The Money Stones

by Ian St. James

  It was round about that time that I began to see more of Sue. She was between books, and able to spend more time with me, coming down for weekends at least twice a month. I had kept my promise and never mentioned her name to Hallsworth. It was awkward at times, leaving a meeting-with him to go straight to her, and making sure that their visits to Hill Street never coincided, but I managed. And she and I often talked about him. It was difficult not to. She took an interest in the business and I'd told her about Pepalasis and how Hallsworth had taken him over. Told her everything really - except the prospect of half a million in a Swiss bank account.

  It was during July that I took her on a long weekend to North Wales. The company's affairs were in good order and July's a quiet month anyway, holidays slipping forward ahead of the August shutdown. And I was really marking time. Waiting for the consortium to pick their geologist and for Pepalasis to name the date.

  We left Hill Street just after lunch on the Friday and headed west, the countryside shimmering in the full heat of a rare summer's day. But at the Welsh border the sky turned overcast and by the time we pulled into the hotel car park at Barmouth rain was sheeting down and closing in for the night. We took dinner early, had a few drinks and adjourned to bed, thankful that wet evenings on the Welsh coast provided some compensation.

  The rain persisted through all of Saturday, steady, relentless, and solid enough to veil the sea fifty yards from our bedroom window. In the afternoon I borrowed an oilskin and went for a walk; Sue stayed behind with a book. I splashed up and down the promenade, eyes slit against the rain, enjoying myself like a kid out of school. I'd not been back to Barmouth since my days in the Army and perversely liked the place better in rain than in sunshine. I would have walked for longer but for a sense of guilt at leaving Sue to amuse herself, so after half an hour of it I trudged back, my feet squelching in my shoes with every step. Upstairs Sue was on the phone. I could hear her talking even as I stood in the corridor, one hand on the door handle, rain dripping onto the carpet from my sodden clothes.

  'No, he's out,' she said. 'But I wouldn't think for much longer. It's bucketing down outside.' There was a pause. I opened the door and went in, just as she added. 'No don't worry, we won't be back until late on Monday.'

  Then she saw me. Her eyes rounded with surprise and a faint flush came to her cheeks. 'Darling, you're soaked!' Fleeting confusion, then quickly back to the phone. 'No, no, of course not you, Aunty. My young man's just come in, that's all. Of course he's got his own room. He's just come in to let me know he's back.' She pulled a face at me, one hand over the mouthpiece, her shoulders shrugging in a gesture of hopelessness as she whispered 'Maiden aunts.'

  I grinned, pulled my clothes off, threw them into a soggy heap in one corner and went into the bathroom for a hot soak. And a minute or two later Sue came in, as naked as I was.

  'My aunt in Aberystwyth.' She massaged my shoulders, sitting on the edge of the bath facing me, her hands sliding down my back and pulling my face forward into the softness of her body. 'I thought, as we were so near, perhaps we might go and see her tomorrow. But she's going to visit friends and won't be back until late Monday.'

  I grunted, my body already responding to the caresses of her hands, brain switching off, senses taking over. I remembered thinking that I'd misheard the scrap of telephone conversation and then was past caring.

  Sunday. And the rain kept coming. Not as fiercely as the day before but a steady grey drizzle which could soak clothing through in ten minutes. I didn't know what to do. By myself I would have walked the hills and enjoyed it, but I could hardly leave Sue alone all day. So we had an enormous Sunday lunch, log fires burning unseasonably. in the dining room, too much food and drink, leaving us doped and drowsy and fit only to snooze the afternoon away.

  I stirred at around four o'clock and began to think about Hill Street. About the work I could do if we left tonight, a day early. We might as well. The weather looked set and Sue hadn't as much as put her nose outside the door since we arrived. I felt her move beside me and turned on the bed to find her grey eyes watching me.

  'Feel like going home?'.

  'Mmmm, I am home.' She stroked my face and inched her body into mine.

  'No, I mean now. Tonight. You could stay at Hill Street and travel down to Winchester in the morning.'

  I felt her stiffen and sensed as much as heard the sharp intake of breath. A minute later she was kissing and stroking me, whispering and moaning, her lips and tongue and mouth and hands taking over and her movements building to a crescendo of urgency as she felt me respond. She had always been passionate in lovemaking but nothing we had shared together was as abandoned and inventive as those next hours. She became every woman of a man's imagination. Dominant and demanding one minute, slavishly submissive the next. In turn, as coy as a girl giving herself for the very first time, then as practised as a whore in a waterfront brothel. It wasn't just what she did with her body, not even what she did with mine, though God knows that was unbelievable. But her language, the words, her voice; movements, mannerisms. Everything was designed to tantalise and arouse until I throbbed for release, tenderly and love warm at times, rutting like an animal an hour later.

  I think we stopped at around ten the next morning. Of course, we'd slept from time to time, but not much, judging from my puffed eyes and blotched face in the bathroom mirror. And my body told its own story. Long scratches, bites and bruises. I bathed, dressed and inspected myself, feeling like a criminal concealing evidence.

  At noon we had a brunch of eggs and bacon, and an hour later I was stowing suitcases into the trunk of the car. The rain had stopped and a few patches of blue sky were breaking through the overcast, as if to hint that summer might be returning to North Wales just as we were leaving. I left Sue in the car and went back to settle the bill.

  Once an accountant, always an accountant. There's nothing you can do about it. Put a column of figures in front of me and I add them up. I checked the bill as I reached for my wallet and credit cards. One item jarred. I looked up to catch the manager speculating on the kind of night I'd had. 'Bit much isn't it?' I nodded at the bill. 'Three pounds for a phone call to Aberystwyth.'

  He coloured slightly, as if I'd caught him cheating. Or maybe he guessed I'd read his thoughts. 'It is that,' he took the bill, frowning hard as if to frighten the truth out of it. I waited while he went to the operator's cubby hole in the alcove under the stairs. He returned triumphant. 'Aberystwyth? I thought it a bit much myself when I heard that. But it was a London call that Madam made.' He laid heavy emphasis on the 'madam'. As a matter of fact we have the number here. We record 'em, see. Just in case of queries.' He gave me the number and, awkward with embarrassment, I paid the bill and left.

  It wasn't until an hour later, as the car pulled smoothly up the long escarpment north of Stafford, that I realised whose telephone number it was. The first five numbers were the same as mine at Hill Street, making it local to that part of Mayfair. I glanced curiously at Sue and watched in fascination as one grey, untroubled eye winked slowly and the red lips pouted in a kiss. My answering smile must have seemed poor response. But at least it covered my confusion. As I wondered if her aunt stayed often at the Dorchester on Park Lane.

  Four

  We arrived back in Hill Street at about seven-thirty and took the tiny lift up to the top floor. Sue had insisted on a leisurely drive back, stopping for tea at Warwick and later, because she hadn't been there for years, calling in at Jack Straw's Castle on Hampstead Heath for a drink. Not that I minded. I wasn't , hurrying. Her train left at eight-thirty and after seeing her off I planned to go directly to bed.

  The ground floor entrance hall looked much as usual and neither of us gave it a second glance as we crossed to the lift. Even the elegance of the fourth floor lobby was undisturbed. But inside, the flat had been hit by a whirlwind.

  'Oh my God!' Sue was a few paces ahead of me, a yard across the threshold, her hands to her face.

  The front d
oor opened directly onto the sitting room. There were two doors off, one to the dining room and kitchen, the other to the bedroom and bathroom. I almost threw up at the mess. Overturned tables, drawers ransacked, paintings torn from walls, ripped cushions scattering more feathers than a fox in a chicken run. The other rooms were as bad. Even the kitchen cupboards gaped open, groceries littered everywhere, sugar granules crunched under foot. The sickness gave way to anger.

  'What are you doing?' Sue's eyes followed me to the telephone.

  'Getting the police.' I was already dialling.

  'Mike, wait!' She reached quickly, tugging my sleeve, her other hand closing on the receiver, breaking the connection. 'Please. Just a minute.'

  I put the phone down and looked at her.

  'They'll want statements,' she said urgently. 'From both of us. Darling, don't you understand? I'll have to give my name.'

  'So?'

  'Rupert will find out. I mean you're bound to tell him aren't you? About - this - this burglary. And then the police will be back and forth. Questions. Statements. All their damned procedures. Well, Rupert's just bound to find out about me, that's all.'

  I think I was still staring at her, not knowing how to answer, when she added, 'Darling, if I go now? Catch a cab to Waterloo? After all, it's not as if I can add anything to what you say?'

  It was so obviously true as to be unanswerable. We went downstairs, collected her case from the car, and I kissed her goodbye through the open window of the cab. 'I'll phone tomorrow,' she promised as the cab drew away, 'to find out what happened.'

  Ten minutes later I had called the police and was making a tour of the downstairs offices. They had all been given the same treatment.

  Two plainclothes men arrived within the hour. We went upstairs and drank whisky amidst the debris. Afterwards they dusted for fingerprints, took mine for comparison, found a broken skylight and generally got on with being detectives, while I restored at least superficial order to the sitting room. They returned as I was stacking books on shelves, accepted my offer of another whisky and settled down to watch me work.

  The sergeant spoke first. 'Any idea who did this, sir?'

  'I imagined it might be burglars.' It was past nine, I was tired and irritated, and it began to show.

  'These weren't ordinary burglars, Mr Townsend.'

  'That's comforting.'

  'Well, from what you say sir, nothing's missing.'

  'So they were inefficient or disappointed.'

  The constable joined in. 'Doubt that, sir. They'd have done a lot more damage if they'd been disappointed.'

  I was standing on a chair, working along the top row of the bookcase. 'More than this bloody mess?' I waved a hand at the chaos.

  'Oh easily. People we know would have urinated up your walls.'

  'Or shit on your carpets,' the other joined in.

  'Nice friends.' I climbed down from the chairs and poured myself another scotch. 'So where do we go from here?'

  The sergeant shrugged, watching me closely. 'Leaves another possibility, sir. They were looking for something specific. Something in particular.'

  'I'm damned if I know what. There's never much cash up here. A few bob in the petty cash downstairs perhaps, but-'

  'We've checked that, sir,' said the constable. 'It's still there. The cash box intact and undamaged.'

  'What, then?'

  'We were hoping you'd know that, sir,' the sergeant said, the faintest hint of suspicion in his voice. 'Our guess is some kind of document - from the mess they've made of the filing cabinets downstairs.'

  I shook my head. 'Only business papers. Nothing which might be, well, valuable to anyone else - valuable enough for this.'

  They had finished their drinks and were going. 'We'll call back tomorrow, sir. You'll have had more chance to check everything by then.'

  But I guessed. Even as I was showing them out at the front door. I could hardly get back upstairs fast enough. I remembered locking my briefcase away into the cupboard next to the bookcases in the sitting room on Friday. I had been working on papers when Sue had arrived and I'd shoved them back into the briefcase, knowing I'd need them again at the end of the weekend.

  The briefcase was still there. Thank God for that! Gasping with relief I reached for it, springing the catches, lifting the lid. But the file had gone. The complete bloody file! All of my notes, calculations, minutes of meetings, everything. Everything I knew about Pepalasis. I groped for a chair as a new thought hit me. Now somebody else had the map of the island.

  Five

  'I still can't understand it. I left at five-thirty and you got here two hours later. Two hours? To create this!' Jean waved a hand at the mess in the general office.

  I took her elbow and guided her through to my office, closing the door behind us. Jean Wilmslow was secretary, office manager, right hand woman and friend. She'd been with me at Walpoles for three years and had packed her bags to follow me as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to do. If Jean had ever found a 'great man', to get behind she'd been living proof of the saying, but in the absence of one she made do with me and my life was a sight easier and a lot more productive as a result of it.

  I never understood why she hadn't got a regular man in tow. Twenty-five, honey brown hair, blue eyes, good figure, tall, I guessed five foot seven in her stockinged feet. We'd been out together occasionally. Dinner after working late, theatre when I'd got tickets and Sue hadn't been able to get down. I enjoyed our evenings a good deal more than I cared to admit and would have asked her out more often but for the rules. My rules. Never get involved with the hired help. And although Jean was a lot more than that, it was the nearest the rules got to classifying her.

  She was everyone's favourite, too. Not just mine. Clients, business associates, staff, everyone succumbed. Even Hallsworth found time during each visit to spend fifteen minutes with her in the room next to mine. 'And you were the last to leave the office?' I was asking her.

  'Aren't I always?' She crossed one long leg over the other, a hand automatically adjusting the hem of her skirt.

  The ten o'clock conference with Jean. Coffee, the morning mail, a resume of the day's appointments. Daily routine. Except that morning we were holding it an hour earlier because of the burglary, with the office cleaners waiting outside for instructions about what to keep and what to throw away.

  'The police will be round later,' I said. 'To find out what's missing. I'll sort the mess out in here while you organise the staff in the other offices. After that perhaps you'll give me a hand in the flat?'

  'You won't have time,' she shook her head. 'Have you seen your diary?'

  I scowled at the desk top, strewn with papers ripped from still-open drawers. The diary was amongst them somewhere.

  She saved me the trouble of finding it. 'Mr Hallsworth will be here at ten. And Harry Smithers of A.W.F phoned twice on Friday and again yesterday. They've appointed their man for the Pepalasis project and he's anxious for you to meet him. It sounded urgent so I slotted him in for two-thirty.'

  I was both surprised and relieved. I'd not expected Hallsworth until Friday, but at least his rearranged schedule meant I could tell him about the missing documents.

  He arrived on the dot of ten, and as usual I told him everything. Except the bit about Sue being with me in North Wales. And still with me when I discovered the burglary.

  'Pepalasis will throw a bloody fit,' he groaned. 'He never wanted to part with that map in the first place.'

  'It's no damn use to anyone,' I said defensively. 'There's no reference to show where the island is.'

  'But the areas are marked! Where he found diamonds.'

  I shrugged. 'So? It's still useless without the island's location.'

  He paced the room in a mounting fever of agitation.

  'Suppose whoever's got the map follows him?'

  'Are you kidding? Wherever the bloody place is, it's not in the middle of Hyde Park. How the hell can anyone follow him?'r />
  He stopped pacing and stared at me as if I was being especially stupid. 'If they know where he is now they can follow him. It's that simple.'

  'Rubbish!' I lost my temper, partly from guilt that the documents were stolen while in my possession, but mainly because I thought his theory ridiculous. It was the nearest we'd come to a full blown row since we started.

  'I'd better let Pepalasis know.' He picked up the phone. 'I'll go straight round to see him.'

  'Want me to come?'

  He shook his head, waiting to be connected.

  'Good,' I growled. 'I've got enough to do. What with the police coming and then this geologist from the consortium.'

  'The police? What are you going to tell them?' He turned back to the telephone. 'Mr Pepalasis please, suite two eleven.' A pause. 'I see. Well, when he's free perhaps you'll give him a message? Rupert Hallsworth will join him for lunch. That's right. Thank you.' He hung up and looked at me. 'You were saying something about the police? Of course, you'll not say anything about the map or the papers to the police.'

  'Why not?'

  'Are you mad? Next thing the evening papers will have it and we'll have a bloody gold rush on our hands. We daren't risk the publicity.'

  He was making a mountain out of a molehill as far as I was concerned and I told him as much, but after arguing for half an hour I agreed to say nothing to the police. And after that he left, no doubt as irritated with me as I was with him. So I was still in a sour mood when the detective sergeant and constable arrived, both seemingly hot with anticipation.

  'Well, sir - discovered anything?'

  'We left that for you.'

  'With your help, sir,' the sergeant reproved patiently. 'Is there anything missing?'

  I shook my head. 'Mind, we haven't sorted everything yet. We could use a bit more time.'