlands was right – he shouldn’t be on the loose.’

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘To hell with charges. Whatever he’s planning, I want to prevent it. We can hold him under Defence Regulations. But where is he?’

  ‘I last saw him on Friday morning just before I came to you. I left him in the company of a rather dandyish young man named Lincoln Tripp – a protégé of Jim Vanderberg.’

  ‘Tripp? New boy at Grosvenor Square?’

  ‘You’ve heard of him then?’

  ‘Of course. We know everyone in all the embassies. Tripp’s lately out of Moscow. Ivy League Yankee, the sort to make your flesh crawl.’

  ‘Actually, he’s quite personable.’

  Eaton raised his eyebrow, but let it pass. ‘Is it just my imagination or are we beginning to see a connection here? A closing of the circle, perhaps?’

  Wilde couldn’t see any such thing. His initial impression had been that Tripp and Marfield might share a sexual attraction. Nothing more. But perhaps he had missed something. ‘What are you suggesting precisely?’

  ‘Moscow. The US embassy there. First Bullitt is targeted under orders
of a Comintern agent named Honoré. Now we have another ex-member of America’s Moscow diplomatic corps vaguely linked to Honoré through you and Marcus Marfield. In my world, there are no coincidences, Wilde.’

  ‘You’re losing me.’

  ‘Sorry, just thinking aloud.’

  ‘You know, I still have no idea how Honoré knew anything about me or where to find me. I’m damned sure Jacques Talbot, my host, didn’t tell anyone. So who, Eaton?’

  ‘It’s a good question, but let’s concentrate on Mr Tripp for a moment.’ Eaton held the whisky glass to his nose and inhaled the heady fumes. ‘I’ll need to check the files, but I do recall that our Moscow station took note of Tripp’s extravagant tastes and his somewhat reckless appetite for the pretty boys and loose women the NKVD threw in his path. But that was par for the course for all the younger officers from the western missions. None of it mattered if you were discreet. You could open your fly, but you had to keep your mouth shut, which most diplomatic officers out there did. And Tripp with his promised inheritance and daddy’s allowance wasn’t going to get himself financially embarrassed.’

  Wilde was beginning to wonder whether Eaton had lost his edge. In the past, his instincts had been finely honed, but this version of the character of Lincoln Tripp seemed pretty baseless. Was this anti-American bias?

  ‘So where is Tripp now?’ Eaton persisted.

  ‘Well, at a guess I’d say he must be back in London. He’d been up to Glasgow with Jack Kennedy and Jim, helping the American survivors from the Athenia. He was only passing through Cambridge on the long drive back to the Smoke.’

  ‘Do you think Marfield might have gone with him?’

  ‘It’s possible. Might explain his absence and present whereabouts.’

  ‘I’ll put in a call to London. In the meantime, we need to work out why this woman Rosa Cortez was pursuing Marfield.’

  ‘She said she wanted to shame him.’

  ‘Did she explain why, or how?’

  Wilde shook his head. ‘We hadn’t got on to that. By the way, have the police located her van? I described it to them.’