Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1

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Ian St James Compendium - Volume 1 Page 66

by Ian St. James


  The letter ended abruptly. Without a signature. Perhaps he had intended to add more later? Or perhaps he had emptied the bottle of brandy? I whispered "Poor Edgar" over and over again - and a lump filled my throat whenever I thought of Kay. I turned the letter over in my hands and read it again. Then I just sat staring into space. Minutes passed, I don't know how many - five, ten, fifteen - until the shock dulled to a steady pain like an aching tooth. Then I was angry. Suddenly I was shaking and trembling with temper. I stood up. Walked about the room - trying to get my nerves under control. None of it made sense. Kay, Edgar - dead - both dead murdered! It was inconceivable. The very idea of Edgar being involved with gangsters had been laughable this morning. Now he was dead. And now Maria had been kidnapped.

  All my life I've had a temper. It's cooled a bit with the years, Sam Harris at forty-two is less prone to fly off the handle than he was twenty years ago. But I have never felt so angry in the whole of my life as I did then. It took half an hour before I stopped twitching and another ten minutes before my hands stopped shaking. I drank some coffee from the machine, smoked another cigarette, and something deep inside me turned to ice.

  Chapter Ten

  Richardson was drinking coffee with Superintendent Roberts at Bristol Police HQ. It was half past two in the morning. For the past hour Roberts had been hinting about getting some sleep, and Richardson's resistance was weakening. After all, not much was happening. Work at the department store had been abandoned at midnight. By then the police had spoken to most of those employees who possessed a private telephone. Very little had been added to the sum of knowledge. It seemed that nurses had been seen in all three public lavatories during the latter part of the afternoon. The local hospitals were being contacted but, so far, the nurses had not been identified. And that was all.

  Richardson's thoughts wandered back to London. It all depended on Sam Harris, he was sure of that, somewhere in the recesses of Harris's memory lay a name, maybe more than one name, maybe an event, a combination of people and places...get Harris to talk, Richardson assured himself, and this whole thing will make sense.

  Roberts stifled a yawn. "We'll have twenty men asking questions when the store opens at nine in the morning. Every employee will be shown photographs of Mrs Green and Mrs Parker. Everyone will be questioned-"

  "Merely to confirm Harry Hall's story," Richardson shrugged.

  Roberts was about to make a sarcastic comment when the telephone rang...after which all thoughts of turning in for the night were abandoned. "They've found the white van," Roberts said with his hand over the mouthpiece.

  Richardson came to the edge of his seat, but Roberts was still listening to the voice on the telephone. He said "yes" twice, then looked at his watch. "We're on our way," he said, then he hung up.

  Richardson followed him to the door and was still asking questions when both men hurled themselves into the back of a squad car. The driver took off like a rally driver leaving a checkpoint.

  "One of my brighter policemen found a nurse's cape thrown over a hedge," Roberts said, "it's our van all right ... abandoned in a hurry by the sound of it."

  They were there within twenty minutes, racing through the darkened streets like a bolting horse. The van was at the end of a cul-de-sac near open country, Richardson saw moonlit fields through a gap in the houses. Three other squad cars were there already, and a ring of arc lamps encircled the van. Other lights blinked on and off down the street, first at bedroom windows, then at front doors as people came to investigate.

  Half an hour later two other nurses' capes were found in a dustbin. The van itself had been wiped clean of fingerprints, so no clues showed there...and the forensic boys were still at their painstakingly slow business, an hour or more away from their report. But then came the discovery of the map. Tucked under the sun visor over the driver's seat in the van was a sheet of thin, cheap note-paper...upon which had been drawn a sketch map. It showed the route from Cardiff, across the Severn Bridge, into Bath and out again to Glebe Farm, the 'safe house' to which Maria had been sent. And there was more ... another sketch of the route from Glebe Farm to Flitton Aerodrome on the other side of Bristol.

  Roberts was positively optimistic. "Flitton is little more than an airstrip. Ex-RAF, but used mostly by the local flying club these days, though some freight business goes through there as well, now that Lulsgate is so overloaded."

  "Export freight?" Richardson asked quickly.

  "Aye, I've no doubt export as well. Laport Pharmaceuticals is just down the road - I'm told they use it ..."

  But Richardson was already hurrying back to the squad car.

  Kaufman left me alone for a long time. Long enough to recover from the shock of Edgar's letter and the news of Kay's death, but never long enough to get used to the concept of murder. Before my trial murder had been something involving other people, headlines in a newspaper - now I was surrounded by it. Even for a loner like me, people - some people - were important. Kay, Edgar, Jack and Maria were...had been...the cornerstones of my life. Now two were dead and Maria was in mortal danger. And Jack would be too blinded by worry to think straight. Reminding myself of that helped me concentrate - made me think of other people - so that when Kaufman returned at three thirty I was ready for him.

  He bustled into the room. His tie was loosened and he conveyed the air of a man who has been hectically busy. There was a determined set to his jaw and a look of subdued excitement in his eyes. He picked Darmanin's diamond ring up from the desk and tossed it from hand to hand as he looked at me.

  I pointed to the letter. "How much of that did you know?"

  "Not much. We knew your ex-wife had disappeared. And we suspected Hardman of knowing a lot more than he was telling."

  "The man from the Inland Revenue - he was your man?"

  Kaufman nodded. "Old Hardman didn't miss much did he? He was even onto the surveillance team-"

  "But he was never the Ferryman. Even you must admit-"

  Kaufman flushed. "Now hold on - that was rough, about your wife - a hell of a shock for you. And maybe I was less than completely right about Hardman, but that letter begs more questions than it answers."

  "Such as?"

  "Such as what was your ex-wife doing in Tunis? Did you have friends there?"

  "She was on holiday! For heaven's sake, you read the letter-"

  "A sudden decision, made overnight? Come on, Sam, the Pipeline runs through Tunis. We're almost sure. It's the last leg of the journey to Sicily."

  "For Christ's sake! Don't you ever stop?"

  "Listen knucklehead - your ex-wife is dead. So is your pal Hardman and there's no telling what's happening to Maria. And in two days' time ..." he checked his watch, "correction - tomorrow - you go to Sicily with a fifty-fifty chance of getting your head blown off. You think now is a good time to stop?"

  "But you'll find Maria ... I mean, the search, there's still time-"

  "You running a book on it? You want to know the chances of us finding Maria now?"

  "But Llewellyn said every policeman this side of-"

  "Forget it. I'll give you a thousand to one, unless ..." he paused to jab his finger in my direction, "unless you remember something real good in the next two hours."

  I made a gesture of hopelessness which was nothing to the frustration I felt. But then I had another idea. "If you're right," I said, "if they get her out ... if they get her to Sicily. Well, we know where she'll be. Corrao said-"

  "So what? You think you can go in with a platoon of marines? You expecting an armed escort or something?"

  I stared at him.

  "Oh Jesus!" he threw his hands in the air. "Do you imagine her sipping a Campari while she waits for you? Then you waltz in, take her elbow and just lead her out of there?"

  "I don't know ..."

  "Listen to me," Kaufman said angrily, "I'll tell you how these things really work. You and Jack arrive - sit in a conspicuous place, have a drink and smoke a few cigarettes while you watch the loc
al colour. Meanwhile, you are being watched. Maybe you sit there half an hour - an hour - all night. If they smell a cop within a mile of you they'll let you sit there the rest of your life. You can rot there for all they care. But if they think you are clean, someone will join your table. 'I can take you to your wife,' he'll say to Jack. 'Have you got the list?' he'll ask you. Then he will point to an automobile. 'Just walk over and get into the back of that Ferrari,' he will say."

  Kaufman paused to add emphasis. "And you'll do whatever that man says, Sam. Nice and easy, without drawing attention to yourself."

  I rubbed my wrist with the palm of my other hand. A less observant man might have thought I was rubbing an itch, but Kaufman knew I was wiping the sweat from my palm.

  Finally I said, "That's when you move? When Jack and I get into that car?"

  "Like hell! You think Maria will be in that automobile? Like she's picking you up on the way home from the beauty parlour?"

  "So you follow the car?"

  He sighed. "I'll level with you, Sam. The way I see it - we won't even be there."

  "You mean ... Jack and I alone?" And I was still digesting that and trying to steady my nerves when Llewellyn arrived. He sat on the edge of the desk and tapped his knee with what was obviously a British passport. "What do you know about Malta?" he asked me.

  "Nothing. I've never been there-"

  "That's where your ex-wife went. Not Tunis." He handed the passport to Kaufman. "Rossiter's people have finished at Wyndham. The place is clean, but they came across this. Hardman must have brought it back with him."

  Kaufman rifled the pages. "Just her date of arrival. No departure ... no re-entry elsewhere." He glanced at Llewellyn, "This place she was found - how far is it from Malta? This Bay of something ..." he tossed the passport aside and reached for Edgar's letter.

  "Gulf of Hammeret," Llewellyn corrected. "About two hundred miles. Sicily is even closer ..." He paused, struck by a sudden thought. "That's an idea. Hardman employs a Maltese chauffeur and his daughter makes a sudden trip to Malta. Do you think there's a connection?"

  Kaufman raised his clenched fist to within an inch of Llewellyn's chin. When he opened his fingers the diamond ring lay in the palm of his hand. "Find Darmanin's son and you'll get your answer ... unless the Pipeline find him first."

  It went.very quiet after that. I suppose we were all struggling to absorb this new piece of information. Malta? Kay had never mentioned the place to me. What on earth had sent her running to an island in the Mediterranean?

  Finally Llewellyn sighed and asked, "Is Enrico about?"

  Kaufman explained about the dash to the Italian Embassy and the possibility of putting forty men into Alcamo - "all armed to the teeth but totally invisible". When he finished he grunted, "Trust an Italian. Wasn't that an old Roman trick - that Trojan Horse business?"

  "Greek actually," Llewellyn had finished his cigar and was packing his pipe with tobacco, "Odysseus and his crowd."

  Kaufman raised an eyebrow. "Is that right?" he said doubtfully. "Well, you would know - it was nearer your time." He gave a tight little grin and tossed Darmanin's ring onto the desk. Then he rose and crossed to the coffee machine. "Coffee, Sam?"

 

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