Hostage to Death

by Roderic Jeffries

  Steen stared out through the window once more. Now he could make certain that a small but regular income reached him with every appearance of legality.

  The waiter brought them a pan piled high with Paella Valencia. He served them and added a final gamba on each plate with a flourish of serving spoon and fork.

  “Would you like another bottle of wine?” asked Steen.

  “Indeed. It is a very nice wine.” The tourist trade might be temporarily depressed, thought Vives, but there were still a few wealthy foreigners around to compensate for that fact.

  *

  Steen walked through the narrow, twisting streets of Llueyo to the Calle de la Huerta and Cifret’s house. The middle-aged woman with her warm, toothless smile opened the outside wooden door and showed him into the entrance hall. He sat down and listened to a murmur of voices from the office.

  After a quarter of an hour, Cifret came out of the office with an elderly man. He smiled at Steen, escorted the man to the door and said goodbye in French, then returned and shook hands. “Good afternoon, Señor Steen. You are well? It is very nice to see you again. Please to enter.”

  Steen went into the office, slightly more cluttered up than before. “I’ve come to find out how close you are to completing the purchase of the finca in my uncle’s name?”

  “It all takes time, as you will understand, señor, especially with things a little unusual. I have had to… How would you say? Imagine up a few details? And always Madrid wants more papers. But events are moving.”

  “Then how soon do you reckon the purchase will be completed?”

  Cifret looked at the perpetual calendar on his desk which was set at the wrong date. “A week, or maybe a little longer. As there was no residencia, I had to discover a passport and that was rather difficult… I have a friend who works in a hotel…” His manner plainly said that the final bill was going to be a very steep one.

  “You sorted out the problem of military permission?”

  “I managed to persuade the military that your uncle’s house was just outside the limits where he would need military permission to buy it… Today it is easier to persuade people.”

  “Then you really should be able to complete soon?”

  “I am sure of it, señor.” He wasn’t sure, but it was good manners to tell a person whatever that person wished to hear and in any case if it weren’t completed soon, no doubt it would be completed later…

  “The moment everything’s fixed up, I want you to kill off Uncle Silas.”

  “I will do that, señor. A thought has come to me. Do you wish for a grave?”

  “Yes, I do. My wife will almost certainly want to visit it to put on flowers.”

  “It becomes difficult… But then I have a friend who will assist. Since five years ago, foreigners may be buried in the cemetery in Llueyo and so it will not be as difficult as if one had to arrange matters in Palma.” Cifret nodded complacently. “There is one small matter I would like to talk about. I have paid several monies. Will you now give me some money?”

  “How much?”

  Cifret searched amongst the folders on his desk and eventually found the one he wanted. He opened it. “It is eighty-five thousand and four hundred pesetas, senor.”

  “What exactly does that cover?”

  Cifret was a little disappointed since he had decided that Steen would not check the accounts. “I shall write you the details, of course.” He smiled broadly. “We are businessmen, are we not?”

  Of a kind, thought Steen.

  *

  Young sat on the windowsill in Rook’s office. “I’ve been on to the Techington police again and they’ve nothing new to offer. There’s no motive they can trace. So that makes it certain we’re right and there was a second switch of the loot in the bank. Dutch Keen thought he was carrying out the original, but in fact he’d only a load of junk. The suitcase obviously wasn’t opened until Thomas and the rest of ’em had been sprung — they’d have been too suspicious of each other — and then they found the junk and not the fortune. They reckoned Dutch had twisted ’em.”

  Certain? Wondered Rook.

  “So now we start in on the bank staff and find out who had the clever idea?”

  Rook leaned his chair back until it touched the wall. He rested his feet on the desk. “It’s going to be tricky, especially with the senior staff.”

  “I’m not scared of anyone in a bank,” said Young brashly.

  “Nor am I, but that doesn’t stop me being careful not to make mistakes. When you start dealing with people in their position you look twice before you leap or you end up in the midden.”

  Young looked faintly scornful.

  “I’ve met the manager socially; he’s a Rotarian. I’d say he’s the last bloke in the place to have lifted the money.”

  “We forget him because he’s a Rotarian?”

  “Don’t be so bloody silly. But we can afford to work through him. He’ll know the staff because he’s a fussy little man. If anyone’s acting out of normal, he’ll be aware of it.” Rook removed his feet from the desk and allowed the chair to crash forward. His voice suddenly sharpened. “I want the bastard who made the switch nailed, and nailed fast.”

  It’ll be too late for your career, thought Young.

  Rook stood up. “We’ll move along to the bank now and have a preliminary chat.”

  “I’ve a hell of a lot of work on hand…”

  “It’ll keep… You know, I can’t help thinking of that poor devil. All the time they were burning him he must have been desperate to tell them what they wanted, yet couldn’t.”

  Young shrugged his shoulders. He would never worry over someone like Dutch Keen.

  The day was sultry, almost stormy in oppressiveness, and the walk to the bank made both men sweat slightly. They entered and went down to the enquiries counter and asked to see Wraight. The woman they spoke to said he was engaged with a customer, but she’d ring and tell him the detectives were waiting to see him. Rook sat down at one of the small tables and picked up a pamphlet which told him how much interest he could earn himself merely by investing in a deposit account. Great news for those not on police salaries, he thought.

  Wraight showed a beefy farmer-type out of his room and escorted him along the open passage and through the swing door. He said goodbye and then crossed to Rook. “Sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  “Sorry to break in on you unexpectedly,” replied Rook.

  Wraight looked keenly at the D.I. “Presumably something important has occurred? Let’s go along to my room.” He led the way into his office.

  When they were all seated, Rook said: “Did you read the other day about a man called Dutch Keen who was found murdered in a gravel pit? He’d been tortured to death.”

  “Yes, I did. A truly horrible affair. As I said to my wife, things just get worse and worse. What on earth could make anyone do a terrible thing like that?”

  Rook told him.

  Wraight sat very upright in his chair and he spoke with sharp dignity. “That is quite impossible! No member of my staff would ever do such a thing.”

  “Why not?” asked Young.

  “Because they are honest.” Wraight noticed the look on Young’s face. “You clearly do not understand. The people who work here are completely trustworthy or they would not be here. I will personally guarantee every one of them.”

  Rook, hurrying to forestall any comment from Young, said: “I appreciate your strong feelings, Mr Wraight, but strange things can happen.”

  “But damn it, they’re surrounded by money all their working lives! It doesn’t mean a thing to them. If someone had found this money in a suitcase, he’d immediately have reported the fact. A suitcase full of money couldn’t tempt any of us.”

  “Frankly, I’ve thought about that aspect of things and it does worry me.”

  “Well, then…”

  “But we can’t uncover any reasonable motive for Keen’s murder other than that the bank mob were tryin
g to get information out of him as to where the money had got to.”

  “You are supposing a very great deal.”

  “In a way, yes, but it’s all pretty logical supposition.”

  “Which could be very wrong, however logical it seems.”

  “Of course.”

  “I am quite certain it is wrong, for the reasons I’ve given.”

  “Your opinion obviously means a lot, Mr Wraight, but I’ll still have to check up.”

  Wraight flushed, as if it had been his own honour which had been impugned. “What exactly do you mean by ‘check up’?”

  “If there was a switch, I want to know who were in a position to have made it. Then the lives of those people will have to be checked to see if any of them has suddenly started to spend… Who amongst the staff was down in the strong-room after the raid and before the bank reopened?”

  “I was.”

  Rook smiled easily. “I should have added, excluding yourself.”

  Wraight drummed on the desk with the fingers of his right hand. “Seebring and Hodges checked out the notes. Steen handled the valuables.”

  “And no one else went down to the strong-room until the suitcase in the name of Parsons was withdrawn?”

  “I am not prepared to say that, although I know of no one. As you know, most of the staff remained at home all that Friday. But surely those three will tell you if they saw anyone else down there?”

  “Yes, but I have to cross-check. Mr Wraight, am I right in thinking it’s a rule that all staff members have to bank with their branch of the bank?”

  “You are correct.”

  “Then may we see the bank statements of Seebring, Hodges, and Steen, to find out if there’s been any change in spending?”

  “You need a court order for that.”

  “Officially, yes. But that would be to bring the whole thing out into the open, wouldn’t it, and the result might not be too good for the bank’s image. Do it quietly and if we find nothing no one outside of us three will ever know what the suspicions were.”

  Wraight again drummed on the desk with his fingers. “You’ll guess the kind of thing we’ll be looking for — a regular sum used for housekeeping which suddenly isn’t drawn, a deposit that doesn’t fit the person’s salary.”

  “I can assure you that none of them has deposited three hundred thousand pounds.”

  Rook smiled, missing the point that it had not been intended as a joke.

  Wraight hesitated a little longer, then used the internal phone to ask for the staff statements to be brought in to him. In less than a minute a woman carried in a large folder, thick with papers. She glanced around with quick curiosity before putting the folder down on the manager’s desk and leaving.

  Wraight checked through the papers and withdrew three sheets. “There you are. The last statements, covering six months and up to date a fortnight ago.”

  Rook studied the figures. In Seebring’s and Hodges’s cases the pattern of deposits and withdrawals was regular, before and after the bank raid: Steen’s figures showed the sudden overdraft, recently increased. “Do you know why Steen went into the red?”

  “Of course. No member of the staff is allowed an overdraft without my express permission. Steen has an uncle who now lives in Mallorca but who seems to have roamed the world for a number of years after leaving home in disgrace. The uncle wanted to see Steen, who’s his sole remaining blood relative, and asked him to go out to the island. He hadn’t the money to pay for the fare and asked me if he might have the initial overdraft. I allowed it. Then he came to me on Tuesday with a second letter from the uncle, asking him to go out again — in fact, he’s travelling today. I gather from the tone of the letter that the uncle has little time to live. As this was a compassionate ground I allowed the increased overdraft.” He said, very dryly: “If Steen had helped himself to hundreds of thousands of pounds, I doubt he would have come to me to ask for the overdrafts.”

  “Probably not… He was working on his own, wasn’t he, when he was sorting through the valuables?” He turned to Young. “How was that suitcase secured?”

  “With white twine and seals,” replied Young immediately. “I can’t say if it was locked because I didn’t test the locks.”

  “Have you any idea what the seals were?”

  “No.”

  Rook rubbed his chin, then spoke to Wraight once more. “The villains seem to have been able to open the suitcase and then reseal it — when they collected it, it was either as they’d left it or, if there was a switch, the person who did that switch must have fixed up the case as near as possible to how it had been. Since the mob wouldn’t have known they were going to do this, there must surely be seals, twine, and sealing-wax readily available?”

  Wraight spoke a shade stiffly. “I thought I’d answered that previously? …The regulations call for all sealing-wax and seals to be held under close security. Probably there’s a seal and sealing-wax down in the strong-room so that they’re handy when they’re wanted, but since normally nowhere could be more secure it is not a practice I have ever checked, in either sense of the word.”

  Rook visualised the strong-room as he had last seen it. “The shelves come out from the walls to make a rough enclosure, don’t they? And when they’re filled with cases it can’t be all that easy to see into the enclosure?”

  “Well?”

  “Seebring and Hodges were busy checking the money, but even if they’d tried to look it wouldn’t have been easy for them to see what Steen was doing?”

  “I wish to say this. William Steen has worked in this bank for some eight years and in that time he has proved himself to be intelligent, competent, and trustworthy. And since it seems necessary to do so, I repeat, had he stolen all that money would he ever have come to me to ask for an overdraft?”

  Yes, if he were clever enough to foresee the possibility of an investigation into his financial position, thought Rook.

  *

  Steen arrived at Scranton Cross station on Monday evening and Penelope was waiting for him by the ticket collector. He kissed her on the cheek and then went down the stairs and out to their battered old Ford.

  As soon as they were seated, she asked: “How was he?”

  “Looking groggy, but amazingly cheerful. I reckon he’s one of those people who genuinely isn’t worried about dying. In fact, he said that he’d be sorry to lose me after only just meeting me, but he didn’t give a button about saying goodbye to anyone else… Then he winked and added you in along with me, even if he hadn’t actually met you.”

  “It’s rather sad and yet cheering, isn’t it, that he can talk like that?” She was silent until he had driven out of the carpark. “I don’t suppose you knew, but we’ve had terrible weather whilst you were away. What kind have you had?”

  “The sun only stopped shining at night. It got so hot I even had a siesta on Sunday.”

  “What decadence! I can see that if we ever do live out there I’m going to have to work hard to stop you going completely bush.”

  “Then you’d better start girding your loins. I don’t think it’ll be very long.”

  “I’m all excited at the thought and yet also a little scared. Is that being stupid?”

  “I don’t see why — it’ll be a hell of a change.”

  “And an adventure, especially for people like us. I mean, we’re so ordinary and ordinary people don’t usually pick up their sticks and leave their country. I keep wondering how I’m going to cope with shopping. I’ve tried to learn Spanish for the usual things and all I succeed in doing is getting them hopelessly muddled.”

  He laughed. “Shopping’s obviously going to be interesting.”

  “Did you ask anyone whether there’s much asthma?”

  “A retired English doctor confirmed that the locals get it, but foreigners who suffered from it back in their own countries are usually much better off on the island. It’s probably a case of escaping from whatever triggers it off and not finding that
something on the island.”

  “I don’t care how many times I make a fool of myself in the shops, or how many dowager duchesses condescend, if only I can stay fit… I still don’t believe it can really come true.”

  “It’ll soon come true,” he promised her.

  *

  There was an air of brash, hard self-confidence about Paul Drude which attracted a certain type of woman and generally speaking such women were unperturbed when they recognised a little of the vicious toughness in his character.

  Hazel Neeve was averagely intelligent, averagely sophisticated, and quite attractive. She thought Drude handsome and liked the way he wasn’t scared of anyone, not even of head waiters. She was also very impressed by the way he spent money: all the men who had previously taken her out had had to watch the pennies, he had a careless disregard for the pounds.

  On Wednesday, he took her to a dance at the Hotel Olympic, in Nuncton, a seaside resort long noted for its high proportion of resident retired officers. The hotel was on the front and had such an imposing façade, and the two doormen were so smart in their light grey uniforms, that she was a little bit scared and wondered if her dress was smart enough. The prices on the menu scared her even more.

  Drude ordered and they drank a bottle of champagne and then ordered another. They danced in between courses and he told her that he had never danced with anyone so beautiful and she believed him and felt wonderfully happy. She drank more champagne to celebrate her happiness and giggled when she discovered that her feet kept becoming slightly mixed up.

  Later, after the staff had been tipped to their evident, if superior, satisfaction they left and began the drive home. Up in the hills he stopped and she had just time to warn herself to be careful when he started to kiss her with a skill she hadn’t previously experienced. Before long, she forgot her own good advice.

  Chapter 15

  Rook walked into Young’s office. There was a large calendar on the wall showing a nude blonde who was preserving her final secret by only a millimetre. Rook stared at her.