Strange Affair

by Peter Robinson

  “This is ridiculous,” said Lambert, a condescending smirk on his face. “If only you could hear yourself. You can’t prove any of this. When I get out of here I’m going to—”

  Banks kicked him hard in the stomach. Lambert groaned and rolled over, clutching his midsection and retching. “Bastard,” he hissed.

  Banks swung the iron bar and hit him on the shoulder. Lambert screamed. “But it wasn’t even about the girls, was it?” Banks went on. “That was just the start of it. Oh, I’m sure you tried to convince Roy how they had a better life here, away from their war-torn countries, away from the poverty and disease and death. Maybe he even wanted to believe it. Then, in a final bid to enlist his sympathy, you told him that you were adopting Carmen Petri’s baby yourself. You probably gave him some sob story about how your wife couldn’t bear children and desperately wanted a family. You told him you’d give the child a much better life than it could have hoped for in Romania, or as the child of a prostitute in London. That was supposed to be the clincher. How benevolent of you. He’d hardly stand in the way of his old mate adopting a child privately, would he? It might not be strictly legal, but people do it all the time, don’t they? How can it be that much of a crime, to give a child hope? And even Roy had to see that any child you adopted had far more advantages than most. Financial advantages, that is.”

  “So what?” Lambert argued. “So what if I was adopting her child? It’s true. The kid would have a much better life with us. Any fool can see that.”

  “Maybe so,” said Banks. “But that wasn’t the real intention, was it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know why Roy had to die,” said Banks.

  “What are you talking about?” Lambert’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper.

  “Because of where he went earlier that day, before you came to call on him. He found out the truth.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s where I’ve just been. Quainton.”

  Lambert said nothing. He seemed to shrink into himself.

  “Roy went to see your wife to ask her about the adoption,” Banks went on. “They’d never met before. If it was true, he would probably have agreed to keep quiet about it all and keep Jennifer quiet, too. But Roy found out what I found out. That you and your wife have a baby girl called Nina and she needs a new heart. And the only heart that can help a baby in need of a transplant is the heart of another baby. You know what the chances are of getting your hands on one by normal routes, so when you found out one of Mazuryk’s girls was pregnant—not just any girl, mind you, but Carmen, intelligent, healthy and clean—you struck a deal. You’d pay Mazuryk for the privilege of adopting Carmen’s baby. That way he wouldn’t be out of pocket when she couldn’t work during her pregnancy. But you weren’t adopting the baby, were you? You were buying the baby’s heart. I don’t know if Mazuryk was in on it with you, but one way or another, as soon as that baby was born, it was going to be on its way to Switzerland. Were you going to kill it yourself, or have you paid a crooked doctor to do that for you?”

  “Don’t be absurd. This is pure fantasy.”

  “Is it? My guess is that you had someone lined up, a crooked doctor from your Balkan days, probably. You wouldn’t have the stomach to do it yourself. And then there’s the Swiss clinic, all ready to go at a moment’s notice, no questions asked. Got it all organized, haven’t you?”

  Lambert squirmed like a toad on his bed of broken wood and twisted metal. At some point, he had cut his lip and the blood welled up as he spoke. “Look, you’re obviously off your rocker, Banks. Let me go and we’ll say no more about this.”

  He made to get up again but Banks kicked him down and swung the bar dangerously close to his head.

  “Stay where you are. Don’t you realize it’s over? Do you think that even your wife will want to know you after what you had planned?”

  “She doesn’t know,” said Lambert. “If you’ve—”

  “I haven’t. Not yet. Tell me the truth, Gareth. How could you be sure you had a match? Who did the tests?”

  “What tests?” Lambert paused and rubbed his shoulder.

  “Come on, Gareth. Humor me. Tell me all about it.”

  Lambert was quiet for several moments, then he spoke. “The blood groups matched,” he said. “That’s the best you can hope for with babies, and even the blood group doesn’t matter if they’re newborn. Do you think I haven’t researched it? The heart only survives six hours outside the body, so you do the transplant first and ask questions later. A chance. It was all I asked for.”

  Though Banks had pieced it all together after seeing Mercedes and Nina, he could still hardly believe it now that he was actually hearing it, that this man had cold-bloodedly bought a baby and planned to use its heart to save his daughter’s life. “Do you have even the slightest idea what you’re saying?” he said.

  “Look,” said Lambert. “What chance did it have with a mother like that? Huh? Tell me. Look at her. A common prostitute. A slut. This way at least the baby could serve some purpose in being born. These people give birth in fields and think nothing of it. You haven’t seen them, Banks. You haven’t been there. I have. I know them. I’ve lived with them. They’re animals. Their filthy children wander the streets and beg and steal and grow up to be criminals and prostitutes, just like their parents. The orphanages are full of abandoned children and none of them has a chance. My child will have a chance. She can make a difference in life. Achieve something. Contribute something.”

  Banks shook his head in disgust. “I wondered where Roy drew the line,” he said, “and now I know. He’d turn a blind eye to most things for the sake of money and an old friendship. To the girls. To the illegal adoption. But not to this, not to the murder of an innocent baby for its heart. What did you do on Friday at the Albion Club? Offer him money to keep quiet or try to convince him you were morally right?”

  “We’d been talking all week about the girls, the adoption. Seeing Mercedes and finding out…well, that was the last straw for him.”

  “Why not tell the police straightaway? Why did he bother to meet with you?”

  “He wasn’t going to tell the police. He was going to tell you.”

  “What? But I am the police,” said Banks.

  Lambert shook his head. “You don’t understand. You’re his big brother. He expected you to handle it.”

  Banks felt stunned. He hadn’t realized Roy had been calling on him as much, if not more, as a brother than as a policeman: the brother who defended him from bullies. It made a difference. Roy always shied away from the police and he would expect Banks to sort the situation without letting it become official. Banks didn’t know if he could have done that even if they hadn’t killed Roy and Jennifer, even if he’d wanted to. Things had probably gone too far already.

  “So what happened at the club?” Banks asked.

  “He said he’d give me an hour to think about it, for friendship’s sake. He’d be in the casino if I wanted to talk. He also told me that he already had someone on her way to see you, but he could ring her mobile and bring her back if I agreed to drop my plans.”

  “What did you say after the hour was up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You could have lied, told him you’d drop the plans.”

  “He would still have known. Do you think he’d have let it go, not kept checking?”

  “I suppose not,” said Banks. “So you sent him to his death?”

  “I had to. What else could I do? I couldn’t abandon Nina and Mercedes. He was going to ruin everything. Mazuryk’s business, my Nina’s life. Mercedes’ life. Everything. Don’t you understand? I couldn’t give in to him. Without a new heart my daughter will die.”

  Blood dribbled over Lambert’s lower lip and bubbled as he spoke. Banks felt like hitting him again, but he knew if he started he might never stop.

  “So you had Roy killed.”

  “Not me. Mazuryk.”

  “Did Ma
zuryk know what you planned to do with Carmen’s baby?”

  “Are you crazy? Nobody knew except me and the doctor I was paying. And the doctor owed me. I helped him out of a jam once. You can’t prove anything, you know. I’ll deny it all. I’ll tell them you beat me up and made me admit to things I haven’t done. Look at me, I’m all bruised and bleeding.”

  “Not nearly enough,” said Banks. “You made a call to Mazuryk from the Albion Club about Roy being a loose cannon, and Mazuryk came himself, or sent Broda to pick up Roy outside and bring him here.”

  “I told him Roy was threatening to tell everything. All Mazuryk cared about was the girls, the profits they made for him.”

  “So Mazuryk protected his interests, and you protected yours?”

  “What else could I do? What would you do if it was your daughter?”

  Banks didn’t want to think about that one. “Why did they go back and take Roy’s computer? Who did that? There couldn’t be anything on it about the baby because he’d only just got back from seeing Mercedes when you arrived.”

  “Mazuryk’s men. Not Artyom and Boris. Others. Not very bright. We thought he might have information on it. About me. About Mazuryk’s operation, the girls. We had talked a lot that week. I really thought he was interested at one time. I told him things. Roy used his computer a lot.”

  And they hadn’t taken the mobile because they hadn’t been in the kitchen, hadn’t even known it was there, Banks guessed. Not that it mattered. Roy and Lambert had been careful not to use mobiles in their communications. They knew how wide open and incriminating such phone use could be. That was why most criminals used stolen ones. And Banks doubted that Roy had ever been in direct telephone contact with Mazuryk or Broda. Later, of course, Broda had used the mobile to send his calling card, his sick joke. “What changed things in the first place?”

  “If that stupid whore hadn’t told Roy’s girlfriend that some girls had been abducted and badly treated, I don’t think any of this would have happened,” said Lambert, “and your brother and me would have been partners. I spent that week trying to convince Roy it was still the right thing to do but he didn’t like the idea that the girls were working against their will. That’s when I told him about the adoption. I thought he would see what a good thing it was.”

  “And did he?”

  “He wasn’t convinced. Obviously. But it softened him a bit. Until he went to see Mercedes.”

  Roy a pimp, or procurer? Banks found it hard to imagine. He would probably have described himself as an investor in an escort agency, or perhaps as a travel consultant. At least his spiritual and moral conversion hadn’t cut into his desire to make a profit from just about anything, short of illegal body parts. “And to threaten my parents? Whose idea what that?”

  “Mazuryk’s. When the digital photo they sent didn’t scare you off, they had to try stronger measures. They could have killed you, but I told them the last thing they needed right then was a dead policeman hot on the heels of his brother. I told them that, Banks. I saved your life. These people are not always reasonable, but I have spent time with them. I can talk to them. They followed you home and back and showed themselves on the road, to frighten you off.”

  “I don’t frighten that easily. And Jennifer Clewes?”

  “They were already worried about her. At first she was happy enough to help Dr. Lukas take care of the girls, but she got too friendly and Mazuryk was worried someone might actually let something slip about how they really came to be there. They thought Carmen was getting too cocky because she didn’t have to turn tricks anymore, and when Artyom saw them talking together, Carmen and Jennifer Clewes, he got suspicious and told Mazuryk. They made Carmen tell them what she had said. Without hurting her physically, you understand. They couldn’t risk harming the baby.”

  “Don’t tell me. They threatened to harm her parents back home.”

  “Possibly. But Artyom and Boris had been keeping an eye on Roy’s girl for a few days, then when she took off like that at the same time I told Mazuryk that Roy was out of control…Look, I wasn’t there…I don’t know for sure how it happened. But it wasn’t me.”

  “But you know what happened. You set it in motion.”

  “Max told me after it was done. They found out where she was going. Roy told Mazuryk when they were beating him and he phoned Artyom in the car. As soon as she got to a quiet spot on the road, they killed her. Artyom was going to kill you, too, just in case, but you weren’t there. He’s not very bright.”

  “It’s a pity he didn’t,” said Banks, “because now Mazuryk is dead, Artyom is dead and the rest are going to jail. And you…”

  “What about me?”

  “I can’t decide whether to kill you or turn you in.”

  And it was true. Banks had never in his life felt like killing someone as much as he felt like killing Gareth Lambert at that moment. If he’d had a gun, he might have done it. He hefted the iron bar, heavy in his hand, and smacked it against his palm again. That would do it. One swift blow. Crush his skull like an eggshell. Lambert was looking at him, fear in his eyes.

  “No!” he said, holding his hands out to protect his face. “Don’t. Don’t kill me.”

  It wasn’t just revenge for Roy, but also because he had never come across anyone so loathsome he’d even contemplate doing what Lambert was doing, let alone defend it and justify it. He could not have imagined such a thing if he hadn’t gone to see Mercedes Lambert, as Roy had, and heard poor Nina cry. Mercedes Lambert obviously knew nothing about her husband’s unholy scheme. The disgust Banks felt churned the bile in his stomach and he could bear to look at Lambert no longer.

  “What are you going to do? Are you going to hurt me?” Lambert whined.

  Banks hurled the iron bar. It clanged into the tangled metal about two inches above Lambert’s head. Then Banks walked away, bent over and vomited on the floor. When he had finished, he took a few deep breaths, hands on his knees, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and took out his mobile.

  One evening a few days later, Banks crossed the old pack-horse bridge at the western end of Helmthorpe High Street and turned right on the riverside path. It was a walk he had often enjoyed before. Flat and easy, between the trees and water, no hills to climb, and he’d end up back in Helmthorpe, where there were three pubs to choose from.

  As he walked he thought about the events of the past month, how it had all started that night he saw Penny Cartwright in the Dog and Gun singing “Strange Affair.” He thought about Roy, Jennifer Clewes, Carmen Petri, Dieter Ganz and the rest.

  And Gareth Lambert.

  Now it was just about over. Artyom and Mazuryk were dead. Gareth Lambert was in custody, along with Boris and Max Broda, and the odds were good that they would get very long sentences. Banks’s actions had forced his hand, but Dieter Ganz seemed to think his team had enough evidence to convict them on charges of trafficking in underage girls across international borders for the purposes of prostitution. Unfortunately, raids on similar houses in Paris, Berlin and Rome had netted only minor players, as word of what had happened in London spread fast. In the Balkans, guides, drivers, kidnappers and traders had scattered. They would be back, though, Dieter had told Banks, and he would be waiting for them.

  Whether Lambert would be tied to the conspiracy to kill Roy Banks and Jennifer Clewes was another matter. Lambert’s more sinister intentions couldn’t be proved. And as he had said, only he and the doctor knew what they intended to do with Carmen’s baby, and neither was talking. Banks had received a reprimand for his treatment of Lambert at the abandoned factory, which would also tend to discredit anything he claimed Lambert had told him. Still, there was a good chance that Max Broda would implicate him in the conspiracy rather than take the fall alone. And Lambert’s mobile phone records for that Friday, the eleventh of June, at the Albion Club, showed a call to Mazuryk’s number at about eleven o’clock.

  As for the rest, Banks wasn’t quite sure how things would turn o
ut. Mazuryk’s girls would eventually be processed and sent home, but who was going to repair their lives, heal their broken spirits? Perhaps some would recover in time and move on, but others would drift back into the only life they knew. Carmen Petri, Annie had told Banks, was to be reunited with her parents in Romania, where, contrary to what Gareth Lambert thought, there was a good chance that her baby might end up with a decent crack at life. Carmen had been abducted from the street three years ago and in all that time her parents hadn’t given up hoping she was still alive.

  Of all of them, perhaps Mercedes Lambert had come out of it worst of all, and Banks felt deeply for her. Not only was her husband probably going to jail for a long time, but in all likelihood, short of a miracle, her baby, Nina, was going to die soon. The police were investigating Banks’s accusation and had questioned her about it, so now she also had to live with the knowledge of what her husband had been about to do. Banks could only imagine how knowledge like that might tear a mother apart and haunt her dreams forever. What might have been. The nameless, faceless issue of a Romanian prostitute she had never met measured against the life of her daughter.

  His mind turned to other thoughts. He had just got back from Roy’s funeral in Peterborough. Needless to say, it had been a sad and tearful affair, but at least he had spent some time with Brian and Tracy, who had come in for the occasion, and it had given his parents some sense of that closure they valued so much. Banks never really got it. For him there was no closure.