A Killer for a Song

by John Gardner

  As a final gesture of good faith, Boysie leafed through his money, extracting some of the English bank notes which he threw carelessly onto the table. Leaving his key in the room side of the lock, Boysie departed.

  No trouble in the foyer. No problems in the street either, except for an overwhelming desire to run. His stomach did one of its fancy spins as a police car whizzed through the Place Darcy. But it was followed by an ambulance, and preoccupied with matters far removed from Oakes. He reached the station a little before nine.

  There was a train due in about seven minutes which would get him as far as Lyons. Otherwise it meant waiting until after ten when the 5025 arrived on its long run from Paris down to Nice. It would not be in his interest to hang about on Dijon station: that was as obvious as a harlot’s mince. He would let the Paris-Nice catch up with him at Lyons. Boysie bought a ticket and boarded the train as soon as it came sliding to a halt.

  He was ten minutes out by the time he realised that it was the wrong train. A local shuttle which would never arrive at Lyons. Feeling like a trapped goldfish, Boysie sweated it out, changed trains, backtracked and finally caught up with himself. His nerves were jangling and he thought he could feel the hot breath of invisible pursuers on his neck by the time he was eventually deposited at Lyons (Perrache).

  The station at Lyons was like most other stations, though they did a better ham roll there than at Paddington. You could also buy litre bottles of red plonk from an elderly man who pushed a little cart up and down the platform. When Lyons finally caught up with the 5025 Boysie was in much better heart.

  The train was not crowded and Boysie got a window seat in a compartment which contained only a young widow in black and a fat Italian lady with a small baby. Boysie thought it would have looked churlish to move when the baby started to cry just after they left the station. The baby was presumably crying in Italian. It was as rough as any other language.

  Four compartments up, in the same carriage, Chiliman, Castervermentes and James Gest dozed. None of them had caught much sleep during the night, and the train left Paris at twenty to eight that morning. They knew that rest was essential. The next couple of days could be strenuous.

  XIII - LEADER

  The directing member of an ensemble

  It was midday when Couperose brought the news in to William Edith.

  “He spent last night at La Cloche, Dijon.”

  The Frenchman looked as though he had discovered the elixir of eternal youth.

  “And you’ve got him,” Edith leered unpleasantly.

  “Unfortunately, no.”

  “Why not?” The words twin stilettos whispering into Couperose’s brain.

  “It was difficult. He managed to book in late, without showing a passport. Only two people saw him: a receptionist and a page. He signed in as Sir Richard Hannay.”

  Edith did not find it amusing. “He would,” the voice soft as plastic explosive. “So where is he now?”

  “He went to Lyons. He could have gone on from there heading south.”

  Edith looked up at him, slyly, his mouth smug and the eyes gleaming like those of a predator on the verge of a kill.

  “Details,” he demanded.

  “He could have picked up the morning from Paris to Nice. I’ve got a man boarding at Avignon.”

  “You mean the 5025?” Edith prided himself for being well clued in.

  “Yes.”

  Edith nodded. “Your man in Avignon, what are his instructions?”

  “To mark him.”

  “I hope that’s all he does.”

  Couperose detected that Edith knew more than he had divulged. “Why? The man is wanted. You want him, we want him ...”

  “And the others want him: our friend Chiliman.”

  “Yes.”

  “Chiliman’s on that train. It’s the first time we have had a concrete tie between him and the man Castervermentes and our singing friend.” Edith leaned back, savouring Couperose’s puzzled expression.

  “So.”

  “They’re on the train with him.”

  Couperose gave a startled exhalation, eyes widening ... “Then we can perhaps ...”

  “Then we can, perhaps, do nothing but watch. What time does your man get on that train?”

  “It’s due into Avignon at about quarter to two.”

  “Then get to him, Couperose. Get to him and cool him. I don’t want fireworks or carnivals. When you’ve done that, get us on to the first flight to Nice.”

  “Us?”

  “You. Myself, and one man each. We’ll pick up Oakes in due course, unless he indulges in heroics. To be honest I’m more interested in Chiliman and Co. than in Oakes. Men like Oakes are two a penny. But Chiliman, well it’s been a long haul drawing level with him: a long time and a lot of lives. One more isn’t going to break the bank.” William Edith was nothing if not ruthless.

  Couperose showed no sign of emotion, even if he felt any, which was unlikely. “Nothing else?” There was no direct evidence that Couperose was being sarcastic.

  “Not unless there’s something new on Griffin and the Lavenham girl.”

  Couperose shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “Gone, like money in a drunk’s pocket. That makes me nervous.”

  The telephone began to get agitated. It was for Couperose who conducted a quiet conversation with whoever was at the other end.

  “Dijon,” he said cryptically once the call had finished. “And?”

  “The hotel room where Oakes stayed last night. They found a Beretta magazine with one round left in it. A little .22: a Jaguar, I think. Not much doubt that Oakes killed the man at Chalon.”

  Edith lifted an eyebrow. “What do you think I should do about it? Give the man a goldfish?”

  “I’ll get on to our Avignon man and see about our tickets.”

  “Do that,” William Edith returned to his paperwork with the concentration of a Victorian spinster attacking her needlepoint.

  ***

  There did not seem to be much dancing going on at Avignon, on or off the legendary bridge where it was supposed to happen. In any case Avignon was surrounded in a rosy glow as far as Boysie was concerned. The bottle, bought at Lyons, was empty and a second, purchased on the train, had been well pilfered. He was heading towards the Côte D’Azur and that thought blotted all the dangers from his, now slightly-overlaid, consciousness. The Côte D’Azur had once been one of Boysie’s major stamping grounds and he had a lot of memory tied up in it. There were days and nights spent along that expensive strip of seaboard that he would carry with him for ever: there were also some scars.

  As the train pushed on towards Marseilles through the afternoon, Boysie did that mental acrobatic trick which is so easy to fantasy-life players of his calibre: the past few days and the crowded events of the last years slowly faded away and he assumed the role of a tourist, a man most likely to, a prospective breaker of the bank at Monte Carlo, a lotus-eater willing to lap up the cream and spicy dressing which garnished a hundred willing and bronzed female bodies ever available on the beaches of Cannes, Antibes, Nice, Beaulieu, or decorating the lounges and bars of the Carlton, Negresco or La Reserve.

  The strain melted and, by the time the train was twisting along the coast, through St. Raphael and Cannes, Boysie’s smile had become set, his body relaxed. His ticket took him as far as Nice, though he had no exact plan, little idea of what he would do next. Nice had become a goal, a star, a stepping stone to the next unforeseen, uncertain, muddled move.

  The train pulled into Nice (Ville) at twenty minutes past five and Boysie alighted, sniffing the air, still a little drunk, and grinning foolishly.

  The sun was warm for the time of the year, for summer and the blazing heat was yet a month or two off, but the few people waiting to board the train were dressed casually, almost indiscriminately. Boysie joined the throng filtering out into the concourse and through the exits.

  “Oakes,” the voice was soft and came from a black Merc pulled
up at the passenger loading and unloading point. The door was open and the man who had spoken leaned back in the front passenger seat: a young man, small with a slightly effeminate and twisted face.

  Boysie whipped to his left, the right hand going for the Beretta. But the load of alcohol acted as a brake and before the hand was even halfway there, he spotted Couperose three paces to his right. Couperose had a Browning in his hand and a nasty look on his face. The combination persuaded Boysie that a shoot-out would not be in the best of taste, particularly for his mortal body.

  “Okay,” he tried a sheepish grin, “you’ve got me. But I didn’t fade Mostyn.”

  “We know that,” Couperose was motioning him towards the car, the gun now back in his pocket. “Please get in, we don’t want people staring.”

  Boysie slid into the rear seat where a French heavy was already lounging in the corner. He recognised the man at the wheel from somewhere. Couperose came in behind Boysie and closed the door while the small young man in front twisted in his seat.

  “We haven’t met,” the quiet voice greasy as butter. “My name’s Edith.”

  “Lucky for you,” Boysie grinned. Inside he did not grin. Inside he felt as though his stomach had become dislodged. He had seen Edith before, twice, flitting in and out of Shooter & Crump, and he could hear Mostyn’s voice commenting, “Being groomed for stardom, that one. Little bastard, Boysie, keep clear of him. Beware men who are long on ambition and short on talent, they can never follow through.”

  “William Edith, Oakes, William Edith. Since Colonel Mostyn’s death, I have been in charge of DTS.”

  “Nice for you,” Boysie reflected that he could, if pressed, grow to dislike this one as much as he had loathed Mostyn. “What’s DTS?”

  Edith spoke to the driver. “Straight back to the hotel,” then he turned back to Boysie. “The Department of Tactical Security, the natural successor to the old Special Security.”

  “I see. I was in Special Security.”

  Edith smiled: unctuously. “I do know, Oakesie,” the inflection in his voice was uncannily like Mostyn’s. Perhaps, thought Boysie, he was one of Mostyn’s bastard children. The little devil must have had a dozen or so scattered around. “You are also in DTS,” continued Edith as the car drew away.

  “Ah,” Boysie allowed the news to filter through. “Can you prove it?”

  “Unfortunately for you, yes. You signed up again for poor old Mostyn.”

  “Ah,” Boysie looked absently out of the window. “I resign.”

  “You remember the rules about resigning from the Special Security days?”

  “Yes. You either die or you’re pensioned off. I was sort of pensioned off when the Department packed up.”

  “Well, you got yourself pensioned back in again. You work for me now. I want you to tell me, first, who the woman was, whether you’ve any news of friend Griffin and the Lavenham girl, and everything that happened at Chalon.”

  “How about the winner of the 3.30 at Doncaster?”

  “Oakes,” Edith snarled, “when I want you to be funny I will give you advance warning, in triplicate. At the moment we’re not here for the laughs, we’re here, as you well know, to bring a costly and abortive operation to a close ...”

  “Hold hard,” said Boysie, his face colouring, voice rising, “just hold bloody hard, Mr. pouf-name Edith. All I know about this abortive operation is that Mostyn and I were bloody targets and Mostyn got chopped. I nearly got chopped. You? You’re a lad, a fresh-faced puny lad who hasn’t had enough time in the service to get his knees brown or his bloody number dry. I’ve been shot at and I object.”

  “I’ve read your file, Oakes,” Edith looked grimly furious. “From that I often wondered about your intestinal fortitude.”

  “That does it,” Boysie puffed. “I want out.”

  The Merc pulled up at the Negresco where the oddly-garbed commissionaire bent to open the door.

  “Oh,” Boysie deflated, “are we staying here’?”

  “You listen to me, Oakes, and you listen good.” William Edith showed his teeth which were disgustingly white. “The only way you will go out is in a box. You get that?”

  Boysie hesitated for a second, trying to reckon up his chances. He decided the dice were loaded, the cards marked, and the odds heavily stacked against him. He tried the sheepish grin again.

  “To hear is to obey, O master,” he chanted.

  They were installed in two suites and a couple of extra bedrooms on the fourth floor with a view out over the Promenade des Anglais. It was now late afternoon. William Edith’s group ranged itself around the main sitting room, waiting for Boysie to start explanations. From outside, over the sea, there came a sound like an amplified angry roaring of bees. It distracted Boysie who moved across to the balcony.

  Low over the sea three elderly biplanes were chugging through the air as though held up by wires.

  “British Airways again,” Boysie watched them, fascinated.

  “It’s an air circus,” Edith irritated at the distraction. “They’re putting on shows twice daily from the airport.”

  The English heavy had moved over to Boysie’s side. “Nieuport Seventeens,” he growled, obviously a World War One buff.

  Behind the lumbering Nieuports came a little high wing monoplane, squat with a radial engine grumbling like an exhausted lawnmower, the fuselage strangely patterned.

  “A Fokker,” said the English heavy.

  “Do you mind? The patchwork baron, I presume.”

  “I saw them last year at Perpignan. They give a good show, there was an RE 8 with them then, gave a demonstration of firepower with live ammunition.” His hand came up, “There he is.”

  The odd and angular twin-seater biplane was making a long sweeping turn to come in behind the other four aircraft. Boysie could see the pilot and gunner, in the rear cockpit, clearly outlined against the evening sky.

  “Jesus, they really fought in those things. A heavy rainstorm would knock them out of the sky,” Boysie narrowed his lids and for a second he was Captain Oakes, Royal Flying Corps, watching his squadron coming in over the mud and rough huts after duelling with Von Richthoven.

  “Oakes,” Edith whispered, “if you don’t come back in here and give me your full attention, I shall personally take you to the airport, tie you to the tail plane of one of those crumbling wrecks, tow you into the sky and drop you from a great height. Now: the girl, your escape, and Chalon.”

  Boysie slumped into a chair, the sound of the ancient aircraft receding. Quietly he told almost all that had happened since his escape from the Baltimore. Edith listened intently, asking no questions until he had finished.

  “You have no idea who got Mostyn?”

  Boysie shook his head. “I saw nobody.”

  Edith leered. “Think about it, Boysie boy. There’s only one contestant.”

  Boysie thought: a desert, wasteland, Arctic snows. Nothing of any moment, except the desire to know what it was all about. That last thought turned into words.

  “Why?” he asked, “why in all reason did somebody chop Mostyn? And what is it really all about? I know the Mexico operation in ‘64, has something to do with it. But what?”

  “You’ve really no idea, have you?” William Edith’s face became composed, almost friendly for a moment. “All right, Oakesie. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.”

  XIV - CANTILLATION

  Unaccompanied chanting in free rhythm - particularly in Jewish liturgy

  It was a long and complex story which had its roots in the concentration camps of Hitler’s Germany.

  “How much did you know about friends Pinkney and Defoe?” asked Edith.

  “Not much. They worked out of Paris. Whatever their importance it was carried in their heads. They ran to a freelance called Chiliman. The French and Americans wanted them alive. Mostyn wanted them dead. They got dead.”

  “You know about Clambake?”

  “I knew they were working on it, but nobo
dy gave me details.”

  Edith sighed. “Well, Clambake was Mostyn’s own pet operation. Literally his own. He wanted to corner a certain market and he nearly made it.”

  “What market?”

  “The most important Nazi war criminals still at large.”

  “Bormann ...?”

  “Two in particular. Bormann and Mengele-the Doctor of Auschwitz.”

  Boysie raised his eyebrows.

  “Pinkney and Defoe,” Edith continued, “worked technically under joint NATO control. In fact they were Mostyn’s operators. He had them, you might say, on a retainer. Their job was sensitive; the correlation of all information regarding the whereabouts of wanted Nazis: snippets, facts, hints, documents, statements, photographs. They sat in a room in Paris and sifted the lot. One might say that those two knew more about the movements of wanted war criminals than anyone else in Europe - probably more than they even knew at the Documentation Centre. And their most important conclusions were carried in their heads.”

  “Walking dynamite.”

  “Which blew them to pieces in the end. Mostyn wanted glory, Oakes. He wanted to nab the baddies single-handed.”

  “So did a lot of other people.”

  “They did indeed. The French, the Americans, the Russians, not to mention freelance operators. They were all getting edgy in ‘64 because time was running out. The Statute of Limitations was about to be brought into play.”

  “The charges would be dropped.”

  “For ever. Everybody wanted to get to them before that happened, and Pinkney and Defoe knew where both Mengele and Bormann were holed up in Argentina. They were also probably the only people who knew Mostyn’s plan. Clambake.”

  “Which was?”

  Edith shrugged, “Nobody knows now, not for sure. I suspect he was going to lift them, or have them liquidated pretty publicly. You would have been the boy to do that.”