Cross of Fire (37 page)

'A William Prendergast hired the Rover, phoned early
this afternoon. He had to give the destination he was taking
it to.'

'Go on, don't tease me, Martin,' Monica pleaded.

'Aldeburgh, Suffolk...'

*

'Look, Brand, you've got to handle this job right. No slip-
ups,' Dawlish snapped.

'Have I slipped up yet?' growled Brand, stirring his bulk in the carver chair in the living room of Grenville Grange. 'I
am your right-hand man, remember?'

'At the moment,' Dawlish rapped back. 'But there's
always a first time for a slip-up. Make sure this isn't it.'

'The job will be handled professionally,' Brand told him curtly.

'Make sure it is. Tonight.'

Approaching Aldeburgh, Major Lamy slowed down. He
had lost count of the number of times he had checked to
make sure he was not being followed. In mid-afternoon the
traffic had been light once he had left London behind, which
had helped.

He had kept within all the speed limits: he couldn't
afford the risk of being stopped by a police patrol car. Once again he checked in his rear-view mirror. Nothing. Shortly
afterwards he drove into the courtyard of a hotel on the
outskirts of Aldeburgh.

Carrying his small case, he entered the hotel, registered
as William Prendergast with a fictitious London address. He
had also phoned the hotel from Paris to make the reser
vation with no reference to where he was calling from.

He sneezed several times behind the scarf pulled up over his face. He wore a deerstalker hat pulled down across his
forehead.

'Your room is ready, Mr Prendergast,' the receptionist
informed him. 'One night, I think you said?'

'Yes. I'll pay in advance now for the room and breakfast,'
Lamy said. 'I may have to leave early tomorrow morning,'
he continued, in English.

He paid in cash and she handed him the receipted bill.
He sneezed again as he stooped to pick up his case.

'You seem to have a bad cold, sir.' she sympathized.

Inside his bedroom he whipped off the scarf, no longer
bothering to fake a sneeze. He checked his watch. He was a
careful organizer. Plenty of time to do a recce of the area.
He took from his breast pocket an envelope, extracted from
it the photograph he had been handed at Charles de Gaulle
Airport. The envelope had been passed to him by his
informant inside Lasalle's Paris HQ in rue des Saussaies. It was a photo of Paula Grey.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Kalmar sat in the car in the public car park close to the
Brudenell Hotel. No other vehicle was in sight. It was
supposed to be daylight but the low storm clouds sweeping across the sky made it seem more like night.

He could hear the
thump!
of giant waves against the high
rampart extending south along the coast beyond the hotel.
No work was going on but huge cranes and Portacabins
showed the artificial sea defences were being strengthened.
He clasped his gloved hands as he saw spray rising like
mist above the rampart, carried over to the marshes by the
fury of the gale.

He flexed his strong fingers. You just couldn't afford to
leave a witness alive. And there had been one witness to the
strangling of Karin Rosewater. He thought about the witness, about her walking, talking, remembering. Then
talking...

The grip of his fingers tightened. He imagined grasping
her by the throat, carefully pressing his thumbs into her
wind-pipe. Her eyes starting out of her head as he was the last person she'd ever see in this world.

He had decided. At the earliest opportunity. Tonight. He
wouldn't be paid a Swiss franc on top of the fat fee he'd
already collected for the Karin job. But you just couldn't
afford to leave a witness alive.

*

Paula sat in her room with Newman and Marler. Newman
had been giving her a terse account of the trip to the
armaments factory in the middle of the night. He went on to
describe how they had followed the truck after Marler
had discovered its contents. She made her first comment.

'Who would need thousands of Balaclavas?'

'You heard what I told you about my Bordeaux trip.' he snapped. Perched on her bed she stared at him, hurt by his brusque rejoinder. He seemed edgy. 'Remember that riot I
watched.' Newman went on. 'It was pretty savage stuff.
And the mob was pretty well organized.
And
I didn't see
one without a Balaclava mask to avoid identification. Now
there's been a much bigger riot in Lyons. Haven't you seen
the pictures in the papers? Every man taking part in that
orgy of violence is wearing a Balaclava. My bet is to hide the fact they're troops from de Forge's Corps.'

'I still don't follow this Dunwich puzzle.' she protested.
'Just supposing they are de Forge's men, he could obtain
Balaclavas in France ...'

'And be sure the supplier - or one of his workers -
wouldn't report the delivery to the DST? The police?'

'Oh, you mean ...'

'I mean.' he overrode her, 'that with the mobs growing
larger they may need a lot more
Balaclavas. It would be
more secure if they brought them in from abroad in secrecy. Hence that truck on the way to Dunwich. You saw the
Steel
Vulture
off Dunwich the day you and Karin went scuba diving.'

'So the
Vulture
could be the means of transporting the
Balaclavas to de Forge - via Arcachon?'

Newman grinned. 'Now you're catching on.'

'Why didn't the two of you follow the truck all the way
to Dunwich, see where it stopped?'

'Because.' Newman explained, 'we hadn't alerted their
driver up to that point. You know the side road to Dunwich is a narrow country road. I didn't want us to risk being spotted. So we came back here.'

'I see.' Paula put her hands on her hips, stretched. 'Bob,
you seem irked with me, irritable. Why?'

'Because you're back here again. Where Karin was mur
dered. I don't like it. Someone might think of you as a
witness. The killer could still be hanging around in the
vicinity.'

'I doubt that's at all feasible. He'll be long gone.'

Newman shrugged. 'Please yourself.'

'I usually do - like you. Listen to who's talking.'

Marler, sensing the start of verbal warfare, broke in for the first time. He had been leaning against a wall, watching and listening.

'If I could get a word in edgeways, I think I'd like to
leave, get back to Park Crescent. I'm anxious for the little men in the Engine Room to develop that film I took of the
laboratory at Dawlish's factory in the forest. You don't mind
if I drive my own Volvo back, do you, Newman?'

'And how am I supposed to get back tomorrow? Swim?
In case you didn't know, the trains stopped coming here
quite a few years ago.'

'You can drive me back, Bob.' Paula said quickly. 'I came
in Tweed's Escort.'

She was beginning to feel contrite. Newman had been
brusque only because he was worried about her. Marler waved a hand - as much as to say, 'You've got transport,
chum,' and left the room.

'I think I'm going for a walk.' Newman said when they
were alone. 'You're right, I am edgy. Maybe it's the storm
they predicted for tonight. Want to come with me?'

'I'd love to, but I'm feeling bushed. Mind if I cry off and
have a bath instead?'

'I could stay and scrub your back for you, but maybe I'll
take that walk instead. Wallow...'

Left on her own, Paula went into the bathroom, turned
on the taps. Her excuse had been a
bit of a white lie. Earlier
she had phoned Jean Burgoyne and they'd agreed to have
drinks together that evening at the home of Jean's uncle,
Admiralty House. Jean had proved her efficiency: while
Paula was enduring the unpleasantness at the Cross Keys
she had left an envelope at reception with a local map
marking the position of the house perched on the hill behind
the main part of the town.

Paula had liked Jean when they'd chatted in the bar at
the Brudenell during her previous visit. During that short
conversation a friendship had sprung up between the two
women.

But that wasn't Paula's real motive in contacting her. She
had not forgotten that Burgoyne was General de Forge's
mistress. She hoped to guide the subject round to that delicate
subject in the hope of extracting information for Tweed.

She followed Newman's advice and wallowed in her
bath, gradually feeling the tension drain out of her body. In
her mind she played with the problem of what to wear for
the occasion. Eventually she decided on a fine wool print dress with a mandarin collar and a wide belt. She favoured wide belts: they emphasized her slim waist.

'So that's settled.' she said to herself as she stood up and
towelled herself vigorously. 'And combined with my suede coat I should be warm.'

The temperature was dropping outside rapidly according
to the weather forecast. A good job it was only a short drive.
Jean had offered to collect her but she'd evaded the offer.
Paula, independent, liked to have her own transport.

Dressed for the occasion, she went down in the elevator to see the receptionist.

'I'll be going out about six.' she told her. 'I expect to be
back about eight. Could you let the dining room know? I'll
be as hungry as a horse when I return. The weather...'

'And it's going to get worse.' a man's voice said behind her. She recognized Berthier's husky tone. 'Winds up to
eighty miles an hour.'

'Sounds lovely.' she replied. 'Excuse me, I'm expecting a
phone call.'

She slipped into the elevator, pressed the button, sighed
with relief as it moved upwards. She'd had enough of
Berthier for one day. Damn it, she reminded herself, I must
get into the mental habit of thinking of him as
James Sanders.
Otherwise I'm going to put my foot in it.

She locked her bedroom door, kicked off her high-heeled shoes, reminded herself of something else - to wear sensible
shoes when she was driving to Admiralty House. She was
expecting no phone call and she sat in a chair, picked up
her paperback of Tolstoy's
War and Peace,
determined to
finish the huge tome. She had about half an hour before it
would be time to leave to visit Jean.