by Douglas Hurd
‘And married folk.’
‘Lena and Angelo? I think not. As for the Grevilles …’
‘He told you about the blackmail.’
‘Of course.’
‘But …’
‘If Signor Greville had killed the girl in order to suppress the blackmail, then he would have retrieved his cheque before her room was searched. It was not hidden?’
‘Hardly. It was in the top drawer of the dressing table.’
‘Exactly.’ They paused.
‘So how would you sum it up?’
Ferretti shrugged his shoulders. ‘There is a girl whom everyone dislikes. No alibis that are really strong. In police work as opposed to detective stories one learns to start with the obvious. I cannot yet arrest Alexander Ruthven, but I shall question him more closely at Lucca. The reason is simply that his motive is the strongest. A scorned lover will always rate high. And unlike anyone else, he was seen in the car.’
‘No!’ said Nicholas spontaneously.
‘He is your friend. I am sorry.’
‘Alex will storm and swear when his vanity is hurt. But he is Don Juan. Love is a game. Murder is not a game.’
Thomas interrupted them. ‘That was Ten Downing Street on the telephone. They couldn’t find her.’
Nicholas made no sense of this. ‘The PM? But you said she was at the Visentinis.’
‘So they told me. But she left a day early. Visentini’s mother died suddenly on Monday, and it was more tactful to go. So they never managed to contact her.’
‘But Number Ten stay in touch with her wherever she goes.’
‘This time is different. She travels under an assumed name. No London police with her. She simply gave Number Ten the name of the next convenient place where they could reach her.’
‘Which was?’
‘La Freddiana.’
‘So she doesn’t know …’
‘She knows nothing except that she is expected to lunch. It is now half past twelve. Now, Captain, in this crisis, do you think you could send out your men on to the possible road …’
As Thomas spoke all three men heard a car start in the little car park adjoining the terrace. It was noisily done, and they all had cars on their minds. Nicholas ran out, in time to see the tail of the Fiat Uno belonging to the Duchess twist round the corner at the start of the steep descent. It left a spurt of dust behind.
‘Someone has taken your mother’s car. Whoever it is is driving helter-skelter down the drive.’ Helter Skelter. Thomas stared at Nicholas as the words slipped out.
The Duchess was suddenly with them. As if she had foreseen the telephone call she wore a blazing cluster of diamonds on the bosom of an old blue dress. Unusually, she had a dab of rouge on either cheek, which made her look old and rather absurd.
‘She shouldn’t have called him useless.’
‘What do you mean, Mother?’
‘That girl. It was true but dangerous. Wicked, immoral, randy, yes, but not useless.’
‘You mean that Dukey tried …’
‘I wish you would not call your father Dukey. You know how he dislikes it. The day before yesterday, soon after she arrived, he went to her room. It meant nothing, it would have led nowhere, if she hadn’t called him useless. As it is, poor man …’
Suddenly the pace of the morning changed. There was a blast of a car horn, the sound of a crash, then after a minute of confusion, the arrival of a powerful and unknown car containing familiar figures.
Of one thing, the Prime Minister, her husband and their driver were afterwards certain. As the approaching Fiat Uno hurtled off the drive and hit the wall, the expression on the face of the Duke of Stirling had been one of schoolboy delight.
9 Warrior
It was as cold inside the armoured car as Faith could remember. She had placed herself by the tiny window, four inches by two, which looked back along the road they were travelling. The snow was piled in deep banks on either side, but on the track itself the convoys had pressed it hard into ice. The sergeant, being a veteran of Bosnia, had taken the seat at front right of the troop-carrying compartment, one foot away from a small radiator. Above his head the condensation dripped from the roof whereas above Faith’s it froze.
Beyond him she could see the boots and calves of Captain Andrew Fairweather manning the Warrior’s gun. He shifted and stamped, manoeuvring his feet as close to the radiator as was compatible with keeping his head and shoulders upright in the open air. It was far too noisy for conversation inside the Warrior even if the sergeant had been so inclined. In fact he was reading the latest Mary Stewart, fished out of one of the voluminous pockets of his battledress.
The only other passenger was Jim. Despite the cold he was fast asleep, blood showing from the cut on his forehead. Not surprising that he had faded out after that ordeal. He looked thirty, whereas she knew he was forty-five. A tuft of fair hair escaped from the front of his blue woolly hat. His green and white padded jacket was attractive only to a sniper. He had always, in the four months he had been in and out of Vitez, seemed determined to look and act as differently as possible from the soldiers whose life he reported day by day. She remembered how thoroughly she had disliked him and how richly he had deserved it. As she remembered he stretched out his long legs in sleep and they intertwined with hers, knee to knee. She thought she felt, though through all those layers of clothing it must be imaginary, the warmth of his body communicating with hers.
They had met at the Christmas party. When Captain Faith Scrymgeour was not shepherding journalists on behalf of BritBat, she acted as community liaison officer with the Bosnian Croats in the Vitez pocket. The Bosnian Croats were besieged by Bosnian Muslims in the surrounding hills, and themselves besieged a tiny Bosnian Muslim enclave in Old Vitez. All of them were vulnerable to attack from Bosnian Serb artillery stationed half a dozen miles to the north.
‘Siege’ and ‘attack’ were relative words. Every few days shells and mortars would be fired, a handful of people would be wounded, a hamlet might change hands and be described in the world’s press as ‘strategic’. Hunger and cold were for all those concerned worse enemies than their enemies.
Faith decided on a Christmas party for Croat children in the sergeants’ mess. She rashly appointed as impresario a Guards subaltern fresh from Sandhurst. For these Catholic children Christmas was familiar, but not the English version with a performance of Ugly Sisters, novelty crackers, and blue jokes. But Father Christmas turned the tide with his generosity, and all could sing ‘Holy Night’.
Faith was a sucker for Christmas. She had tears in her eyes as she watched the large-eyed children troop out into the frosty moonlight clutching their packages. The snow-covered hills were silent.
She found Jim Boater beside her. They had shaken hands at the start of the evening but there had been no time to do more than introduce themselves. She had liked the look of him, slim, wrinkles round the eyes, fair hair turning to grey, an American lumbershirt above tight jeans. She thought he might catch her mood.
But, ‘Bloody farce,’ he said.
‘What the hell d’you mean?’
‘By next Christmas the Serbs will have killed or raped half these kids. Will they thank you then for the Mars Bars and carols when the guns open up?’ He pointed to the hills with their silent artillery.
‘Those are Muslim guns in those hills,’ she said.
‘Pedantry! Heartless bloody pedantry.’ Then, abruptly changing the subject, ‘Where do I sleep?’ He had only just arrived.
‘I’ll show you. Your bag’s gone there.’
They crunched together through the snow, without more words. He was to sleep at the top of the rented house just outside the perimeter, in a long room converted into a dormitory for visiting journalists. Faith’s room was just below – a bare light bulb, no carpet, a rather elegant green bathroom opposite, hot water stored in jerrycans in the bath. He used the lavatory on her floor, pulled the chain with violence, then stumped upstairs, kicking the
wainscoting as he went.
She had met the type already. From a quality London daily, heading downhill. Angry because it was not simple, impatient of the facts he had to report, feeling the suffering at one remove, waiting for the roar of western intervention.
‘Bloody cocks,’ he said when they met on the stairs in the morning. He had not shaved and it did not look as if he meant to.
There’s plenty of hot water in the jerrycans in my bath,’ she said. In Vitez this sounded almost romantic.
‘I know exactly how St Peter felt’ – as if she had said nothing. ‘And he only heard it three times.’
They crossed the road, entered the perimeter, headed for breakfast. Faith had to choose between two kinds of day. Pencilled in her diary was a meeting with the Croat Mayor of Vitez, who was portly but effective. He had a scheme to reopen a kindergarten, and had found a house and a couple of teachers.
But months ago the house had been hit by a shell, whether Serb or Muslim did not perhaps matter. The Mayor wanted the Army engineers to test it for safety. She thought that he would then ask for a tarpaulin for the roof and help in cleaning, decorating, moving in furniture which had fallen off some lorry. It was a good cause, and would take most of the day. Or she could show Jim the Road. In her own mind she spelt it with a capital R, but she kept her pride to herself. She had no obligation to do this. She did not usually bother herself with single journalists. When there was a burst of fighting, or a British soldier killed, or a Secretary of State visiting, a buzz of journalists would descend for a day, and she would drop everything else and shepherd them. Faith told herself, Jim’s paper was important in a maddening sort of way, and so therefore was Jim himself.
It was the day itself that convinced her. Snow was heavy on the firs and clean on the mountains. Under the frosty sun Bosnia had shed for the day the mess and awfulness of its ordinary life, and transformed itself into a place of beauty. On such a day, the frowsty office of the Mayor of Vitez held few attractions compared with the Road.
Jim showed no sign of gratitude as they clambered into the Discovery, but he listened as they headed south. She tried to keep her voice clinical and conceal the pride she felt in what she was showing him. Gorni-Vakuf first, and the platoon of Coldstreams based in the dismal ruined warehouse between Muslim and Croat front lines. The Muslim check point, and a soldier asking to see identity papers.
‘What does that red beret mean?’ asked Jim.
‘It means he shot a Croat yesterday who had a red beret.’
Faith regretted the remark at once. It was the sort of flip comment that she despised from others.
‘No, in fact, the Muslims are the best disciplined of the three. It must be a new regiment. They’re bringing fresh troops into this sector.’
Up to the Redoubt, the next army post in the woods on the ridge of mountains beyond which Bosnia fell away towards Dalmatia and the sea. The Redoubt was famous for its hot doughnuts, sticky-crackly on the outside and hot sweetness within. A deer crossed the clearing as they munched. Beyond that began the stretch of road which the Royal Engineers had created from a mountain track.
‘Like the Romans.’
‘It’s not straight,’ objected Jim. His green and white jacket was absurd.
‘You can’t make a mountain road straight.’
It was to her mind the right comparison. The legions built Roman roads through the mountains and wilderness of Europe, set up posts along the road, gave their own names to the landscape, defended and managed the traffic and gradually introduced the Roman peace. Only this time there was no Emperor, no law, no eagles, no triumphs through the streets of Rome, just twelve obscure Ministers sitting round tables in Brussels and New York.
They met their first convoy in mid-morning, and drew off the road to let it pass. The sun was hot by now, and the drivers were in shirtsleeves. Thin and earnest Danes, Irish from a religious charity, then five trucks from the British aid programme with hospital supplies and some generator equipment. All carried the big blue and white UN flags on the bonnets. The British were beefy cheerful drivers with tattoed forearms. One of them had met Faith before.
‘What you got for us this time, love? Is it mines or mortars?’ He did not stay for an answer.
Church Pond fancied itself on its cuisine. The building was a school house opposite a Catholic church with a spire, for they were into undisputed Bosnian Croat country now. The food was cooked in Chinese mode by a private from Hong Kong, and was disgusting. The striking feature of Church Pond was the sea of mud on which the whole hamlet rested.
Jim jumped out early into what looked like hard snow, and was soon well through the crust and up to his thighs in wet red mire. Faith giggled as he swore. The Discovery had to wallow its way to a sort of jetty in the sea of mud, and Faith stepped nimbly on to dry land. Jim ate bean curd while his jeans dried over the stove. His underpants were bright orange.
Finally to Tomislavgrad where the supplies accumulated from the port of Split until there were trucks to carry them into central Bosnia. An intelligence briefing by a spruce major. A quiet day, he reported, the Croatian customs being more trouble than anyone else, fussing about documents. Little real fighting this week.
On the way back Jim talked about Sarajevo fifty or so miles away, and the horrors through which he had lived. His sympathies were wholly with the Muslims. He assumed Serb responsibility for outrage after outrage. Faith had seen intelligence that told quite a different story, but she knew it would be an unprofitable argument. The UN military of all ranks and nationalities throughout Bosnia tended to quite a different view of the fighting from the journalists. Few had any sympathy for the Serbs, but few believed it was a war of right against wrong. More like a mess in which politicians and generals in all three communities destroyed their own country. Hard to explain, hard to forgive. But on the whole the soldiers kept their mouths shut, and the journalists’ view swept the world.
Darkness fell on the way back to Vitez. Some of the villages had no electricity because generators had failed through lack of spare parts. In these villages the children gathered round bonfires by the side of the street until it was time to sleep. Seeing the headlights of the white Discovery, some cheered, some shouted rude challenges.
Faith felt tired but exhilarated. She did not feel much closer to Jim despite the episode of the underpants. Their talk had been professional rather than personal. But she felt she had done a good job. She left him to file his story, and went early to bed.
But she could not fight against her dreams. The slopes beyond Redoubt were a ski slope, thronged with instructors and their pupils of all ages in the bright sun. A chair-lift carried the more elderly up to a smart restaurant near the summit. Faith could see elegant ladies in dark glasses eating doughnuts. But she was following Jim down the Black Run, straining her eyes to keep his green and white jacket in sight. Then they were drinking in a smart café by the Church Pond, she cassis, he Scotch. At once she was in the bath at Vitez, enveloped in fragrant foam. The taps and the jerrycans were of gold. The door handle turned, there being no lock, and in of course came …
Not of course at all. Faith woke angry. It was just becoming light, and he would still be asleep, alone, in the dormitory above her head. She put on her uniform quickly and slipped out. They were surprised at the mess to find her so early for breakfast. Better to spend the day away from him.
The fax was waiting in her office when she returned in mid-morning from her talk with the Mayor of Vitez. Her secretary, a civilian from Bromley, made it a priority to get hold at breakneck speed of all stories filed by journalists who had passed through their hands. It could hardly be worse. Jim had just laughed at them all. The story was written in the worn-out pseudo-dramatic style now normal in his paper.
‘British play act in Bosnia farce’ was the headline. The story started with the Christmas pantomime the Ugly Sisters, the uncomprehending children.
‘Equally baffling is the purpose of the whole exercise now costin
g the British taxpayer £200 million a year. I spent yesterday marvelling at the effort the British army is making to keep a handful of trucks rolling into Central Bosnia each day carrying Mars Bars for Croat children. The officers seem blind to the horrors a few dozen miles away. They do not make any difference between Croat, Muslim and Serb. All are patronised and scolded, for Colonel Blimp is alive and well here. The only difference is that in the modern army he is often a woman, such as my charming escort yesterday. Half the effort deployed here could have saved Sarajevo, now teetering to its inevitable fall as the world washes its hands …’
And so on. Slowly Faith tore up the shiny paper, shocked by the poverty of thought and expression, not yet sure how the rest of her would react.
There was no sign of Jim at lunch in the mess. As was his right, he had taken out the car and driver allocated to the press when they wanted to be independent of Army shepherding. No sign of him when dusk came. So questions were asked. He had passed through Gorni-Vakuf, but had not been seen at the Redoubt. Faith remembered having pointed out a side track which left the road short of the Redoubt and led to two villages along the slope to the west. She went to bed troubled.
In the morning the driver staggered into Gorni-Vakuf. An armed group had seized the car at midday in the first of the two villages. One of them had a smattering of English. All carried sub-machine guns. After interrogating the driver they had beaten him about the head and shoved him out into the snow. He had failed to find the right tracks and staggered about aimlessly on the mountainside until he saw the broken roofs of Gorni-Vakuf.
The Colonel authorised two Warriors for the search. Faith’s companion in the lead vehicle was once again Andrew Fairweather. She had met him five years ago when he was an Equerry at Buckingham Palace. He had danced well.
They reached the first village without difficulty and found the press car in the little square, its windscreen shattered. There was a small foodshop near by and various passersby but their interpreter could get no information. Yes, there had been bad men, yes, they had attacked the car, then they had gone. Questioned about Jim, all were vague. Questioned about the direction the bad men had taken, they became contradictory.
