The Gigantic Shadow

by Julian Symons

  ‘You told me all that before. And I told you I wanted your agent to give me cash. Cash is what you’ve got there on the table.’

  ‘Where did the money come from, Mr Hunter?’ Hunter jerked back his head in alarm. ‘Yes, I know your name. Your face was familiar to me, but at the time I could not place it. I have done so since.’

  ‘Well?’

  Westmark shrugged. There was something epicene about him, in spite of his size. ‘I have to know the names of those I deal with. It was foolish to call yourself Smith. I know what has happened to you. Where would you get fifteen thousand pounds?’

  ‘It came from a bank. And I didn’t steal it. Somebody gave it to me.’

  ‘Very well. I am sorry. We cannot do business.’

  I mustn’t let him see what this means to me, Hunter thought. He sat on his striped chair, sipped the Madeira, and said nothing.

  ‘If you acknowledged that the money was hot, that you had obtained it in some way that you wished to keep to yourself, then we might have arranged something. I have my own terms for hot money.’

  ‘It’s not hot. I told you that. They’re all ones, and they’re not new. They’re not in sequence. They can’t be checked.’

  Westmark went on as if he had not spoken. ‘But you insist that it came from a bank, that somebody gave it to you. Very well. Go and pay it into your own bank, and give me a cheque. Or go and give it to somebody else. I want nothing to do with it.’

  He’s got me by the short hairs, Hunter thought, and he knows it. Bitterly he said, ‘All right. The money’s hot, though not in the way you mean. It can’t be traced. But I want to go abroad, and I can’t take it with me. What’s the deal?’

  Westmark drank the rest of his Madeira at a gulp. His eyes watched Hunter. ‘Why is it important that you leave England in such a hurry?’

  ‘That’s nothing to do with it. Or with you.’

  ‘Very well. Fifty per cent.’

  ‘So that’s how the good life’s paid for.’ Hunter began to throw the packets of money back into the bag. Westmark watched him throw a few back, and then spoke again.

  ‘Come now, Mr Hunter. Be reasonable. There is a risk connected with this money, or you would not want to get rid of it so quickly. I take the risk, not you. All you have to do is to go to my agent in Tangier, Mr Kadiska, and he will make available to you seven thousand five hundred pounds in any currency you care to name.’

  ‘If you honour the agreement.’

  ‘As I said to you before, you will not find anybody to tell you that Theo Westmark does not honour his agreements. If I wished to cheat you I should agree to any terms you wished. But I have said already, take away the money if that is what you want. I shall forget that you have ever been here.’

  There was no time to get in touch with Dawes and make fresh arrangements. But Hunter went on putting money into the bag. Suddenly Westmark laughed, a rich musical sound.

  ‘You are not an easy man to deal with, Mr Hunter. Do you suppose I have built up my business as – what shall I call it? – an honest broker – by cheating my clients? I told you before that there must be mutual trust in our affairs. I trust you, when you say that my agents will not be arrested when they try to pass this money. You do assure me of that, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve told you, there’s nothing wrong with the money.’

  ‘I accept your assurance,’ Westmark said gravely. ‘And now, if you wish, I will give you a cheque. You can walk out and post it to Tangier to await your arrival. It will mean nothing, but if it soothes your feeling of anxiety…’

  ‘No. Write to Kadiska, your agent, as you suggested. That’s good enough. But let’s talk about the terms.’

  Westmark held the glass up to the light. ‘Sweet, rich, strong. It is nectar. I am afraid that you do not appreciate it.’

  The cloying smell was in his nostrils again. He said again, doggedly, ‘Let’s talk about the terms.’

  ‘But what is there to talk about?’

  ‘You said fifty per cent. I’ll pay ten. That gives you fifteen hundred pounds for writing a letter.’

  Westmark shook his head. ‘It is not for writing a letter, but for taking a risk with something I know nothing about. I could not do it for less than forty per cent. It would be foolish.’

  In the end they settled for twenty-five per cent. Instead of having twenty-eight thousand five hundred pounds for conversion in Tangier, he and Anthea would have twelve thousand two hundred and fifty.

  ‘Another glass of wine?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  Like a great cat Westmark walked over to the table, and stood looking at the money. He did not touch it. ‘Then let me wish you all the luck in the world.’

  He left the room. Westmark was still looking at the money on the table. The Chinese girl appeared, eyes downcast, and went with him to the door. There she said something.

  ‘What’s that?’ Hunter asked. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Your name is Hunter.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It is not good for you to come here. There is a man –’

  The door of Westmark’s room opened, and his bulk filled the doorway. His voice was soft. ‘Kitten, are you talking to Mr Hunter? You know I do not like you to talk to my guests. Come here.’

  The girl almost ran to him. The cosmetic mask did not change, but Hunter sensed the terror behind it. He let himself out.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  He was the only person to get off the train at Blanting, and he left the padlocked zipping bag with the money in it, in the luggage office at the station. As he left the village behind, and turned off into a field of wheat, following the route he had taken with Anthea, the sky darkened. Presently it began to rain, no more than a few drops at first, but then with thick persistence. Hunter was wearing a dark suit and thin town shoes. As he walked along, skirting the edge of fields, walking over tracks already used by cattle, he trod in mud that squelched persistently underfoot and that once or twice oozed thinly over the edge of his shoe.

  After half an hour’s walking he began to feel unsure that he was going in the right direction. How stupid he had been not to ask Anthea to draw a map, he reflected. He felt mingled relief and alarm when he turned into yet another field and came almost face to face with a farm labourer trudging along in sou’wester hat and black oilskin cape.

  The man was smoking a pipe. He took it out of his mouth to say, ‘Arternoon.’

  ‘Good afternoon.’ Hunter tried to move into the shelter of a small bush which immediately pelted him with raindrops.

  ‘It’s a wet ’un.’

  ‘It is indeed.’ He spoke with what he felt to be odiously false joviality. ‘I seem to have lost my way a bit. I’ve come from Blanting.’

  ‘Might help if you said where you were tryin’ to get to.’

  ‘Of course. It’s the nearest village – over in this direction, I think.’ He pointed wildly.

  The man shook his head. ‘Not that way. Bassington estate that way, old Manor House. Nearest village’s Leddenham, couple of mile across the fields, straight as you can go. Then you come to the road, turn right and matter of a quarter of a mile along go sharp left –’

  He ceased to listen, waited until the man had finished giving directions which were both long and elaborate, and then offered thanks. The labourer looked at him curiously. ‘You’re welcome. Didn’t come out prepared for weather, eh?’ Hunter laughed feebly. ‘If you’re stayin’ in Leddenham best place is the Black Bull.’ He stuck his pipe in his mouth again, nodded goodbye, and was gone.

  There’s a man who won’t forget me, Hunter thought. But at least he knew in which direction the estate lay. He plunged on through thick grass, nettles, brambles, until he reached the barbed wire. The wood was on his right – he had gone a hundred yards too far, that was all.

  As he reached the edge of the wood, the rain stopped. He wiped his face and hair with a handkerchief, but water continued to trickle down his neck and to drop from
his suit. There was water in his shoes, too, as he trod on bracken up a barely marked path. Suddenly he was in the glade, and looking round he saw that he had come along the overgrown path he had seen leading on through the wood, when they had come here before together.

  ‘Anthea,’ he called, and called again. His voice sounded strange in the unstirring wood, strange and – although he did not think of himself as an imaginative man – frightening. There was no answer, but perhaps sound did not carry far in such surroundings. He wiped his head and face again. He was shivering a little, possibly with the beginnings of a cold.

  Slowly, reluctantly, he began to push a way through the brambles that, as they had done before, sprang back at him. He had only a few yards to go, yet he was shivering uncontrollably by the time he had pushed a way through to where the stone hut stood, and there was unmistakable terror in his voice as he cried her name again.

  She did not answer. He did not know what it was he feared, what sort of ultimate betrayal he expected to find inside the hut. She had left the place, changed her mind suddenly about the whole plot – that would be like her. Or it had all been some sort of trick played on him – that possibility had, as he knew, always been present somewhere in his mind. Or she had told somebody about the den in spite of her promise not to do so, some secret enemy, and she lay within the hut, dead.

  He did not want to prove his fears, or to know the details of her betrayal if she had betrayed him. He did not want to open the hut door. But had he not already realised that he had reached a point from which there was no turning back? He walked to the door of the hut, and pushed. The door creaked and opened.

  The hut was empty. The dust lay on the floor, as it had done before. Anthea had never come here, nobody had come here. Had he not accepted this as a possibility? Yet now that he was confronted with the act of betrayal, now that the hut offered its silent evidence that she had cynically rejected all that they had talked about, he could not believe it. He stumbled to the door again and out of it, walked round the hut looking for footprints (but there were no footprints except his own), leant against the side of the hut staring at the green bushes in front of him, and mouthing unintelligible words. There was nothing to be seen here, and nothing to be done. When he looked round the scene that should have been the victorious climax of their planning, tears came to his eyes and ran down unchecked.

  As he left the hut and stumbled away, pushing through again to the glade, thin sunlight filtered through the poplars. The tears were still in his eyes, but as he walked back, stepping recklessly in puddles, smearing his shoes with mud and filling them with water, he sought for an answer to the question: why had she done it? What purpose could there be in a plot which left him with fifteen thousand pounds in ransom money, to use as he wished?

  Was there, then, another sort of explanation, one which did not involve betrayal? Had her stepfather discovered what she meant to do, locked her up, and handed over the money in order to have him arrested afterwards while in possession of it? Had Roger Sennett somehow discovered the plot, and told Lord Moorhouse? When he got out of the wood the day was bright and warm. On the dripping branches, in the sunlight, birds sang. He had recovered his faith in Anthea, and he knew what he meant to do.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  The headlines met him as he got off the train at Waterloo, just before five o’clock. Peer’s Daughter Kidnapped, he read, and Society Beauty Held to Ransom. Moorhouse had not kept his word, then – he had realised, perhaps, that any kidnapper who meant to claim the further fifteen thousand pounds would have been in touch with him again at once. Or was this, in some way impossible for him to understand, part of Moorhouse’s own plan? He bought the papers, and read the stories. They described Anthea variously as ‘a beautiful society debutante,’ as ‘a girl who shunned the bright lights to help her stepfather, Lord Moorhouse, in his work for Colonial development,’ and as ‘one of London’s slum-going smart set, engaged to the Honourable Roger Sennett, son of Lord Broughleigh.’ Nothing was said about the fifteen thousand pounds that Moorhouse had paid over, but there was an interview with him in which he said that his daughter was fond of practical jokes, and that he still hoped she might be playing some sort of joke now. The interview went on:

  ‘If you discovered that this was some sort of practical joke now, would you be very angry?’ I asked.

  ‘Not at all. I am too anxious about Anthea’s safety. I want her to come home.’

  ‘If the practical joke theory were right, the men who rang up would be friends of hers, and in the joke as well.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Did they sound as if they were joking?’

  Lord Moorhouse’s mouth set in a grim, hard line. ‘They did not. They sounded as if they were the scum of the earth.’

  The case was the first of its kind in England, and the evening papers played it up accordingly. There were several photographs of Anthea, in riding kit, stroking a dog, in evening dress, with the caption HAVE YOU SEEN HER? There was an interview with an unnamed police inspector in charge of the case, who expressed confidence that Miss Moorhouse would be found within the next forty-eight hours.

  Reading these stories, he felt his idea that Moorhouse was somehow keeping Anthea prisoner rather shaken. Supposing, then, that somebody else was responsible for her disappearance, what was the likely course of events? Bert from the Cosmos would undoubtedly go to the police and tell his story, but there was nothing in it positively incriminating to Hunter. Why should a man who had had Anthea as a mistress try to kidnap her? It was possible that the police might keep a watch on places of exit from the country. Did it matter? He shrugged away the thought. The plane for Tangier did not leave till midnight, and he did not want to be on it without Anthea.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Within the flat there were voices. He stood a moment on the landing, strangely reluctant to use the key. Then he turned it in the lock, opened the door, hesitated again in the hall, put down the blue suitcase and the zipping bag, and opened the living room door.

  ‘Why, Bill!’ Anna swung her legs off the sofa, pushed away her woman’s magazine, got up. ‘We were talking about you. You’re wet, Bill, you’re awfully wet.’

  ‘Talk of the devil,’ Charlie Cash said. He was sunk in the big shabby armchair with the webbing gone at the bottom, and there was a bottle of beer by his side. ‘I was asking Anna where I could find you. She said she didn’t know.’

  ‘And in you come like the Prince in the fairy tale.’

  ‘Or the wicked uncle.’

  They were glad to see him, there was no doubt about it. They enveloped him in a blanket of affection which was quite unlike anything he had known in his relationship with Anthea, a relationship all ice and fire. He knew the warmth and the protective quality of the blanket well enough, but the time had gone by when he could roll up in it and think himself happy. So now he looked from one to the other of them, and answered the question that Anna had not asked.

  ‘I’d like a bath and a change of clothes. I should like that very much.’

  ‘And shoes,’ she cried, refusing to see any implication of speedy departure in what he had just said. ‘They’re simply filthy. All over mud. You might have been walking through fields in them. Charlie, go and talk to Bill in the bath while I get him some clean clothes.’ Now she came up to him and kissed him on the cheek.

  Five minutes later he was in the bath with a glass of whisky in his hand, and Charlie was sitting on the bathroom stool drinking beer.

  ‘What I wanted to say was this, that you went off half-cock when you left here.’

  His body was exposed to the water, he seemed to feel it seeping through the flesh, warming the chilled bones. He drained half the glass of whisky and felt corresponding warmth in his stomach. Where was the liquid that would warm the heart? ‘I don’t understand you.’

  Charlie, unusually, was embarrassed. ‘About you and Anna, I got no call to interfere. I know that. You want to leave her, I thin
k you’re a fool, but it’s not my business. I’m talking about a job, about you being finished in TV. You’re wrong about that.’

  He went on to explain. There was this TV research firm, Bill knew the kind of thing, audience research, what markets were best for what products, why C and D groups switched off at certain times of the day no matter what programme was on, what programmes got real audience participation, that kind of thing. ‘They’re looking for an assistant general manager, and it could be you, Bill.’

  Clouds of steam came up from him. ‘You mean you mentioned my name and they didn’t flinch?’

  ‘Hell, no, why should they flinch about something that happened way back in the dark ages? We all killed people in the war and crowed about it. You’re out as a TV personality, agreed, but for the rest of it you’re carrying a chip on your shoulder.’

  The bathroom door opened. Anna put her head round it. ‘There’s a man on the telephone. His name’s Westmark. Shall I tell him you’re here?’

  ‘Westmark.’ He sat up, moved to get out of the bath, thought again. ‘Say you may be in touch with me. If so, you’ll ask me to telephone. Try to find out what he wants.’

  Her head disappeared. ‘I thought you just wanted his name for an article you were writing,’ Charlie said.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Westmark’s dangerous.’

  ‘You said he was reliable.’

  ‘So he is. But dangerous if you try to play any tricks with him. What have you…’ Charlie shut his thin mouth at the sight of Hunter’s expression. ‘Not my business, all right, I know. But how about the other thing, Bill? How about coming along with me to see these people?’

  The heat, the real passionate heat, was going out of the water. ‘Give me the towel, Charlie.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘No use. It’s too late.’