High Jinx (17 page)

17

Blackford Oakes was at the Nell Gwynne Tavern at nine-fifteen. It was uncrowded. Its customers, relaxed, convivial, appeared to be regulars, natives of Windsor, though there was a studied quaintness in the decor and in the menu handed to Blackford, when he sat down at one of the tables, that suggested a play for tourists who came to see Windsor Castle, or parents who came to take their sons out to lunch on weekends.

It was warm, and even smoky, though no charcoal grill was in evidence. Blackford spotted, at the far end of the dining area, a table shielded by a wooden partition from the larger bar-dining quarters. He rose, slipped the serving girl a ten-shilling note, and said, “Someone is meeting me here. We'll have a little more privacy in the corner. Is that all right?' The pert young waitress pocketed the note and said, with just a suggestion of a mock-American accent, ‘That's okay, sir. As you like,' and followed him to the corner. He sat down and ordered a beer. ‘Oh, and do you have one that is cold?'

‘Yes, sir. We serve a lot of Americans at the Nell Gwynne.'

Renira Williams was punctual. She took his hand formally, and sat opposite. Her nurse's uniform had been removed, and she had put on makeup. She was indeed a handsome woman. Her manners were direct, her self-assurance manifest. Blackford did not doubt that she was a veteran of a thousand BOAC flights, nor was he concerned that the urchins at St. John's would give Miss Williams much to worry about. He doubted that
she
had been doused when she stepped into her car. Blackford signalled the waitress, and Renira Williams ordered a gin and tonic.

‘Well then, Mr. Benton. You are interested in Bertram Heath?'

‘That is correct. My clients are interested in knowing something about him.'

‘Who are your clients?'

Blackford pulled out the card, as he had done previously.

She stared at it. ‘Well, that doesn't mean anything to me. But I am not going to call them up tomorrow to verify that you are on the level. And do you know why?'

Blackford said, as though amused by a hypothetical question, that no, he did not know why.

‘Because I don't particularly care whether you are or you are not. I suspect you are not, for the very simple reason that Bert never plays it straight himself. You never know what he is up to. Oh, you find out eventually what he is up to where you are concerned. But what he does when he disappears for weeks and months at a time I haven't the least idea, and the only time I asked him it cost me a black eye.' She sipped from her drink. ‘Oh yes, please let's get the other business settled first. How much do you propose to pay me for informatin on Bert?'

Blackford said that his clients were certainly prepared to compensate her for her time, and something besides but that the actual sum would depend on how useful her information proved to be.

‘By “useful” can I assume, Mr. Benton, you really mean “damaging?” If I told you Bertram Heath was a full-time choirboy, that wouldn't be worth much to you, now would it?'

Blackford reasoned that it would not subvert the essential gravity of the conversation if he permitted himself to smile, which he did. She returned it, but cynically. ‘It happens that I am in need of some money. St. John's is not a munificent employer. What is it you most wish to hear about?'

Blackford was not quite ready to say that he wished most to know where Bertram Heath was. The cover story was that he was being considered for employment. His clients presumably knew where the applicant was. So he said. ‘When did you last see him?'

‘You have not mentioned a figure.'

‘Suppose we agree that for your trouble tonight I will pay you fifty pounds. In the event that the information we get from you turns out to be especially useful, I shall send a cheque for another fifty pounds.'

Renira Williams's smile was genuine. ‘Very well. And I shall have another gin and tonic, please. The bar here is better than the one at St. John's.'

She had met Bert Heath, she said, lighting a cigarette, on a BOAC flight from Rome about four years ago. He had flirted with her. She had admired his looks and manner, and agreed to meet him for dinner the following evening.

This had led to a long romance. She lived in a small cottage in Old Windsor, one mile from the house where her parents lived in retirement. ‘Bert had a flat in London, and sometimes we stayed there. Sometimes we would go to Windsor. This had to be done carefully, because of my parents, though they never come to my house; I go to theirs. But of course, there are neighbours.

‘We had two passionate years. It wasn't ever easy. My job with BOAC kept me out of England half the time, and his job kept him on the move. I suspect he had something to do with the military, legal or illegal I don't know. But often in his bag there'd be a copy or two of a magazine, I forget what it was called, but I flipped through one once and they were advertising guns and the kind of thing you would want in a military situation. My guess is that Bert is a soldier of fortune. Do they call it that in America?' Renira Williams wished her interrogator to know that it was entirely clear to her that whether or not he was actually associated with a British law firm, he was clearly an American.

‘Yes,' Blackford said. ‘Same thing.'

She drank deeply from her glass. ‘Bert was always asking me to marry him, and when I'd say yes—you know, in the sort of situation in which a girl tends to say yes—he was always postponing it. Then the business of last March happened.'

‘Last March?'

‘Yes.' Renira paused in her narrative, stirring with her finger the half-empty drink. ‘I was scheduled out on a long haul. London, Rome, Cairo, Salisbury, Jo'burg. Eight days there and back, counting required time off. He said that by the time I returned he would have a wedding licence, and we would “stitch it up”—his words. In Rome we had engine trouble. The mechanics worked for three hours before the flight was cancelled. I was directed to return to London and wait there for the schedule to resume. There was just time to catch a westbound BOAC Super Connie. I got to London about nine, went to ring Bert and thought no, I'll surprise him. So I went to the flat—naturally, I had a key—and opened the door. He was having it off in the middle of the living room with this … very young girl—lights on, music playing, whisky bottle at their side.'

Renira Williams paused. ‘This is not a story Father Paine would want to hear.'

Blackford said nothing.

‘I don't know what I did. I think I reached for the bottle of whisky and tried to smash it down on his head. He caught me up, of course—he's a strong bastard—and then he started in on me. Gave me one hell of a beating with his open hand—I mean, one hell of a beating. I must have passed out. When I woke up, they were gone. There was a note on the door. I keep it. It brings me down to earth. I look at it, maybe once a month.' Renira Williams's voice was subdued now, strained. She reached into her handbag and brought out an envelope and handed it to Blackford. He pulled out a piece of paper on which had been scrawled in ink, ‘Get your ass out of my apartment—B.'

Blackford said nothing for a moment. Then, ‘Nice guy,' he said, returning the envelope. ‘Is that the last you saw of him?'

‘Yes. I had to go to a clinic for treatment, missed my flight schedules for three weeks, and was bumped—BOAC was looking for reasons to trim back. I looked around the home town area and got the position at St. John's. Life there is less exciting than it used to be, but it has its compensations.'

There was no other way to proceed, Blackford decided, than more or less directly. But he took a slightly circuitous route. ‘I am very sorry, Miss Williams. And now I need to advise you that my clients have in fact lost contact with Mr. Heath, and wish to be in touch with him. Where is he?'

‘Ah,' Renira Williams's face brightened. ‘So that's it! You people want to hunt him down! He's wanted by somebody? For something. If it's for murder, I hope it was that blonde on the floor. No—' Renira Williams was serious again. ‘Actually, I don't want him hurt. At least, not permanently.' She looked up at Blackford. ‘Do you know, Mr. Benton, or whatever your real name is, I don't think you are a mobster aimed at gunning Bert down. Just a feeling. May be wrong.' She took the initiative in signalling for the waitress to bring her another drink, and Blackford ordered a second beer.

‘Well, you have his flat number, don't you?' she said.

‘He isn't there.'

‘Funny. He's had that place for a long time. Of course, he goes off for long trips, too. How long has he been away?'

‘He hasn't been seen for six weeks.'

‘That's a fair amount of time for him to be away. Is his flat emptied?'

‘There is evidence that he doesn't intend to return there. Is there anyplace else you can think of that he used to go?'

Renira Williams thought. ‘No,' she said slowly. ‘No. He never told me where he was going. But then …' she paused. ‘Yes. Just after Christmas he went off on one of his missions, and a week later I got in the mail, in Old Windsor, an insurance receipt. One of those policies you buy at the airports, you know, so many thousand pounds per half crown you put into the machine. Old Bert must have put a half-dozen half crowns into the machine, because the policy—the accident policy, payable if Bertram Oliver Heath was killed as the result of an aeroplane accident between Date A and Date B—read, “Pay the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds to”'—she mimicked the wording of a cheque—‘and on the line for the beneficiary he had written out, “Renira Williams, 2 Sunnycoate Lane, Old Windsor, Berks.” But then there was fine print, something like, “In the event the designated beneficiary is deceased, please specify alternative beneficiary,” and Bert had written out a name, and an address.'

‘Do you remember that name and address?'

‘I do, as a matter of fact. I had completely forgotten about it—though I still have that policy, somewhere, in my cottage. But looking at the newspapers about a month or two ago I saw a picture of one of our scientists, introduced in a speech as a Nobel Prize winner. I thought, well now, this is a coincidence. Same chap gets twelve thousand pounds from the King of Norway as would have got twenty-five thousand pounds from Lloyds, assuming Bert had been killed, and I had died or been killed. There can't be two people called Sir Alistair Fleetwood. I never met him. Never heard Bert mention him.' She drained her glass and looked up.

‘Maybe he knows where Bert is?'

Blackford volunteered to drive her the five miles to Old Windsor, but Renira Williams said no, she would prefer to take a taxi, as she had done in getting here. ‘The school always uses Fred's taxi. He is very obliging and doesn't charge much.' And then, on reaching the outdoors, where the taxi was waiting, ‘I hope I have given you useful information, because I am making payments on the cottage.' Blackford told her the supplementary payment would be forthcoming, and they shook hands. She looked him squarely in the eyes for just a moment, before opening the door of the taxi and sitting down in front with Fred, and heading out toward Runnymede.

18

They met in the office of Sir Eugene Attwood. Three Americans, two British. Ellery Blass, tall, scrawny, silver-haired, as head of MI6 was responsible for international security. ‘We clearly have here,' Rufus had said to Blackford in the car driving over to Leconfield House, ‘a case that blends the responsibilities of the two agencies, domestic and foreign security.' He had studied, in Washington, the report of Black-ford's month-long exertions. The covering note had ended:

I tell you, Rufus, I am convinced of two things. One of them is that Fleetwood is our man. The second is that he has come up with some devilish device that managed to crack our code on Tirana and everything we exchanged before then with the Brits through the embassy. We've got to play my hunch. And to do this, obviously, we need the full cooperation of MI5 and MI6. What do you say?

Attwood and Blass had known Rufus since the war. Attwood and Trust had had extensive dealings since Trust became the chief of station for the CIA in London. Trust was now introduced to Ellery Blass, and both the Englishmen to Blackford Oakes for the first time.

They sat around a table in a soundproofed, bug-proof room situated within a carapace especially designed to frustrate any efforts at electronic intrusion. It was in that room, at MI5, that all conversations of a highly secret nature were carried on. There was always the slight hum from the sonic detectors. The room was air-conditioned but it was warm, and before too long even the British had taken off their jackets.

Rufus was seated at the centre, and gave a quick summary of the reasons for Blackford Oakes's manhunt, and then he turned the floor over to him.

Blackford Oakes stood up.

He began factually. He spoke of his conversations with ‘Henry,' the commando put in charge of the destinies of forty American and British commandos. He reminded them of the grisly photo album they were all familiar with, and then told of his encounter at the airport, the surveillance by Anthony Trust of ‘Henry,' and the man's disappearance the following morning.

He gave what he judged to be the relevant details in his painstaking reconstruction of the life of Bertram Oliver Heath. He stressed, when he came to the Cambridge days, the central role of Alistair Fleetwood, to whom everyone had pointed as the formative influence in Bertram Heath's life. He underlined the adamantine refusal of Fleetwood to any interview concerning Bertram Heath. He spoke then of the girlfriend, Renira Williams, and, finally, of the interview at the Nell Gwynne Tavern three nights before. By the time he reached the account of the insurance policy, Blackford's narrative had created a measure of excitement.

But when he ended the story, with its increasingly predictable request, the ice water began to drip.