by Len Deighton
She left her muddied coat in the car. We came, huffing and puffing from the cold, into the warmed and scented air of the lobby. The tiles were polished and the carpets brushed. Behind the desk a middle-aged man looked up and reached for his jacket He put it on before greeting us. 'Yes?' he said, as if he could think of no possible reason why people should break their journey there.
'Can we get a drink?' I said.
'I'll see,' he said, and disappeared through a door marked 'Private'.
There was a smell of disaster in the air, along with the scent of tile polish and coffee. About thirty tables had been set with cloths and cutlery but only one table had been used. On it there were two used cups, a coffee-pot and a newspaper folded so that the classified columns could be read.
A second man appeared from the service doors. Behind him there was the sudden sound of water going into a pot and a clatter of plates.
'A table for two?' He gave us a dignified smile. He was about sixty, a balding man with pale face and red hands: the legacy of a lifetime of steamy kitchens and hot water.
'Yes,' I said.
He raised a hand, turned on his heel and led us through the empty dining-room to a table near the window, as if we'd have had little chance of finding an empty seat without his assistance.
'Omelette fines herbes,' he suggested. His collar was twisted, as if the coat had been put on hurriedly.
'Give me a brandy,' said Pina, 'a/ma. We just want a drink.' She sighed, and dumped her handbag on the table with a thud that knocked the cutlery askew. Then she opened the bag and began to search for cigarettes.
The waiter was patient. He handed me a menu.
'Two omelettes,' I said. 'And I'd like a glass of red wine.'
'Fleurie,' he suggested.
'And a green salad.'
'Perfect,' said the old man.
Pina found her cigarettes and lit one. She watched the old man stride away with his order. 'You just gave him his big moment of the week,' she said.
'The way you say it, it sounds like I gave him leprosy.'
She touched my hand on the table-top. 'You were being nice. And I'm being...' She shook her head, unable to think of a word, and inhaled on the cigarette again. She propped her hand under her chin, and did not turn her eyes away from the kitchen door, shivering so violently that, for a moment, her whole body trembled.
'Relax, Pina, relax,' I said. But she did not relax until the old man emerged with the drinks. When he placed the brandy before her, she reached out to touch the stem of the glass, and as she did so-just with the possession of the drink-I saw the tension die within her. As if exercising masterful restraint she raised the glass slowly and met my eyes before taking a sip of it 'It's a good brandy,' she said.
'Drink it down, Pina, you need a drink.'
But she didn't gulp it. She pushed her gold cigarette case towards me, to offer me one, 'No thanks,' I said. 'I'm trying to give it up.'
She smiled, as if at some secret joke, and placed the jacket of the black Dior suit over the back of her chair, carefully enough for the label to be on display. 'Have a cigarette.' She touched her hair as if it was herself that she was offering.
'I'm trying to give it up,' I said again, but I opened the case and took one, in just the same way that I'd ordered the omelette: to be obliging.
The afternoon sun came through the window and lit up her hair. And it lit up the strange grey eyes. 'And what else are you trying to give up?' she said, and waved away her cigarette smoke and my answer with it. 'No, don't tell me, darling, let me find out.'
It would have been difficult to guess Pina's age. She needed no girdle, nor skin treatments. Neither the tiny wrinkles around her eyes, nor the freckles on her cheeks, were disguised under make-up. And when she'd combed through her hair, and tidied up in the car mirror, she'd done so without the narcissistic alarm that you see in the eyes of so many women over thirty. In Pina I could still see quite a lot of the foul-mouthed tomboy who had so alarmed me when I was a teenage subaltern.
'Go and wash your face,' she commanded. 'When I look at the mess you're in, I'm surprised they didn't ask us to pay for the meal in advance.'
I looked at my watch.
'They'll be ages yet,' she added caustically. 'They'll have to go and buy some eggs.'
Unlike the French restaurants that persist in modernising dining-rooms while retaining medieval toilets, this place had reversed that configuration. The antique wood carvings, dark panelling and worn flagstones of the dining-room ill prepared me for the brilliantly lit stainless-steel sinks, the tinted minus md scented air of a washroom designed to look like a space-station.
I used the silver-backed hairbrush provided by the management, and stared at my reflection as I went over the events for the thousandth time. I'd put on my gloves before being brought out of the hotel and I had not taken them off until the shooting was done. Therefore no dabs on the car or at the scene of the crime. My Centennial Airweight had been bought new-in 1968 from a man in Rue Paradis, Marseille. He was well known, and well paid, for his skill at removing numbers from metal, and going deep enough to remove the impacted metal under the numbers. The gun had lived in a rented cash-box deep under a bank in suburban Lyon, until I collected it a week before using it. The gun was all right. They'd discover nothing from that. I stopped brushing my hair to finger the blackened holes in my coat pocket. All that would go for nothing, if the police lab got a sniff at my clothes. Oh, well.
Behind me, the toilet door creaked softly. In the mirror I saw it open just enough for someone to see inside. I turned. Perhaps I would have been fast enough, and even heavy enough, to handle one such man, but there were three of them. They were motorcycle cops: giants in boots, breeches, black leather coats and shiny crash helmets. I thrashed about, until a butt in the face with a helmet, and a nicely timed kick behind the knee, tumbled me to the floor. As they pulled me to my feet they had me pinioned so tight I could hardly breathe.
There were two other men behind the cops. They were small, white-faced men, with tight-fitting overcoats and expensive gloves. One of them bent down to pick up my spectacles. He examined them to be sure they were not cracked and then placed them on my face. The other civilian advanced upon me, clutching a handful of paperwork, as a priest might brandish a crucifix at a malevolent Lucifer.
I protested as much as a man can protest when he has a blue uniformed arm choking the life out of him, and the hard corner of a sink prising his vertebrae apart.
And they were still crowding into the place: autoroute police, motor-cyclists, civilians and helicopter pilots. 'Is this the one?' a voice asked, and they shuffled about until the person questioned could get a look at me.
He must have nodded, for another voice said, 'You know that under French law you can be held for questioning for up to forty-eight hours without charges being preferred against you.'
I was gasping for air. I got my arm free, and tried to loosen the arm round my throat My captor mistook this for an attempt to escape. He gave me a kidney punch, nicely calculated to be less than lethal.
Now I was bent almost double. I could no longer see any of the men. This is a murder charge,' said another voice. 'Mrs Helen Bishop, alias Melodic Page, murdered in flat seven, twenty-three Victoria Terrace Gardens, London South-West. It's all here... French magistrate's signature, prefecture, as well as the extradition... You just cool it. We're taking you to Lyon airport, and then to London. You just cool it, or I'll beat you unconscious personally. Got it?'
It was the voice of Colonel Schlegel. The grip on my throat was loosened so that I could answer.
'O.K., O.K.,' I croaked.
'Get the cuffs on the bastard,' said Schlegel. 'And if he looks like he's even thinking of escaping, beat him senseless.'
They let me straighten. There was a ghoulish smile on Schlegel's face. If he was trying to convince.these French policemen that this wasn't a way of getting a colleague out of trouble, he was overdoing it I took a few deep breaths. Over
Schlegel's shoulder I could see through the open door into the dining-room beyond. Pina had gone.
Chapter Eleven
ALL YOU do is complain/ Schlegel told me. Dawlish was pouring tea and cutting into a fruit cake. 'He's simply trying to irritate you, my dear Schlegel. He knows that that was the only way to do it.' Dawlish turned to me and smiled, challenging me to tell him a better way of getting away from the quarry, and the corpses, and the problems arising therefrom.
I couldn't, I took the slice of cake Dawlish offered.
'You moved quickly,' I said. Schlegel bit into his piece of fruit cake and smiled to show his appreciation of my grudging praise.
He said, 'Your friend-the Princess-came through with a description of the two men, the make and year of the car and the registration number. I'm telling you, she had me high-tailing down that highway in the police chopper before I was fully awake.'
My mouth was hardly open before Dawlish answered my question. 'Colonel Schlegel had the foresight to leave a contact number with her,' he said.
I scowled. Colonel Schlegel was too bloody fond of leaving contact numbers, and what he described as cutting through British red tape and deviousness. It was bloody dangerous.
'She was worried about you,' said Dawlish. 'I think the Princess is straight.'
'A pity she wasn't with Schlegel and that French heavy-glove squad when they found me.'
'We didn't know about the quarry and the shooting at that time,' Schlegel explained. 'We thought we were picking up the hoods who were snatching you.'
'Well, when the cops find the bodies, Colonel Schlegel is going to have a lot of explaining to do,' I told them.
'Not so,' said Dawlish. 'We had one of our people go up to the quarry last night-no corpses, no guns; nothing.'
'Champion has cleaned up the garbage,' said Schlegel. 'No more will be heard.'
They had it all worked out. There was no arguing with them. And anyway, I had nothing to add. I walked across to the window. I rubbed the condensation away with my fingertip, and looked out. This was really gracious living. From the window I could see a few hundred acres of Wiltshire and Sir Dudley's new Bentley parked at the east wing entrance. Did the family know what we used the west wing for? Did the gardener, who watched them bury the Telex cables and the scrambler phone lines under his five-hundred-year-old lawn, know? Did he think we needed the eight Yagi aerials for TV, and the double-glazing to keep us warm?
I turned round to look at them. 'But why would Pina Baroni take a movie camera up there?' I said. That's what I still fail to understand.'
Tin your ears back,' said Schlegel, waving a piece of fruit cake at me. Tina Baroni took nothing up there. She was snatched, the same way you were.' He bit into the fruit cake and chewed it for a long time before swallowing.
'Are you sure?' I said.
'Sure, we're sure,' said Schlegel, and Dawlish nodded.
Schlegel said, 'This Pina Baroni was wearing the identical fur coat to one that your guy was wearing. Right?'
'Identical,' I agreed.
'Not just a coincidence,' said Schlegel. 'She was going to get killed in that coat. Killed by you.' He pointed at me in case I needed a little help in following the conversation. 'Killed by you when you mistook her for the gunny in the same coat.'
'No,' I said calmly.
'Don't give me no,' said Schlegel. The movie camera was there to film it happen.'
'Why?'
Schlegel said, 'We know Champion killed Melodic Page... Oh, sure, he gave you all that crap about us conspiring to frame him- but he did it. So he dreams up the counterploy-and it has just that - kind of poetic touch that a psycho like Champion likes-he was going to have you kill Pina Baroni, and with enough evidence to make it stick.'
'Why?' I said again.
Dawlish interrupted Schlegel's act. 'He'd threaten us. He'd offer a deal: we forget about the Page murder, and he lets you off the hook.'
Well, it did have the kind of crazy effrontery that had once been Champion's hallmark. 'It's the film camera gimmick that I find so difficult,' I said. 'The kind of blurred image you'd get on 16-mm film on a winter's day doesn't compare with eyewitnesses, or tele-photo stills, that a court of law would want.'
'Court of law!' said Schlegel. 'Don't be so dumb. Champion knows it would never get that far. He wanted something that would capture the imagination. He'd be threatening to give it to one of the U.S. networks or a TV agency. He was more interested in grabbing attention than getting a conviction.'
'It would have given us a headache,' said Dawlish, as if regretful that the department had lost such an employee.
'But why Pina Baroni?' I said. I was still not convinced. 'Why murder his sister-in-law? Why not a movie of me killing just anybody?'
'We thought about that,' said Schlegel, tapping the papers on the desk. 'Sure, why Pina Baroni, his sister-in-law? Finally we figured it this way. The girl hates Champion-really hates him. She's convinced that after Champion was arrested he talked. She thinks he betrayed her brother Marius to the Gestapo-you know all about that, I guess.'
'I know all about it,' I said. 'She's crazy. I saw Champion arrested at Nice station. And that was hours after Marius was picked up.' I thought about it. 'Yes, hours after.'
'It's water under the bridge now,' said Schlegel. 'She hates Champion's guts, and Champion divorcing her sister didn't help.'
'Marrying her sister didn't help,' I corrected him. 'There was a ' time when Pina Baroni was crazy about Champion.'
'Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,' said Schlegel.
'You should write that down, Colonel,' I said. 'It has a fine ring to it.' '
Schlegel was never slowed by sarcasm. He said, 'And the Baroni girl killed men in the war, she got a medal for it. So she's not the kind of doll who is going to sit at home, sticking pins into clay figures. I mean, this babe is going to do it!'
'O.K.,' I said, 'you've told me why she might kill Champion, but I'm still waiting to hear why Champion would want to kill her. This is someone we were both with in the war. Why her? Why not a stranger?'
Dawlish said, 'Any news agency would drag out all that stuff about you and Pina Baroni in the war. First they find out she was in the resistance, and then they find out you were with her. Then they start asking what work you are doing nowadays... It would cause us maximum embarrassment. It was just another perfect Champion touch.'
'But not quite enough,' I protested. 'Not quite enough.'
'Don't baby him along,' Schlegel told Dawlish. Turning to me he added, 'If you'd killed some broad you'd never.met, you'd clam up and put your mind in neutral. You're a pro, and your training would make you proof against any kind of working-over the press, the TV or the law could give you. But if you'd killed this Baroni woman-especially in error-you're going to be full of guilt and remorse. With you in that kind of mood, a prosecutor presses the right buttons, and any guy will sing.'
He was right, and I didn't need to tell him so. In that moment any last doubt I'd had, about Champion killing the Page girl disappeared completely. Champion was a dangerous bastard. As devious as ever and not too fussy about who got hurt, as long as it wasn't him.
'It all fits,' I admitted.
'Good,' said Schlegel. There was an indefinable change of atmosphere in the room. I felt as though I'd passed some sort of examination. I looked at Dawlish soon enough to see the tiny nod of his head. Schlegel looked down at the piece of fruit cake he was eating. 'Hell!' he said angrily. 'I don't eat fruit cake.' He stubbed it into the ashtray like an old cigar butt. 'You knots I don't eat fruit cake,' he complained to Dawlish.
'I'm afraid we're all a little on edge today,' said Dawlish. He bent to pick up cake crumbs and put them into the ashtray.
Schlegel grunted a sort of apology and picked up a couple of crumbs.
I sat down in the red leather chair that is usually reserved for visitors. I closed my eyes for a moment. Schlegel mistook my weariness for anguish.
He said, 'You don't need
to lose any sleep about the guy you knocked off. A real expensive hit-man out of Zurich. "The Corsi-can", a rub-out artist, who probably cooled more guys than you've had hot dinners. For my money, you'd get a medal for that job you did. A medal; not a murder rap.'
'Well, I didn't know I was getting either,' I said.
'Keep your voices down,' said Dawlish primly. 'These wretched guns. If you'd obeyed your orders about guns we'd not have to be sending chaps up to the quarry at dead of night, and faking up a lot of extradition paperwork for Paris.
'If I'd obeyed orders about guns, I'd be D.E.D.,' I said.
