Shot on Location
Page 18
“The loyalty of friends is always touching.”
“I wouldn’t know. I have no friends. But thanks, anyway. The bourbon’s good.”
Peter Lange wasn’t drinking. He toyed with the swizzle stick and watched Brad empty his glass. He nodded to the bartender and had the glass replenished. He glanced back at the doorway and then at his wristwatch, as if he were waiting for someone to join him. “Strange, isn’t it?” he said. “Harry was found dead, with nothing but his clothing. Even his wristwatch and his glasses are missing.”
“They tell me these mountains are full of desperate people, who think nothing of robbing corpses,” Brad said. “What did you expect?”
“Maybe you’re right. Smith, you just said that you had no friends. That can be a sad state of affairs. A friend never hurt anyone—especially a drifter in a foreign country. But such a man has to be extremely careful that he doesn’t make the wrong kind of friends.”
“If that’s advice, I know what it’s worth.”
“It could be worth a tidy sum. A plane ticket back to the States, for instance, and a stake of—say, ten thousand American dollars.”
“I knew there was a string somewhere,” Brad said. “What are you trying to buy, Mr. Lange?”
“Space. Lots of space between you and Mrs. Avery. She’s a widow now. Even without an audit, I can tell you that she’s easily worth five million. And a widow can be very vulnerable.”
“A widow is a free woman. She can choose her own companions.”
“Stay away from her, Smith.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’d rather talk about what happens if you do. It’s a more pleasant subject. Ten thousand and a ticket on the first available flight back to Los Angeles.”
Brad finished his drink and stepped away from the bar. He could see the headwaiter beckoning from the doorway, and then the man was pushed aside as Pattison Blair came into the bar. She looked different with clothes on, and now, as she came directly towards Lange, Brad could see that her face was different, too. If the jet-set wasn’t supposed to be above such normal reactions, he would have sworn that she had been crying.
“Peter—” she said hoarsely.
Seeing that he was with Brad, she hesitated.
“It’s all right, Miss Blair,” Brad remarked, “I was just leaving. The man in the yachting jacket is setting up drinks. Be nice to him. He’s very generous.”
She had been crying. He was sure of it, when she stared at him.
“Mr. Smith is an old friend of Harry’s,” Lange explained, “and of Harry’s wife. It’s too bad he can’t stay long in Greece. You might want to invite him out on the Columbia.”
But Pattison Blair wasn’t interested in conversation she didn’t understand. She turned to Lange. “Have you seen Dr. Johnson?” she asked. “I heard he was in the hotel. I’ve even had him paged.”
“Johnson?” Lange echoed. “Why do you want to see him? You can’t still have any suspicions about Harry’s death. Not this one, Miss Blair. Your father’s fine hand may have been raised a time or two before, but not this time.”
“Just the same, I want to talk to him. Oh, there’s Leslie—” She had turned back towards the doorway. The headwaiter had given up on Brad and now the way was clear to the registration desk, where an angular man, wearing a baggy sweater, was leaning across the desk in conversation with the clerk. “I have to go now,” she added.
“But we’re having dinner—”
“Later,” she said. “I have to go now.”
She left Lange no time for argument. She ran out of the room and caught the man at the desk by the arm, as he was turning away towards the exit to the street. They went out together and Lange gulped at his drink.
“This isn’t your night,” Brad said. “Unless you want to take me to dinner.”
Chapter Sixteen
PATTISON BLAIR DROVE the Ferrari slowly, paying more attention to Leslie Parker than to the road. They had passed through the city and were skirting the lake at a point almost opposite the lights of the hotel.
“I was too shocked last night to be sure it was you I saw at the police station,” she said. “When I recognized you in the lobby just now, I had to run out to you. Sorry, Leslie, but I need to lean a little. That’s funny, isn’t it?”
“It happens to all of us in time,” Parker answered, “and it’s never very funny.”
“I mean—you’re a familiar face. A piece of the past.”
“I try to live without a past.”
“Isn’t that impossible?”
“It’s getting easier. And I have help.”
“A woman?”
“Of course.”
“What is her name?”
“Elena.”
“Is she Greek?”
“Yes, she’s Greek. Very young and very lovely. Speaks almost no English at all. It’s not really necessary.”
Pattison laughed. “You must love her, Leslie.”
“I’m beginning to. You see, anything’s possible. There was a time when I thought I could never love again.”
The lights of the hotel faded in the distance. When Parker pointed the way, Pattison turned off the road they had been following, and took a path into the woods.
“You really loved Lori that much?” she asked.
Leslie Parker took a packet of cigarettes from his sweater pocket and poked about for a match. Pattison obliged with the dashboard lighter, noticing how boyish his face still looked in the red glow. He would be one of those men, she thought, who would look boyish all his life. The kind Harry had called the ever-blooming juvenile. When he had taken the light he offered the cigarette to her. She shook her head. “I thought,” he said, when the lighter was back in the dash, “that everyone in London knew how I killed my wife’s lover, out of passion for her.”
“Killed! You are a masochist! You tried to save his life—that’s what half of London knew. The other half are dirt!”
“Actually, we’re both wrong. It wasn’t one half or both halves of London. It was a very few people, in a nasty little social set I’m glad to be rid of. It’s peaceful here.”
“Peaceful! After what happened at the police station last night—and what happened today out at the monastery! That poor wretch I saw dragged out of the police station, last night, went absolutely mad, they say, and drove his knife clear through the security captain’s body, before he was shot! It’s in the air, Leslie. Bombings, beatings, tortures. Peter Lange calls it anarchy.”
“There’s no such thing as anarchy,” Parker scoffed. “It’s just a word for the turbulence when there’s a change of guard in the power establishment. Thank God it doesn’t affect me any more. I’m totally uninvolved.”
“The ‘in’ word is ‘dropped out’.”
“Very well, I’ve dropped out. Don’t I look like a hippy? Even my hair is getting long.”
“How do you live?”
“Remarkably well. I get two hundred pounds a month from the estate in England. It keeps me in the necessities of life.”
“Such as that fifth of Scotch you’ve put in the rear seat.”
“Exactly. I know it shocks you—old teetotaler Parker. There, I’ve spoken my name for the first time in three years. You’re a bad influence, Pattison. But you always were. You did flirt with me when I was in Harley Street.”
“Of course. You were—you are—a handsome, charming, virile male. Now I know why I couldn’t make any time with you. Imagine, a society surgeon in love with his wife! I should have concentrated on Walter Savage. Oh—” Pattison clapped one hand over her mouth, “damn! I didn’t mean to say that!”
“Go ahead and say it. It’s true. If you had gone after Walter, he might not have gone after my wife with such outstanding and public success. But I forgive you. There would have been another Walter sooner or later.”
Pattison tried to change the subject. “Are you sure you have a house?” she asked. “This road’s getting us lost in the woods.”
“Gossips! So that’s why you fled London—you’re chicken. You should be like me. I’m immune.”
“You were born to headlines. It makes a difference.”
“But you were cleared. Barney told me that the medical hearing, or whatever they called it, exonerated you completely when Walter died on the operating table. He said you had every right to let the sonovabitch die, but you were too good a doctor to follow your impulses.”
“Maybe that’s why I was such a failure as a husband,” Parker said. “And perhaps I didn’t exonerate myself. How could I? How could I ever be sure that I had done all I could for Walter, on the operating table, when I knew Lori was dead and that he had been driving when the car went off the road? Let’s take out all the dirty laundry for old times’ sake. It was so romantic up in Wales, where Walter and Lori went for their holidays together, and so damned public when their affair splashed all over the headlines. Do you know, I used to fancy that Lori would have enjoyed that part of it, if she could have known? She always said my family was too stuffy to live outside a glass case. I wonder why it is that the things that draw people together are the things that force them apart. What I loved in Lori was what I helped to kill. But I’ve thought it all out and forgiven everyone.”
“Except yourself.”
“Don’t be so melodramatic! You have me living in a self-imposed exile and drinking myself to an early grave. Look at me. I’ve never been healthier or happier. If I take a drink it’s because I’m learning to enjoy life. There’s more than work and glory. I don’t need Harley Street any more, and that’s something to celebrate—not mourn. There, just ahead. See the small light? It’s almost like a candle in the window.”
Pattison braked the Ferrari to a stop, in front of a small white-washed building with a paved courtyard and a few trees to shadow the moonlight on the drive. She switched off the ignition and watched Parker snuff out his cigarette in the ashtray.
“Are you going to ask me in?” she queried.
“No. Elena is more beautiful than you. You might get jealous.”
“You could be right.”
“I could be—but I don’t think I am. There are a few surprises in you, too, it seems. You came up from Athens to look for Harry Avery. You must have loved him.”
“I needed him. That’s a switch, isn’t it?”
“It sure is. You never really needed any man before, except Barney.”
“Barney!”
“Don’t tell me you’re the last to know. Barney’s always been the man in your life. That’s why your husbands never had a chance.”
“I hate Barney!”
“That’s what I mean. You hate Barney until you finally find a man as ruthless and ambitious as he, and then you fall in love for the first time. I’m sorry about Avery. That sounds silly, doesn’t it? It always sounds silly when an outsider tries to touch grief.” Suddenly Parker leaned across the seat and kissed Pattison softly on the mouth. She didn’t draw away but he did. He smiled. “Would you believe that I always wanted to do that?” he asked.
“Even in Harley Street?”
“Even in Harley Street. I’m going in now. You can turn about in the courtyard and go back the way you came.”
“Let me come in, please.”
“No, Pattison. My militantly puritanical mother taught me always to close the door when leaving a room. I won’t let anything spoil what I have now.”
“I’m frightened, Leslie.”
“You can’t be, so soon. That comes later. Now you’re still shocked and angry because the life you had planned for yourself has vanished. You may want to find someone to blame for Harry Avery’s death. Barney, perhaps. Forget it. I examined Avery before his doctor arrived from Athens. Believe me, nothing could have saved him after that crash. Now start living with that. It takes time but it works out somehow. Goodbye, Pattison.”
He opened the door and got out of the car. He picked up the bottle of whisky from the rear seat and tucked it under his arm. “And whenever you get back to London,” he added, “don’t go about telling how you ran into poor old Leslie Parker, going to pot in the Greek mountains. I like it here. I’d have to move if people started dropping in.”
He ducked his head against the wind and sprinted all the way to the house.
Elena was at the door. Her dark hair hung loosely, halfway to her slender waist, her eyes were wide and her lips were new life closing out the horrors of the violence at Kastoria. Parker’s arms pulled her close but she shyly pushed him away. He looked past her into the softly lighted room and saw that they weren’t alone. Elena slipped behind him and closed the door, as the woman called Petros emerged from the shadows.
“You—again?” he cried. “What are you doing here? I imagined you were miles away by this time.”
“I was miles away, Doctor,” she said. “I had to return.”
“Don’t call me doctor!”
She smiled. “Would you rather I called you Mr. Parker? No, don’t look so surprised. We met several years ago, when my late husband was an attaché at the Greek embassy in London. Our positions have changed since that time. Both our positions.”
“I’m sorry for you,” he said. “Please don’t be sorry for me.”
“I’m not. Your exile is of your own doing. My husband’s was not.”
“That’s politics.”
“So it is. But even in politics there are some rules among civilized people. Now it seems there are no rules in Greece, and heroes are rewarded with banishment or prison.”
“I’ve already resisted one call to arms tonight,” Parker insisted. “If you’re recruiting for anything, you can save your breath. I’m a man of peace.”
“You’re a doctor first.”
“Damn it, woman, what do you want?” he demanded. “I went along with you, when you came to me with a story about finding a dying man at the monastery, and what did I walk into? Only the most famous corpse in the world at this moment! Is that a way to maintain seclusion?”
“I couldn’t go to the authorities,” Petros said. “That should be obvious.”
“But you could have told me who he was. You must have known.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come with me if I told you the man was Harry Avery. But don’t worry, I’ve no celebrity for you to treat now.”
“Good! Would you like a whisky?” Parker waved the bottle over his head—in invitation.
“There’s no time,” Petros protested.
“There’s time for me after the rotten day and night I’ve put in.”
Petros watched Parker open the bottle and pour himself a drink.
“You must come!” she said. “One of the men who rode with me this afternoon is seriously ill. Severe abdominal pains—”
“Give him medicine.”
“—and painful swelling. Acute appendicitis.”
“Take him to a hospital.”
“You know that’s impossible! He would be arrested. It would be more merciful to let him die.”
“Then let him die!”
“He is twenty-three years old, Doctor, and has a wife and two small children.”
Parker drank the whisky in great gulps—the fire it started in his stomach helped to remind him that he was an Englishman and this struggle was nothing to him. “This is a Greek fight, Madame!” he shouted. “I don’t want to be involved.”
“You are alive,” she said quietly. “Being alive is being involved. There’s no danger to you. My van’s parked half a metre down the road under some trees. I will leave this house first. You can start to follow me in about ten minutes. Come alone and whistle something as you approach the van so we will know it is you.”
“You really think I’m coming with you, don’t you?” P
arker asked.
Petros drew the folds of the cloak closer about her lanky body. She had won. She was satisfied. “Whistle anything you like,” she added, “except Beethoven’s Fifth. I hear that it makes the Junta nervous. It reminds them of a time when people fought for liberty.”
Chapter Seventeen
BRAD HAD NO more than completed his dinner, when he saw Rolf Johnson meeting with complications at the dining room doorway. The doctor had been flown to Kastoria without a change of clothing. He wasn’t dressed for dinner, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the lack of available space. Brad called his waiter and asked him to convey an invitation to share his table. He watched the message being delivered and saw the doctor look in his direction, with less than enthusiasm. But a table was a table. He shrugged and followed the waiter back to Brad.
“You’re Dr. Johnson,” Brad said. “I saw you at the police station earlier this evening. They told me that you had been flown in directly from a fishing boat. You must be tired. Sit down.”
Johnson accepted the invitation. “I am tired,” he admitted, “but I don’t like talking to a reporter when I’m eating.”
“I don’t blame you. I’m not a reporter. I’m a friend of the Avery’s.”
The doctor’s sun-bronzed face brightened. “Are you Smith?” he asked. “Omar Bradley Smith?”
“That’s my name.”
“In that case, I thank you. I talked to Mrs. Avery by telephone, shortly after I arrived. She asked me to look for you. She wanted to come up here, too, but I discouraged the idea. This is no place for a widow.”
“Pattison Blair is here,” Brad said.
“I know. That’s one of the things I had in mind, when I talked to Mrs. Avery.”
The waiter had returned with a menu. Johnson ordered quickly and then asked for a bottle of cold beer, to drink while waiting for his dinner. “And don’t let me wait too long or I may confiscate my neighbour’s plate,” he added. “I’ve had nothing but coffee and snacks all day. The machine has to be refuelled or it breaks down. I’m not as young as you are, Mr. Smith.”