The Amber Knight (13 page)

‘You saw them, I didn’t.’

‘It wasn’t a trade fair. They weren’t wearing name badges.’ Adam glanced out of the window. The sun was still low in the sky. A family was breakfasting at a log table and bench at the side of the road. Mother, father and three beautiful blond children, the standard, nuclear family so beloved of advertising companies. Further along a group of teenagers were thumping a volleyball over a net in a school yard. He opened the window and breathed in the scents of morning and pine woods. The scenes and the day were peaceful and normal, but that didn’t prevent him from checking the mirrors either side of the car. The road was empty behind them, but he didn’t relax until they joined the dual carriageway out of Elbag.

‘Another hour and we’ll be in Gdansk.’ Josef adjusted his rear-view mirror. ‘Elizbieta looks exhausted.’

‘With any luck she’ll sleep until we return her to Feliks.’

‘Don’t enjoy troilism?’

‘I don’t enjoy hysterical females.’

‘You can hardly blame them after what you’ve put them through.’

‘I don’t blame them for anything, only Elizbieta. Magdalena’s either a very brave, very cool cookie, or just plain stupid.’

‘I grew up with her. She’s not stupid, which is why I’m putting a guard on her as soon as we reach Gdansk.’

‘You think she’s at risk from the Mafia?’

‘I’m not taking any chances.’

‘She’s not going to like it.’

‘Then you’ll just have to explain why a guard’s necessary.’ Josef slammed his foot on the accelerator and overtook a car being driven by an elderly woman.

‘Why me?’ Adam demanded

‘You pay her wages. People listen to their paymasters.’

Adam turned his head again to see Magdalena sitting tense and awake behind him. He opened the glass panel.

‘You think those men in the Mercedes had something to do with Brunon, don’t you?’ she asked.

‘From what Adam’s told me they could have been anyone, Magda,’ Josef prevaricated. ‘They were probably just thugs looking to mug a couple of tourists.’

‘But if they were after Brunon they could be at my apartment by now. My brothers…’

‘Have police protection,’ Josef interrupted.

‘To guard against kidnappers? Or in the hope they’ll lead you to my husband?’

Josef maintained a tactical silence.

‘Brunon’s grandmother is frail. She won’t be able to cope with this…’

‘She left to visit her sister the morning you disappeared. We were hoping you could help us with an address.’

‘Oltzyn.’

‘Oltzyn?’ Josef repeated, hoping for more.

‘That’s all I know. She goes there two or three times a year, usually after she’s had a letter pleading for help. Her sister’s an invalid.’

‘Those men in the Mercedes were heading for my side of the car, Magdalena,’ Adam reassured her. ‘I’d lay a zloty to a grosz they’re holding the Amber Knight and they’re pissed off with us for going to Krefta’s apartment.’

‘I didn’t see any sign of them on the way to Kaliningrad.’

‘We probably picked them up there. I should have realised they’d watch Krefta’s place after putting out his photograph with the information on the knight.’

‘You don’t expect me to believe those men want to protect that filthy apartment in Kaliningrad?’

Irritated at being excluded from the conversation, Elizbieta opened her eyes. ‘Something tells me you didn’t tell me the whole story on this knight of yours.’

‘I told you all I know,’ Adam protested.

‘You know how hire cars attract attention.’ Josef turned off onto the slip road that led into Gdansk. ‘It’s probably the old story, broke Polish peasant sees three well dressed people sitting in a car with a sticker advertising a rental company…’

‘No broke Polish peasant I know drives a Mercedes with Russian plates,’ Magdalena interrupted.

‘There’s a bottle of brandy in the first aid kit under my seat. Why don’t you open it?’ Josef suggested, tired of speculation that wasn’t taking them any closer to solutions.

‘You’re a policeman and you’re driving,’ Adam reminded.

‘You aren’t, and Elizbieta looks as though she could do with a medicinal belt.’

Adam turned around and touched Magdalena’s arm as she reached for the brandy. ‘You all right?’

‘Perfectly well,’ she replied in a strained voice.

He wished he could believe her.

Disregarding the no entry signs, Josef drove directly to Mariacka Street and dropped Elizbieta outside Feliks’s shop, but not before she’d extracted a cheque from Adam’s wrinkled cheque book.

‘Conference in my office?’ Josef suggested to Adam.

‘I refuse to go anywhere in a white boiler suit.’

‘We should talk.’

‘Give us a couple of hours to eat and change.’

‘I have to see my brothers,’ Magdalena insisted.

‘If it will make you any happier, I’ll check with their guards now.’ Josef picked up the radio telephone and made contact with his control office. After a few minutes of static-filled conversation he was able to reassure her. ‘The boys are safely under escort at school, and you have my word they’ll stay that way.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘If you won’t come back to the station now, how about lunch in the Milan?’

‘We’ll be there.’ Adam opened the car door. ‘Know any good dress shops around here?’ he asked as he helped Magdalena out of the back. ‘If you do, I’ll get Waleria to buy you an outfit.’

‘I’d rather go home.’

‘Like that?’

‘It’s the utility look.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t go anywhere, especially the Milan, dressed like a window cleaner.’

‘I’d rather not go to the Milan at all.’

‘You have to eat, woman. If you’d rather go somewhere else, say the word and I’ll call Josef,’ he offered impatiently as he led the way to his back door.

‘It’s not the Milan that’s the problem, it’s you. I don’t want you to buy me outfits, and I don’t want to be seen with you, especially in a restaurant. You know how people talk. You run the Institute and I’m an employee, a married woman…’

‘Which your husband seems to have conveniently forgotten.’

‘My private life –’

‘Is private,’ he interrupted. ‘I got the message a long time ago. Let’s get a couple of things straight. I’m not making a pass at you, only offering you a replacement outfit, which is no more than I’ve given Elizbieta. I got you into a mess, the least you can let me do is foot the bill. And both of us have to eat…’

‘And wash. There’s a bathroom in the apartment in the Historical Museum. You can send the clothes over there.’

‘I’m not leaving you on your own until Brunon’s back in custody.’ Adam opened the back door to his building.

‘You can’t be with me every minute of every day.’

‘No,’ he agreed patiently, ‘but I can stay with you until Josef posts a round-the-clock guard to shadow you as he’s done with your brothers.’

‘Adam…’

‘For once you’re going to do as you’re told.’ He pulled her into the building after him.

‘Despite what you said in the car, you think those men in the Mercedes were after me, don’t you?’ It was phrased as a question, but both of them knew it wasn’t one.

‘Whether they were or they weren’t, neither Josef nor I will regard you as safe until Brunon’s been found.’

‘And if they were after you?’

‘You can protect me,’ he answered glibly.

She waited while he locked the door behind them. ‘Brunon never told me anything about his affairs even when we were living together.’

‘I believe you, but it looks like there are a few other people who need convincing.’

‘He’s always been a thief. Ever since we were kids.’ She followed him up the stairs. ‘If he wanted something and didn’t have the money to buy it, he took it. I thought things would change after the Revolution. They did, but for the worse. There were more things for Brunon to want, and less money than ever to buy them with.’

‘At least he seems to have stolen from his own kind this time.’

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I married him.’

‘Is that an invitation to ask, so you can tell me to mind my own business again?’

‘No,’ she answered seriously. ‘An attempt to tell you that I’m honest and I’ve brought my brothers up to be the same.’

‘You wouldn’t be working for the Institute if I thought otherwise. It also might be a good idea for you and your family to move into the flat in the Historical Museum until this Brunon situation is resolved one way or another.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘The Mafia isn’t going to stop looking for Brunon just because Josef’s put a guard on your family. If you won’t consider yourself think of your brothers…’ He froze in the stairwell as voices drifted down from the floor above.

‘Are those coming from your apartment?’

‘Run down to the gallery and ask Waleria to call the police.’

‘You can’t go up there alone.’

Waleria walked up from the gallery to meet them. ‘I thought I heard you coming in. Your sister’s arrived.’

‘And you gave her the key?’ Adam ran up the final flight of stairs. The door was ajar, his apartment in chaos. A tall, effeminate man, with shoulder length blond curls, dressed in a black leather biker suit, was hovering over Georgiana who was lying on the sofa. She had a glass of wine in one hand, a telephone in the other and was haranguing the international operator. As Adam picked up a bottle of duty-free bourbon that had scarred the surface of the limed oak table next to her, a crash resounded from the gallery. He looked up to see his nephew Niklas sitting at his desk banging away at his computer.

‘If you’ve cracked my security code and messed up my records, I’ll kill you.’ Ignoring Georgiana and momentarily forgetting Magdalena he pounded up the stairs.

‘A bozo could have cracked your code,’ the thirteen-year-old goaded him. ‘No one uses “Open Sesame” any more – it went out with steam driven computers.’

‘This shirt is tasty.’

Adam whirled around to see his eleven-year-old niece wrapped in his most expensive silk shirt and very little else.

‘Janine, get that off this minute!’

‘Mom, Uncle Adam wants me to strip naked.’

‘Really, Adam, you’re behaving like a bear,’ Georgiana drawled, not bothering to cover the mouthpiece of the telephone. ‘You haven’t even allowed me to introduce Casimir, or told us the name of your friend.’

He looked down to see Magdalena hovering in the doorway. ‘Come in, Magdalena, but don’t shut the door. My sister and her entourage are leaving.’

‘Looks like we’ll have to.’ Georgiana waved a manicured hand in Magdalena’s direction. ‘I sent Nanny and the maid to investigate this Grand Hotel of yours. Why didn’t you tell me that you live in one room? The woman downstairs said you don’t even have a housekeeper. Really, Adam, what are you trying to prove? That you can slum it like the natives?’

‘Magdalena happens to be a native.’

‘No insult intended. They’re accustomed to a rudimentary lifestyle, we’re not.’

‘I happen to like my lifestyle just the way it is.’ Pulling the plug on the computer, he yanked Janine’s hand out of his wardrobe and slammed the door. ‘You two, down the stairs, stand by the door, and don’t touch a thing until the taxi arrives.’

‘What taxi?’ Georgiana asked.

‘The one I’m going to call for you.’

‘I’m not leaving here until Nanny rings back with her judgment on the hotel.’ Giving up on the operator, Georgiana replaced the receiver, and buried her hand in Casimir’s hair.

The bathroom door opened and a ravishingly beautiful woman, with flawless skin, a perfect figure and a shimmering halo of blonde hair stood in the doorway. She summed up the chaotic scene in a single smiling glance. ‘I’m Courtney von Bielstein Salen, Adam’s wife.’ She held out her hand to Magdalena, but her attention remained riveted on Adam.

‘Magdalena Janca, I’ve been seconded to the Salen Institute from the Historical Museum.’

‘Then you work for Adam.’

‘We both work for the Institute.’ Adam didn’t bother to conceal his irritation at Courtney’s presence.

‘You must show me around this museum of yours, Magdalena,’ Courtney continued smoothly. ‘We’ll be here for a while, and I intend to take in all the sights.’

‘From the Grand Hotel,’ Adam said firmly.

‘Your grandfather’s been trying to get in touch with you for a few days, darling,’ Courtney purred, very much the caring wife. ‘He’s been worried…’

‘I’ll ring him.’ Adam cut her short and dialled the local taxi service. ‘As you won’t all fit into one car, I’ll order two. They’ll be at the back door in twenty minutes. I suggest you wait for them in the gallery downstairs.’

‘Twenty minutes!’ Georgiana rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re not in the States.’ He turned to Niklas who was creeping back up the mezzanine. ‘Touch that computer again and I’ll get Granddad to suspend your pocket money for the next ten years.’

‘Mom gives me my pocket money,’ Niklas countered.

‘Granddad gives her hers.’

‘Aren’t you going tell us what you’ve been doing in this God-forsaken neck of the woods?’ Georgiana complained as he pounded up the stairs to his wardrobe.

‘Magdalena and I have an important lunch date. Business,’ he elaborated, reading the expression in Courtney’s eyes. ‘We only called in here to freshen up.’

‘I take it white boiler suits are all the rage in Gdansk?’ Courtney beamed at Magdalena.

‘Ladies first.’ Adam threw a towelling robe down the stairs. ‘I’ll get Waleria to send out for some clothes.’

‘Jeans and shirt, please. I could do with a new pair. And size 42 shoes.’ Magdalena caught the robe and disappeared into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

‘And before either of you say a word,’ Adam glared at his sister and Courtney, ‘we lost our clothes in an accident. The only thing between Magdalena and me is work.’

‘I didn’t doubt it for a moment, darling.’ Courtney walked slowly up the stairs towards him. ‘No capitalist playboy could possibly be interested in a woman who wears boiler suits and scrapes her hair back in that unbecoming fashion. And she’s so tall, practically the same height as you.’

The phone rang. Before Adam was half way down the stairs, Georgiana was cooing into the receiver, her hand still fondling Casimir’s thick curls. Taking advantage of the distraction, the children ran back up on to the mezzanine. Adam shouted yet another dire threat to Niklas before retreating into the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator he pulled out a bottle of vodka and downed a stiff measure before remembering it was early morning, and he’d only eaten half a dozen salami sandwiches in the past three days.