‘This is about some lousy insurance policy for a thousand pounds?’ she blurted. ‘You have to be kidding me.’
‘I can see you’re a practical lady,’ the man continued without turning a hair. ‘I can see that. So there’s no point in saying anything more. Now, do you agree to the arrangement or do I shoot you both today and simply let the Prudential wonder why you never came back to the office? A lot of things can happen on the way back to the office, you know. All kinds of things completely unrelated to insurance policies. Violent place, England these days. Especially for darkies. I do like to help you people, you know, when I can. Gave money to Africa to help the black babies, and all that. Now, why don’t you let me help you, too, love? Eh?’
Vesta felt her knees weaken. She looked at Sandor whose eyes were burning with fury and for the life of her she couldn’t see that she had a lot of options. After all, if they knew she wasn’t from the Prudential they’d probably kill both of them straight away. Suddenly Vesta felt at a dreadful disadvantage not having been through the war. She was sure there was a clever way out of this. She was sure that Mirabelle would know what to do but as far as she could see she was caught in a rat trap and there was really only one option available to her. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll do it. But I need to know Sandor is safe. I need to be able to check.’
The man smiled very slightly. ‘Good, very good. Well, you’d better give me a telephone number, then. A discreet one. We can certainly arrange that.’
‘Untie me,’ Vesta directed. ‘There’s a little office here in Brighton where I can use the phone – a regional office called Halley Insurance. I’ll give you the number.’
15
Courage is not absence of fear.
Mirabelle strode down Norton Road and turned smartly into the Church of the Sacred Heart, heading straight down the aisle. Father Grogan was sitting in the front pew. He looked up as soon as he heard the sound of her heels on the stone floor.
‘My daughter,’ he said, recognising her. ‘I’m afraid Father Sandor is out.’
‘Where has he gone?’
Father Grogan shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’m not sure. He had a funeral to conduct this morning and then he seems to have been called away suddenly. It happens sometimes – we are a busy parish. Are you sure I can’t help you?’
‘No, thank you.’ Mirabelle looked through the side door of the Church, which opened onto the graveyard. She desperately didn’t want to enter the churchyard, but she knew that she probably had to. ‘Is it all right if I go into the graveyard?’ she gestured along the transept.
‘Oh, surely.’
Tentatively she walked through the door. It was clear where the new grave was. A fresh mound of earth was marked at the head with a wooden stick. Mirabelle walked cautiously towards it. She could make out where the mourners had stood, two men and two women. On one side there were shoeprints clearly visible in the mud – two sets of high-heeled shoes and two sets of flat wide men’s prints. From the other direction there were the gravedigger’s footprints, the jagged patterns on the sole of their work boots etched into the mud. At the other end, at the foot of the grave there were some smears as if something had been dragged – the coffin perhaps? She turned towards the gate to the street, avoiding looking at the plot where she knew Jack had been laid. There are spring daffodils on his grave, she thought, without fully registering the flash of yellow. Then she turned to leave quickly with her eyes firmly on her own feet. It was then she saw it. A half-eaten biscuit with a smattering of chocolate lay in the grass. It was only as she bent down to pick it up that it dawned on her what it might mean. It wasn’t like Vesta to toss food aside. If she needed to get rid of it she’d put it in her pocket or, she thought with a smile, just as likely, in her mouth. Then Mirabelle suddenly felt sick. She stared at the smeared mud. ‘Oh, my goodness,’ she said, turning back towards the church.
‘Father Grogan,’ she called, ‘when did you arrive here? Do you know when they left?’
Father Grogan looked up. ‘I can leave a message,’ he offered.
‘What time did you get here? You didn’t see them?’
‘Who?’
‘Father Sandor? And he was with a woman. Vesta. My friend, Vesta. I’m worried something has happened to them.’
Father Grogan had the engaging presence of an unexploded mine. He hardly reacted to her concern and he certainly didn’t hurry. ‘Now, now,’ he said without sounding the least bit comforting, ‘no need to panic. I’m sure something just came up. We have a lot of parishioners here at the Sacred Heart, you know.’
Mirabelle could have screamed with frustration. ‘Of course. Only, what time did you get here? Were you here early this morning?’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘So what time did you arrive?’
‘About half past eleven, I suppose.’
‘And the church was open?’
‘This is God’s house. We don’t lock the doors. Not during the day, in any case.’
‘And he wasn’t here? The funeral was over?’
‘Yes, yes. Calm down, my child.’
‘That’s three or four hours they’ve been gone. Where is your phone? We have to phone the police!’
‘Now look here,’ Father Grogan started, ‘you need to calm down!’
There was no point in having an argument. Father Grogan had an immoveable quality. Trying to make him understand would take too much time. Instead Mirabelle ran back up the aisle. She burst onto the street and looked left and right. There was no sign of anything. She strode into the traffic and flagged down a taxi, jumping into the back seat.
‘East Street and please hurry,’ she snapped at the driver, making the decision not to go to the police station – cases got caught up at the front desk of police stations. If you phoned, you could get straight through. The office was closer in any case. As the cab pulled away, she swivelled in her seat to check she wasn’t being followed. Who knew if the people who took Vesta were still nearby? She cursed her stupidity as the car sped along, flinging some change at the driver when he stopped at the kerb on East Street. Then she burst out of the cab and hurtled up the stairs. But what she saw there made her stop in her tracks and take a very deep breath.
Vesta was sitting at the desk – she was dishevelled and her face was wet with tears but she was safe and sound.
‘Oh, thank God!’ Mirabelle started in a rush, ‘I was terrified. I thought ...’
Vesta put up a hand. There was still mud on it from Romana Laszlo’s grave. She was shaking. ‘Whatever you thought had happened, you were probably right. And they still have Sandor.’
‘We have to go to the police.’ Mirabelle picked up the telephone directory and started leafing through it. ‘There was a chap here today. Detective Superintendent McGregor. Looking for Ben ...’
‘No,’ said Vesta decisively, ‘we can’t go to the police. That’s certain. If we go to the police and they get a sniff of it they’ll kill Sandor. And, Mirabelle, I’m sorry, I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, but Mr McGuigan is dead.’
16
Ratissage: a counter-espionage manhunt
During the course of three cups of hot sweet tea, Vesta told Mirabelle everything that had happened. As they sipped, Mirabelle was glad to see the girl’s hands stop shaking. It was hardly surprising that the shock had made her sick and tearful. Mirabelle laid her hand on Vesta’s shoulder and tried to comfort her. As the news sunk in, Mirabelle forced herself not to think of what had happened to poor Ben and focus instead on the fact that Sandor’s life was at stake now – that was the most important thing. This wasn’t the time to grieve and she knew it was important to focus on the living, not the dead.
‘So,’ Mirabelle said, ‘they think they’re being investigated by the Prudential and they’ve bought you off so their policy will be safe?’
‘Yes.’
‘And they don’t know where you really came from? They’ve no idea?’
Vesta shook he
r head. ‘I told them Halley Insurance is a regional office. I told them I’d be here. They’re going to ring every lunchtime and I can check on him.’ She put down her cup.
‘And you don’t have any idea who he was, this man?’ Mirabelle tried.
Vesta hung her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was English. White. Middle-aged. He was wearing a suit but he wasn’t posh. I couldn’t see him properly – he blindfolded me before we went outside and in there it was all shadow.’
‘But you think he’s watching?’
Vesta shrugged. ‘Can we take that chance? If we get it wrong and we go to the police, then he’ll kill Sandor. Even if he’s not watching, who knows who they have on the inside at Bartholomew Square. Policemen! They’d sell their own mothers, wouldn’t they? It’s too risky.’
Mirabelle weighed it up. Vesta was right. Even if McGregor was straight, there was no saying who else might be on the team. The main thing was to do what was best for Sandor – whatever was safest. ‘Well, we can’t just sit here,’ she said. ‘We should try to find out more. See what we can come up with.’
‘That’s what got us into this situation, Mirabelle!’ Vesta spat. She was angry. ‘If you hadn’t sent me to that stupid funeral none of this would have happened. Do you really want to continue with this – just the two of us? Are you crazy? These people are dangerous. We should just do whatever they say.’
Mirabelle noticed out of the corner of her eye the cup that Ben always used sitting beside the sink. She tried to ignore it. ‘If we don’t do anything then we’re just leaving Sandor’s life to chance. Can you sit here and say that’s all right? We should at least try to find out where they held you. We need to do something. Perhaps he’s still there and we can get him out.’
Vesta slumped. She had had a difficult day – unarguably her most difficult day – and now it struck her that Mirabelle sounded like her mother. The reason Vesta had come to Brighton in the first place was because she had had enough of being told what she had to do and how to do it. This was too much. And even if Sandor was in danger, who knew if digging around would do him any good?
‘It’s all right for you,’ she said petulantly. ‘You weren’t there. I thought you knew about this kind of thing!’
Mirabelle glared. ‘You were supposed to be the lookout, Vesta!’ she snapped back. ‘All I’m talking about is doing some surveillance.’
Vesta made a dismissive motion with her hands. Did Mirabelle really expect her to become some kind of undercover Mata Hari? ‘Yeah, that’s easy for you to say. You’re a white woman. I can’t do surveillance! Do you know how many people turn round and stare when I walk down the street? You’ve got to be kidding!’
Mirabelle paused. She felt sorry for Vesta. Black people were stared at here in Brighton more than London. They shouldn’t be stared at, at all, of course. But it was still no reason not to help Sandor. ‘That’s fair enough,’ she said. ‘We can work around that.’
Vesta banged her cup onto the desk. ‘No. I’m not doing anything else. I’m going to sit here and hope Sandor rings when they said he would. I’m going to hope they keep their word and let him go when the insurance money clears. All this Dick Barton stuff – it’s crazy.’
Mirabelle took a deep breath. ‘If we stop now it will endanger him more. These things don’t come off well, Vesta. And there’s no one else to bother with it. It’s only you and me. Think what it felt like to be held, to be in danger and completely vulnerable. Think about what Sandor would be doing right now if it were the other way around. If you were there, would you rather no one was looking for you? Would you really think that was safer? We owe Ben now he’s gone and we owe Sandor. And perhaps we owe Romana Laszlo, wherever she is. And Mr Velazquez. Something happened to all these people – something bad – and it’s landed in our laps. Sometimes life isn’t what we want, it’s what we get.’
Vesta held her head in her hands. The picture that came back into her mind again and again was of Sandor, tied to a chair in that dank outhouse God knows where.
‘Shit,’ she said, as it dawned on her that Mirabelle was absolutely right. If she’d been stuck in that chair she’d be praying that Mirabelle and Sandor were doing whatever they had to. She let out a deep breath, shrugged her shoulders and glanced at the open biscuit box lying on the desk to one side. The shock had confused her, she thought. Still, despite what her mother believed, perhaps she was a responsible adult after all. It might be easier to just sit there but it wasn’t right. She picked up a biscuit and with a heavy heart made her choice. Not much of a choice, really, but she made it.
‘So what exactly are we going to do?’
Mirabelle turned to the map of Brighton on the wall and prised out the pins that held it in place. ‘You said they took fifteen minutes in a car to bring you back here?’
Vesta nodded. ‘About that.’
Mirabelle drew a circle around the city centre – locations all within a quarter of an hour’s drive. Then she marked in the house at Second Avenue, the Grand Hotel, the racecourse, Big Ben’s house, Cobb’s of Patcham and Sandor’s church – all known and potential locations connected to Lisabetta in one way or another.
Vesta eyed Mirabelle, waiting for her to speak.
‘Right, so we’re looking for an outhouse in that area. We have to try to find out where they held you. And you have to think, Vesta. Did you hear anything? Smell anything? Was there anything that would give us a clue?’
Vesta shook her head sadly. ‘I was so scared. I don’t remember.’
‘You need to try,’ Mirabelle insisted. ‘Do you think it could be the house on Second Avenue? They might have outbuildings in the garden.’
‘No, that’s not far enough away,’ Vesta said decisively, placing her finger on the spot. ‘Anyway there’s nothing like the place in that part of town. I mean outside. I only caught a glimpse but I think it was pretty open – not too many buildings. And the fact I don’t remember any noise indicates it’s probably pretty quiet. Second Avenue is near the front and it’s busy. I’m sure I’d have at least remembered hearing some car engines. I was there for a while and there’s traffic on that road during the day. And there was something else. I felt warm. I remember it being quite hot. But I was panicking. Perhaps I just got flushed.’
The girl was doing all right. ‘Warm ... and quite quiet.’ Mirabelle cast her eyes over the map. ‘Open scrubland. Well, that’s a start. And meantime I’m going to find out what Ben was up to. If he was buried in Romana Laszlo’s grave then there’s a connection between what happened to her and whatever he was doing at the racecourse. It’s not only some thousand-pound insurance policy, let’s face it. He was tracking some kind of payment system for far more than that. He’s written down figures for more than twenty grand. So what are they really up to?’
‘Whatever you got up to during the war, it was important, wasn’t it?’ Vesta asked.
Mirabelle looked up. ‘Everyone was important during the war. Everyone. We worked together and we won. And that’s what we’ve got to do now. Shake hands on it, Vesta.’
Vesta gripped her hand firmly over the top of the desk.
‘I thought I’d lost you there,’ Mirabelle admitted.
Vesta shook her head. ‘I was just scared,’ she shrugged. ‘Sorry Mirabelle.’
Mirabelle glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘We better leave now. It has to look like the office is working normally. Just in case we are being watched. We usually lock up about this time.’ She folded the map. ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’
17
A piece of advice always contains an implicit threat, just as a threat always contains an implicit piece of advice.
Lisabetta’s voice could be heard from the hallway of Dr Crichton’s house. She was speaking in German on the telephone. The housemaid lingered by the kitchen stairs, open-mouthed, and only managed to get out of the way just in time as the doctor came downstairs two steps at once and burst into his study.
‘Jawohl, aber es
ist nicht so leicht.’
She sounded calmer than she had when he first heard her voice. He motioned to attract attention. ‘Lisabetta,’ he hissed, ‘everyone can hear you!’ and he gestured towards the door behind him.
Lisabetta swivelled his chair, turning away, but she conceded by lowering her voice as she spoke into the receiver.
The doctor felt uncomfortable hearing German spoken, and not only because it might be overheard by others. He had been attached to The King’s Own Scottish Borderers during the war – an officer like all medical staff – though he quickly discovered there was money to be made if he turned a blind eye to some of the body bags being sent out by air. He told himself that his negligence benefited refugees as well as ex-Nazis and that it was simply a matter of who had enough money. Money was the key to everything – for right or wrong. The great decider. Before he had managed to secure a scholarship to study medicine Dr Crichton had come from nothing and from nowhere. He had no intention of going back there.
He glanced nervously at his desk. What had Lisabetta been up to? She had been in his house for three days and it felt as if he had been invaded. His safe respectable existence meant nothing to her. In the general run of things she’d left him alone – asking for a prescription now and then, an occasional consultation for a client or, once, medical care for a thug who had been shot. And, of course, he also saw to the coordination of some of her activities outside London. In essence she’d wanted him for his respectability and now she was compromising it by shouting at some Hun down the wire. Thank heavens she’d be going soon.
‘Vielleicht. Guten Tag.’ Lisabetta finished the call and set the heavy black receiver back on the rest, pausing a moment before she turned.
‘Who was it?’ he asked gingerly.
‘His wife,’ she said blankly. ‘Not happy.’
‘No widow is happy.’
Brighton Belle Page 11
