Seven Days to a Killing

by Clive Egleton

  He remembered that boy well, a thin boy who seemed almost emaciated, and who had found it difficult to hold the AK 47 Kalashnikov automatic rifle in his small hands, and looking back now over the years, Tarrant realised that he must have been close to David’s age. He saw the tired reflection of his face in the mirror. ‘You and me, Drabble,’ he said aloud, ‘what’s the difference between us?’

  Fear was being replaced by a consuming hatred and a deep rooted conviction that somehow, somewhere, he would extract payment in full from Drabble, but until that opportunity arose, Tarrant would act like a pliant tree and bend with the wind. He would mask his feelings as he had been trained to do; he would, if necessary, betray everything he represented to preserve David’s life until he was out of harm’s way, and then, by Christ, even if it took him twenty years, he would track down and kill Drabble.

  He turned away angrily and started to lay out an additional change of clothing on the bed because he didn’t want Alex to know that he had been lying. The telephone summoned him in the middle of packing and he went into the other room to answer its strident call.

  It was Alex, and her voice was stretched tight like a piano wire. She said, ‘Drabble has been in touch again and I don’t know how to get hold of your Mr Harper.’ Her voice rose and the words came separately as if each required a special effort of will-power to get them out. ‘YOU HAD BETTER DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT, JOHN, BECAUSE HE IS TORTURING DAVID. YOU HEAR ME? HE’S TORTURING OUR SON.’

  It took him all of fifteen minutes to calm Alex down and then he phoned Harper.

  6

  HARPER WAS WAITING FOR HIM ON THE PAVEMENT AS TARRANT PULLED UP outside the flat and got out of the Zephyr. He eyed the grip in Tarrant’s hand and said, ‘You chose an odd time to leave your wife on her own.’

  ‘I didn’t know Drabble was going to call her.’

  ‘No,’ Harper said coldly, ‘no, I don’t suppose you did, and of course you also wouldn’t know that Drabble has collected the bill of sale.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Because of a lack of foresight on our part.’ Harper walked up the short flight of steps and rang the bell. ‘He’s made fools of us, Tarrant. He’s too clever for words, isn’t he? Keeps one jump ahead all the time.’

  ‘He’s going to make a mistake sooner or later.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘I know so.’

  ‘I wish I shared your confidence,’ Harper said acidly.

  Alex opened the door and stood to one side to let them enter. Her eyes told him that she had been crying and when she puffed on the cigarette, Tarrant noticed that her hand was shaking. He remembered that she had given up smoking soon after they had married and, except for a brief period when Sarah had been killed, she had never reverted to the habit. She rarely drank either, but the whisky was strong on her breath. Tarrant put out a hand in sympathy but she appeared to shrink away, and he allowed his arm to drop.

  Harper said, ‘Your husband tells me that Drabble has been in touch with you, Mrs Tarrant?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘It’s all there on the tape,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I could listen to it again.’

  ‘I expect it must have been very harrowing for you.’ Harper meant to be considerate but the words sounded trite and Alex ignored him.

  Looking at Tarrant, she said, ‘If you want me, I’ll be in my room.’ She left them outside the lounge with a curt nod of dismissal, and Tarrant could see that Harper felt awkward, but he made no attempt to excuse Alex’s behaviour. He figured that if Harper couldn’t see for himself that she was overwrought, he would have to be peculiarly insensitive. And in a way he was, for Harper was in no mood to prevaricate. As soon as they entered the lounge, he told the duty policeman to play back the latest tape.

  It began with Alex. She said, ‘9984.’

  The bleeps started and then ceased abruptly as the coins were fed into the box.

  ‘Mrs Tarrant?’

  ‘Yes, who’s speaking?’

  ‘Drabble—you should know me by now. Is your husband in?’

  ‘No, he’s out, he’ll be away for about an hour.’

  ‘Well, I suppose if this conversation is being taped, it hardly matters who I speak to, does it?’

  ‘If you say so,’ she said in a dull voice.

  There was a pause lasting a few seconds during which time Drabble apparently debated whether or not to ring off. In the event, he didn’t.

  ‘I’ll take delivery of the diamonds tomorrow at noon and in Paris. It has to be Paris, and your husband will be the courier because we know him by sight and no one else will do. He will go to the Cercle National des Armees in the Place Saint-Augustin, where he will wait until we contact him. For obvious reasons, I will now pause for about fifteen minutes and then call you again. Until I do, you must stay away from the telephone, Mrs Tarrant, because I don’t want to hear an engaged signal when I come back to you.’

  There was a few seconds of silence and then a flat voice said, ‘This message was timed at 14:38 and lasted for one minute twenty-eight seconds. Attempts to trace the call ended in failure.’

  Harper looked at the duty policeman. ‘Did you record those comments?’ he said.

  The man nodded and placed a finger against his lips.

  Alex said, ‘9984.’

  ‘Just to make it very clear to you, Mrs Tarrant, we expect your husband to arrive at the Paris RV at twelve noon, give or take five minutes either way. Incidentally, we don’t want Mr Harper to come up with any bright ideas. This should help to convince him that we mean business…’

  The scream started high and tailed off into a fit of sobbing, and Tarrant knew that it would rise again as soon as he heard David say, ‘Please, please Mr Drabble, please don’t do that again.’ It was but a small consolation to know that Drabble had made another track of the original recording.

  Harper said, ‘Kill it, I’ve heard enough.’ He turned and stared at Tarrant. ‘I suppose that was your son?’ he said slowly.

  ‘Jesus Christ, of course it was.’

  ‘I just wondered.’

  ‘If you don’t believe me, ask Alex—you saw the expression on her face when we arrived here.’

  ‘Yes; I also saw the look on your face just a minute ago. You know what surprised me, Tarrant? You showed little sign of emotion.’

  ‘I’ve been trained to hide my feelings.’

  ‘They seem to know you by sight—any idea why?’

  ‘I expect it’s because they’ve been watching me for bloody weeks.’

  Harper said, ‘Somehow I thought you would make that point. Now it seems that I really will have to purchase those stones.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You seem surprised,’ Harper said mildly. ‘Surely you didn’t expect me to lay out half a million pounds when I could persuade the firm to let me have a receipted bill of sale for nothing, did you?’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘I go out and buy the diamonds from Rand and Goodbody while you get in touch with your mother-in-law. You’d better ask her to drop everything and get down here by six o’clock before we collect you.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Drew, Vincent and myself. We’re going to find out how well you can shoot. With half a million pounds at stake, I do not intend to take any chances.’

  ‘I won’t let you down.’

  ‘What a curious thing to say, Tarrant. Perhaps, like me, you don’t believe that this is just a simple case of kidnapping?’

  ‘I don’t know what you believe.’

  ‘Don’t you? It’s really very simple. Someone is being bought out, and I want to know who it is.’ He turned away from Tarrant. ‘Don’t bother to come to the door,’ he said, ‘I can see myself out.’

  Tarrant followed him out into the hall and cut short any protest from Harper before it could begin. ‘Don’t fret,’ he said, ‘I’m just going to see how Alex is.’

  He found her, not in her own bedroom but in David’s. She was sitting on th
e floor, her back resting against the bed, and there was an infinitely sad expression on her face.

  She looked up as he entered the room and said, ‘I came in here to be near him.’

  Tarrant sank down on the bed. No matter where he looked, the room bore the stamp of David. Airfix models of a Daring Class destroyer, a Leander Class frigate and a World War I American four-stack D.M.S. were arranged in line ahead across the front of his desk. The Complete Sherlock Holmes Short Stories rubbed shoulders with Haka! The All Blacks Story, The Second Saint Omnibus and Fighting Men and their Uniforms between book-ends perched on the wide window ledge. Suspended at varying heights from the ceiling were an ME 262, a Lockheed Starfighter and a Hawker Harrier, and pinned to the wardrobe door, was the Esso 1970 World Cup coin collection.

  ‘Are you going to Paris?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With the diamonds?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Somehow I expected Mr Harper to be difficult.’

  ‘He wants to get David back alive as much as you and I do.’

  ‘Are you sure of that?’ she said suspiciously.

  Tarrant stared at her. ‘Listen,’ he said tightly, ‘Drabble will get everything he’s asked for. What more do you want?’

  ‘The truth from you.’

  ‘Christ, we really have reached the end of the road, you and I, haven’t we?’

  ‘I think we reached it the day Sarah was killed.’

  ‘You blame me for that, don’t you?’

  Alex didn’t answer him; she looked down and fiddled with the hem of her skirt.

  ‘Sarah was killed in a road accident. It wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t mine, and it certainly wasn’t the truck driver’s. It happened because she ran across the road without looking. If I had been in England, if we had been living together, it still wouldn’t have made the slightest scrap of difference.’

  Alex said, and her voice was listless, ‘I was going to meet her, I usually did you know, but it was my birthday and you telephoned me from Aden just as I was about to leave, and but for that, I would have been there on time.’

  ‘Oh, love,’ he said gently, ‘you forget there was a Lollipop Lady on duty to see the kids across the road but Sarah ignored her.’

  ‘You always were good at seeing things in a rational light,’ she said listlessly. ‘I never could. I don’t know what I’ll do if anything should happen to David.’

  ‘He’ll come home safe,’ said Tarrant, ‘you have my word for it.’

  She turned and rested her head in his lap and her soft, chestnut hair brushed against his hands. ‘Will you be in danger?’ she said.

  ‘Where? In Paris?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I don’t think so—Harper is bound to send someone to look after me. He thinks it would be a wise move if your mother came down this evening and stayed with you.’

  ‘And you, what do you think?’

  ‘I think it would be for the best while I am away.’

  ‘Poor John,’ she said softly, ‘you don’t like her much, do you?’

  ‘It’s a mutual feeling. Will you phone her, or shall I?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Well, that’s settled then.’ He leaned down and kissed her on the lips. It was a long time since he had done that without Alex drawing her head away from him.

  ‘I want David back more than anything else in the world,’ she whispered. ‘You hear me?’

  ‘I hear you,’ he said.

  *

  They always went for a walk on Wednesday afternoons when the boy came home from school providing the weather was fine, and the old man and his grandson followed a set route which never varied. Walking east from Coxwold in the direction of Ampleforth, they stuck to the country road until they came to the narrow lane which led up to the gravel pit. Up to that point the dog was always kept on the lead, but once they turned into the lane, the mongrel bitch was allowed to run free. It was also their habit to rest at the top of the lane while the dog wandered off to explore the gravel pit and the surrounding area.

  It was possible to descend to the level of the water on the south side of the pit by means of a track which, in the past, had been used by the mechanical grabs to reach the shelf from where they could operate. The dog, more often than not, would find its way down to the shelf where it would wait until the boy, from above, threw a stick into the water which it would then retrieve. On that particular Wednesday afternoon, there was only one minor change in this long-established ritual. The dog, instead of retrieving the stick, returned with a sodden piece of clothing hanging from its jaws.

  It was the boy who discovered that it was a brand-new combat jacket, but its presence in the gravel pit aroused the curiosity of the old man whose common sense and twenty-five years experience in the police force before he retired, convinced him that it hadn’t got there by accident. In looking for an explanation, he came across a faint set of tyre marks which, in leaving the track, made straight for the gravel pit and ended abruptly at the edge of a sheer drop. Following this discovery, they returned to the village where the old man reported the matter to the local police constable who, after some discussion, decided to refer it to the Inspector at Thirsk.

  After due deliberation, the police at Thirsk telephoned 83 Corps Engineer Regiment at Ripon and asked them if they could provide two frogmen to search the gravel pit near Coxwold. At 5:40 pm the Sapper party arrived and commenced diving. They located the overturned Land-Rover and reported that, as far as they could see, no one was trapped inside it. The vehicle, they said, belonged to the 10th Parachute Battalion, Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve and its registration number was 66 WD 54.

  A check subsequently showed that none of the vehicles on charge to the 10th Parachute Battalion was missing. The computer at Headquarters Vehicle Organisation revealed that there was no army vehicle with that registration number.

  *

  In Harper’s world, twenty thousand pounds was enough money to keep an underground press running for a year in Czechoslovakia. For one hundred thousand pounds he knew where he could purchase twenty reconditioned Shermans armed with seventeen-pounder guns, and the same source would, for a further ten thousand, provide Harper with sufficient Armour-Piercing Discarding Sabot ammunition to give each tank fifty rounds. Apart from hardware, Harper also bought and sold men on occasions, but he had yet to meet one who was worth half a million.

  Those who passed information were either bought, suborned or did it for free. The really big fish like Oleg Penkovsky or Kim Philby were probably worth five hundred thousand, but they didn’t ask for payment; their kind were motivated by political convictions. Those who were suborned because they were perverted or had something to hide, didn’t have to be paid either, but it was politic to slip them a little gift now and then to keep them happy. Those who sold information were petty, greedy and small people who had no true idea of their value, and they could be had for a few hundred pounds. But this man, who demanded half a million pounds in uncut diamonds, was really someone rather special. He knew precisely how much he was worth and evidently there were people around who were prepared to see that he got it.

  Harper studied the list of names he had scribbled down on the sheet of foolscap. They embraced every single member of the General Purpose Intelligence Committee, and in his view, there was not one man on the list who was worth more than fifty thousand. Certainly, no single naval, army or air force Intelligence officer would fetch that amount of money on the transfer market unless, for some reason, he had access to Cabinet Papers, but someone in MI5 or the Secret Intelligence Service or MI6 might just command such a fee, and the Russians or the Chinese or even the CIA would be interested. He thought it would be just like the CIA to buy someone with money put up by a British Intelligence Agency; it was the sort of move which would appeal to their sense of humour.

  He had already spoken to the spooks in MI5 who were concerned with counter intelligence, but they were either hugging it close t
o their chests or else they really were unable to give him a lead. MI6 would never tell him anything because they had become very sensitive after Blake had shopped their people in Eastern Europe, but Edward Julyan might be able to help. As one of the principal controllers in the SIS, Julyan had a wide range of contacts, and they had known one another for years.

  Harper called him on the office scrambler. He said, ‘I have a problem, Edward, and I wondered if you could help me solve it?’

  ‘You know me, Cedric,’ said Julyan, ‘if it is within my power to help, I will.’ Julyan was not only a popular and handsome man, he also possessed natural charm.

  ‘Someone on the General Purpose Intelligence Committee is evidently worth half a million pounds to the opposition. I wondered if you had any idea who he might be?’

  There was a longish pause and then Julyan said smoothly, ‘I can’t think of anyone, apart from you and I, Cedric, and of course Poppleton of MI5. Does he have to be a member of the committee? We’d certainly pay that amount to get our hands on—say Marshal Zhukov for example. I imagine they would give a like sum for one of our Cabinet Ministers or any Permanent Under-Secretary come to that. Who’s putting up the money?’