Arms and the Women (43 page)

'See? Slit your throat, knock out nursie back there, mebbe even give her a quick bang, then I can be out of this cave so quiet them guards of yours wouldn't know till they found your body later on. Stroll round to your mooring place, got to be on the windward side of the island, so it shouldn't be hard to find. Then swim out, help myself to anything small enough for one man to manage, scuttle the rest, and I'm away and free and you don't have to worry about making your mind up any more.'

Aeneas closed his eyes in anticipation of the blade biting deeper into his throat.

Then sudden as it had come, the pressure vanished, the grip on his hair was released, and when he opened his eyes, Odysseus was sitting opposite him, regarding him over a full goblet, and saying solicitously, 'You OK, Prince? Looked like you were having a bit of a funny turn there? Mebbe you should call for help.'

Aeneas's hand was at his throat. He drew it away and looked down at his fingers, lightly stained with red. Wine not blood. And the same redness marked the sharp thumbnail of the man opposite him.

He looked towards the cave entrance, beyond which
he knew that faithful Achates and his armed guard kept watch.

Then he looked at the fat smiling man sitting opposite him and he saw again the fire raging through the temples and palaces of Troy and heard again the shrieks of despair and defeat rising up from the ruins with the billowing smoke.

All down to this fat smiling man.

He smiled back and said, 'Yes, perhaps I should call for help. What time would you like your morning call?'

End of chapter. Sempernel lay back on the bed and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. Interesting woman, this Ellie Pascoe. He felt almost sorry that he was probably going to have to put her away. Her involvement might of course turn out to be more coincidental than conspiratorial, but his long experience of looking for connections others had missed had taught him to be very reluctant about admitting accident. After keeping Peter Pascoe firmly in the picture and clearly in his sights after the 'chance' encounter with Cornelius on the Snake Pass, he was minded to concede that
his
involvement might be accidental in every sense, which meant that this family had used up its share of coincidences already.

He scrolled to the next page, eager to read on. But all that came up was:

Chapter 4

Nothing else. Damn. How like a woman to leave a man up in the air. Well, if as was distinctly possible she ended up taking a rest as Her Majesty's guest, she would have plenty of time to finish it.

There was a tap on the door, which opened before he could call, 'Come.'

Must have a word with her about that, he thought, looking at the tall, well-made woman with black hair and a strong handsome face, slightly marred by some bruising and scratches down her left cheek, who'd come in.

She said, 'Word from Wen. That pavilion on the cliff, they call it the Command Post. CP.'

'How nice to receive confirmation of what one has already intuited. Anything more?'

'No. Pushed for time.'

'Let me know soon as you hear anything further from her or Jacobs.'

The woman went but reappeared almost immediately.

'Car coming,' she said urgently.

'Well, go out and meet it, my dear.'

Pascoe, seeing the woman come out of the door as his car bumped down the lane, felt his heart leap, even though simultaneously he realized it wasn't Ellie. Same build, same colouring, same hairstyle, in fact, similar enough to deceive anyone who knew her only through description or even a fuzzy photo but, even at twice the distance, not a husband who knew intimately and loved passionately every inch of her body . . .

His mind jerked tardily to a connection he should have made long before.

What was happening to that fine high-flying detective mind which could once leap vast distances to places other minds couldn't reach? It had taken the Fat Man's hefty nudge to make him stumble over the similarities between the courtroom watcher and the fake welfare officer. Now, despite Ellie's description of the woman, and her dream of seeing her doppelganger get out of the car and head for the front door, key in hand, he had let his anger and shared pain obscure what should have been obvious.

That woman hadn't come to his house to help abduct Ellie. She had come expecting to find the house empty and to take Ellie's place.

All this came to him in the seconds it took to pass at speed through the open gate with its ominous sign and slam to a halt, jolting Dalziel and Wield hard forward against their seat belts.

'Bloody hell, lad, you caught short or what?' exclaimed the Fat Man as Pascoe flung open the car door and shot out.

The bruising on the woman's face confirmed his identification.

'Bitch,' he said as he pushed by her. 'I hope you get blood poisoning.'

He went through the front door into the small porch. The sight of a pair of yellow wellies he recognized as Rosie's on the flagged floor twisted his gut. Then he was through into the living room.

'Ellie!' he yelled. 'Rosie!'

A door opened and a tall, thin, white-haired man with a welcoming smile on his face came towards him, hand outstretched.

'Mr Pascoe, how nice to meet you ag - '

He was driven against the wall with a crash that dislodged a parade of fine china from the Delft rack.

'Where's my wife, you bastard? Where's my daughter?'

Hitting someone, except in the extremes of self-defence, was never going to be easy for a man of Pascoe's temperament but he would have done it if his drawn-back fist had not been seized in a grip like a gorilla's.

'Easy, lad,' said Dalziel. 'Have I taught you nowt?

Beating someone round the head's no way to get information. No, that just knocks them silly. The belly or the bollocks, that's what gets them talking.'

As he spoke, he drew Pascoe away, their feet scrunching on shards of china, and when he got him into the middle of the room, gently but with irresistible force he lowered him onto a sofa.

'Right,' he said. 'Now you're sitting comfortable, Mr Sempernel's going to answer your question, isn't that right, Mr Sempernel?'

Sempernel slowly straightened up. The assault had clearly shaken him but he was a quick recoverer. A slight adjustment to his tie and shirt front, a hand to his handsome head of white hair, and the reel had been run back to his original entrance, even to the welcoming smile.

He said, 'Cynthia, my dear, do put that thing away before you do somebody some harm.'

In the doorway the woman was standing uncertainly, a small automatic pistol in her hand. The chances of her doing harm to anyone but herself were slim as Wield had her in an armlock which directed the pistol's muzzle towards her own left foot.

He relaxed his grip and the woman gave him an unfriendly glance then put the weapon away.

Sempernel said, 'Now that we've both got our violent underlings under control, Mr Dalziel, by all means let's sit down and talk. I take it from your presence here that you have decided to ignore my request and your superior's command not to meddle in this affair.'

'Nay, perish the thought,' said Dalziel indignantly. 'We're just down here on a social trip, see how Ellie and the kiddie are enjoying their bit of a holiday.'

'In that case, I can set your minds at rest. They seem to be enjoying it very well. They are presently taking supper with Miss Macallum at Gunnery House, which is half a mile or so up the road. Believe me, the only thing likely to sound a note of alarm in their minds and spoil what looks set to be a perfectly delightful evening would be the inexplicable arrival of yourself and your colleagues, looking anxious. I really think it would be best all round if you drove quietly home and left them in our very caring hands.'

Pascoe, his feelings back under tight control, said evenly, 'No one's leaving here until you've told me exactly what's going on, Sempernel.'

'I see. And do you propose following Mr Dalziel's advice in order to extract this information?' enquired the tall man courteously. 'I must say I should find this strange behaviour in one who, by all reports, is reckoned to fit the new user-friendly profile of policing in so many respects that great things are forecast for him.'

'You really do know how to wrap up a threat, don't you?' said Pascoe. 'But you're not so good at recognizing when a threat is empty. Yes, Mr Dalziel's technique is certainly tempting, but in this instance unnecessary. What I propose is to carry out my duty as a good cop. I have reason for suspecting that your lackey here took part in an attempt to abduct my wife, and reasonable grounds also for suspecting that you were a party to, and therefore fellow conspirator in, this attempt. These are serious offences. I shall arrest you both and take you back to Headquarters for questioning. I shall, of course, radio ahead to give warning of my arrival and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if our local media hawks who, quite illegally, monitor our radio channels, hear what is happening and are waiting with their cameras when we arrive.'

Sempernel seemed unperturbed.

He raised his eyebrows about two inches higher than Pascoe had ever managed and said, 'What say you, Superintendent?'

'Sounds like by the book to me, sir,' said Dalziel, who'd sunk into an armchair and looked ready to spend the rest of the evening there. 'Can't see owt to quarrel with there. That's how I train my lads to act. By the book.'

'You must lend me this book one of these days,' said Sempernel. 'Very well. I am nothing if not a pragmatist.'

He sat down, looked towards the woman and said, 'Cynthia, my dear, would you care to resume your guard-dog duties in case of further interruption?'

The woman nodded and went out. Wield looked towards Dalziel, who gave him a single nod, upon which he followed.

'What well-trained beasts we keep,' said Sempernel. 'Now, Mr Pascoe, first let me assure you there was never any plan to abduct your wife. Far from it. Our intelligence was that your house would be empty that day with your good lady accompanying your daughter on her school trip. What occurred was merely a botched-up attempt to extemporize when, to their great surprise, my operatives discovered Mrs Pascoe still at home. I hope that puts your mind at rest on that point.'

'At rest?' exclaimed Pascoe. 'She had a key. To my front door. She was going to masquerade as Ellie. And I'm supposed to feel reassured?'

'Well, no. Perhaps not. I take your point. But my point is that neither you nor she would have known anything about this if things had gone to plan.'

'Mebbe,' said Dalziel, who'd been looking round the room with a pointer's unblinking and questing gaze, 'if you told us about this plan ... ah yes.'

He rose, went to a fine oak bureau, opened the cupboard to reveal an array of bottles and glasses, and said, 'Malt or blended?'

'I bow to your taste,' said Sempernel. 'The plan. Yes. Mr Pascoe, for some time now, your wife in her capacity as a member of the Liberata Trust has been in correspondence with various political prisoners, including a Colombian woman called Bruna Cubillas. Have you heard of her?'

'Vaguely. I knew Ellie wrote to these people, and sometimes, not often, got replies. But we didn't talk about it much.'

'Really? Could this perhaps be because she felt there might be some conflict with your job as an officer of the law?'

'Of course not. How the hell can you break the law, writing to someone?'

'I can think of half a dozen ways off the top of my head,' said Sempernel. 'But never mind. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

'Bruna Cubillas . . .'

xi

spelt from Sibyl's leaves

Bruna Cubillas . . .

born in a shack in a slum on the banks of a drain . . .

living was pain . .

One brother, five sisters. The other girls all died in infancy.

Did Bruna ever look up soulfully at a questioning stranger and insist,
we are seven?

I doubt it. She might feel her life in every limb, but kids of that condition in that place almost certainly knew a hell of a lot about death

look at her growing . . .

out on the streets where each day a new terror could

strike . . .

What was it like?

Even if I knew the details, could I begin to understand? She probably had freedoms which I in my narrow little Welsh village in my narrow little Welsh valley could never have dreamt of, the freedom to roam at will from her earliest years, the freedom on boiling-hot days to leap naked from the concrete lip of the dock into the sordid but cooling waters beneath, the freedom to make her way from the shanty town where she lived into the heart of Cartagena, the real town next door, the freedom to beg in the street, the freedom to snatch bread or fruit from market stalls and slip her pursuers by squeezing under fences and through cracks that their adult bodies couldn't negotiate.

But my freedoms - the freedom to wear clean new clothes, to eat fresh wholesome food, to sleep between cool linen sheets, to be feted and fussed over on my birthday and at Christmas, to go on holiday with my family in the summer, to sit at a school desk among my friends and complain about being educated - these were freedoms she never knew, and probably never dreamt of. Not until her brother started talking about them.