Jack Higgins (15 page)

She stared into space, horror on her face, and said in a whisper, “I think I heard the shots as I went down the street, but I can't be sure. The front door was locked so I went round to the back. And then I saw the blood on the wall. Oh, dear God, the blood.”

She broke down completely and I left Ilana to comfort her and went to the window. After a while she joined me. “So it was all for nothing.”

“All for nothing,” I said. “It's difficult to think of him as dead. He was so full of life.”

She put a hand on my arm. “You'll have to go to the police now, Joe.”

“Not yet,” I said. “There's someone else I want a word with first.”

“Sarah Kelso?”

“That's right. Her reaction to this should be very interesting. I'll see if she's in her room.”

“You'd be wasting your time,” she said. “She's with Jack. As far as I know they've been together all evening.”

“She'll just have to get out of bed then, won't she?” I said. “You'd better hang on here.”

“Oh, no you don't.” Ilana brushed past me and opened the door. “I wouldn't miss this for all the tea in China.”

 

Desforge's door was locked and I knocked and kept on knocking until I heard sounds of movement inside. When he opened it he was still tying the cord of his dressing gown, his hair was rumpled and he didn't look pleased.

“What in the hell is this?” he demanded.

I forced my way past him and Ilana followed me. “Get her out here, Jack,” I said.

He stared at me openmouthed, then slammed the door and moved in belligerently. “Now look here, Joe . . .”

I crossed to the bedroom door, opened it and said crisply, “Mrs. Kelso, I thought you might be interested to know that someone just murdered Arnie Fassberg.”

I closed the door again and moved back to the others. Ilana helped herself to a cigarette from a box on the table and Desforge stared at me, his mouth slack.

“You don't sound as if you were kidding, Joe.”

“I wasn't, believe me.”

He moved to the side table where several bottles and glasses stood on a tray and poured himself a drink mechanically. “And you're saying she's mixed up in this in some way.”

“That's about the size of it.”

The door opened behind me and when I turned, Sarah Kelso was standing there, her face very white. She was wearing a button-down jersey dress that had obviously been pulled on in some haste and her hair was all over the place.

“I believe you said something about Arnie Fassberg, Mr. Martin.”

“That's right,” I said. “He's dead. Somebody used his own shotgun on him—both barrels in the face at point-blank range.”

She swayed and Desforge hurried to her side and helped her to a chair. “You're very kind,” she said weakly.

I poured some brandy into a glass and carried it across to her. “A lot kinder than Vogel and Stratton will be when they get their hands on you. You tried to double-cross them, didn't you? There were emeralds hidden in that plane in the roof of the cabin near the pilot's seat. You told Arnie. You persuaded him to drop in on that first day and recover them, then fly back here and pretend that a landing was impossible.”

“He told me that he hadn't been able to land,” she said, gripping her glass with both hands. “He lied to me.”

“But you couldn't be sure, could you?” I said. “Not until the rest of us had reached the Heron, and by that time he might be gone, so you went down to the airstrip at night, started up that old truck and ran it into the Aermacchi.”

She nodded wearily. “All right—I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything. Vogel is the kind of man who has an interest in many things. Some legal—some a little bit on the shady side.”

“What about the London and Universal Insurance Company?”

“It's a legally constituted company. I know it must be
because it paid me out on my husband's death just like Vogel told you.”

“What about your husband? Where did he fit into all this?”

“Jack was flying for a Brazilian internal airline. Just a fill-in job till he got fixed up with one of the big companies. He met this man Marvin Gaunt in a bar in Sao Paulo. He said he'd bought a Heron secondhand from some rich Brazilian, but couldn't get an export licence. He offered Jack five thousand dollars to fly it out illegally to a small field in Mexico. There they would change the registration number and fly the plane to Europe via America and Canada. Gaunt said he had a buyer in Ireland who would pay double what he'd given for it.”

“What went wrong?”

“Gaunt got drunk one night and disclosed that there was better than a half a million in uncut emeralds hidden on board and that Vogel was going to make a fortune.”

“So your husband decided to cut himself in?”

She stared at us tragically. “I know it was wrong, but we'd had a lot of bad luck. I was working in London while his mother looked after the two boys. Things were very difficult.”

“And Vogel agreed to pay more?”

“He had to. Jack was promised twenty-five thousand pounds and he refused to fly until it was paid over to me in London.”

“He drove a hard bargain.”

She gave a little shrug. “They didn't have much choice.”

“And you didn't mind where the money came from?” Ilana said.

“There are worse things than smuggling.” She sighed. “Or at least that's what I tried to tell myself. It was me he was thinking of remember. Me and the boys.”

They say it only takes one final straw and that was it for me. I clapped her ironically. “Slow curtain to cheers from the audience.”

“For God's sake, give her a break, Joe,” Desforge said. “Mrs. Kelso's had just about all she can take for one night.”

“I applaud your sentiments,” I said, “but just let's get one thing straight, shall we? She isn't Mrs. Kelso.”

There was the kind of silence you get just after one clap of thunder when you're waiting for the next. Desforge stared at me in bewilderment and Sarah Kelso looked like a hunted animal who has just found the last route to freedom closed.

Ilana leaned forward, a slight frown on her face. “Just what are you getting at?” she demanded softly.

“It's quite simple really.” I opened my arms wide. “Meet Jack Kelso.”

I
t had all started with Jean Latouche, a barrel-chested French-Canadian bush pilot with the loudest laugh I've ever heard and a ragged black beard. He was a sort of twentieth-century
voyageur
who used a float-plane instead of a canoe. From what I'd heard, he had the best part of a couple of hundred thousand dollars put away against his old age and a small portion of that had been earned flying in partnership with me on freight contracts to oil survey outfits in up-country Newfoundland.

That year the season had finished in Greenland by the last week in September as far as I was concerned, and I had flown over to Canada to see if I could pick up some extra cash before the snows came. I didn't have much luck, which was a pity, because although I'd managed to save twelve thousand dollars over the season as a whole, I was still on the books of the Silver Shield Finance
Company of Toronto for sixteen thousand against the Otter. Not that they were going to cut my throat over it. I'd already paid off more than I needed to according to our agreement, but it was a big disappointment. I'd hoped to start the next season clean with the Otter bought and paid for.

I hung around Goose Bay for three days but nothing seemed to be happening so that I was glad of the work when a couple of geologists chartered me for a one-way flight to a small airstrip west of Michikamau Lake called Carson Meadows. It was the sort of trip that netted me more than a couple of hundred dollars after expenses and I was sitting at the bar in the town's one and only hotel drinking black coffee and contemplating the future with foreboding when Jean Latouche came in.

He must have been at least fifty and wore flying boots and a great shaggy sheepskin coat that reached his knees. He dropped his duffle bag against the wall and advanced on me, hand outstretched.

“Eh, Joe, how goes it? You have a good season over there?”

“It could have been worse,” I said. “It could also have been a damned sight better. How about you?”

“You know me, Joe. A crust, a jug of wine. I don't ask much.”

“Like hell you don't,” I commented sourly. “Were is it to be this winter? The Bahamas again or are you going to Tahiti this time?”

“You're beginning to sound bitter in your old age,” he said. “What's wrong?”

“I'm tired, that's all. Tired of running round this
Godforsaken country looking for work when there isn't any to be had.”

He swallowed the cognac he'd ordered from the barman and asked for another. “Maybe you ain't been asking in the right places.”

I looked at him hopefully. “Look, Jean, if you know of something then say the good word for God's sake.”

“Don't get so excited, you probably won't be interested anyway. I know I wasn't. I was in Grant Bay yesterday. I met a fella there called Gaunt—Marvin Gaunt. He had a Heron fitted with auxiliary tanks. He's looking for someone to fly it to Ireland with him.”

“What happened to his pilot?”

“He flew it in from Toronto himself in easy stages. He just isn't good enough to take on the Atlantic on his own, that's all.”

“What's he offering?”

“A thousand dollars plus the return fare.”

“Why didn't you take it?”

“I just didn't like the smell.” He tapped his nose, a wise look on his face. “I've been around too long, Joe.”

“You think he's up to no good?”

“I don't just think it—I know it.” He got to his feet and clapped me on the shoulder. “No, it isn't for you, that one, Joe. Anyway, I've got to be on my way. Got a flight to the coast at noon. See you around.”

I didn't, because he was killed a month later trying to land at Gander in a fog so thick you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, but I wasn't to know that as I sat there in that quiet little bar, brooding over my coffee or what was left of it, thinking about Marvin Gaunt and
his Heron. A good aircraft, but he'd need those auxiliary tanks fitted to get her across the big pond. Still, with that done, it was a piece of cake and a thousand dollars was a thousand dollars. I paid for my coffee, and hurried back to the airstrip.

 

Grant Bay was a couple of hundred miles south of Goose and had been constructed to serve the local town and mining interests in the area. As I flew in, it was raining heavily and I wondered what Gaunt was doing there instead of some place like Gander in Newfoundland. It didn't make too much sense, not if he was really looking for a pilot.

There was a small tower, half a dozen hangars and three runways. I got permission to land, put the Otter down and parked beside the first hangar. I had a look inside all of them on the way down, but there was no sign of the Heron.

I found it in the open on the other side of the hangars, standing forlornly in the heavy rain. I walked round it slowly and paused, fascinated. On that side the Canadian registration number painted on the fuselage was crumbling at the edges in the heavy rain. I rubbed some more away with my fingers, just enough to confirm that there had been a previous registration, now painted over, which was very, very interesting and seemed to indicate that Jean's assessment of Gaunt hadn't been too far out.

He was staying at the town's one hotel and I found him in his room, a tall, rather handsome Englishman with the sort of public school voice that was too good to be true. By the time I'd spoken to him for five minutes, I
had him pegged as someone who'd climbed rather a long way up the ladder.

“Mr. Gaunt?” I said when he opened the door. “I heard you were looking for a pilot.”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “And where did you hear that?”

“Carson Meadows,” I replied promptly. “Someone was talking in a bar there.”

He stood back and I went in. It wasn't much of a room—the sort you'd expect to find in a place like that. A mahogany wardrobe, an old bed, a thinning carpet. He went to the dresser, took a half bottle of whisky from a drawer and got a glass from the washbasin.

“Join me?”

I shook my head and he poured himself one and looked me over. “You've got a licence of course?”

I nodded and took out my wallet. Nobody knew me in Grant Bay and in view of the circumstances it might be a good idea to keep it that way. The previous year I'd flown for a Lebanese air freight firm as co-pilot to a Canadian called Jack Kelso. By flying standards he was an old man—fifty-three—and had lived hard all his life, so no one was particularly surprised when he went on a three-day drunk for the last time and died of a heart attack in Basra.

I was with him at the time and had the job of collecting his things together, not that it was really worthwhile because as far as anyone knew he didn't have a relative in the world. I came across his pilot's licence when I was throwing things away and had kept it ever since, more as a souvenir than anything else.

I took it from my wallet and gave it to Gaunt who
examined it briefly, then handed it back. “That all seems to be in order, Mr. Kelso, I've got a Heron down there on the field that I bought cheap in Toronto. I flew her here myself in easy stages, but I'm not up to crossing the Atlantic on my own. I've got a buyer waiting in Ireland who'll double my money if I can get it there by the end of the week. Are you interested?”

“What does it pay?”

“A thousand and your return fare from Shannon.”

“Four thousand,” I said. “Four thousand and my return fare.” He managed a look of blank amazement, but before he could say anything I added, “Of course you could wait another couple of days to see if anyone else turns up, but I doubt it. It's the wrong time in the season. Another thing, if that Heron stands out there much longer, the rain will wash the registration right off and then we'll all be able to see what it really is—or wouldn't that bother you?”

He took it right on the chin. “All right, Mr. Kelso, four thousand. Four thousand plus your return fare. I think we should do very well together.”

“In cash,” I said. “Before we leave.”

“And when will that be?”

I'd already decided that I'd rather fly back to Goose and leave the Otter there. I could always get a lift back in the mail plane if nothing else was available.

“If the met report is satisfactory we could take-off tomorrow afternoon,” I said. “Does that suit you?”

“Couldn't be better. I'll have her checked over in the morning.”

“You do that.”

I left him there and went back to the airstrip, already half-regretting my decision, but it was too late for that kind of talk now. I'd said I was going and go I would. The money would solve my personal problems nicely and any stray thoughts about what Gaunt might be up to I pushed firmly into the back of my mind and closed the door. I didn't want to know. As far as I was concerned, it was just another charter or at least, that's what I tried to tell myself.

 

It was still raining as I prepared for takeoff on the following afternoon, but the met report for the crossing was pretty good. There was no customs control to pass through as it was a passage out and at a field like Grant Bay formalities were cut to the minimum. Gaunt handled all the documentation and even the two mechanics who tuned the engines for takeoff didn't get a clear look at my face, which suited me down to the ground.

Gaunt had my money waiting for me in crisp new hundred dollar bills and I slipped them into an envelope I'd already prepared and posted it to myself, care of General Delivery at Goose Bay. So everything seemed to be taken care of. I'd calculated that we should get about halfway across on the normal tanks before having to switch to the auxiliaries and was sitting in the pilot's seat doing an instrument check when Gaunt joined me.

He was wearing a newish one-piece flying suit and looked extremely cheerful as he strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat.

“Ready to go?” I said.

“Whenever you like. There's just one thing.” He
handed me a map that had been neatly clipped to one of the chart boards. “If you have a look at that you'll see that I've changed our destination.”

The course he'd charted ran northwest from Grant Bay in a dead straight line, cutting across the tip of Greenland and finishing at Reykjavik in Iceland, a flight of about sixteen hundred miles.

“What's the idea?” I said.

He took an envelope from one of his pockets and passed it across. “There's another thousand in there—all right?”

They were just as new as the others and just as attractive. I slipped them back into the envelope and put it into the inside pocket of my flying jacket. After all, what did it matter to me? Reykjavik or Shannon. It was all the same.

He smiled contentedly. “We won't bother informing the tower of our change of destination, old man. I'd much rather they still booked us down as being en route to the old country.”

“You're the boss,” I said and taxied out into the runway.

It was still raining as we took off and the sky was as heavy as lead, but I remembered the forecast and wasn't worried. I didn't alter course until we were well out to sea. The plane handled nicely—very nicely indeed and somewhere on the far horizon, the edge of a cloud was touched with light. I sat back, my hands steady on the controls and started to enjoy myself.

• • •

A couple of hours later and five hundred miles out, I'd had my fun. I handed over to Gaunt who hadn't had much to say for himself and went to the lavatory in the tail of the plane. That's when I got my first big shock because when I opened the door there was a man in there dressed like one of the mechanics at Grant Bay. In other circumstances it could have had its funny side, but there was nothing humorous about the Luger automatic pistol he was holding in his right hand.

“Surprise, surprise! Actually I was just about to look you up.” The Luger moved so that the muzzle pointed in the general region of my stomach. “Shall we see what dear old Marvin has to say for himself?”

The same throwaway public school voice as Gaunt's but this one was for real, I was sure of that and there was a glint in his eye that said he meant business.

“I wouldn't know what all this is about,” I said, “but I'd be obliged if you'd point that thing somewhere else. Gaunt's doing his best, but I'm the pilot really and we don't want any nasty accidents this far out over the Atlantic.”

“My dear chap, I could fly this crate to China and back with one hand tied behind my back.”

I had the sort of feeling you get in the bar at the Royal Aero Club when some bore with a moustache a yard long takes a deep breath and you know that a second later you're going to get summer 1940, Biggin Hill and what it was really like doing a dozen sorties a day in a Spitfire.

I moved back through the body of the plane and opened the cabin door. Gaunt turned to grin at me and the smile faded from his face.

“Harrison,” he said blankly.

“In person, old man.” Harrison tapped me on the shoulder with the Luger. “Sit down and take over.”