by Gregg Loomis
“Sorry about that,” Francis said without a shred of remorse.
Lang sat the refilled ice bucket on the bar. “All is forgiven as long as you haven’t drunk the last of the scotch, too. Now, you were saying. . .? ‘Botched’ how?”
After pouring from the bottle, both men returned to the couch, sweating glasses in hand.
“Well, for openers, when the word of the murder got out, half of Nassau trekked out to Westbourne, Sir Harry’s estate. The Duke let them all, maybe a hundred people, tromp through the room where the murder had been committed.”
“Not my idea of securing a crime scene.”
“Not on Law and Order, SVU, anyway. First thing the Duke did when Sir Harry’s house guest, Harold Christe, called him in near panic that morning was to phone the editor of the paper, requesting news of the murder be withheld until the investigation could be begun. Unfortunately, Christe had already called him and the presses were rolling, not to mention local radio.
“The two local police investigators, Erskine-Lindop and Charles Pemberton did nothing to stop the flow of the curious. The Duke told the local police chief, Chief, Edward Sears, that the local force was ill-equipped to handle a matter of this magnitude. Caused quite a local stir, particularly since Lindop and Pemberton were experienced investigators. There were some who thought they were marginalized, if I can use that word, because they were natives. Both men had outstanding records with the police force.”
“This magnitude?’” Lang interrupted. “A single murder?”
Francis paused to sip from his glass. “I have no clue on what he based that. I couldn’t find any evidence the Nassau police weren’t as capable as any other force of a similar size city in the US. I do know Edward used that assertion to, in essence, take over handling the investigation.”
“The Duke could have asked for assistance from Scotland Yard or even the FBI.”
Francis shook his head. “There was a war on, remember? Getting someone from London or even the FBI from Washington or New York would have required diverting resources needed for the war effort. A perfect reason not to try. What the Duke did was settle for a pair of Miami homicide detectives he had met somehow on a previous trip to the city. Maybe they provided the sort of security visiting British royalty would have required.
“Within a day or two, they claimed the one legible print they had beloged to Sir Harry’s son-in-law. They lifted the print on rubber, rubber, mind you, no explanation given. Anyway, it was destroyed leaving only the one they got off the Chinese screen
“Sounds like the Abbot and Costello of law enforcement.”
“Pretty much so. Nancy, ‘Freddy’ de Marigny’s wife, hired an American private detective, Raymond Schindler, to prove her husband's innocence. By the time he got to Nassau, someone had ordered the murder scene hosed down. Baker and Melchen claimed they had been told to authorize cleaning the place up since fingerprints had already been taken.”
“Who told them to authorize that?”
Francis shrugged. “I’ll leave it to you to guess. Then, Schindler, the private eye, told Nancy de Marigny he thought his telephone was bugged. He called a number at random, told a total stranger he would meet him at one of the island’s beaches the next night. Who showed up was the Nassau cops.”
“Are you saying the Nassau police were in on the murder?” Lang wanted to know.
“Vere scire est per causas scire In on what looks very much like a cover-up. More than a botched job, doesn’t it?”
“Why a cover up?”
“That, I’ll leave to you. False accusations are a sin, even against the deceased. But to finish: De Marigny’s lawyer pretty thoroughly discredited the whole investigation. The only credible evidence was that Sir Harry and Freddy did not get along. Sir Harry resented the fact that de Marigny, a divorcee, had eloped with his daughter and made no bones about his displeasure. De Marigny was acquitted. No one ever inquired around the island as to persons buying a gallon or two of gas in a jerry can. Gas was rationed back then. Besides, the number of gas engines on Nassau was pretty limited--a few power boats, a few more trucks and cars, mostly owned by the white population. Anyway, it was a small number of people who needed gasoline. Christe never explained how he could have been in the next room and heard nothing. He said he never left Westbourne until the next day, yet several people, the police chief included, said they saw him late that night in an unidentified truck.
“No one ever explained why the killer tried to make the scene look like a ritual murder, either.”
“Suppose it was?”
Francis drained his glass. “No hint Sir Harry was involved with the local mumbo-jumbo, voodoo or whatever it was.” He checked his watch. “I gotta go. Early morning Mass. Thank Gurt again for me.”
Lang took his arm at the elbow, a gentle but effective restraint. “Suppose the killer wanted to make it look like some sort of black magic was involved, as a diversion?”
Francis eased his arm loose, heading for the door. “Then I’d say he--or she--succeeded in not diverting but dispersing suspicion. Everyone was a suspect; no one was convicted.”
The priest took two more steps, stopped with his hand on the front door’s knob and turned. "Lang, you know World War II is over.”
“Huh?”
“World War II, the last time our country out and out won a war. Korea isn’t even technically over and we got our butts kicked in Vietnam. Admittedly due to politics, but kicked just the same.”
Lang wasn’t sure he was hearing correctly. “Your point would be?”
“I don’t know your involvement in this thing, this whatever in Nassau. Don’t want to know. But guessing from that cut on your face, which seems to be healing nicely, I might add, from that cut, I gather whatever it is in the Bahamas includes some degree of violence.”
Lang said nothing.
Francis continued. “My point is, have you considered there might be a way to settle whatever the issues are before more people get seriously hurt?”
The look on Lang’s face made him add, “Surely there’s a way everybody gets enough of whatever they want to leave each other alone.”
Francis frequently had the ability to resolve issues he didn’t fully understand. It was a gift. Like the luck he enjoyed on the golf course.
“I’ll give that some thought.”
Lang watched his friend climb into the battered Toyota that the parish furnished. A conclusion of fact was emerging from the fog of history, put together with what Jacob had told Gurt. Unfortunately, that same conclusion had apparently been already reached by Alred James and the boys of the Society of St George. He could do nothing for Sir Harry, but he could surely save himself and his own family before those people launched another attack.
He took out his iPad and dictated a text. It would make no sense to anyone but Jacob.
52.
Temple Bar
London
The Next Morning
The doors to both outer and inner offices were carefully locked although the barrister was in. He was not seeing clients this morning, however.
Instead, his desk was clear, possibly for the first time, its top covered with a plastic tarp, definitely for the first time. Instead of the usual dark suit, Jacob Annulewitz resembled your standard mad scientist who had just stepped out of a really bad sci-fi film: Diver’s goggles compete with snorkel to avoid the fumes of what was on the desk, a blacksmith’s fire retardant knee length apron which would indicate the possibility of unanticipated combustion and latex surgical gloves whose implications were too numerous to mention.
Some weeks prior, he had anticipated the task awaiting him. His preparation had included multiple distillations of household bleach until he had perhaps a teaspoon of potassium chlorate crystals to reduce to powder before mixing with Vaseline and soaking in gasoline. Once the gas evaporated, he made a couple of other additions to achieve the substance before him, a reddish brown mass of a putty-like consistency.
It w
ould have been easier, much easier to make the preparations at home but the risk of Rachel finding out were too great. That discovery would have produced a reaction far more volatile than his handy work would.
Taking his iPad from a pocket, he called up a specific photograph and began to shape the material.
Ten minutes later, he held up the finished product and smiled his satisfaction. A quick paint job from a can of varnish delivered the exact color and superficial hardness desired. The thing would be brittle as chalk but that couldn’t be helped. Permanence was not necessary. He began a cleanup far more thorough than those who knew him socially might have imagined likely. The excess of the material itself went down the drain in the bog down the hall. He broom swept around the desk although he was certain nothing had fallen on the floor. Nonetheless, the sweepings, mostly dust and few errant ashes from his pipe, went into a plastic bag which, along with the tarp that had covered his desk and gloves, would go into a public rubbish bin on a very public street. The apron would suffer a similar fate along with mask and snorkel in another bin as far from the first as was practical given Jacob’s immediate plans.
Having fulfilled the rubbish disposal, he took the train for Betchwort.
Within an hour and a half, he was once again standing on Kiln Lane in front of the same rose covered cottage. The difference was the time: It was afternoon. Schools would soon release their pupils and the park across the way would fill with footballers or other children at play. One or more of them might know the cottage’s owner and realize the old coffin-dodger hobbling about with his briefcase and cudgel of a walking cane was not he.
A risk he would simply have to take. Tomorrow was Friday and likely the owner would be in residence.
It was not a footballer or cricket player that confronted Jacob as he exited the house. It was a large man in a dark suit with glasses to match. Based on posture and manner, Jacob would have bet present or former military. One of Alred James’s SAS troopers, no doubt.
“And blimey! Wot do we ‘av ‘ear?” the man exclaimed.
Make that military, SAS and East London.
“Just having a look about,” Jacob replied with a calmness he didn’t feel. “Seeing what might be for let or sale in the area.”
The man shook his head. “You were inside, Pops. That’s bloody burglary. You can explain to the coppers.” He reached for the briefcase. “An’ jus’ whot might you ‘ave ‘ere?”
Jacob drew back, careful not to go more than a few feet. “Whatever, it’s mine.”
“We’ll just see about that.”
Indeed they would.
The weighted head of the shillelagh crunched into the big man’s temple before he even saw it coming. He dropped like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
Before he hit the ground, the old man was in the cottage’s back yard with a speed one would not have thought possible for someone of his apparent age. He cleared the rear fence with the grace of an antelope and was nowhere to be seen when the local constabulary arrived.
Had they searched the premises, something that seemed unwarranted, they might have been surprised to find a pair of caterpillar-like false eyebrows and a matching wig.
Jacob made the fourth and final train of the day back to London.
53.
Kiln Lane
Two Days Later
Alred James was a careful man by nature. His job as one of the top men in his nation’s foremost intelligence gathering institutions required nothing less. The news that his country home had been invaded by person or persons unknown made him even more cautious. Even more disturbing was the fact Denny Moore, one of the SAS soldiers who were unquestionably loyal to James and The Society, insisted the intruder had been a man in his seventies if not eighties.
An advanced aged for a professional burglar, or, for that matter, spy.
Sgt. Moore had served multiple tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, receiving the Victoria Cross in the latter. He was not a man given to flights of fancy, but his assertion the concussion and fractured skull that had him in the hospital had been rendered by an octogenarian was. . . Well, fanciful, perhaps the result of trauma to the brain.
Still, the man was quite sure someone had been coming out of the cottage.
There was nothing missing as far as James could tell. The computer was still in its hiding place behind the tie rack, the telly was still on the wall. The eating utensils were a lot of mismatched stainless, hardly worth stealing. Little more could be said for the rest of the cottage’s contents.
So, the intruder hadn’t been after actual booty; he had wanted something else.
But what?
James sat down at the desk and absently reached for a pipe in the rack and opened the tobacco can.
The “thief” possibly knew who he, James, was and hoped there was some kind of useful (and salable) information lying about.
His mind went to the code he had used as he stuffed the pipe and struck a wooden match.
That was a disturbing thought. Damn, but he (James) had wanted a code (cypher) that required no code book, no machine.
He greedily sucked the flame into the bowl of the pipe.
His deep subconscious was trying to tell him something.
The code. . .?
No, the pipe.
THE PIPE!
It wasn’t his.
The pipe’s bowl hissed like air escaping from a tire as smoke poured out of it.
James dropped it and jumped backward, his eyes frozen to it as the bowl detached itself from stem and spun across the floor trailing sparks like a child’s sparkler. A combination of surprise and terror froze his feet. He could no more have fled than the legendary bird charmed by the approaching snake.
“Think what could have happened had we been serious.”
The voice from behind him broke the spell.
He spun to see two men on the staircase. One looked to be in his sixties. His face was vaguely familiar. From habit, James’s brain spun through the memory’s file cabinet of old surveillance photographs.
The other, the younger of the two, was instantly recognizable from photographs more recent, bandaged face notwithstanding.
“Reilly! What the bloody hell. . .?”
Lang took the last few steps to the floor, arms extended, hands open. “Alred James, I believe. I fear I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“You’ve got bloody cheek,” the MI6 man spluttered, “breaking into my house! The fuck you think you’re doing, you and your bloody little joke? I could have a dozen men here within minutes. . .”
For the first time in years, he wished he still carried a firearm.
“But you won’t,” the older man still on the stairs said. “You won’t because you don’t have a dozen men available. Ever since you bought this place, you’ve refused all but a single body guard who drives you between here and London. Weren’t recognized hereabouts, you said, didn’t want to be. Same reason you have no electronic security on this cottage: didn’t want to sacrifice your anonymity here in the Surrey countryside. Pure arrogance, I’d call it, thinking no one would dare attack one of MI6’s chiefs.”
Lang faced Jacob, extending both hands, tone down the rhetoric, before he spoke to James. “The purpose of that little display was to show you we meant you no harm. My friend here could just as easily have blown your head off and achieved pretty much the same effect we’re hoping for.”
James felt his anger ebb, replaced by the curiosity endemic to those of his lifelong profession. “And what might that be?”
“A truce.”
“Not as long as you present a danger to the royal family or their reputation.”
This time Lang extended his hands toward the old spymaster, the gesture of a reasonable man. “You can try to preserve that only as long as you have a job with MI6.”
“A job in which I feel quite secure until retirement, thank you.”
Lang nodded and Jacob came down the stairs holding a bulging manila envelope which
he handed to Lang.
Lang passed it to James. “Go ahead, open it.”
James did, his face growing pale as he thumbed the pages. “How did you. . .?”
“More arrogance,” Jacob smiled. “A child’s encryption.”
“I dare say your job wouldn’t be so secure if those messages appeared in, say The Times. Or if the Society of St. George were made public.”
James sagged into the desk chair. “So, what do you want?”
Lang had been down this road. In the world of espionage, principles rarely existed, only survival. And that usually meant compromise.
During the Cold War, unwritten agreement prevented CIA from killing KGB on “neutral” ground and visa versa. Compromise. Emotion, revenge, anger had no place at this table. Forget your losses, only try to cut those likely in the future.
It was a language Lang was sure the MI6 man understood.
First, tell your enemy what you were in a position to do for him.
“We’ll hand over the documents you have in your hand.”
“What about a certain letter concerning moon flowers?”
“That, too. If you like, I’ll send it back to Nassau.”
“How do I know you won’t make copies?”
Lang smiled. This was going to get done. “You don’t. But like any copy, experts will disagree as to whether it has been doctored from the original.”
James held up the envelope. “And these?”
“You’ll just have to take my word I don’t have a lot of incentive to start the war up again by releasing those to the press.”
“You had an innocent woman killed,” Jacob added. “No one is going to hold you to account for that.”
“Innocent? She stole some very personal items like that letter. Besides, I’ve lost two very good men, thanks to you, Mr. Reilly and this gentlemen I’m guessing is Mr. Annulewitz. Two very good men dead, one, a motorcyclist, in a coma brain damaged, and two more your wife has put on indefinite leave.”
