by Jim Hougan
The airport at Southend-on-Sea was sufficiently obscure that Dunphy felt certain that no one would be looking for them there. It would take a few hours, at least, for the Agency to sort out Curry’s misfortune and to invent a reason for MI5 to put Dunphy in its lookout books. By then, he and Clem would be on a British Midland flight to St. Helier.
This was the capital of Jersey, largest of the Anglo-Normandes, or Channel Islands. A British dependency only twelve miles off the coast of France, the islands were a feudal anachronism—a bilingual tax haven with more registered corporations than actual people. Famous for its soft climate, Jersey was one of the favorite banking venues of (the unfortunately defunct) Anglo-Erin Business Services, PLC.—and its proprietor, K. Thornley.
Which was why Dunphy decided not to stay at his usual bolt-hole, where he was known to the management by his pseudonym, but to take a suite at the rather more posh Longueville Manor. (Or, as it was formally known, The Longueville Manor.)
An Edwardian pile of ivy-clad granite and tiles, the Manor was situated in a private wood, a few miles outside the capital. As their taxi entered the hotel’s circular drive, Clem remarked how spooky it looked, opaque in the winter mist.
But once inside the hotel, the Channel’s damp surrendered to ancient tapestries, candlelight, and a roaring fireplace.
“Will you need help with your luggage, Mr.? . . .” The clerk squinted at the registration card.
“Dunphy. Jack Dunphy. And no, we won’t—the fucking airline lost it on our way in from the States.”
The clerk winced. “Oh, dear . . . well, I’m sure it will turn up. It always does.” Bright smile.
Dunphy grunted. “Yeah, only now it’s beginning to look like this could turn into a major shopping opportunity.” Clem rocked back and forth on her heels, mugging her glee, as if a director had called out Eyes and teeth, dahling! a “You do have stores here,” Dunphy asked, “or is it just banks?”
The clerk grinned. “No, sir, I’m afraid we do indeed have shops, as well.” The two men exchanged rueful chuckles as Dunphy accepted a plastic room key. “Just down the hall, sir,” the clerk said, and folding his hands with a smug smile, watched the American couple wander off in the direction of their suite.
Which was large, and more Ralph Lauren than Laura Ashley, with birch logs crackling in the hearth. Hunting scenes hung from the walls in dark wooden frames, and a bowl of fresh flowers bloomed beside the bed. “Have you been here before, then?” Clem asked, falling backward onto a velvet couch and staring up at the ceiling.
“Not here,” Dunphy said, fixing each of them a drink from the minibar. “But Jersey—yeah.”
“It’s very nice.”
“Uh-huh.” He swirled the Laphroaig in her glass and gave it to her. Then he sat down on the floor beside the couch, facing the fireplace, and sipped. “Only we can’t stay here for long.” He could feel her frown on his shoulder blades. “It wouldn’t be safe. They’ll be looking for us.”
“On Jersey?”
“Everywhere.”
“Then why don’t we just go to the police?”
Dunphy sighed. “Because the police think I had something to do with . . . what happened to Schidlof. And maybe I did, indirectly. I mean, I was bugging the guy.”
“You were what a?”
“Recording his telephone calls. And then he got killed.”
She was quiet for a moment, and then, “Why were you listening—”
“I wasn’t listening. I was having the calls recorded.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Dunphy replied. “I wasn’t told.”
“You weren’t told a?”
“It was my job. I did what they said.”
She was quiet again, and then spoke up. “I still think the police . . .”
Dunphy dismissed the idea with a flick of his hand. “No. If we go to the police, the embassy will get into it, and the next thing you know, they’ll be telling the Brits it’s a ‘national security matter.’ And that wouldn’t be good.”
“Why not?”
“Because as soon as that happens, I’m on the next flight out, wrapped in a rug.” He took another sip of whiskey, relishing its heat on his palate. “And that’s just me. I don’t know what happens to you. You fall between the cracks or something.”
“I what a?”
“You fall between the cracks. Which I suppose could be good or bad, depending—”
“On what?”
“The cracks—and how deep they are.”
A long silence ensued. Finally Clem asked, “So what do we do?”
Dunphy turned to her. “We have to get you a passport—”
“I’ve already got one. I mean, at home. I could say I lost it, and—”
He shook his head. “No. We need something in a different name.”
“Which name?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Any name you like.”
The idea seemed to please her, and she thought about it. “Could it be Veroushka?”
Dunphy did a double take. “I guess, but . . . what the fuck is a Veroushka?”
Clem’s shoulders rose and fell in a little shrug. “It’s just a name I like.”
“Okay . . . Veroushka it is.”
“And I’ll need a last name, too.”
“No problem. There’s a million of them. Windsong is taken, but how about Stankovic? Or Zipwitz?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not? Veroushka Zipwitz! It’s got a ring to it.”
She smiled. “Bell will do. One e, two ls a.”
“Got it.”
“It was my grandmother’s name.”
“No problem. Veroushka Bell. I like it.” She smacked him on the shoulder. “No, I mean it,” he said. “It’s great.”
“Okay, so now that I have a name—how are you going to get a passport made?”
“No problem. I can do it in Zürich.”
“I’m sure you can. But we aren’t in Zürich.”
“Riii-ight,” he replied, and got to his feet. “That’s the bad part.”
“What is?” she asked.
He didn’t answer her at first, but fetched another miniature from the minibar. “Refill?”
“What’s the bad part?” she demanded.
“The part about your going home—but not to your flat.” Suddenly, she looked frightened, and he hurried on. “Can you get a room for a few days? Until I can get you a passport?”
“No!”
“Clem—”
“I can’t!”
“You can. You have to. C’mon, babe . . . it’s the only way.”
She looked at him in a way that was almost as surly as it was sad—as if she were a child who’d been cheated by an adult. Her lower lip trembled, and her forehead plunged. It would have been comical if it weren’t so heartrending.
Finally, she nodded.
“We’ll get pictures taken for your passport,” Dunphy said, “and have a really good dinner. In the morning, I’ll take you down to the docks. You can get the hydrofoil to Southend—ever been in one?” She shook her head, tears flying. “You’ll like it. It’s very exciting. Like sitting inside a vacuum cleaner.”
She giggled in spite of herself. “And what about you?”
“I’ll be at the bank. And then on a boat to France, and then a train to Zürich. There’s a hotel there, the Zum Storchen. It’s right in the middle of town, so you won’t have any trouble finding it. But I’m going to need an address for you a—so I can send the passport.”
“I guess I could stay at my girlfriend’s,” Clem said. “She has a cottage near Oxford.” She wrote the address on a scrap of paper and handed it to him.
“Look for a FedEx truck, okay?”
She nodded. “You won’t just leave me there?” she asked.
Dunphy shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m not gonna do that again.”
The morning was bright and blustery, with soft, lenticular clouds floating over
a meringue of whitecaps in St. Helier’s harbor. He bought a ticket for the hydrofoil and waited with Clementine until it was time to leave.
“I’ll call you from Switzerland,” he said, and held her in his arms.
“You won’t lose the number?”
“No.”
“Because if you do, she’s ex-Directory—”
“I’ve memorized it,” he said, feeling her jump as a bell rang to signal the boat’s departure. “And remember—”
“I know, pay cash for everything. Don’t use the phone. And don’t talk to strangers.”
He kissed her gently. “What else?”
She thought about it, then shook her head. “I don’t remember.”
“Look both ways . . .”
***
The Banque Privat de St. Helier was in a three-story town-house on Poonah Road, about a block from the Parade Garden. In a niche beside the front door, a gleaming brass plaque announced the building’s identity, and that of its tenant, J. Picard. Climbing out of his taxi, Dunphy was assailed by the smell of hops from the brewery around the corner.
It was his second visit to the bank in as many years. The nature of his work, or what had been his work, dictated that he should establish as many contacts as possible in the worlds of offshore banking and “creative accountancy.” Accordingly, he had made it a point to spread his business around, so that, on Jersey alone, he’d opened nearly fifty accounts in as many as six or seven banks.
But he’d met Jules Picard only once. This was two years earlier, when he’d introduced himself as a new customer, establishing his bona fides with a large cash deposit and a letter of introduction from a solicitor in the Outer Hebrides.
Mounting the steps to the bank’s impressive oak door, Dunphy remembered Picard as a wheezing old man who’d climbed the steps to his office with so much effort that he, Dunphy, had feared the banker would have a heart attack, there and then.
“May I help you?”
The words crackled out of the speaker phone beside the door. Dunphy leaned closer to it and, speaking in a soft brogue, replied, “Mr. Thornley for Mr. Picard.”
There was no response for what seemed like a long time. Beginning to feel the cold, Dunphy took a step back and glanced around. Helluva way to run a bank, he thought, noticing for the first time the closed-circuit cameras in the eaves. “I’ll just wait out here, then,” he said, smiling at the nearest camera. “No rush a-tall.”
Soon afterward, the door swung open noiselessly, revealing an older woman whose elegant demeanor was at odds with her improbable size. By Dunphy’s guess, she was half an inch this way or that of six feet tall and built like a rower—not what one expected of a woman in her sixties.
“Was Mr. Picard expecting you?”
It was the woman he’d spoken to on the phone the day before. “Not unless the man’s gone clairvoyant on us,” Dunphy replied.
A thin smile from his hostess, who led him down a narrow corridor hung with a brace of Orientalist paintings. Elegant in a black pantsuit, she wore her battleship-gray hair compressed at the back in a no-nonsense bun.
“If you’ll have a seat,” she suggested, ushering Dunphy into a brightly lighted room that looked out upon a winter-withered garden. “I’ll let him know you’re here.”
Dunphy did as she suggested, and took a seat on the leather couch, crossing his legs. Soon, a brisk knock rattled the door, and a tall man strode in wearing a houndstooth jacket and slacks so sharply creased as to be dangerous. “Mr. Thornley!” he declared.
“The very one,” Dunphy acknowledged, getting to his feet and shaking hands. “But I was expecting Mr. Picard.”
“Then you won’t be disappointed. I am Mr. Picard. And it’s a pleasure to meet you—I’ve heard so much.”
Dunphy shot him a questioning look.
“Lewis Picard,” the banker announced. “With a w a.” Bright smile.
Dunphy thought about it for a moment and said, “Well, it’s grand to meet you, but—”
“You were expecting Jules. My father!”
“Exactly.”
The man gave him a pained look. “Well, I’m afraid he’s dead a—so that’s not on. But perhaps I can be of help?”
The young man’s brisk demeanor was unsettling, and it was only with an effort that Dunphy remembered his brogue. “Well, I expect so,” he said. “I mean, of course ya can, but . . . Jay-sus, man, how did it happen?”
“You mean, old Jules?”
“Yes!”
“No great surprise, really. Heart attack on the stairs. Tumble tumble! Dead before he hit the ground.”
Dunphy winced. “Poor man!”
“Mmmm. Pity. So much to give.”
“And when did it happen?”
“About a year ago.”
“Oh. I see.”
A silence fell between them, which Lewis Picard finally broke. “I take it you weren’t close to Dad?”
“No,” Dunphy replied. “Not close, not really.”
“Well, then, no need to grieve at this late date! What can I do for you?”
Dunphy cleared his throat. “I’m havin’ to make a small withdrawal.”
Picard fils removed an elasticated policeman’s notebook from the inner pocket of his jacket. A fountain pen was conjured from the same site, uncapped, and pointed at the page. “Very well. That’s what we’re here for. And which account would that be?”
“Sirocco Services.”
Picard began to write the name in his book, then hesitated—as if something had suddenly occurred to him. Something unpleasant. Slowly, he looked up and smiled. “Sirocco?”
“Exactly.”
“I see. And, umm, how much will you be withdrawing?”
“The entire amount.”
Picard nodded thoughtfully. “As I recall, that’s rather a lot of currency.”
“About three hundred thousand quid—a little less.” Dunphy patted the attaché case that he’d stopped to buy on the way to the bank. “But I think it will fit.”
“Mmmm,” Picard mused, rapidly tapping his expensive pen on the little notebook in his hand.
“Is there a problem, then?” Dunphy asked.
“No,” Picard answered, regarding Dunphy with a dubious eye. “It’s just that . . . we seem to be having a bit of a run this morning.”
Dunphy leaned toward him and, as he did, dropped his voice almost to a whisper. “Now, about that, Mr. Picard. I wouldn’t be too upset, if I were you, because I have a small confession to make.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed. I should have told you, right off. I was on the phone with your assistant yesterday and— Now, that reminds me, I’ve been meaning to ask, is she the only one who works with you here?”
“She is, and quite competently.”
“Oh, there’s no doubt about that—the woman has a demeanor of great efficiency,” Dunphy agreed, thinking, The bitch is probably on the blower even now, ratting me out to Blémont’s man, telling him where I am. “But as I was sayin’, I got on the phone to her yesterday morning, having just gotten in from the night before, if you get my meaning . . .”
“You were drunk.”
“As a lord. And, no malice intended, of course, but I will admit to having played a role—for the laugh that was in it.”
“I see,” Picard said, nodding to himself as if he’d just confirmed a dark suspicion. “Not that I’m surprised. She told me she’d spoken to someone who’d pretended to be an American. I take it that was you?”
Dunphy shrugged, slightly hurt by the characterization. “It may well have been.”
“And that leaves us . . . precisely where?” The banker looked expectantly at Dunphy, who handed him a letter written on stationery from The Longueville Manor.
“The letter’s self-explanatory,” he said. “If you’ll lend me your pen, I’ll give you my signature. There’s only one on the account. And the number’s right there at the top of the page, where it says in re. Once I’ve had my money
, I won’t bother you any further.”
Picard gave him the pen and watched as Dunphy signed the letter, requesting the bank close out the Sirocco account. “You know,” Picard remarked, returning the pen to his pocket and taking the letter that Dunphy had signed, “we had some unpleasantness here.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. About this very account.”
“Did you now?” Dunphy asked, his voice thick with incredulity.
“Ye-esss . . . chap named Blémont stopped in. This was several months ago. Said the money was his.”
“Jay-sus, Mary, and Joseph—they’re gettin’ nervier every day!” Dunphy exclaimed.
“Mmmm.”
“And what did you tell the man?”
“Well, you can imagine,” Picard replied. “No one here knew him from a bale of hay. No signature on record. No references. Though, mind you, he did mention your name!”
“My name?!”
“In fact, and repeatedly.”
“The nerve! And what did you do?”
“Showed him the door. Told him I’d ring the police. What else could I do?”
“Quite right.”
“More than my job’s worth! Though I will say, he seemed quite determined. Outraged, even.”
“A great actor, no doubt!”
“Precisely. And I must say, not terribly happy in the presence of noes.”
“Jay-sus. Was he threatening, then?”
“Indeed. Well,” the banker said, clapping his hands together, “just a little heads-up for you. Mustn’t grumble.”
Dunphy blushed.
“Now, if you’ll just follow me, we’ll get your money,” Picard said, smiling widely. “Whomever it belongs to.”
Chapter 20
The voyage from St. Helier to Saint-Malo was rough, the Channel a froth of whitecaps. Sitting at a table in the first-class restaurant, drinking coffee, Dunphy surveyed his fellow passengers and wondered which, if any, of them was following him.
On leaving the bank, he had almost expected to find Blémont waiting for him on the corner, but, of course, the Frenchman was nowhere around. Just to be sure, Dunphy had taken taxis from one end of the island to the other, directing the drivers down roads that were more like country lanes. And while the drivers thought he was odd, it was apparent, from all the doubling back that they did, that no one was on their tail.