Red Crystal (37 page)

‘No.’

Nick gave up. He’d already pushed as hard as he dared.

‘What about the car? When d’you want it?’

‘Tomorrow night. By ten.’

‘Where shall I take it?’

‘Here. I’ll meet you here.’

Wheatfield opened the front door and, with a brief wave, was gone. Nick went to the kitchen window and watched him stride up the street. His instinct was to follow, but it would be too risky. Wheatfield would see him and realize immediately, and then there’d be no hope of finding his friends.

Nick watched Wheatfield disappear round the corner and hoped he wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

After ten minutes he left the house and went to the nearest phone box. He called Kershaw and spoke to him personally. They arranged to meet half an hour later in Notting Hill.

Nick left the booth and paused. Gabriella. Was it worth calling her now? The crystal information could surely wait.

But no, it was best to leave no stone unturned. He went back into the booth and dialled her number. She answered straight away. He suggested meeting for a drink at ten that night.

There was a pause. She said, ‘Can’t you make it earlier, for dinner?’ There was a hint of resentment in her voice.

‘I’m tied up at the moment.’

‘Tied up?’

‘Trying to fix up a new place to stay,’ he lied.

‘All right then,’ she conceded. ‘But come over here, will you? We’ll have a late dinner. I don’t want to go out.’

He thought: Damn it, she’s trapping me. He said evenly, ‘I don’t know if I’ll have time for more than a drink …’

There was a deathly pause. ‘I see.’ Her voice was like ice.

He suddenly gave in. She had outmanoeuvred him. ‘Okay, we’ll have dinner. I’ll try to make it before ten. But I could be late.’

He put down the phone, angry with himself. Damn. He should never have phoned. She was bound to expect him to stay the night.

The door closed behind Giorgio, and Victoria burst into tears. He was gone again, and as usual she had no idea when he’d be back. She could take almost everything else – the sudden changes of mood, the caustic remarks – but not this terrible uncertainty. She never knew where she was with him, and it was eating away at her.

And she’d been so good until now. When he’d disappeared on Thursday she’d put a brave face on it. When he’d come back again yesterday to collect the van, she’d been calm and smiling. But when he’d returned this morning and settled down to a meal and read the papers and treated the place like his own, she’d been silly enough to let her hopes rise. That had been her mistake. To think he’d stay. What a
fool
.

And now he was gone and she felt very empty and it was Saturday night and she was on her own.

She dried her tears. She must look on the bright side. He hadn’t actually
said
he wouldn’t be coming back. And then there was the van – he needed it some time in the week, so he’d said.

The van.

She went to the window and peered down into the dark street. It was there; he hadn’t taken it. But it was parked very untidily on a corner with two wheels on the pavement. Typical. She found the spare keys and, putting on a coat, went down the two flights of stairs to the street.

As she approached the van she saw that a number of parking tickets were tucked under the windscreen wipers. She removed them and got into the van to repark it. She drove round the block and finally found a space.

She looked into the back. It was a bit of a mess. Putting on the interior light, she climbed over the driving seat and half-heartedly began to pick up bits of paper and cellophane off the ancient carpeting. As she walked over the floor, she noticed it was uneven, as if there was something between the metal floor and the carpet. She stooped down and, lifting a corner of the carpeting, examined the metal floor.

Of course. It was the lid of the spare wheel compartment; it wasn’t quite closed.

She got out of the van by the front door and, going round to the back, opened the rear doors. She tried to force the lid of the wheel compartment down, but it wouldn’t close. She rolled the carpet back and pushed up the hinged lid.

She saw immediately why it wouldn’t close. Arranged around and inside the spare tyre were six or seven bundles wrapped in heavy cloth.

She hesitated for a moment then slowly picked up one of the bundles and unwrapped it. Inside the cloth were six tubes about ten inches long and an inch or so across, covered in a heavy oiled paper. Each tube had a printed label on it. She squinted at one of them. It read: Nitramite 19C,
Explosif Rocher, Societe Frangaise des Explosifs, Usine de Cugny.
Underneath was a date: 20th March 1968.

She stared at the tubes for some time, thoughts chasing through her mind, clashing, failing to connect.

Then the realization of what she was holding hit her like a punch in the stomach.

A moment later came the related thoughts, equally terrible; how had they
got
here? How
long
had they been here?

Slowly a dreadful scenario came into her mind: that she herself had brought this terrible load from France, brought it through Customs, that Giorgio had lied to her, that the leaflets had never existed.

Feeling sick, she replaced the tube in the bundle, wrapped the cloth round it, and put it inside the wheel. She rearranged the bundles so that the lid would close properly and unrolled the carpet over the top. She closed and locked the doors.

She went up to the flat and let herself in. She went into the living-room and sat in the darkness, trying to make sense of the thoughts ricocheting around her brain.

Whichever way she looked at it, the conclusions she reached were appalling. It was impossible to find a reasonable explanation. And yet – it was just possible there
might
be.

She must give Giorgio the chance to explain.

Just one chance.

Drawing her legs under her, she curled up in the chair and, sick at heart, settled down to wait.

Nick lay in the bed and thought: I should never have stayed.

He’d hardly slept at all. Neither had Gabriella – she’d tossed and turned all night. And the evening had not been a success. During the meal Gabriella had been brittle and tense. He’d tried to bring the conversation around to extremist groups, but she’d wanted to talk about other things. Then, when he’d got up to go, she’d snapped out of her mood and turned on that animal sexuality of hers. He had weakened. But for all her passion there had been something mechanical and heartless about their love-making. There was no sign of the warmth and vulnerability she’d shown a few days earlier. She was like two different people – and he didn’t like this one at all. He’d been left feeling empty and cold.

The trouble was, he didn’t really
know
her. He thought: I should never have stayed.

He heard Gabriella moving around downstairs and, getting up, went into the bathroom. He noticed that the male toiletries had gone. Perhaps she’d chucked the lover out. It might explain her mood.

He dressed and went down to find Gabriella sitting on the sofa reading the Sunday papers, a frown of concentration on her face.

Nick glanced at the headlines. Not surprisingly they were all about the bombing of the Commissioner’s house and the death of Helen McCabe. He made himself a coffee and, sitting down beside Gabriella, said, ‘Who d’you think did it?’

Without looking up, she said, ‘Could be anyone, couldn’t it?’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Well, there are so many people who’ve had a raw deal at the hands of the filth, aren’t there?’

‘But not many who can hit them with explosives.’

She shrugged. ‘Explosives are easy enough to get.’

‘But what political group is it? I mean, if it
is
political.’

She turned to him. ‘Oh, of course it’s political!’ she exclaimed. ‘This is a statement. A warning.’

‘But who by? I mean, Trotskyists or what?’

‘No,
no
,’ she said impatiently. ‘These people are way beyond that.’

He tried not to let his interest show.

‘What philosophy do they follow then? Situationism?’

‘Possibly.’ She paused. ‘But that’s a bit general. Things have moved on since Paris, you know. These people will be way ahead, past Vaneigem and Debord and old stuff like that. They’re probably into Petrini.’

He tried to remember. Petrini. Italian. Philosopher.

‘Tell me, what’s different about Petrini then?’

‘Ah.’ She began to talk with the fervour of a teacher lecturing a new pupil. ‘He believes in the necessity of
action
to accentuate and polarize the divisions in society so that people
see
and
understand
the exploitation that’s happening right in front of them. He says it’s necessary to clarify things on their behalf, to crystallize their thinking.’

Crystallize
.

She talked on but Nick was hardly listening.
Crystallize
. There it was! Good God, why hadn’t he got on to this Petrini before? Why hadn’t he realized that this new philosophy had been taken up by the young activists?
She
knew all about it. He’d obviously slipped up somewhere in his research. He could have kicked himself.

He asked, ‘Are they a big group, these – what do you call them?’

She shrugged and said very carefully, ‘They have no name, as far as I know. But they won’t be a large group. The whole idea is to work in small cells, in isolation.’

‘I see.’ He did, only too clearly. He saw that the answer had been there all the time and he’d missed it. Thank God for Gabriella. He forgot his coldness towards her and smiled encouragingly.

She continued, her eyes gleaming. ‘They’re the beginning of a big movement, though. They’ll succeed where all the others will fail. In a few years the movement will have spread all over Europe.’

He stared at her. ‘How do you
know
about this?’

‘I just know. I keep my ear to the ground.’

‘Do you …’ He hesitated. It was a difficult question. ‘Do you have any idea of who these people are? Where they might come from?’

Immediately her face became a mask, and she said deliberately, ‘No. Why do you ask?’

He shrugged. ‘I just wondered, that was all. What sort of people they were.’

‘You’re interested? In their ideas?’

He must step carefully here. She was probing. ‘Yes,’ he said vaguely. ‘It seems a good way to get things done.’

She said, ‘Perhaps the
only
way.’

There was an awkward pause. The baldness of the statement had taken him by surprise. He said, ‘If you believe in the Petrini philosophy that strongly, yes, I suppose it
is
.’ He thought: She’s no better than the rest. An intellectual revolutionary without the courage of her convictions. Spouting precious theory without the nasty consequences. All talk and dangerous hot air – from a safe distance.

‘So what do you think of direct action?’ she asked.

He had a good mind to tell her what he really thought of her half-baked ideas, but he didn’t want to alienate her. The information had been pure gold, and there might be a lot more to come.

She was waiting for his reply; he sensed his answer was going to be important. ‘I certainly believe strongly in changing the system,’ he began. ‘And I suppose I’d do almost anything that was necessary …’

She looked pleased. ‘Of course you would.’

He stood up. ‘Well, I’ve got to go now.’

To his surprise she didn’t argue. It was almost as if she was expecting it.

‘Will you come back later?’ she asked.

‘No. I’ve got a favour to do for a friend and I won’t be finished till late.’

She nodded and led the way to the door. She turned abruptly and, putting her arms round his neck, kissed him for a long time. ‘I’ll miss you.’

Now she was all warmth and softness. A very confusing lady. He said, ‘I’ll see you again very soon.’

‘Can I contact you? At your new place?’

‘What?’

‘You said you were moving.’

‘Oh yes, but I don’t know where to yet.’

‘It was just that – there were some people I thought you might like to meet. People you’d find very –
useful
.’

What
did
she mean? Whatever, the opportunity was too good to miss. Without a word he wrote his Lambeth number on a piece of paper.

‘Give me the address too, in case I’m passing.’

He hesitated. Normally he liked to keep a distance from informants. But this was different. He added his address. ‘It’s the flat of a friend,’ he explained. ‘He’s letting me borrow it while he’s away.’

Gabriele closed the door behind him and thought: He’s going to be all right. At one point she’d had her doubts. But then he’d said he would do almost anything that was necessary. And that was just after they’d been talking about the bombing. Yes: he was going to be all right.

Stealing the car would be a start. If he made a good job of that then she would give him another more demanding task – driving on a robbery perhaps. Finally, when she was sure she could trust him she would bring him right into the group.

There would be problems, of course. With Giorgio. She hadn’t worked out what she was going to do about that. She only knew that her relationship with Giorgio was going to have to change. He would have to find someone else.

She wanted Nick. The truth was, he had got under her skin. She shouldn’t have let it happen, of course. Even more important, she shouldn’t have let it show. She shuddered to remember how she had clung to him that first night …

It was a weakness, to show feelings like that, and he would only despise her for it. But it had been all right last night – she’d got herself under control. She would never let her feelings show again.

Everything was going to work out very well. Nick would come and live with her here and be a member of the cell. He was clever and cool and decisive; he would be a great help with the planning. Someone to share the load. She needed that. It was hard taking decisions on her own.

It was lonely at night too. She had nightmares all the time. They were often the same. A group of people sat in a circle and talked about her as if she wasn’t there. ‘She’s
always
been difficult … Ungrateful and inconsiderate … We’ve done all we can … A strong will, of course. Uncontrollable.’ Then someone took the decision to punish her, and she was locked up in her bedroom without books. The time crept by so slowly that she could have screamed. She felt her life slipping away, unfulfilled and hollow.