The Ways of the World (41 page)

‘No doubt. But what have they done about it?’

‘Sweet FA, I should think, sir.’

‘Exactly. And why do you suppose that might be?’

‘Oh, the usual reasons. No money. No land. No balls.’

‘You’d need a natural flyer who’s also a good communicator, backed up by a smart mechanic, a nice flat piece of land within easy reach of London and enough capital to set the operation up and see it through some lean times.’

‘You’ve got it about right there, sir.’

‘So, you’d better stop calling me “sir” and switch to “Max”.’

‘Why’s that, then?’

‘Because we’re not in the RFC any more, or whatever they call it now.’

‘RAF, sir.’

‘“Max”.’

Sam grimaced. ‘I’ll never get the hang of that, sir.’

‘Well, try, for God’s sake. We’re going to be partners.’

‘We are?’

‘Unless you tell me your heart’s in the bakery business.’

‘No, sir. Too much of the wrong kind of dough.’

‘I virtually was an instructor for a lot of the younger pilots.’

‘You were, sir. And a damn good one.’

‘You’re the best mechanic the squadron ever had.’

‘Well …

‘Spare me the false modesty. I think I’ll be able to twist my old dad’s arm into leasing us some land near Epsom.’

‘Sounds perfect.’

‘And I have a little money put by.’

Sam took a deep swallow of beer and looked Max in the eye. ‘I’d work my socks off, sir.’

‘I know you would, Sam. I know you
will
.’

‘They’re practically giving planes away out at Hendon. Engines and parts too. The lot.’

‘What do you say, then?’

‘You really mean it?’

‘Of course. You don’t think I came all the way out here just for the pleasure of your company, do you? We could make a go of this, Sam. I know it. Are you game?’

‘You bet I am.’

‘You won’t regret it.’

‘Neither will you, sir.’

‘I think this calls for a toast.’ Max ordered Scotch for them both. They clinked glasses. ‘To the future.’

‘To the future,’ Sam echoed.

They downed the drinks in one and smiled at each other. In that moment of blind optimism, the future they had drunk to looked long, bright and inviting.

But it was not to be.

THE WORLD TURNS
on a sixpence. Nothing can be foretold. Certainty lies only in the actual.

A figure drifted gently into Max’s field of vision while his attention was fixed on what was happening in the bathroom. It was only a sudden draught from the window that made him look round. Then he started in surprise.

It was le Singe: a small, agile, dark-skinned boy, wearing bits and pieces of army uniform and a cautious smile. He raised a hand and pressed his forefinger against his lips. His eyes were wide, his gaze eloquent: ‘
Do not speak; do not move
.’ Max stared at him and frowned a question: ‘
What then?
’

The boy stepped past him so nimbly it was as if his feet were not touching the floor. He lowered his finger from his mouth and opened his hand. A small key was lodged in his palm. He smiled more broadly still and nodded in confirmation of Max’s guess.

‘Where is Lemmer?’ Tarn’s voice carried from the bathroom.

‘I … don’t … know,’ came Brigham’s answer in a series of strangulated gasps.

‘You will tell me.’

The choking began again. Max looked at le Singe. The boy grasped the handcuff attached to Max’s wrist, slid the key into the lock and released it, then lifted it away carefully so that it did not rattle against the post. He gave a final nod. ‘
I have done what I can for you
,’ it seemed to declare.

Max returned the nod, then moved. There was no time to reflect
or consider. He had the advantage now. And he meant to take it.

Brigham was kneeling in the bath, his arms stretched ahead of him, his wrists handcuffed to the pipe supporting the taps. Tarn was crouched over him, tightening a narrow strap round his throat. The sound coming from Brigham was a spluttering, sputtering struggle for breath, for life itself. Tarn might give him another chance to speak. But it would make no difference even if he did. Brigham could not tell him what he wanted to know.

The gun would make a difference, though. Tarn had left it on the laundry basket next to the washhand-basin. He could easily reach back and grab it if he decided to finish Brigham with a bullet. But it was not in his hand at that moment.

Max had not survived as a fighter pilot by hesitating in a crisis. He strode forward and seized the gun.

Tarn sensed some movement behind him. He swung round, flinching in alarm and amazement as he registered Max’s presence in the room.

Max raised the gun as Tarn lunged at him. The barrel was pointing straight at Tarn’s forehead as he pulled the trigger. He could not miss.

And he did not.

Dobson’s muscularity had been as useful to Norris in the recent past as his taciturnity. He arrived as promptly as Norris had assured Nadia he would, unloaded a large, empty packing case from the back of his van and carried it into the shop and up to the flat. He said nothing, grunting some kind of greeting to Nadia and various acknowledgements of orders from Norris. They bundled the inert and unconscious Sam into the crate, nailed it shut and, with Dobson doing the lion’s share of the humping and heaving, carried it back down to the van.

Norris told him to wait while he returned to the flat for a parting word with Nadia. With his cargo safely stowed, Dobson stood behind the van, lit a cigarette and, smoking it, wondered idly what the exact nature of Norris’s relationship with Nadia might be and whether there would be time for a second cigarette.

His wonderings were rudely interrupted by a sharp blow with a cosh to the back of his neck, eliciting one of his limited range of grunts. He went down like a sack of coke from a coal-lorry.

Norris was in the midst of urging Nadia to remain calm in the days ahead, and patient with regard to his efforts to arrange her departure from Paris, when he heard the engine of the van cough into life. He rushed to the window, just in time to see it pull away, leaving a sprawled figure in the street behind it.

Schools Morahan was attuned to the need to act decisively when circumstances required it. He had not anticipated such circumstances would arise that evening, but he was not unduly surprised. Life, in his experience, was generally predictable – until it ceased to be. Malory had given him the name of the member of the British delegation Ireton had approached on Sir Henry’s behalf because she, like Morahan, was worried about what would happen to Max when he left hospital. She had overheard a telephone conversation between Ireton and Herbert Norris that left no room for doubt in the matter. She was also acquainted with a secretary at the British delegation who had access to the addresses of delegation members not lodging at the Majestic or neighbouring hotels. This was only what Morahan would have expected. Malory Hollander was a woman of greater resourcefulness than Ireton seemed to appreciate. The fact that Norris was sharing a flat in the 16th arrondissement with Lionel Brigham had struck Morahan as nothing less than sinister in light of Brigham’s banishment from Paris.

He went to the Hôtel Dieu to warn Max of Norris’s possible role in events, only to be told Max had already left, as he had the Mazarin by the time Morahan reached it. Morahan proceeded to Norris’s address in the 16th with no great hopes of accomplishing anything, but arrived just as Norris was leaving and followed him to Little Russia. He knew Nadia Bukayeva slightly because of her late uncle’s dealings with Ireton and had never trusted her. Her associations with Norris only confirmed his doubts about her. He saw Sam Twentyman go into the shop and not come out. A little later, a man drove up in a van and carried a large packing case up to Nadia’s flat. Then he returned, with Norris helping him to carry
the case, now clearly much heavier. What was inside? Morahan reckoned he could guess. And he always backed his own guesses.

Morahan drove fast to the Avenue Hoche and pulled in under a street lamp. He climbed out, hurried round to the back of the van, yanked the doors open and clambered in beside the packing case. There was a tool-box inside the van as well. He grabbed a jemmy and levered the lid off the crate, the nails tearing loose as he let his strength tell. Tossing the lid aside, he shone a torch in on Sam and checked he was still breathing. He was, though deeply unconscious. Several slaps to his cheeks brought no response. Drugged, Morahan concluded. He would need medical attention. There was nothing for it but to drive him to the Hôtel Dieu. It was frustrating not to be able to settle matters with Norris and the treacherous Nadia, but Morahan was well aware that he could not afford to declare his loyalties too openly. There were sleeping dogs that must be left to lie, while there were others, awake and barking, that must be brought to heel. He clambered back out of the van, returned to the cab and drove away.

Weakness began to overtake Max as he coped with the aftermath of Tarn’s death. He had been carried to this point on a surge of adrenalin. Now his limbs felt rubbery and his wound twinged at every move. He found the key to the other pair of handcuffs in Tarn’s pocket and released Brigham, reduced by his ordeal to a stumbling, mumbling old man. Nothing coherent was said by either of them as Max helped him out of the bath and led him slowly to the bedroom, where he laid him on the bed. Le Singe was gone, as Max had known he would be. Had he stayed long enough to witness the death of his master? Max would have needed to understand the working of the boy’s mind better than he did to answer that question.

There was a lot of Tarn’s blood on Brigham and spatters of it on Max too. Tarn himself, his head split by the bullet Max had fired at point-blank range, was a dark, bleeding, spreadeagled form in the bathroom. Max leant against the door-jamb and gazed in at the body as he recovered his breath from the effort of moving Brigham.

He felt no satisfaction at having slain his father’s murderer. He had wanted to learn the full truth of the night Sir Henry had died and feared now he never would. Tarn had snatched the chance away by forcing Max to kill him and the identity of those who had hired Tarn was more elusive than ever, now Brigham’s innocence had been so starkly demonstrated. Sir Henry’s assassin had covered his tracks by dying in them.

Max stumbled on along the passage to the drawing-room, where he telephoned for an ambulance – Brigham would certainly need one even if shock was the worst of what he was suffering from – and then called the police. He had shot a man dead. There would be many questions asked of him. He might even be arrested, though he felt sure he would be vindicated by what Brigham had to say, as soon as he was capable of saying it. He could not quite grasp in his mind all the ramifications of what had happened. He would simply have to await them.

He poured himself a Scotch and one for Brigham as well, which he watered, then set off back to the bedroom with the glasses, taking a couple of gulps from his as he went.

Brigham moaned some kind of recognition as Max entered the room and set the glasses down on the beside table. ‘There’s an ambulance on the way,’ Max said, surprised by his own hoarseness. ‘They won’t be long. Do you want a little whisky?’

But Brigham seemed not to have heard. He frowned and feebly raised his hand, as if trying to point.

Max turned and looked at the wall facing the bed. And there, in chalked letters, he saw le Singe’s parting message.

MAX MIGHT EASILY
have been arrested, but he looked little better than Brigham when the police arrived. In the event, they were both packed off to St Thomas’ Hospital, with constables in tow.

After a doctor had satisfied himself that Max was no worse than badly shaken, though certainly in need of bed-rest in view of his wound and recent fever, a fox-faced Scotland Yard inspector by the name of Denslow invited him to explain what had happened. Max adhered as closely as possible to the truth. Tarn was a hired assassin who would have killed them both if they had not killed him first. He made no mention of le Singe, having no wish to set the police on his saviour’s trail and secure in the knowledge that Brigham had not seen the boy. He claimed Tarn had foolishly left the key to the handcuffs within reach. As for any message Brigham might later say he had seen written on the bedroom wall, Max planned to suggest, if he needed to, that it was a hallucination. He had already ensured it was no longer visible.

Max referred Denslow to Appleby for confirmation that he had been trying to track down his father’s murderer in Paris and had followed Brigham to London under the misapprehension that Brigham was party to the murder. Appleby’s Secret Service credentials had a satisfyingly intimidating effect on the inspector, who undertook to contact him as soon as possible.

Soon translated into an hour, which was as long as it took Denslow to return with the news that Appleby had vouched for Max and would be on his way to London to do so in person as
soon as he had dealt with ‘a related incident’ in Paris. As to the nature of that incident, Denslow was in the dark. He clearly had no desire to become embroiled in Secret Service business and began treating Max with exaggerated respect. ‘We’ll just wait until you feel well enough to make a formal statement, Mr Maxted.’

A terrible conclusion formed in Max’s mind as he drifted in and out of sleep that night. Brigham’s innocence, amply demonstrated by his ordeal at Tarn’s hands, pointed to Nadia’s guilt. Brigham had told her nothing about her uncle. Nor had anyone else. She had not needed to be told. She had consented to Igor Bukayev’s murder. She might even have engineered it. And she had probably implicated Brigham at the behest of whoever in the British delegation Ireton had sounded out on Sir Henry’s behalf. But why in that case had le Singe given them the registration number of Brigham’s car? Unless …

Max was feeling quite well enough the following morning to undertake a short walk along the corridor to Brigham’s room. He found Brigham bruised and weary, but eager to express his gratitude.