The Great Pursuit (22 page)

'Have they no idea who did it?' he asked.

'Only some terrorist group,' said Sonia. Frensic swallowed.

'Terrorist group? Why should a terrorist group want to kill poor Piper?'

'Well because of all the publicity he got in that riot in New York,' said Sonia. 'You see when
we landed...'

She told the story of their arrival and Frensic listened in horror. 'You mean Hutchmeyer
deliberately provoked a riot? The man's mad.'

'He wanted to get maximum publicity,' Sonia explained.

'Well he's certainly succeeded,' said Frensic.

But Sonia was sobbing again. 'You're just callous,' she wept. 'You don't seem to see what this
means...'

'I do,' said Frensic, 'it means the police are going to start looking into Piper's background
and...'

That we're to blame,' cried Sonia, 'we sent him over and we are the ones '

'Now hold it,' said Frensic, 'if I'd known Hutchmeyer was going to rent a riot for his welcome
I would never have consented to his going. And as for terrorists...'

'The police aren't absolutely certain it was terrorists. They thought at first that Hutchmeyer
had murdered him.'

'That's more like it,' said Frensic. 'From what you've told me it's nothing more than the
truth. He's an accessory before the fact. If he hadn't...'

'And then they seemed to think the Mafia could be involved.'

Frensic swallowed again. This was even worse. 'The Mafia? What would the Mafia want to kill
Piper for? The poor little sod hadn't...'

'Not Piper. Hutchmeyer.'

'You mean the Mafia were trying to kill Hutchmeyer?' said Frensic wistfully.

'I don't know what I mean,' said Sonia, 'I'm telling you what I heard the police say and they
mentioned that Hutchmeyer had had dealings with organized crime.'

'If the Mafia wanted to kill Hutchmeyer why did they pick on Piper?'

'Because Hutch and I were out on the yacht and Peter and Baby...'

'What baby?' said Frensic desperately incorporating this new and grisly ingredient into an
already cluttered crimescape.

'Baby Hutchmeyer.'

'Baby Hutchmeyer? I didn't know the swine had any...'

'Not that sort of baby. Mrs Hutchmeyer. She was called Baby.'

'Good God,' said Frensic.

'There's no need to be so heartless. You sound as if you didn't care.'

'Care?' said Frensic. 'Of course I care. This is absolutely frightful. And you say the
Mafia...'

'No I didn't. I said that's what the police said. They thought it was some sort of attempt to
intimidate Hutchmeyer.'

'And has it?' asked Frensic trying to extract a morsel of comfort from the situation.

'No,' said Sonia, 'he's out for blood. He says he's going to sue them.'

Frensic was horrified. 'Sue them? What do you mean "sue them"? You can't sue the Mafia and
anyway...'

'Not them. The police.'

'Hutchmeyer's going to sue the police?' said Frensic now totally out of his depth.

'Well first off they accused him of doing it. They held him for hours and grilled him. They
didn't believe his story that he was out on the yacht with me. And then the gas cans didn't
help.'

'Gas can? What gas can?'

'The ones I tied round his waist.'

'You tied gas cans round Hutchmeyer's waist?' said Frensic.

'I had to. To stop him from drowning.'

Frensic considered the logic of this remark and found it wanting. 'I should have thought...'
he began before deciding there was nothing to be gained by regretting that Hutchmeyer hadn't been
left to drown. It would have saved a lot of trouble.

'What are you going to do now?' he asked finally.

'I don't know,' said Sonia, 'I've got to wait around. The police are still making enquiries
and I've lost all my clothes...and oh Frenzy it's all so horrible.' She broke down again and
wept. Frensic tried to think of something to cheer her up.

'You'll be interested to hear that the reviews in the Sunday papers were all good,' he said
but Sonia's grief was not assuaged.

'How can you talk about reviews at a time like this?' she said. 'You just don't care is
all.'

'My dear I do. I most certainly do,' said Frensic, 'it's a tragedy for all of us. I've just
been speaking to Mr Cadwalladine and explaining that in the light of what has happened his client
will have to wait for his money.'

'Money? Money? Is that all you think about, money? My darling Peter is dead and...'

Frensic listened to a diatribe against himself, Hutchmeyer and someone called MacMordie, all
of whom in Sonia's opinion thought only about money. 'I understand your feelings,' he said when
she paused for breath, 'but money does come into this business and if Hutchmeyer finds out that
Piper wasn't the author of Pause...'

But the phone had gone dead. Frensic looked at it reproachfully and replaced the receiver. All
he could hope now was that Sonia kept her wits about her and that the police didn't carry their
investigations too far into Piper's past history.

In New York Hutchmeyer's feelings were just the reverse. In his opinion the police were a
bunch of half-wits who couldn't investigate anything properly. He had already been in touch with
his lawyers only to be advised that there was no chance of sueing Chief Greensleeves for wrongful
arrest because he hadn't been arrested.

'That bastard held me for hours with nothing on but a blanket,' Hutchmeyer protested. 'They
grilled me under hot lamps and you tell me I've got no comeback. There ought to be a law
protecting innocent citizens against that kind of victimization.'

'Now if you could show they'd roughed you up a bit we could maybe do something but as it
is...'

Having failed to get satisfaction from his own lawyers Hutchmeyer turned his attention to the
insurance company and got even less comfort there. Mr Synstrom of the Claims Department visited
him and expressed doubts.

'What do you mean you don't necessarily go along with the police theory that some crazy
terrorists did this thing?' Hutchmeyer demanded.

Mr Synstrom's eyes glinted behind silver-rimmed spectacles. 'Three and a half million dollars
is a lot of money,' he said.

'Of course it is,' said Hutchmeyer, 'and I've been paying my premiums and that's a lot of
money too. So what are you telling me?'

Mr Synstrom consulted his briefcase. 'The Coastguard recovered six suitcases belonging to Mrs
Hutchmeyer. That's one. They contained all her jewellery and her best clothing. That's two. Three
is that Mr Piper's suitcase was on board that boat and we've checked it contained all his clothes
too.'

'So what?' said Hutchmeyer.

'So if this is a political murder it seems peculiar that the terrorists made them pack their
bags first and loaded them aboard the cruiser and then set fire to the boat and arsoned the
house. That doesn't fit the profile of terrorist acts of crime. It looks like something else
again.'

Hutchmeyer glared at him. 'If you're suggesting I blew myself up in my own yacht and bumped my
wife and most promising author...'

'I'm not suggesting anything,' Mr Synstrom said, 'all I'm saying is that we've got to go into
this thing a lot deeper.'

'Yeah, well you do that,' said Hutchmeyer, 'and when you've finished I want my money.'

'Don't worry,' said Mr Synstrom, 'we'll get to the bottom of this thing. With three and a half
million at stake we've incentive.'

He got up and made for the door. 'Oh and by the way it may interest you to know that whoever
arsoned your house knew exactly where everything was. Like the fuel store. This could have been
an inside job.'

He left Hutchmeyer with the uncomfortable notion that if the cops were morons, Mr Synstrom and
his investigators weren't. An inside job? Hutchmeyer thought about the words. And all Baby's
jewellery on board. Maybe...just supposing she had been going to run off with that jerk Piper?
Hutchmeyer permitted himself the luxury of a smile. If that was the case the bitch had got what
was coming to her. Just so long as those incriminating documents she had deposited with her
lawyers didn't suddenly turn up. That wasn't such a pleasant prospect. Why couldn't Baby have
gone some simpler way, like a coronary?

In Maine the Van der Hoogens' mansion was shuttered and shrouded and empty. As Baby had
promised their departure had passed unnoticed. Leaving Piper alone in the dim twilight of the
house she had simply walked into Bellsworth and bought a car, a second-hand estate.

'We'll ditch it in New York and buy something different,' she said as they drove south. 'We
don't want to leave any trail behind us.'

Piper, lying on the floor in the back, did not share her confidence. 'That's all very well,'
he grumbled, 'but they're still going to be looking for us when they don't find our bodies out in
the bay. I mean it stands to reason.'

But Baby drove on unperturbed. 'They'll reckon we were washed out to sea by the tide,' she
said. 'That's what would have happened if we had really drowned. Besides I heard in Bellsworth
they picked up your passport and my jewels in the bags they found. They've got to believe we're
dead. A woman like me doesn't part with pearls and diamonds until the good Lord sends for
her.'

Piper lay on the floor and found some sense in this argument. Certainly Frensic & Futtle
would believe he was dead and without his passport and his ledgers...'Did they find my notebooks
too?' he asked.

'Didn't mention them but if they got your passport, and they did, it's even money your
notebooks were with them.'

'I don't know what I'm going to do without my notebooks,' said Piper, 'they contained my
life's work.'

He lay back and watched the tops of the trees flashing past and the blue sky beyond, and
thought about his life's work. He would never finish Search for a Lost Childhood now. He would
never be recognized as a literary genius. All his hopes had been destroyed in the blaze and its
aftermath. He would go through what remained of his existence on earth posthumously famous as the
author of Pause O Men for the Virgin. It was an intolerable thought and provoked in him a growing
determination to put the record straight. There had to be some way of issuing a disclaimer. But
disclaimers from beyond the grave were not easy to fabricate. He could hardly write to the Times
Literary Supplement pointing out that he hadn't in fact written Pause but that its authorship had
been foisted on to him by Frensic & Futtle for their own dubious ends. Letters signed 'the
late Peter Piper'...No, that was definitely out. On the other hand it was insufferable to go down
in literary history as a pornographer. Piper wrestled with the problem and finally fell
asleep.

When he woke they had crossed the state line and were in Vermont. That night they booked into
a small motel on the shores of Lake Champlain as Mr and Mrs Castorp. Baby signed the register
while Piper carried two empty suitcases purloined from the Van der Hoogen mansion into the
cabin.

'We'll have to buy some clothes and things tomorrow,' said Baby. But Piper was not concerned
with such material details. He stood at the window staring out and tried to adjust himself to the
extraordinary notion that to all intents and purposes he was married to this crazy woman.

'You realize we are never going to be able to separate,' he said at last.

'I don't see why not,' said Baby from the depths of the shower.

'Well for one simple reason I haven't got an identity and can't get a job,' said Piper, 'and
for another you've got all the money and if either of us gets picked up by the police we'll go to
prison for the rest of our lives.'

'You worry too much,' said Baby. 'This is the land of opportunity. We'll go some place nobody
will think of looking and begin all over again.'

'Such as where?'

Baby emerged from the shower. 'Like the South. The Deep South,' she said. 'That's one place
Hutchmeyer is never going to come. He's got this thing about the Ku Klux Klan. South of the
Mason-Dixon he's never been.'

'And what the hell am I going to do in the Deep South?' asked Piper.

'You could always try your hand at writing Southern novels. Hutch may not go South but he
certainly publishes a lot of novels about it. They usually have this man with a whip and a girl
cringing on the cover. Surefire bestsellers.'

'Sounds just my sort of book,' said Piper grimly and took a shower himself.

'You could always write it under a pseudonym.'

'Thanks to you I'd bloody well have to.'

As night fell outside the cabin Piper crawled into bed and lay thinking about the future. In
the twin bed beside him Baby sighed.

'It's great to be with a man who doesn't pee in the washbasin,' she murmured. Piper resisted
the invitation without difficulty.

The next morning they moved on again, following back roads and driving slowly and always
south. And always Piper's mind nagged away at the problem of how to resume his interrupted
career.

In Scranton, where Baby traded the estate for a new Ford, Piper took the opportunity to buy
two new ledgers, a bottle of Higgins Ink and an Esterbrook pen.

'If I can't do anything else I can at least keep a diary,' he explained to Baby.

'A diary? You don't even look at the landscape and we eat in McDonalds so what's to put in a
diary?'

'I was thinking of writing it retrospectively. As a form of vindication. I would '

'Vindication? And how can you write a diary retrospectively?'

'Well I'd start with how I was approached by Frensic to come to the States and then work my
way forward day by day with the voyage across and everything. That way it would look
authentic.'

Baby slowed the car and pulled into a rest area. 'Let's just get this straight. You write the
diary backwards...'

'Yes, I think it was April the 10th Frensic sent me the telegram...'

'Go on. You start 10 April and then what?'

'Well then I'd write how I didn't want to do it and how they persuaded me and promised to get
Search published and everything.'