This transaction did nothing for his peace of mind. He didn’t want Morne, he felt uncomfortable at the idea of buying it behind Lizzie and Catherine’s back, and, so far as the money was concerned, he didn’t trust Duncan not to come back for more. And underlying all this anxiety, lapping just beneath the surface of his consciousness, were his tumultuous feelings for Catherine.
A couple of days later, he brought Maeve over to Morne for a picnic in the walled garden. Alice was there, and some neighbours and cousins. With all the comings and goings there was no chance to speak to Catherine alone, but when she glanced his way and smiled it seemed to him that there was a very private and particular message in her gaze. Imagination? Wishful thinking? The longings of a lonely man?
Early the following morning he arrived at Morne for their customary walk, but it was raining too hard and they stayed in the kitchen instead. Catherine was drained after tending to Lizzie in the night. Her eyes looked enormous and empty in the flat white light. After a while, though, she began to emerge from her tiredness, even to tease him a little, which always cheered her up, and when he suggested an expedition to Castledermot later for a spot of supper she agreed immediately.
The evening had stayed with him as a series of conversations interwoven by a long unspoken dialogue. He saw her face animated, sad, thoughtful, but most of all he saw her eyes, which seemed to contain but one simple message. As the evening wore on could he have been so wrong? it seemed to him that the two of them were gathered up in a growing and unequivocal understanding.
Two days later, in a state of agonised hope, he sent the letter. An invitation to go to Donegal for the weekend, but also, clearly spelt out between the lines, a man asking a woman if she wouldn’t like to take things further, the nearest a man could get in such undemonstrative times to a declaration. He signed it ‘with greatest love’.
The letter was written on perfectly ordinary paper, cream if he remembered correctly, but for all its apparent fragility it might have been written in stone.
Promptly at six thirty the desk rang up to announce Fergal. Wherever Fergal’s natural habitat might be, it was clearly not the fin-de-siecle opulence of Claridge’s Hotel. In his faded baggy-kneed trousers, his crumpled linen jacket with the drooping hem, his recalcitrant hair, he reminded Terry of a rather shambolic priest entering a lady’s boudoir. As if to reinforce this impression, Fergal looked around him with curiosity and faint disapproval.
Settling himself as best he could in a cabriole-legged chair with roseate padded upholstery, Fergal swivelled his eyes, as if to encompass the whole building. “Not thinking of buying this one, then?”
“Not just at the moment, Fergal.” Terry offered him a drink, which he declined with a spread of his hand.
“How’s Maeve?”
“She’s truly fine. She’s off now with Dinah, buying up Bond Street and Knightsbridge and probably the rest of London as well.”
“She’s well recovered, then?”
“Almost there, I do believe.” Terry sat down opposite. “So?” he prompted fretfully.
Reaching into a sagging pocket, Fergal pulled out his notebook and flipped it open. But either he didn’t need reminding of what it said or he hadn’t written anything down anyway, because he closed it again and spoke from memory. “Pavlik,” he stated solemnly, his shaggy eyebrows knotted together in what might have been weariness. “Bail application successful. Fifteen thousand pounds surety. Required to report once a day to the local police station.”
“So. As expected, more or less. The lawyer He gestured a lapse of memory.
“Gresham.”
“Gresham. Any good?”
“Wily enough, I’d say.”
“The question is, will Pavlik keep to the bail terms? Or will he try to do a skip?”
“Hard to say. He has no passport, no papers to speak of, except for a forged national insurance card. He doesn’t have too many alternatives, really.”
“He might get frightened into it.”
Fergal gave a laconic shrug. “Thus far he’s shown every indication of resuming his life, returning to his haunts. On release from Brixton he made his way to the restaurant where he works, presumably to tell them he is back in circulation, then on to West Kilburn, to the address given to the court. It’s a house owned by a Mr. Christopher Addleston. It seems Mr. Addleston deals in antiques when he’s out of work as an actor, which is much of the time.”
“So. That’s it for the moment, is it?” Terry brought his hands down decisively on the chair arms in a move that invited agreement.
“Not quite. There are two complications,” said Fergal in a brogue that was suddenly very Irish indeed. “Firstly, I was not the only person following Pavlik home.”
Terry felt a beat of alarm. “What do you mean?” he asked, though he had heard him perfectly well the first time.
“There were three of us along the way. A bit of a procession, you might say.”
“Who was this other person?”
“I don’t know. Sadly I wasn’t able to follow him once he left Pavlik’s because he managed to find the only free cab on the whole of the Harrow Road. I’m fairly sure he was an amateur, though. Certainly not police, and not a private eye. Though he took a lot of trouble, I’ll say that for him. He was in the public gallery when Pavlik came up at the magistrate’s. Wearing a smart suit, designer-style, young professional. Then when I spotted him outside Brixton he was in casual clothes, wearing a cap, dark glasses. But it was the same fella all right, no doubt about that. Early thirties, five ten or eleven, darkish hair, pale complexion.”
Sitting high in his chair, back board-straight, Terry made a wide gesture of incomprehension that was also an appeal. “I don’t understand. Who could it be, for heaven’s sake?”
“There’s one thing. He was joined in the public gallery of the court by a woman he knew, also young, also smartly dressed. I’m guessing here, but I don’t think he was expecting her. I would say he was startled to see her. They talked a lot -well, whispered. Then, after Pavlik’s appearance, they left the gallery together and parted in the hall.”
“And she? What did she look like?”
“Darkish hair. Medium height. What you might call I think the term is statuesque.”
“A big girl?” He was thinking of Alice.
“Oh, no. Trim, but curvaceous.”
“Black hair, you say?”
“No, somewhere between red and mid-brown. That rich glossy colour that catches every kind of light,” said Fergal, turning poetical. “The colour, you might say, of mahogany.”
“And the style?”
“The style? Ah .. .” Fergal’s vocabulary failed him here. He put a hand to the side of his head and made a corkscrew gesture that might have denoted Medusan locks. “Short,” he offered feebly. “In layers, I suppose.”
None of this fitted Alice. “For God’s sake, Fergal!” he cried in annoyance. Jumping up, he strode across the room and stopped by a window. “What have we here? What’s going on?”
“What we have here is someone who wanted to make sure Pavlik got home safe and sound,” said Fergal mildly. “Or .. .”
Terry strode back and stood over him. “Or?”
“Possibly someone who wished to harm him.”
Terry almost laughed. “And if someone did wish to harm him?”
For a moment they stared at each other in mutual incomprehension.
Terry shrugged. “I meant, would we terribly care, for God’s sake?”
Fergal looked mildly disappointed in him, as though he had betrayed a singular lack of judgement. “I don’t think it would be terribly useful.”
Terry gave a heavy sigh. “I suppose not,” he agreed glumly and headed for the drinks tray. Having returned from a weekend at Longchamps in which he seemed to have passed precious few moments without a glass in his hand, he had been determined to abstain, at least for a few days, but now he poured himself a large Scotch. “So what are you suggesting?” he added dar
kly. “That we protect him?”
Fergal let this remark pass in silence.
Pacing back to his chair, perching on the edge of his seat, Terry declared, “It may be that these people are going to try to make him talk, Fergal! It may be that they’re after information. One way or another, we should know?
“Ah. That brings me to the other thing.” Fergal paused to add weight to his words. “Apparently he did talk to the police. Briefly. When he realised the seriousness of the accusations. Before Gresham got to him and told him to shut up.”
“Jesus!” Terry gasped. As the full implications sank in, he cried more fiercely, “Jesus And what did he say?”
“He said that he’d been put up to the burglary, but denied absolutely the assault. Said he wasn’t even there when it took place.”
Terry stared at him furiously. Tut up to it? But he didn’t say who by?”
“No. He just said he’d been hired to go in and burgle the place.”
“Curse it! Why didn’t we know this before, for God’s sake? Why weren’t we told?”
“My contact isn’t on the case himself. He can only get so much information at one time.”
“We should have paid him more then, shouldn’t we!”
Fergal didn’t deign to answer such madness, but continued in his calm voice, “Pavlik said he broke in during the early hours of that Sunday morning, a good sixteen hours before the assault.”
Terry exclaimed, “Hah!”
“Later he withdrew his comment about being put up to it. Refused to say a word. Just stuck to the story about breaking in well before the Galitzas arrived home.”
“Anything to back his story?”
“Pavlik said he spent Sunday evening with two acquaintances in a pub.
But the police haven’t been able to find them.”
“Not looking especially hard, I don’t imagine,” Terry declared scathingly. “But he knew these men, he knew their names?”
“Apparently so, yes.”
“Can we get them?”
“At a price.”
“Well, then!” Terry pushed himself restlessly to his feet once more. “Well!” He paced to the far side of the room and back again. And still he couldn’t remain in one spot; he turned, offered first one profile to Fergal, then the other. “Only one thing for it, isn’t there?”
“Find him his alibi?”
Terry jabbed a finger at Fergal. “Get it in black and white, watertight, no possibility for error! Yes find him his alibi!”
“It might take some extra men.”
Terry made a sweeping gesture. “Whatever it takes.” His mind returned to the other disturbing element in the story. “Just so long as these other people don’t get to Pavlik first. We must find out who they are, Fergal.”
“Without more to go on .. .”
“Get whatever you need.”
“It’s not a question of more men,” Fergal pointed out patiently. “It’s a question of there being nowhere to start.”
“There has to be!”
Fergal didn’t answer but fixed his attention on a spot some three feet in front of his chair, in the depths of the Aubousson-style carpet.
“Well, do what you can,” Terry offered weakly, which was the best he could do by way of apology. He knocked back his drink, and, telling himself it had done him good, immediately went and poured himself another. “Curse be to hell,” he muttered under his breath. “Curse be to hell and back!”
Fergal waited until this small storm had passed before murmuring, “I’ve made a few more enquiries about Ben Galitza, but failed to turn up anything new.”
“Nor me!” Terry exclaimed hotly, and for an instant it looked as though the storm would blow up again, worse than before. “And not for want of trying, that’s for sure! I have these facts, I have a mountain of facts, but much good they’ve done me. There’s no sense in any of it, Fergal. No sense at all. It’s like a play going on in the theatre next door someone understands what’s going on, but it certainly isn’t me!”
“If I can help .. .”
He levelled his glass at Fergal. “You can have a drink for a start.”
Fergal was not fond of Scotch, but took the drink and sipped at it dutifully because it was easier to go along with Terry in this mood.
Terry sat down again, and hunched forward with a weary sigh. “Right .. . this is the story. You will not be surprised to hear that it is a tale of money, greed and what should have been large profits,” he began, in the manner of a fable or a parody. “It is also a tale of promises, broken and unbroken. The story takes us across many frontiers and many banking systems. We start in Poland, which is famous for its electrical cable and generator industries. We have a valuable consignment of generators that have been built for some hospitals in Germany. However, the order is cancelled a contractual dispute over specifications. The person put in charge of finding a new buyer for these generators is a fixer called, let us say, Mr. X. Mr. X puts feelers out. In no time there is a firm bite. It all looks good. The price is fair. There’s a middleman or two who wants his introduction fee, but then that’s the way business is done over there.
Mr. X makes checks on these people he is intending to do business
with. They are British, though reassuringly they speak Polish. He
discovers they are known in Poland and some other countries in the old
Eastern Bloc. They have done business in Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Slovenia. They have a reputation for driving a hard bargain, but once
terms are agreed they meet their contracts, they deliver on time,
everything is done by the book. So, here we have it ... it’s all
looking good for a deal that is going to be worth roughly fifty
million
US.”
“Has Mr. X ever done such deals before?” Fergal asked quietly.
“Nothing like this. But he has a reputation for being nobody’s fool. Canny. He’s been wheeling and dealing locally for years.” Draining his glass, it seemed to Terry that he could see Mr. X, that Mr. X was large and pasty-faced, with bullet eyes and unfortunate manners. “Then,” he resumed rapidly, ‘for no apparent reason, the deal goes up in smoke. The middlemen don’t get their money. Naturally, they are put out, but they offer their services again, they offer to find another buyer. However, Mr. X is not interested. He says he is unable to sell the generators after all, that a decision has been taken by a higher authority he hints at a government department and the machines are off the market. End of story, we would believe. But some time later one of the middlemen hears on reliable authority that the generators have been shipped out of the country. Sent, he is told, to Gdansk. But where did they go from Gdansk?”
Recognising a narrative pause when he heard one, Fergal waited mutely.
“CintePs best efforts were required here,” Terry commented. “It took time .. . but they discovered that the ship carrying the generators was bound for Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela. In the meantime, back in Warsaw, Mr. X has bought a BMW, he is renovating his house, he has sent his daughter to America for a couple of years. He says she’s gone to be an au pair, but in fact she’s attending an expensive college, and is able to accompany her richest classmates to Aspen on skiing trips.”
He pulled in a sharp breath, he shook his head; this was the end of his story. He rotated a hand towards Fergal. “First thoughts, off the top of your head.”
Taking a long slow breath, Fergal went through the motions of setting his mind to this conundrum, his eyes narrowed as if against a fierce light, his mouth puckered in concentration, while Terry waited impatiently, alert to any change of expression.
“Clearly, Mr. X or his masters struck a better deal,” intoned Fergal at last. “But you have to ask why, having scented the improved deal, Mr. X didn’t go back to the first buyers to see if they would be prepared to better their price. In effect, to have an auction. Perhaps the second price was so much better there was no p
oint.”
“But why would it be?” Terry demanded. “Why offer a crazy price?”
Fergal circled a hand loosely to show that he was entering the realms of guesswork. “It could be that Mr. X was providing a service for the buyers, something quite separate from the provision of the generators. Who can say? Perhaps he was close to someone in the government who could put another far more lucrative contract their way, perhaps he could bribe an official to allow something in or out of the country .. .” The circling hand became more agitated. “There’s an endless list of possibilities. But in broad terms there was more to the deal than meets the eye.”
“Okay,” Terry agreed. “Another question. Who got rich out of this?”
Fergal regarded him with caution, suspecting, rightly, that this was a trick question. “Everyone but the first unsuccessful buyers?”
“You would think so, yes.”
The first buyers did get rich, then?”
“No.”
Tiring of this game, Fergal waited.
“No,” murmured Terry. They didn’t get rich. They got very short of money indeed.”
“Ah.”
Sounds came from the next room, the chatter of Maeve and Dinah returning from their shopping trip.
“But one of them was expecting to get rich, Fergal. One of them was expecting to get very rich indeed.”
With a shake of his head, a setting of his mouth, Fergal unwound himself from the chair and got to his feet. He could offer no more opinions without additional information.
“Will you give my warmest regards to Maeve?” he asked as he left. “And tell her that I’ve found her that book. She’ll know the one I mean.”
Terry promised, but in the hurry to get changed and off to the theatre before curtain up it slipped his mind.
Rebecca made a fine entrance, with her firm stride, her head high, her strong austere beauty set off by the whiteness of her skin and the severity of her black suit.
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