‘Where will you be going?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a mystery tour. Maybe we’ll send you a card.’
Regretfully, they concluded that it would be necessary to leave the guns. There were so many precautions at airports these days that it was doubtful whether they would have been able to board an airliner with hardwear of that kind. Anyway, it was only a woman they were proposing to tackle, so firearms were hardly essential.
‘We’re on our way,’ Gomez said.
There was a fortune beckoning to them, and they meant to get it, come what might.
Chapter Fifteen – Help
They took accommodation in a modest hotel and began to look around. And only then did the full difficulty of this task with which they were faced really get home to them.
In faraway Buenos Aires it had all looked so different. Adelaide Lacoste had gone to London. They would follow and find her. It was quite straightforward. No problem.
But now that they were in London things took on a very different appearance. The metropolis was so vast; it was as large as Buenos Aires; a great sprawling mass of buildings scattered around in streets, roads, avenues, closes, circuses, crescents, ways, walks, groves, lanes, squares, courts, yards, mews, gardens and even fields, hills and mounts. At the end of a week they felt exhausted and dispirited. The weather was hot and oppressive, and they had sore feet from so much walking. They had stood in Piccadilly Circus, in Trafalgar Square, in The Strand, watching the world go by, and there had been women who they had thought for a moment might be the one they were seeking, but were not. They were nagged by the thought that she might have left London, gone somewhere else. Maybe they were wasting their time.
‘We cannot go on like this,’ Gomez said. ‘It is hopeless.’
Villa looked at him. ‘You are saying we should give up?’
‘No. I am saying that we must try another way of finding the woman. I think we should get help.’
‘What help?’ Villa asked. ‘Tell me.’
Gomez told him.
*
The help they got was a man named Walter Sharpe. He was an operator working for a private inquiry agency, and when younger he had served in the Metropolitan Police.
Sharpe was a lanky round-shouldered man with thin features and the sad look of a chronic dyspeptic. He was about fifty years old and wore a shapeless blue suit and black suede shoes. His hair was greying at the fringes and receding from the summit.
Gomez and Villa were not at all favourably impressed by his appearance and had thoughts of going to another agency. But they were assured that Sharpe was one of the best men in the business and they decided to give the agent a chance.
As things turned out, it was a wise decision. Within a space of little more than three days Sharpe had discovered where Adelaide Lacoste was living. His method was simple but effective. Gomez had told him the probable date of Miss Lacoste’s arrival in London, and Sharpe wanted to know whether she had friends or relations to whom she might be going.
Gomez said she had not. ‘We are her relations and we are worried about her safety. It is a family matter, you understand?’
‘I understand,’ Sharpe said.
Secretly he was not convinced that Gomez was telling the truth. He was a good judge of men, and he would not have trusted Gomez or Villa further than he could have thrown them with one hand. But this was immaterial. His job was to find the woman and not to bother his head about the reasons why he was being asked to do so.
Since this Miss Lacoste — which sounded to him like a French name rather than Argentinian – since she was not going to friends or relations, it seemed logical to suppose that she would need accommodation on arrival in London. Therefore he began systematically checking by telephone with the hotels to discover whether they had received a guest by the name of Adelaide Lacoste around the date given by Gomez.
It was tedious work, but eventually it brought a result. A person of that name had taken a room at a Bayswater hotel on the date mentioned. Unfortunately for Sharpe, this person had stayed only a few days before leaving.
Sharpe inquired whether Miss Lacoste had given any indication regarding where she was going. The answer was that she had not. She had told the hotel receptionist, however, that she was proposing to rent a flat or small house. She had asked for advice on finding a reputable estate agent.
Sharpe asked whether the receptionist could recall the name of any agent she might have recommended, but it appeared that she had mentioned none. Instead, she had advised Miss Lacoste to look in the Yellow Pages or the classified advertisement columns of one of the newspapers. She would find what she was looking for there.
So now Sharpe had to turn his attention to the letting agencies, and it took some time. But once again his patience finally paid off. He discovered that a woman giving the name of Adelaide Lacoste had rented a small terrace house in Southwark a short while ago.
He went down there to check it out. It was a house with no pretensions to grandeur or even style, but he noted that it was in good condition and he guessed that a place like that would command a fairly steep rental nowadays, especially if it was let fully furnished.
He pushed the gate open and walked up the little path to the front door and rang the bell. A young woman opened the door, and he was impressed by her beauty. The clients had not told him that she was so attractive; perhaps they had deemed it immaterial. Indeed, they had not described her at all. Seeing her now, Sharpe had even stronger doubts concerning the truth of Gomez’s statement that he and Villa were related to her: there was no resemblance whatever between this blonde charmer and those men.
Sharpe had been married for twenty-five years to the same woman and had never been a Lothario, but he felt his heart leap a little at the sight of the girl. For a moment he was taken off balance and just stared at her, saying nothing.
‘Yes?’ she said.
He found his voice. ‘You are Miss Adelaide Lacoste?’
‘I am.’
‘I’m from the Council,’ Sharpe said. ‘Just checking up. I believe you moved in quite recently.’
‘That is so,’ she said.
He thought she seemed nervous. He wondered why. He wondered for a moment whether the nervousness could have anything to do with Gomez and Villa, who looked like proper villains to his experienced eye. And he had a sudden feeling of reluctance to go back to them and report that he had found the woman.
But of course it would be stupid not to; he was being paid to do the job and not ask why the clients wanted to have it done. Besides, if he went back to them and reported a failure they would get someone else to take his place; and what good would that do for his reputation at the agency? Anyway, he was probably building too much on the fact of the young woman’s apparent nervousness. There was no reason at all why she should connect him with Gomez and Villa. Perhaps she was just naturally nervous with strangers who came knocking on her door. And the way things were these days, she probably had reason to be.
‘Is that all?’ she asked.
‘You haven’t any complaints?’
‘About what?’
‘Services. Rubbish collection. That sort of thing.’
‘No, I haven’t any complaints.’
He could see that she wanted to be rid of him, and he did not blame her. From her point of view he was just a public nuisance, if not worse.
‘Right then. I’ll be on my way.’
*
He gave the address to Gomez and Villa when they called in at the agency the next morning for a progress report. He supposed they were pleased, though they did not give much sign of it.
‘You saw Miss Lacoste?’ Gomez asked.
‘Of course. I had to make sure she was living there. I’m not in the habit of doing things by halves.’
Sharpe spoke curtly. The more he saw of these two South Americans, the less he cared for them. And having seen the woman they were looking for and claimed to be related to, he could not avoid this feeling
that he had become involved in a particularly dirty piece of work.
Not that it would be the first dirty job he had done; in his profession it was the kind of thing you had to accept. So why did this one seem any worse than the others? Well, he knew the answer to that: it was because of the young woman. He had seen her for no more than a couple of minutes, but she had really made an impression on him; and the fact of the matter was that she was the one he would have preferred to be helping, not the men. Somehow he did not feel that tracing her was going to be to her advantage at all. Far from it.
In his mind he was asking himself why Miss Lacoste should have flown in from Buenos Aires and gone to earth in a terrace house in the Southwark area. Had she been running away from something? And was this something human? Did it in fact go by the names of Gomez and Villa?
He believed so, and he did not like it. He did not like the part he had played in putting them on the trail. If anything bad happened to the woman he would –
Well, what would he do? Bring them to justice? It would be a bit late for her then. Especially if she were dead.
Oh, but that was surely going too far. He had no good reason to suspect that the clients intended to kill Miss Lacoste, or even to harm her in any way. It was all in the mind, and an old campaigner like Walter Sharpe ought to have known better than to allow imagination to run away with him. He ought to have known better than to be influenced by a pretty face. He ought to –
Gomez was speaking. He was expressing his thanks. ‘You did a good job, Mr Sharpe. Got the right name, I guess. What do you say, Fernando? He’s a sharp guy, huh?’
Villa said nothing.
Sharpe said: ‘I suppose you’ll be going to that address?’
‘Sure we will. She’ll be pleased to see us.’
Sharpe doubted that. He doubted whether a visit from Gomez and Villa would give her any pleasure whatever.
Chapter Sixteen – The Hide
Craig’s car was a Rover 600, coloured blue. The time was coming up to ten o’clock in the morning when they got into it and he started the engine. They had planned to get away to an early start, but they had overslept and good intentions had gone by the board.
Adelaide was on edge. She kept urging Craig to hurry. She was afraid that Gomez and Villa might turn up before they could get away.
Craig was less worried by this possibility. ‘Relax. What could they do even if they did come?’
‘You don’t know them as I do. They’re killers.’
He was inclined to doubt that. He felt certain she was exaggerating. But it was all too apparent that she was scared of the men, and maybe she had good reason to be. Again he wondered just what it was they wanted from her.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we can be sure of one thing: they won’t kill you as long as you hold the secret of where this object is that they’re looking for.’
She admitted that this was so, but added sourly: ‘They’ll just torture me and then kill me after they’ve got the information they want.’
‘Why would they do that? They’d have no reason to do it. It wouldn’t be to their advantage.’
‘Men like them don’t always need to have a reason for killing. They do it because they like it. It gives them a kick.’
Again he thought she was exaggerating. But he could see that to her the danger from these two men was real enough, and he himself was glad to be leaving the house and locking the door behind him. Once they were away from there she would be more at ease.
But the departure was not to be without incident. He had just got the car moving when Gomez and Villa suddenly appeared. They were on foot and they were coming round the corner some twenty yards down the street. When they saw the car they began to run towards it, signalling for Craig to stop.
Adelaide spoke urgently: ‘Keep going! Don’t stop!’
The car had gathered very little speed. Craig had half a mind to bring it to a halt and listen to what the men had to say. He was curious, and he could see no harm in having a word or two with them.
But again his companion was urging him to go on. She was almost screaming at him.
‘Don’t stop! Please, Brian, please!’
He could not ignore such an appeal from her. He put more pressure on the accelerator and the car surged forward. Villa had stepped off the pavement into the path of the vehicle, shouting and gesticulating. He had to make a convulsive sideways leap to avoid being run down. He glared at Craig through the side-window as the car went past and yelled something that was probably in Spanish and even more probably highly uncomplimentary. If he had had a gun he might have used it in his anger. But the hardware had been left behind in Buenos Aires, and mere words were a poor substitute for bullets.
The two men ran after the car and caught up with it as it slowed for traffic at the corner. They beat on the windows with their fists and shouted again. But it was futile; a gesture but nothing more.
Adelaide would not even look at them. She stared straight ahead, her face tense, as the car drew away from the pursuit.
‘I think,’ Craig remarked, ‘that those were two very angry men, don’t you?’
She thought so too. She wondered whether it would ever be safe to go back to the house in Southwark. They might be waiting for her.
*
They reached their destination early in the afternoon. It was a wooden bungalow in the heart of the Norfolk Broads country, a dozen miles or so north-east of Norwich. The bungalow was on the edge of one of the lesser broads, little more than a mere in fact, which was inaccessible from any of the others by boat. For this reason it was not a target for holidaymakers, and apart from a few anglers now and then was practically devoid of human life.
Craig’s bungalow was built on stilts to keep the floor above the level of occasional flooding in wet weather. It was fairly isolated and was reached by way of a narrow private road which meandered through the trees surrounding the broad. It was about a quarter of a mile in length and joined up with a minor tarred road, at the junction with which was a board displaying the name of the property: The Hide. Two miles away was a small village called Ringham, which had a post-office doubling as a general store, a butcher’s shop, a bakery and one public house.
Craig stopped in the village to buy provisions before going on to the bungalow. He was known in Ringham, and Mrs Siggins, a stout middle-aged woman who ran the post-office, gave him a friendly welcome.
‘Nice to see you again, Mr Craig. You planning to be here for long?’
‘A while,’ Craig said. ‘It all depends on circumstances.’
‘Well, the weather’s good, and that’s a blessing.’
‘Yes, it is.’
Adelaide had accompanied him into the shop. She thought it was quaint, a relic of a bygone age. She was surprised that such businesses still existed in this era of supermarkets and department stores.
Mrs Siggins glanced at her and had her own thoughts, which she kept to herself. She noted that this was a different lady from the one who had previously accompanied Mr Craig; but it was no concern of hers whom he brought down to share The Hide with him. He could do as he pleased.
Craig thought The Hide was an appropriate name for the bungalow in the circumstances, and said as much to Adelaide.
‘It really is a hideaway, isn’t it?’
She agreed. She was charmed by it. It was quite idyllic in its setting of woods and reeds and shimmering water.
‘There will, of course, be no city high life here,’ Craig said. ‘No theatres or nightclubs; nothing hectic at all. You may be bored.’
‘I think not,’ she said.
It was enough to be at a safe distance from Gomez and Villa. For the present. It could, of course, be no more than temporary; a respite. Eventually it would be necessary to think of an alternative, to make some long-term plan.
Although it was built of timber, the bungalow was a pretty solid structure; there was nothing gimcrack about it. Main electricity and water were laid on, but there was no
telephone.
‘When I’m down here,’ Craig said, ‘I don’t want the phone ringing at all hours and disturbing the peace.’
There were no deliveries of newspapers or milk either; for such articles it was necessary to drive into Ringham, where Mrs Siggins was also the newsagent.
A boathouse adjoined the bungalow. It contained a rowing-boat, and there was a little jetty reaching out into the deeper water. Soon after their arrival Adelaide walked to the end of this jetty and gazed out over the broad. It was completely surrounded by trees, and the afternoon sun was glinting on the ripples. A light breeze had come up and was roughing the surface, but there was no chill in it. She felt Craig’s hand on her shoulder.
‘Glad you came?’
‘Of course.’
There was something else he had to show her. In a kind of storeroom was a steel cabinet fixed to the wall and fastened with a padlock. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it. Inside the cabinet was a twelve-bore shotgun and a box of cartridges.
She looked at the gun with interest. ‘So you shoot?’
‘Very seldom. And then only clays. Fact is, this was left here by the man I bought the place from. He used to do a bit of shooting, but he said he was giving it up and offered me the gun. The asking price seemed reasonable, so I took it from him.’
She said: ‘I have never handled a gun. Show me how you use it, won’t you?’
He took it from the cabinet and gave a demonstration. Then he passed it to her to handle.
‘Now you try it.’
When she had the gun in her grasp she held it as he had, with the butt pressed against her shoulder and her eye looking along the barrel. She could smell the pungent odour of the gun-oil and she had an odd feeling of excitement. With this weapon you could kill a man. It gave you power over life and death. You became a god.
The gun was not loaded. Craig showed her how to break it open and insert cartridges in the breech. He showed her the safety-catch and how to operate it.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘Yes, I see.’
He unloaded the gun and put it back in the cabinet and secured it with the padlock.
Lady From Argentina Page 14
