The Chalon Heads

by Barry Maitland

  ‘How do you think she’s coping?’ she asked, stirring her cup.

  She sensed that he didn’t welcome the approach. ‘With blind terror, if she’s got any sense,’ he said softly. ‘How do you think?’ Any euphoria from his auction triumph had evaporated.

  ‘Sorry. I just meant, is she the calm type or is she likely to panic if there’s a crisis?’

  ‘Christ . . .’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘No, she isn’t the calm type. Yes, she’ll jump out of her skin with panic, especially after five or six days and nights with them.’

  ‘I just have no idea what she’s like as a person. She’s obviously very beautiful.’

  ‘She’s beautiful . . . She’s bright, she’s wilful, she’s proud, she’s got fantastic taste, a terrific imagination. And none of that’s going to be the slightest use to her. I don’t know if she’s very brave . . . I don’t suppose she’s ever had to be. Having something like this happen to you . . . How brave would you be?’ He looked at Kathy, appraising. ‘How much experience have you had, eh? How much experience have you had of the kind of bastards who’ve done this to Eva?’

  ‘We don’t know who—’

  ‘Oh, yes, we do. I know.’ He turned and stared out of the window at the luminous blue sky high above the Strand. ‘I lived among them for years, people like this. And it scares the fucking shit out of me, Kathy, believe you me.’

  Kathy felt a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, which the sight of Gallows and Health calmly checking schedules on a clipboard didn’t allay.

  Then Starling added, the tone of his voice low now, confiding, ‘If anything goes wrong, get in touch with Sally for me, will you? Sally Malone.’ He pulled out a business card and wrote the name on the back, and a London phone number. ‘Tell her I said . . .’

  When he didn’t finish the sentence, Kathy prompted, ‘Yes?’

  He shrugged. ‘That I’m sorry.’

  The phone call came at four precisely. They were all sitting expectantly round the table, staring at Starling’s mobile lying in front of him, and watched him flinch as it began to ring. The exchange was brief.

  ‘Did you get the stamp, Sammy?’ A disguised voice.

  Probably male.

  ‘Yes, yes. I have it here.’

  ‘Have you told the coppers?’

  ‘No I swear!’ Starling’s brow was glistening with sweat.

  ‘Get a taxi, now, fast. Head west. Brentford. Take the M4. I’ll ring again in twenty minutes. Got that?’

  ‘West, Brentford, M4. Let me talk to—’ But the line had clicked off.

  And then a rush of activity, Starling flustered, grabbing his phone and the brown envelope in which was sealed the Canada Cover, the others bunching around him.

  ‘The earpiece, Mr Starling!’ Gallows yelled, as he bundled out of the door.

  The room emptied, leaving Brock, Kathy and a couple of radio operators. Brock and Kathy went to the window and watched a taxi slide to the kerb just as Starling ran out of the front door. He jumped in, unaware that the driver was one of Gallows’s men, and they heard his hoarse instructions over the loudspeaker: ‘Take us to the M4, quick as you can.’

  The taxi pulled out into the traffic, and after a minute they heard the driver’s voice, ‘M4, guv? You going to Heathrow?’

  Brock turned to the others. ‘That’s a possibility.’

  Starling’s voice said, ‘I’ll let you know when we get on the motorway. I’m expecting a phone call.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  The driver kept up a muttered commentary on their journey, ‘Usual traffic in Trafalgar Square . . . getting clear now . . . no problem in the Mall . . . past Buck House now . . . I’m taking the Cromwell Road route—OK with everyone?’ His radio squawked an affirmative.

  Brock and Kathy sat down at the table with London street maps and waited, watching the time.

  ‘We’ve traced the call, sir,’ one of the operators said. ‘It came from a mobile phone. From a West London location. The phone is registered in the name of Eva de . . .’ She made the person at the other end repeat the name ‘. . . de Vasconcellos.’

  ‘Eva’s maiden name,’ Brock said. ‘What address do they have?’

  There was a delay, then the operator repeated a Canonbury address.

  ‘That’s not the flat,’ Kathy said.

  ‘No.’ Brock had a Yellow Pages directory open in front of him, searching. ‘Here it is. La Fortuna. She’s given the restaurant as her address.’

  The taxi was on the M4, passing through Osterley Park, when the phone, which Starling was gripping in his right fist, rang again.

  ‘Heathrow, Terminal One,’ the voice said. ‘Have him drop you at the arrivals level and then you stand outside the main exit doors, under the canopy, beneath the sign for the Terminal Four transfer bus, and wait for my next call.’

  Starling passed on the instructions to the taxi driver, who played dumb. ‘Going on a trip, guv? Somewhere exotic, I hope. Nice little Greek island, maybe?’

  ‘I bloody hope not,’ Starling muttered. ‘I haven’t brought my passport.’

  ‘You did say the arrivals level, though, guv?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Back in the Strand, Brock and Kathy listened to the reports from SO10 cars converging on Heathrow. The consensus seemed to be that Terminal One would only be a transit stop. ‘There’s every kind of transport there,’ Gallows’s voice droned reassuringly, ‘taxis, coaches, car rentals, transfer buses, the underground, the fast train . . .’

  ‘Should we join them, Brock?’ Kathy asked, but he shook his head.

  ‘This is what Gallows and his crew are supposed to be good at. We’ll keep out of their way—we can hear what goes on better from here, anyway.’

  Knowing their destination, Gallows overtook the taxi on the M4 and reached Terminal One some minutes ahead of it, positioning his car fifty yards beyond the exit doors and in sight of them. He switched on the emergency lights and his partner got out and made a play of searching in the boot.

  ‘Taxi’s arriving now,’ he said. ‘Starling’s taken up position . . . OK, his phone’s ringing! They must have seen him arrive. They must be in sight of him.’

  The message on Starling’s phone was relayed to those waiting in the Strand.

  ‘Go in the doors, Sammy. There’s an information desk straight ahead. There’s a package waiting for you there, addressed to Mr S. Starling, for collection. Do what it says inside. Don’t question it or think about it. Just do exactly what it says, and everything will be all right. Eva’s waiting for you, Sammy. Don’t screw this up.’

  The phone clicked off, and Brock and Kathy heard Gallows come on. ‘We heard everything, Sammy. Just do what he says. Read the instructions, then tell us what they say, the way we showed you.’

  He got a snuffling grunt by way of reply.

  After a couple of minutes, Gallows came on the air, talking softly, slightly out of breath. ‘I’m inside the building. He’s reading his instructions. It’s quite a big package . . . several bits of paper . . . I can’t see exactly . . . There’s a hell of a crowd of people here. Looks like several planes have just arrived, and there’s building work going on . . .’

  An unfamiliar voice came on. ‘Sonny boy,’ it said, ‘we’re approaching now. Shall we join you inside?’

  ‘Stay outside for now,’ Gallows replied. ‘Keep your eyes peeled. For the moment . . . Sammy, talk to me! What do the instructions say?’

  The line went silent as everyone waited for his reply. It came finally, two words, almost indistinct in the middle of a burst of muffled sniffing, as if Starling were disguising the movements of his mouth behind a handkerchief. ‘Left luggage.’

  ‘OK.’ Gallows sounded relieved. ‘Go ahead. I’m not far behind. Tony, get in here, will you?’

  Gallows tracked the small figure of Starling through the crowd, past the foot of the escalator leading to the departures level overhead, towards a sign for left luggage. It pointed the
way to a staircase, which Starling took, climbing above the heads of the crowd, then passing out of sight when he reached the landing. Gallows followed barely ten yards behind, reaching the landing a few seconds later and seeing the counter of the left-luggage office beyond. Several people were queuing there, but Starling wasn’t one of them. Gallows double-checked, then turned to the stairs continuing upward. No Starling.

  ‘Sammy, you’re not at the left luggage. Where are you?’

  There was no reply. Gallows ran up the flight of stairs and found himself, with several thousand others, at the western end of the huge departures floor of Terminal One.

  ‘Sammy . . . Mr Starling, sir!’ Gallows whispered into the ether. ‘Where are you?’

  At Cabot’s, Brock, Kathy and the others strained forward in their seats, hearing the change in Gallows’s voice as he ordered units up from the floor below.

  Then, like a message from deep space, came the snuffling and almost incomprehensible whisper from Starling. Two more words. ‘Gate thirteen.’

  ‘Good!’ Gallows breathed. ‘Slow down now, Sammy. Take your time. Let me catch up with you. Let me find gate thirteen . . .’

  It took several minutes of confused exchanges between the police team and the airport police, who had now been brought into the operation, before it was established that there is no gate thirteen at Heathrow’s Terminal One.

  ‘One to twelve and sixty to ninety are domestic gates, accessed through the departure gate in zone east,’ an unfamiliar voice intoned. ‘Fourteen to fifty-six are international, opposite check-in zone H.’

  ‘I’ve got him!’ Heath’s voice broke in, excited and breathless. ‘At least, I think I have . . .’

  Running up the escalator from the lower level, Heath had jostled his way through the crowded departures concourse ahead of his partner. Beyond a block of duty-free shops he had spotted a small figure of Oriental appearance, dressed in a dark business suit as Starling had been, hurrying through the crowd. The man was carrying a bright yellow plastic carrier bag, with ‘duty free’ in large black letters across its sides, and was making his way towards the security checkpoint in zone east, giving access to the domestic gates. It seemed to Heath that his air was one of resolution, chin up, like a soldier advancing bravely towards the front line. Heath watched him drop the carrier bag in a rubbish bin near the doorway, then proceed beneath the large sign PASSENGERS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. He disappeared behind the screen wall beyond, empty-handed apart from a white boarding card clutched in his right hand.

  ‘Shall I try to talk my way through the gate, chief?’ Heath said. ‘Might be a problem.’

  Gallows told him to stay where he was. ‘We’ll get airport security to take you through. Where the hell are they?’

  After a short pause, Gallows came on again, bursting with frustration. ‘Sonny boy? Get up here. I want you to keep watch on a rubbish bin.’

  ‘He could have dropped the envelope in the bin,’ Brock said. ‘Why isn’t Sammy talking to us?’ he growled. ‘He’s up to something.’

  By the time the SO10 men had been met and escorted through to the departures area, it had been established that a Mr S. Starling was booked on a British Midland flight to Glasgow, due to be called from gate eighteen in half an hour’s time. The computer showed that he had checked in forty minutes previously, using the self-service check-in machine in the Terminal One departures concourse. Trying to appear unhurried, though filled now with the same foreboding as Brock, Gallows and his colleagues searched the domestic departures area from end to end. They went through all the gate lounges, the bars and cafés, the book and souvenir shops, the toilets and executive lounges, without success. They watched the final travellers queuing through gate eighteen, and ten minutes later stared gloomily through the observation windows as the Glasgow flight lifted slowly into the late-afternoon sky, without passenger S. Starling.

  Out in the general concourse, no one had been seen making any attempt to remove anything from the waste bin. Finally Gallows asked airport security to arrange for a cleaner to rummage through the bin and report on what was inside the duty-free bag. The answer came back after an interminable wait: one mobile phone, one Rotary lapel badge, one pink plastic earplug, and a small transmitter.

  Sammy Starling had vanished.

  6

  A Feminist Theory of Stamp Collecting

  When he became reconciled to the fact that Starling had given them the slip, Brock’s first reaction was that the missing Eva had been a blind, and that it had been Starling’s intention all along to steal a million-pound rare stamp. Yet when he questioned Melville and the Cabot’s finance expert again about Starling’s arrangements for payment, he was assured that his houses, cars and all other assets were now inescapably in the hands of Cabot’s bankers.

  After he’d gone, Brock turned to Kathy and drew up his shoulders in a great shrug, turning up his palms. ‘Well, what the hell do we do now?’ It was the first time Kathy could remember seeing him so completely at a loss. For some reason that no one could fathom, Starling had apparently run them all round in circles, and as far as anyone could tell, the only one worse off was himself. Unless Eva really was missing, of course.

  ‘We’ll wait for another hour,’ Brock said, without much conviction. ‘He may have hidden somewhere in the terminal and be planning to leave on a later flight under an assumed name.’

  By six fifteen they had picked up all their gear and were on the point of leaving, when Kathy’s phone rang. She heard Desai’s voice.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, and hesitated a moment as if he weren’t quite sure which of several openings he might use. Then he said, ‘Are you looking for Sammy Starling?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a strange story . . .’

  ‘He’s here, with me. Do you want me to put him on?’

  Kathy stared at the instrument in her hand, astounded. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At the Canonbury flat. I came back here to have another look round, and Mr Starling just walked in the door.’

  He was sitting on the white hide sofa with a glass of brandy in his hand, looking pale and puffy. Brock burst in and glared down at him, Kathy following.

  ‘This had better be good, Sammy,’ he barked.

  ‘I can’t stop long,’ Starling said. He had the unhealthy sheen to his skin that Kathy had noticed before, and the asthmatic wheeze back in his voice. ‘I only called in here to pick up my car. I left it here this morning. I have to get back to Farnham. They’ve told me to wait there.’

  Brock sat down facing him. ‘What happened?’

  Starling took a deep, laboured breath. ‘They told me to go to Heathrow . . .’

  ‘Yes. I know that. Terminal One. You were to go inside and pick up instructions at the information desk. What then?’

  ‘There was a big envelope waiting for me. Inside were three smaller envelopes, each with a number, one, two and three, and a note, hand-printed, like the others. It told me to open envelope number one, and do what it said inside.’

  He took a gulp at his brandy, choked and broke into a coughing fit. Desai, standing by the door to the kitchen, disappeared briefly and came back with a glass of water. Starling waved it away and continued hoarsely. ‘Inside was a plane ticket, a boarding pass, an empty duty-free carrier bag, and another note telling me to go to the stairway marked for the left-luggage office. When I got to it I was to continue up the stairs to the departures level and head for the domestic departures area. I was to go through the passengers-only checkpoint, and make my way to the lounge at gate eighteen, where I was to open envelope number two.’

  ‘You told us gate thirteen,’ Brock growled, leaning forward as if he might be about to grab Starling and shake the truth out of him.

  ‘Did I? Yes, that’s right, I remember. I misread it the first time. It looked like it could have been thirteen, only it was eighteen. I was in a state, Mr Brock, believe me.’

  Brock glared at him. ‘Go on.’

  ‘The note also said that
the metal detectors at the security checkpoint would pick up any electronic devices about my person, and that, if I wanted to see Eva alive again, I should put any such equipment, together with my mobile phone, into the carrier bag, and deposit it in the waste bin near the entry to the departures area.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, about the detectors,’ Brock said.

  ‘Is it? But how was I to know? If I walked through that gate and the alarms went off, where would Eva be then? I couldn’t risk that. I did what I was told.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘I reached gate eighteen. There was a big crowd around and I couldn’t sit down. I opened the second envelope, and it said I was to keep going along the departures concourse and then follow the signs for the flight connections centre. It said I had to hurry. When I reached it, I was to open the third envelope. I did that. Envelope three told me how to go through the security gate there and take the escalator down to the Terminal Two link, and follow it until I came out in the Terminal Two concourse. Honestly, it’s like a maze, that place. I was completely lost. I just followed the instructions.’

  He took another deep breath and reached forward for the glass of water. At the same time there was an urgent buzz from the doorbell. Desai went over to the intercom and they heard Gallows’s voice. In a few moments he was inside, facing Starling, who avoided his glare.

  ‘We’re in Terminal Two,’ Brock said softly. ‘From domestic departures in Terminal One he walked to the flight connections centre, and from there to Terminal Two.’

  Gallows swore softly.

  Brock nodded at Starling.

  ‘So I came out on to the main concourse of Terminal Two, just opposite international arrivals. And there’s this big notice-board there for people to leave messages for people coming in. It’s got like tapes across it to stick your messages behind, with the name showing. There were a dozen or more messages already there. My note told me to address the envelope with the Canada Cover to Mr Chalon, and put it on to the board, dump all the envelopes and messages they’d given me into the rubbish bin next to it, then walk out of the building, get a cab and head straight home to Farnham. It said they would contact me there once they’d checked the cover to make sure it was genuine. Sometime within the next twenty-four hours, it said.’ He looked around, eyes wide. ‘That’s exactly what I did.’