by James Munro
"Here now," Craig said. "You had a dream, remember?"
"It was a dream, wasn't it?" said Flip. "Harry wouldn't—"
"I know the big man you mean," said Craig. "Can you see me beating him outside a dream?"
"You are still prevaricating," said Sir Matthew.
"I told Harry you gave me some heroin," she said.
"Why did you do that?"
"I wanted you to go away. No. I mean you had to go away. You were getting to be dangerous." 'To Harry?"
"To both of us. It was better to get rid of you,
John."
"Why be sorry about it? You did what you had to do. No hard feelings," said Craig. Behind her he could see Sir Matthew's hand move very slightly toward the door. He finished his drink.
"I'll have to go now," he said. "I'd like to come and see you again soon, if you'll let me."
Flip said: "Casting directors, bit players, agents, any jerk who can say, 'Kid . . . with a shape like yours I'll get you a part tomorrow.' That's the kind I draw. Them and Harry. Not you, John."
"That's enough amusement," said Sir Matthew. "You're beginning to enjoy yourself again. But Mr. Craig has to go and we have work to do."
"Yes, of course," Philippa said. "One never has a minute, does one?" She offered her cheek for him to kiss, and he left.
In the corridor outside, Naxos was waiting. Craig nodded to him, and kept on walking.
"Hey," Naxos said. "I want to talk to you." Craig turned. "What did she say to you?"
"She said hello," reported Craig. "Then she said some other things. Then she said good-bye."
"Look, Craig," Naxos said. "Don't make jokes with
me."
"I don't think you're funny," Craig said. "Cheap, cowardly, treacherous, nasty, lying—yes, but not funny, Harry. You never made me laugh. Not even in Dyton-Blease's gym."
"It was for Flip," Naxos said. "I had to protect Flip." 'The record's old," said Craig. "It's starting to scratch."
"Believe me," said Naxos. "I had to. She's all I got. And when I thought you were giving her that stuff, I wanted to shoot you myself. Only that was too easy. So I gave you to Dyton-Blease. I couldn't help myself. It was my wife you were doing this to. My wife."
"Didn't they offer you more money?"
"All right," he said. "All right. But I wasn't going to take it—not until they faked that stuff about heroin."
Craig looked at him. Naxos's eyes were just for seeing. They told him nothing.
"What happens now?" he asked.
"1 got it all straightened out. I'll sign with your government."
"And Selina's father?"
"Him too," said Naxos. "If he goes independent I'll finance him—and trade with Britain anyway. I'm all straightened out now. So what did Flip say about me?"
"She had a nightmare about a big man who tried to kill me, only I got away. I told her not to worry. Everybody has nightmares."
"I'm grateful to you, John, believe that," Naxos said.
"Don't be," said Craig. "For you I did nothing."
He turned and walked away. When he got back to the flat in Regent's Park, he found a note from Pia. Grierson had taken her to a first night.
# * »
Lady Swyven had gone there too. She was very fond of the theater, which she regarded as a convenient center for the display of her jewelry and furs. The plays themselves she usually despised, but enjoyed. It was always hugely amusing to see poor people being jealous of rich people in a messy, unconstructive sort of way, and that was what the current school of dramatists seemed to insist on writing about. Lord Swyven, who was deaf but good-natured, accompanied her on these forays into social realism, and made his deafness the excuse for staying in the bar. Lady Swyven didn't mind; he was available for arrival and departure and perhaps for supper later. To have him out of the way was a positive gain really. Lord Swyven was a fidget on the heroic scale.
That night the piece she had chosen was set in a flat in Notting Hill. Lady Swyven looked expectant, and opened her box of chocolates in high hopes. In front of her a dramatically handsome man was talking in Italian to a really gorgeous, but rather too full-blown young woman, who wore quite the most shattering chinchilla coat Lady Swyven had ever seen, as well as a diamond necklace and earrings that positively shrieked Cartier. Lady Swyven wished she had worn something more exciting than her pearls and that ridiculously demode sable. Then the curtain rose on a quite delicious squalor, and Lady Swyven forgot all about them.
During each act interval she followed the two gorgeous ones to the bar, and drank gin and tonic with her husband, and half heard their lazy flow of chatter about Rico and Sofia and Booboo and Nono, and wondered if a wealthy Italian had ever actually done anything—though the man looked more English than anything. Then her husband began to look as if the Italian words were reaching him (why do all foreigners have such loud voices?) and if he did it wouldn't be long before he began to think of their son Mark. Lady Swyven, who had been married for thirty-seven years and loved her husband deeply, couldn't bear it when he talked about Mark. She touched his arm, and he looked at once at her mouth. Shaping her words very carefully, she said: "Jack, dear, couldn't we move back from the crowd a little?"
As she spoke, the full-blown beauty bumped into her, muttered "Scusi" without looking round, and went on talking. Jack at once cleared a path for his wife, but once again she was bumped into by a chubby, twinkling sort of man, who pushed into her really rather rudely, knocked her bag from her arm, then bent at once to pick it up, hand it back, say "Awfully sorry," and disappear into the crowd.
"Bloody rugger scrum," Jack said. "Can't understand what you see in it."
But it really was rather fun, particularly at the end, when everybody clapped very loud, as if to apologize for not enjoying it, and all the rapists and tarts and perverts lined up, smiling their fresh and wholesome smiles, and one could try to remember which of them one had seen on the television commercials. And then, alas, it was time to go, and one waited one's turn of course, not like the awful Italians who charged out pushing and shoving (could Mark really be happy in Venice?). One followed at one's leisure, because dear Jack, always reliable, would be certain to have the car ready, and one was aware of the Italians kicking up a most tremendous fuss. And then it happened. A simply impossible thing. Quite impossible. But it happened.
She reached the end of the seats, and was about to turn left towards the bar, when a man somehow appeared beside her, and in some way she could never explain, eased her out of the crowd, and into an alcove.
"I should like a word with you, madam," he said.
Lady Swyven had been a beauty in her day, and was used to elderly gallants who remembered her from the past, and bored her in the present, but she knew at once that this man wasn't one of them. He was thirty years too young, and his words were all wrong.
"My name is Linton, Detective Chief Inspector Linton," the man said. "Here is my warrant card." He showed her a card covered in Perspex, but her heart was jumping so the words refused to focus. "I think we'd better just step into the manager's office," said Linton, and again she found herself somehow persuaded away, this time into a room that was mostly a safe and photographs, and a desk and chair, and the two Italians gabbling more rapidly than ever, and a fat, sweaty sort of man in a dinner jacket pouring whiskey for the Italians and trying to say "Honestly, I can't tell you how sorry I am that such a thing should happen in my theater" only the Italians were talking so much they wouldn't listen.
Lady Swyven fought for, and finally gained, her self
control.
"What on earth," she asked, "is happening?"
Linton said: "The lady here, Signorina Busoni, has lost a diamond brooch. It seems very likely that you have it, madam."
Lady Swyven said, "How dare you!" and at once pondered the fact that in real life too, there is a use for theatrical cliche.
"You think you haven't?"
"I know I haven't," Lady Swyven said. "The wh
ole business is quite ridiculous." She paused, then added: "I should like my husband to be here. He's waiting for me outside."
Linton shrugged, then went to the door and spoke to a brisk, alert, young detective sergeant, the kind who gets ulcers because he still isn't a superintendent and here he is turned thirty already. He was back in minutes, and all the time the two Italians talked; the manager poured Scotch and tried and failed to get into the duologue.
Swyven came in slowly, unhurried, because hurrying impeded his thinking and there was obviously something wrong.
The sergeant said loudly: "This is Lord Swyven, sir. I'm afraid he's rather hard of hearing."
Swyven's words cut across the sergeant's. "I'm bloody deaf," he said, "but it's no good shouting like this idiot. Just let me see you speak."
Linton said: "It's your wife, sir. We have reason to believe she's stolen a diamond brooch."
"You're either mad or drunk," Swyven said. "Or
both."
"It's in her handbag, sir."
Swyven looked at his wife and grinned.
"Better let them look, Jane," he said. "Then we can go and get a bite at the Caprice or something. You like the place and I can't hear them anyway."
Lady Swyven opened her handbag, took out a handkerchief and cigarettes, lipstick, powder compact, lighter and a rose diamond brooch made by Carrier in Paris, approximate value three thousand pounds.
"Great God Almighty!" said Lord Swyven.
"Ecco," Miss Busoni shouted in triumph. "E—ceo."
The very handsome man with her said, "That's Pia's brooch, all right. I'd recognize it anywhere."
Linton said: "I'm afraid I must ask you to come with us to the Station, madam," and Lady Swyven burst into tears.
» Chapter 18 *
Well," said Loomis. "We're doing very nicely. Chubby Chal-lon planted the brooch on her when he bumped into her, you're on hand to identify it, and the Busoni person gets a lot of free publicity."
'There's just one point, sir," Grierson said. "She's Italian."
"Nothing could be more obvious," said Loomis. "And I am wanted for murder in Italy." "Didn't I tell you? Naxos explained all that," Loomis said. "You're in the clear now. But don't do it again." "No, sir," said Grierson. "Thank you, sir."
"Yes. Well. We also planted some more stuff in Swyven's place. Stuff Chubby knocked off for us. She could get seven years for this. Now all we got to do is leak it to the press."
"You think it'll draw Swyven out?"
"It must," Loomis said. "You don't think I want to send an old woman to prison, do you?"
"As soon as he sees Pia's name he'll know it's a plant," said Grierson.
"You are an old misery this morning," Loomis said. "Of course he'll know it's a plant and hell come all the quicker. He'll assume we're the same as he is, d'you see? And that means jail for his old ma. What you got for the press?"
Grierson handed over a typewritten release. It read: "Last night a daring attempt was made to steal a priceless diamond brooch belonging to glamorous Italian film star Pia Busoni when she attended a first night at the Duke's Theater."
"We've got a sexy picture to go with it," said Grierson.
"I'll bet you have," said Loomis.
"The attempt was frustrated by Detective Chief Inspector Linton, C.I.D. It is understood that Lady Swyven, wife of Rear Admiral Lord Swyven, is assisting the police in their inquiries. It is reported that Detective Chief Inspector Linton believes that the robbery may be linked with other recent society thefts."
"That'll do nicely," said Loomis. "I never knew you could be so vulgar, Grierson. Now all we have to do is wait."
"Suppose Lady Swyven just calls me a liar?"
"How can she?" said Loomis. "You're an ex-captain of the Royal Marines, you hunt with the Quorn, you've an uncle who's an Archdeacon. How can you possibly be a liar?"
« » «
Swyven flew in next morning at dawn, in an El-Al Trident. He had a car waiting for him, a big Russian Zim from the Zaarbist Embassy. He cleared Customs slowly, but when he reached the car it moved away at once. Swyven took comfort from its CD plates, and as it neared London began to breathe more easily. Beside him Zaarb's eleventh cultural attache, an expert on the manufacture, maintenance, and use of small arms, explained how Zaarb would never let down their good friend Swyven, who had done so much for the latest and best of people's republics. He did not explain that Swyven had only been allowed to come because it was feared that he might have done so on his own if he'd been refused help; nor that it was too early for him to die—there was still work for him to do; nor that even so the cultural attache's orders were to kill him if there were any chance of his being captured.
The Zim moved up to seventy, and Swyven felt happier still. The Skyways Hotel was behind them now, the dual carriageway was almost empty, the petrol stations clicked by in fast blobs of color. Swyven permitted himself a cigarette, then the big car slowed. There was a "Road Up" sign ahead, and a diesel road roller clanking slowly down. The Zim braked down harder as the road narrowed even more. The car moved level with the road roller, which was moving flat out at twelve miles an hour, then, incredibly, the road roller swerved into them.
The front of the bonnet disappeared before the car hit the middle of the carriageway. The chauffeur stamped on his foot brake, the back-wheel brakes engaged and slued the car round faster, slamming him into the steering wheel. The cultural attach^ received Swyven's head in his chest as his hand groped for his gun, and fell sideways, to slam his head into the rear door. Swyven pulled him clear, and reached for the door handle, but the door opened before he could touch it, and a man in overalls stood framed inside it. The man looked familiar to Swyven, but he was too terrified to think where he had seen him before. The workman had his hands on the cultural attach^ who was struggling feebly, then he struck, and the cultural attache was unconscious, and the workman was taking a gun from inside the cultural attache's coat. There was another man busy in the front of the car, a man in ambulance uniform, and he was dragging out the unconscious chauffeur.
Swyven whimpered as the cultural attache was hauled out, and handed over to other ambulance attendants. At last he made a dive through the open door, and the workman turned and tripped him, almost contemptuously, then hauled him to his feet and ran him up to a waiting ambulance, pitched him inside, leaped in after him and slammed the doors. The ambulance moved off at once, its bell clanging.
"Hello, Swyven old man," said the workman. "How are all the Carpaccios?"
After an hour they arrived at a nursing home, a quiet, discreet building, with oak trees, ivy parterres and the best alarm system in the United Kingdom. Electronic eyes winked, a gate swung open, and the ambulance went inside, behind the shelter of the trees, and pulled up by the main doors. Craig opened the doors and jumped down._
"Out," he said. "Time to see the doctor."
The cultural attache and the chauffeur stepped down, and automatically put their hands on the back of their necks. Swyven came out last, his face hidden by a handkerchief. He was weeping.
They went inside, and one of the ambulance attendants came with them. Swyven recognized Grierson, but it made no difference. Craig alone was more than he could cope with. They reached a door labeled "Group Psychotherapy." Grierson knocked, and went inside. Behind a desk heaped with carnations, Loomis beamed like a fat uncle at Christmas. His gaze moved over to Craig.
"Goodness," he said. "You do look authentic."
Craig rubbed his nose with the back of his hand, then wiped the hand on his trouser seat.
"Don't overact," said Loomis. "Any trouble?"
"No," said Craig. "The cultural attache here—and his friend—"
"A sort of cultural attache's mate," said Grierson.
"They started yelling about diplomatic immunity at first," said Craig. "Now they're more keen on political asylum."
"What about Swyven?"
"He wants his mommy," said Craig.
"And if he's
a good boy—a very good boy—he shall have her," said Loomis. "Just take these two away and tidy them up, will you, Grierson?" He glowered at them. 'Tell the truth and we'll give you money. More truth, more money. If you tell enough truth, we won't let anybody shoot you. If you don't, we will."
Grierson took them out, and Loomis came out from behind the desk, placed a massive hand on Swyven's shoulder, and rammed him into a chair.
"You've got a choice, you know," Loomis said. "You can tell me, or I can let Craig get it out of you. I don't like you, Swyven, but Craig hates the sight of you. You were too pally with a feller he didn't like." He turned to Craig. "Got a flash this morning. Doctor's report on Dyton-Blease. You paralyzed him, son. For life. He can't even speak." He turned back to Swyven. "That's the way Craig is, cock," he said. "I wouldn't cross him if I were you. Then there's your mother to consider."
"You've no right to do this to me," Swyven yelled. "No right at all. And what's going to happen when the Zaarbist Embassy finds out about this?"
"Finds out about what?" said Loomis. "Your two orangutans don't want to go back to their cage. They'll use the accident as an excuse to stay out. The accident's been reported to their embassy, and you're here for treatment. The road roller man will be charged with dangerous driving, and he'll plead guilty. What on earth can Zaarb do about it? You'd better concentrate on your mommy— and Craig here."
"What about my mother?"
"She stole a lot of stuff," said Loomis. "Over ten thousand quid's worth. She'll go to prison, unless we find fresh evidence."
"That's not very likely, is it?" said Swyven.
"Up to you," said Loomis. 'Take another look at Craig, cock, then make up your mind. I won't ask you again." Swyven looked round. A dirty man in dirty overalls. A hard man, harder even than poor, dear Dyton-Blease.
"All right," he said.
"You just he back and make yourself comfy," said Loomis.
"My mother—" Swyven said.
"I'll ring Scotland Yard as soon as we're finished," Loomis said. "Don't worry about a thing." He looked quickly at Craig, his head jerked, and Craig turned to the door.
"Now just tell your old uncle," said Loomis. Craig closed the door very sofdy, and went to wash, to change, to think about Fhp.