Echo of Barbara

by John Burke

  ‘That’s a point. We’ll have to be careful when I take you downstairs.’

  ‘It will be safer,’ she insisted, ‘if we don’t move from here. We . . . we can talk. There are things I ought to tell you. I want to talk. I don’t want to be alone. I couldn’t bear to be left alone now. Not right away.’

  Her fingers tightened on his sleeve. Gently he eased her down into the chair by the fire. He saw that she could not be taken out and left in the car or in a restaurant. She was ready to collapse.

  He said: ‘All right. You can stay. But when they come, keep back. Keep well out of the way. Just in case.’

  Her head was bowed. He looked down at her, and knew that there was no escape: frightened and dishevelled as she was, he still found her beautiful and knew that nothing she could tell him would ever make any difference.

  Paula said: ‘They won’t be back for a while, will they?’

  ‘Not for some considerable time, I imagine.’

  ‘You can sit down, then.’ A note of defiance crept into her voice. She put her head back, and the stubbornness in her face made her so like Sam Westwood that it was impossible to believe that she was not his daughter. ‘Let me tell you my life story,’ she said bleakly. ‘It’ll pass the time, won’t it?’

  Willie McKenna stirred and tried to get to his knees. Adam turned to the bed and pulled a sheet off. He lashed Willie’s arms behind his back, and tore off a strip to tie his feet together.

  Then he said to Paula: ‘You don’t have to . . .’

  ‘I want you to listen.’

  He listened. And all he felt was love. The story she told was the story of somebody else — a shadow figure, a pitiful character out of some tale that had ended long ago. For Paula, too, it was becoming unreal: she faltered, losing conviction.

  Adam said: ‘You’re not telling me your life story at all. You’re a very different person from this Paula Hastings you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes,’ she marvelled. ‘I feel different. Now.’

  They sat for a long time in silence: the silence of rest and contentment.

  It was broken, at last, by footsteps on the stairs. A voice growled: ‘Go on, keep moving. And don’t try anything.’

  Adam moved swiftly and quietly. He dragged Willie into the lavatory, and stayed there with him. Paula sprawled on the bed. Adam kept the lavatory door slightly ajar. His gun was in his right hand; his left hand rested against the door.

  A key turned in the lock of the room door.

  ‘Hey — Willie. Where —’

  ‘He’s out,’ said Paula blandly.

  ‘Out? What the hell —’

  Adam pulled with his left hand; the lavatory door opened and he moved out into the room.

  Legat swore, and tensed.

  Adam said: ‘Stay still. Both of you.’

  He heard Paula’s sudden cry of dismay, but his attention stayed on Legat and Russell. Even when Russell let go of Sam Westwood so that Sam collapsed to the floor, Adam was not distracted.

  ‘Any guns?’ he said tersely.

  Legat, his face dark beneath the sinuous black curls, said: ‘Find out.’

  ‘All right. I’ll find out. Paula — see what you can do for Sam.’

  Paula moved warily round behind the two glowering men. She got her hands under Sam’s shoulders, and tried to lift him. He gasped, and got one knee forward. Gradually he pushed himself up. She supported him to the washbasin, and mopped the blood from his face.

  ‘Fine,’ he whispered at last, swaying but upright. ‘That’s fine.’

  Adam said: ‘See if they’ve got any guns, will you, Sam?’

  ‘They’ve got ’em all right.’ Sam touched a raw weal across his forehead. ‘Where do you think I got this?’

  He moved very slowly towards Legat and patted his sides. Then he drew out a revolver and went on to Russell.

  Legat said: ‘This isn’t the end. Don’t think it is.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is,’ Sam said, forcing a smile. It obviously hurt him to smile. ‘This is the end, Legat. Russell ought to have told you; Willie ought to have told you: you couldn’t win against me.’

  He retreated, a gun in each hand. Paula stood close beside him, ready to support him. But he was standing on his own, hunched up, in pain but alive and pleased.

  Adam said: ‘They tried to beat the truth out of you.’

  ‘They did.’

  ‘But it didn’t work.’

  ‘They still don’t know where the diamonds are,’ Sam confirmed.

  Adam studied him with respect. Sam had taken a terrific beating. His eyes were puffy and almost closed; his forehead and cheeks were gashed, and his top lip was swelling into an ugly mass.

  ‘You knew,’ said Adam, ‘that this would happen.’

  ‘I guessed it would.’

  ‘And —’

  ‘And when they found they couldn’t get it out of me,’ said Sam, ‘I knew what they would do. They weren’t going to kill me: that wouldn’t have helped one little bit. I was pretty sure they’d bring me back here and . . . try to persuade me by other means.’

  Adam looked at Paula, and back at Sam.

  Sam nodded. ‘Yes. That was the idea. To work over Barbara, as they thought she was, before my eyes. They figured I would talk then.’

  ‘We should both have come here right away. We could have got her out without your taking all that punishment.’

  ‘How were we to know?’ said Sam. ‘Suppose the address had been wrong? Roger could have been mistaken. Then what would we have done? What would these creatures have done to . . . to Paula if I hadn’t turned up at Grenbridge and then gone where they told me on the phone? I had to meet them this time. Then, if you had failed to find her, at least I knew I would be brought along. And somehow or other I’d have beaten them.’

  Paula, trembling with fatigue and the aftermath of fear, said: ‘Can’t we go now? Can’t we get out of this place?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sam. ‘Let’s go.’

  Paula led the way out of the room. The two men backed away, watching Legat and Russell.

  At the door, Sam said: ‘Don’t try anything again. You’ll never get those diamonds. Never. You can take my word for that. My word was always pretty good, wasn’t it, Russell?’

  Russell mouthed something inaudible.

  ‘Forget about the whole business,’ Sam concluded. ‘Because next time’ — there was steel in his voice — ‘I won’t let you off so easily. Next time my young friend here won’t be with me, maybe, and then I won’t be so law-abiding. I’ll kill you. All three of you. Understood?’

  As though hypnotized, Legat and Russell nodded in unison.

  Sam and Adam went out, closing the door behind them. They went down the stairs. Paula stood waiting in the doorway, looking out at the cold afternoon with rapture.

  Nobody pursued them. There was no sound from above.

  ‘The car’s up here,’ said Adam. ‘Unless,’ he added, ‘it’s been towed away by the police.’

  It stood where he had left it. They crowded in, and were silent as the streets opened out into a main road, the road led out through the suburbs, and the suburbs gave way to the countryside. The afternoon darkened over them.

  Adam spoke first. He said: ‘If you hadn’t been able to turn the tables on them . . . if they had threatened Paula in front of you —’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Paula. ‘Don’t let’s talk about it. It didn’t happen.’

  ‘If it had happened —’

  ‘It would have been very tricky,’ said Sam reflectively.

  ‘You would have given up the diamonds? As a last resort, you’d have given in and told them where the diamonds were?’

  ‘I suppose I would have done. But they wouldn’t have been at all pleased. I doubt, even, whether they would have believed me.’

  Adam flicked his headlights on. The bright road rushed towards the car, and the hedges, bare and brittle in the winter afternoon, fell away on either side.

  He s
aid: ‘What did you do with the diamonds?’

  ‘I threw them away,’ said Sam. ‘The whole lot went to the bottom of the Thames.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Out of the goodness of my heart,’ said Sam, ‘I must insist on those diamonds staying where they are. They’re no use to you, Adam — and they’d be a great embarrassment to young Mannerlaw.’

  He sat in his own chair by his own fireside. In spite of his battered face and hunched, hurt body he looked bigger. There was a new resilience in his voice.

  Barbara sat on the edge of the couch. She felt a stranger here. She was, incongruously, no more than an echo of Paula. The impostor had become the real person. Barbara allowed herself to feel amused. She was a visitor who would be leaving tomorrow, and she was no more involved in the things that had happened than if she had been a casual acquaintance: she listened as she might have listened to the account of a family holiday, or a protracted operation.

  ‘Let’s just say,’ added Sam, ‘that all’s well that ends well. And it has ended.’

  Adam Collier said: ‘Damn you, I believe you enjoyed the whole thing. Every little bit of it.’

  ‘No,’ said Sam, ‘I didn’t enjoy it.’ He glanced shyly at Paula. ‘There was too much at stake.’

  ‘Even so —’

  ‘It meant something to me,’ Sam agreed. He flexed his fingers, watching them judicially. ‘I . . . I’m remembering what it’s like to be alive. It’s all coming back.’

  ‘And everything is going to start all over again,’ said Barbara, ‘just as I said it would.’

  Sam accepted her comment as he would have accepted a remark from a visitor — politely, with a little smile that showed she did not understand.

  ‘No,’ he said; ‘it’s not the same as it was. But I can’t explain it. Not yet.’

  Roger looked from one to the other impatiently. Barbara pursed her lips. She knew what he was thinking, and the little twitch of her mouth told him that she knew. He was longing for somebody to bring up the one important topic. Somebody else, rather than himself. The question was burning him.

  Mrs. Westwood cleared her throat, then shook her head wonderingly, and said nothing.

  Roger could not restrain himself. He said: ‘What did you mean by . . . well, all that stuff about the goodness of your heart?’

  Barbara said: ‘He means, what about the diamonds?’

  ‘At the bottom of the river,’ said Sam placidly.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘The thought of it hurts you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I just want to know,’ implored Roger.

  Sam stretched his legs. ‘I suppose,’ he said expansively, ‘I owe you all an explanation.’

  ‘It would be very welcome,’ said Adam.

  Barbara sat back, put her head against the couch cushions, and stared at the far corner of the ceiling. She was interested, no more. Let them get the story finished off, the ends tied up; and tomorrow she would leave.

  Sam said: ‘In my — ah — more lavish days a certain proportion of my income was derived from regular payments made by people who wished to give some sign of gratitude for my continued discretion.’

  ‘Blackmail?’ said Adam.

  ‘The word is generally supposed to have an unpleasant flavour. I can assure you that it is less unpleasant than the things in which these people had been concerned in their time. I saw no reason why they should not pay for their sins. The money was of the greatest use to me, and their monthly payments were a constant reminder to them of the folly of wickedness. One might almost say that I was exercising a very beneficial moral influence on them.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with a diamond robbery?’ demanded Roger fretfully.

  ‘We’re coming to that. One of my most cherished contributors was the Earl of Mannerlaw.’

  Adam said: ‘Mannerlaw? But . . . I don’t believe it. He’s not the sort to get involved in anything really foul. I had a long talk with him when I took on the job of trying to trace the diamonds through you, and I’m sure he’s as straight as they come. As decent a young fellow as . . . Oh. I see. You mean the old earl.’

  ‘The old earl,’ Sam confirmed. ‘The one who died while I was in prison.’

  ‘I never knew him.’

  ‘You didn’t miss anything. I understand his son is a credit to the family name. Nobody could have said that about his father — at least, nobody who knew half the things I did. He frittered away a lot of his money when he was young, and it wasn’t just boyish exuberance. He was an unpleasant specimen. There were two unsavoury incidents at Heidelberg; and there were some questions about the death of his first wife that were never answered. But from my own point of view, the profitable misdemeanour involved a Stock Exchange transaction. Perhaps some of Mannerlaw’s fellow directors would have said that it was an understandable transaction — if not legal, at any rate the sort of thing that one expects on that battlefield. Perhaps. But it was a very sharp piece of dealing, involving two forged documents, the use of confidential information from a bank of which he was a director, and the death of two men. The further results were the suicides of three other men, including one of Mannerlaw’s best friends in his own county. Two of them seemed to be accidents rather than suicides; but I had reliable sources of information, and I knew.’

  Adam said: ‘For a man as rich as Mannerlaw to indulge in that sort of thing —’

  ‘He was not rich. Not nearly as rich as he allowed people to believe. He lived on too lavish a scale, and denied himself nothing. His Stock Exchange manipulation was carried out in order to provide him with funds. It was skilful — but not skilful enough. After he had pulled it off, he had an additional expense — the expense of keeping up my monthly payments.

  ‘He was incapable of lowering his standard of living. He was arrogant and vain, and he had expensive pleasures. Money went very quickly. And even if he could have started, at that stage, to make economies, he still had to meet my demands. If he didn’t, I could have ruined him — not only financially, but in the eyes of all the people whose flattery meant so much to him. He had to keep me quiet. Once he tried to have me killed. After that I raised the figure for his contributions.

  ‘With all these demands on his pocket, he had to do something. During the war, he approached me and asked for my help. It was for our mutual benefit. If I wanted him to keep up his payments, I would have to do some work for him. He thought I could be trusted. He was right. I was to dispose of the Mannerlaw diamonds for him. Quietly, without fuss, at the highest price I could get for them. He thought I would make a better job of it than anyone else he knew. Again he was right. I got rid of them, handed over the money — less a small commission — and he was able to go on paying me the — ah — fines for his folly.’

  Adam’s jaw dropped. ‘You . . . sold the Mannerlaw diamonds?’

  ‘Bit by bit. The main pieces were broken up, of course. No word ever leaked out.’

  ‘In that case the robbery —’

  ‘The robbery,’ said Sam, ‘was visualized, right from the beginning, as part of our plan. It was settled that after the war, when the Mannerlaw valuables were brought back to London — as they’d have to be — I would be responsible for removing the fakes. The earl would then claim the insurance. That way he would get the money for the diamonds twice over — and, of course, be able to go on paying me. That’s what we agreed; and that’s what I did.’

  ‘And you were the only two who knew the diamonds weren’t real?’

  ‘The earl and myself knew; and he’s dead now.’

  ‘The men who worked for you . . .?’

  ‘They worked for me,’ said Sam flatly. ‘That was that. I paid them for the job, and the rest of it was no concern of theirs.’

  ‘But they didn’t see it that way,’ said Adam.

  Sam’s grin was rueful, but still arrogant and unrepentant. ‘I had a mutiny on my hands,’ he admitted. ‘They ganged up on me and said they wanted a bigger cut. I told them they wer
en’t going to get one. I ran the show, and they took what I offered them. I never stood for argument. Then it all blew up — one of them talked after I’d beaten him up — and the police were on to us fast.’

  ‘You couldn’t have told them —’

  ‘The truth?’ Sam shook his head. ‘In the first place I wouldn’t have trusted them with details of my relations with Mannerlaw. They’d have tried to cash in on that, too: they’d have wrecked the whole set-up. That’s why I went along on that job myself. And in the second place, I wasn’t going to be pushed around by scum like that. I ran the show,’ he said again; ‘it wasn’t up to me to explain things to men who merely worked for me.’

  ‘You didn’t consider telling the police the real story when you were arrested?’

  ‘No,’ said Sam, ‘I didn’t. The robbery with violence was just as real, fakes or no fakes. And there wasn’t any sense in bringing old Mannerlaw down with me. He could still lay quite a lot of golden eggs for me, one day! It was just a pity that he died while I was still inside. When I got out I couldn’t take up where I’d left off. Young Mannerlaw was different stuff from his father — and in any case, with death duties he had precious little left. Even before I got out I knew that nothing was going to be the same.’

  It was Roger who concluded the story for his father. ‘So the diamonds are gone. The real ones — and the fakes.’

  ‘As soon as I’d got my hands on the fakes,’ said Sam, ‘I disposed of them. They’re in the river; and they’ll never be found.’

  Roger’s despair drew his cheeks down, turned the corners of his mouth down, and blurred like tears in his eyes. Then, abruptly, he began to laugh. It was a strange, warped sound in the quiet room. For a moment it verged on hysteria; and then it became the laughter of relief — as though something was over and done with, and there was no point in worrying any more.

  ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do now,’ he said weakly, but still laughing.

  Barbara said: ‘I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to bed, and first thing in the morning I’ll be off.’ She looked at Paula. ‘I wanted to see what my — my other self was like. Now I’ve seen it, there’s nothing to stay for. There’s nothing here for me.’ She swung towards her father. ‘Is there?’