The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  ‘Absolutely. No matter how much it costs you.’ I gave her my little butler bow and ushered her out.

  I thought about her, all through the poached eggs and cheap chablis. And then I thought about brother Martin. Well, it all seemed straightforward enough. I just had to find him. That should be simple enough. How simple can you get? Here was a case, I thought, which I could take just for health reasons; no escalation to the dangerous heights of the Secret Service world of Manston and Sutcliffe, no excessive excitements—just find Martin Freeman. Somewhere—God damn it—somebody must have laughed at my innocence, knowing I was going to end up looking for another man, far more important than Freeman, a man who had been kidnapped—and for reasons which were to bring Manston and Sutcliffe down on me like a pair of hawks on a corn-fat dove.

  *

  Intercontinental News Services were around the corner from Fleet Street in Whitefriars Street. The weather had relented a bit and there were occasional strip-teasing gleams of spring sunshine. Walking the few yards from the taxi to the office, I thought I detected a suggestion of a new lift in my steps, something that in time might almost develop into briskness.

  After a lot of delay and little co-operation I saw a Mr Addle who was the Office Manager. He lived in an office about the size of a big packing case. As I sat opposite him my knees almost touched his under the desk. His long grey face looked as though it had been moulded out of wet paper pulp and allowed to set hard. He had an absent look in his eyes and a rambling way of talking which suited me. All I had to do was nudge him now and again. I explained how Mrs Stankowski was worried about her brother and wanted me to trace him. Had he any views about the resignation?

  His eyes wobbled, trying to focus on a point somewhere above my head, and he said, ‘Not the first time he’s resigned. Always comes back. Restless man, certain charm, though. Knew how to make friends and use people. Good at his job . . . well, good as most. Always trouble over his expenses, of course, but there always is trouble over expenses with all of them.’

  ‘Did he specialize in anything, any particular field of news?’

  ‘No. Anything he could pick up. Oh, well, maybe European political affairs more than most.’

  ‘He’d been in trouble before, hadn’t he?’

  ‘Before he came to us. Impulsive, easily led. Always had some wildcat scheme for making a fortune. But then a lot of people have. You know, being Office Manager and responsible for staff. . . makes me a bit like a Father Confessor. Everyone comes to you with their stupid little confidences and problems. Particularly the secretaries and typists.’ His eyes managed to focus briefly on me. ‘Miss Lonelyhearts, that’s me. Thank God I’ve only got another year to do. Got a bungalow down at Seaford. You can sit at the window and look out to twenty or thirty miles of nothing but sea.’ His eyes wavered up to the wall a foot behind my head. ‘Distance . . . lovely thing.’

  ‘How was he on women?’

  ‘Terrible, I’m told. But not here. I saw to that. Anyway, he wasn’t here often. You should tell Mrs Stankowski he’ll turn up. He’s that kind. The turning-up kind.’

  ‘Where was he based in Europe?’

  ‘Paris, usually. Sometimes Rome. Beirut, too, for a while. Look, I can’t tell you anything that’ll help you trace him. He’s just gone off.’

  From Fleet Street I went round to the Mountjoy Hotel in Dorset Square. It was a quiet, modest place which could have done with a repaint job inside and out. Behind a little counter-fronted alcove which was the hotel desk sat a brunette of about thirty-odd, good-looking and pleasant, and with time on her hands. She was drinking coffee and reading a week-old Observer colour supplement. She looked up and gave me a bright, flashing smile full of false promises. Returning it in kind, so that we immediately became old and intimate friends, I said, ‘My name’s Addle. I’m the Office Manager of Intercontinental News Services. And I want to make some enquiries about one of our correspondents—Martin Freeman—who used to live here.’

  She nodded sympathetically and said, ‘I’m Mary McCarthy, American novelist—but, of course, you know that—and I’ve taken this job to get material for a new book I’m writing. You don’t have to go out of the door and come back and start all over again. You can do it from where you’re standing.’

  ‘You know Mr Addle?’

  ‘He’s been in Room Twelve for the last ten years. Martin Freeman came here on his recommendation. My real name is Jane Judd—yes, I know it sounds like a strip-cartoon character, but I’m stuck with it. Actually I am writing a book and it’s called Why I Sometimes Don’t Like Men. Subtitle—Homo Hoteliens. They think every chambermaid is a whore, or should be, and every woman receptionist is longing for escape to an illicit weekend. You’re lucky I’m in one of my chatty moods. Yesterday you’d have found me glum and dumb.’

  ‘Today’s model suits me.’ I dropped my card in front of her.

  She glanced at it and said, ‘I read about you once. In an old copy of London Life—a symposium on private-detective agencies in London. All the magazines I read are old, left behind in their rooms by transients and regulars. What’s that bastard Martin been up to and why has he left us?’

  ‘Is your heart broken?’

  ‘Chipped on one corner. I suppose he’s been pinching from that sister of his again.’ She held up a hand. ‘This ring belonged to her once. Still does, I suppose.’ It was a dress ring, a thin gold band with an oval-shaped piece of jade.

  ‘She’s cross with him this time. And he’s given up his job. She wants me to find him. Any ideas? For instance—’ I nodded at the small switchboard behind her—‘what about a list of phone numbers that he used to call?’

  ‘We don’t keep a record.’

  Probably they didn’t.

  ‘Well, anything that could help me.’

  ‘Maybe—if you could help me. Summer’s just round the corner. I was looking at some super beach-wear in Harrods the other day . . . I don’t mean all the way, of course. But perhaps a contribution.’ I put two five-pound notes under the blotter on the counter. She stirred her coffee, looked up at me and I saw that she had gone glum. No smile. I slipped another fiver under the blotter. The smile came back.

  ‘Martin Freeman,’ she said, ‘is a charming man, but potentially as crooked as Hampton Court maze. He never gave it any publicity, and certainly Mr Addle doesn’t know about it, but he has a small place in the country.’ She picked up a pencil and began to scribble on a tear-off pad. ‘Don’t run away with the idea of anything worth writing home about when I say “place”. It’s a crummy little cottage. Oil lamps and a chemical closet. Those were the things that put me off after two visits.’

  She tore off the sheet and handed it to me.

  ‘Thanks.’ I gave her a genuine smile. ‘One of these days I might get a small place of my own in the country.’

  ‘Let me know sometime.’

  ‘How long ago were you last at the cottage?’

  She retrieved the fivers from under the blotter and began to put them in her handbag. ‘Relations between Martin and myself have been very correct for the last year. I’m engaged to a P.R. man from Shell-Mex, but it doesn’t inhibit either of us.’

  ‘Thank you for your co-operation.’

  ‘You should thank me. I refused it a couple of days ago to another man. He said he was from a hire-purchase company . . . something about a car Martin had bought. I didn’t care for his manner. And anyway, Martin hasn’t owned a car for all the years I’ve known him.’

  ‘What did this man look like?’

  ‘I kept on thinking of a well-beaten spaniel. Fifty-odd, shabby grey suit, mackintosh and well-rubbed suede shoes. Brown eyes, thin wispy brownish hair, London-Scottish regimental tie, white silk shirt with the collar frayed, and his heart not really in his job, whatever it was.’

  ‘You should have been in this business.’

  ‘Let me know if you ever have a vacancy.’

  I went out, thinking about the London-Scottish, beaten-spani
el type. Given a change of tie there were a lot of them about, and one of their characteristics was that they would never get anywhere unless they really believed that it was important to girls like Jane Judd that summer was just around the corner and Harrods was full of super beach-wear.

  The address on the sheet of paper read:

  Ash Cottage, Crundale, near Wye, Kent.

  Key under foot-scraper at back door.

  Fire smokes when wind in north-east.

  Drinks in cupboard under stairs.

  Jane Judd was a girl after my own heart. There should be more of them around.

  I phoned Mrs Stankowski and told her that I was doing some preliminary work on her brother and would call and see her the next day. She wanted to know what I had been doing, and what I still had in mind, so I pretended the line was bad and finally rang off. No matter how you get a quarter of a million, or a million, one of the things it does for you is to make you think that all your questions should be answered instanter. And let’s face it, they usually are.

  I called in at the office and had a ten-minute but not unreasonably acrimonious chat with Wilkins to put her in the picture. As I was going out to get some lunch she said, ‘Well, at least this looks like a reasonably straightforward job.’

  I said, ‘In this business there is no such thing. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any business. What about the chap with the London-Scottish tie? Debt-collector, or a divorce creep? Freeman been playing around? Or something really sinister?’

  ‘I know which you would prefer.’

  ‘Sinister? Why not? In my present condition any doctor would recommend it. Salt in the blood—’

  ‘Don’t start that.’

  I had lunch in a pub, then went round to Miggs’s place and borrowed a Mini-Cooper. An hour later I was in the green leaf and bare hop-poles of springtime Kent, going like a bat out of hell round the Maidstone by-pass, and convinced that it was better to hire a car and charge it up to expenses than to own one and spend daily misery in worrying over London parking places. I found Wye all right, but Crundale was more elusive because I was three times given explicitly wrong directions. It was half past four and a strong slanting rain, with a lick of sleet in it, was coming down when I got to Ash Cottage. At least, as near as I could get with the car. It was in a little valley, served by a dirt road that ended at a field gate. At the side of the gate was a wooden arrow stuck on top of a pole with the name—Ash Cottage—on the arrow and pointing up a low hill towards a beech wood. The cottage sat just in the lee of the wood. Coat collar turned up against the rain, I went up a muddy footpath for two hundred yards to the cottage. It was red tiled, wooden framed, with black timbers against white plaster, and had small diamond-lozenge window glass. A crack of thunder heralded my arrival. Behind me the footpath was becoming a coffee-coloured torrent. I took the key from under the foot-scraper, didn’t dally to scrape my muddy shoes, and went in.

  I found myself in the kitchen. Well, everyone says it’s the most important room of the house, so why not enter through it? It was dark inside and I flicked on my torch and had a pleasant surprise. By the far door that led into the main part of the cottage was an electric light switch. I pressed it down and a light came on. Martin Freeman had had electricity installed since Jane Judd’s last visit. I remembered then that there were poles all the way up alongside the dirt road.

  Apart from being as crooked as Hampton Court maze, Martin Freeman was also untidy. The sitting room was large and comfortable, but there were old newspapers crumpled on the settee, and dirty glasses and an empty vin rose bottle on a side-table. The open fireplace was a foot high with old wood ash and was decorated on one side with a pair of gum boots and on the other by an old cavalry sword which had been used as a poker. Against the window that looked up the hill to the beech wood was a dining table with a cloth half over it and, on the cloth, the remains of a breakfast set-up, yellow egg-spill congealed hard on a plate and a paperbacked thriller propped against a Worcestershire sauce bottle. An open stairway ran up to the bedrooms. Round the newel post hung a pair of nylon stockings. Halfway up the stairs was an empty beer bottle with a faded red carnation stuck in it. I began to get a confused idea of Martin Freeman.

  The main bedroom had a large double bed, unmade, covers flung back, the pillows crumpled. Over an armchair had been tossed a dressing gown, black with a white lightning-stripe motif all over it, and a red pyjama jacket. I found the trousers in the bathroom next door later. Just at this moment I was interested in a pile of letters, opened, that lay on the floor at the side of the bed. It was easy to tell that Freeman went down for his mail in the morning and came back to bed to read it. His procedure was clear. He opened an envelope, read the letter or contents, stuck it back in the envelope and dropped it on the floor.

  I sat on the floor and began to go methodically through the pile. The bottom one dated the accumulation as being four months old. Most of the stuff was bills—and all of the envelopes had been addressed to Freeman, care of Lloyds Bank Ltd, 50 High Street, Canterbury, and then redirected to the cottage from there. A January bank statement showed that he was £45.11.6. overdrawn. Sorting out what I hoped might be the wheat from the chaff, I was left with:

  1. A New Year’s card—postmark Firenze—inscribed ‘Buon Natale e Felice Anno Nuovo.’ Signed: Leon Pelegrina. The message and name on the card had been printed and the name Pelegrina was struck through in ink just to leave Leon. Obviously Leon was a friend. The printed address in one corner read: 23 Piazza Santo Spirito, Firenze. Freeman’s letter of resignation had been written from Florence.

  2. A letter, only a few lines, from someone called Bill Dawson. It was on hotel stationery and in an hotel envelope—the Libya Palace Hotel, Tripoli, Libya. It was a month old, and read: ‘Long time no see or hear. Tour out here extended another three months. What about it? Find some excuse. We could make Sabratha this time. And you could have your revenge on the Wheelus course. Additional incentive (?) the charmer is due in Uaddan next month sometime.’

  Well, if Freeman had taken off, it might be to Tripoli. Sabratha and Wheelus meant nothing to me. Charmer could be guessed at.

  3. A statement of account rendered for £105.7.2. from a shipping and travel agency—Phs. Van Ommeren, 118 Park Lane, London, W.1. I might be able to check with them whether Freeman had gone to Libya.

  These were the only things that seemed to me might be of significance. There was plenty of other stuff—mostly from women—that no man of discretion would have left kicking about on the floor. However, it was clear—from the bank redirecting—that Freeman hadn’t let any except very close friends—apart from Jane Judd—know about the cottage.

  I did a quick tour of the bathroom and the other bedroom and then went down to the sitting room. It was still raining outside and getting dark. I found the cupboard under the stairs. There was half a bottle of whisky there and a couple of bottles of soda water. I got a clean glass from the kitchen and fixed myself a drink. I sat down in an armchair and put the drink on a side-table. The ashtray on it was full of golf tee pegs, and lying face down by it was a small framed photograph. Tidy-minded, I stood it up. It was worth bringing out into the light. It was a photograph of a girl of about . . . well, not far off thirty . . . not that I was concerned with her age. She wore baggy Arabian Night harem trousers, too diaphanous ever to keep out a cold desert wind, and two heavily sequined plaques over her breasts. On her head was a tiny turban with a large jewel at the front from which sprang a whisk of stiff horsehair. She was slim, good-looking and would have made the Sultan Schahriah’s eyes pop. Scribbled in violet ink across the foot of the photograph was the inscription: For Martin—Paris 1966. Apart from being good-looking, she had a good face, interesting, intelligent, and something about the set of her lips, even in the posed smile, that said she was clearly on the ball. I couldn’t make a guess at her nationality, but she was certainly not Arab.

  I took a drink of my whisky, felt in my pockets—amongst the letters and stuff I�
�d taken from the bedroom—for my cigarettes, and had them out when a voice said from the direction of the kitchen door behind me, ‘All right then, let us be very civilised about our behaviour.’

  Before I turned I knew that he was not English. The French accent was as thick and meaty as pate de campagne. When I did turn I found myself looking at the business end of what, later, I learned was a 9 mm Browning pistol, manufactured under licence in Belgium, at Herstal, by the Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre.

  I said, ‘Considering that thing you’re holding, I think that remark applies to you more than to me.’

  ‘I don’t trust anyone.’

  ‘It’s a good rule-of-thumb procedure, but it still doesn’t make you civilized. I hope you’ve got that damned thing on “safe”?’

  ‘Naturally, Monsieur Freeman.’

  For a moment my instinct was to disillusion him. Then I decided to play it for a while. He might say things to Monsieur Freeman that he would never say to Monsieur Carver. And when he did get the name I knew that he was going to pronounce it Carvay.

  I said, ‘I’m not going to give you any trouble. There’s some whisky and a bottle of soda left. Get yourself a glass.’

  He hesitated quite a while and then decided to accept the invitation. He put the pistol handy on a chair near the stair cupboard and began to help himself, managing most of the time to keep an eye on me.

  He was a biggish man, about fifty, and with most of his weight around the middle. He had a nose in the de Gaulle class and rather close-set, worried little green-brown eyes. Fiddling with his drink, he made flappy, almost womanly, flutterings with his hands and kept on humming to himself as though to keep up his confidence. He was all wrapped up, untidily, in cellophane, or that’s what it looked like, until I realised that he was wearing one of those transparent light-weight raincoats and a sou’wester kind of hat over his own cloth cap. Rolled up, the whole weather-protection outfit could be tucked away in a tobacco pouch. His drink prepared he stood behind the chair on which his pistol rested and took a sip from his glass and, because of the way his eyes were, eyed me narrowly from above it.