“On the last occasion, and on this, you were followed by a young man whom we believe to be called Mohammed Jemal. He is one of a group of dissidents from our country who have been given sanctuary in yours. They spend much of their time parading the streets with banners calling for the overthrow of the Ayatollah. If that was all they did they would hardly be worthy of notice. Unfortunately one or two of them are more active. Jemal is one such. His primary objective in following you was, I surmise, to find me. And, if he could, to kill me.”
Mrs. Chaytor noticed that he said this without emphasis or bravado. He had lived under the threat of assassination for so long that it had become a way of life, to be accepted without emotion.
“Our manoeuvre at the Gare du Nord has had two excellent results. He has lost your trail. We are still on his. So, having failed in his primary task, he will be all the keener to succeed in the other one; which is, I feel certain, to deprive you of the exceedingly valuable picture you will be carrying and our country of the large sum of money it will fetch through the efforts of the good Mr. Meyer. And of your husband, too, of course.”
Mrs. Chaytor said, “Yes.” She was aware of the important part that her husband played in these matters.
“On this occasion the picture is too old and too fragile to be rolled in your umbrella. It will be in that suitcase.” He indicated the case which was standing at the end of the couch and which had caught her eye as soon as she came into the room. It was not her suitcase, but it was very like it. It was the same size and made of the same stuff. There were labels on it not unlike those on hers.
“It has a compartment in the lid which I would defy anyone to find, even in the unlikely event of such a regular traveller as yourself being suspected. I will show you the trick of it. It is this case upon which young Jemal’s attention will assuredly be fixed. He will have no opportunity to steal it whilst you are on the train or the boat for we will see that you are well, and moreover openly, escorted until you reach London. In any event, it is no doubt on the final stage of your journey that he will be planning to act. I assume that he knows your house and the surrounding area well. Explain to me exactly how you reach it.”
“On one of the suburban line trains from Waterloo to Staines. Then a bus to Stanwell. Then a walk to our house.”
“How far?”
“Less than half a mile.”
“But not, I understand, along a well-lit street.”
“Unhappily, no. It’s a side road. There’s no lighting on it, or in the place where we live. We are, now, its only remaining inhabitants.”
“Excellent. It is surely there that he will plan to relieve you of your suitcase. As an additional incentive he will have noticed that the last of the team that was guarding you on your journey was left behind in London. You follow what I am saying?”
Mrs. Chaytor understood exactly what Zaman was saying and liked none of it.
“Don’t be alarmed. The withdrawal of your escort will be more apparent than real. We are planning this campaign on a large and careful scale. Two of my best men are leaving by air. Rest assured they will deal with Jemal.”
When he stopped speaking the words ‘deal with’ seemed to hang in the air. Mrs. Chaytor said abruptly, “You mean they will kill him?”
“Certainly. And if you cherish any soft feelings towards him perhaps you will recollect that he has already been responsible for the deaths of a number of French citizens.”
“Then why not report him to the authorities here?”
“I considered it, of course. But I had to reject it. To bring the crime home to him, I should have been forced to come out into the open and give evidence. It would be the end of my usefulness. My services to our leader are too valuable to take such a chance. Of course, if you were prepared to give evidence yourself—”
“I couldn’t possibly identify him,” said Mrs. Chaytor hastily. “Why, I hardly saw him—”
With a contraction of the lips that might, in a less reserved man, have been described as a smile, Zaman said, “You will see, then, that my way is best. All the necessary steps will be taken in England. We will leave the whole matter as a puzzle to be unravelled by your celebrated Scotland Yard. Right? Then, all we have to do now is to transfer your personal effects to this case and send you on your way.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Chaytor. She hoped that her legs would support her when she stood up. “That’s all.” But to herself she said, with total conviction, ‘Never again. Never again.’ She repeated this in time with the beating of her heart, which had started to play tricks with her, slowing at one time to a heavy irregular thudding, then doubling in speed and racing.
Once she was seated in the train, speeding smoothly towards Amiens and Boulogne and had taken several deep breaths, she felt her heart steadying. She told herself, in the firm voice she had so often used with her young charges, ‘Stop being silly. Everything will come out all right if you do exactly what you’ve been told.’
She had no difficulty in spotting her guardian for this part of the journey, a tall Iranian with a pock-marked face who had seated himself where he could keep an eye on her and on her case in the rack above. When he left the carriage at Amiens and moved to the corridor, one of his compatriots, who had been standing there, immediately took his place. This one was shorter and stouter, but looked equally wide awake. Both of them followed her as she made her way onto the boat. They did not embark with her, but she noted that one of the stewards, a dark boy, was unusually attentive. He found a seat for her in the lounge and visited her more than once with offers of refreshment and of help, which she did not need.
At Dover the Customs Officer, an old friend, waved her through with a smile and without troubling her to open her case. Everything seemed to be going easily and smoothly.
It was while the train was running through the fields and orchards of Kent that doubts began to creep in.
Zaman was clever, no doubt about that. And an excellent organiser. But had he, on this occasion, misread the minds of his opponents? Were his precautions all being taken in the wrong place? Those two men of his, who were to guard her on the last stage of her journey, had crossed, that evening, by plane. Presumably Jemal had done the same. There was an hourly shuttle service between de Gaulle and Gatwick. But why should it be supposed that Jemal was operating on his own? Zaman had mentioned that there were a number of activists. The walk from the bus to her house looked like being a battlefield, with her in the middle.
These fears travelled with her to Victoria. She considered the possibility of cloakrooming the case, but realised that this action would certainly be observed. The objective of her assailants would then be switched to the cloakroom ticket in her pocket rather than the bag in her hand. There was no comfort in that idea.
Dusk had fallen by the time her suburban train crawled into Staines. Fortunately the bus terminus was directly opposite the station exit. She went out with the crowd and made her way to the waiting-room. There were several people there waiting for the Windsor and the Chertsey buses. It was nearly an hour before her bus arrived. By that time only three other passengers remained: a middle-aged woman with two talkative children. She hoped that they would come all the way with her, but they got off at the reservoir turning, leaving her alone with the conductor.
He seemed inclined to conversation. It appeared that he was a vegetarian, a teetotaller and a member of the Staines Regatta Committee. She expressed suitable interest in all these activities. She wondered whether she could possibly ask him to walk with her from the bus terminus to her house, but decided that this offer would certainly be misconstrued and equally certainly rejected.
When the bus finally drew up she dismounted slowly, picked up her case and started off. She had not gone far before an urgent shout stopped her. Looking round she saw that the conductor was holding out her umbrella.
“Likely you’ll need this,” he said, “before you get home.”
She had been too worried to pay much attent
ion to the weather, but now she noticed for the first time that the stars had been covered and the wind was rising.
On the left of the road there was a dry ditch with steep sides. On the right it was open ground until about half-way, where there was the entrance to a farmhouse, so long empty that the ‘For Sale’ boards were almost illegible. No help there. Indeed, the entrance would be a very likely place for an ambush.
Drawing on her considerable stock of resolution, Mrs. Chaytor put these thoughts aside and strode out. In the event of attack she had decided to drop the case and bolt. Let them have the picture. It would give her a chance of escape.
She had almost reached the farm gate when she heard the sound behind her and swung round. It was a car and it was coming fast. She jumped for the farm gate, found it padlocked and threw herself at the top bar.
The car stopped with a jerk and a voice said, in tones of surprise, “Mrs. Chaytor? Well met. Sling that case on board and jump in.” It was Stewart. Her husband was already out on the road. He took the case and handed it to Peter who was in the back of the car. He said, “You should have taken a taxi from Staines, my love. How often have I told you? Five minutes later and you would have been soaked to the skin.”
The first heavy drops of rain were hitting them.
“Autumn storm. Quick come, quick go,” said Stewart. The windscreen wipers were working overtime as he drove forward through a screen of rain. “I’ll park as close to the door as possible. You go first, Colin, with the key and get the door open. Then we’ll all jump for it. Right?”
Five minutes later they were sitting in front of a newly kindled fire, sampling Mr. Chaytor’s whisky. Even Mrs. Chaytor, normally abstemious, was gulping down her share with the rest. Her husband, who had been in the kitchen to fetch the glasses said, “You were last out of the house this morning, my love. Did you leave the kitchen window open?”
“Certainly not.”
“Well, it’s wide open now.”
“Burglars,” said Stewart comfortably. “Better go and see if they’ve taken anything.”
When he came back Mr. Chaytor was looking puzzled. “As far as I can see,” he said, “they haven’t taken anything. On the other hand the catch of the window had certainly been forced and there are muddy footmarks on the kitchen floor. Red mud from the back garden and it’s still wet.”
“That solves the mystery,” said Stewart. “It was a burglar. He heard us coming and bunked.”
Peter and Mr. Chaytor nodded agreement. Mrs. Chaytor kept her thoughts to herself. So Jemal had broken in and had been waiting for her, expecting the house to be empty. Zaman’s men, if indeed they were outside, would have been in no position to interfere. She would have been at his mercy.
“You’re shivering,” said her husband. “Have another drop of whisky and I’ll get some soup on the boil.”
“I’d better refix the window,” said Stewart.
Peter, left alone with Mrs. Chaytor, looked at her curiously. It was clear to him that she had been badly frightened, but far from clear by what. Was it the attempted burglary? No. She had been frightened before that. Then was it something that had happened in France? That was more probable.
Stewart, standing at the open kitchen window, was thinking on the same lines. He did not entirely believe his own burglar theory. And what had Mrs. Chaytor been up to? As he drove up she had not simply been standing in the entrance to the farm. He had the impression that she had been starting to climb the gate.
The rain had nearly stopped and the moon reappeared for a moment among the racing black clouds which were the tail end of the downpour.
It was whilst he was staring out of the window that the scream came.
It was from somewhere beyond the end of the garden, a shriek of pain and outrage, cut off sharply. It had been loud enough to fetch Peter and Mr. Chaytor from the front room. They stood staring out into the night. The moon was playing hide-and-seek among the clouds. When it shone out they could see as far as the garden fence, but not much beyond.
The cry was not repeated.
“A rabbit chased by a stoat,” suggested Peter.
“That wasn’t an animal,” said Stewart. “It was human.”
Mr. Chaytor nodded agreement. They stood for a minute peering out and listening, but all they could hear was the wind whipping through the branches of the trees.
“Have you got a torch?” said Stewart.
Peter said, “You’re not going out, are you?”
“Must see what’s happening.”
Typical, thought Peter. “Why should we?” he said.
“It’s none of our business,” agreed Mr. Chaytor. But when he had produced a torch the three of them set out together, with Stewart leading, and climbed the railed fence at the bottom of the garden.
A hundred yards beyond it they reached the filter beds. These covered an area as large as a football field and were surrounded by a three-strand barbed-wire fence. They were divided, by one central and a number of transverse walkways, into rectangular boxes with steep sides, full of the partly treated sewage of the airport. An overlay of some green chemical which floated on the top of each box masked the smell.
“It came from somewhere in there,” said Stewart. The top line of wire was slack enough at that point to be pressed down and stepped over.
“For God’s sake,” said Mr. Chaytor, “be careful how you go. Some friends of ours lost a dog there last year. He slipped in and couldn’t get out. Poor beast.”
The centre walkway was wide enough to be used with some confidence. When they were half-way along it, Stewart said, “We’ve gone too far. It was over on the left, back there. Watch your step.”
This was one of the side turnings, easy enough in daylight, tricky by the light of a single torch. They advanced cautiously until they reached the boundary wire on the left.
“It came from near here,” said Stewart. He swung the torch. Away to the right something was hanging on the barbed-wire. From where they stood it looked like a bundle of rags. As they edged closer they could see two feet sticking up into the air. A scarecrow had been turned on its head and lashed to the wire.
Stewart swung the torch down and they saw a face, slimed with green, the eyes open and staring.
“Jesus Christ,” said Peter. “It’s young Jemal.”
3
“We did think at first,” said Superintendent O’Keefe, “that it might have been mugging and robbery. Rather an unpleasant sort of mugging, you might say. He’d been drowned. Held head down in that muck. Not very nice.”
His fatherly manner and matter-of-fact way of speaking robbed the words of some, but not much, of their brutality.
It was five o’clock in the morning. His audience was Mr. Chaytor, Stewart and Peter. They were seated in the living-room before a dying fire. In the last few hours a large number of people had appeared and disappeared. Most of them had tramped through the house. A photographic team, with flash-lights; finger-print men who seemed able to work in the dark; a police doctor, followed by a well-known pathologist who had been treated by everyone with great deference and had looked as neat and as wide awake as if he had been in his Harley Street consulting-room.
Statements had been taken from everyone and a follow-up team had appeared and erected a tent over the spot where Jemal had hung. A pathetic catafalque, thought Peter.
The police doctor had sent Mrs. Chaytor to bed and had given her a sleeping-pill before he left.
“However, when we got that boy’s prints on the computer at Central and found out he was—” the Superintendent consulted his note-pad, “—an Iranian called Mohammed Awali Jemal, a member of a militant section of his compatriots, why then we changed our minds somewhat.”
“If you already had his finger-prints on record,” said Stewart, “does that mean that he had had previous convictions?”
“Some form, yes sir. He’d been up twice for brawling in the streets. The second occasion was more serious. People got hurt. Rather a
violent young man. Well, you know how these groups fight among themselves. Hate each other, sometimes more than they hate their real enemies. And this had the look of a revenge killing.”
“You said mugging and robbery.”
“Did I?” O’Keefe looked surprised. “I suppose I thought that because there wasn’t much in the young man’s pockets. If he had had a wallet or anything like that it was gone. Only thing we found, in his watch-pocket, was a damp piece of cardboard which might tell us something when our back-room boys have worked it over. They do wonderful things with screens and cameras. You say you knew him, sir?”
This was shot, without warning, at Peter who had been slumped in his chair. Now he sat up and tried to pull himself together.
“I wouldn’t say I knew him well. It was when I was doing a stint of teaching foreigners English. Quite a few of the Iranian dissidents came to me. Jemal was one of them.”
“What did you make of him?”
“I thought he was a very earnest young man, wholly devoted to the anti-Khomeni faction. And prepared, unlike most of the others, to take active steps.”
“Active steps?” said the Superintendent thoughtfully. “Yes. You didn’t know, perhaps, that a young man of his description is wanted in France in connection with an outrage in the Boulevard de Magenta?”
“I read about it,” said Stewart. “A bomb was thrown. Do you mean that was Jemal?”
“It might have been, sir. There is no certainty. If it is true, it provides another possible explanation of what happened here last night.”
“You mean that French agents—”
“Agents of some sort. The Special Branch, who deal with such matters, will be informed later today. After they have breakfasted. They are gentlemen of regular habits who do not appreciate being deprived of their sleep. Speaking of which, I will now leave you to yours.”
After he had gone, Chaytor put another log on the fire. So little of the night was left that it seemed scarcely worthwhile going to bed. It was Stewart who raised the matter that was in all their minds.
Paint Gold and Blood Page 15
