The only other passenger had plied him with so many questions during the journey that Peregrine had emerged physically and mentally exhausted. This was an uncommon condition in one respect, his body being a durable instrument.
His interlocutor had been an agitated wiry Scot. Although Peregrine judged the man to be in his mid-thirties, early baldness, a permanently furrowed brow, and owlish, gold rimmed spectacles all served to make him look older at first sight – and a mite donnish. He had moved to the seat next to Peregrine shortly after take-off. Before beginning his inquisition he had pressed evidence of his identity upon the embryonic banker in the shape of a not very clean visiting card. This he had snatched back some seconds later without explanation but with a look that signified he considered the retrieval to be accepted practice. For some reason he had then myopically studied the card himself before replacing it with some care in what was evidently its customary position in a wallet crammed with frayed and yellowing papers.
Peregrine had noted the legend ‘Angus McLush – Author and Journalist’ before he was denied lasting proof of this admission.
McLush had then succeeded in extracting enough information from the incautious Peregrine about himself and his business to fill several newspaper articles, without giving his subject the opportunity to question or consider his motive for doing so. Apart from his name and occupation the only other information vouchsafed by McLush was contained in his parting remark in the tiny K.CI Customs Shed. ‘See you at dinner, I expect,’ he had observed conspiratorily as he had whisked himself and a battered suitcase past the sole and uninterested duty official.
It was shortly afterwards that Peregrine had been descended upon by the big, hearty, blonde-haired girl – an event that entirely put McLush out of mind. ‘Wotcha,’ she had opened, striding towards him with a gait and manner that put him in mind of Aldershot and a poem by John Betjeman. ‘I’m Deborah Rees – call me Debby – Governor’s daughter, sent to meet you and all that. You’ll be Peregrine Gore – any relation to Pamela Gore-Blimpton?’
Peregrine had time only to shake his head in denial; this seemed to be his day for one-sided conversations.
‘Well, that’s a good start. We were at school together – couldn’t stand the little tick. Here, let me have that bag.’ Debby had then taken a deep breath and hollered ‘Amos!’ – a summons that prompted the emergence of a lean and aged black retainer from the rear of an equally decrepit and also black Rolls-Royce limousine.
Debby had swung the suitcase at Amos who had caught it underneath with both arms and struggled off, sagging, towards the car.
‘He’s our butler, first-rate chap.’ Peregrine just hoped the valued paragon would survive the following few seconds. ‘We’re short-handed today. We’ve got a chauffeur but he’s working on the puffing billy for tomorrow. I see you had Angus for company – too weird – great buddy of Daddy’s, though. Knows about railways.’ No doubt there were other ways in which to win the Governor’s confidence.
Since car driving was evidently not numbered amongst Amos’s accomplishments it was the Governor’s daughter who had taken the wheel with Peregrine beside her, feeling like a footman, while the exhausted butler recovered his breath in the capacious rear compartment of the car.
The journey from the airport had been a short one but by the end of it there was hardly an aspect of current and pending events on KCI of which Peregrine had not been at least partially apprised.
He was expected to dine at Government House in three hours’ time with, amongst others, Angus McLush, Joe O’Hara, Father Babington, the Chief Minister and his wife and a couple called Dogwall. Next day, being January 30th, was a public holiday when the whole island commemorated the execution of King Charles the First with – inappropriately, it seemed to Peregrine – a carnival. While he was obliged to share the guest house with the Dogwalls he should feel no obligation to fraternize since, in Debby’s opinion, the couple were quite definitely NQOC.
‘NQ, what?’ Peregrine had seized the opportunity to put a question while Debby, who had handled the big car with ease on the deeply rutted road, had been obliged to concentrate at a point where every semblance of a macadamized surface had been obliterated altogether for a distance of some fifty yards. The erratic and bumpy progress of the car seemed not to affect Amos who was soundly asleep.
‘The rains did that three months ago,’ the girl had offered knowingly, as though this explained instead of highlighted the inexcusable disrepair of KCFs presumably main thoroughfare. ‘NQOC – not quite our class. You’ll see what I mean when you meet them. Plenty of loot, of course. Turned up this morning in a damned great aeroplane – well, by our standards anyway.’
On arrival at the guest-house Peregrine had unloaded his luggage from the boot of the car before Amos was properly awake. Debby had explained the extent of the accommodation, remarking enthusiastically on the wholesome width of the double bed – a point that gave an enigmatic quality to her parting promise to come back later. Peregrine had considered her an admirable girl in every respect.
The large studio room and well-equipped bathroom that were the extent of Peregrine’s quarters overlooked the beach on one side and a small swimming pool and patio on the other. He swam first in the sea and then padded back through the room to the pool.
‘Hi there, welcome to King Chawlls.’
Peregrine gulped. The breathtakingly beautiful woman lying face down on the patio appeared at first sight to be unclothed. A second look established that while her back was totally bare, the most basic of the proprieties was covered lower down by a wisp of brown bikini that nearly matched the sun-tanned colour of the wearer’s skin. The accent was American; the lisp endearing; the breathy delivery enchanting; the total effect devastating. She was long, slim and superbly proportioned. Her jet black hair she wore in a careless bouffant style that had taken hours of anything but careless professional attention to arrange. Big gold rings hung from her ears. Her gaze was steady and frankly appraising. Her movements were positively feline – and she was moving now, trying without success or effort to bring together the unhooked ends of her bikini top behind her back. ‘Say, would you give a lady a hand? – I guess I have this thwing twisted.’
Peregrine hurried around the pool. He knelt beside the woman who was now supporting herself on one elbow, one hand holding the ends of the bikini top. Her face was turned to his. Their two heads were close. There was a delicious scent about her. The eyes were still on his, the wide lips parted in an inviting smile. Peregrine grasped the two ends of the material and tugged them together. There was the sound and feel of tearing. The garment – what there was of it – fluttered to the ground. The woman remained as she was. ‘Gee, but you’re an anxious one.’ The gaze remained rock steady.
‘What’s the praablem, honey?’ The voice came from behind – so did its owner, a towering man with the proportions of a well-preserved, middle-aged, heavyweight boxer. He was dressed in a blue bush jacket, immaculate white trousers and white buckskin shoes. He wore a leather belt around the jacket, holstered and equipped with a particularly lethal-looking hand gun.
‘I say, I’m most awfully sorry,’ Peregrine got to his feet and held up the hook and eye as though he was about to thread a needle. ‘There’s been a slight accident. I was fiddling about with this lady’s er . . . that is . . . er, I’m afraid the wretched thing’s come apart. . . most fearfully careless of me.’
‘You English?’
At least the chap was not intending to shoot first. The woman was rocking with laughter while swathing herself in a towel.
‘I am, as a matter of fact. My name’s Peregrine Gore.’ Tentatively he offered his hand to the man. It was grasped immediately in a crushingly firm grip.
‘Well, how dee do, Perry. I’m Glen Dogwall and this is my wife Rachel – or have you two met already?’
‘No, no,’ Peregrine protested defensively. ‘That is, Mrs Dogwall just asked me to help her with her . . . er . . .’
‘I guess we’re neighbours.’ Mrs Dogwall was now standing beside her husband. There was obviously twenty years difference in their ages, but they made a handsome couple. ‘Sweetie –’ she turned to her husband – ‘do you have to wear that armowy all the time? I mean, it looks kinda unfwiendly – don’t you think so, Pewegwine? Gee, that’s a cute name.’
Dogwall patted the gun. ‘Just so the word gets out, honey. We’re pretty isolated down here – and there’re no locks on the doors. When the help spread the word we’re protected, that should keep things nice and quiet. Don’t you agree, Perry?’
Peregrine was not even sure whether the possession of a firearm was permitted on KCI, but he had no intention of arguing the point with a man who already possessed one and who had come upon him inadvertently undressing his wife. The affair of the Field Marshal’s mistress was still fresh in his mind.
‘I gather the people here are pretty law-abiding, sir,’ he offered, and then, remembering his research, he added, ‘They get an occasional case of praedial larceny, but that’s about it.’
‘What kind of larceny was that?’ asked Mrs Dogwall, arranging the drape of the towel so that one bare leg showed through provocatively.
‘Praedial,’ repeated Peregrine, who had never heard of it either until the week before. ‘It means the stealing of growing crops – pinching bananas, don’t you know. It used to be quite common in the West Indies.’
‘Say, you’re a mine of information, Perry. What business you in – you some kinda lawyer?’ This was Dogwall.
‘Banking actually – merchant banking.’
‘Well, how about that. You with this Grenwood, Phipps outfit?’ Peregrine nodded. ‘But I thought a Mr Treasure . . .’
‘Mark Treasure’s my boss. He and his wife won’t be here until tomorrow.’
‘So, Perry, we’re rivals for the King Charles concession.’ Dogwall’s tone and manner were both relaxed. ‘Gee, I wish we could reach some kind of accommodation over this whole thing. My guess is there’s room for everybody.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Honey, why don’t you mix us up some of that rum punch and bring it out here. Perry and I could use a little talk, man to man.’
Half an hour later Peregrine Gore was back in his suite unpacking the remainder of his things, confident he had done an exemplary job worming the finer details of the American project out of Glen Dogwall. For his part, Dogwall was satisfied that Peregrine knew a great deal more than he was telling, and that the young man – obviously hand-picked for this assignment – was every bit as shrewd as his well-known, hot shot employer: either that or he was dimmer than a broken flashlight – but in the circumstances such a possibility was unthinkable. Peregrine had done it again.
Angus McLush gazed momentarily at the feebly revolving three-bladed ceiling fan above his desk. The effect of this instrument was almost entirely psychological; any violent disturbance of the air inside the tiny living-room would have led to a pointless redistribution of the dust that coated all available surfaces: it would also have further confused the untidily heaped and scattered typescripts, newspaper cuttings, photographs and letters that gave the room not so much a lived-in look as a wholly unkempt appearance. This description applied as well to the whole interior of the little cottage on the western outskirts of Rupertstown.
McLush was not a big-spending visitor who maintained a vacation home on KCI. As such, he would in any case have been unique since the breed was officially discouraged. In the event, formal restriction was unnecessary due to the total absence of accommodation suitable to the needs of the least discerning sun-seeker. Some visitors had observed that even the standards of comfort at the single hotel on the island – the Royal Grown in Rupertstown – seemed calculated to ensure an average stay of one night – as it happened, a perfectly correct conclusion.
The dilapidated bungalow that constituted McLush’s sole abode anywhere in the world had been available for rent some years before when the King Charles Railway Company had felt obliged to provide its previous occupant – the senior engine-driver – with accommodation more suited to his station and not quite so close to his work. McLush enjoyed the noise of shunting wagons.
As a resident European freelance journalist, McLush was the convenient funnel of communication for KCI announcements to the world at large – not that there were many such. Indeed, it was more his ability to smooth or smother accounts of undesirable events than his professional capacity in any more positive context that endeared him to those who controlled the island and secured his status as a resident – despite a recently developed and inexplicable coolness towards him shown by Joe O’Hara. The small honorarium he was paid for his services was entirely commensurate with the less than onerous duties. The King Charles Weekly Advertiser, his nominal employer in this connection, required nothing more of him than an occasional article. Its regular staff was quite capable of handling unaided the ritual digest of births, deaths, marriages and other parochial titbits its owner considered adequate illumination for its undemanding readers.
If pressed, McLush would have described himself as an investigative journalist and author – but not so far as the affairs of KCI were concerned. He travelled a good deal in the Caribbean, and as a ‘stringer’ for a number of American and Caribbean newspapers was the unaccredited source of a very few not very illuminating stories or leads about public and private affairs in politics and business in the area. A safe base was an essential requirement for one engaged in such work. It was just such a base that KCI provided.
No amount of pressure would have prompted the Scottish expatriate to reveal the nature of his other and most remunerative source of regular income – more particularly since it involved an activity conducted from his servantless, bachelor abode without the knowledge of the King Charles authorities. Further, it was business fulfilled without the need to travel much beyond his own doorstep – and certainly not beyond the confines of the island itself.
Angus McLush was a secret agent. He could not have affirmed with any accuracy – even under torture – exactly who employed him to provide regular intelligence reports on KCI. He could say with reasonable certainty that the authority involved was non-Communist and, in the light of experience, unexacting about the quality of information for which it was ready to pay on a regular basis.
He had been recruited in the lobby of the Strand Palace Hotel while on a visit to London two years earlier. At the time the proposition had seemed as unlikely as the person who had put it – a small, dark man with a badly fitted wig, an artificial eye and a pronounced limp. McLush had concluded that any organization using such a conspicuous character for clandestine work was not to be taken seriously. He changed his opinion when he found a bank credit slip for three months’ retainer in advance – as promised – awaiting him in his post when he returned to KCI. The bank was Swiss. It was always possible that the short, dark man had been disguised. This still left the matter of the false eye.
Normally, McLush posted his entirely undramatic monthly commentaries on the state of King Charles when he was visiting some other part of the Caribbean. This avoided the possibility of his dispatches ever being censored on the island, though their contents were so innocuous as to be nearly suitable material for his occasional column in the Weekly Advertiser. Indeed, on one occasion he had used the same copy for both purposes, with only the most perfunctory of amendments aimed at making the newspaper article the racier of the two.
He appreciated that he was very small beer indeed in the Secret Service hierarchy of whatever nation it was that retained him. Sometimes he found it difficult to credit that his worthless reports were read at all. It seemed more likely that they were sent for immediate filing from the forwarding address in the Cayman Islands and in due course shredded. He had certainly never assumed they were examined on the Caymans. Since he was well paid for his commission he had permanent misgivings on the possibility of it being suddenly concluded after some costcutting official sampled his submissions and justifiab
ly cancelled his retainer.
Thus it was that McLush spent less time than usual staring at the fan – his regular source of inspiration – before directing his fingers to tap out a report of some consequence concerning his first-hand and exclusive knowledge of the coming clash of commercial interests on KCI. Here was an opportunity at last. A competent journalist, he built a narrative on the information gleaned from Peregrine Gore laced with political and ideological innuendo. He acted quickly to match the ‘URGENT AND IMPORTANT’ prefix he used to head the first sheet – and also because the pilot of the Brittan Norman had promised to deliver the letter for him that evening when he flew on to his Cayman Island base.
What Angus McLush underestimated was the speed of the reaction that followed his report – the entirely unexpected and incautious telephone call just before midnight, and the instruction which, if fulfilled, would justify the payment for two years’ accumulation of worthless submissions and the promised bonus of as much again.
CHAPTER V
Peregrine Gore had decided to take his bath without the assistance of the obliging Sarah. This did not prevent him from self-consciously experimenting to discover whether it was in fact possible to wash the whole of his back without help. He was somewhat disappointed to conclude that not only was it entirely possible but also that it would be a charlatan ruse to invite nubile female assistance to do it for him.
The bath faced the south wall and above it an antiquated but functioning air-conditioner wafted refrigerated breezes on to his half-submerged body; it also dripped a good deal of water in various directions while setting up a clamour that drowned the music on the portable radio he had playing beside the bath.
In the circumstances it was surprising he heard the voice calling to him from the other room.
Treasure Up in Smoke Page 4
