‘What, Smert and his temper?’
‘About my house?’
‘Come on, Dr Finch, give me some credit… But yes, that’s what he dragged me back here for. Looking for something on behalf of his master…’
His eyes darted around the room.
‘…You think it’s normally this messy. Please, Dr Finch, you can’t run an investigative operation if your files aren’t in order. That’s what I’ve been doing, putting everything back in place. Just took out a small ad. Have a girl starting next week.’
Finch looked around. He hadn’t noticed, but now Vax had said it, he saw that the curtain pole had been pulled off the wall. It was resting vertically in the corner, the material furled around it. The metal filing cabinets, too, had dents above the locks where the drawers could possibly have been jemmied open. A ransacking would also explain the piles of papers everywhere. But it was not entirely convincing – about as convincing as the turning over of his own place.
‘What was he looking for?’
‘Who?’
‘Smert… Schmert?’
‘Information.’
‘What information?’
‘On something called Ursa…’
Finch blew out a sigh. He hadn’t realised it, but he’d begun pacing up and down.
‘And so here we are yet again,’ he quipped sarcastically. ‘The mystery inside the riddle inside the bloody enigma.’
‘Why, do you know something?’ asked Vax.
Finch smiled and shook his head in mock disbelief.
‘Nice try, Vax… I mean, really, that was a very nice try. You almost had me…’
‘But I—’
‘Come on, man, I wasn’t born yesterday.’
‘It’s the truth!’
‘Truth is, Vax, that if you’d angered these people, got in their way, why didn’t Smert…’
He repeated it, pronouncing it again in an exaggerated fashion.
‘…Schmert, just bump you off, something he seems very adept at?’
‘Because I’ve got something on them… on Chilcot… something that will be passed into influential hands if anything should happen to me… Call it my insurance policy… Come on, Doctor, you know how to play that game.’
Finch didn’t like the insinuation.
‘Well I’ve got an idea, Vax. How about this?’ said Finch. ‘How about if I frogmarch you straight over to Chepstow Place right now? Have it out with this Chilcot character? Thrash it out in the open. Get to the bottom of it all.’
Vax squirmed beneath his bindings.
‘No, Finch… No, no, no!’
Finch taunted him with his gun. He waved it just inches from Vax’s nose this time. More hair dye had run.
‘Seems like a good idea to me, Vax… Conscious or unconscious, makes no difference how I get you there.’
Finch swung back his gun again, the butt of the pistol aimed straight for Vax’s nose. Vax flinched.
‘Please, no… that would be madness!’
‘Would it? I thought there were guardian angels watching over me? What have I got to lose? Or is it because Vax, or whoever the hell you are… YOU’RE NOT BLOODY TELLING ME EVERYTHING?!’
Finch was so tired, so battered, he again didn’t know where the move had come from. It certainly wasn’t premeditated. But this time he shoved the gun barrel right into Vax’s open mouth. The man’s eyes grew so wide, he thought they’d pop out of his head. He moaned and groaned and choked.
‘You’ve got five seconds. Five…’
He could feel the bleat and whine of protest.
‘Four…’
It transformed, according to Finch’s ears, into what sounded, curiously, like the sound of a mewling guinea pig.
‘Three…’
There were tears in Vax’s eyes.
‘Two…’
Finch cocked the hammer.
‘One…’
‘Okay, okay…!’ he felt him mumble, his tongue caught round the barrel.
Finch pulled the gun out. The sight rasped on the man’s front teeth.
Vax panted, simultaneously sucking hard for air and spitting out the taste of metal.
‘I’ll be straight with you…’ he wheezed, ‘but I do so for two reasons.’
‘I’m listening.’
There was a water jug on the filing cabinet. Finch filled a glass and put it to the man’s lips, sloshing half of it down his shirt front. He gulped and spluttered and panted some more.
‘The most pressing reason, Dr Finch, is that you shouldn’t be here. Neither of us should. Not together, not like this…’
‘And two?’
He huffed and puffed for more air.
‘Two is that I genuinely believe you don’t know what Ursa is. You just proved it.’
‘I thought you didn’t know either.’
‘Sorry, just part of the act,’ he said. ‘Though my name is Vax.’
‘So then, Vax… talk…’
‘It’s not that simple.’
‘Yes it is.’
‘It’s not. What I know… about my client… the one who commissioned me and, more importantly, about Ursa… you need to see it to truly understand. It’s complex. Plus, I’ve a feeling this isn’t going to turn out well for me… not now. In which case, I’ve just added you to our insurance policy… I mean, carrying things on in the event I don’t make it.’
‘Our insurance.’
‘You’ll soon understand.’
Vax nodded to the desk drawer.
‘There.’
‘What?’
‘In there… my keys… take them…’
‘Why should I do that?’
‘I live just up towards Euston, a basement flat off Fitzroy Square, 29B. A fifteen-minute walk, ten if we go fast…’
‘We?’
‘You untie me. You take me there. I show you. You can keep your gun pressed in my back the whole way. In your custody.’
Finch laughed.
‘I’ll give you credit, Vax. You can talk your way out of anything. How about I leave you tied up here and go there myself?’
He slid open the drawer. There was a bunch of keys attached to a rabbit’s foot.
‘No, no, no, no… You can’t leave me here. Not like this. If Smert were to come by—’
‘I thought you had something on them?’
‘Not if they think we’re in cahoots.’
‘We’re not in cahoots, Vax…’
He swigged straight from the water jug himself.
‘…in which case, yep, I think I’ll leave you right here.’
There was genuine panic in the way Vax said it.
‘YOU CAN’T!’
‘Believe me, Vax, I can. So tell me… Your flat… What was it we were supposed to be looking for?’
‘No, Dr Finch, YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO ME!’
‘Oh yeah…?’
He scooped Vax’s keys into his pocket.
‘…But I’ll make a deal with you, Vax. Tell me what it is I’m supposed to find and I’ll take a look. If your story’s genuine, I’ll come right back, we’ll be brothers in arms… bosom pals… whatever you say…’
‘How do I know I can trust you, Dr Finch?’
Finch spluttered incredulity.
‘You? Trust me?’
‘Yes, Doctor. The issue here isn’t whether you trust me now, but whether I trust you.’
‘You don’t… You have to go with your instinct. But given what I’ve been through already, I’d say I’m a pretty safe bet…’
He pulled out his silk handkerchief – Edward’s silk handkerchief, navy blue with white polka dots – from his breast pocket.
‘…But if you’re lying to me, Vax, then maybe, just maybe, I’ll make a telephone call to Chilcot’s house… I’ve got his number… I’ll tell him you’ve just sung like a canary… and that you’re sitting here trussed up like a turkey… Pardon the similes.’
He nodded to the candlestick telephone on the desk.
&
nbsp; ‘You wouldn’t?!’
‘Try me.’
‘Under my bed,’ he flustered, ‘there’s a loose floorboard… has a bent nail poking up… It’s where I’ve hidden it… Didn’t trust it in the office… You see what’s in there, replace everything exactly as you found it… exactly as you found it, not a hair out of place… you’ll see I’m genuine…’
He stared Finch directly in the eye.
‘…And if you want to talk about trust? Goddammit, I’ve just placed my life in your hands.’
Finch yanked the handkerchief taut…
‘Please,’ protested Vax. ‘There’s no need…’
…and pulled it hard into his mouth, tying the gag at the back. He took the door key, ready to lock Vax in as he left.
‘If you’ve played your cards right, Vax, I’ll be back in half an hour.’
Chapter Thirty
Fitzroy Square was less than a mile away from Vax’s shabby office. Finch headed north, cutting across busy Oxford Street and up Charlotte Street, past the Hundred Marks pub, the Sass art school, the Scala Theatre and the bijou eateries.
When he had followed the blue Rover car previously, it had diverted this way. If Smert had been forcing Vax at the point of a gun on a search of his properties – going to Vax’s home first – then such a detour made sense. Though they would have had barely any time there. Perhaps they had changed their mind? Perhaps Vax had persuaded Smert that what he was seeking lay in the Soho office? Maybe they were deterred for some other reason?
Who knew with Vax? He was still an unknown quantity. He had hinted at knowledge of Finch’s former brush with military intelligence, which suggested he knew far more about events than he was letting on. Finch pondered that if he had simply heeded the warning Vax had given him at the Cathay restaurant, as Vax had reminded him, he might be going about his everyday business untrammelled.
Then again, looking at it from another point of view, Vax was in a desperate situation a few minutes ago and – slippery as an eel – had managed to wriggle his way out of his predicament, possibly telling Finch any old story to serve his purpose. Finch kept his hand on the Colt revolver in his pocket.
There was one thing that stung Finch and gave him pause – that parting shot, Vax’s urgent insistence that he had placed his life in Finch’s hands. There was something that suggested the slipping of a mask – his reference to it being part of an ‘act’, the brief flicker of an expression and a voice slightly changed.
Finch felt bad – less about clobbering Vax with his gun than for the brutal way he had then shoved the barrel into his mouth. It was a cruel and unnecessary flourish – sadistic. He thought of Sun Tzu: ‘To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.’
He was disturbed by the capacity for violence that lurked deep within him. He had unleashed it once before – back in South Africa, a case of kill or be killed. He was not sure any more whether he truly liked himself. A psychiatrist would have a field day.
A news stand, covered by a striped awning, had an array of newspapers and magazines on its racks, with all the usual bold-type headlines agitating for war against Russia. The Morning Post, however, carried an insider’s hint of an ‘international summit’, suggestive, if not of immediate peace, then of a possible alternative way of achieving a diplomatic resolution. Finch yearned to get up to speed on current affairs – his travails of the past few days meant he was now lagging way behind.
Fitzroy Square was a large open space, set between fine Georgian buildings made from Portland stone, not far from Regents Park, hemmed in on its north and east sides by the busy Euston and Tottenham Court Roads. It had a cluster of plane trees and a circular garden in the centre. In a burst of afternoon sunshine, some children thundered past, chasing a hoop. A few adults strolled back and forth; some walked dogs, but it was fairly quiet. It had a cheap hotel for railway travellers and some boarding houses. Judging by the casual style of the people thereabouts, it fancied itself as bohemian.
Number 29 was on the western side of the square, its basement – 29B – down some dank, mildewed steps upon which water dripped. Finch kept his distance as he walked past several times, looking about him the whole while. The door appeared to be covered by a metal concertina grille, the kind that shopkeepers pulled across their storefronts.
Satisfied that the coast was clear, he descended. The dripping water from an overflow pipe had started to form into a stalactite. Or was it stalagmite? He could never remember. There was rubbish – bits of newspaper and food wrappings – that had been blown (or thrown) down into the basement well, and the dustbin itself was overflowing. He thought he heard the scuttling of rats.
Finch went through the keys attached to the sad and sinister rabbit’s foot, though when he identified the correct one for the grille, he realised that it had already been forced open, just pulled back to rest in place – again the familiar work of a crowbar or some tool used to prise the lock, backed by considerable strength.
When he slid the grille back out of the way, he saw that the lower left of the nine frosted glass panes that constituted the upper half of the front door had been smashed in. It was the one right over the door handle. And the door was now unlocked.
Finch drew his gun, flipped off the safety catch and gently prodded the door open with his foot. There was enough light coming through the window for him to see inside and, with a couple of darting movements of his head, he managed to get a look around the door frame. Cautiously he entered, primed for any movement.
The main room was a sitting room but there were two doors at the rear. The door to the left looked to lead to an interior passage to elsewhere in the building. It had a white towel hanging on the back of it and a big key on a nail in the wall. Finch supposed it was the way to the bathroom or WC, probably a kitchen too, meaning the door led to up to a hallway and communal facilities. He tried it. It was locked.
The other door, hanging ajar, was surely to Vax’s bedroom. Finch approached slowly, nudged it open, led with his gun and looked in. The room was barely big enough for its single bed. There was no one in there.
The main living space was cluttered, much as Vax’s office was, and smelled inevitably of lavender. On the window sill was an earthenware vase with a small bush in it. A table had the remnants of a meal: a plate of bacon and eggs and a half-drunk cup of tea. They were sitting on a wooden tray, which fitted with Finch’s hunch about shared facilities and carting things back and forth.
There was a small coal fireplace, a threadbare settee, a tatty rug, a bookcase and a writing desk. Vax, the detective – if that’s what he was – was evidently fond of crime writer Fergus Hume. On the table was a programme from a recent Association football match, Woolwich Arsenal versus Aston Villa.
The desk contained various letters and bills – one from a grocer, another from a tailor – that were all addressed to Clive Vax, or Clive V. Vax if one was to be precise – the V standing for Victor as was written on one letter, a rather depressing bank statement that suggested Vax was down on his uppers.
One missive, addressed to Vax specifically as a ‘Private Investigator’, from a Mrs Babcock of Twickenham, thanked him for his good work in tracking down her missing (grown-up) daughter, but wondered when he might return the gold bracelet that had been used in identifying said mother to said child.
The compact bedroom had a small wardrobe at the foot of the bed. The cramped confines prevented it from opening fully – not that the door functioned properly anyway, wedged closed with a folded piece of brown card. The bed was unmade, the pillows greasy – probably from all the hair dye.
There was a gas lamp and Finch lit it. He set it on the bare floorboards next to the bed and peered under. There was a stack of periodicals – magazines. On pulling them out he saw they were of a certain kind: several editions of a publication called Gentlemen’s Monthly. GM, as it styled itself, fancied itself as a publication of lifestyle, with various articles about sporting goods and motorcars, though its chief fascina
tion, according to the well-thumbed pages, was the middle section devoted to photographs of coyly smiling women either in their undergarments or… in interesting arrangement… no undergarments at all.
Finch put his head on the ground and looked along the line of the dust-laden floor. At the far side, against the wall, he saw a crooked nail poking up. He manoeuvred the bed out of the way within the cramped confines, leaned over and yanked the section of floorboard up – a two-foot length, custom-built as a hideaway. It was hard to see and he brought the lamp over… There was nothing in there.
Angered and alarmed by the possibility that Vax had either duped him, or someone had beaten him to the stashed information first, he leaned over again, thrust his arm in up to the elbow, poked about and – this time – felt something rectangular and hard wedged in at the back. He pulled it out. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied tightly with twine – too thick for him to snap – and with a knot impossible to unpick.
He took it to Vax’s desk, set down his gun and found a letter opener with a serrated edge on one side of the blade designed for just such a purpose. As the string pinged open and he peeled back the paper, he hit a cold wall of shock, the kind that made his head swim and pulsated behind his eyes. It was a book…
…Henry James’ The Golden Bowl.
It had reddish-brown linen binding and the corner of page seventeen turned down. It had ‘A.J.’ inscribed on the endpaper. He felt nauseous, light-headed and sensed the chill of cold sweat between his shoulder blades. Annie! Dear, sweet Annie. She had wanted nothing to do with this. And now…?
He knew he must get out of there, and get out of there fast. He checked his watch. He had already been gone twenty-five minutes and he speculated whether, in his absence, the person who had planted this, clearly to taunt him, to signal to him, might already have done for Vax – a man he’d left alone, a sitting duck.
Unless Vax…?
You bastard. Did you just set me up?
He shoved the book in his jacket pocket. Instinct told him to head straight for the Savoy. They would have got to Annie… taken Annie… only in the last couple of hours. But he knew his presence there would result in immediate arrest, with his plea for urgency lost amid everything else. Whoever had done this was banking on his impulsive response – his Achilles heel.
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