Sellinger’s eyes darkened. ‘Who did? How?’
‘I’ve hired Jim Pike. He’s put together a special team. You’ll have heard of Pike, of course. Ex-detective chief superintendent. Best governor the Flying Squad ever had. Jennifer didn’t have a chance.’
‘Has she confessed?’
I looked at Sellinger carefully; it was time to use the big-lie technique he had so often tried on me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think she’s going to have anything to confess. My guess is we’ll clear her.’
‘But you haven’t done so already.’
‘Not finally, no. But that’s hardly surprising since someone shot her full of bloody giraffe tranquilizer. She’s only just coming around. Pike’s handling the interrogation. It won’t be long.’
Now that Nancy had tipped me off that Paul was not concealing any ace in the hole, I could bluff as well as he could.
‘So why did you come down here?’ he said. Attack, attack, attack, I thought. With Paul, always attack.
‘I’m not happy with the way your people are handling their side of the investigation,’ I said. ‘My part is almost done. I’ve found Jennifer and we’ll have that side settled soon. Either way, I’ve no doubt that what she’ll say will confirm that I’m not a Soviet mole. So if there is a mole, it has to be someone in the Starburst program. From what I hear, you haven’t been doing a damn thing to find out who it is. You’re always bleating about wanting to help me. Well, I came down to tell you that it’s time to get your ass in gear and do some real helping. Get your internal investigations moving.’
Paul grunted. ‘We’d better go and have a drink,’ he said. ‘Come on, we’ll use the west terrace.’
He led me around the side of the house and I wondered if he had chosen the route deliberately so that I would have the best view over the estate. The gardens probably hadn’t been in such superb condition since the man who built the house, Sir Thomas Weatherby, had created them in the sixteenth century. The magic wand of wealth had passed over the unkempt jungle with which I had once struggled. Trees and fully grown shrubs had appeared, by landscape contractor’s conjuring trick, and the lawns had been rolled and chemically prepared and cut by a massive professional mower, to judge from the width of the immaculate stripes.
But I was more interested in watching Paul. Thanks to Nancy, I had the initiative, but I was still surprised that Paul was fighting back so feebly. He had planned for my arrival carefully and it wasn’t like him to be so easily thrown when he was acting through a piece of theater. For the Sellinger family, public life was always treated as theater, and Paul had had plenty of practice. Jacob, the patriarch, always demanded of his sons a disciplined, polished performance, even when someone departed from the script, as I had. Paul wasn’t giving a true Sellinger performance and I was curious to know why.
As we turned the corner by the west terrace, Nancy appeared on the path beside the fountain, and immediately I had the feeling that she had had something to do with it. Paul almost jumped when he saw her, and as she approached I could see his neck muscles tensing as they did when he was violently agitated. For a moment, I thought he had guessed that she had already spoken to me, but I dismissed the idea; if Paul had known about the talk in the rose garden, he would have handled my arrival quite differently.
As Nancy approached, she looked at me calmly and said, ‘John. What a surprise. I didn’t expect to see you at Samman’s.’ Before I could answer, Paul interrupted brusquely.
‘Something urgent has come up. Nan, do you mind leaving us to have a little chat.’
‘Well at least let me give John a drink,’ Nancy said. ‘If he’s come down from London in heat like this he must at least feel like a gin and tonic.’
‘I’d love one,’ I said, but Paul’s face clouded with anger.
‘I’ll take care of the drinks, Nan,’ he said sharply. ‘I said it was urgent. Leave us to talk. Would you mind?’
‘What’s the matter?’ Nancy said. ‘Are you afraid we’ll start fighting again?’
Paul’s look left no doubt that I’d been right. It was something that had happened with Nancy which had put him off his usual stride.
‘I’m sorry if I interrupted a quiet family afternoon,’ I said. ‘But it is urgent.’
Nancy looked hard at Paul. ‘It wasn’t exactly quiet,’ she said. ‘In fact, Paul and I were tearing each other’s throats out.’
‘Our domestic quarrels are no concern of John’s,’ Paul snapped.
‘But it wasn’t a domestic matter,’ Nan said equally sharply. ‘It was a World News matter. In fact, it’s more John’s business than mine. John, did you know Paul had fired Sally Menzies?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I didn’t.’
I was surprised, both that Sally had been fired and that she’d been the subject of a fight between Nancy and Paul. Sally was Paul’s London private secretary and she had worked for my predecessor before the merger.
‘Nan, for the last bloody time, I did not fire her,’ Sellinger roared. ‘She quit for personal reasons.’
‘That’s not how I heard it,’ Nancy said, squaring off to Paul head on.
‘That’s quite a turnabout,’ I said, looking toward Paul. ‘I’d always thought of her as one of our best secretaries. What happened?’
I thought I might as well try stirring up the quarrel, but I didn’t really have much hope. This was the point where Paul would normally have sent Nancy scuttling, even though she was in a defiant mood. I was fully prepared for him to recover his composure and swing back into the attack against me.
Instead, Paul flared at Nancy, ‘Nan, I ordered you to leave it alone.’
‘I don’t take orders,’ Nancy snapped back. ‘I hate capricious men, especially when they’re powerful. From what I heard, you fired Sally on a whim.’
I listened and I simply couldn’t believe it. For all my bravado, I was still on shaky ground over Jennifer. If Paul could just compose himself, he could still ask me some very awkward questions, but instead he seemed completely consumed by a fight over his secretary.
‘This is becoming absurd,’ Paul said. ‘Nan, you’re making a fool of yourself.’ He turned to me. ‘John, do you mind leaving? There’s no point in you getting involved in this.’
‘Paul, we have to talk,’ I said, putting on a reasonable show of irritation. ‘I need some answers from you about your investigations.’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ he said. ‘Nan and I have some matters to settle.’
For a moment I was almost tempted to insist, but I decided not to push my luck. I’d had a lucky escape, first thanks to Nancy’s tip-off and now thanks to a quarrel I didn’t understand.
‘If you say so,’ I said. I smiled at Nan. ‘It was nice to see Samman’s again. I’ll take that drink another time.’
14
The firing of Sally Menzies nagged at me all the way back to London. In all the years I’d known Paul Sellinger, I had never seen him lose his grip on a situation like that. The firing of a secretary just couldn’t be that important to him. More likely, the quarrel with Nancy was a symptom of a much deeper break between them. All the signs were there. And I had been there to gain by it. But how would Nancy feel when her anger wore off? Would she be sorry she’d gone so far?… Really, I knew it was best not to think about it. I mustn’t fall into the same trap that Sellinger had and let myself be distracted from what really mattered. The Family was clearly becoming reconciled to my arrest. Until I found Seagull, nothing was going to come out right.
When I got back into central London I called Cox at his flat, where I’d told him to make our base, and the news was all bad. Ryder had been furious and given me virtually twenty-four hours to find Seagull, after which his director would take the matter out of his hands. Pike had managed to round up five ex-Flying Squad men ‘and they were working in three teams. They’d already covered almost all the contact points on my list and turned up nothing. Seagull was remembered in several places,
but no one had seen her for five months, when she’d been about to leave for France. I waited in a pub in Fulham, sipping a cloudy pint of bitter, until Pike called in his whereabouts to Cox and I drove out to join him. We met in a pub in Hampstead, had a quick drink, then cruised around the area near Seagull’s former flat, in the hope that I’d remember some person who knew her, but we both knew that it was only a way of keeping my spirits up.
By half-past twelve, reaction to the day was beginning to set in and I felt exhausted. Pike said he and his men would carry on the circuit but I decided to break off and go to bed. We had a final disconsolate coffee in a late-night student cafe in Swiss Cottage and I told Pike everything that had happened at Samman’s, including the way Nancy had got me out of trouble. Pike wasn’t impressed. ‘All very touching, mister,’ he said, ‘but you shouldn’t have gone in the first place. And the Sellingers are on the warpath. If we don’t find Jennifer, you’re a stone dead duck.’
Pike was contacting Cox every half hour, and at one o’clock I said I would make the call. I picked up the phone, to report that we’d still found nothing, but when Cox came on the line he said excitedly, ‘Chief. She called. She came through the WN switchboard. She wants to see you. She gave me an address.’
When I went back to tell Pike, he said, ‘So that’s the game, is it? Sounds like a very nasty little trap.’
‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I’m not walking away from it.’ Pike’s gravel voice showed no emotion.
‘Nobody said you were, mister, but we’ll have a little think first.’
The address was in Belsize Park and we held a council of war in Pike’s car, in a side street near Swiss Cottage. The three teams parked separately in adjacent streets and the squad men came over one by one and slid into the Rover.
Despite my agitation, Pike refused to be hurried.
‘Anyone know the place?’ he said. ‘Bill, that used to be your ground, didn’t it?’
A slender, flashily dressed man who looked more like a bookie than an ex-CID officer nodded. ‘Yeah. That’s where we picked up Dizzy Richards that time. Had to chase him all over the fucking gardens. Service flats. About six in one of those converted Victorian jobs.’
‘Any porter?’
‘Yeah. May even still be the same old boy. Been there donkey’s years.’
Patiently, Jim continued the questioning until we had a picture of the house. I could visualize the kind of old converted mansion it was, but this one was apparently different in that it had a big rear garden which was shared by the tenants and was full of sheds and small outbuildings.
‘Don’t like the sound of that much,’ Pike said.
‘Is he going in wired for sound?’
The small, rough-looking Irishman asked the question straight across me; it was obviously not my decision. This was a familiar assignment to them and I was part of the problem, not part of the solution.
‘He’s not going in at all until we’ve been through the building,’ Pike said. ‘We’ll wire him up, if he does go in, but you’re going to comb that place like you’re searching a baby for nits. If we’re dealing with the same people, they didn’t mind burning down half of St. Tropez to get him last time.’
‘Don’t forget they got Seagull too that time. Are you saying she’s back with them again now?’
‘I haven’t the faintest fucking idea,’ Pike said gruffly. ‘Let’s just take it one step at a time.’
We drove to the house and I was left in the Rover with one of the team, a former Flying Squad driver called Terry Mitchell. He was obviously used to doing the backup chores, and while the rest of the team surrounded the house, he fitted a microphone and tiny transmitter under the waistband of my trousers.
The street was quiet but there were still, at 1:30 in the morning, a few home-going residents parking cars or walking back from the restaurants and cafes of Hampstead a mile or so away beyond the park. The house was exactly as Bill had described it: a detached red-brick house with a high-peaked slate roof framed by wooden eaves. There was a low wall in front, and a straggly hedge, and at the back the wall doubled in height to enclose a large, badly kept garden.
‘Don’t worry, sir,’ Mitchell said. ‘There’s no one knows his job like Jim Pike. They won’t let you go in there if there’s going to be agro, and Jim can sniff trouble ten miles away.’
He described the routine they would be going through; Bill would be talking to the porter while the rest of the team would be going quietly over the grounds, shed by shed; checking for every catch-hole or hiding place. If they were satisfied, Pike would take the decision about the rest of the flats.
‘She’s on the top,’ Mitchell said. ‘I doubt if Jim’ll let you go without checking her floor and the one below it. Paddy’ll do the roof. He’s like a cat up there. You needn’t worry about anyone hearing him.’
Half an hour passed and I began to get impatient, but Mitchell didn’t seem concerned. ‘Check like this could take an hour, easy. More, if they do all the next-door gardens.’
Then, suddenly, Pike reappeared. I’d expected him to come sliding out of the bushes, but instead he walked out of the front door of the building, crossed the road, and leaned into the car window. ‘Interesting situation,’ he said. ‘We’ve done her flat. It’s clean. You can go on up now. She’s waiting.’
‘You’ve been in her flat and talked to her?’ I said incredulously. ‘What excuse did you give?’
‘Didn’t need one,’ Pike said. ‘She invited us in. We talked to the porter, got him to take us up to the floor below hers. We talked to the people right under her. Old couple. No problems there. Then she came out on the landing and said, ‘You’d better come up. It’s quite safe.’ Jim paused. ‘We’ve been through her flat. Every inch. Nice place. Full of flowers. No sign of trouble. She just watched us, smiling, then she said, ‘Will you let him come up now? I really want to talk to him.’ He shrugged. ‘Decision’s up to you now. They could be planning to blow you both sky-high, but if they are, I don’t think she knows about it. I wouldn’t say she’s in a suicidal mood. Bit tense. But I don’t know what to make of it.’ He grinned. ‘She’s a good looker, though, isn’t she? I can see why you fancied her.’
‘I’m going up,’ I said.
‘I presumed you would,’ Pike said. ‘We’ll be recording. Paddy’s on the roof and Mike’s with the old dears in the flat below. Any sign of trouble, we can be in there in about ninety seconds.’
The porter let me into the building and led me nervously up to the top-floor flat; he obviously hadn’t enjoyed renewing acquaintance with the Flying Squad again and he scurried back down as soon as we reached the upper landing.
I knocked and Seagull opened the door. For a second, while the door was ajar, I thought it was someone else, then it opened further and I thought, Good God. It’s Seagull in Nancy’s clothing. She was wearing a long silk Liberty’s kimono tied loosely at the waist; it wasn’t the same color or pattern, but it was exactly the kind of garment Nancy used to wear and I had never seen Seagull in anything like it before.
She saw my odd look and smiled. ‘No, it’s not really me, is it? I borrowed the flat from a friend who’s away in Scotland and I had to borrow a few clothes to go with it.’
‘You look beautiful,’ I said. ‘Truly beautiful.’
‘A Liberty’s robe and a tan does wonders.’
The interior of the flat was expensively furnished with leather and stainless steel chairs and modernistic wall hangings and, as Jim had noticed, it was full of flowers. There were flowers in little baskets and buckets and vases; tall sprays and delicate arrangements in miniature glass ornaments.
‘The flowers are my contribution,’ she said, and added in an oddly quiet tone, ‘I use them to keep me steady. They’re a great consolation when things feel as though they’re getting out of hand.’
She didn’t suggest where I should sit, but I noticed that we both, independently, ignored the stylish armchairs in the center of the long room and cho
se two upright chairs at a side table close to the window. Neither of us needed to say that it was how we used to sit in her tiny flat in Hampstead.
‘Would you like some tea?’ Seagull said. ‘Your doctor said we should stay off alcohol.’
‘I’ve already had a drink. It did wonders.’
‘Wine then? There’s some here you’ll like.’
‘Yes. Please.’
As she crossed to the kitchen, I was still distracted by the image of Nancy. But there was no mistaking the walk; she moved with a subtle sway that made her flow along the floor, and I felt the stirrings of arousal that had been missing in St. Tropez.
She brought a bottle of claret and poured me a glass, then a second one for herself and put it by her elbow.
She crossed her legs and I watched the kimono slide open. She wasn’t teasing; that was her usual way of sitting, but I noticed that she was wearing sleek, satiny pants that matched the kimono. She caught my look and smiled. ‘Your style,’ she said. ‘You always did like your women to look like a cross between a snake and a seal. I wasn’t indulging you. It’s the only kind Anna has.’
I could see the banter wasn’t really playful. She was very tense and I guessed she was slipping into our usual ways as a cover for her unease. She noticed again as I glanced down at her thighs and at the wine.
‘If you’re thinking that I’m tense, I am,’ she said. ‘But I think we have a problem.’
‘Oh?’
She smiled. ‘I read a book once called Blue Movie. It was very funny. And very instructive too. I learned from it that you get a really spectacular sound effect if you put a microphone close to the activity you have in mind.’
She touched my hand. ‘Don’t lie. I don’t mind your being wired up, or whatever it’s called. I brought it on myself. I’ve been very stupid. I’m sorry.’
She took my other hand. ‘So no gentling, please. But I wouldn’t mind if you held my hands. Tonight I’m not the tough old Seagull you always said you admired. But I’m ready to talk. I know it’s serious. I won’t run away from it again.’
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