Echo of Barbara

by John Burke

  ‘. . . a house fit to call a house,’ she lamented, ‘and a life worth living. It wasn’t too much to ask. I’ve been patient. You can’t say I haven’t been patient. Hanging about all these years, after the sort of life we’d been used to — and now this!’

  The clouds over the sea thickened, and although this was morning a sombre twilight crept into the room.

  Roger said: ‘He must have it somewhere. If he hadn’t got it, he’d have said so outright.’

  ‘You can’t even be sure of that. To think that I stood by him and —’

  ‘He’s got to crack up sooner or later. No man in his right mind could leave all that lying around, wherever it is — just lying there — and not go to pick it up.’

  ‘In his right mind,’ echoed his mother hopelessly.

  ‘If we could get him back to some of his old haunts, he’d see sense,’ urged Roger, as though by persuading her he could move his father. ‘He needs to live as he used to live —’

  ‘We had so much. So much.’ She was grey with her own wretchedness: it was impossible to tell how much she had said to her husband when they were alone together, how vainly she had talked and how little he had replied. Abruptly she said: ‘The only person he would tell is Barbara. If she were here. And if she’d ask him.’

  ‘Which she wouldn’t,’ growled Roger.

  ‘She’s the only one. If only you could find her and talk to her. Maybe that’s all it is. Being in prison does things to a man — makes him queer. You’ve only got to look at him to see that. Barbara’s all he wants. And the way he is now, Barbara’s the only one he’d tell.’

  Roger nodded slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She’s the only one. If we could find Barbara . . .’

  Chapter Four

  Spread out all over the floor and on the desk, back issues of Pepper Publications looked as dull and unappetizing as a heap of ancient parish magazines.

  Stan Morrison glanced into the office, cursed, and said: ‘Hurry up and get that bloody mess cleared up, will you? I want to sit down sometime.’

  Roger skimmed through yet another issue, and flung it aside. Automatically he reached for the nearest one to hand. Had he already gone through this? It looked just the same as all the others; he had lost the ability to distinguish between them. Girls on their knees thrust flimsily covered breasts at him; ‘artistic’ poses exhibited a tangle of legs and hunched shoulders; the repetitive patterns of arched eyebrows, breasts, navels, and knees were tiring his eyes.

  Actually — it would have been a laugh to anyone who was told this — he was looking for a face. One particular, half-remembered face.

  He got up from the floor, his legs stiff. On the desk was a small pile he had not yet investigated. He picked up the top magazine and leafed through it. Nothing in there. Then there were several consecutive issues. He opened the first; and there she was.

  Roger sighed. He opened the pages out and tossed the magazine to the other side of the desk. The girl stared up at the ceiling. Roger turned away, then turned back abruptly as though to catch the photograph by surprise. Then he studied it at length, closely and at a distance.

  He had been right. She would do.

  Stan Morrison came in as he was gathering up the copies from the floor.

  ‘Found what you were looking for?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roger jubilantly.

  ‘Thank God for that. What was it — don’t tell me you’re getting interested in women after all this time? I thought they were rather out of your line.’

  Roger stifled an instinctive retort. He could take that sort of remark now. Instead, he jerked his thumb towards the open magazine. ‘Who’s that?’

  Stan shrugged. ‘No idea.’

  ‘Those issues are a year old. We don’t seem to have used her since then. But I’ve got to find her.’

  ‘What’s all the fuss about?’ demanded Stan.

  Roger almost decided to tell him. But the plan might fail. It was a long chance, and if it failed there would be more jeers, more savage contempt. Let him wait.

  Roger said: ‘It’s a personal matter. I must talk to this girl. Tell you all about it later.’

  His curiosity aroused, Stan picked up the glossy photograph and studied it more carefully. He pursed his lips. He had a good memory: like his father, he remembered women. When you lived on women, you needed to know all and remember all.

  ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Dark brown hair. Very smooth skin.’ His eyes narrowed appreciatively, as though smoke had drifted into them. ‘Very smooth. And grey eyes — very light grey.’

  ‘That’s her.’

  ‘It’s coming back to me now. She came to London to be an actress —’

  ‘Perfect! Couldn’t be better.’

  Stan was pulling open the top drawer of the filing cabinet. ‘A hell of a lot of ’em do that. Let’s see, what issue was it? Mm.’ He pulled out a file, and went on fitting pieces together in his mind. ‘She was one of those who went on.’

  ‘To your father’s?’

  ‘I think so.’ Stan took out a card. ‘Paula Hastings. Yes, she was the one all right — she went on to one of the clubs. I’ll give the old man a tinkle, and locate her.’

  Roger collected the remaining magazines and stacked them in the cupboard. He was hardly aware of the movements of his hands as he prodded the last one into place and closed the cupboard door. All his attention belonged on Stan, perched on the desk with the receiver in his left hand, whistling through his teeth.

  ‘That you, Pop? Listen . . .’

  If she had gone on to Lew Morrison, maybe she would not be the right sort of girl. It was hard to imagine her playing the part he had devised for her. And anyway, with the sort of money and the sort of life she would be used to by now, what chance was there that she’d be interested?

  He listened to Stan’s questions, listened to the answering crackle in the receiver. Stan’s eyes rested on him, cold and sardonic. Stan said: ‘Is that so? Well, we’ve got plenty more where that one came from.’ The metallic voice went on for a few seconds and then ceased. Stan put the telephone down.

  Roger said: ‘Well?’

  ‘She doesn’t work there any more. She didn’t like it. And my old man doesn’t like to be reminded of her, much.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘Pop told me,’ said Stan blandly, ‘where he thought she ought to have gone.’

  Roger held out his hand. Stan dropped the file card into it.

  ‘She may not live there any longer,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll find out,’ said Roger.

  *

  The girl frowned into her glass of Dubonnet and swung it gently to and fro so that the ice clinked against the sides. Her hair was longer than it had been in the photograph. Her eyes looked tired, rimmed with a languid, rather noble darkness. She wore no jewellery, and the flesh of her throat had a shadowy richness that was more disturbing than all the exposed bodies in all the magazine pictures.

  She said: ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with Lew Morrison again.’

  ‘This is a private matter,’ said Roger. ‘It concerns me, and only me. Morrison doesn’t come into it.’

  ‘If you’re still a partner of that son of his —’

  ‘This is separate,’ said Roger. ‘You won’t be concerned with the Morrisons at all.’

  She drank, and put her glass down. Her eyes, sunk in darkness, were a velvety grey — soft, yet startlingly clear and demanding.

  ‘I’m not fussy about many things nowadays,’ she said; ‘but your precious friend taught me to be more critical than I thought I could be. That’s why I’m where I am now. That’s why I’m even listening to you — because once he’d made me really sick, and I’d walked out, he saw to it that I didn’t get a job anywhere else. Powerful friends you have.’

  He sensed that her language was not her own. This was not the way she spoke when she was truly herself: it was the tongue of the world which she had entered a year ago . . . two year
s? . . . some time back. He knew because he was like that himself. It was the way things went nowadays. You said what you meant in phrases from the cinema, and it sounded good, and after a while everyone was talking like that and it became almost natural and ceased to be an act any longer. Powerful friends you have . . .

  He said: ‘I don’t have to run with the Morrisons. My father’ — he was approaching the point of this interview — ‘is bigger than a dozen types like Morrison.’

  ‘If he’s in the same line of business —’

  ‘No,’ said Roger. ‘He wouldn’t touch that sort of thing. He never needed to.’

  She watched him, waiting. He was conscious of a tingle of optimism. Her calm, sceptical self-possession was just right. If she would listen — if she would only agree — it would all work out just as he had planned.

  He went on: ‘I’ll tell you the whole story. In confidence. I’ll have to trust you.’ He waited for some acknowledgement. She made no comment; did not move. ‘Another drink?’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, no. Tell me what you want.’

  ‘My father,’ he said, ‘is Sam Westwood. Just over ten years ago he was a very respectable citizen. Very respectable indeed. We had a large house, in its own grounds, beyond Maidenhead. Two cars, a boat — everything.’ He thought of the boat and of the gentle plash of water and the way the lawn ran down to the river. ‘My father,’ he said, ‘drove into London most mornings, and came back sometimes in the early evening, sometimes late. We understood he was a promoter of some sort — Westwood Enterprises, his firm was called, and somehow we got the idea over the years that he had a finger in every pie in the entertainment business. My mother sometimes asked him what he was doing, and he’d say that he had been involved in a big deal over theatre scenery, or had been trying to do something to get restrictions lifted in some big restaurants. Post-war rationing — you remember? It seems a long time ago.’

  ‘I wasn’t much more than a kid. Just a little,’ she judicially added, ‘older than you, I suppose.’

  The calm assumption of superiority annoyed him. ‘You can’t be all that much older.’

  ‘Twenty-three,’ she said.

  ‘That’s just right.’

  ‘Right for what?’

  ‘My sister,’ he said, ‘is twenty-three.’

  She stared.

  He said: ‘My sister Barbara was always my father’s pet. She was brought up to consider herself the most wonderful thing that ever existed. Nothing was too good for her. Dad spent most of his spare time with her. They were always hanging about together. But when it came down to it — when she discovered what he’d really been up to . . .’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘She’s not like me,’ he said passionately. ‘She wanted all the trimmings — she couldn’t take the truth underneath.’

  Paula Hastings said: ‘I don’t know what all this is about.’

  ‘I’d better go back and tell you the rest of the story. Just over ten years ago we found out that Dad wasn’t as respectable as he looked. He was a big shot in the — er —’

  ‘The crime world,’ she supplied flatly.

  ‘He was smart, that was all,’ snapped Roger. ‘He wanted the good things, and he knew how to get them. He didn’t get mixed up in any of the smaller things — other people did those jobs for him. The police never got anywhere near him.’ His enthusiasm kindled. The picture that had been built up in his mind over these years came to life again; he marvelled at the empire which his father had ruled. ‘Everything was running smoothly. But on one big job my father decided to go along himself.’

  ‘Why?’

  Roger had asked himself that question so often, and every time there was a different answer. He tried now to sound confident and mysterious. ‘It was something really big. He couldn’t have trusted even his best men. He wanted to supervise the whole thing. When it was the big stuff, he had to deal with it personally.’

  Paula was watching his mouth. She said: ‘You’re crazy about your father, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been waiting ten years for him to get out.’

  ‘This last job of his you’ve been talking about —’

  ‘He got on to something terrific. The biggest haul ever. The Mannerlaw diamonds.’

  At last he had made an impression on her. She let out a faint, wondering sigh. ‘I’ve heard about them.’

  ‘A lot of people have heard about them,’ he said proudly. ‘A lot of people would like to know where they are.’

  ‘Your father was the man who went to prison — I remember hearing someone talking about him.’

  Roger held himself back for a moment. He tried to sit quite still and study the girl. He needed a quick, final assessment before he gambled on her.

  He said: ‘You do want a job, don’t you? And a lot of money.’

  ‘I wouldn’t even have come to meet you if I didn’t.’

  He was almost prompted to drop some sinister hint about his own contacts, and the things that might happen to her if she cheated him; but the look in her eyes stopped him in time.

  ‘If you turn down the offer I’m going to make you,’ he said carefully, ‘you’ll keep quiet about it afterwards?’

  ‘Plenty of things have happened to me that I don’t talk about,’ she said. ‘This won’t be any different.’

  He was still studying her face. The longer he looked at it, the stronger the resemblance became.

  ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘My father got the Mannerlaw diamonds. Quite a while after the war ended. The family collection — paintings, jewellery, everything — had been moved out of London to the country home of some relative. The old earl went with it. When his son got back from the war, their London place was cleaned up and all the treasures were disinterred from the country and brought back. At least, that was the idea.’ He could not repress a smile. The terrific idea, the planning, the way it had been carried out . . . He said: ‘The Mannerlaw diamonds were travelling in a car with two private detectives. It was all very inconspicuous — all carefully worked out and very secret. Only there weren’t such things as secrets where my father was concerned. He knew too many people, without them realizing it. He knew every detail, and knew where and how to make the snatch. It was the fastest hold-up you ever heard of — all over in less than a minute.’

  ‘But,’ she said, ‘they were caught.’

  The triumph ebbed out of Roger’s voice. ‘Yes,’ he said; ‘they were caught.’ The memory of treachery was like a sour taste in his mouth. ‘One of the three men with him squealed. There was a row over the shareout of the proceeds — that’s what everyone who knew about it says. It got into all the papers after the trial — headlines like ‘Thieves fall out’ and that sort of dirt. The men wanted a bigger cut, and my father stuck to what he’d arranged. There was a big split, and a rough-house somewhere one evening. The police got to hear of it and pulled one of the men in. They must have worked him over pretty thoroughly. Told him one of the detectives they’d attacked was likely to die and he’d be charged with murder, or something like that. Anyway, he talked. They pulled my father in, and eventually they got the other two.’

  And so the house, the garden, the river, the cars, the fine days all came to an end. After the trial and the conviction for robbery with violence, there was still enough money for them to exist on while they waited; but it was existence, not life.

  Paula Hastings said: ‘But the Manner-law diamonds — they never got them back, did they?’

  Roger drew a deep breath. ‘That’s the point.’

  ‘Your father —’

  ‘The quarrel between him and his men was because he refused to share out. He paid them for the job, and that was that. It was the way he always worked. And he hid the diamonds before the police caught up with him. Nobody knows where.’

  Wonderingly she shook her head. Impersonal voices buzzed around them, but he and the girl might have been in a different world. He took her empty glass from between her slim fingers. Sh
e sat with her legs crossed, apparently contemplating her right foot.

  She said: ‘And the rest of you really didn’t know about your father? I mean, your mother must have known what he was up to.’

  ‘No, she didn’t know. Right to the end she thought Dad worked in an office, running a respectable business. She played bridge and gave little parties, and she was always spending money, and she was happy.’

  ‘And now,’ said Paula, ‘you can all spend money again, I suppose? I mean, he must be out by now, surely?’

  Tersely, bitterly, Roger told her the truth. He admitted to her, as he could not have admitted to Stan Morrison, the humiliation he had been suffering since his father was freed. There was no holding back now. Those dispassionate, quietly challenging grey eyes released his pent-up anger and frustration: they encouraged him in a way he could not explain. It was almost as though he had some tangled sin to confess. When he had explained everything, and she had replied, there would be assuagement.

  He finished. She had not touched her drink all the time he was speaking. Now she said:

  ‘Yes. Ironic, isn’t it? But what has it got to do with me?’

  ‘There’s only one person he might talk to,’ said Roger. He forced himself to slow down now; forced himself to drive his words heavily, methodically home. ‘The thing that’s hit him most — the only thing that’s affected him in any way since he came out, as far as we can see — has been Barbara’s disappearance. If she were to come back, I believe he’d give way. She could coax it out of him.’

  She laughed briefly, disbelievingly. ‘And I . . . I’m like your sister: is that it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Roger; ‘that’s it.’

  A man passed them carrying three pint tankards with his two hands clasped around them in a praying gesture. Somebody began to laugh hysterically behind a pillar in the middle of the bar. Roger and Paula had hunched towards one another, their voices low. They might have been lovers, murmuring together — or tensely quarrelling.