Peter’s thoughts jumped to that day in Sir Stephen’s office. Had the boss suspected the infiltration of Counter’s unit? Had he brought in Peter because he was an outsider, and Bartleben’s man?
Peter had to ask his toughest question now; there would be no other opportunity. “Was John on the take?”
“No, never. He was honest. And Johnny never had a chance to work on the cricket investigation. So ironic. He focused on the telephone-hacking. The Sword knew that the people who worked on the hacking crimes worked closely with the ones assigned to the cricket bribery. He thought he was being subtle by getting me to hook up to the cricket investigators through Johnny. But Johnny’s work on the match-fixing was minimal. As soon as we got together, I saw that he would never be a good source. I tried to tell the Sword but he did not believe me. He kept pressing me for information. Said I wouldn’t be paid unless I delivered.”
It occurred to Peter that much of this had happened before the incident in the Mayfair hotel and the splash in the tabloids. “Tell me about the Sword.”
“The bribery of the Pakistani stars was the Sword’s chance to make his own mark in the world of match-fixing. The party in the hotel came about suddenly. The Sword actually called me at Johnny’s flat and told me to go. He instructed me to watch the cricket players. And do other stuff. If only I’d known that the News was paying the Fake Sheikh for pictures. I eventually saw that the Sheikh was setting us up in the hotel And I knew it was time to bail. I waited for the whole thing to blow up. And it did.”
Peter wasn’t about to let her off without a deeper admission. (He wondered how he would ever write his report to Bartleben.) “It was your idea to come to Montreal, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” The air in the bedroom was smothering. Alida took a step in from the doorway. She was beautiful, seductive, with the poise of a practised model. “Johnny and I met at a club in Soho. I liked him well enough and we might have made a go of it anyway. But I knew from the day the Sword gave me my orders to attend the party with the cricketers that I’d never be off his leash. There was a lull in the phone-hacking work and so I urged Johnny to take this silly job in Montreal.”
“Tell me how you decided to steal the letters,” said Peter.
The young woman took a step to her right and then back; it was her version of pacing while she considered his query. He could still make out her expression in the dim light. It wasn’t a case of deciding whether to confess, Peter knew, but how much detail to provide. He further realized that this visitation was meant to be her last stop before vanishing.
“Johnny was as bad as me in some ways. In Montreal we both felt we had escaped from jail. It was sex and fun. He thought the whole Hilfgott thing was crap.”
“You went to Leander Greenwell on your own?”
She hesitated. “Yes, I did.”
“What did Leander say?”
She glowered at him and held up her hand. “Forget about Leander. Don’t you understand? Hilfgott is crazy. The real amount of the payment was thirty grand of her husband’s money. Greenwell was as greedy as anyone. He made the deal only because Hilfgott was willing to pay more than the other bidder.”
“Seep.”
“Yes. Seep was crazy as a bed tick, too. My mother would say that.”
“But you went to Seep and made a deal.”
Alida shifted her weight to her other foot; she took a step backwards into the hall and regrouped, ending up mostly in the dark. She came forward again. The look on her face showed that he had missed something. Peter discerned that she was deciding how much more to reveal; but he knew there was a key point she wanted to get across.
“Seep wanted a particular letter, he told me. If necessary, I was willing to leave one with Greenwell, a three-way split. I didn’t care which one I got but Johnny had already mentioned Lembridge and I figured I could get some quick money for it with the American’s help. Greenwell told me there were private collectors in the States. I started thinking I could follow up with that kind of deal. I needed money.”
But Peter saw that Seep, out of anger and avarice, changed everyone’s plans by turning robbery into murder.
“We made a deal. My job was to get Johnny drunk. Not too hard to do. Seep said he had a drug we could mickey him with. He gave the dose to me but I didn’t use it, since the booze seemed to be doing the trick, and the drug, in combination, might have killed him. We were celebrating in the market after the handoff and I led Johnny towards the dark place over here. He was stupendously drunk and fell behind. I had already handed Seep the rental keys. Seep was supposed to wait in the car and after Johnny passed out, he would collect his letter, while I would take the other two, and he would let me off at the hotel.”
Peter was wary of being too direct again but he asked, “Were you gone when Seep drove up?”
“I was almost at the tree over by the factory. I turned and saw Johnny fall down on the grass and then get to his feet. He staggered onto the road.”
“It’s important for me to know what happened next with the car.”
“You want to know, Inspector? Something true and clear and simple in this mess? The professor saw him and deliberately accelerated. Sent him flying onto the grass. Johnny got partway up and crawled; got up, fell down, and crawled some more. I ran over to him. He was bleeding, dying. No one came out of the houses. Seep got out of the car and ran at me. Then he started to attack Johnny. I threw one of the packets at him to slow him down. Then he did something odd. He picked up the letter and read it and smiled.”
“Coincidentally,” said Peter, “it was the letter Seep wanted in the first place, the one with Williams’s signature.”
“Yes. Seep would have killed me, too, but when I ran he didn’t follow. I didn’t see him throw Johnny into the water.”
“The car?”
“I ran all the way to Greenwell’s place — and there was the car already outside. Seep was trying to set both of us up.”
“Seep abandoned the Ford to implicate you. The keys were in it?”
“Yes,” Alida said. “Leander thought it was me who had driven it to the store.”
Peter filled in the rest. Alida had threatened Leander and kept both remaining letters. With most of the cash as well, she took off for Annapolis.
He saw that she still wanted to talk. “Why me?” he said.
She looked down at the carpet. The distant furnace had run through one cycle and come on again. “I wanted you to know I didn’t try to kill the kid in Buffalo.”
“Jeff? No, you didn’t. He survived the drug you gave him.”
“Horniest kid I ever met.”
Her statement added up to a mix of irony, wonder, and a plea for credit for refraining from murder. Peter hadn’t forgotten the prostitute, ravaged by jellyfish and lice, lying gutted in a D.C. morgue. He played along.
“You didn’t kill anyone in Buffalo.”
Alida backed towards the corridor. He was talking to a shadow. It was the oddest confession he had ever heard.
“Why did you stop Dunning Malloway from shooting me?” she said.
“You saw that?”
“Oh, yes. He aimed right at me. I saw his eyes.”
“Not the right time and not the right move, Alida. What more can I say?”
“But there was more. I saw the look on his face, the shape of his mouth,” she said. “You also knew he would have fired until the gun was empty. Is the American policeman alive?”
“Mild heart attack. He’ll be okay. His recovery will be steady.”
“Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.” The space around them had grown cool; Renaud’s furnace did not seem very efficient.
Alida stepped back into the archway of the bedroom.
“One last thing you should know. Malloway works for the Sword. He’s being paid to kill me.”
She became
invisible.
Peter stared at the dark. He had been full of calculation, down to the feet and inches between them. She was a murderess, he reminded himself. Special pleading ultimately wasn’t enough. He had tracked her from country to country, state to state and except for a glimpse in Buffalo hadn’t come close to catching her. Now she had come to him, unarmed and desperate to explain. He had to decide whether to let her go.
And he was sure that there was something else she needed to tell him.
Her retreat into the hall was strategic, leaving him to make the next move. Should he follow? He stood for a full minute by the bed in the silence. His slippers were lined up on the floor, six feet away. The furnace had stopped. He heard a drunken shout from outside somewhere.
As he turned to the window, the girl walked back into the dimly lit room, completely naked.
She held a small gun in her right hand.
“Christ, Alida!” Peter said, jumping back. He hadn’t heard any zippers opening, any clothes falling. She stopped, the gun angled away from him. “What are you doing?”
His words were preposterous, as if he were a father expressing opprobrium at finding his daughter déshabillée after a date with a boy. Fatherliness wouldn’t have been a bad posture to adopt with the girl, he thought, had all else been equal. She was a killer, yet Peter had made his decision: at that moment he was prepared to let her run. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her perfection was a rebuke to an old man’s sorry state.
She could have seduced him in a minute. For that first moment, his hopelessness matched hers. Her nakedness was her confession, telling him she had nothing more to hide. As the seconds passed, a distance began to grow between them; she felt it, too. He had Joan and his family. What did she have?
He stared back at her calmly, trying to ignore her gun. It was difficult to do. Her body was smooth, with perfectly moulded proportions. The flaw, the small burn marks under her breasts made the rest of her riper, and spoke of the strength of a survivor.
Peter’s mobile rang. Absurdly, he was glad that he had changed to a sensible ring tone, not Big Ben. Was there a man in a thousand who would not have checked the display, even with a naked woman standing in front of him? It was Maddy. It was 9 a.m. in Leeds. He stabbed the button for his voicemail to kick in and turned to face Alida.
The mood was broken. He waited for the gun to move or for her to speak.
“I have the last two letters,” she stated. Her words held no hostility or defensiveness, certainly no hint that she wanted to return the documents.
Peter watched as Alida raised the gun and pointed it at him. He still wasn’t afraid. He tracked her eyes and her measured movements as she checked the safety. He wasn’t tempted to rush her, even as she glanced away.
She twitched.
Very slowly she lowered the small pistol to the carpet and placed it on its side. She stood straight and began to back out of the room. Without the gun and fully naked, she seemed neither lethal nor innocent. She disappeared into the corridor.
She had said, “I have the last two letters.” Peter had listened to her jumble of confessions, pleas, evasions, and prevarications. That last statement did not mean that she had only two letters. She had all three now.
He picked up the gun.
CHAPTER 41
Peter dressed and rushed downstairs. He had little chance of finding Alida in the maze of suburban streets, and he wasn’t going to try.
He knew where to go next.
He could have rationalized taking a minute to call Maddy but first he had to figure out where the hell Olivier Seep lived. The address wasn’t in the phone directory. He booted up the computer and was searching the website for the Université de Montréal when Pascal came back in.
For the moment, Peter refrained from telling Pascal about Alida’s ghostly manifestation in his townhouse. Pascal seemed alert and vigilant, and Peter looked at him with a degree of puzzlement. Why hadn’t he spied Alida in the street?
His friend tossed his ring of keys on the credenza by the front door. “What are you doing up at this late hour, Peter?”
Peter tried the university online directory but no residential addresses came up. Pascal went into the kitchen. He seemed not to notice Peter’s distress. Peter could see him from the computer station, and watched him consider pouring a glass of wine and then think better of it.
Peter jumped from his chair and reached for Renaud’s keys.
“Where are we going?” Pascal said.
“Do you know where Olivier Seep lives?”
“Naturally. In Mount Royal. Imagine, here’s this dyed-in-the-wool indépendentiste living with the English . . .”
While Renaud drove, Cammon peppered him with questions: How was Seep’s house laid out? How many entrances? How was the exterior lighting positioned?
Pascal described what he could remember about the house, but turning onto Sherbrooke Street he pulled over to the roadside and demanded, “Who are we expecting to find there?”
“Seep himself. Hopefully alive.”
“The girl, too?” said Renaud.
Peter opened his phone and began to call up Maddy’s message. While it kicked in, he turned back to Pascal. “I don’t know. How far away are we? Let’s move.”
Pascal pulled back onto the street. “I’m moving, I’m moving.”
Peter listened with growing dismay to Maddy’s voice. “Peter, it’s Maddy. Five minutes ago I received a call from Carole Carpenter. She was in a panic. Her brother, Joe, is on his way to Henley, she says. He’s been talking about Alida and the lack of progress in finding her. He was extremely overwrought, she said. He thinks the sister, Avril, can be forced to tell where Alida is hiding. Michael and I are on our way. Should be there in three or four hours. Michael is driving and I’ll try to reach the local police from the road.”
Peter tried Maddy’s mobile but encountered a busy signal. A second call to the house in Leeds invoked their standard message.
Peter was wearing a black windshell over a T-shirt, and he was cold. Pascal ignored the weather. Relaxed by booze but stimulated by the night air rushing in through the driver’s window, he launched a stream of questions back at Peter. “Do you know what a monte-en-l’air is?”
“A second-storey man?” Peter replied, struggling with his cell phone directory as they passed in and out of the glow of streetlights. “Very good! It is a cat burglar, yes.”
Peter stabbed at the speed dial. “Great. Does Seep’s place have a second storey?”
“Oh, yes,” Pascal responded, but he noted Peter’s preoccupation and backed off for the moment. Peter had no time to guess what point the professor was making.
Peter was desperate to reach his son and daughter-in-law but further calls to her mobile failed. He flashed on Malloway’s image and the angry face both Peter and Alida had reacted to in Buffalo outside the Gorman. Malloway would do anything to get to her. If Joe Carpenter had the address of the home where Avril Nahri was living, Malloway had been the one to provide it, along with a not-too-subtle hint to seek revenge.
He tried Maddy’s cell again, and this time her crackly voice responded. “Peter, we’re only a few —” The signal abruptly faded.
Rather than fight through the ether to reach Maddy again, Peter called his oldest friend, Tommy Verden. He imagined Tommy drinking coffee over his crossword puzzle or on some errand for Sir Stephen.
“Verden.” The voice was distant but clear, and it warmed Peter.
“Tommy, it’s Peter here, in Montreal. How fast can you get to Henley-on-Thames?”
No yachting jokes, no complaints about the hour. Tommy simply stated, “Two hours twenty.”
Peter filled in his old friend on the developments in the pursuit of Alida Nahvi, without describing her visit to the condo in detail. Tommy knew the basics of the manhunt from their mutual bo
ss. He was all business. “A crucial decision has to be made. Carpenter might go after Nahvi’s sister but Avril won’t know anything. The mother, Mabel, is the more profitable target.”
“Agreed,” Peter said.
“He’ll soon realize Avril knows zilch and he’ll move on to the mother at the nursing home, though he might do harm to the sister first. I’ll go to Avril first. I presume that is where Michael and Maddy will head.”
“Yes, I think so. Malloway has Joe pretty confused. Joe thinks he’s helping to find the girl but he’s got no patience. It’s a short leap to retaliation for Johnny’s death.”
Tommy and Peter hadn’t worked hand-in-glove for nothing. Verden detected the other urgency in Peter’s voice. “You wouldn’t be on the girl’s trail now, would you, Peter?”
“Something like that.”
“Malloway?”
“He’s turned, Tommy. And he’s after Alida.”
“You want me to mobilize our people?”
Peter hesitated. He wondered what instructions Bartleben might have already conveyed to Tommy or Frank Counter about Malloway. “It’s complicated. I’m not keen to alert Frank to anything yet.”
“Don’t worry about that part. I can call in anyone you want. We do have assets in Montreal outside formal channels, if that’s your fancy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Whatever you can find out about Malloway’s itinerary would be useful. I’ve lost track of him here.”
“I’ll talk to his secretary. Anything else?”
“What are you going to do, Tommy?”
“I’m trying to decide whether to take the Mercedes.”
“Stay safe.”
“You too, Peter. I was prepared to point a gun at Joe once. I guess I can do it a second time..” He hung up.
And just as he did, Renaud announced — for some reason, in a stage whisper — that they were one street away from Seep’s house. Peter ordered him to park right where they were and turn off the motor. Pascal knew enough to defer to a professional policeman, but he watched in amazement as Peter confirmed his cat-burglar persona by taking out a pencil flashlight and holding it between his teeth while he examined Alida Nahvi’s gun.
The Drowned Man Page 37
