Death Penalties

by Paula Gosling

  A torch beam swung around and revealed her pressed against the frame of a torn advertisement for Cadbury’s chocolate. ‘Good God,’ said Tim Nightingale.

  She was never to know how she looked standing there – face filthy with soot and grime, clothes torn, legs bleeding through ripped tights, white streaks of tears dividing her face like river channels, hair strung with cobwebs, eyes wild.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Nightingale asked, gruffly, coming over to her, while other men went over to the stairway and peered down. She leapt forward. ‘Make him tell you where he’s got Max!’ she screamed. ‘Get him, make him tell—’ She was hammering on his chest, desperately. What if Kobalski was unconscious? Hurt? Dead? He’d never speak, then. ‘I’ll do it. Let me do it. Let me hurt him, let me kill him, make him tell me, make him—’

  ‘Mrs Leland!’ He grabbed her arms, shook her. ‘It’s all right. We’ve got the boy – he’s quite safe.’

  She cried out with the sudden relief and felt the floor giving way – was she, too, to fall into darkness? But Nightingale was there, holding her up with one strong arm, helping her over to a bench, saying encouraging, peaceful things until the vast dust-fogged hall ceased spinning and humming around her. Some of the men by the broken stairway had edged forward, clinging to the handrail and one another, tentatively descending via the surviving edges of the stairs.

  ‘Is Max all right?’ Her throat was so raw from screaming that when she tried normal tones they were no more than a croak.

  ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Where—’ she began to ask, but then the men who had gone down the stairway re-appeared, hauling Kobalski and John Soame with them. As she watched she saw John hold out a bleeding arm while one of the officers tied a handkerchief around it. He looked across the man’s shoulder at Tess.

  And she looked at him.

  There was a sudden burst of voices from the direction of the rusty gate, and Tess turned to see Adrian Brevitt being led through the gap in the boarding. He stood there staring at her. From beyond him there came the sound of traffic – just ordinary street traffic. So there was a street out there, after all, and she hadn’t climbed from the tunnels merely to find herself entombed beneath a pile of concrete.

  Then Richard pushed past Adrian and the man in the London Transport uniform. He came straight over to Tess, put his arm around her and tipped her face up. ‘Are you all right? Did he hurt you?’

  ‘I’m fine, Richard.’

  ‘Christ, you’re bleeding,’ he said, and produced a handkerchief which he used to wipe the long, thin cut that was oozing blood into her collar. She had forgotten that – it seemed to have happened many years before. ‘And your legs—’ he bent to wipe those, too, and saw her swollen ankle. ‘Oh, Tess,’ he said. ‘My dear.’

  Adrian came across, too, and gazed down at them. ‘All this is not very nice, is it?’ he said, in a strange and sorrowful voice. ‘So – unnecessary.’

  There was a snort of derision, and they all turned to see that Detective Constable Murray had moved to the centre of the hall, and was holding Kobalski’s arm in an iron grip.

  ‘All she had to do was tell me where the money was,’ Kobalski said to him, in a perfectly reasonable tone.

  Abbott went over and stood next to the handsome American, whose good looks were not lessened by the dirt on his face nor the fact that his hair was tumbled over his forehead. If anything, he looked more attractive than ever, Tess thought. Only the anger in his eyes spoiled things. That, and the cruel twist of his mouth.

  It did not seem at all strange to her that she could think that he was attractive, even now. All the men around her seemed frozen in a tableau so that she could examine them one by one, as if she were suspended in a bubble of time. All the men in her life. Richard, so solicitous, so protective, his good square face earnestly gazing down at her. Adrian, elegant and impeccable, but still with that odd and distant expression in his eyes. John Soame, dirty and dishevelled, watching her intently, his narrow face scratched and bruised, his expression strained.

  Detective Chief Superintendent Abbott, tall and self- contained. Detective Sergeant Nightingale, who had believed her when no-one else had. Detective Constable Murray, and the other detectives who had been at the house. Even the London Transport man looked familiar, standing there in his uniform, twisting the keys in his hands, gazing around the empty booking hall making a mesmerized inventory.

  And Roger, who was not there, but whom she could see clearly now in her mind’s eye, the way he’d looked when he’d left on that last, terrible morning. His dear, familiar face had been haunted, his natural ebullience dulled – as if he’d been invisibly bruised, and was hurting inside. ‘Don’t worry, Tess,’ he’d said. ‘It’s a bit of a mess, but at least I’ve decided what to do about it. I’ll sort it all out.’

  But he’d never said what it was.

  And he hadn’t lived to sort it all out, either.

  She’d been left to pay the bills.

  All the bills.

  Abbott spoke to Kobalski. ‘Perhaps you’d like to make things easier for yourself now,’ he suggested. ‘Perhaps you’d like to bring someone with you for company when we take you to the Yard. Your local contact, for instance?’

  ‘Yeah, sure, why not?’ Kobalski agreed. ‘Misery always loves company – not that I intend to be miserable for very long.’ He walked forward, Nightingale coming with him on one side, Murray on the other. As he moved, Kobalski spoke with a kind of resigned disgust. ‘My main man warned me about you and your damned English caution. Always interfering. Always making me slow down, back off. You should have let me do the job right from the beginning,’ he sneered. ‘We could have finished it long ago, if you’d let me do it right.’

  And Nightingale’s hand closed on Richard Hendricks’s arm.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Adrian Brevitt sat down beside Tess and rested his chin on his silver-headed cane. ‘One should have known,’ he murmured. ‘He had absolutely no taste. And as for his clothes—’ He shuddered, delicately.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Tess whispered, shivering.

  ‘I can,’ Abbott said quietly. ‘Richard Hendricks is the kind of man who is always right, in his own eyes. When that kind of man is crossed, he is very dangerous indeed, because every argument is a threat to his ego and his self-image. We spent most of this morning with the Fraud Squad, going over and verifying information Tim had got from . . . somewhere.’ He glanced over at Nightingale, who flushed and managed to look both proud and sad.

  Abbott went on. ‘We were pretty certain Hendricks was behind the trouble, but we didn’t know how he fitted in, and how far back it had begun. At first we assumed it was just the accident – that perhaps he’d been driving the car that old Ivor Peters thought was chasing your husband, and that Max could identify him—’

  ‘Where is Max?’ Tess demanded. ‘You said he was all right, but where is he? I want to see him!’

  ‘You might better ask where was he,’ Adrian said. ‘All the time we were searching for the little devil, he was sitting in Hendricks’ outer office, waiting to see him. That young curate drove him over, apparently under the impression that you knew all about it. Hendricks’ secretary finally rang through because she wanted to go home and didn’t want to leave Max sitting there alone. Sergeant Nightingale went for him in a police car – I expect riding in that made his day.’

  ‘He went to see Richard? But why?’

  ‘To return the money, in a manner of speaking,’ Nightingale told her. ‘You see, he had it all along. His father had given it to him.’

  ‘Three hundred thousand pounds,’ Adrian murmured. Tess stared at them, aghast. ‘Where did Roger get three hundred thousand pounds, for goodness’ sake?’ Her head was spinning again, and it had nothing to do with the concussion, or the terrible flight through the darkness of the tunnels below. ‘Are you telling me that
Roger did steal some money? That he was involved in drugs?’

  Abbott shook his head. ‘Not in the way you’re thinking. I’m sorry if this upsets you—’

  ‘I think I’m beyond being upset,’ Tess said, weakly.

  ‘Yes, I suppose you are. Well, I had a word with the pathologist – and it’s quite likely that your husband didn’t die instantly in that crash. He and the boy were trapped there together for perhaps ten minutes or so before the ambulance came. He must have realized he was dying. He managed to tell Max something about what he had done – although it was probably pretty incoherent – but before he could tell him what to do about it, he died.’

  ‘Oh, Lord.’ Tess felt as if she had been stabbed, the pain in her chest was so great. ‘My poor Max. No wonder he had nightmares,’ she said. ‘But why didn’t he say something? Why didn’t he ask me about it?’

  ‘Your husband may have told him not to tell you. We didn’t question the boy closely, there wasn’t time, so you may learn more eventually. But it’s obvious that he was upset and confused about it all. It was quite a dilemma for a youngster. And then he became ill. That meant he had a perfect excuse to delay doing anything, but the delay also made the burden of guilt heavier. The time went on – and so did those nightmares. Max knew that by rights the money was Hendricks’s, but he didn’t like Hendricks. He may even have blamed him for his father’s death. So he didn’t want to give it back. And, of course, he didn’t know anything about what you were going through, did he?’

  ‘No, I didn’t want to frighten or worry him,’ Tess said, slowly. Then the enormity of it hit her. ‘But how could Max have had all that money? I mean, that much would be very bulky, wouldn’t it? I’ve cleaned his room dozens of times since Roger died, and there was no money there. And Kobalski didn’t find it, either.’ She remembered something and turned to John Soame. ‘You told Kobalski you knew where it was.’

  He didn’t look at her. ‘I was bluffing,’ he said, dully. ‘Trying to buy time.’

  An ambulance siren sounded in the distance, muffled by the fog, coming closer. Some blood was still trickling down John’s arm and splashing onto the marble floor by his feet, combining with the dust to make small, muddy crimson puddles. She could feel the warmth of him beside her, and was ashamed. She had been so wrong, so quick to assume he was associated with Kobalski when all along he had been trying to protect her. The blood he was shedding, the struggles he’d had, the time he’d lost from his work, all of it was because of her, and when the final moment had come, she had not trusted him.

  ‘Oh, Max has told me where it was,’ Nightingale said. ‘I talked to him in the car on the way back to the house. I have a couple of younger brothers of my own.’ He grinned. ‘You might not have seen it, but it was in his room all the time.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘In his stamp album.’ Nightingale smiled at their astonishment, enjoying the moment. Then his face saddened, because he knew he had to tell her the rest, and it wasn’t easy. It was never easy to tell someone that they had been deceived by a person they trusted, in whatever way, and for whatever reason.

  He took a deep breath. ‘You see, for quite a while your husband and his partner were involved in a little more than public relations, I’m afraid. Under cover of servicing their actual clients they’d been running a nice little sideline in smuggling stolen or proscribed works of art or even occasionally transferring money for some very questionable clients on their “private” list. I think your husband did it for fun, but Hendricks was always interested in profits. There came a day – perhaps inevitably, considering the kind of people they were dealing with – when Hendricks was shown there would be even more profit in drugs. Hendricks was willing, but there your husband drew the line. Little tricks to cheat the taxman or Customs were one thing – sort of glamorous, I suppose – but drugs were something else again.’

  ‘Roger would never have touched drugs,’ Tess said.

  ‘Your husband went to France just before he died, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Marseilles.’

  ‘It would be. Hendricks probably gave him money to make a “purchase”,’ Abbott said. ‘The contact had been pre-arranged, but when your husband realized it was to be drugs he was to carry, and not negotiable bonds or some work of art, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He never made the meeting. There he was in Marseilles with all this money. He was furious with Hendricks, and worried about being implicated in some way because of it, so he bought something else instead. Something that would look quite innocuous if he was stopped at Customs at either end.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A set of stamps. Not so much to look at – just very, very rare. When he got back, he slipped them into Max’s stamp album. And when Max saw them, he loved them. That also made it difficult for him to turn them over to Hendricks. But in the end, seeing the house torn apart and, most importantly, seeing you hurt, was more terrible to him than losing any stamps, however rare and wonderful. So he decided to give them back to Hendricks, as his father had told him to do. He thought the trouble would stop then.’

  ‘Did Richard . . . kill Roger?’ She was almost afraid to ask.

  ‘We don’t think so,’ DC Murray said. He had returned from handing the prisoners over. ‘Anyway, it would be hard to prove, with Ivor Peters dead.’

  Abbott became reflective. ‘It might have been a genuine accident – Peters could have been totally wrong about the intentions of the following driver – it could have been anyone in a hurry who didn’t want to get “involved”. Just one of those terrible things that happen to the very people who least expect it. And it came at the worst possible time, because it left you facing a great deal of unfinished business.’

  ‘When Roger kissed me goodbye he said he was going to clear up “the mess”,’ Tess said, sadly. ‘I didn’t know what he meant, but I saw he had come to some kind of decision about something that had been worrying him.’

  ‘Well, for what it’s worth, I tend to trust Ivor Peters’ instinct,’ Nightingale said. ‘I always did. I think it was Kobalski driving the chase car, and Kobalski who frightened Peters sufficiently to precipitate a heart attack.’ Tess remembered something. ‘He said something about thinking the old man had taken the money.’

  Nightingale allowed himself a glance of satisfaction at Abbott, who raised an eyebrow but said nothing. ‘Perhaps the car hire clerk will recognize him,’ Nightingale said.

  Abbott shook his head. ‘It won’t make any difference,’ he said. ‘Kobalski will simply say he never intended to kill your husband, just frighten him into handing over the money. And it could be true, because it was early in the game, after all. We could never prove otherwise.’

  ‘And Richard hired him?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Abbott said.

  ‘But Kobalski—’

  ‘Kobalski was wished on Hendricks by the American syndicate, he didn’t have much choice about it.’

  ‘He said something about “a main man”.’

  ‘Yes. You see, Hendricks never suspected your husband had done anything with the money except what he had been told to do – he assumed he’d made the buy and passed on the goods – until the Marseilles dealer got in touch with him a few days after Roger’s death and asked him if he was still interested in the shipment. That was the moment Hendricks realized your husband had stolen the money. By then, the client knew it, too. At first they assumed Roger had either given the money to you or hidden it at home, hence the break-in during the funeral. When nothing was found, Hendricks was told to get close to you.’

  ‘And that’s why he was so attentive,’ Adrian put in. ‘Not that you’re not worth pursuing, my dear, but he had ulterior motives beyond the obvious, I’m afraid.’ He patted her hand in a fatherly fashion.

  As he spoke, the ambulance drew up outside, they could hear the distinctive throb of the engine, and then
the ambulancemen came through the gate.

  ‘Here,’ Abbott called, gesturing them over and indicating John Soame’s bleeding arm. One of them ripped the sleeve open and got to work.

  ‘Did Hendricks ever hear about your son’s nightmares?’ Abbott asked Tess.

  She nodded. ‘He actually witnessed one, in the hospital, when Max was delirious.’

  ‘Mmmm. I’m afraid that may be what first made him think that Max knew something about the money, rather than you, and that there was still a chance he could get it back. But he couldn’t get at Max in the hospital, and once Max came home he was never alone. You and Mr Soame and that housekeeper of yours saw to that.’

  Nightingale spoke. ‘Kobalski had tried the phone calls and the break-ins to frighten you. They didn’t work, and now Mr Soame was in the way, too. Hendricks tried to turn you against him, but that didn’t work either. So, Archie McMurdo was invented.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘At first, to charm you. But you weren’t having any. So he tried kicking up a fuss, to make you lose your job and perhaps either start spending the money or turn to Hendricks. I think Hendricks is genuinely fond of you, Mrs Leland, and insisted that Kobalski go gently.’

  ‘I suppose I should be grateful for that,’ Tess said.

  ‘Yes. But there was increasing pressure on Kobalski from the “client” to get the job done.’

  ‘I don’t know why Hendricks just didn’t pay the client back out of the insurance money,’ John Soame put in. ‘Or from his own funds, if he’s so well-off.’

  Abbott shook his head. ‘I don’t know if you know much about organized crime, but there was a lot more than just money involved here. It wasn’t the money, it was the getting back of the money that was so important. The big men don’t like to be seen as soft, and they don’t like to be made fools of. What they do like is revenge, and making their position clear. That’s why, whenever Hendricks was out of town, Kobalski got a little rougher. He was under pressure, too, and eventually he stopped listening to Hendricks.’