“Yes,” Sam confirmed. “The exhibition was here from March 23 to the end of May, before going to Paris. Maggie, I think we need to talk to Patrick again. He said Noel went for coffee with an acquaintance, not a friend or a colleague, but an acquaintance. Maybe it was Barstoc.”
“Perhaps, but of all those involved with the show my money’s on Enrico Vasquez,” Maggie stated. “Why else would he be trying so hard to turn your attention towards everybody else?”
“That’s a good point,” Sam noted, a little vaguely because she’d just been struck with a ‘why didn’t I think of it before’ type thought. “What about your mate Pavel Mercier?”
“Pavel’s not responsible for any of this, Sam,” Maggie said defensively. “He’s���”
“He’s dead, I know Maggie,” Sam interrupted. “But it’s the fact that he is dead too that makes him a potential piece in this puzzle. Where, when and how did he die?”
“Peru, January last year, I think.”
“What do you mean, you think?”
“I mean I think it was January. In the last 25 years Pavel has been reported killed or rumoured to be dead at least 11 times, and all in weird or sensational ways. You see he was so well known, at least throughout our little world, that an innocent story about Pavel coming down with glandular fever would sort of Chinese whisper its way along the archaeologist’s/university/museum grapevine until it became a fact that he’d been killed in the jungle by a poison arrow.”
“He was poisoned?” Sam was incredulous.
“In 1973 he was poisoned, in 1978 he was killed in a landslide, in 1982 he had a heart attack while doing the deed with his non-existent Peruvian mistress, in 1990 he was shot by a jealous husband, in 1992 he died in a plane crash in the Andes.”
“And last year?”
“Last year he finally did it for real. He got knocked down by a car in Cuzco and died of his injuries in hospital three or four days later.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. After the poison arrow incident in 1973 I made Pavel promise to contact me every three months regardless of where he was or what he was doing. It became a sort of joke because although his work often kept him deep in the jungle for up to 10 months at a time he always managed to find someone to pass on his messages. I regularly got notes that simply said ‘still ticking’ or ‘jumping for joy’ or ‘these old bones ain’t what they used to be’.
“I received that last one nearly two years ago, in October ‘96, so when I heard about the car accident I ignored it until the start of February. When I didn’t hear from Pavel, I contacted the manager of the hotel where he always stayed when in Cuzco. She sent me a newspaper clipping about the accident, dated December 29th, and a box of his stuff.”
“Okay so it wasn’t a stroke, but maybe he was run down on purpose,” Sam suggested.
“Pavel’s death doesn’t fit your Exhibition itinerary theory. Marcus’s show did not go to Peru.”
“But maybe someone from the show did,” Sam suggested.
“Sam, I think you’re starting a whole new puzzle here, with Pavel as the only piece.”
“No, no,” Sam disagreed, getting up to pace the room. “His piece has to be connected somehow.” Sam stopped pacing and rested her forehead against the cold window as she stared blankly out at the Great Pyramids and sifted through the clutter in her memory. Her eyes were shining when she turned to face Maggie. “I think this whole thing has something to do with Manco City,” she announced. “That photograph is the only connection between all four men.”
“Forty years of friendship and parallel careers is a much stronger connection,” Maggie stated.
“But four out of the 16 people in that photograph have died in unusual circumstances in less than two years,” Sam remarked.
Maggie shook her head doubtfully. “You found that photo by accident under a pile of magazines, Sam. There was no reference to it, direct or obscure, in the notes left by either Lloyd or Noel.”
“But the same photo was missing from its frame in Marsden’s office,” Sam reminded Maggie, taking a set next to her on the bed. “Marsden and Winslow both referred to ‘the finder’. The Professor had a ticket to Lima, and Winslow’s note said he was going to ‘seek the finder’. I bet Patrick will confirm that Noel Winslow had been struck with a sudden urge to visit Peru.”
Cairo, Wednesday September 22, 1988
After running a gauntlet of hawkers and money changers on their short walk down Talaat Harb, Sam and Maggie sat in the hushed atmosphere of the Americo Bank waiting for the manager; for it was only he, they had been informed, who could attend to the safety deposit box vault. They’d already been waiting 15 minutes and Emil, who had picked them up at 8 am in a nondescript vehicle, as per Maggie’s request, was probably making his first drive-by. He had deposited them just around the corner from the bank, where Maggie had asked him to wait for quarter of an hour, before cruising around the block to pass the bank every 10 minutes until they emerged.
Sam had been tempted to comment that Maggie’s precautions were taking the cloak and dagger routine a little too far, until she realised the normally cool, calm and extremely collected Maggie Tremaine was actually nervous.
“You realise this is not going to be as easy as getting the box at the hotel,” Maggie noted, tapping her foot impatiently.
“It might be just as easy Maggie. If Noel left the key and the box number for Lloyd or you, then he probably left the box in your names as well.”
“Apologies Madame, for keeping you waiting,” said a tall, bony man with a face like a ferret. He was all nose, with beady eyes and a prune-like mouth overhung with a thick moustache.
Mr Halim introduced himself as the manager and escorted them through a security door, down a short hall and into a secure room where he offered them coffee.
“Thank you, but no,” Maggie stated. “We would just like to check my box and be on our way.” Maggie placed the key and a page from a notebook, on which she’d transcribed the number from the drink coaster, on the table in front of her.
“I will also need your name and some identification,” Mr Halim pointed out.
“Of course,” Maggie agreed, handing him her passport. “My name is Maggie Tremaine.”
“This says Mar-ga-ret,” he enunciated.
“Yes, Margaret Selby Tremaine.”
“Very good. I will now check the number against the register and return here with the box if all is as it should be. You understand this is procedure for someone who has never been to our bank.”
“Oh I understand,” Maggie nodded. “This is nerve-wracking,” she added when Mr Halim had left the room. “What do you suppose the ‘procedure’ will be if I’m not authorised to claim the box?”
“A week of intense police interrogation which escalates into an international incident when the Australian Government has to negotiate your release from jail,” Sam pronounced.
“You’re trying to get me back for what happened yesterday, aren’t you?”
Before Sam could think of a smart retort, Mr Halim entered the room, placed a safety deposit box on the table and left again, without saying a word.
“Boy are you lucky,” Sam said. “I hear the Cairo cops are really tough on fraud suspects.”
“Ha, ha,” Maggie said, before inserting the key and opening the lid. She removed a heavy tin, the size and shape of a school pencil box, bearing a label which said, ‘For LM or MT’. There were also two manila envelopes - one addressed to ‘Lloyd or Muu-Muu’ and the other to Patrick Denton.
Maggie prised the lid off the tin and removed a great wad of bubble wrap, inside which was something wrapped in red cloth. She laid it on the table, glanced at Sam and unfolded the cloth.
“Good grief!” was all Sam could manage to say. It was a finger. Lying there on the table in front of them was a finger: a huge gold - she picked it up - solid gold finger. It was about 15 centimetres long by five thick.
Sam looked at Maggie whose expression regi
stered something, puzzlement maybe, but not surprise. “Maggie,” she snarled, “you knew about this, didn’t you?”
“Not���really,” Maggie replied.
“What is it?”
“It’s a pinky finger, Sam. Apart from that I don’t know, except���”
“Is this the missing and priceless artefact you told Pilger about?” Sam interrupted.
“Not precisely, no,” Maggie said. She started to undo the buttons on her shirt.
“But it is a priceless artefact.”
“Undoubtedly. But I couldn’t say whether it’s missing or not, because I’ve no idea where it comes from.” Maggie pulled her shirt out from her trousers.
“Why are you getting undressed?” Sam asked. “And what on earth is that?”
Under her shirt, Maggie was wearing what looked like a soldier’s utility vest, except this one was black, hugged her tightly around the stomach under her breasts, and featured a very large front pocket. Maggie opened the pocket’s Velcro flap, removed a cloth-wrapped object and placed it on the table in front of Sam.
“That is the artefact I showed Jim Pilger,” she said.
Sam removed the cloth, gazed at the artefact and took a deep breath to compose herself. Sam had a feeling she knew exactly where it had come from, so she was making sure the urge to throttle Maggie Tremaine had passed before she spoke. She then placed the very large gold thumb next to the very large gold pinky finger on the red cloth. “Where did you find this?” she asked politely.
Maggie at least had the grace to look extremely guilty. “Lloyd’s cottage, in the box in the book,” she confessed. “I’m sorry Sam.”
“And you claim you don’t know what it is, apart from the obvious?”
“I swear I don’t, but I bet there’s at least three more pieces, fingers - somewhere.”
Sam stood up and paced the room for a moment before returning to her chair. “Honest to god, Maggie, if I were a six-year-old I’d thump you in the arm. Very hard. And if I was at home right now, I’d arrest you for obstructing a murder investigation.”
“I haven’t obstructed anything at all Sam, and you know it. We’re here looking at this pinky finger because I did the only sensible thing and went right to the top of your bureaucratic tree and got permission for us to take this murder investigation in the appropriate direction.
“If I had shown this thumb to you at Lloyd’s on Sunday, you would have felt compelled to admit it as evidence, and that unimaginative man-mountain Homicide detective would’ve ignored it or tried to shove it into his neat and cosy, but completely inaccurate, little theory about Lloyd’s death being a one-off local murder.” Maggie’s voice, though still firm and righteous, had grown quieter in direct proportion to the anger expressed on Sam’s face, which was now very dark indeed.
“Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?” Sam held her palms out and wiggled her fingers. “Any other little secrets?”
“No Sam. You know everything that I know. I promise.”
“Good,” Sam said, although her green eyes were narrow with suspicion, “because I do not appreciate being used. It is not nice finding out that you’re not trusted by someone you trust and respect. Don’t say a word,” Sam ordered, holding up her hand. Maggie closed her mouth obediently.
“I especially don’t like being kept in the dark. Had I known what it was we were looking for, and that you already had part of it, I would not have stood around in the Khan el Khalili like a shag on a bloody rock waiting for a murderous Turk to beat the crap out of me.
“But, although I am sorely tempted, I am not going to handcuff you and drag you home because we are on to something here, and you’re probably quite right about Jack’s reaction, had I been in a position to turn this over to him. Besides, I can’t pretend I haven’t made the most of this Egyptian expedition, nor can I ignore the fact, unfathomable as it is at the moment, that I like you and that despite everything I’m having fun.” Sam frowned, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d just said.
“Are you finished?” Maggie smiled.
“Yes. You can open the other thing now.”
“Thank you,” Maggie stated. She emptied the contents of the envelope onto the table.
“Oh good, another postcard,” Sam said cheerfully. “What’s it of this time?”
“La Compa����a,” Maggie stated. “It’s a Jesuit-built church in the Plaza de Armas, in Cuzco. The card was posted from Peru on May 20th.”
“Peru no less,” Sam said, not in the least surprised. “What does it say?”
Maggie turned the card over. “It says, ‘Got your message. Come at once. Seek me on the board at Hostal Casona.’ It’s signed, Henri Schliemann.”
“Ha! What did I say?”
“You said this had something to do with Manco City,” Maggie smiled.
“I did, didn’t I. Who is Schliemann, do we know him?”
“Well, Heinrich Schliemann was the German-born archaeologist who discovered Troy. But I’ve no idea who Henri is.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “He discovered Troy. Maggie, he’s probably ‘the finder’.”
“I don’t think so dear, he’s dead.”
“Another dead archaeologist?”
Maggie laughed. “Heinrich Schliemann is very dead, Sam. He popped off round about 1890.”
“Oh,” Sam grunted. “You know, there’s something wrong with the progression of all these cards and notes. If Schliemann, whoever he is, posted this to Noel on May 20th, and Noel posted his to Marsden on May 28th, then why didn’t the Professor do as Noel suggested and contact you, Muu-Muu? Even if we factor in a slow postal boat via China he would have got the postcard sometime in June, but he did nothing until he started going peculiar when Marcus’s show arrived.”
“That’s a very good point,” Maggie noted. “No, I know. Lloyd spent a couple of months, on and off from early June, in the Northern Territory on a curatorial project for one of the Aboriginal centres. Also the postcard was sent to the cottage which Lloyd only went to for the odd weekend away. And, by the time he started to panic about all this, I was in Paris.”
Sam sighed deeply. “I think it’s time to talk to Patrick again.”
Patrick Denton had tears in his eyes as he slid the pages back into the envelope that bore his name.
“It’s an official letter drawn up by a solicitor in London advising Noel’s publishers that I have sole entitlement to all copyrights and royalties on his books.”
“That’s wonderful Patrick,” Maggie said, squeezing his hand. She called out to Sam, who had excused herself from the room so she wouldn’t intrude on Patrick’s privacy.
Sam had to drag herself in from the balcony where she’d been standing, a glass of lemonade almost forgotten in her hand, as she drank in the view of the Nile instead. A huge white cruise ship, not unlike the15 feluccas had passed by in the space of a few minutes.
Sam sat down on the couch opposite Maggie and Patrick. As agreed she let Maggie begin.
“Patrick, was Noel agitated, excited or upset about anything in that week before he died?”
Patrick shrugged. “Yes. All of the above, as well as vague as a violet and extremely jumpy. But that was situation normal in the final stages of writing every book.”
“I mean anything out of the ordinary,” Maggie said. “As if he’d had strange or bad news, maybe just a few days before he died.”
Patrick thought for a few moments. “Two days before he spent ages on the phone, making international calls. He was annoyed because he couldn’t get through to anyone he tried; until he spoke to someone, um McBride I think, in Edinburgh.”
“Jean McBride?” Maggie asked.
“Maybe. Anyway, he was really upset after that. But all he would tell me, was that he’d lost an old friend. That she had died five months before and he hadn’t known.”
“She had died,” Maggie repeated. “You don’t know who it was?”
“No. Noel said I didn’t know her.�
�
“May I use your phone? To ring Scotland.” Maggie asked, already half way to the desk.
“Go ahead,” Patrick shrugged. “What’s this all about, Sam?”
“Probably nothing,” Sam lied, keeping her promise to Maggie not to upset Patrick with any talk of foul play. “You said Noel had coffee with an acquaintance the morning he died. Who was that?”
“Andy Baxter. He’s an English mystery buff and aspiring crime writer who tracked Noel down through the museum just the week before. But Baxter wasn’t there when Noel had his stroke.”
Baxter, my arse, Sam thought. She reached into her pouch and pulled out some snapshots of the Rites of Life and Death staff, courtesy of Ben Muldoon’s surveillance team.
“Yeah, that’s him,” Patrick said, pointing out Andrew Barstoc. “Don’ tell me he’s a criminal or something?”
“Or something, Patrick. He claims he’s a businessman. I think he’s a smuggler. And, before you ask, we don’t know what he wanted from Noel, unless it was info about Professor Marsden,” Sam lied.
“I met Mark too, briefly,” Patrick said, tapping the photo of Bridger.
“Did Noel spend time with Marcus Bridger as well?” Sam asked, puzzled.
“Not really. Mark dropped Andy off at the cafe two days before Noel died. I didn’t stay for lunch, so I don’t know if they spent any time together when Mark came back to collect Andy.”
“I just spoke to Angie McBride in Edinburgh,” Maggie said, slumping down onto the couch next to Patrick. She was as white as a sheet. “Her sister, my friend Jean, was killed in a hit and run accident two days before Christmas last year.”
“Oh shit,” Sam uttered.
“That is an understatement,” Maggie said. Her hands were shaking, but she took a breath and turned to Patrick. “I don’t suppose Noel had had a sudden urge to go travelling anywhere.”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. The day before he died he came home and announced we were both going to Peru. Just like that. He’d booked tickets for the Saturday. We never made it, obviously.”
“Did he say why he wanted to go there in particular?” Sam asked.
“He’d changed his mind about Mexico and had decided to set the tenth Jake St James book in Peru, but he needed to track down a guy called Schliemann who was an expert in���something.”
Golden Relic Page 17
