The Night Manager (10 page)

Goodhew, out of his Christian decency, had invited Palfrey to Kentish Town at summer weekends to drink Pimm's in the garden and play silly cricket with the kids, well aware that, in his shabby, grinning way, Palfrey was near the dangerous edge.

And after dinner, Goodhew had left Palfrey at the table with his wife so that he could pour out his soul to her, because there is nothing that dissolute men like better than confessing themselves to virtuous women.

And it was in the afterglow of one such luxurious unbaring that Harry Palfrey, with pathetic alacrity, volunteered to become Goodhew's informant on the backstairs machinations of certain wayward barons at the River House.

FIVE

Zürich huddled low beside the lake, shivering under a freezing grey cloud.

"My name's Leonard," Burr announced, hauling himself out of Quayle's office chair like someone about to intervene in a brawl. "I do crooks. Smoke? Here. Poison yourself."

He made the offer sound so much like a jovial conspiracy that Jonathan obeyed at once and--though he smoked rarely and always regretted it afterwards--took a cigarette. Burr drew a lighter from his pocket, cocked it and fired it at Jonathan's face.

"I expect you think we let you down, don't you?" he said, going for the point of most resistance. "You and Ogilvey had quite a how-d'you-do before you left Cairo, if I'm correct."

I thought you let her down, Jonathan almost replied. But his guard was up, so he gave his hotelier's smile and said, "Oh, nothing terminal, I'm sure."

Burr had thought carefully about this moment and decided on attack as his best defence. Never mind he harboured the worst suspicions of Ogilvey's part in the affair: this was no moment to suggest he was speaking for a divided house.

"We're not paid to be spectators, Jonathan. Dicky Roper was flogging some very high-tech toys to the Thief of Baghdad, including a kilo of weapons-grade uranium, which had fallen off the back of a Russian lorry. Freddie Hamid was laying on a fleet of relief trucks to smuggle the stuff through Jordan. What were we supposed to do? File and forget?" Burr was gratified to see Jonathan's face set in the kind of rebellious obedience that reminded him of himself. "There's a dozen ways the story could have leaked without anybody pointing the finger at your Sophie. If she'd not shot her mouth off at Freddie she'd be sitting pretty to this day."

"She wasn't my Sophie," Jonathan put in too fast.

Burr affected not to hear. "Question is, how do we nail our chum? I've a couple of ideas on that subject if you're interested."

He gave a warm smile. "That's right. You've spotted it, I can see. I'm common Yorkshire. And our chum Mr. Richard Onslow Roper, he's quality. Well, that's his tough luck!"

Jonathan laughed dutifully, and Burr was grateful to find himself on dry land the other side of Sophie's murder. "Come on, Jonathan, I'll buy you lunch. You won't mind us, Reggie? Only we're strapped for time, see. You've been a good scout. I'll pass the word."

In his haste, Burr failed to notice his cigarette burning in Quayle's ashtray. Jonathan stubbed it out, sorry to be saying goodbye. Quayle was a bluff, twitchy soul, with a habit of beating his mouth with a handkerchief that he whipped, Services style, from his sleeve; or of suddenly offering you biscuits from a tax-free tartan tin. In the weeks of waiting, Jonathan had come to rely on their quaint, inarticulate sessions.

And so, he realised as he left, had Reggie Quayle.

"Thanks, Reggie," he said. "Thanks for everything."

"My dear chap! Pleasure all mine! Travel well, sir. Keep your arse to the sunset!"

"Thanks. You too."

"Got transport okay? Wheels? Whistle you up a barouche? All fixed? Jolly good. Wrap up warm, now. See you in Philippi."

"You always thank people for doing their job, do you?" Burr asked as they stepped onto the pavement. "I suppose you learn to, in your trade."

"Oh, I think I like to be polite," Jonathan replied. "If that's what you mean."

As always for an operational encounter, Burr's field manners had been meticulous. He had chosen his restaurant in advance; he had inspected it the night before: an out-of-town lakeside trattoria, unlikely to attract the Meister set. He had chosen his corner table and for ten cautious Yorkshire francs to the head waiter reserved it in one of his work names, Benton. But he was taking no chances.

"If we bump into someone you know and I don't, Jonathan, which as you are no doubt aware is Sod's Law in this game, don't explain me. If you're driven to it, I'm your old barrack-mate from Shorncliffe and switch to the weather," he said, thus incidentally demonstrating that he had done his homework on Jonathan's early life. "Doing any climbing these days?"

"A bit."

"Where?"

"Bernese Oberland mainly."

"Anything spectacular?"

"Quite a decent Wetterhorn during the cold spell if you like ice. Why? Do you climb?"

If Burr recognised the mischief in Jonathan's question, he chose to ignore it. "Me? I'm the fellow who takes the lift to the second floor. How about your sailing?" Burr glanced at the window, where the grey lake smouldered like a bog.

"It's all pretty much kiddie stuff round here," said Jonathan. "Thun's not bad. Cold, though."

"And painting? Watercolours, wasn't it? Still dabble, do you?"

"Not often."

"But now and then. What's your tennis like?"

"Middling."

"I'm serious."

"Well, good club standard, I suppose."

"I thought you won some competition in Cairo."

Jonathan gave a modest blush. "Oh, that was just some exiles' knockabout."

"Let's do the hard work first, shall we?" Burr suggested. He meant: let's choose our food so that we can talk in peace.

"You're a bit of a cook yourself, aren't you?" he enquired as they hid their faces in the overlarge menus. "A man of parts. I admire that. There's not a lot of Renaissance blokes about these days. Too many specialists."

Jonathan turned the page from meat to fish to dessert, thinking not of food but of Sophie. He was standing before Mark Ogilvey in his grand ministerial house in Cairo's green suburbs, surrounded by fake eighteenth-century furniture assembled by the Ministry of Works, and Roberts prints assembled by Ogilvey's wife. He was wearing his dinner jacket, and in his mind it was still coated with Sophie's blood. He was shouting, but when he heard his voice it sounded like a sonar echo.

He was cursing Ogilvey to hell and back, and sweat was running down the undersides of his wrists. Ogilvey was wearing his dressing gown, a mousy brown thing with a drum major's frayed gold frogging on the sleeves. Mrs. Ogilvey was making tea so that she could listen.

"Watch your language, do you mind, old boy?" said Ogilvey, pointing at the chandelier to remind him of the risk of microphones.

"Damn my language! You've killed her, do you hear me? You're supposed to protect your sources, not have them beaten to death!"

Ogilvey sought refuge in the only safe answer known to his profession. Grasping a crystal decanter from a silver-plate tray, he removed the stopper with a practised flick.

"Old boy. Have a drop of this. You're barking up the wrong tree, I'm afraid. Nothing to do with us. Or you. What makes you think you were her only confidant? She probably told her fifteen best friends. You know the old saying: Two people can keep a secret provided one of 'em's dead? This is Cairo. A secret's what everyone knows except you."

Mrs. Ogilvey chose the same moment to enter with her pot of tea. "He may just think he's better with this, darling," she said in a voice pregnant with discretion. "Brandy does odd things to one, when one's het up."

"Actions have consequences, old boy," Ogilvey said, handing him a glass. "First lesson in life."

A crippled man was limping between the tables of the restaurant on his way to the lavatory. He had two walking sticks and was assisted by a young woman. His rhythm discomforted the diners, and nobody was able to go on eating until he was safely out of sight.

"So that night our chum arrived was pretty much all you saw of him, then," Burr suggested, shifting the topic of conversation to Roper's stay at Meister's.

"Apart from good morning and good evening, yes. Quayle said don't press my luck, so I didn't."

"But you did have one more casual conversation with him before he left."

"Roper asked me if I skied. I said yes. He said where. I said Miirren. He asked me how the snow was this year. I said good. He said, 'Pity we haven't got time to pop up there for a few days; my lady's dying to have a shot at it.' End of conversation."

"She was there too, then--his girl--Jemima? Jed?"

Jonathan affects to search his memory while he secretly celebrates her unfurrowed gaze on him. Are you frightfully good at it, Mr. Pine?

"I think he called her Jeds. Plural."

"He's got names for everyone. It's his way of buying them."

It must be absolutely gorgeous, she says, with a smile that would melt the Eiger.

"She's quite a looker, they say," said Burr.

"If you like the type."

"I like all types. What type's she?"

Jonathan acted world-weary. "Oh, I don't know. Good spread of O-levels... floppy black hats... the millionaire urchin look.... Who is she, anyway?"

Burr seemed not to know, or not to care. "Some upper-class geisha, convent school, rides to hounds. Anyway, you got along with him. He won't forget you."

"He doesn't forget anyone. He had all the waiters' names off pat."

"It isn't everyone he asks for their opinion on Italian sculpture, though, is it? I found that rather encouraging." Encouraging to whom or why, Burr did not explain, and Jonathan was not disposed to ask. "He still bought it, though. The man or woman wasn't born yet who could head off the Roper from buying something he fancies." He consoled himself with a large mouthful of veal. "And thanks," he continued. "Thanks for all the hard work. There's some choice observation in those reports of yours to Quayle I've not seen bettered anywhere. Your left-handed gunman, time-piece on the right wrist, changes his knife and fork over when he tucks into his food--I mean, that's classic, that is."

"Francis Inglis," Jonathan recited. "Physical-training instructor from Perth, Australia."

"His name's not Inglis, and he doesn't come from Perth. He's a British ex-mercenary, is Frisky, and there's a price on his nasty little head. It was him taught Idi Amin's lads how to extract voluntary confessions with the aid of an electric cattle prod. Our chum likes them English, and he likes them with a dirty past. He doesn't fancy people he doesn't own," he added as he carefully sliced his roll down the middle and spread butter on it. "Here, then," he went on, jabbing his knife in Jonathan's direction. "How come you got the names of his visitors, with you only working nights?"

"Anyone proposing to go up to the Tower Suite these days has to sign in."

"And hanging around the lobby of an evening?"

"Herr Meister expects it of me. I hang around, I ask whatever I want. I'm a presence; that's why I'm there."

"So tell us about these visitors of his," Burr suggested.

"There was this Austrian, as you call him. Three separate visits to the Tower Suite."

"Dr. Kippel, address Vienna, wore a green loden coat."

"He's not Austrian, he's not Kippel. He's a humble Pole, if a Pole's ever humble. They say he's one of the new czars of the Polish underworld."

"Why on earth should Roper be messing with the Polish underworld?"

Burr gave a regretful smile. His purpose was not to enlighten Jonathan but to tantalise him. "How about the thickset fellow with the glittery grey suit and eyebrows, then? Called himself Larsen. Swedish."

"I simply assumed he was a Swede called Larsen."

"He's Russian. Three years ago he was a big shot in the Soviet Ministry of Defence. Today he runs a flourishing employment agency, pimping East Bloc physicists and engineers. Twenty thousand dollars a month, some are pulling in. Your Mr. Larsen takes his cut both ends. As a sideline he traffics in military hardware. If you're looking to buy a couple of hundred T-72 tanks or a few Scud missiles at the Russian back door, Mr. Larsen is your man. Biological warheads come extra. What about your two military-looking Brits?"

Jonathan remembered two loose-limbed men in British blazers.

"What about them?"

"They come from London, all right, but they're not Forbes and Lubbock. Belgium is where they're based, and they're purveyors of military trainers to the leading crazies of the world."

The Brussels boys, Jonathan was thinking as he began to follow the threads that Burr was deliberately weaving before his memory's eye. Soldier Boris. Who's next?

"This one ring any bells? You didn't describe him, not in as many words, but I thought he might be one of those suited gentlemen our chum received in the ground-floor conference room."

While Burr was speaking he had drawn a small photograph from his wallet and passed it across the table for Jonathan's inspection.

It showed a tight-mouthed man in his forties with saddened shallow eyes and unnaturally waved black hair and an incongruous gold cross hanging over his Adam's apple. It had been taken in bright sunlight and, to judge by the shadows, with the sun directly overhead.

"Yes," Jonathan said.

"Yes what?"

"He was half the size of anyone else, but they deferred to him. Carried a black briefcase that was too big for him. Wore risers."

"A Swiss? A Brit? Pin him down."

"More a Latin American of some sort." He handed back the photograph. "Could be anything. Could be Arab."

"His name is Apostoll, believe it or not, Apo for short."

And Appetites for long, thought Jonathan, once again remembering Major Corkoran's asides to his chief. "Greek, first-generation American, doctor of law at Michigan, magna cum laude, crook. Offices in New Orleans, Miami and Panama City, all places of impeccable respectability, as you are no doubt aware. Remember Lord Langbourne? Sandy?"

"Of course," Jonathan replied, recalling the unnervingly beautiful man with the ponytail and the sour wife.