Return

by Brian Freemantle

  The anticipatory fear was obvious in Durham’s voice even before Myron Nolan’s reincarnation identified himself. ‘You!’

  ‘I gave you three months.’

  ‘I’d hoped you might have fallen under a bus. Or caught cancer.’

  Harold Taylor intruded a long pause. ‘What makes you think you can talk to me like that?’

  ‘I can talk to you how I goddamned please.’

  Taylor frowned, irritated at the unexpected bravado. He was glad now he’d decided upon the payment the way he had. ‘Apologize.’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  In different circumstances the truism of the remark might have been amusing. ‘You’re irritating me. And you can’t afford to irritate me. I said apologize. So apologize.’

  There was silence from the other end. Taylor didn’t break it. At last Durham said, his voice strained, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘And “I promise not to say anything like that again”.’

  ‘I promise not to say anything like that again.’

  ‘Ever.’

  ‘Ever.’

  ‘That’s better. I’m outside. I’m coming up.’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘It can’t ever be inconvenient when I come. You haven’t got anyone there, have you? I’ve been watching the apartment for three hours.’ He had, from the comfort of the Waldorf-Astoria, which was almost directly opposite Durham’s apartment on New York’s Park Avenue. He was calling from one of the public phones in the hotel lobby.

  ‘No.’

  ‘And if you’ve got an appointment, cancel it. I come first. Always. That’s the rule, isn’t it, James?’

  There was another silence.

  ‘James?’

  ‘Yes.’ The voice was subdued, the man beaten.

  ‘You tell the concierge you’re having the visitor he’ll know, from before. Mr Barkworth.’ It was a nostalgic reminiscence sometimes to use the name of his last full reincarnation in London, as an early nineteenth-century surgeon in the vanguard of medical scientific development, particularly in the new-found discipline of ophthalmology. It was also the false name in which he’d banked the family inheritance from this existence, close to $1 million he hadn’t needed to touch for a long time, not since putting the squeeze on James Durham. It was ironic that it was because of what Durham had done that he now kept his own money so well hidden, in a numbered account in the Cayman Islands.

  ‘It’s not the same man. He’s changed.’

  ‘Tell him Barkworth. That he needn’t bother with ID.’

  The lobby of Durham’s apartment block was not as clean as Marcus Carr’s had been. There was still a lot of glass but with a man behind the desk, watching him come in, he couldn’t amuse himself as he had in Pittsburgh. The concierge was a black, so tall and thin that his uniform badly fitted, too big at the shoulders but too short in the arms.

  ‘Mr Durham is expecting me.’

  ‘Mr Barkworth?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘He called down. You mind signing in, sir?’

  Taylor hesitated, not expecting the demand. There was no reason to protest. At least the lobbyman hadn’t asked for documentation, which he didn’t have. The elevator smelt of stale tobacco and there were stubs in the ashtray. Taylor wrinkled his nose in disgust. After the facile but unexpected defiance on the telephone he anticipated something further, perhaps the stupidity of keeping him waiting in the corridor, but the apartment door opened at once.

  Taylor knew Durham to be eighty-three and although there was no physical likeness – Durham was a large, broad-shouldered man against Marcus Carr’s rotund smallness – there was a similarity in their apparent good health. The brownness of Durham’s face – since his retirement from the law firm he’d founded he’d spent a lot of time at his fishing cabin in the Catskills – was heightened by his very full, although totally white hair and he was clear eyed and clear skinned.

  Taylor walked in, uninvited, and went directly to the drinks tray, pouring himself Scotch from a decanter. It was important to impose himself absolutely after the telephone nonsense. Durham stood watching, blank faced.

  Taylor said, ‘Well?’

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  ‘Of course you’ve got it. You stole it.’

  ‘I’ve got it together in cash.’

  ‘That’s what I gave you three months to do. That was very generous of me.’

  ‘This is the last. You said this would be the last!’

  ‘You’re a millionaire, several times over. Why should you worry?’

  The elderly man’s face twisted. ‘So you’re going to want more. Blackmailers always do.’

  ‘You should know. You’re the criminal lawyer. And the criminal. You know it from both sides, James. Just like I know how your entire life – all those millions – was built on stealing from Myron Nolan, before and after he was murdered.’

  ‘You said you’d bring the documents this time,’ said the old man, plaintively.

  Theatrically Taylor snapped his fingers, as if in sudden recollection. ‘Would you believe it! Slipped my mind. Means I’ll have to bring them another time.’ This charade was the best part of the torture. There had been documentary evidence, statements from the banks they’d hidden from the military police investigators and to which he’d given Durham access, with power of attorney, when he’d trusted the lawyer: statements he’d got independently when he’d stopped trusting him, showing Durham’s consistent looting. But they’d all been returned to Durham by prison authorities unaware of their significance, after his death as Myron Nolan, as part of the estate for which the lawyer was responsible. And which he had gone on plundering.

  Durham extended his arms, palms upwards. ‘God how I’d like to kill you, with my own bare hands.’

  ‘Murder as well as larceny and embezzlement! Who would have believed it of such a well-known, upstanding citizen of this fine city?’ Abruptly Taylor changed the tone. ‘What you’d like to do and what you’re going to do are a very long way apart, James. You’re going to go on doing exactly what I tell you, as and when I choose to tell you. And the moment – the very moment – that you imagine some independence like you imagined this morning on the telephone you stop and think for a moment how everything you built up – your practice and your reputation and your respect – would crumble if I took what I know to the police. Never forget that’s the choice you’ve got.’

  ‘You’re never going to let me, are you?’

  ‘No, never …’ He paused, smiling at the joke he’d try to remember to tell Durham next time: ‘not for as long as you live. Now you go to that great big safe set into the closet floor and get me the money you’ve had three months to get together.’

  The lawyer returned so quickly that Taylor guessed he’d already had the cash ready, out of the safe. It was divided between two large, equally filled, brown envelopes. The lawyer offered them to Taylor and said, ‘Four hundred thousand.’

  Taylor took it, shaking his head, savouring the surprise he’d intended even before Durham’s insolence. ‘Price has gone up,’ he declared.

  ‘What!’ Durham’s face fell.

  ‘I’ve made some more calculations. Three months ago I thought $400,000 would repay everything you stole from Myron Nolan. But it won’t, will it? The actual figure, to clear the slate, is $500,000 …’

  ‘That’s not true!’

  ‘You know it is. Like I know it is because I’ve got the documentation, remember? Means you owe another $100,000.’

  ‘But I haven’t …’ started the lawyer, desperately.

  ‘And I also think you should be fined for the way you behaved on the telephone,’ stopped Taylor. ‘Always got to pay for your sins. Wasn’t that the principle in all those cases that made you famous?’

  He wasn’t sure whether the visible tremors going through the other man were fury or despair. ‘I don’t have $100,000 in cash in the apartment. Don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘On this occasion, I’
ll take a cheque. You can tell your bank, before I leave, that it’s to be paid by special clearance.’

  ‘They won’t take instructions by telephone.’

  ‘Yes they will, from someone like you: a respected, well-known customer. Come on now! I’ve got a lot to do.’

  Durham’s mouth opened and closed, but no words came, and Taylor decided the shaking was fury. When the man finally spoke, the one word – ‘bastard’ – only just croaked out.

  ‘You trying to get another fine here, James?’

  Leaden footed, Durham crossed the room to a bureau in the corner, took out a cheque and for a moment stood forlornly with it in his hand, staring down at the floor.

  ‘I said come on! T-A-Y-L-O-R. And get a hold on that anger. I don’t want any query on the signature.’ He stood over Durham while he wrote and remained close to the man while he talked to his Wall Street bank, wanting to hear everything the high deposits manager said from the other end. He also needed the name of the man, Howard Drew, through whom the arrangement was being made.

  When Durham replaced the receiver he said, ‘There! See how everyone does what they’re told when they’re told by a rich man. How you do everything you’re told when I tell you!’

  ‘Get out,’ said the lawyer, although quietly, drained of any remaining anger. ‘Please, just get out.’

  Taylor caught a shuttle back to Washington with ample time to get to the Connecticut Avenue bank in which he’d opened an account and rented a safe deposit box within two days of his decision to make the city his base. His banker was a girl of about thirty whom he’d briefly considered trying to date, a milk-fed blonde with exciting-looking ties, named Thelma Jones. She raised her eyebrows at the size of the cheque and said the stock market must be doing well and Taylor, who’d described himself as a freelance broker on his bank application details, said it was if you knew what you were doing. He gave her Howard Drew’s name to contact in New York and the special clearance arrangement was confirmed with one telephone call. That transaction completed, he went to the safe deposit division and retrieved his box, emptying most of the contents of the brown envelopes into it. He allowed himself $75,000 for the trip to London and bought his first-class ticket in cash, for a flight on the following day.

  By the time Taylor returned to his no man’s land house to pack, Thelma Jones had spoken at length with her department head, who agreed with her that they had to obey the law.

  And in New York James Durham was still numbed with despairing disbelief at the inconceivable mistake that he, a criminal lawyer of all people, had made. There wasn’t any escape. He could possibly argue statute of limitations: negotiate a deal. How long would it be before they came for him? All he could do was wait.

  Taylor’s flight left Dulles airport promptly at 11 a.m. At noon, after complaints about the smell from other residents, the Pittsburgh janitor used his pass-key to enter Marcus Carr’s apartment to find the putrefying body of the retired army general. The janitor vomited.

  Chapter Ten

  Matt Hirst, head of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office, was waiting for them in the corridor, driven out by the smell along with four or five local police officers. Two of the local men were very slowly taping off the corridor, determined to keep a job outside. Hirst was a stocky, red-haired man whose freckles were even more pronounced against a face turned chalk white by what was inside the apartment. He was already protectively suited. He said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like it. Never.’

  Lucille Hooper, who, like the rest of the FBI group except Powell, had put on her forensic protection in the corridor, said, ‘This is how I become the most popular person on the Task Force’ and held out a jar of strongly mentholated balm. She already had a heavy smear beneath her nose. Everyone copied her, even Geoffrey Sloane.

  Marcus Carr’s body was displayed in exactly the same position as the other victims. Decomposition was already well advanced. More flies remained than swarmed up at the disturbance of their combined entry. The grotesqueness of the body was heightened by the fact that the face sockets were filled with maggots, making it appear that Carr was white eyed. The forensic team distributed themselves according to their functions. Powell, just minutes behind, went from room to room, keeping out of their way, before returning to Hirst. He said, ‘How much do we know about Marcus Carr?’

  ‘Retired army general. Quiet. Well liked. Lived in this block for fifteen years. Wife had a long history of heart problems, so they needed to be near the hospital …’

  ‘Where’s she now?’

  ‘In hospital. According to the janitor she had a heart attack three weeks ago. I called, while I was waiting for you. She’s been in a coma for the past three days. She’s going to die …’ Hirst paused. ‘Janitor says he hadn’t seen the general for about a week but that there was a guy, a stranger he hadn’t seen before, who visited around that time.’

  Barney Zeto’s basement office was crowded, with three extra people in it, but it was better than trying to talk to the janitor in the corridor with the pervading smell. Powell took it at the other man’s speed, needing the background anyway, listening to Zeto’s account of a childless ‘army gentleman, wonderful wife’ too independent to have a maid (‘Mrs Carr’s upbringing, I supposed. She was German: they’d met in Berlin just after the war, when it was hard there’) who’d remembered him at Christmas and took an interest in other people’s kids, a man who’d actually used his influence (‘lotta respect locally, the general’) as a college governor to get Zeto’s nephew a football scholarship.

  ‘Tell! me about the man you saw,’ prompted Powell, at last.

  ‘You think he could be the man who did that up there?’

  ‘Until I find him and he convinces me he’s not,’ said Powell. ‘He definitely told you he’d been to see General Carr?’

  Zeto nodded. ‘I’m responsible for the security in this place …’ The man swallowed, realizing how badly he’d failed. ‘So when I see him come out of the elevator, carrying this bag, I decide—’

  ‘What bag?’ interrupted Powell, urgently.

  Zeto made a vague shape, with his hands. ‘Big, briefcase-type thing. With a strap.’

  Gaynor’s description, recognized Powell. Just as he’d recognized the military significance of an army stockade in Alabama. It was coming! ‘How’d this case work? You mean the handle was a strap? Or that it had a strap that went over the shoulder?’

  ‘Strap that went over the shoulder.’

  ‘You thought this stranger might have something in there he’d stolen, from someone in the apartments?’

  ‘At first,’ agreed the man. ‘That’s why I stopped him. Got to talking.’

  ‘You ask to look inside?’

  ‘Was going to, until he mentioned General Carr. If he was a friend of General Carr’s he had to be all right, hadn’t he?’

  It would have been cruel to give the obvious answer. Powell said, ‘I want you to really concentrate …’ He nodded sideways. ‘Matt here will come back tomorrow, go through what you tell us, in case you remember something more. But for now I want you to describe this man to me. Everything about him that you can. It’s very important. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Zeto. ‘Odd.’

  Powell hadn’t intended to interrupt – prompt at all – but he couldn’t risk any wrong directions. ‘What do you mean, odd?’

  ‘He seemed young, bodily. Slim, no gut. Walked easily, young-like, know what I mean?’

  ‘Kind of,’ said Powell, cautiously. ‘So what was odd?’

  ‘His face. His face didn’t fit his body. It was an old face, pouchy. Bags under his eyes, lot of wrinkles.’

  Powell had a stomach drop of disappointment, changing his original intention. ‘Let’s forget the face, for a moment. Describe him bodily.’

  ‘Slightly built, average height.’

  ‘Bodily, how old would you have said?’

  ‘Thirty, tops.’

  He’d definitely prompt, Powell decided. ‘Black hair?’ />
  ‘Kinda mousy. Lotta grey at the sides.’

  It didn’t fit Gaynor’s description! The man Gaynor had wanted to encounter rather than the man he had, Powell remembered. ‘Long or short?’

  ‘Crew cut.’

  Shit! thought Powell. ‘What kind of clothes?’

  ‘Dark trousers – but trousers, not jeans – and a windbreaker. And a sweater.’

  Back where he’d started, with a vague comparison to Gaynor’s impression. Abruptly, annoyed with himself for not thinking of it earlier, Powell said, ‘This block got CCTV?’

  ‘I’ve already checked,’ came in Hirst. ‘Loop’s wiped every four days. I’ve retrieved the film, for enhancing, but I think we’re too late.’

  Why the hell wasn’t life just very occasionally fair? thought Powell. There was silence for several moments, no-one sure how to continue. Powell remembered something Zeto had told them earlier. ‘You described the general as a man of routine?’

  ‘His army training, I guess.’

  ‘He have any regular places he used to go that you know about, where he might have met this man you saw?’

  The janitor shook his head. ‘Not without Mrs Carr, until she got taken into hospital this time. They were inseparable. Celebrated their golden wedding here.’

  Powell thought immediately and intuitively that there was something there. But what? ‘Until she got taken into hospital,’ he echoed. ‘You mean he began doing something regular after?’

  ‘No,’ dismissed the man. ‘Nothing like that. Used to go out to eat more often, breakfast, dinner sometimes. But that’s all. Just local, places he could walk to. The Hilton a coupla blocks up. More convenient than doing it himself, I guess. It was Mrs Carr who wouldn’t have help: did everything for them. He was kinda lost without her.’ He paused. ‘Now it’s Mrs Carr who’s lost him.’

  Powell’s intuitive feeling was that he’d missed something but he knew that whatever it was – if, indeed, it was anything at all – he’d have to wait for it to become more obvious than a simple impression. He said, ‘I’m going to have a drawing sent from Washington, which Matt here will show you. I want you to look at it very carefully. Tell us if you think it could be the man you saw. And in between I want you to think of anything else you can about General and Mrs Carr – and the man – and write it down so you’ll remember, when Matt comes. OK?’