He tried to conceal his hurt because he did not believe he was really entitled to feel it. She regarded him sombrely as if she could read every thought and emotion as though they were parading across his forehead on a printout, but she made no gesture of help or affection.
“I’ll come if I can then,” he said, a stupid male pride bringing up the rear of the parade.
“I’ll be here,” she said wearily. “I’m a creature of routine, Christie.”
The mailman arrived as Christie left. There was a letter with a Sanderton postmark for her. She studied the envelope for several minutes before opening it. And after reading it, she sat for even longer, quite still, staring sightlessly at the outspread sheets.
At lunch Flora found herself acting out of character by telling everything to Deirdre. They were eating in a crowded diner where the press of customers gave them as much privacy as the discreet distancing of tables in a top restaurant. Sam, Deirdre’s minder, was at the counter near the door, chewing on a sandwich and looking more at home with it than with a bowlful of olives.
Deirdre listened unhappily. In an ideal world Flora would have been married to Christie and the two women could have looked forward to a lifetime in which to enjoy and develop their friendship. But the only way that was achievable was via a ruinous domestic bust-up. Dree thought her sister-in-law Judith was on the whole a pain, but she and the four girls didn’t deserve the agony of a fractured home, and as for Christie, it would tear him apart. So everything piled up on this young Englishwoman’s shoulders.
“Your father, will he try to see you again?” asked Dree.
“I think so,” said Flora. “The thing is, I’m not sure what he’s doing here.”
“Visiting his only daughter, surely?” said Dree in surprise.
“Maybe. He wasn’t due for another month and that hadn’t been finally settled either. I kept on backing off. No, there’s something else. I got a letter this morning after he’d gone. It was from Heather Davison, that’s the wife of my dad’s police boss in Sanderton. She’s a nice woman, a bit of an interferer but she means well. She said he was in a bit of trouble, there’d been a car accident and someone was killed, and Dad was driving. So at the moment he was suspended from duty and feeling very down and a loving letter from me might help. Nothing about him coming to the States.”
“And he didn’t mention this?”
Flora said: “Our conversation didn’t develop along those lines. Funny, yesterday I’d have said I was far beyond him, wounds all healed, ready even to establish a simple, guarded, limited relationship. Now I’m bouncing around between love and hate like a pinball. And it’s opened up my whole relationship with Christie too. I found myself looking at him this morning, comparing him with Dad and not knowing whether I was glad or disappointed at the differences. Oh, screw it all! Let’s talk about your interesting neuroses and sexual problems for a change! Have you made up your mind yet?”
“About what?” said Dree automatically, then shook her head. “Sorry. Defense mechanism. Yes, I’ve made up my mind. A couple of dozen times a day I make up my mind! Sometimes it’s the great altruism bit, with heavy violin music as I retire to a convent. Others, it’s all blue lagoon, with the pair of us escaping to some remote island where we do nothing but screw and eat passion fruit. So when I say yes, I mean no. What am I going to do, Flora?”
“You want advice?” asked Flora.
“Yes, please,” said Dree.
“My advice is, don’t take advice,” said Flora. “Follow your heart. Did I really say that? Makes you want to vomit, doesn’t it?”
“It sounds like good advice,” said Dree.
“Then don’t take it,” said Flora. “Oh, look, Dree, I’m no person to be giving you advice on how to conduct your love-life. Look at the state I’m in!”
“OK.” said Dree. “No advice. What about help?”
Flora raised her eyebrows. “With your love-life? What did you have in mind, dearie?”
Dree giggled.
“No. I’m serious. Just listen and then say yes or no.”
Flora listened.
“Why not?” she said.
CHAPTER 4
McHarg had spent a morning drifting.
It was not a feeling he liked. In his book, you met storms by turning into the wind. And if you couldn’t ride them out and felt yourself being pushed slowly back towards the rocks, then you should swing about, clap on all canvas and drive boldly across the jagged reefs, preferring to sink proudly rather than drift aimlessly, a useless hulk.
He had started by revisiting Flora’s apartment, a little later this time. There had been no reply to his knocking and he had been half relieved. There was only room for one more failure there.
Next he had attempted to pick up the Tyler’s proposed trail. The Tourist Information Office told him they knew of no imminent police conference in the city and a call to Police HQ on Berkeley Street got the same response. However, he managed to make himself sound important enough for someone to dig out the information that there was an Interpol conference in New York in ten days’ time. That sounded like Freddie Grossmith’s cup of tea.
So, why come to Boston first?
Partington was impossible to trace unless he rang every likely hotel. He didn’t feel up to it. That was policeman’s work. Today he didn’t feel anything like a policeman. Thoughts of Flora and Betty floated through his mind. Impatiently he pushed them aside and tried to get a grip on the helm once more.
It was time for action, time to clap on sail and let the forces that were buffeting him generate power and create direction. There was only one thing he knew for certain and that was the owner of the car which had taken the Tyler to Sanderton that night. Boston was for him a diversion. He didn’t understand its significance.
Except of course as Flora’s home.
He paused and took his bearings in time and space. It was just on midday and he was not surprised to find himself in the university area. Some internal compass had still been functioning through all his apparent aimless meanderings. A few enquiries got him directed to the department of political and social science. The administration office should be able to tell him if Flora had any official duties that morning or at least direct him to the library area where she was most likely to be pursuing her research. This part of his life had to be sorted out now. After that there might be little opportunity. He had other things to do.
As he approached the building a little knot of men and women came out of it. McHarg’s eyes immediately focused on one of them to the exclusion of all others. It was the big gingery man he had last seen stark naked in his daughter’s apartment. Simultaneously the man’s gaze caught his and the broad amiable features twitched in a shock of recognition. But before either of them could make a move, their encounter was pre-empted by another of the group.
“Hello there! Superintendent McHarg, isn’t it? Our paths seem fated to cross. But how delightful to see a familiar face so far from home!”
It was Hunsingore, the noble evangelist, his narrow face alight with the kind of joy he might have been expected to reserve for an unlikely conversion. His fluttering right hand grasped McHarg’s in a surprisingly firm and rather curious grip, maintained the pressure for a couple of seconds, then released him.
“Yes,” said McHarg. “A real coincidence,” in the dead voice of one who ceased to believe in coincidence the second time the midwife slapped his buttocks at birth.
The others had halted a little to one side and were chatting among themselves. Ena Dyas, the housewife conscience, was there, and Rose le Queux, the reformed whore, plus half-a-dozen others, mostly American from the sound of them. Only the ginger man didn’t join in the animated talk but silently watched the separated pair.
“Are you having a convalescent holiday, my dear chap? I read about your troubles in the papers. So sorry. Quite dreadful.”
“You could say that,” said McHarg. “And you?”
“I’m on the lecture ci
rcuit. One or two of us from New Vision spreading the light, as it were. Most stimulating, these American campuses. Rather naive in many ways, but so intense, so involved. I have a couple of small seminar groups this afternoon and give a lecture this evening. I much prefer the small groups, but you can’t have one without the other, it seems. Come along, my dear chap, if you have the time.”
“I’ll check,” said McHarg. “I think your hosts are getting impatient.”
“So organized,” said Hunsingore admiringly. “We’re lunching in the refectory. So democratic.”
The ginger man came across.
“Lord Hunsingore, I think we’d better move if your schedule isn’t to get blown.”
“Of course. Professor Connolly, this is an old acquaintance of mine, Mr McHarg. Goodbye now.”
He flapped off and the group got in motion again, but the ginger man made no move to follow them. “Professor Connolly,” said McHarg.
“Mr McHarg.”
“Do you screw all your students, Professor?”
“Do you beat up all your daughters, Inspector?”
“She’s the only one I’ve got,” said McHarg.
“She’s the only one I screw,” said Christie.
The two men examined each other in silence for a moment.
“I’ve got to see her,” said McHarg finally.
“Why?”
“I’ll be moving on. There are things to get straight.”
Unexpectedly Christie Connolly laughed. “You’re not a man who likes uncertainties, I guess.”
“Occupational hazard,” said McHarg.
“Are you going to hit her again?”
“No. That was for my wife. Once was enough.”
“You loved your wife?” asked Christie curiously.
“Yes. I loved her,” said McHarg, adding with the effort of a man instinctively reticent, “I love my daughter too.”
“Well, I guess that makes two of us,” said Christie, rubbing his hand across his face. “Come on. She’ll be in the refectory, I reckon. I’ll take you there.”
They walked side by side, two big men who felt the beginnings of a liking for each other but both doubted for very different reasons if it could ever come to anything.
“Are you married, Professor?” asked McHarg.
“Irretrievably,” said Christie.
“Well, that’s honest.”
“Honesty’s sometimes the easy way out,” said Christie sadly. “You’re a policeman, you should know that.”
The refectory wasn’t packed but there were enough people in it to create a loud buzz of voices and tintinnabulation of implements.
Christie looked around. “There,” he said pointing. “She’s a creature of habit in some ways.”
McHarg followed the blunt finger’s direction. Flora was sitting by a window, eating, with a book propped up against a cruet. The only other people at her table were a young couple, clasping hands and staring soulfully into each other’s eyes across plates of congealing french fries.
“Thanks,” said McHarg.
Christie Connolly nodded and moved away to join his party who were already seated together at a table in the center of the room. Very democratic.
Flora did not look up till McHarg had taken the seat opposite her. She showed no surprise.
“This won’t take long,” said McHarg.
Suddenly she grasped him by the wrist, a retaining rather than an affectionate grip, but she studied his face so closely it amounted to an intimacy.
“You’re going to be OK?” she said. “This trouble you’re in—it’s going to pass?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But most things pass,” he replied.
“Is it being chucked out of the force that bothers you so much?” she asked, her voice a little scornful, but still holding his wrist.
To her surprise he laughed.
“There are worse things to be chucked out of,” he said. “No, that doesn’t bother me. Not seeing you again, that’ll bother me, I think. Yes, that’ll bother me.”
“And your little bit on the side,” she said, inspired to coarseness in an attempt to resist a wave of compassion that was rising in her. “Will you not be seeing her again? Or are you off now to walk together into the sunset?”
“Difficult,” he said drily. “She’s in a wheelchair. And no, I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing her either. Not for a while.”
“In a wheelchair? You mean, crippled?” She whistled. “Jesus Christ, Dad. You don’t have much luck with your womenfolk!”
“On the contrary,” he said.
He slipped his hand from her wrist, then bent forward and quickly kissed her as though frightened she would start back. Curiously that little uncertainty touched her more than anything else.
But there was no time for more talk. He had pushed back his chair and was striding away with that military bearing he had never lost.
When he reached the door, he raised his right hand, the hand that had struck her the previous morning. But he didn’t pause and he didn’t look round. In a second he was through the door and out of sight.
More than one pair of eyes watched his departure, but only in Flora’s breast did it cause such a confusion of feeling. She had rehearsed this second encounter a hundred times in the past twenty-four hours, but it had followed none of the possible scenarios and neither he nor she had spoken any of the hypothesized lines.
They hadn’t even said goodbye.
There was something very final about that.
CHAPTER 5
The Preceptor was missing the Tyler.
Not that the American craft-brother did not inspire confidence. There was, after all, a long tradition of good old American know-how in these matters.
That was partly the trouble. Because of this they hired outsiders, professionals, to do their removal work. They argued that once you had hit-men on the permanent staff you became a rival Mafia. And you tended to use them because they were there.
The Preceptor accepted this. The last thing they wanted was to get into competition with the Mafia. And removal must always be a last resort.
Reluctantly they agreed that in Deirdre Connolly’s case, this stage had been reached. Jopley reported that a rendezvous had been arranged. Whatever its purpose, it was too dangerous to let it take place. As for McHarg, the stage was long overdue. Tracking him through Heathrow had been easy. But it still had come as a shock the previous day to see that looming, menacing figure here in Boston.
And where, wondered the Preceptor, was that other menacing figure? Oh Tyler, Tyler.
“I’ve sent for Ember,” said the American. “We’ve used him before. He’s absolutely reliable.”
“He works alone?” said the Preceptor doubtfully.
The American raised his eyebrows. He thought the Preceptor was being a little hysterical about this McHarg guy. One middle-aged British cop was a mid-morning snack to a man like Ember. OK, so McHarg had dumped the Tyler, but after all he was just another middle-aged British cop.
He said none of this to the Preceptor, however, but went on, “No. He’ll bring an assistant. He picks his own, probably a man named Goldmann. He’s very good too. I’m telling Ember we want McHarg removed any which way, but the girl like it was an accident.”
“Why’s that?”
“Conal,” said the American. “He’s our investment programme. Put yourself in his shoes. He lives pretty close to the edge. One sniff that we’ve had anything to do with harming his sister and he could go over.”
“But he’ll hold together otherwise?”
“I think so. You see, in the end we’re helping him to do what he wants more than anything else in the world to do. But we keep a close eye on him. I’ll be checking him out myself tomorrow night.”
“In Washington?”
“New York. He’s staying there till after the big parade the day after tomorrow.”
“St Patrick’s Day?”
“That’s right,” said the American, smiling. “T
here’s votes there for the collecting, so you can bet that young Conal Connolly will be there to collect them.”
“One more thing. The other girl.”
“Miss Woodstock? That was easy. We’ve traced her to Los Angeles. She’s in hospital there. You’ll laugh when I tell you. It’s a Masonic foundation!”
The Preceptor didn’t laugh.
“Does that mean we have influence?”
“Some,” said the American. “Just give the word, say what you want done.”
“Nothing, as yet,” said the Preceptor.
“You’re not feeling sorry for this girl?” wondered the American.
The Preceptor ignored the impertinence and replied in an even tone, “McHarg is.”
“So, she’s a weapon? But only while McHarg’s still with us, which isn’t for long, believe me!”
“Yes,” said the Preceptor. “I’m sure you’re right.”
“I know I’m right,” said the American. “Relax, Preceptor. Come St Patrick’s Day and one way or another everyone’s troubles are over!”
PART FOUR
SAINT PATRICK’S DAY
CHAPTER 1
St Patrick’s Day dawned cold and clear all along the Eastern seaboard.
Not everyone saw the dawn.
In a Boston hotel a couple of hours before the sun rose a man left his room and moved slowly along the corridor. For more than four hours he had been meticulously noting the returning guests. There were two distinct possibilities, a middle-aged couple who had returned after midnight, full of booze and giggles, and a man alone who had moved with the dignified oversteadiness of the chronically stoned.
The latter proved to have been too well conditioned. Despite his state, he had bolted the bedroom door behind him. The couple had been more carefree, however, and the intruder had been able to rifle wallet and purse without disturbing their alcoholic slumber. What he got was small reward for such dangerous work. He had once been big time, but even hotel thieves reach retiring age, the touch goes, the nerve with it, and besides his face was known and he could no longer work the big hotels where the real bread was. Here there was nothing but peanuts and the jewelry wasn’t worth the bottles it was made from.
Who Guards a Prince? Page 18