Seven Days to a Killing

by Clive Egleton

  He had left his hotel in the Linden Allee and walked briskly towards the U Bahn in Theodor-Heuse Platz and the savagely cold January night had turned his escaping breath into a white cloud and the frozen snow had crunched under his feet. At least on the U Bahn he had been able to thaw out a little, but it was only temporary, and the cold night air pierced through him like a knife as soon as he left the station at Zoologischer Garten. He had an appointment to keep with a man called Max and he’d crossed the busy Budapester Strasse opposite the Kaiser- Wilhelm Church and they had met outside the Berliner nightclub and he had been surprised to see that Max was accompanied by a woman.

  The night-club had proved expensive—three half-litres of beer had cost Jarman forty-eight marks, but Max had explained that this was a cover charge for the floor show and that the next round of drinks would not be so costly. And he had thought it was typical of headquarters to let the man in the field foot the bill, and they had been shown to a table for three in a tiny booth off to one side where he could only see the cabaret if he looked into the angled mirror on the wall because he was sitting with his back to the stage, but of course Max had made sure that he had a clear view, and that too was quite typical of the people from headquarters.

  And he had found himself hypnotised by Max’s bloated face and had watched those thick, full lips opening and closing like the mouth of a codfish as the words softly tumbled out, but those pale expressionless eyes were never on him, and the plump blonde woman at his side just sat there passively and Jarman thought that she was an extraordinarily bovine creature with about the same intelligence as a cow.

  And the lights had gone down and Max had stopped talking because it was impossible to make himself heard above the noise of the taped music and besides, his eyes were now riveted on the floor show which Jarman could only see in the mirror. The sketch had consisted of two girls; one, a Nigerian, was dressed as a maid, while the other, a dark-haired girl with a creamy skin, had worn a white satin evening dress and elbow-length matching gloves. The maid had helped her to undress in time to the music and it had begun tastefully enough but, in true Germanic fashion, it had turned a little coarse and suggestive towards the end, and he had found the psychedelic lights trying on his eyes and all he could see was a couple of blurred forms performing a ballet on the bed. And suddenly he had become aware of the cramp in his right leg, but when he had tried to move, his kneecap had caught the pedestal supporting the table and a wave of pain had shot through his body. And Jarman had been forced to sit through the whole of the first cabaret as one dreary, boring routine followed another and he had grown hot and sticky, and the acrid, stale tobacco smoke had nauseated him and the black, vinyl-covered bench seats had begun, with the passage of time, to feel as though they were made of iron.

  And as the outline plan was unfolded, Jarman had questioned the whole concept, and then the woman had suddenly come to life, and her eyes had bored right through him, and her voice had been no more than a low hiss but she’d spoken of a soldier’s duty to obey orders and he had been left in no doubt that the line had been drawn. He recalled that they had left the Berliner at eleven-thirty and he had walked with Max and the woman as far as the Bristol in the Kurfurstendamm, and when they had parted there, the woman had said, ‘I expect that, after all these years, you must be pleased at the thought of going home?’ And he had managed to smile but that was all.

  *

  Jarman finished his coffee, wiped his mouth on the napkin, smiled once more at the Mother Superior and left the dining-room. He collected his raincoat, and leaving the key to his room at the desk, walked out of the hotel.

  In the height of summer, the narrow streets of the old Corsair city were always crowded, but this early in the season he could walk unhindered along the pavement and the cafés around the Place Chateaubriand were half empty. He went on past the floodlit Hotel de Ville and, crossing the cobbled road by the slipway, entered the dark flight of steps which led up to the ramparts. A fresh breeze was coming off the sea and he turned up the collar of his raincoat, but it afforded him little protection and he wished that he had worn a heavier suit. He walked slowly along the ramparts listening to the waves slapping against the wall some fifty feet below, and in the distance he could see the lights of Saint Servain and it suddenly came home to him that, within the space of a day or two, he would be leaving France never to return, and all because one man wanted six and a half million francs as a down payment for services about to be rendered, and he knew that after years of faithful and dangerous service all he could look forward to was promotion to the rank of Major and a desk job in Moscow. Moscow, he thought, was just as cut off from the rest of the world as was the fort sitting on that piece of rock off the shore, except that, when the tide went out, you could walk across to it and that was more than could be said of Moscow.

  The woman, whose headscarf concealed most of her face, was standing in the wall between the gun emplacement and the outer wall of the bastion and was looking down at the harbour mole as if fascinated by it.

  Jarman stopped at the next embrasure and lit a cigarette. ‘There’s a chill in the air,’ he said.

  The woman turned her head towards him. ‘And it comes not from the east,’ she said in a low voice.

  ‘Somebody had a poetic turn of mind when they picked that phrase for a recognition signal,’ he said. Jarman took hold of her arm and she fell in step beside him. ‘I presume you’ve spoken to your husband?’ She inclined her head and the mannerism irritated him. ‘Well, did you or didn’t you?’ he snapped.

  ‘Of course I did.’

  ‘He hasn’t changed his mind, has he?’

  ‘He has no reason to as long as you people stick to your part of the bargain.’

  Jarman patted his stomach. ‘You haven’t got any problems,’ he said, ‘I’m a walking bank. We’ll leave early tomorrow morning, right?’

  ‘I thought about eleven.’

  ‘You’d better think again,’ Jarman said grimly. ‘I intend that we should be in San Remo by tomorrow evening.’

  ‘I have an au pair girl with me,’ she said as if that explained everything.

  ‘You’ve what?’

  ‘I need help to look after the children, they’re only four and five and they can be quite a handful.’

  He flicked the cigarette end over the ramparts and watched it fall into the dark sea. ‘My mother had eight,’ he said, ‘and she didn’t have anyone to help her.’

  She jerked her arm away from his. We have a straightforward business arrangement,’ she said angrily, ‘and it doesn’t include a sermon from you. I’ve told Frangoise she can have the weekend off.’

  ‘FranÇoise?’

  ‘The au pair. I think she has plans to catch the 10:30 bus into Parme.’

  ‘You think,’ he said scornfully.

  ‘All right then, I know for a fact that she intends to catch that damned bus. I’ll pick you up in my car outside the Casino at a quarter past eleven.’

  ‘We’re never going to make San Remo tomorrow.’

  ‘We will.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that.’

  ‘I used to be a rally driver; you can spell me if you’re up to it.’

  ‘What sort of car have you?’

  ‘A white Mercedes. Oh, don’t look so disapproving—it’s four years old.’

  She turned and ran down the steps to the street below and he stood there watching her until she turned the corner into the Rue Bidouanne and was lost to sight. Jarman thought she was typical of her class—arrogant and expensive to keep, like most of the yachts in the basin below the ramparts. He wondered how long it would take Melissa Julyan to get through six and a half million francs.

  13

  MCKEE HUNG UP HIS SUEDE JACKET IN THE HALL, RAN THE PALM OF ONE hand over his head and smoothed the thin dark hair into place before entering the lounge. Burroughs, a glass of whisky and soda at his elbow, was seated at the writing desk studying the farm accounts, while Ruth was curled up in
an armchair apparently engrossed in a book. Neither looked up when he entered the room.

  McKee cleared his throat. ‘I take it this studied form of indifference is supposed to mean something?’ he said.

  Ruth looked at him blankly. ‘Should we jump to attention, then?’

  ‘I need your help.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘With the boy.’

  Burroughs turned sharply to face him and accidentally knocked over the glass and the whisky formed an ever-widening pool on the desk. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said, ‘leave the poor child alone. Hasn’t he suffered enough already?’

  ‘Did I say I was going to hurt him?’

  ‘Well, aren’t you?’

  ‘No. I want him to record another message.’

  ‘To send to his father?’

  ‘Or his mother,’ McKee said evenly. ‘Maybe that doesn’t meet with your approval either, Paul? Perhaps you would handle it differently and then we’d spend the rest of our lives behind bars. You’ve become soft, Paul, that’s your trouble.’

  Burroughs pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began mopping up the whisky. ‘Ruth will help you,’ he muttered, ‘I’m busy with these accounts.’

  McKee said, ‘Of course you are, even I can see that. I’m sure Ruth has no objection to helping me.’ He turned and smiled at her. ‘Or have you, Ruth?’

  Ruth Burroughs uncurled her legs and stood up. ‘I’m surprised the question even occurred to you,’ she said.

  The musty smell came up from the cellar as soon as McKee opened the door. He switched on the light and ran agilely down the flight of wooden steps, Ruth following unhurriedly. He approached the bed on which David lay and noted with satisfaction the look of fear on his face.

  ‘Look at him blinking his eyes in the light,’ he said callously, ‘he’s like a bloody little mole.’

  ‘If you had spent hour after hour in total darkness, I expect you’d blink like a mole too.’

  McKee said, ‘Are you getting soft too?’ He picked up the set of reins which were lying on the top shelf of the wine rack. ‘I want you to untie him and get him on his feet while I fix this harness.’

  ‘Do I remove the gag?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he said, ‘I don’t want his blubbering to distract me.’

  McKee stooped down and dragged out a battered fibre suitcase from beneath the wine rack. He snapped open the locks, and raising the lid, took out fourteen sticks of plastic explosive which resembled plasticine and smelt faintly of almonds. He squeezed the sticks into shape and carefully slotted them into the canvas pouches on the set of reins and then, having selected a like number of gun-cotton primers, he cut off fourteen lengths of varying size from a reel of Cortex instantaneous fuse; he then married each primer with a length of fuse and plugged the primers into the plastic explosive. Gathering the trailing ends of the Cortex together, McKee secured them with a rubber band before reinforcing them with twine.

  The suitcase also contained a tin, and unscrewing the lid, he gingerly removed three fulminate-of-mercury detonators which he rigged to a push-pull switch. For safety reasons, and because he saw no point in taking unnecessary risks at this stage, he kept the explosive harness away from the push-pull switch. When the two parts were ultimately joined together, he planned to attach twenty feet of trip wire to the switch.

  McKee sat back on his haunches and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘How’s the boy making out?’ he said.

  ‘His fingers are in a mess.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The burns are oozing pus.’

  ‘Put some antiseptic on them then and bandage them up.’ She moved towards the steps. ‘Not now,’ he said, ‘later, when I’ve finished with him.’

  ‘You enjoy hurting people, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t get any pleasure from it, but sometimes it is necessary.’

  ‘As when you hit me, for instance?’

  ‘Yes, much as I regretted doing it.’

  ‘Is that an apology?’

  ‘No,’ said McKee, ‘just an explanation. Now hold the boy still while I slip the reins over his shoulders.’

  ‘You’re turning him into a living bomb, aren’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. You see, it’s a form of insurance. About an hour ago, I left a message for Harper with Mrs Tarrant. I think he will meet all our demands because it will give him the chance to get close to us and so I am preparing a little surprise for him.’ He looked at David and smiled thinly. ‘We’re going to record another message for your mother,’ he said. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ There was no response from the boy but McKee was exasperated to see that he was close to tears. ‘I don’t want to hear a sound from you when Mrs Burroughs removes the gag. Understand?’ David nodded his head, blinking rapidly. ‘Good; and mind you don’t forget it, because if you give me any trouble, I’ll light a cigarette and burn you some more.’

  *

  Tarrant lay on his side, a hand cupped to his face shielding his eyes from the fierce lights in the ceiling. The biscuit-shaped mattresses on the bunk felt like planks of wood beneath him, and although he was not a stranger to living rough, a too active mind and a splitting headache made sleep impossible. He knew that the seeds of distrust which Drew had tried to plant in his mind would take root and multiply like cancerous cells unless resisted. It was possible that Alex was having, or had had, an affair with a man called Richardson, but Drew had struck a false note in the telling of it. There was nothing cheap or furtive about Alex and even in the wildest moments of fantasy, he couldn’t imagine her making love to anyone on the back seat of a car.

  It was part of their technique to undermine a suspect, to make him feel alone and unwanted, and although he could recognise it, Tarrant couldn’t deny that it was beginning to work in his case. Harper wanted him to accept the fact that if any love and trust had survived their separation, it was now being steadily eroded and eaten away.

  They’d had twelve years together and it hadn’t all been bad, and until Sarah had been killed, enforced separation had strengthened, not weakened, the bond between them. Sarah’s death was the cataclysm and he knew now that he should have asked for a compassionate posting, but there had been so much bitterness and recrimination, that Aden with all its troubles had seemed more welcome. If he had been a little more perceptive, he would have realised that Alex, who was on the verge of a breakdown, was trying to exorcise a misplaced sense of guilt, and he’d had to wait until now to discover that blindingly simple fact. And he recalled what Alex had said yesterday in the stillness of David’s room—’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.’ And instead of trying to comfort her, he’d sought to explain it rationally. For three years she’d lived alone harbouring a sense of guilt, and Christ, it would have been a miracle if she hadn’t looked for love and comfort elsewhere. There was a gap between them and it was getting wider, but it could be bridged if he made the effort, and he could make a start by talking to Alex about Sarah, and perhaps it might help if he acknowledged that he was mostly to blame for the break up of their marriage, and then somehow he would have to find the right words to tell Alex how much she meant to him, and that shouldn’t be too difficult because these last three years had been damned empty without her.

  Vincent said, ‘Daydreaming?’

  Tarrant swung his feet off the bed and sat up. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

  ‘I tread softly.’

  ‘And talk softly too?’

  ‘When necessary.’ Vincent sat down at the table and opened his notebook. ‘There are one or two points which I should like you to clear up,’ he said.

  Tarrant came and sat across from him at the table. ‘Like what?’

  ‘You’re a second-grade staff officer in Colonel Mulholland’s section?’

  ‘You know I am.’

  ‘How long have you been in post?�
�

  ‘Eighteen months—it’s a two-year posting.’

  ‘And in that period the General Purpose Intelligence Committee would have held something like seventy-eight meetings?’

  We do meet once a week.’

  ‘Approximately, how many have you missed?’

  ‘Not more than half a dozen.’

  ‘So by now you must know everyone quite well?’

  ‘For the most part they are just casual acquaintances. Faces change with individual postings, and you never really get close to someone you only see once a week for an hour or so.’

  ‘Tell me what happens at these meetings.’

  ‘Harper must know, he attends them regularly.’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me.’

  ‘We assemble in the Main Building every Tuesday morning shortly before ten. Coffee is available for those who want it and then the meeting starts promptly…’

  ‘Do you take coffee?’

  Tarrant stared at Vincent and then, after a moment’s hesitation said, ‘Quite frequently.’

  ‘And naturally you stand around and chat to people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘This and that—the weather, the news, the cost of living, sport and so on.’

  ‘Did you ever talk about David?’

  ‘Only when someone asked after him.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Crompton; he met David when we were stationed in Germany.’

  ‘Who’s Crompton?’

  ‘A second-grade officer in MI10.’

  ‘Did you ever mention David’s school to anyone?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps I may have done so, I know some people were always comparing their schooldays with their sons. I probably said my bit.’