Shot on Location (17 page)

PATTISON BLAIR DROVE the Ferrari slowly, paying more attention to Leslie Parker than to the road. They had passed through the city and were skirting the lake at a point almost opposite the lights of the hotel.

“I was too shocked last night to be sure it was you I saw at the police station,” she said. “When I recognized you in the lobby just now, I had to run out to you. Sorry, Leslie, but I need to lean a little. That’s funny, isn’t it?”

“It happens to all of us in time,” Parker answered, “and it’s never very funny.”

“I mean—you’re a familiar face. A piece of the past.”

“I try to live without a past.”

“Isn’t that impossible?”

“It’s getting easier. And I have help.”

“A woman?”

“Of course.”

“What is her name?”

“Elena.”

“Is she Greek?”

“Yes, she’s Greek. Very young and very lovely. Speaks almost no English at all. It’s not really necessary.”

Pattison laughed. “You must love her, Leslie.”

“I’m beginning to. You see, anything’s possible. There was a time when I thought I could never love again.”

The lights of the hotel faded in the distance. When Parker pointed the way, Pattison turned off the road they had been following, and took a path into the woods.

“You really loved Lori that much?” she asked.

Leslie Parker took a packet of cigarettes from his sweater pocket and poked about for a match. Pattison obliged with the dashboard lighter, noticing how boyish his face still looked in the red glow. He would be one of those men, she thought, who would look boyish all his life. The kind Harry had called the ever-blooming juvenile. When he had taken the light he offered the cigarette to her. She shook her head. “I thought,” he said, when the lighter was back in the dash, “that everyone in London knew how I killed my wife’s lover, out of passion for her.”

“Killed! You
are
a masochist! You tried to save his life—that’s what half of London knew. The other half are dirt!”

“Actually, we’re both wrong. It wasn’t one half or both halves of London. It was a very few people, in a nasty little social set I’m glad to be rid of. It’s peaceful here.”

“Peaceful! After what happened at the police station last night—and what happened today out at the monastery! That poor wretch I saw dragged out of the police station, last night, went absolutely mad, they say, and drove his knife clear through the security captain’s body, before he was shot! It’s in the air, Leslie. Bombings, beatings, tortures. Peter Lange calls it anarchy.”

“There’s no such thing as anarchy,” Parker scoffed. “It’s just a word for the turbulence when there’s a change of guard in the power establishment. Thank God it doesn’t affect me any more. I’m totally uninvolved.”

“The ‘in’ word is ‘dropped out’.”

“Very well, I’ve dropped out. Don’t I look like a hippy? Even my hair is getting long.”

“How do you live?”

“Remarkably well. I get two hundred pounds a month from the estate in England. It keeps me in the necessities of life.”

“Such as that fifth of Scotch you’ve put in the rear seat.”

“Exactly. I know it shocks you—old teetotaler Parker. There, I’ve spoken my name for the first time in three years. You’re a bad influence, Pattison. But you always were. You did flirt with me when I was in Harley Street.”

“Of course. You were—you are—a handsome, charming, virile male. Now I know why I couldn’t make any time with you. Imagine, a society surgeon in love with his wife! I should have concentrated on Walter Savage. Oh—” Pattison clapped one hand over her mouth, “damn! I didn’t mean to say that!”

“Go ahead and say it. It’s true. If you had gone after Walter, he might not have gone after my wife with such outstanding and public success. But I forgive you. There would have been another Walter sooner or later.”

Pattison tried to change the subject. “Are you sure you have a house?” she asked. “This road’s getting us lost in the woods.”

“Not really. It comes out on the lake again and that’s where we’ll find my house. If you look sharp. It’s a tiny one. Hardly big enough for a London garage. I like it and Elena likes it. We have no servants to tell tales and keep the gossips supplied.”

“Gossips! So that’s why you fled London—you’re chicken. You should be like me. I’m immune.”

“You were born to headlines. It makes a difference.”

“But you were cleared. Barney told me that the medical hearing, or whatever they called it, exonerated you completely when Walter died on the operating table. He said you had every right to let the sonovabitch die, but you were too good a doctor to follow your impulses.”

“Maybe that’s why I was such a failure as a husband,” Parker said. “And perhaps I didn’t exonerate myself. How could I? How could I ever be sure that I had done all I could for Walter, on the operating table, when I knew Lori was dead and that he had been driving when the car went off the road? Let’s take out all the dirty laundry for old times’ sake. It was so romantic up in Wales, where Walter and Lori went for their holidays together, and so damned public when their affair splashed all over the headlines. Do you know, I used to fancy that Lori would have enjoyed that part of it, if she could have known? She always said my family was too stuffy to live outside a glass case. I wonder why it is that the things that draw people together are the things that force them apart. What I loved in Lori was what I helped to kill. But I’ve thought it all out and forgiven everyone.”

“Except yourself.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic! You have me living in a self-imposed exile and drinking myself to an early grave. Look at me. I’ve never been healthier or happier. If I take a drink it’s because I’m learning to enjoy life. There’s more than work and glory. I don’t need Harley Street any more, and that’s something to celebrate—not mourn. There, just ahead. See the small light? It’s almost like a candle in the window.”

Pattison braked the Ferrari to a stop, in front of a small white-washed building with a paved courtyard and a few trees to shadow the moonlight on the drive. She switched off the ignition and watched Parker snuff out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Are you going to ask me in?” she queried.

“No. Elena is more beautiful than you. You might get jealous.”

“You could be right.”

“I could be—but I don’t think I am. There are a few surprises in you, too, it seems. You came up from Athens to look for Harry Avery. You must have loved him.”

“I needed him. That’s a switch, isn’t it?”

“It sure is. You never really needed any man before, except Barney.”

“Barney!”

“Don’t tell me you’re the last to know. Barney’s always been the man in your life. That’s why your husbands never had a chance.”

“I hate Barney!”

“That’s what I mean. You hate Barney until you finally find a man as ruthless and ambitious as he, and then you fall in love for the first time. I’m sorry about Avery. That sounds silly, doesn’t it? It always sounds silly when an outsider tries to touch grief.” Suddenly Parker leaned across the seat and kissed Pattison softly on the mouth. She didn’t draw away but he did. He smiled. “Would you believe that I always wanted to do that?” he asked.

“Even in Harley Street?”

“Even in Harley Street. I’m going in now. You can turn about in the courtyard and go back the way you came.”

“Let me come in, please.”

“No, Pattison. My militantly puritanical mother taught me always to close the door when leaving a room. I won’t let anything spoil what I have now.”

“I’m frightened, Leslie.”

“You can’t be, so soon. That comes later. Now you’re still shocked and angry because the life you had planned for yourself has vanished. You may want to find someone to blame for Harry Avery’s death. Barney, perhaps. Forget it. I examined Avery before his doctor arrived from Athens. Believe me, nothing could have saved him after that crash. Now start living with that. It takes time but it works out somehow. Goodbye, Pattison.”

He opened the door and got out of the car. He picked up the bottle of whisky from the rear seat and tucked it under his arm. “And whenever you get back to London,” he added, “don’t go about telling how you ran into poor old Leslie Parker, going to pot in the Greek mountains. I like it here. I’d have to move if people started dropping in.”

He ducked his head against the wind and sprinted all the way to the house.

Elena was at the door. Her dark hair hung loosely, halfway to her slender waist, her eyes were wide and her lips were new life closing out the horrors of the violence at Kastoria. Parker’s arms pulled her close but she shyly pushed him away. He looked past her into the softly lighted room and saw that they weren’t alone. Elena slipped behind him and closed the door, as the woman called Petros emerged from the shadows.

“You—again?” he cried. “What are you doing here? I imagined you were miles away by this time.”

“I was miles away, Doctor,” she said. “I had to return.”

“Don’t call me doctor!”

She smiled. “Would you rather I called you Mr. Parker? No, don’t look so surprised. We met several years ago, when my late husband was an attaché at the Greek embassy in London. Our positions have changed since that time. Both our positions.”

“I’m sorry for you,” he said. “Please don’t be sorry for me.”

“I’m not. Your exile is of your own doing. My husband’s was not.”

“That’s politics.”

“So it is. But even in politics there are some rules among civilized people. Now it seems there are no rules in Greece, and heroes are rewarded with banishment or prison.”

“I’ve already resisted one call to arms tonight,” Parker insisted. “If you’re recruiting for anything, you can save your breath. I’m a man of peace.”

“You’re a doctor first.”

“Damn it, woman, what do you want?” he demanded. “I went along with you, when you came to me with a story about finding a dying man at the monastery, and what did I walk into? Only the most famous corpse in the world at this moment! Is that a way to maintain seclusion?”

“I couldn’t go to the authorities,” Petros said. “That should be obvious.”

“But you could have told me who he was. You must have known.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come with me if I told you the man was Harry Avery. But don’t worry, I’ve no celebrity for you to treat now.”

“Good! Would you like a whisky?” Parker waved the bottle over his head—in invitation.

“There’s no time,” Petros protested.

“There’s time for me after the rotten day and night I’ve put in.”

Petros watched Parker open the bottle and pour himself a drink.

“You must come!” she said. “One of the men who rode with me this afternoon is seriously ill. Severe abdominal pains—”

“Give him medicine.”

“—and painful swelling. Acute appendicitis.”

“Take him to a hospital.”

“You know that’s impossible! He would be arrested. It would be more merciful to let him die.”

“Then let him die!”

“He is twenty-three years old,
Doctor
, and has a wife and two small children.”

Parker drank the whisky in great gulps—the fire it started in his stomach helped to remind him that he was an Englishman and this struggle was nothing to him. “This is a Greek fight, Madame!” he shouted. “I don’t want to be involved.”

“You are alive,” she said quietly. “Being alive is being involved. There’s no danger to you. My van’s parked half a metre down the road under some trees. I will leave this house first. You can start to follow me in about ten minutes. Come alone and whistle something as you approach the van so we will know it is you.”

“You really think I’m coming with you, don’t you?” Parker asked.

Petros drew the folds of the cloak closer about her lanky body. She had won. She was satisfied. “Whistle anything you like,” she added, “except Beethoven’s Fifth. I hear that it makes the Junta nervous. It reminds them of a time when people fought for liberty.”

BRAD HAD NO more than completed his dinner, when he saw Rolf Johnson meeting with complications at the dining room doorway. The doctor had been flown to Kastoria without a change of clothing. He wasn’t dressed for dinner, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the lack of available space. Brad called his waiter and asked him to convey an invitation to share his table. He watched the message being delivered and saw the doctor look in his direction, with less than enthusiasm. But a table was a table. He shrugged and followed the waiter back to Brad.

“You’re Dr. Johnson,” Brad said. “I saw you at the police station earlier this evening. They told me that you had been flown in directly from a fishing boat. You must be tired. Sit down.”

Johnson accepted the invitation. “I am tired,” he admitted, “but I don’t like talking to a reporter when I’m eating.”

“I don’t blame you. I’m not a reporter. I’m a friend of the Avery’s.”

The doctor’s sun-bronzed face brightened. “Are you Smith?” he asked. “Omar Bradley Smith?”

“That’s my name.”

“In that case, I thank you. I talked to Mrs. Avery by telephone, shortly after I arrived. She asked me to look for you. She wanted to come up here, too, but I discouraged the idea. This is no place for a widow.”

“Pattison Blair is here,” Brad said.

“I know. That’s one of the things I had in mind, when I talked to Mrs. Avery.”

The waiter had returned with a menu. Johnson ordered quickly and then asked for a bottle of cold beer, to drink while waiting for his dinner. “And don’t let me wait too long or I may confiscate my neighbour’s plate,” he added. “I’ve had nothing but coffee and snacks all day. The machine has to be refuelled or it breaks down. I’m not as young as you are, Mr. Smith.”

“You look healthy,” Brad said.

“I am. I take care of myself. Wish most of my patients would do as well. I told Harry, when we were on Corfu together last week, that I was going to take time out, for a fishing trip, even if the whole Saga company came down with a contagious disease. Never dreamed I would be called back for something like this.”

“I take it you had no radio on the boat.”

“None at all. I went native, Smith. Went out with the real Greek fishermen—not some fancy tourist boat. I didn’t know a thing about the crash, until that helicopter picked me up yesterday. It was a shock, I’ll tell you. I hadn’t had almost a week to get used to the idea of Harry’s death, like the rest of the world. Still, I’m not surprised. A man like Harry Avery had no sense of danger, and he drove himself like there was no tomorrow.”

The waiter returned with a bottle of beer and a glass, and Johnson insisted on doing his own pouring. He drank almost half a glass, before putting it down.

“There, I feel better already,” he said. “How’s the food?”

“Excellent,” Brad answered.

“Glad to hear that. I’m starved. I’m a little in the dark about your relationship with the Averys, Smith. Were you Harry’s friend or Rhona’s?”

“Both,” Brad said, “but the relationships weren’t the same. I knew Rhona long before she met Avery.”

“I see. Naturally, when you showed up, she would turn to you. How is she taking it?”

“Why ask me? You’re the doctor.”

“But I haven’t seen her since Corfu. You have.”

“She’s very upset. She seems frightened.”

“Yes, she would be. Harry ran everything, you see. The business, home, everything. She was completely dependent on him. Not that it was a good marriage. It wasn’t. More of an arrangement, if you understand what I mean.” “I think I do.”

“But it gave her security. An emotional woman, like Rhona Brent Avery, needs all the security she can get. Pattison Blair, now, she was a natural for Harry. Has the same wild streak. Takes the same chances. Her coming up here, for instance. Damn the scandal. Damn the protocol. Harry liked that kind of woman.”

“I heard she was going to play his Aphrodite.”

“Really? I wouldn’t be surprised. She’s got all the attributes, shall we say? The name, too. It would have been good box office. Yes, that sounds like something Harry would have done. Well, it’s all finished now.”

Johnson poured the last of the bottle of beer into his glass and savoured it more slowly. “Don’t let me keep you from your dinner,” he said.

“You aren’t. Interesting conversation is good for the digestion. Incidentally, Pattison Blair was looking for you a little earlier. She asked Peter Lange if he’d seen you and he said something that puzzled me. He tried to impress her with the fact that nobody killed Harry. Does that make any sense to you?”

Johnson wiped his mouth with a napkin and sighed. “I heard she wanted to see me when I was still at the morgue. It’s a fixation she has, I believe. Her last two or three fiancés have met with violent deaths. You can see how that would get to her.”

“Fiancé?” Brad echoed. “Did she intend to marry Harry?”

“I don’t see how she could. Rhona would never have given him a divorce. Not that he didn’t give her grounds. There was another woman a year or so ago. Harry wanted his freedom then and got nowhere. Rhona liked being Mrs. Avery too well and, the Good Lord knows, she never gave him grounds. It was as if she’d been given a part to play: the perfect wife, and she was determined to play it flawlessly. But listen to me, I sound like a beauty parlour gossip. Nerves, I guess. That was a bad scene back at the morgue.”

“What did kill Harry?”

“His heart stopped beating. I’m not trying to be cute, Mr. Smith. It’s that simple. A stronger man might have survived what he’d been through—even the internal injuries. Harry wasn’t a strong man. I’ve tried for the last three years to get him to slow down. A rich corpse is just a rich corpse. But Harry had a tiger by the tail and couldn’t let go. I suppose you could say he was compulsively self-destructive. He could have sent any number of assistants out on that aerial survey, but he had to do it himself and it had to be in that Greek’s hybrid plane.”

“A death wish?” Brad asked.

“Hell, no! Not Harry Avery. I never knew a man who wanted to live more, do more, and be more, than Harry Avery. He was a bigger fantasy than anything he put on the screen. Ah, here comes my dinner. Excuse me, Mr. Smith, but I’m hungry.”

The doctor dug into his food with a zest that bore out the statement. Brad let him eat in silence, while he absorbed this new information on Harry and Rhona. Rhona hadn’t seemed the dependent type, when he lived with her, but that was a long time ago and Harry Avery wasn’t a boy just out of high school and learning his way with the opposite sex. But the interesting thing was what the doctor had told him about Harry’s physical condition, and the cause of his death.

“Did Harry use drugs?” he asked.

Johnson’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth.

“Why do you ask that?” he demanded.

“Because so many people do these days. If Harry was burning the candle at both ends, he might have needed stimulation. Drugs can distort reality and alter judgement.”

“You’re damned right they can! What’s more, Harry knew that. He wouldn’t have anything that could injure his brain. Why do you ask?”

Cards on the table, Brad decided. It was the only way to learn what he had to know. “Because I was with him when he died. Only two other people know that—Rhona and Brooks Martins. I found him in a coma. He came out of it for a few minutes, just before his heart gave out. He wanted me to give him an injection, from a syringe he had in a leather case in his coat pocket. I thought it was something for the pain.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“Yes. It didn’t seem to help.”

“Of course not. A dying man will grasp at any straw, I guess. That injection was a vitamin concentrate. I fixed it for him myself. He was sensitive about it—didn’t want anyone to know he took it. That image of his—Superman Avery. That’s all it was, Smith.”

“Then I didn’t—” Brad caught himself in time, before he completed the thought aloud.
I
didn’t kill Harry
. He took a quick swallow of coffee to cover the release of tension. In a controlled voice, he added: “I’m glad. I thought maybe I did the wrong thing.”

“Forget it. It made no difference one way or the other. Remember, Harry was wandering around, out there in the mountains, for four days, with a shattered arm and a broken rib cage. No food, no shelter, no sense of direction. The crash should have killed him, the shock could have killed him. All that kept him going was that tremendous will and he was only mortal after all. They don’t have the equipment here for a full autopsy and I haven’t asked for one. Mrs. Avery doesn’t want it and I think she’s wise. I’ll spell it out for you once and for all. Harry’s heart was a joke, Smith. It was like an over-driven motorcycle engine, trying to power a Maserati racer. He just couldn’t keep up with himself. Tell that to Pattison Blair if you see her. I hate to keep repeating myself.”

“And there’s to be no autopsy?”

“Why should there be? There’s been enough publicity already. The sooner he gets buried, the better it will be for all concerned. Morbidity is the curse of the masses, and Harry’s been headline news too long. Death is final. The living need the chance to put it behind them and get on with life. I hope I’m not shocking you.”

“Not at all. You’re educating me,” Brad said.

“Good. I judge a man’s intelligence by the degree of things he knows that he doesn’t know. Harry Avery had a good life—exactly the kind of life he wanted for himself.”

Brad pushed back his chair and came to his feet.

“You haven’t had your dessert,” Johnson said.

“Not on my diet. Besides, I have to see about arranging transportation back to Athens.”

“Fly back with me if you wish. I’m going back with the body, in an army transport, tomorrow. Check with me in the morning and I’ll let you know the take-off time.”

“I may do that,” Brad said.

“I’ll be looking for you. Plenty of room if you don’t mind the coffins. I think they’re shipping back that police captain and the anarchist who killed him, in the same plane. It’s a quick flight.”

“It’s a deal,” Brad said.

Vitamins. Brad left the dining room with the comforting thought that he hadn’t contributed to Harry’s death. What was it Harry had told him to tell Martins? Mission accomplished? He could report back to Rhona now, with the same statement. As for the flight back, riding in an army transport, with dead men, was no new experience. The touchy thing was what he would have to do about Katerina Brisos. He would have to tell her about Stephanos and make her understand that nobody was to blame. Nobody could have stopped the boy from killing Koumaris at any cost. She was Greek; she would probably understand. She was also human and alone.

Somebody had turned on the canned music in the lounge and Elvis Presley was singing about a tragedy in the Chicago ghetto to a scattering of people who weren’t listening. Brad ordered his coffee to be sent up to his room, then bought some cigarettes in the lobby. He was getting his change, when Brooks Martins came in, with a stocky male companion he introduced as Sam McKeough from the embassy.

“I’ve convinced Lieutenant Zervios that you’re on the staff with McKeough,” he advised. “We’re flying back to Athens in the morning. You shouldn’t have any trouble.”

Smith grinned. “That’s white of you,” he said.

“Of course, that doesn’t mean that you may not get into trouble, after Zervios has time to check you out. Keep in touch. I may have a proposition for you.”

“Riding shotgun again?” Brad asked. “No, thanks. I’ve got all the fight out of my system.”

“I doubt that. Anyway, look me up in Athens. I still owe you a dinner.”

“I’ve eaten,” Brad said and walked quickly to the elevator. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of Pattison Blair coming in the front entrance, as he stepped into the cage. She would nail Dr. Johnson in the dining room, he reflected, and hoped the doctor was through the main course by this time. Pattison Blair looked determined. The elevator doors closed and he went upstairs, to catch up on a lot of lost sleep.

Key in hand, he approached the door of his room. He inserted the key and turned the lock. The door didn’t open. When the waiter arrived with the coffee, Brad was examining the key. The number on the tab matched the number on the door. The door should open.

“Trouble, sir?” the waiter asked.

“I think the lock’s jammed,” Brad said.

“Let me try it, sir.”

Balancing the tray with one hand, the waiter re-inserted the key and the door opened easily.

“You must have the touch,” Brad said.

The waiter switched on the light. “You must have left the door unlocked, sir,” he said. “Shall I put the tray on the coffee table?”

“That seems to be the place for it.”

“Yes, sir. Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No, thanks. That’s all.” Brad deposited a handful of Greek coins in the waiter’s hand and received a broad smile in return.

“I’ll get the tray in the morning, sir. Good night, sir.” When the waiter left the room, Brad locked the door with the safety catch. He hadn’t left the room unlocked—not with Harry’s fat wallet on display, on the dresser top. He crossed the room and checked the contents. Nothing was missing and so he turned his attention back to the pot of coffee. He drank the first cup with his shoes on; the second cup with his shoes off, and by the time the pot was empty he was down to his underwear and ready for that lovely mattress, which was so much more inviting than a shallow cave in the mountains. He was asleep as soon as he got under the blankets.

It was the persistent ringing of the telephone that awakened him. He opened his eyes, blinked at the sunlight streaming in through the window, and closed them again. He groped with one hand until he found the telephone and picked it up. A hearty voice boomed in his ear: “Smith? I got your number from the desk clerk. This is Rolf Johnson.”

“Johnson?” Brad repeated sleepily.

“Are you awake? Better get awake if you aren’t. It’s after seven and I just got word that transport’s taking off at nine-thirty. If you want to fly back to Athens, meet me at the registration desk in the lobby in an hour.”