Domino Island
Page 18
There was a pause. ‘Well?’
‘Yes, sir.’
The voice was soft with menace and I suddenly realised it was Hanna. I had never heard him sound like that before. ‘If you are not there when I get back, Campanilla will not be big enough to hold you. Now get out of here.’
I unfurled myself cautiously and Hanna squatted on his heels. He held the flashlight on me and said, ‘How are you, Mr Kemp?’
I couldn’t help laughing. ‘As well as you might expect.’ I stopped laughing when I found it hurt.
Someone else knelt down and I looked into the eyes of Leotta Tomsson. ‘Are you hurt bad?’ Her dress was torn.
‘They didn’t get my head,’ I said, and tried to sit up.
‘Wait,’ she said, and I felt her hands on me, pressing on my chest. ‘Does that hurt?’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘Just sore.’
‘I don’t think they broke any ribs,’ she said, and smiled at my enquiring look. ‘I was a nurse before I was a model. I know what a broken rib feels like.
Someone came running over. ‘What the hell happened, Bill?’ said Negrini. ‘I lost you.’
‘I was the victim of a police riot.’ I eased myself up so I was sitting, with Leotta supporting me.
‘They’ll be disciplined,’ said Hanna in a hard voice.
‘You’re missing the point,’ I said. ‘It was premeditated. They knew me, Hanna. They identified me before they attacked. It was the sergeant who knew what I looked like.’
Hanna looked bleak. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s true,’ said Leotta. ‘They shone the light then called the sergeant, and he said, “That’s him.” Then they attacked.’
Hanna took a long shuddering breath. I said, ‘I think you now hold four suspects for the murder of Owen Ogilvie. His injuries were consistent with what they tried to do to me. I’m glad you were around, Hanna.’
‘It will be investigated,’ he said, and stood up. ‘We ought to get you to a hospital.’
‘That’s not an option,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to be lying helpless in a hospital bed when someone slips me a mickey. Same goes for the hotel. I’m a witness, Hanna, and so is Miss Tomsson.’
Negrini said, ‘We have a house doctor at the casino. How about that?’
‘That’ll do fine,’ I said. ‘As long as I don’t have to walk there. Help me up, someone.’
Negrini and Hanna hauled me to my feet. Hanna said, ‘You’d have a police guard in hospital.’
‘Don’t make me laugh,’ I said. ‘It hurts too much. I’ve just about had enough of your bloody police force.’ I saw the sadness in his eyes and said quickly, ‘Present company excepted. But you know what I mean.’
‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ll find you a car. Fleming Square isn’t safe yet. Wait here.’
He went away carrying an aura of depression almost like a visible cloud. I stood there testing various bits of my anatomy and found that I hurt in the damnedest places. Negrini said, ‘I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but you’ll be safe at my place.’ He paused. ‘I keep some strongarm boys on the premises, so if you need a bodyguard just shout.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, and looked at Leotta. ‘Could you extend your hospitality to Miss Tomsson here? She’s as much at risk as I am.’
‘Sure,’ said Negrini. ‘Be glad to have you, Miss Tomsson.’
She hesitated and I said quickly, ‘I wouldn’t go back to Marshalltown for a while. As I said to Hanna, you’re a witness and I wouldn’t want Commissioner Barstow tracking you down. He’s the wrong sort of copper, like Sergeant Taylor.’
‘All right,’ she said, and I breathed easier.
Presently Hanna came back with a police car and I hobbled into it. Hanna said, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m busy right now.’
That sounded like the understatement of the year.
Negrini drove the car and Leotta and I sat in the back. He had to drive the long way round, avoiding Fleming Square and its immediate vicinity. There were police everywhere and several streets were barricaded. ‘What’s the pitch?’ said Negrini.
I glanced at Leotta. ‘I’ll tell you later when I feel more in the mood.’
As we turned on to the sea front, Negrini whistled and put on the brakes. A convoy of army trucks passed, including several Land Rovers with machine-guns already mounted. The soldiers appeared to be armed. ‘What does Conyers think he’s doing? Martial law?’
‘He seems to be over-reacting,’ I said. ‘I’d say he’s panicking.’
‘I felt pretty panicky myself,’ said Negrini. ‘What a hell of a way to break up a party.’
He drove to the ferry and the three of us went over alone, jumping the queue. I suppose that was the boss’s prerogative. Not that there was much of a queue – the riot seemed to have put a damper on festivities. In the casino we took the lift up to a penthouse, which Negrini told us was his private quarters whenever he stayed in town. ‘I have a house over in Marshalltown,’ he said. ‘A casino is no place to bring up kids.’
Within ten minutes he had a doctor in attendance and I was sipping a scotch while the quack probed into the sore places. Leotta helped him and he glanced at her. ‘You’ve done this before,’ he commented.
She nodded but said nothing, and he didn’t pursue it.
On the other side of the room, Negrini was on the telephone. ‘Sure, honey, I’m all right. I don’t care what it said on the radio, I’m still all right. Look, I’ll be staying here tonight. Lock up tight, you hear?’
The doctor was content to let Leotta strap me up tightly in bandages. Negrini said, ‘Who’s that? Charisse? Hello, honey-bun.’ He made oochy-coochy noises for a while, then put down the telephone. ‘Kids!’ he said. ‘I love ’em.’
The doctor went away and Leotta fingered her torn dress. ‘Would your establishment run to a needle and thread, Mr Negrini?’
‘Better than that,’ he said. ‘We can find a new dress.’
He picked up the telephone and presently a young lady appeared who made commiserating noises and whisked Leotta away. Negrini stared at the closing door and said, ‘That’s a hell of a beautiful woman. Who is she?’
‘She was David Salton’s mistress.’
He choked over his drink. ‘The randy old goat! You mean that he … and she …’ He put down his glass. ‘Did Jill know?’
‘She does now. Conyers was blackmailing her with it.’ I told him about it.
‘Conyers,’ said Negrini disgustedly. ‘He’s so crooked I bet he uses marked cards when he’s playing solitaire.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Jesus, you never know what a man will do.’ He held up two fingers close together. ‘I thought Jill and David were like that.’
‘Maybe they were,’ I said. ‘I think they were.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I know what you mean. It would take some woman to equal Jill, but maybe this Tomsson girl does that.’
I felt suddenly weak and tired. The doctor had doped me with something and all I wanted was a bed. I looked at the jacket I had been wearing. One of the pockets had been torn right off and the rest of it didn’t look too good. It appeared I owed Hanna a new suit. That and my life.
Negrini looked closely at me. ‘You’re nearly asleep. We’ll get you into bed.’
He helped me into the bedroom and stood around while I undressed and then assisted me into pyjamas and saw me settled. It was the first time I’d been tucked into bed since I was a child. As he straightened up he said, ‘By the way, you wanted to know something about Salton’s plane on the day he vanished. It went to Benning all right, and took off for New York at eight in the evening. Hope it helps.’
He switched off the light and closed the door and I lay there trying to think about that and what made it so important. But my head was buzzing with drugs and fatigue – there is nothing in the world so tiring as being beaten up – and I slid into the depths of sleep while trying to grasp hold of something significant but very slippery.
II
The bedroom door opened and Negrini stuck his head around it, saw that I was awake and came in. ‘How are you feeling? What about breakfast in bed?’
I sat up, unfastened the pyjama jacket and looked at the broad bandages strapping my chest. I prodded myself experimentally and said, ‘No, I’ll get up. Just point me in the direction of the bathroom before you leave.’
‘Okay. Breakfast in half an hour. It’s nine o’clock now and Hanna says he’ll be here at ten.’
I got out of bed slowly. ‘What happened to Jill Salton last night?’
‘She’s okay,’ said Negrini. ‘I checked after we’d sorted you out. She holed up at Abel Stern’s place. Said she’s going back to El Cerco this morning.’
Breakfast was most pleasant. The table was set before a floor-to-ceiling window, which gave a panoramic view of Buque Island, Pascua Channel and a part of San Martin. The sun shone in a cloudless sky, the breakers rolled in from the blue sea and already the first of the brown sun-worshippers were relaxing on the beaches below. The scene was as bright as a picture postcard and it was hard to associate it with rioting and police violence. But Leotta Tomsson was at the breakfast table and her presence – and my aching back – made the reality abundantly clear.
Her dress was a simple shantung sheath and I said, ‘That’s nice.’
‘Mr Negrini was optimistic when he said he could find me a dress,’ she said. ‘I’m six feet tall. One of his secretaries went over to Marshalltown and brought back a selection of my own clothes.’ She poured herself coffee. ‘She said the police arrived at Gregory Plaza just as she was leaving.’
I hesitated with my fork poised in the air. ‘Did they, by God? Did they question her?’
‘She passed them in the lobby. They didn’t stop her but she noticed they went up to the fourth floor. She got out of there quickly.’
‘It’s just as well you didn’t go back. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for losing you too.’
Negrini arrived with a newspaper and sat down. ‘The Chronicle is interesting this morning.’ He passed it to me.
Jackson had gone to town. The headlines were big and black and there was a centrefold of nothing but pictures. One was of Jackson himself. He had a black eye. The front page asked a question in 120-point capitals – ‘MARTIAL LAW?’ – and below it was a picture of a soldier behind a machine-gun. Other pictures showed policemen charging beneath the unequivocal headline ‘POLICE BRUTALITY’.
I turned to the editorial, which said, in the measured prose peculiar to leader writers, that this time the government had gone too far, that there was no necessity for the death of fourteen Campanillan citizens and the maiming of dozens of others, and that the disturbance – a justifiable outburst of the people’s rage against a wicked government – could have been contained without the bloodshed of a police riot.
It seemed that Hosmer’s gag on Jackson had slipped. Up to the time of Salton’s death the Chronicle had been the organ of the Liberal Party, which was natural enough since Salton led the Liberals and owned the Chronicle. Since his death it had been curiously non-committal – the result, I assumed, of Hosmer’s gag. But there was nothing non-committal about this coverage of last night’s events.
I said, ‘Jackson seems to have changed his tune.’
Negrini grinned. ‘When the editor is given a black eye by a cop, you can’t expect him to be on the cop’s side. But there’s more to it than that. Jill told me last night that she’d ordered Jackson to pull out all the stops, to go for the police and Conyers. Did you have anything to do with that?’
I put down my coffee cup. ‘I might have done. I showed her that Conyers couldn’t deliver on the promises he’d made to her.’
‘She isn’t as interested in the political side as David was,’ said Negrini. ‘But something must have made her mad last night. Even with a black eye Jackson wasn’t too enthusiastic about going along with her, apparently. Until she threatened to fire him on the spot.’
I smiled. So that was why he’d spat out the gag. And once he’d done that, once he knew he had the support of his employer, there would be other consequences. Nothing I’d seen so far suggested that Jackson wasn’t actually a decent journalist, so the next step would follow logically. I guessed he’d already sent a cable to the Sunday Times in London, alerting them to the fact that there was more to the rioting on Campanilla than met the foreign eye. Within two days, the Insight team would be probing into the situation. There was nothing Conyers could do about it, except declare journalists personae non gratae – and that would shout to the world that there was something rotten in the state of Campanilla.
Negrini stood up. ‘This isn’t putting money in the bank. I have work to do.’ He pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘All this is hardly conducive to the smooth operation of the tourist trade. Business is going to be lousy over the next few weeks.’ He shrugged and walked towards the door, then turned. ‘I’ll send up Hanna as soon as he arrives.’
I said to Leotta, ‘Are you still thinking of leaving?’
‘I couldn’t stay here now,’ she said. ‘Not after what’s happened.’
‘No,’ I said pensively. ‘No, you couldn’t. Still thinking of trying England?’
‘I might. What’s it like over there? All I can picture are big smoking chimneys and factories. I wouldn’t like that.’
I smiled. ‘Neither would I. I live in London but I have a little cottage down in Devon, between Dartmoor and the sea. Not many factory chimneys in Devon. Whenever I get uptight in London I go to the sea to smooth the wrinkles out of my psyche.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘The cottage or Devon?’
‘Both.’
‘The cottage is thatched, believe it or not. A woman from the village keeps it in order for me. Devon is rolling hills and narrow country roads with hedges between the sea and the moor. I do some fishing and I have a little sailing cruiser moored in the Dart – that’s the river. Sometimes, in the evenings, I go down to the pub and chat with the locals in the four-ale bar. They’re not very fast-moving but they’re shrewd in their country way. Not much gets past them. They’re just not very interested in the city rat-race – so maybe they’re the really smart ones.’
‘It sounds nice,’ she said.
‘If you ever get to England, I’ll take you there.’
The door slammed and I turned to see Hanna. He was rumpled but, for a change, not at all sleepy-looking, although he must have been out late – possibly all night. His movements were stiff and jerky and I wondered if he had pepped himself up with pills.
He came over and said abruptly, ‘How are you feeling?’
‘A bit stiff, that’s all. Thanks for last night.’
‘You were lucky,’ he said. ‘I was passing that alley at a run. If I hadn’t glanced sideways I wouldn’t have seen you. And I didn’t know it was you until I shone the light.’ Even his speech was jerky.
‘What did the sergeant have to say?’
Hanna came out with a stream of foul obscenities which crisped my ears. I glanced at Leotta.
He stopped as suddenly as he had started. ‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘So what happened?’
‘It was late when I got back to the office,’ he said. ‘All hell was breaking loose in the city. When I got back, I saw Inspector Rose. He told me that the men had turned themselves in as I ordered. And then Barstow came in and took them away. Rose couldn’t do anything about it. Barstow countermanded my order and took them away.’ Hanna suddenly sat down.
‘What are you going to do?’
He glared at me. ‘What do you expect me to do? Arrest Barstow?’
> That was hardly likely. I said, ‘The police raided Gregory Plaza last night.’ I explained how I knew.
‘What can you do?’ said Hanna in despair. ‘No, tell me: what can I do? That son-of-a-bitch is playing politics. He’s taking the whole damned police force into the political arena. Did you see the Chronicle this morning?’
‘I saw it.’ I thought of something else. ‘Does Barstow know about Raymond White?’
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Hanna. ‘I have him in custody at a police station up in North End.’
‘He might know by now,’ I said. ‘Gerry Negrini knew last night. Mrs Salton was making no secret of it. She wanted to know why he’d been arrested.’
Hanna jerked upright. ‘She might even have asked Barstow. Where’s a telephone?’
Leotta pointed. ‘Over there.’
Hanna crossed the room and I settled down to think of the consequences of Barstow knowing what White had said. With the Chronicle coming out against Conyers quite openly, Barstow might reckon it a good move to make a snap arrest of Jill Salton so as to discredit the Chronicle and the Liberals. It would also take the heat off as far as the riots went. After all, they’d happened essentially because of the uncertainty about Salton’s death, so if it could be made to look like a squalid jealousy killing, then Conyers would be laughing.
No wonder Hanna wanted a telephone fast.
He came back. ‘It’s all right. White’s still there and no one from headquarters has asked any questions. I’ve given instructions that he be taken back to El Cerco. It’s time I had a talk with Mrs Salton.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I think so, too.’
‘Are you fit to travel?’
I looked at him in surprise. ‘You want me along?’
‘As I said, you’re a catalyst. You start reactions going.’
‘Not a catalyst,’ I said. ‘If you look at the proper definition, a catalyst comes out of a chemical reaction unchanged. I think I’ve changed a lot since I came to Campanilla.’
‘Never mind that,’ he said impatiently. ‘Can you come?’
I felt the constriction around my chest. ‘If I took off these bandages I’d probably fall apart, but I reckon I’m okay if I can pick up another suit. You won’t be getting yours back, I’m afraid.’ I grinned at him. ‘I’ll put it on my expense account and Hosmer can pay.’