"How often did Hardman visit the clubs? Was he a heavy gambler? Who were his friends? Did he take pains to avoid people?"
"You're wasting time. You're wrong - really wrong!"
"Yeah! Two things, Sam. That fancy photo in his safe at Chelsea-"
"Edgar was at his wits end. I know the man. He was a shadow-"
"He was giving a performance-"
"Rubbish! Why the hell should he pretend to me? You're so convinced he was guilty you won't even consider another explanation."
"Such as?"
"Such as blackmail. Someone was blackmailing him. It's the only explanation-"
"With that photograph?"
"Why not with that photograph? What's wrong-"
"So why didn't he go to the police?"
"I don't know - people don't, not always - do they? I mean if-"
"People always go to the police - unless they're afraid of what the police will find out. What was Hardman afraid of?"
"Afraid of the photo being circulated-"
"Your wife wasn't doing anything illegal - not in that photograph. So the blackmailer couldn't threaten to send it to the police and no newspaper would touch a shot like that-"
"But ... Kay's circle of friends...her social life. It was important to her. Just that photo being shown around would be enough-"
"But Hardman had the photograph. And the negative. How in God's name could someone threaten him with what was already locked up in his safe?"
"Copies. Perhaps other people - someone - had copies-"
Kaufman shook his head. "I don't buy that. Don't misunderstand - I've thought about it. But if you accept blackmail you must take what goes with it. Which is that Hardman knew something. If blackmail comes into this it's because someone found out Hardman's connection with the Pipeline. Now that would really give a blackmailer some leverage."
I rubbed my eyes as if trying to get a clearer picture of what was in the back of his mind - or what might have been in the back of Edgar's mind.
"And another thing," Kaufman drove on relentlessly, "I got this little scene buzzing round my brain. A scruffy hotel room in Palermo. A man runs in, locks the door, grabs the phone, gives a number and hangs up to wait. He's sweating like a pig. He's frightened. Shaking too much to even light a cigarette. He's as good as dead and knows it. He knows they're onto him - knows he's only got a few minutes left. The phone rings - he hears footsteps running up the stairs - he's through to Bonello - someone starts kicking the door down - starts shooting the door down - armed men appear in the opening - the man on the phone screams shouts a name - then he's cut down in a hail of bullets." Kaufman paused to ram the point home, "And the name he shouts is Hardman. That's all - just one word - one name - and that name is Hardman."
We came back to that every time. It was unanswerable. I shook my head as I walked over to the coffee machine. "Okay," I said, "Let's have the next name."
And so it went on - until midnight, when Kaufman called a break. "Just for ten minutes, Sam," he warned, "to give your head a chance to stop buzzing."
We went upstairs to find Henderson. He was in a room so small that the table and four upright chairs left little room for anything else. But Henderson had managed. For a start he had some sort of computer terminal, with a triple deck screen and a print-out unit. And a teleprinter. And maps on the wall - and an electric kettle, with a jar of Nescafe and half a pint of milk.
Another man occupied one of the chairs. He wore a blue shirt and black tie which might have been police issue. He stood up as Kaufman entered, then went back to checking names on a typewritten list. Henderson himself looked close to exhaustion. He had discarded his jacket, loosened his tie and was working in bloodstained shirtsleeves.
Kaufman took one chair and motioned me into the other. "Well?" he said.
Henderson sighed as he reached for a handwritten list. "A club in Fulham called The Pearl and Oyster. Three bars in the Greater London area called the Oyster Shell. Two pubs in East Anglia called the Oyster Catcher - a bar in a Birmingham hotel called the Oyster Room, and about fifteen fish restaurants."
"And?" Kaufman offered his cigarettes.
"Nothing so far," Henderson nodded at the computer screens, "but the list gets longer all the time."
"Anything else?"
"Immigration are checking their Maltese section. So far they've come up with forty-two Darmanin's registered in London alone." He smiled but not enough to dispel his air of weariness, "Darmanin is beginning to seem like the Maltese equivalent of Smith."
"What's happening to the names?" Kaufman asked.
"Being classified - given names, ages, occupations-" he broke off with a gesture of exasperation. "If only I'd got his name! But the old man kept saying my son - my son. I thought he meant the chauffeur to begin with-"
"What about a list of licensees?" Kaufman interrupted, "The old man said the boy ran a bar didn't he? Not worked in one-"
"It's being checked - or rather they are being checked. There is no central registrar. Each licensing authority maintains its own lists."
"Shit," Kaufman said quietly.
Henderson ran a hand through his hair. "There's another complication. I discovered it earlier. Children of mixed British and Maltese parentage are allowed British and Maltese passports until their eighteenth birthday. Then they have to choose - British or Maltese."
"So? You found a Maltese passport in Darmanin's apartment-"
"But his son might have a British one. In which case he won't be registered as an alien with Immigration-"
"Only if his old man had a British wife. You don't know he did."
"I don't know he didn't."
"Any sign of a woman in the apartment? Clothes, make-up, jewellery-"
"No, strictly a bachelor pad. My guess is the old man was a widower."
Kaufman shook his head: "I still don't see the problem. Get the Passport Office to run a check on all Darmanin's holding a British passport."
"It is midnight," Henderson pointed out. "The Foreign Office gave us a very frosty answer an hour ago. The Brigadier is sorting it out now."
The Brigadier was Llewellyn - I had discovered that much.
Kaufman grunted as he stood up. "Keep me posted, I'll be downstairs with Sam."
Outside on the landing we bumped into Bonello and Lucia quite literally because Bonello was struggling in to his overcoat and not looking where he was going. Kaufman stopped him, "You two taking a vacation?"
"We're going to a meeting with the Italian Ambassador," Bonello said in a rush, "at the Embassy."
"At this hour?" Kaufman took an incredulous look at his watch.
Bonello pulled a face. "We've already spoken on the telephone. He's not happy but he'll see us."
"Mind telling me-"
"No time ... just say there's a chance of putting forty armed men into Alcamo ... armed to the teeth but totally invisible." Then Bonello and Lucia were running down the stairs and Kaufman and I were left staring after them. Kaufman swore half under his breath, then he and I returned to the big back room, back to the lists, back to questions, dates, places, names, relationships - and all the time Kaufman urging, "Think, Sam, for Christ's sake think!"
It had turned two o'clock when Llewellyn came in, wearing a dinner jacket and smoking a cigar instead of the perennial pipe. He looked remarkably fresh, considering the hour and everything else. No black coffee for him either - he went directly to the bottles next to the coffee machine and poured himself a large brandy.
"You celebrating?" Kaufman enquired, "or drowning your sorrows?"
Llewellyn took the chair next to mine. "Hardly celebrating - an evening with Rossiter? God, what a bore he is. Insufferable."
Kaufman glanced enviously at the cigar, "Yeah - must have been rough."
"No news from Bristol I suppose?" Llewellyn asked in a matter of fact voice.
"Bristol lose things," Kaufman pronounced, "finding them is something else."
Llewellyn nodded and was about
to add something when he stopped with an odd look at me. I had the impression very strongly that he wanted me out of the way, that he wanted a private word with Kaufman. But I settled deeper into my chair, as if to say I was staying, so he had no choice but to get on with it. Finally he pretended I wasn't there by turning his back on me and speaking directly to Kaufman. "None the less," he said as he withdrew an envelope from an inside pocket, "Rossiter's people came up with something. They found this - at Wyndham Hall."
Kaufman reached for the envelope and extracted a letter from the already unsealed flap. He raised his eyes to me in a curiously revealing gesture, as if he too would have preferred my absence. Then he turned his attention to the letter. He read quickly, and then - when I guessed him to be half way down the page - he gave a start of surprise. After which he turned to the second page and read more slowly - as if committing it to memory.
Their secretive attitude infuriated me. It reminded me of the earlier incident - the way in which Kaufman had shuffled away from my question about something happening to Edgar in January. Corrao's phone call had put it out of my mind, but it was back now - with a vengeance.
"You two make me sick," I complained, "you're quick enough asking questions but bloody slow in answering them."
"Sure, Sam," Kaufman said absent-mindedly. He was placating me rather than listening - and Llewellyn slid me a glance which said clearer than words that he hoped I wasn't about to create a scene.
"Something happened in January," I said, "and you two know about it."
"In a minute, Sam," Kaufman said softly. His full concentration was taken up by the letter in his hands.
"January?" Llewellyn murmured with polite interest.
I swore and wished Jack was around - it needed both of us. Then Kaufman whistled softly as he looked up, "Where in God's name was this?"
"Hardman's desk at Wyndham Hall," Llewellyn answered. "It was stuffed at the back of a drawer - as if he'd forgotten it, or overlooked it."
Kaufman rubbed the creases on his face. Then he placed the letter and envelope on the seat of his chair before crossing to the whisky bottle. He poured two drinks, added water to one, carried the glasses back to the desk and pushed one over to me. Carefully he reassembled the pages of the letter into their correct order. "You got a copy of this?" he asked, and when Llewellyn nodded he persisted with another question, "With you - you got a copy here?"
Llewellyn nodded again.
Kaufman held the letter in his hand, but he was no longer looking at it. He was looking at me. "Read it, Sam. It's addressed to you anyway."
My name and the Rex Place address were on the envelope in Edgar's spindly handwriting. It no longer angered me that other people had read what was intended for me, but Kaufman's attitude alarmed me. And when he spoke he avoided my eye. "Look at the date first," he said, "it might help." Then he turned to Llewellyn, "Let's check on Henderson, bring your drink with you."
But I doubted they were going to see Henderson. They wanted to discuss the letter, and perhaps leave me alone to read it. It was dated January! Even as I saw it I remembered Edgar in the restaurant - and Kaufman's reaction when I said - "something happened in January".
And on the twenty-eighth of January, Edgar had written:
My Dear Sam, I doubt I'll ever send this. Hopefully I'll have the courage to tell you what I've done face to face, but if you ever read this you will know my courage has failed me - as it has more than once of late. I'm safe enough writing it now - I cannot post it anyway, not until you are released. The prison censorship officers would have a fine old time with it, even before it reached you - assuming it ever did. So I've a while yet to make up my mind about sending it - and a while longer to screw up my courage to talk to you about it. So why write at all? Loneliness I suppose - and a troubled conscience. An old man who can't sleep, with only a bottle for company. Sam - Kay is dead. There, I've written it - even that helps. To set it down in black and white. To say it aloud helps. Kay is dead. Not that anyone knows - except a ruffian called Rogers and me, and now you - and whoever murdered her.
I dropped the letter as if it had burst into flames. It had startled Kaufman at exactly the same place - half way down the first page. But he had read on, whereas I didn't want to - not that I could for a moment - I was too stunned. Kay was dead! All that vitality, that zest for life - gone, gone forever.
I drank the scotch which Kaufman had provided, helped myself to another - lighted a cigarette and sat staring into space - thinking of Kay - remembering her - mourning her. Oh Christ she was gone! Kay was dead! I would never see her again. Never hear her laugh - never get that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach when she smiled at me. Never hold her in my arms, never make love to her - never again. Never, ever.
And yet...and yet ... hadn't I known? Hadn't some small voice deep inside me whispered as much. Even in Brixton I had guessed I would never see her again. Perhaps I had accepted it then - when the divorce went through I wondered if I would ever see her again. But dead?
For a few moments I was stunned by that shock alone. Then I realised what Edgar had written. Not that anyone knows - except a ruffian called Rogers and me, and now you — and whoever murdered her.
Shock, the selfish pain of grief, the bitter empty sense of loss gave way to horror. Kay had been murdered! I pushed the whisky aside and reached for the four pages of thick writing paper.
Kay never told me what happened that night - with Faberge and Martinez - but I rather gather she was involved. All she would say was it was all her fault - and that she would make it up to you, somehow. It's important you know that, Sam - especially now. She went to pieces after the trial you know - turned into a complete nervous wreck. I never told you but the hospital diagnosed drugs when she crashed the car that night. There were lots of questions, but nothing came of it - nothing could I suppose, so long as Kay denied everything. I wanted her to go into a private clinic, but she wouldn't have it in fact she wouldn't have much to do with me either - spent her time with that bloody awful crowd she'd got in with - either at Ashley Grange or that place on the river. I tried to reach her - went down once a week to begin with, but she was jumpy as a tick with me and I couldn't stand the people she was with. Anyway, next I heard she had money troubles. I gather she didn't see eye to eye with that fellow Collins who was looking after your affairs. I said I would help out if she was hard up, but I also pointed out that those leeches at Ashley Grange were sucking her dry. That didn't help - she went up like a sheet of flames and we had a hell of a row about it - then she came out and said it - that I wasn't welcome there any more. Well I took umbrage - damn silly but there it is - stormed out and told her she could stew in her own juice for all I cared. I was cut up about it. I don't mind admitting. We're a rum lot us Hardmans - too damn proud by half I suppose I felt she owed me an apology but it was more than that - I felt she owed herself. She was letting herself down, doing things unworthy of her, mixing with the wrong people. Of course I got no thanks for telling her, so things were a bit strained after that. I tried to get over it - after all, a man's only child means a damn sight more to him than a few unkind words. So I phoned her a few weeks later - and then she told me about the divorce. I was shocked. I tried to talk her out of it reminded her of what she had said, that business about making it up to you - but she gave me a damn funny answer. At least I never understood it at the time. She said it was important for you both to be free when you met again - no ties, no obligations. If you went back together then it would be because you wanted to - not because you had to. I thought it was so much rubbish and said as much, and then she told me something else. That she needed money, cash, urgently - and a lot of it. She said a divorce settlement was the only answer. Of course I asked why - what the money was for - but she went as tight as a clam and refused to say another word. She rather avoided me after that. I tried to keep in touch, but I was having the devil's own fight with the receiver at Apex, trying to persuade him not to sell up, and I had the wine busines
s to think of on top of that - so one way and another I was as busy as the proverbial fly. But I knew your divorce had gone through because there was a bit in the papers about it - and a couple of weeks later Ashley Grange was offered for sale in The Times. Then - it must have been about a month after that - Kay phoned me late at night. Her voice sounded weird and I knew she was in trouble. She was at Rex Place. It took me twenty minutes to get there and that wasn't a moment too soon. She had taken an overdose of something and was barely conscious. If the front door hadn't been unlocked I wouldn't have made it in time. As it was I roused her, got her on her feet, and walked her up and down and round and round until Bertie West arrived from his bed in New Cavendish Street. It was a ghastly business, but it was a turning point. Bertie saved her life, and got her into some hush-hush clinic in Beaconsfield. We called it a nervous breakdown but of course it was nothing of the kind. Sam, I can't describe the hell she went through. It broke me up just watching her. I'll never know how she came through it week after week, month after month - but I swear she was over it when she came out. Really over it! Whatever else you believe - I want you to know that. She came to live with me then at Lorimer's Walk - or rather, in her old flat upstairs. I wanted to keep an eye on her and keep her away from her old crowd at The Fisherman, I expected trouble at first, but as she grew stronger she seemed to like living there. She became more her own self - more like the girl you married - as wilful as ever of course but perhaps not so headstrong. She got so clear eyed and glowing with health - eating properly - well I tell you Sam, you would have been proud of her. We saw each other every day at Lorimer's Walk, and our roles reversed a bit as she got stronger I don't mind telling you. This fight with the receiver had worn me out. It was as good as lost and I was at my wits end, but a few weeks ago I got the old crowd together again to try to work out a salvage operation - a last ditch stand if you like. Old Darlington was in a blue funk and kept on about it being bad for the bank's reputation to be mixed up with receivers and Charlie Weston and Lew Douglas had washed their hands of it because of that damn fool undertaking of mine. Well, the meeting got a bit heated and in the end I lost my temper - especially with Charlie Weston - he really got under my skin. So I said if he wouldn't at least try to save Apex then I wanted nothing more to do with him. That brought him up with a start. He asked what I meant and I said the first thing that came into my head - that I would cancel my contract with his haulage firm for the shipment of our wines. A bit to my surprise it did the trick because he was much more helpful after that - and even Lew Douglas made a few constructive suggestions. It's all so much wasted effort now because I've just heard that the receiver has sold out over our heads - but I want you to know that I tried. In point of fact I held the meeting at Lorimer's Walk, and Kay asked me the outcome after they left. Actually she asked if Apex could be held together until you came out. I had to say I was beginning to doubt it, but I told her how the meeting had gone, about me leaning on Charlie Weston and all the rest of it. We talked for about an hour, then she made some coffee and we went to bed. She was up half the night I think. Certainly she was prowling about upstairs until gone two o'clock. Then in the morning she announced she was going on holiday. It must have been a sudden decision because there was no mention of it the night before. When I asked where she said anywhere in the Med. - just as long as she got some sunshine. Well, it was the usual bloody awful January in London and had I not been so busy I might have gone with her wish to God I had now, but there it is. Then something rather strange happened. She gave me a large brown envelope and asked me to look after it. She was very mysterious. I had to promise not to open the damn thing, just keep it in the safe until she returned. She said it really ought to be destroyed but it had cost too much for that - and just knowing it was there was enough to remind her of what she had lost. I couldn't make head nor tail of it, but I put the envelope in the safe for her just to humour her. Then she went upstairs to pack and I left for the office, but she kissed me goodbye before I left and she said she would be away for a couple of weeks. Oh, and another thing, she told me to stop worrying about Apex because she felt sure it would turn out right in the end. Well, Sam, now comes the hardest part of all. A week ago I had a phone call from a man called Rogers in Tunis. Damned mysterious. He wouldn't go into detail, other than to say it concerned my daughter and he was afraid it was bad news. Then he asked if I could get out there immediately? Well, I dropped everything and went. Devil of a job getting there - via Paris in the end, took me ten hours, but I was there the same day as the call. Not that it mattered - Kay was dead before Rogers picked up the telephone. Rogers runs some kind of fishing business. He's English, but nothing to be proud about - a sly, ferret-faced man, as oily as a grease rag. His Arab fishermen had found Kay drifting in an open boat - somewhere in the Gulf of Hammeret. She was dead when they found her - and Sam - it's a horrible thing to have to tell you - but she had been badly beaten up, I won't go into detail but take my word for it - I saw her - though I wish to God I hadn't. She was dressed normally enough - shirt and jeans and sandals, and she had a handbag with her - but how she came to be in that boat is a mystery. Rogers found my name and address among her stuff, enough to know she was my daughter - so he phoned me instead of going to the police. That was his angle of course - he was no end impressed I was a Lord and not plain mister - and he kept nagging on about the scandal and the newspapers and that rubbish. I said to hell with that - I just wanted to get my hands on whoever had hurt Kay. I even suspected Rogers at first, but his fishermen all vouched for his story - I questioned them myself. And there was something else - Rogers found a hypodermic in her handbag - and some heroin. At least he said it was heroin - I wasn't sure one way or the other, but he seemed the type to know. I wished to God you had been, there, Sam, to share the decision. Even now I wonder if I did the right thing. But when I got over the shock of it I got to thinking, and it seemed to me that we've had enough of the bloody newspapers to last us a lifetime. I was thinking as a father naturally, but the thought of Kay's body being photographed and poked around by a lot of coroners - well, it turned my stomach. Even finding out what had happened, who had done those terrible things, well, none of it would bring her back to me - to us. Rogers offered to bury her at sea and keep his mouth shut. He wanted money naturally, but not a fortune. Sam - Kay loved the Mediterranean, you know that, she hardly missed a summer as a kid, and, well to my mind, it made as good a final resting place as any. So Rogers made a kind of sleeping bag affair from white sail cloth - and in the early hours of the following morning we took a boat out, deep into the Med. and slipped her over the side. It's taken the best part of a bottle of Remy to get this letter this far - so I may as well finish it even though the odds are against posting it. Sam, I did what I thought was best for Kay - please believe that. I thought of you too, and felt you would understand. It seemed almost logical out there - all that sea and sky, such a natural, simple, clean way to end it all - but back here in England, well I'm not so sure. Life is more complicated. For a start, Lorimer's Walk was broken into while I was away and that envelope has gone missing. I don't know what was in it, but Kay's words keep coming back to me - about it costing too much to be destroyed. This whole business has got me so confused I don't know if I'm coming or going - but is it too preposterous to imagine Kay being blackmailed? God alone knows what about - but her desperate need for money last year has to be explained some way. Now something else has happened. A man from the Inland Revenue called yesterday. He wanted to talk to Kay about her tax affairs. I said she was away on holiday, but if it was a tax matter why not discuss it with her accountant? I gave him Forbes's address and telephone number and left it at that, but I was speaking to Forbes's this evening on another matter. Nobody has been to see him, and he couldn't think that the Inland Revenue would have a query large enough to warrant a personal interview. It's all so odd! Twice lately I've had the feeling I'm being watched - that I'm followed even. Maybe I'm getting old and senile - but there it is.
You know, Sam, just writing this has made me feel better. It’s as if we were talking it over. It eases the guilt and some of the loneliness - but I'm damned if I know what to do next. Kay can't be on holiday forever. All her old crowd seem to have dropped her but somebody is bound to ask sooner or later. What the hell do I say? That she's living abroad, I think - and hope nobody pursues it more than that. But it's a terrible worry. Sam - try to remember all the good things about her. I know the pair of you had troubles at the end - but she wasn't a bad girl spoiled I know, but that was my fault not hers - irresponsible and selfish in some ways, but she sorted herself out in that clinic. She was settling down to wait for you, I'm sure of that, and now this terrible, terrible thing has happened.
Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 65