A Love to Kill For

by Conor Corderoy

  He thought about it a long time before he answered. Then he sighed deeply and said, “It’s a book. It is a small, illuminated Bible from the fifteenth century. It is the work of a saint. Saint Thomas of Ahisi. The book is barely known outside religious circles and, frankly, that is the way we should like it to stay. The last thing we want is publicity.”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “The Opus Dei and, ultimately, the Vatican.”

  I looked at his hands again, then at his clothes. I said, “The Vatican and the Opus Dei have a very elegant line in evening soutanes.”

  He winced. “I am, in fact, a Jesuit, Mr. Murdoch. I was head of the Santa Maria Library, the archive of ancient texts of La Obra, the Opus Dei, located at Almodovar Castle, outside Cordoba in Andalusia. It is second to none in the world.” He paused, watching me a while, then added, “Even the Vatican cannot match it.” His eyes drifted and he sighed again. He wanted me to know that this was painful and embarrassing for him. “I made a mistake. As a result of my mistake, the book was taken from the library, with a view to auctioning it here in London.” He smiled in a way that just failed to be beatific. “Thankfully the Lord was watching over us and the lady who took it has found it harder than she anticipated to dispose of the Ahisi Bible.”

  I knew he was lying, but a man as skilled as del Roble would never lie outright. He would blend lies with truth so you could never tell which bits of what he was saying were lies, which were elaborations and which were truths. Either way I was starting to get bored and I had a sudden urge to be at Victoria Station before the late train to Paris departed. I sat forward and crushed out my cigarette.

  “I’d like to help you, Mr. del Roble, but you’ve made a mistake. I don’t know anybody involved in your problem. You have me confused with somebody else.”

  His face went real hard. When he spoke his voice hung uncomfortably between a hiss and a snap. “Does the name Mary-Jane Carter mean anything to you?”

  I was about to get up but I didn’t. I watched his face. It didn’t look holy. It was vicious.

  He said, “Yes, Mr. Murdoch, the golden, sparkling, charmingly innocent Miss Carter. She is the lady who beguiled me, fooled me, duped me and took the Ahisi Bible!’

  He waited for me to react. My best offer was, “Go on.”

  He sighed again and this time it was a bit ragged. “I was forced to resign from the library, as you can imagine, but I was given the opportunity to redeem myself by recovering the Bible. I traced Miss Carter here to London and found that she had made contact with Rupert Ferguson-Medicci. Whether to sell the Bible or to steal from him I was not at first sure. However, I watched them and made inquiries. Then, quite unexpectedly, Miss Carter vanished and Mr. Ferguson-Medicci came to you for help. I assume that help was to find Miss Carter. What I want is for you to find Miss Carter and for the Ahisi Bible to be returned to its proper place—the Santa Maria Library in Almodovar.”

  I stood up. I had a slow burn in my gut. I let it show when I said, “You are very well informed, del Roble, but you ought to know this too. I don’t like being spied on.”

  His eyes narrowed into small needles that he tried to pin me down with. “Mr. Murdoch, forgive me if I have been heavy-handed, but I am in dire straits. You will see I have been painfully honest with you, and if I am well informed, now, so are you.”

  I said, “Give me a number where I can contact you. I have somewhere I have to be right now. If I find Miss Carter, I’ll give you a call.”

  He thought about this for a moment. Then he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a billfold. From there he took an embossed card, wrote something on the back and handed it to me. “You will find, Mr. Murdoch, that the Opus Dei can be a very generous friend.”

  When I looked on the back, he’d written a telephone number at The Continental Hotel, and underneath it a figure that was generous by any standards. At this rate I was going to be retiring before the weekend was out. I looked at him and thought about the offer he was making me. I said, “I’ll call you.”

  He creased the corners of his eyes and sat back.

  Chapter Five

  The tail was easy to spot, especially as I knew it would be there. I took it nice and easy so he wouldn’t figure I’d seen him. Once I had reached Knightsbridge, I pulled up and parked in full view outside The Berkeley. I strolled up, had a word with the doorman and went in like I was going to see someone there. Then I ducked out the side entrance by the subterranean car park, hailed a cab and made my way to Victoria Station. In London, this is the station that takes people to the continent of Europe. It is big and cavernous, and late at night it’s populated by a few straggling travelers waiting for trains to Paris and Amsterdam and huge rolling echoes like the ancient ghosts of Victorian giants, still dragging their iron chains.

  She wasn’t hard to find, and she didn’t look surprised to see me. She just looked real sad, tired and frightened. I walked over to where she was sitting. She seemed more human than when I’d seen her last. She met my eyes but she didn’t say anything. Finally, I said, “I pulled my best tux out of storage and went to The King’s Hart.”

  She lowered her eyes and her cheeks colored. I knew it wasn’t real, but it looked real and I wanted to believe it. After a moment I realized she was crying. There was no drama. No shaking of the shoulders, no sobbing. It was just that the dim lights caught one of her tears as it slipped down her cheek. I sat down next to her and pulled my pack of smokes from my hip pocket. I offered her one and she took it. When it was lit, I said, “You want to tell me about it?”

  She was wearing white kid gloves and she wiped the tear from her cheek with the crook of her left index finger.

  “They followed me.”

  “Who did?”

  “I thought if I sold them back their stuff, I’d be free of them, but I’m not, am I?”

  I said, “If you’d come clean with me from the start, I could have told you that. That was the wrong way to go about it. These guys don’t like getting screwed. It’s bad for their reputation.”

  She looked at me, half smiled and nodded once. “That’s always been my problem. I’m naïve.” A voice in my head told me I was being suckered. This woman was anything but naïve. I listened to the voice but only for a moment, then I told it to shut up. I figured I’d play the game. I was Liam Murdoch, right? It would take a smarter dame than Catherine Howard to sucker me. I smiled and said, “There are worse things to be. Smart might be one of them.”

  This time she made it to a smile and we sat smoking for a little in companionable silence. I decided I liked her. She might be as crazy as a box of frogs. She might be trouble from her conk down to her shoes, and she was definitely a compulsive liar, but I still liked her. I liked her a lot.

  Finally, she said, “Why did you come here?”

  I grinned at her. “Nobody ever gave me a quarter million bucks before. I wanted to say thank you.”

  This time she really laughed. It was a beautiful, cut-crystal sound that put the creaking ghosts to flight. I leaned back and sat listening, thinking it was a sound I could get used to. Somewhere in the station a train was pulling out. She stopped laughing then and her eyes followed the sound. I noticed she had placed the fingers of her hand on my knee. I followed her gaze and said, “That’s the late train to Paris…” She nodded. I said, “Why aren’t you on it?”

  She said, “I can’t,” then, “It isn’t finished. I can’t go till it’s finished.”

  “What are you going to do? How are you going to finish it?”

  She looked down at the floor, then at me. “I don’t know. Will you help me?”

  I looked at those green eyes for a long while, with that strange mixture of strength and vulnerability, until I thought I might get lost in them. I wondered in a crazy way if there was something in there I was looking for—had been looking for all my life. Then I knew I had no choice. I had to help her. I tried to hide it, but I knew she was reading me like the front page of Hello—big pic
tures and simple text. I said, “Yeah, you know I will.” Then I asked her, “What happened to your tail?”

  She turned to where the sound of the late train to Paris was receding into the night and smiled. It was a strange, cold smile. She said, “He’s watching my luggage for me, on the train.” It should have made me laugh, but it didn’t. Then she frowned and said, “I’m afraid, Liam. What will they do to me?”

  I dropped my butt on the floor then trod on it with my toe. “I don’t know, sugar, and I won’t till you stop playing games with me. You could start by telling me who the Don is. Who was Mr. X in the back of the car in New York when I went to make the drop? And who was out on the river taking pot shots at him?” I let her think for a moment, then added, “Tell me what this is about, Catherine, then I can tell you how to fix it.”

  She was staring at her feet, like a frightened, ashamed child who’s just had a good spanking. She didn’t answer and, after a while, I said, “You got anywhere to stay tonight?”

  She shook her head.

  “You can stay at my place.” I caught the glance and the frown then smiled. “Don’t worry. I like my couch, and I never make passes at women who are richer than me. It’s bad for my self-esteem.”

  * * * *

  I got the cab to drop us at the side entrance of The Berkeley and left Catherine sipping something cool in the cocktail bar. When I stepped outside, I saw that my tail had finally given up watching my TVR, so I went in and got Catherine. We strolled down to the car and drove through the night lights of the city back to my place on Church Street. When we got there, there was a black Audi A8 parked across from my block. The streetlamps were bleeding amber light over the hood and the smoked windows. I didn’t stop. I said to her, “Lie down. Your friends from the Triborough Bridge are here.” Her face went white like paper and she slid down on her seat till she was practically under the dash, which in a TVR isn’t easy. But it was dark and I figured they couldn’t see her. As I drove past, I made out a punk at the wheel. He looked tall and scrawny, but tough. He had Buddhist-short hair and the face of an iguana. He’d wound down the window and he was watching me like he really didn’t care. Next to him was a hulk that qualified for the human evolutionary scale because he was too stupid to be an ape. He had one eyebrow, and I figured he used it to frown at words with more than one syllable. They made a beautiful pair.

  In my rear view, I saw them do a U-turn and start following me up toward Notting Hill Gate. I let them tail me at a gentle pace for a couple of minutes, then I turned left up a dark backstreet and left again into the lights of Camden Hill. I didn’t drive too fast because I didn’t want to shake them. All I wanted was a little time to unload Catherine Howard. When I could see they were pretty close, I did another U-turn against the traffic. It made a few people lean on their horns and flash their headlights, because the good people of Notting Hill just don’t do that kind of thing. It isn’t cricket. But it let me get away from the Audi, and as I turned across the traffic and sped up toward the Gate again, I could see Dharma-Hair leaning out of his window. I gave him my sweetest smile but he still didn’t care.

  Now I did drive fast. I heard the tires complain as I turned back into Church Street then again as I squealed to a stop in full view outside my building. I told Catherine, “Get out. Run down the alley to the back. Wait at the service entrance.”

  She did as I said and I watched her disappear, swallowed up by the darkness of the alley. I got out slowly then went up the steps to the front door. I opened it, stepped in then went fast to the service entrance. I let her in and we went up in the elevator without being seen. In my apartment I told her to stay away from the windows. Then I went to my room and took one of the attaché cases from my wardrobe and locked the other one away. As I left, I said to her, “Wait here.”

  When I got downstairs, the Audi was parked across the road again, under the streetlamp. As I strolled toward him, Dharma-Hair was watching me like his only thought was the fly on the lotus flower. I laid the attaché on the roof and leaned down over the window. I said, in my best wiseass voice, “Hello, boys, nice to see you.”

  Dharma-Hair blinked real slow and shrugged. Just a little. Then he said, “What do you want?” He sounded Hungarian.

  Monobrow in the passenger seat leaned forward to look at me and said, “Wise guy,” and I knew he was from New Jersey.

  I smiled at him. “Did your boss manage to get his pants cleaned?” I could see him frowning, like he was genuinely trying to remember if his boss had recently had his pants cleaned.

  Dharma-Hair, the thinker of the outfit, said, “That was in New York. Place change. Situation change.”

  “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  He met my eyes real steady. “You got something that belongs to us. We want it back.”

  I slid the attaché down and showed it to him. “Tell your boss that possession is nine-tenths of the law. Do you understand that, Einstein? It means that I have what he wants and that, as things stand, it’s mine.” I shook the case a little. “This?” I said, and thrust it into his chest. “This doesn’t even begin to cut ice. The price went up, and every day you two goons sit out here watching me, the price goes up again.”

  Dharma-Hair heard me out, then he quietly took the case away from me. He looked down at it then raised his eyes to me. There was a nasty smile in them. “Possession,” he said. “It always leads to suffering.”

  As I strolled back to my block, I heard their wheels scream as they took off up the hill. I had just given away nearly a quarter million dollars, but it was a quarter million I didn’t need. I had no idea who their boss was or what I had that he wanted so bad, but I was pretty sure it was worth more than two hundred and fifty grand. I was also pretty sure I’d soon be meeting him, and he was going to tell me in person.

  When I got back to my apartment, Catherine Howard was sitting in the living room with the lights off. She was very upright on the sofa, with her hands clasped in her lap. Her green eyes were very wide and her Cupid’s-bow mouth was clamped tight. She stood as I walked in. I snapped on the lamp and it cast a soft amber glow in the room. “Mr. Murdoch, are you all right?”

  I nodded as I closed the door. “Sure. It was a couple of guys who work for your Mr. X. I gave them back their money and told them it wasn’t enough.”

  She frowned and her eyes darted about my floor as if she were looking for possible unwanted consequences of what I’d done and she might find them on my carpet. “Was that wise?”

  I laughed. “I figure if they are prepared to pay a hundred and fifty K in sterling, it has to be worth at least twice that much.”

  I stepped over to her. She was looking up, searching my face. I said, “You okay?” She nodded. I said, “Relax. I’ll make us something.”

  I brewed us some coffee. She was real quiet. I took it into the living room, poured us a cup each and laced it with a generous slug of Irish. Then I sat opposite her and we lit up. I inhaled and watched her while she blew smoke at the floor near her feet. Finally, I said, “So, who are these people?”

  She said, “It’s not people. It’s a man. He may be Mafia, but I don’t think so. He specializes in blackmail and extortion. He uses drugs and prostitutes and operates on the fringes of Hollywood and the world of politics and high finance. You wouldn’t believe how much political power there is in and around Hollywood. He preys on vulnerable people. He has a genius for finding and exploiting people’s weaknesses.”

  “This is the Don story again. Don’t lie to me, Catherine.”

  She shook her head, then raised her eyes to meet mine. She looked drawn and scared. “I swear I’m not, Liam. Not this time.”

  That voice in my head told me she was still lying. Maybe it was her ocean-green eyes, maybe it was just the sordid promise of big bucks and her perfect body, or maybe it was another promise, something deeper and harder to articulate. But, whatever it was, I wanted to trust her—even if I didn’t believe what she was saying, I wanted to
believe her. I said, “How does he do it?”

  The night was turning sultry, and even though there was a breeze from the open window, it was muggy and close. I pulled off my jacket and my bow tie, then loosened the neck of my shirt. She watched me do it, then said, “He operates in various ways. One of his biggest rackets is using high-class girls to seduce executives in the movie industry and big shots in politics. Then he blackmails them.” She gave a bitter laugh. “It’s not original, but it works. You wouldn’t believe some of the people he has in the palm of his hand. If he extorts them, he keeps it to manageable amounts, so they never kick against him. Some of them are even grateful.

  “Others he never extorts. He just uses them for political purposes as and when he needs them. Often as not their agendas are compatible, so the information he has is no more than an insurance policy on his own power.” She paused and sipped her coffee. “As you accumulate that kind of dirt, the information itself becomes a tradable commodity, and you can play your victims against each other, selling information for favors and money to the highest bidder. Over the years, his power has become enormous.” She glanced at me. “The girls are nothing to him, just tools. Any who have given him trouble in the past, he got hooked on heroin to break their spirit. I have watched beautiful young women become wasted wraiths. If they become a liability, he simply has them killed and dumped—another Jane Doe with puncture marks on her arms, to be tagged at the morgue and written off.”

  I gave her a moment, then asked, “What’s in the box?”

  Her head snapped around. “You opened it?”

  It was an odd question, and I answered carefully. “I opened the case, not the box.”

  She put her cup down, as though positioning it with care in exactly the right place. “Liam, are you telling me you didn’t swap the box for the money, as I asked?”