Seven Days to a Killing

by Clive Egleton

  ‘I am,’ Harper said grimly. ‘I’m being blackmailed into it.’

  ‘Good God.’

  ‘Payment is to be made in uncut diamonds.’

  ‘Clever.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Oh yes, if your man knows a good cutter, the stones could well appreciate in value.’

  ‘Are you free this evening?’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘I thought you might like to have dinner with Muriel and me? It’s been quite some time since we had the pleasure of seeing Melissa.’

  ‘I’d love to come, Cedric, but I’m afraid Melissa won’t be able to make it. She’s holidaying in St Malo—I sent her away with the children for a week—she’s been a little run down of late and I thought she needed a break.’

  ‘You’d be very welcome to come on your own.’

  ‘Well, thank you, I’d like to very much. About what time?’

  ‘Let’s say eight-thirty,’ said Harper, ‘I still have one or two things to attend to.’

  7

  AS FAR AS JARMAN WAS CONCERNED, PARIS WAS A CITY IN A CLASS BY ITSELF; Berlin lived on a knife edge of intrigue, London was a vast seething dormitory and Tokyo was dying from carbon monoxide fumes, but Paris was a beautiful monument. Winter, spring, summer and autumn he had been a citizen of Paris for the last ten years, and he never tired of it. On those occasions when business took him away, he always returned to the capital fresh and eager, like a man with a new mistress.

  Jarman had an apartment in the Avenue de la Division Leclerc in the sixteenth arrondissement, which overlooked the Bois de Boulogne, and an office in the Rue Vingt-Neuf Juillet, from which address he ran a travel agency. The office was not large, but it was in a fashionable area, and it offered a splendid view of the Tuileries Gardens beyond the Rue de Rivoli. The business was not large either, but it was prosperous and it was still growing. People who rented a villa or a flat through Jarman were never disappointed because they could be sure that he personally had vetted them.

  Only that morning, Jarman had received a postcard from St Malo from a satisfied client. On the reverse side of the picture of St Vincent’s gateway, she had written:

  ‘Arrived here on Monday evening and so far the weather has been marvellous. Having a wonderfully lazy time on the beach. So glad you were able to let us have the apartment at 63 Rue de Rampart.’

  The card was written in English and signed ‘M’.

  Jarman leaned back in the chair and folded his arms behind his head. Through the frosted glass window in the door, he could see the shadowy form of Madame Laurent. Madame Laurent was a widow, a dumpy sallow woman who was efficient, loyal, hard working and best of all—unimaginative. And being unimaginative, she was not in the least bit curious. A younger woman might have wanted to know something of his private life.

  At thirty-two, Jarman was still a bachelor and he intended to remain so. Although he despised women, there was a girl-friend in the background, but theirs was a casual relationship. She lived outside Paris in St Germain, and often they didn’t see each other for weeks on end, and when they did meet it was merely to sublimate a desire for sex. It was an arrangement which suited both parties.

  He heard Madame Laurent close the drawers in the steel filing cabinet and Jarman immediately adopted a more businesslike attitude, so that when she came in to say goodnight, he was carefully drafting a letter. Although Jarman frequently stayed behind when she left to go home, Madame Laurent never failed to remind him to lock up. It was one of her few annoying habits. As soon as he heard the door close behind her, Jarman abandoned all pretence of work.

  For the greater part of his life, Jarman had been acting out a charade. As far as the concierge of his apartment building knew, he was Marcel Vergat and he had an identity card and a French passport to prove it. He was an Algerian colonist who had returned to Metropolitan France in June 1959, a year after de Gaulle had come to power, and the French police had long been satisfied that he had never been connected with the OAS. He had, in fact, done his national service with the Chasseurs Alpins, and for a short time he had been stationed in Baden Baden. He had moved to Paris when he was demobilised from the army and had immediately gone into business on the strength of a small legacy left to him by an uncle. The real Marcel Vergat had, however, been murdered in Oran by the FLN in the autumn of 1957 and his body had never been found.

  The sun, now streaming in through the side window, caught Jarman in profile and emphasised his sharp angular features, and the shaft of light playing across his face made him squint and he was obliged to get up and close the venetian blinds. The drumming sound of the evening rush-hour traffic moving along the Rue de Rivoli reached his ears.

  His eyes strayed to the painting of the Place du Tertre which concealed the small wall safe, and for a moment he hesitated before deciding that he might be pressed for time in the morning. He removed the picture, worked the combination and reaching inside the open safe, took out a wad of one hundred franc notes and an American passport which he stuffed into the breast pocket of his jacket. He then closed the safe, spun the combination dial and carefully replaced the picture. The phone trilled exactly on time, and answering it, he said, Trinite 98.66.370.’

  ‘Marcel Vergat?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Andrew McKee. I wondered if you had had any luck in finding a flat for me?’

  Jarman said, ‘As a matter of fact, Mr McKee, only this afternoon I managed to find an apartment in the Boulevard de Grenelle which I think might suit you. Unfortunately, the concierge is a little deaf and near-sighted, but I don’t think that need concern you.’

  McKee said, ‘I’m very grateful.’

  ‘You’re welcome. When can we expect you?’

  ‘An associate of mine is paying a flying visit to Paris tomorrow and I would like him to view the place before I sign the lease.’

  ‘I understand. When might we see this friend of yours?’

  ‘About twelve noon, I should think,’ said McKee.

  Jarman replaced the phone, unlocked the drawer in his desk and took out the photograph. He sat there for the better part of an hour studying every feature of the face—the deep lines either side of the mouth and the finer crease marks under the wide-set pale grey eyes, the almost square jaw and the short blond hair— before refreshing his memory of the physical dimensions of height—six feet one inch—and weight—one hundred and seventy five pounds—listed on the reverse side, and not until then was he satisfied that he could recognise Tarrant anywhere. Special Branch were not the only people who could open a locked door with a piece of mica.

  *

  Chesterman had thought it was going to be a simple job, but now he had to admit that Wray had been right all along. He had no idea of the immense size of the Ministry of Defence until he started to check through the records of the civilian employees, nor had he appreciated that this vast organisation was spread right across the face of London. Even when he had eliminated the branches in Stanmore and Chessington on the grounds that, since they were in the outer suburbs, Tarrant would have been unable to meet her for lunch, Chesterman was still left with the Admiralty Building, the main War Office Building, the Air Ministry, Horse Guards Parade, Lansdowne House, Old Scotland Yard, Northumberland House and the establishment in Oxford Street.

  It was not enough to scan the personnel currently employed in these branches, he also had to take into account the possibility that the woman might have been transferred to the Provinces within the last five months. He was looking for a woman who was in her thirties, who answered to the name of Barbara and who had red or auburn hair. This woman might be married, single, divorced or widowed, and there was no guarantee that Barbara was her first name; it could be just one of a number of Christian names or even an adopted name. Chesterman’s own wife, for example, had been christened Ada Jane but to her friends she was Jackie.

  At the end of a long day, and with the help of the Defence Ministry’s Security Branch, he had narro
wed the choice down to half a dozen women, one of whom had been transferred to Bath early in March. Since the security people were unwilling to release these six duplicate identity cards, Chesterman had to ask permission to photograph them. Unfortunately, by the time the initial check had been completed the only person who was able to authorise such a request had already gone home, and Chesterman reluctantly decided that it would have to wait until Thursday morning.

  *

  The indoor range at Braintree Hill in Essex used to be the recreation hall and cinema for the inmates of the World War II POW Camp. The original chain-link fence and watch-towers around the perimeter were reminders of the past and some of the wooden huts were still standing with their windows intact; the camp was too remote and too well patrolled by guard dogs to attract vandals. Harper, who cherished a reputation for being droll, referred to it as his place in the country.

  They had left Chiswick before Alex’s mother had arrived and the journey had taken them less than forty minutes because Drew was driving, and Drew and the Capri 2000 were sympatico. He had carved through the traffic using the short, stubby gear lever as if it were a natural extension of his left arm, and there was no doubt that he had got the best out of the car. Where there was a thirty-mile-an-hour limit, he was rarely doing less than fifty, where the roads were derestricted the needle of the speedometer flirted with the hundred mark.

  Drew was twenty-six and very sure of himself. He was every playwright’s idea of what an aggressive middle-class young man should look like; Vincent, with his thick black hair, burly frame and sideburns would have been type-cast as a street trader. In fact Drew had been born in West Ham and had left school at fifteen, while Vincent, who was twelve years older, had been educated at Rugby. They were as different as chalk and cheese, but working together, they made a formidable team. Of the two, Tarrant would have preferred it if Vincent had been detailed off to take him through the firing practice but instead he was landed with Drew.

  Drew said, ‘I don’t know whether you have used this type of range before but I will explain how it works anyway.’ He pointed towards the stage. Up there, instead of a fixed cinema screen, we have a continuously moving belt of white linen against which Vincent will project the film strip. When you shoot at the target, the sound waves will freeze the picture and then we will be able to see whether you’ve hit anything or not.’

  ‘It’s similar to one of our training theatres,’ said Tarrant.

  ‘Oh really?’ Drew’s tone was a masterpiece of studied insolence. ‘Well, I don’t know how you people in the army shoot, but we don’t hold the pistol in an outstretched arm like some eighteenth- century duellist. If the target is five to ten yards away, we hold the pistol two-handed at chest level and keep both eyes open. At a greater range, we bring the weapon up to near eye level and take a more deliberate aim.’

  Tarrant said, ‘Are you sure there isn’t anything else I should know?’

  Drew handed him a pair of ear defenders. ‘You’ll need these,’ he said. ‘We can’t have you claiming a disability pension because your eardrums have been perforated.’ He took a 9-mm Walther P38 out of his shoulder holster, removed the magazine from the butt, and cleared the breech before handing it over to Tarrant. ‘You’ll have to use my gun,’ he said, ‘and we’ll start at the ten- yard point.’

  ‘How many rounds have I got?’

  ‘Six,’ said Drew. ‘Let’s see if you can hit anything with them.’

  The lights were dimmed and Tarrant found himself looking down a narrow, poorly lit street of terraced houses. The two men moving towards him on either side of the road were no more than a faint blur, but he noticed that when one moved, the other man covered him forward. Tarrant noted the pool of light around each street lamp and waited until the leading man was silhouetted and in range, and then he fired twice, swivelled and fired twice more, and such was the speed of his reaction, that the crack of the first round merged with the last. The still picture showed that the leading man had been hit in the chest by two bullets spaced less than an inch apart, the more distant target had been shot in the right shoulder and head.

  The scene changed to a crowded street in broad daylight. The camera zoomed in on a bank twenty-five yards from Tarrant and focused obliquely on a woman who stood frozen in the entrance. Someone pushed her forward and, losing her balance, she fell off the bottom step. For a split second, the head and shoulders of a masked man were in view amongst the eddying crowd on the pavement and Tarrant, taking deliberate aim, fired once, and then noticing the car pulling away from the kerb, fired again into its windscreen.

  Drew removed the ear defenders. ‘Why didn’t you go for the tyres?’ he said.

  ‘You know why,’ said Tarrant. ‘They’re too small a target.’

  ‘I think you had a run of luck.’

  ‘You want to try me again?’

  ‘We’re going to,’ said Drew.

  During the next twenty minutes, Tarrant fired a total of sixty rounds. He shot at men sniping from windows, from behind piles of rubble, at men moving across rooftops and at men climbing, jumping, running, crawling and diving, and these celluloid encounters took place at dusk, in the first light of morning, in thick fog, in driving rain and sleet and in the dead of night. When it was finished, he had recorded a total of fifty-two hits.

  Upstairs in the projectionist’s box, Vincent turned to Harper and said, ‘What gave you the idea he couldn’t shoot?’

  ‘Did I say he couldn’t?’

  ‘Well, why are we here if there wasn’t a doubt in your mind?’

  ‘It’s advisable to know what you are up against.’

  Vincent rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Is he with the opposition, then?’

  ‘I don’t know, he might be. It depends on events in Paris tomorrow.’

  ‘You mean he could try to slip us?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘He would find that difficult if he didn’t have any French francs.’

  Harper said, ‘I’ve thought about that, but if you or Drew pay for everything, they will know he is being watched and they will avoid making contact.’

  ‘So we shadow him at a distance, is that it?’

  ‘We’re after the contact man, not Tarrant.’ Harper glanced at his wrist-watch. ‘Let’s call it a day,’ he said, ‘I’m going to be late for dinner as it is.’

  8

  MCKEE GOT OFF THE NOTTINGHAM TRAIN AT KETTERING, SURRENDERED his ticket at the barrier and walked out of the station. He had expected to find Burroughs waiting for him but instead, Ruth was there with her Mini. He opened the door, tossed the briefcase and brown paper bag on to the back seat, and got in beside her. He barely had time to adjust the seat belt before she moved off.

  McKee said, ‘Why didn’t Paul come to meet me?’

  ‘Because I chose to pick you up instead.’

  ‘So he’s watching the boy?’

  ‘Well, there isn’t anyone else, is there?’ she said flippantly.

  ‘You know damn well he could be the weak link, and he’s squeamish where the boy is concerned. He might do something stupid.’

  ‘The boy,’ she said patiently, ‘is locked in the cellar and I’ve got the keys. You may have promoted Paul out of his class, but he won’t do anything silly. He is squeamish about violence, but as long as he is not forced to watch it happening he can be quite objective about it.’

  ‘You should know.’

  ‘I should. Did you have a good day in London?’

  ‘You might say it went off without a hitch. Silk didn’t have any trouble collecting the receipt from Roscoe.’

  ‘You were lucky, the police could have been watching the place.’

  ‘Silk was watching from a phone-box up the road, and he can smell a policeman a hundred yards off. If he had been in doubt, he wouldn’t have gone near the place.’

  ‘And if the Post Office had failed to deliver it on time?’

  ‘We would have called it off, and our friend would have been for
ced to trust us.’

  McKee lapsed into silence and thought about the man, the very special man on whose behalf they were risking everything. Every night between ten and twelve, that very special man would leave his house in Hampstead to walk his dog over the heath before turning in for the night. The dog would pause at the occasional tree because dogs have a habit of doing that, but tonight the dog would be led to a particular tree and there, in that most simple of all dead letter-boxes, the man would find the bill of sale he wanted so much.

  Ruth Burroughs said, ‘Were they surprised to see you in the office today?’

  ‘No, why should they be surprised? They knew I was calling in this evening.’ McKee undid the safety belt, turned about and picked up the brown paper parcel from the back seat. ‘I bought this today,’ he said, ‘a pair of reins for a toddler.’

  ‘How very kinky. Shall I wear them when I prance round your room in a pair of high-heeled boots?’

  She saw the anger in his face and said hastily, ‘Sorry, it was a very bad joke.’

  ‘You can make all the bad jokes you like when this job is over.’

  ‘I’ve already said I’m sorry.’

  ‘All right,’ McKee snapped, ‘let’s forget it. Tomorrow, I want you to make fourteen canvas pouches which we can tie on to this set of reins. Don’t look so puzzled, they will serve as our exit visa.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He laid a hand on her thigh and squeezed it gently. ‘You will when the time comes.’

  ‘We haven’t got much time left, have we?’

  ‘It should be all over by Saturday.’

  ‘That isn’t what I meant.’ She looked down at the hand which was caressing her thigh. ‘And you know it.’

  ‘There isn’t much I can do about that,’ he said vaguely.

  ‘Every Thursday, except in the winter months and at harvest time,’ she said slowly and deliberately, ‘Paul finishes work at four o’clock so that he can have a round of golf with his friends. Now, that is a well-established pattern which, even now, I think