The Burma Legacy (17 page)

She walked past Ingrid’s darkened office towards the wing which had been Perry’s domain. She touched her forefinger on the number pad. Typical of Perry to have sealed his private world with a combination lock. Enhancing the mystique which had drawn so many young women to him over the years. She remembered the feeling when given the code for this secret portal. That she was becoming a part of his exclusiveness. But they were just his tricks and she’d seen through them eventually. Seen that at the bottom of it all he was just a man, one who was making the most of his charisma and his still relatively youthful looks. And that would be the theme of her book. Not a debunking of Perry Harrison. Far from it.
There was no one she admired more. A portrait, warts and all. But unless she could find him and share his last days, the book might never be written.

She tapped in the number.

Inside the room the burglars heard it. A rattle like a mouse gnawing at a loose piece of wood.

The man at the computer was halfway through copying the hard-drive. He switched off the screen and waved his companion to the bedroom, then crouched behind the desk, heart thudding like a road drill.

The second man pressed his back against the bedroom wall. The apartment door opened, then closed again. The sound of breathing. Female. Laboured, like someone overweight. He heard feet pass, moving towards the living room. Then they stopped as the woman held her breath. She’d seen or heard something. Nothing for it. He reached into a pocket and closed his fingers round a small plastic tube.

Melissa knew something was wrong, but not
what
. There seemed to be a noise from the computer and it shouldn’t have been on. She stared into the corner where she knew the machine to be, but the screen was dark. And the rest of the living room too. Surprisingly dark. No moonlight coming through, the curtains tightly drawn, and they weren’t normally. A shiver ran up her spine. Was it … could it be possible that the man she admired most in the world had come back?

‘Perry?’

She fumbled for the torch in her pocket. Then, right behind her, a floorboard creaked.

‘Ingrid?’ she squeaked, beginning to turn.

Suddenly a hand clasped her mouth and nose, jerking her head back. She tasted latex. Then another hand hooked round her front, tugging at the buttons of her coat.

She tried to scream, but her voice wouldn’t work.

The hand wrenched open the quilting and began probing her nether regions. She groaned inwardly. She was to be raped. Her first sexual experience with a man and it would be an act of violence

She began to struggle, but too late. Something pricked the top of her thigh. She felt a sharp, stabbing pain, followed by a burning inside her leg. A second pair of hands was grappling with her now, pulling her off balance, tumbling her to the floor. She lay prone, feeling a heavy weight pressing on her knees. She wanted to kick but couldn’t. A slow wooziness came over her, like a sudden onset of drunkenness. Then a creeping numbness. A steady loss of feeling throughout her body.

Then nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The man who’d administered the injection pushed fingers against the artery in her neck. When he was sure her pulse was steady he breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Okay,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s get this fucking job over with.’

West London

The next day, Tuesday, 11 January, 7.30 a.m.

Sam stood by the living-room window looking into the street as Julie made her way to the tube. She was wrapped in a dark overcoat, collar up against the stiff breeze. They’d made it up last night. Agreed that all big decisions should be put on hold. She’d even withdrawn her ultimatum, admitting it had never really been serious anyway.

He retreated to the kitchen to make toast and fresh coffee. For now it was the job he had to concentrate on. Late last night Waddell had rung with a phone number for Robert Wetherby. It had been too late to call it then and it was still too early this morning. Not too early though for a report back on what the burglars had found at Bordhill Manor.

Sam was just finishing shaving when the call came from his controller.

‘There was a problem,’ Waddell began. ‘The team were disturbed.’

‘By whom?’

‘They don’t know. Some woman. They gave her a shot to knock her out.’

‘But who was it?’

‘Someone from the commune, they assumed. Aged about thirty. Rather overweight, with wiry hair.’

‘Oh God … Melissa probably. Harrison’s PA. She’d have had access to his flat. What did your psychos hit her with?’

‘A cocktail including rohypnol. So with a bit of luck she won’t remember anything about it.’

‘Hope they didn’t kill her.’

‘Don’t … What I’d like to know is what she was doing there.’

‘Same as us probably. Looking for evidence. I told her about Harrison’s letter to
The Times
and it shook her rigid. What did our guys get?’

‘Nothing.’

‘What?’

‘Sod all of any use. Copied his computer hard-drive only to find the thing had been spring cleaned. The disk had been formatted then reinstalled with just the basic programmes on it like it was a new machine. No document files or email software anywhere. Same with the stuff in his filing cabinet – they scanned a whole bunch of pages on the off-chance, but there was nothing of interest.’

‘Shit.’

‘Harrison was thorough,’ Waddell declared mournfully. ‘Extraordinarily thorough. And his disappearance clearly wasn’t a spur of the moment affair. But where he’s gone is as much a mystery as ever.’

‘It’s Myanmar,’ Sam declared. ‘Burma.’

Waddell grunted. ‘Find me proof and we’ll get you on your way.’

Sam waited until nine, then rang the number in Suffolk. It was answered by a dithering female voice. The woman, sounding elderly and a little confused, said her husband had taken an early train to London. Something going on at the Imperial War Museum. Burma veterans, but more than that she couldn’t remember.

He rang the Museum’s press office, claiming to be a stringer for the
Straits Times
. They told him of a reception at midday to mark the opening of an exhibition of war paintings.

He homed in on the green cupola and colonnaded portico of the Imperial War Museum at a quarter to twelve. The last time he’d come here was as a child with his submariner father. He remembered climbing on the 15-inch naval guns on the paved forecourt.

Inside, the building had been refurbished. An airy atrium held the hardware of conflict, ancient tanks vying for space with an omnibus used by troops in the First World War. Far above, fighter planes hung from wires beneath a glass roof. Sam made his way to the stairwell and pressed the button for a lift.

The glass-fronted art galleries were on the second floor. Above one of them a banner bore the words
The Jungle War
. Beyond the glass he could see caterers putting finishing touches to a drinks table in the centre of the room. The walls were hung with pencil drawings and watercolours. A poster told him they’d been done from sketches made during the Burma war.

Sam moved away and leaned against a balcony to
wait for the guests to arrive. Before long two men emerged from the lifts, their dark blazers glittering with regimental badges. Guided by a museum assistant, they walked with the aid of sticks. Each looked about eighty. Harrison’s age.

Doubts crept in again. How could
any
man of that vintage travel halfway round the world to kill someone?

He approached the pair.

‘Excuse me. I’m looking for Robert Wetherby …’

‘Oh he’ll be along.’ The old man’s voice was surprisingly strong. ‘Never misses a free drink. Know him, do you?’

‘No. No I don’t.’

‘Purple birthmark on the side of his face. Spot him a mile off. What’s it about?’ The old soldier’s eyes burned with curiosity.

‘Oh, a family matter.’ Sam saw the gallery doors being opened behind them. ‘Enjoy the reception.’

The old men turned to look. ‘Kicking off, are they? Come on Frank. Let’s get at it.’ They marched unsteadily towards the drinks table.

The lift disgorged a steady stream of war veterans. Most could walk unaided, but two were being wheeled by fitter colleagues.

It was a quarter past twelve before the man he was looking for emerged. Straight-backed and with a thin slick of grey hair, he wore a thorn-proof suit of brown and green. Sam stepped forward.

‘Mr Wetherby?’

The man’s birthmark made his smile appear lopsided.

‘How d’you do …’

‘My name’s Stephen Maxwell. I work for the Foreign Office.’

Wetherby’s face darkened, his eyes flickering with alarm. ‘Nothing to do with this?’ He swung an arm towards the gallery.

‘No. I wanted to talk to you about Perry Harrison. We’re very concerned about him.’

‘Are you?’ Wetherby sounded wary.

‘I’ve been told you were one of his oldest friends and hoped you’d know where he was.’

‘I’m sure Perry will make his whereabouts known if he wants to be found.’

Sam gritted his teeth. This wasn’t going to be easy.

‘I spoke to his son Charles. He told me his father hasn’t long to live, Mr Wetherby. Would you mind – after the reception – if we had a chat?’

‘There’s no point. I can’t tell you anything.’ The old man waved at another veteran and called across to say he’d be joining him in a minute. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Maxwell. Stephen Maxwell.’

‘How did you know I’d be here?’

‘Your wife …’

Wetherby’s eyes registered annoyance. ‘All right. We can talk. In about an hour. After this shindig’s over. Where will you be?’

‘Here. I’ll be waiting for you. And there’s a café on the ground floor we could go to.’

‘Very well.’ Wetherby turned and made a beeline for the drinks table beyond the glass doors.

Sam took the lift to the ground floor and whiled away the time looking at the displays.

It was one o’clock when he returned to the upper level. The frailer veterans were already leaving. Wetherby was still inside however, laughing with a couple of comrades at the far end of the room.

Ten minutes later he emerged, pausing by the door to compose himself before coming across to Sam.

‘They must mean a lot, occasions like these,’ Sam ventured as they took the lift to the ground floor.

‘It’s a chance for a laugh. But there are fewer of us each time.’ He said it quite matter-of-factly.

‘Would Perry normally have come to a do like this?’

‘Probably not. He wasn’t good at reunions.’

Sam led the way into the café, found them a table, then queued at the counter. Wetherby had asked for tea. When he returned with the tray the old soldier cocked his head and narrowed his eyes.

‘Look, it’s no good asking me where Perry is,’ he said, ‘because I don’t know.’

In terms of his precise location it was probably true, Sam guessed. ‘When did you last see him?’

Wetherby thought carefully about his answer. ‘Sometime around Christmas.’ The eyes flickered when he said it. Sam suspected it was more recently than that.

‘You’ve known each other since the war?’

‘We were prisoners together in Rangoon. Before that we’d each been held at different internment centres. Fought with different units too. My lot fell
into Jap hands when they invaded in 1942, so I had a year more of being locked up than Perry. We knew of each other’s existence in the prison but weren’t friends particularly. That came later.’

‘When?’

‘Oh, long after the war.’ He picked up his cup and sipped the tea, beginning to look more at ease. ‘Nineteen-sixty-three to be precise. We bumped into each other – at Green Park tube. Literally. At the top of the steps. He nearly knocked me down them. Apologised profusely for his carelessness, then we both recognised each other.’

‘And that was it?’

‘Well, yes. We’ve been friends ever since. I suppose we discovered we had more in common than we’d thought.’

‘Your past, you mean?’

‘And our present. The same sort of problems.’ He picked a sugar lump from the bowl on the table and rolled it across the surface like a dice.

‘Nightmares? That sort of thing?’

‘Well, yes. Most of us had those, although Perry’s seemed more persistent than mine. And there was guilt – you’d seen your mates being used for bayonet practice or wasting away in prison, and you sort of felt bad about surviving. Hard to talk about except with somebody else who’d been through it.’

‘You’d had similar experiences after the war?’

‘No. Very different. I’d been a regular soldier before ’39 and stayed in afterwards for another five years. And I got married soon after coming back. Both of those things gave stability to my life. I mean
Perry got hitched too, but it didn’t work out. He’s like a man suffering from tinnitus, you know. Or with a mosquito in his ear. Some irritation in his head that’s always made it hard for him to settle. Never worked out if it’s because of what he went through in Burma or whether it’s in the genes.’

‘But after that reunion you saw each other regularly?’

‘Perry was of no fixed abode at that point. He’d just left Dorothy for the second time. Full of grandiose plans for founding his commune. I invited him to stay with us until he got himself somewhere permanent.’

‘Were you living in Suffolk then?’

‘Yes. I’d set up an electronics business in Bury St Edmunds. Servicing and spare parts for hi-fi and TV sets. Employed 135 people at one stage,’ he added proudly. ‘We’d moved into computers by the time I sold out.’

Sam’s antennae twitched. ‘You must be quite a techie.’

‘Trained in the Royal Signals.’

So he would almost certainly know how to format a hard-drive, Sam surmised.

‘Did he talk to you about his illness?’

‘Not much.’ Wetherby leaned back and folded his arms as if deciding he’d said enough. ‘Look, I’m sorry I can’t help you.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Need to be on my way in a minute. There’s a train at a quarter past the hour.’

‘Charles said his father had unresolved issues from his past.’

‘Wouldn’t know about that …’

‘In Burma. His ex-wife. And a son who’s a political prisoner. Khin Thein?’