The Python Project

by Victor Canning

  ‘You will have to do better than that. Why not order the drinks?’ I did and we talked. I had a feeling that I was doing better, but it was hard to tell. I didn’t doubt that she felt that she had my measure. And I didn’t doubt that I hadn’t anything like got hers—except that she knew how to handle herself and wasn’t going to let anyone else do it unless he passed muster. And nothing came out of the small talk, except the pleasure of making the time to Tripoli pass quickly and enjoyably.

  As we parted in the beginning of the stampede into the customs sheds, under a dusky blue velvet sky lit with little yellow star sequins and a crescent moon to symbolize the Arab world, I said, ‘Some evening soon, perhaps, we might make pigs of ourselves over pasta and a bottle of Orvieto?’

  ‘Could be, but it would have to be Chianti Ruffino.’

  With a smile she flowed ahead of me and I couldn’t help noticing that the customs boys fell over themselves to deal with her and get her through as. fast as possible.

  I came out into a warm night that smelt of dry dust, burnt-up palm fronds, goats and exhaust fumes from the waiting taxis.

  One of the taxis was under the charge of the faithful Wilkins. She was wearing a woolly cardigan, a tweed skirt, sensible shoes and a wide-brimmed straw hat so that she wouldn’t get burnt by the tropical moon. Just seeing her there gave me a warm feeling of belonging and nostalgia. She certainly wasn’t any Gloriana or La Piroletta, but she was my girl Friday, one in a million, and that’s what a man has got to have if he’s going to make a success of business and have his filing system kept in order.

  *

  It was half an hour’s drive in to Tripoli from the King Idris Airport. The Arab taxi-driver took it at top speed and with the radio wailing out snake-charm music at top volume. Now and again Wilkins and myself were thrown about as he deliberately just missed the odd pedestrian, goat or camel. Conversation was difficult but we managed.

  I said, ‘Why didn’t Olaf come with you?’

  ‘He has a stomach upset.’

  I didn’t make any comment. The taxi ride was bad enough; I didn’t want Wilkins turning a broadside on me.

  ‘Where am I staying?’

  ‘At a hotel on the sea front called Del Mehari. I got you a room with bath.’

  ‘Why not a room at your hotel, or the Uaddan?’ La Piroletta was still very, very fresh in my mind.

  ‘Because all of them are fully booked. This is a booming oil town and hotel rooms are at a premium. And, anyway, I thought you might like to stay where Martin Freeman and William Dawson had stayed.’

  ‘How did you find that out?’

  ‘Olaf was responsible. I told him about the case. We checked all the hotels to see if either man had stayed recently—with no result. Then Olaf said that if Bill Dawson had said in his letter to Freeman that he could have his revenge at the Wheelus course, then—if the hotels were covering up about them for any reason, which now I am sure they are—the police or whoever it was who had instructed them might not have thought to put a cover on the Seabreeze golf course, particularly as it is American owned. So Olaf said—’

  ‘Let’s go out and see if they did play there and enter their names in the book?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they had?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Clever Olaf. He’s in the wrong business.’

  ‘They played there about twelve days ago and they both gave the Del Mehari as their hotel. But at the Del Mehari when Olaf and I made enquiries—’

  ‘They just looked blank and said no?’

  ‘Very blank. And since they don’t use a hotel registration book but do each guest on a card which goes into a filing system we couldn’t ask to see the register. How long do you think it will be before Olaf and I can go to Cairo?’

  ‘Don’t tell me you’re losing interest? You’ve done so well.’

  ‘I’m entitled to my holiday. Also—’ an even primmer note came into her voice—‘I don’t like being followed by the police everywhere I go. The car behind us now is one which followed me out to the airport.’

  I screwed my head round. Through the back window I could see headlights following us.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Positively.’ Then disapprovingly, ‘I thought this might be a straightforward case, but I’m sure now that it isn’t. You know how much I dislike complications.’

  ‘You, and Monsieur Robert Duchêne. What’s Olafs reaction? Doesn’t he find it exciting?’

  ‘I told you he has a stomach upset. I’m sure it’s a nervous one. I’m worried for him.’

  She had reason to be. In a man Olafs size a stomach upset was no minor matter.

  I said, ‘Did you get anything on Bill Dawson?’

  ‘Nothing, except—’

  I lost what she said as the radio began to whack out an Arab nuptial dance or something and we swerved to miss a donkey loaded four storeys high with sacks.

  ‘Except what?’

  ‘Except that I keep thinking that I ought to know something about him. Something at the back of my mind. It is most irritating.’

  ‘I get the feeling too. Maybe it will come. Did you check the hire-car services? This golf course is some way out of the town, isn’t it? They could have hired a car to go out.’

  Wilkins nodded. ‘Olaf suggested that. We went round them all. And they were all very co-operative, looking through their books and apologizing when they had no record recently of a Freeman or a Dawson. All except one—it’s a place near the centre of the town called the Magarba Garage. They just said at once without reference to their books that they had not hired out any cars to any such persons.’

  ‘The police or whoever had been at them?’

  ‘Yes. Did you bring any firearms in?’

  That was typical Wilkins. She could call a spade a spade with the best of them, but a gun was always a firearm.

  I said, ‘Yes. It’s strapped to the inside of my left leg now and damned uncomfortable.’

  ‘Then if you don’t want to become persona non grata I should get rid of it. Firearms can only be imported if declared on arrival and a licence obtained.’

  ‘I’ll be careful. And you’ve done a good job—or, at least, Olaf has. He’s a bright boy. Why don’t we offer him a job with us and then you wouldn’t have to make the Cairo trip every year? Carver, Wilkins and Bornjstrom. Sounds good.’

  ‘The car behind is coming up to overtake us.’

  I squinted back. It was. And it did. And then about a hundred yards ahead it pulled up and a man jumped out into our headlights. Wilkins said, ‘The firearm.’

  I jerked up my trouser leg and did some quick unstrapping. Wilkins took it from me and calmly put it into her handbag like a schoolmistress coolly confiscating a catapult.

  Our driver hesitated for a moment or two, considered whether he would notch up another pedestrian on his steering column, and then changed his mind as the white holster webbing, navy blue uniform and peaked cap said ‘Police’ very plainly.

  He pulled into the side of the road behind the police car which I saw now was a Land-Rover. The police corporal or sergeant or whatever he was came round to the side of the car and spoke through the driver’s open window. Our taxi-man switched off ‘Return to the Oasis’ or whatever was playing and shrugged his shoulders.

  The policeman came back to the rear window and signalled for me to wind it down. I did. A warm gust of night air came in and I gave him a big smile.

  ‘Trouble, Officer?’

  He was a Libyan, small, stocky, hard material all the way through and very correct. Even his English was correct.

  ‘You are Mr Carver?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you stay where?’

  ‘At the Del Mehari Hotel, when I get there.’

  ‘This lady?’

  ‘She is my secretary.’

  ‘It is requested that you come with us, Mr Carver. Be good enough to ask your secretary to take your luggage on to your hotel.’

 
‘I hope I’m going to be allowed to join up with it later?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  I wondered why they hadn’t picked me up at the airport. The only answer I could come up with was that they wanted the minimum of public display. Interesting, since I was only looking for a man who’d stolen money and a bracelet from his own sister.

  ‘Shall I be back there tonight?’

  ‘Certainly, Mr Carver.’

  I turned to Wilkins. ‘Drop my stuff and come round and have breakfast with me in the morning. Bring Olaf if he’s in a breakfast mood.’

  I got out and the policeman waved the taxi on. It roared away, leaving a dust cloud behind it and I could hear the radio going full blast.

  They put me in the back of the Land-Rover and we headed for town. One of the things about strange towns is never to reach them at night. You have no sense of topography or direction and if you have to take quick action you are at a loss to know which way to head. Not that I thought this might be necessary tonight. But you never knew. Some of the politest police opening gambits lead up to nasty end games sometimes.

  There was a nasty end game this time. But not the kind I could have anticipated. We drove into the town and I didn’t try to make any sense out of it until for a few moments we swung along a wide esplanade with the sea on our right and the lights of shipping somewhere way ahead from a harbour. Then we turned into a side-street and pulled up in front of a blank-faced building with double wooden doors. From a socket over the door projected a Libyan national flag.

  I got out with my police escort and he took me by the arm and through the door. He said nothing and I went with him, his palm on my elbow, feeling like some old man being helped across the street by a good Samaritan. We went down a tiled corridor that smelled of old cooking and stale tobacco, up a stone flight of steps and then through a half-glass door into a large, low-ceilinged room. One wall held what looked like a collection of large metal filing cabinets. There was a bare, chromium-topped table in the centre and sitting on one edge of it was another Libyan in a white overall. My guide said something to him in Arabic and the man got up and jerked a half-smoked cigarette into a drainway under the table. For the first time I got the smell in the room and a flicker of familiarity trembled inside me.

  The man in overalls went over to one of the filing cabinets and pulled it open. It didn’t surprise me now to see it come out about six feet on its rollers. He made a motion with his hand for me to come over. I did.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight. I stook there and took out a cigarette. The policeman who had come up alongside me held out a lighter. The man in overalls watched me guardedly. Neither of them said anything.

  Lying in the container was a naked man. I inhaled smoke to get the chemical smell out of my throat and to fight down an edge of nausea. I’d seen plenty of dead men, and even a few who had been in the water a long time, but to stand there and look down at this one took more out of me than any of the others had. I let my eyes go from what had been the head down the length of the body to his feet. I did it deliberately, slowly, and with half of my thoughts a long way away. Then I stepped back, turned and heard the cabinet roll back behind me.

  To the policeman I said, ‘What now?’

  He said, ‘Please to come with me.’

  I did, avoiding his helping hand, moving alongside him and wondering how Jane Judd and Gloriana Stankowski were going to take the news, because tabbed neatly round the right wrist of the body had been a label, marked—Martin Freeman, British.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Apprentice Tail

  The room, though I didn’t know it then, was in the Police Headquarters on the Sciara Sidi Aissa which was a street one block south of the waterfront. Almost next door, though I didn’t know that until the next morning when I got a town map and began to take my bearings, was the Hotel Casino Uaddan, and a little further up the street to the east was the Libya Palace Hotel.

  It was a small, high room with a framed photograph of King Idris of Libya over a fireplace which was piled high with old pine-cones. On the opposite wall was a framed photograph of H.R.H. El-Hassan El-Rida El-Senussi, the Crown Prince of Libya, and just below it, flickering in the slight sea draught from the half-open window, a calendar of the Oasis Oil Company which told me that it was now April 21 and cuckoo time back home. I had to admit to a slight touch of nostalgia for the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the tube rush in the evenings and Mrs Meld leaning over the garden gate. I always got nostalgia when I sensed that I was getting into something deep and far from home.

  The man behind the desk wore a plain navy blue suit, a white cotton shirt and a black tie with a white stripe right down its middle. He was in his thirties, had a brown face as smooth as a pecan nut, pleasant dark eyes, a small, thin-lipped mouth, and short, wiry black hair. He looked as though no one had ever rushed him in his life, or was ever going to, because he had long ago decided that, paradise as the bosom of Allah might be, he was in no hurry to reach it—so the form for longevity was a calm, even-paced life and always keep your voice down. On the edge of his desk was a little wooden board which read ‘Captain Iba Asab’, in English, and below some Arabic writing which probably announced the same thing.

  He watched my police corporal escort out of the room, and then gave me a slow nod which was a greeting and an invitation to sit on the chair lying just off his desk.

  ‘Mr Carver?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Captain Asab, Libyan State Police.’ He put out an arm slowly and tapped the announcement board across his desk.

  ‘And not without a sense of the dramatic. Why this build-up?’

  ‘You have been inconvenienced?’

  ‘Only to the extent that by now I’d thought I’d be having a leisurely drink at my hotel and changing my socks.’

  He smiled. ‘Moslems are especially enjoined to be kind and charitable to the masakeen—unfortunate. I regret, however, I have no drink to offer you. However, I will try not to keep you too long.’

  ‘Don’t rush anything.’

  He gave me a look and said, ‘At the moment you are a little uncertain. Perhaps of my attitude? Perhaps of your status? Do not worry. My only wish is to give you all the information I can to help you to bring your business here to a conclusion.’

  ‘How’s your colloquial English?’

  ‘Fair to middling. I did three years at the London School of Economics—and ended up a policeman, which just shows that you can never tell which way the ball’s going to bounce. I don’t myself—but light up if you want to.’

  I lit a cigarette and he slowly opened a drawer as I did so.

  ‘Where was Martin Freeman fished out of the drink?’ I asked him.

  He pushed an open shallow cardboard box across the desk to me. ‘A little way up the coast, west of the town, two days ago. He was fully dressed, a sports jacket and trousers and so on. That’s all he had on him.’ He nodded at the box.

  I took the box and went through the stuff All of it had suffered from water exposure. There was a British passport in Freeman’s name, a leather wallet with about ten pounds in Libyan sterling, a couple of membership cards of clubs in Rome, a bunch of keys, a Ronson leather-bound lighter, a silver cigarette case with the initials M.F. on the outside and two water-pulped cork-tipped cigarettes inside.

  ‘Where would the rest of his stuff be? He was a visitor here. He must have had a case or something at his hotel.’

  ‘That we have been unable to trace.’

  It could have been a lie, but whether it was or not didn’t seem important to me.

  ‘How did you know I was looking for him?’

  ‘We were informed by the British Embassy here when we reported the recovery of the body to them. I gather, too, from them that your Treasury officials in London were interested in him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The details are confidential, but, I imagine, irrelevant now. You can go and see them, if you wish, but they asked me to tell you that Mrs Stankowsk
i is being informed of her brother’s death and she will give whatever instructions are necessary for dealing with the body. In other words the affair is out of your hands.’

  ‘Unless—when she knows the facts—she tells me she would like to know why, before being tipped into the sea, he was shot through the head.’

  ‘Whether it was murder or suicide, Mr Carver—that is our concern. We need no help.’

  ‘Got any ideas on the subject?’

  ‘At the moment, few.’

  ‘The body floated ashore?’

  ‘Yes.’ He reached slowly for the cardboard box and began to put it back in the drawer.

  ‘So he could have been in the water anything from six days onwards?’

  ‘About that.’

  ‘What did the autopsy show? About the time in the water, I mean.’

  ‘There is some doubt. The head wound complicates it.’

  ‘Well I can tell you he hadn’t been drifting around more than twelve days.’

  He looked at me calmly, but it was the kind of calm that covered surprise. Tell this man that some forgotten old uncle out in the Fezzan had left him Solomon’s treasure and there still wouldn’t be a flicker; in fact, you could tell him anything and he would still be the same. But one thing was for sure—he was never going to tell me or anyone else anything that he had decided was best kept to himself.

  ‘How can you know?’

  ‘Because he played a round of golf at the Seabreeze course twelve days ago with a friend called Bill Dawson. You got a line on any Bill Dawson?’

  ‘No. But thank you for the information.’

  ‘Just that? Thanks. No questions as to how I know?’

  He smiled. ‘Tomorrow, maybe. At the moment I don’t want to delay your whisky and soda.’

  ‘I can wait. In the visitors’ book at Seabreeze they both entered their hotel as the Del Mehari—that’s where I am staying—and the hotel people told my secretary that neither of them had stayed there.’

  He shook his head. ‘Maybe they did. Some of my countrymen, Mr Carver, are lazy and inefficient. It is a young country. I’ll look into it.’