The Hireling's Tale

by Jo Bannister

  ‘He’s single. I believe he’s considered a great catch in Bucharest.’

  ‘What about Ian Selkirk?’

  ‘His father emigrated from Scotland soon after the war. He was a fisherman, so that’s what he did in Mexico - ended up with a small fleet and a cannery in Yucatan. Ian was here shopping for new automated plant for the cannery.’

  ‘And the drugs connection?’

  For a moment Kendall considered denying all knowledge. Then he shrugged. ‘I’ve heard the stories, I don’t know if they’re true.’

  ‘The FBI think they are. They think the Selkirk fleet runs drugs into the United States. An undercover agent was murdered.’

  ‘By Ian?’

  ‘They consider that a distinct possibility.’

  Kendall shook his head in wonder. ‘I’d no idea.’

  ‘How about the Saudi? Ibn al Siddiq.’ He had to read that from his list. ‘Is he a real prince?’

  ‘Yes; though there are a lot of real princes in Saudi Arabia, he’s only a distant relative of the present king.’

  ‘What does he do for a living? Does he do anything for a living?’

  ‘He owns oil wells.’

  ‘Wasn’t he in the services during the Gulf War?’

  ‘He was a pilot in the Saudi air force. Did he kill people? - I expect he did, I think that was the whole idea. If you’d had Iraqi tanks heading for your borders you might have done too.’

  ‘There was an incident in London two years ago. Are you aware of that?’

  Kendall frowned. ‘The business with the African maid. It was most unfortunate; Prince Ibn was deeply embarrassed. Though in fact it was his wife who was responsible.’

  ‘Tell me what you understand of the episode.’

  ‘The girl was travelling with the family as a lady’s maid. She was admitted to hospital with burns on her back caused by an electric iron. The younger of Siddiq’s wives had found creases in her best frock.’

  ‘So she burned the girl with an iron?’ Incredulity was like a bad taste in Superintendent Hilton’s mouth.

  ‘She was sent home in disgrace,’ Kendall said. ‘Siddiq was as horrified as you and me. He tried to make amends: looked after the girl’s expenses in this country and provided generous compensation to see her back safely to her own. He did all he could to remedy the situation.’

  ‘I see.’ Hilton made a note. ‘Is there anything more you can tell me about any of them?’

  ‘I can tell you,’ said Kendall, measuring his words, ‘that they’re all good customers. That those in the market for armaments are acceptable to our government as end-users. They pay their bills, and don’t expect backhanders. What else should I know? They’re not personal friends, I can’t vouch for what they do on their nights off. If you tell me one of them committed this crime I’ll be shocked but I won’t argue, I don’t know them that well. The only genuine friend I had at the conference was Mrs Atwood, and she and I were having supper when the murder was committed. I can tell you she wasn’t involved. Beyond that I can’t tell you anything for sure.’

  ‘And the fact that Detective Superintendent Shapiro was shot while responding to a call from you is - what, coincidence?’

  ‘I shouldn’t imagine it was anything of the kind,’ said Kendall tersely. ‘I imagine it happened exactly as planned. The man terrorized me in my own house in the confident expectation that I’d call the police, that the town’s senior detective would want to see where the shots were fired, and that as he came up those steps he’d be a sitting duck. That may make me stupid - it’s certainly how I feel right now. But it doesn’t make me involved, Superintendent. He used me, I didn’t help him.’

  ‘Him? Who?’

  Kendall spread a hand. ‘Whoever we’re talking about. The Mexican, the Korean, the Arab - whoever the others were.’

  ‘Oh no, Mr Kendall, you misunderstand.’ Hilton did that cold smile of his. ‘I don’t think the man who killed the girl shot Mr Shapiro. He was perfectly capable of beating a young girl and throwing her off a roof, but he wouldn’t take on a senior police officer. I think when he realized Mr Shapiro was on his trail he hired a professional to stop him. The miracle of modern communications, eh, Mr Kendall? - pick up the phone, transfer money to a Swiss bank account, and within a few hours someone who was threatening your peace of mind isn’t any longer. No exchanging of bulging envelopes on park benches - nothing to photograph, no one to follow. All pretty untraceable. You can imagine how hard that makes our job.’

  He paused just long enough for Kendall to think he’d finished and begin to relax. Then abruptly he went on. ‘Fortunately, we have technology on our side too. Pretty soon I’ll be able to tell you which of your guests is a murderer. Samples taken from Mrs Atwood’s room are being compared with those from rooms occupied by those five men. I think we’ll find a match, and then we’ll have him.

  ‘Well, we may not have him exactly. If he’s any sense he’ll have skipped the country by now.’ Hilton’s tone hardened. ‘After all, that’s why you bought him that bit of time - that, and to cover your own involvement. You got Mrs Atwood out of the way so he could use her room, and when you learned what he’d used it for you may have been appalled but you didn’t pick up the phone and tell us. You helped him to make his escape.’

  He leaned back in his chair, regarding Kendall speculatively. ‘Did you try to find the other girl too? - to buy her silence or ensure it some other way? But she was already gone. She hadn’t told the police either or we’d have been swarming all over the hotel when you got back from your supper, so maybe she just panicked and fled. Maybe she’d keep her head down and never be heard of again. Every hour that passed left you a little more confident.

  ‘But not for long. Fourteen hours after the murder Mr Shapiro had established where it occurred, and you were having to answer questions that put you perilously close to naming the man you’d gone out on a limb to protect. So you warned him, and he sent a mechanic - a professional, Mr Kendall, a hit man, an assassin - to deal with it. Maybe you weren’t expecting that. Maybe you hadn’t thought he’d want your help to shoot Mr Shapiro. But it was already too late to refuse.

  ‘After that you were committed. You’d do anything he asked, because your safety depended on it. When Detective Inspector Graham, in a worthy if unwise attempt to set your mind at rest, told you the missing girl had been in touch and how, when and by whom she was being brought back to Castlemere, you passed the information on.

  ‘But you see, technology’s going to help us there too. Every call made on that phone is logged. When we find a number on the list that is suddenly, unaccountably unobtainable, and the call was made at a time only you, your wife and my officers were in the house, you’re going to find yourself in severe difficulties.

  ‘For a cannery contract, was it? - or some oil industry equipment? By God, Mr Kendall, I hope you’re on commission. It wouldn’t be worth it otherwise.’

  Mr Browne fielded that too. His jowly face was ideally suited to convey outraged disapproval. ‘Superintendent, you really mustn’t throw blanket accusations at Mr Kendall without any evidence to support them. I realize this is a difficult time for you, which is why my client’s trying to help. But he won’t keep trying to help if you’re going to accuse him of everything that’s happened in this town in the last week.

  ‘If you want to treat him as a suspect, that’s your prerogative. But I’ll then have to advise him that he’s already given all the information that can reasonably be expected of him and he should say nothing more unless at some point you have some evidence against him. I’d be reluctant to do that, Superintendent, but if there is now a possibility, however remote, of Mr Kendall facing charges it’s my duty to protect his interests rather than assist with yours. Perhaps you’d like to consider that before we go much further.’

  Hilton looked at him for a long moment before replying. ‘No need, Mr Browne. I believe we’ve achieved all we can, for the moment. I’m ending this interview at’ - he
glanced at his watch -‘one twenty-two p.m. Mr Kendall is free to go.’ He turned off the tape.

  Kendall went on sitting, eyes flicking between the man at his side and the man across the table as if he wasn’t sure who’d won. ‘That’s it?’

  Hilton shook his head. ‘No, Mr Kendall, that’s not it. I have a dead girl in the morgue, an injured colleague in the hospital, and a scared girl and another police officer missing in the fens somewhere. It won’t be, as you say, it until someone is made amenable for these crimes. But don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be today. I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you.’

  Chapter Three

  The farmhouse had been abandoned for a decade. Fewer people working more land with bigger machines made it economic to combine into larger units farms which had once supported several families, with the consequence that some of the dwellings became surplus to requirements. This was an old one, and it had been vacated in favour of something smaller, newer and less remote. But whoever built it, two hundred years earlier, had known it would have to withstand savage Fenland gales with a minimum of cosseting, and ten years of them had hardly been enough to dislodge a slate or penetrate the rendering on a wall. The broken windows were more vandalism than wear: essentially the house was still weather-proof. There was no warmth inside, but there was shelter.

  Abandoned houses are never entirely emptied. There are always bits and pieces that nobody wants enough to come back for. The kitchen range had been removed, because it was worth serious money, but a little pot-bellied stove in the scullery had been left. There were a couple of wooden chairs in the kitchen; and scavenging upstairs Donovan found two pairs of enormous red plush curtains, musty but not mildewed, neatly folded into a cupboard.

  He hauled them into the scullery and, using anything dry that came to hand, got the stove burning. He wrapped one of the curtains round Maddie and sat her in a chair where the warmth would reach her. ‘When you feel up to it,’ he said, ‘get out of those clothes and give them a chance to dry.’

  Outside in the yard he found a trough served by a big rainwater butt. The water wasn’t exactly clean, but it was cleaner than what had been in the drains. He stripped off and rinsed his body and his clothes. He was going to have to find help, his best chance was stopping a car on the road, but he wouldn’t have picked up someone looking like he looked when they got here. If he was reasonably clean, hopefully no one would notice he was wet until after they stopped.

  When he’d struggled back into his damp clothes he returned to the scullery. It was a small room, already the little stove had made inroads into the chill.

  Maddie was huddled up in her curtain, but she’d done as he suggested and draped her clothes around the stove. If anything, the smell of the mud drying was worse than when it was wet.

  Donovan stood as close to the stove as he could without stealing her heat, felt the glow begin to percolate through to his flesh. Given half an excuse he’d have spent an hour here, thawing out and resting. But time mattered. Even if Donovan couldn’t see how Dodgson could have followed them here, given enough time he would find them again. It was impossible to say how long they’d got, only that the longer they waited the likelier it was they’d regret it.

  ‘Maddie,’ he said quietly, ‘I have to leave here now. We need help, and no one knows where we are. I have to get to a phone.’

  Maddie’s voice was an exhausted little plaint. ‘You have a phone. Ah—’ She remembered. It had been in her hand when they drove round the corner into the sights of an RPG. She had no idea what happened to it after that, but she hadn’t hung on to it and she didn’t know when Donovan could have gone back for it. Either it was in the burnt-out car or at the bottom of the ditch. ‘I can’t …’

  Donovan shook his head, spraying droplets of water like a labrador. ‘I know. You stay here. I’ll get back as soon as I can, but it could be another hour or so. Will you be all right?’

  She thought, hunched herself deeper into her curtain. ‘Don’t go.’

  ‘I have to. I have to let my boss know what’s happened. Then she’ll send us some transport. Maddie, if we wait to be found it could be days, and it may not be my people who find us.’

  She was terrified of being left alone. ‘What if he comes before you do?’

  ‘He won’t,’ said Donovan, with all the confidence he could muster. ‘There hasn’t been time for him to track us down. The Levels is all like this, isolated farms at the end of long tracks. He doesn’t know which way we went - Jesus, I don’t know which way we went! - so he has to go up every one. There’s time enough if I go now. I may not be that long. I might meet a car, or somebody ploughing a field, in the first mile. I could be back here in half an hour. You’ll be all right for half an hour, won’t you?’

  She didn’t think she would. For some reason, and it couldn’t be his success in keeping her out of trouble, she had confidence in this long streak of black Irishness. He’d said he’d stick by her, whatever the cost, and though Maddie had heard the words before she’d never heard them from someone who obviously, genuinely meant them. She knew that all his earnest commitment - all right, to his job, but this time that meant to her too - wasn’t enough to guarantee her safety. But she’d spent a lot of her life at the lower end of people’s priorities and it felt good to be on top for a change.

  She didn’t deceive herself that it was personal regard that put her there. He was taking care of her to the best of his ability because he’d taken the shilling and was too proud to say that any of the ways of earning it were too difficult. That didn’t lower him in her estimation. Anybody could be great in bed with someone they fancied the socks off: the mark of a professional was to do their level best for someone when it was just a job. It was something to be proud of. The labourer was worthy of his hire.

  Of course, the same thing applied to the man hunting them. Hunting her, rather - Donovan was incidental, only at risk as long as he was with her. Another professional, another hireling. He’d taken the money and he’d finish the job if there was any way at all. He didn’t hate her, any more than Donovan cared for her or she loved the men she bedded. But it was a contract, you had to give value for money. You didn’t just go through the motions. You did your best, even when you wished heartily to be anywhere but here. She wouldn’t put her clothes back on and run because the man turned out to be more Proteus than Adonis. Donovan couldn’t cut and run because circumstances had turned him from a taxi-driver into an unarmed bodyguard. And the man out there couldn’t call it a day simply because it had got messy and taken too much time and on reflection it seemed a pretty sordid way to make a crust, hunting a woman to exhaustion and then snuffing her out.

  Donovan was right: he would keep coming. If they waited he would find them. She didn’t look up, didn’t want him to see how afraid she was. ‘Yes,’ she mumbled. ‘Yes, of course I will. I’ll just stay here by the stove.’

  He didn’t need to see her eyes. He knew she was terrified. She had every reason to be. When he left here he’d be reasonably safe, but she wouldn’t be safe until she was at Queen’s Street. If then. A top mechanic had been paid to end her life. He’d already tried; only luck had saved her. If Donovan was wrong and Dodgson had already picked up the trail, he’d get back here to find her dead. It really didn’t alter anything. If he didn’t go, Dodgson would find them for sure.

  Donovan didn’t kid himself that his presence in the house at that moment would make more than a fleeting difference. Armed, he would have been no match for a professional gunman; unarmed, all he could do was offer an additional target. He’d have done that if need be, but not with any hope that his death would do more than delay the inevitable by a few moments. It was almost the hardest thing about what he had to do next: that he would be leaving the worst of the danger behind.

  He crouched down so that his face was level with hers and he smiled. Donovan’s smile could surprise people who had known him for quite some time, partly because he didn’t do it often and partly beca
use it was a gentler, more tender thing than anyone who knew his fierce, feral grin ever expected. His grin made those of a nervous disposition hide behind the furniture, but his smile was like a secret gateway to an altogether sweeter place in his soul. What surprised people was that such a place existed.

  ‘You’re doing great,’ he said. ‘And I’ll be back before you miss me.’ Then he left.

  Realistically, he didn’t expect to see another living soul for half an hour. Even then he could still be some way from the nearest phone. At least he didn’t have to decide which way to go. Unless he was prepared to return to the fen, there was only one way. He set off at a walk, his long stride lending speed to the apparently easy pace. He did a lot of walking at home, it took nothing out of him. Even after the morning he’d had, after a few minutes he had energy to spare for an economical jog.

  Drainage for cultivation had shrunk the fields on either side so that the track stood two metres above the rest of the landscape. Donovan felt desperately conspicuous, had to keep reminding himself that was probably a good thing. Of all the people who might spot him from a mile away and wonder who the hell he was and what he was doing there, only one was bad news. An irate farmer loaded for bear was just what he needed right now.

  But if anyone saw him they did nothing about it. He walked and jogged for ten minutes, and then the track joined a metalled laneway. There were no signs: he might as well have flipped a coin as try to work out which way would serve him best. He turned right simply because walking into the spring sunshine was pleasanter than walking away from it.

  Finally a hard-of-hearing God responded to his not-very-practised prayers and sent a car.

  Over the flat landscape he saw it even before he heard it. He could make out no detail except the one he absolutely had to be sure of: that it wasn’t navy blue. In fact it was cream, a big load-carrying estate capable of accommodating a large family, several sacks of grain and a sick sheep. Donovan breathed a sigh of relief. If they were all out together, the sheep could take its chances while he got Maddie to safety.