Death and Other Lovers Read online

  It was a gentleman’s club, much frequented by gentlemen in the trendier types of business. It was the sort of gentleman’s club that did not exactly refuse admission to women but did all in its power to make them uncomfortable and reluctant to come again. But Shimoni was about as easy to wither as a brake of camel-thorn, and she stared down the servant who answered the door until he held it wide for her. Then, since she was not wearing a hat or gloves, she gave him her car-keys to hold while she followed Todd to the desk where he was asking for Peter Loriston.

  Loriston was a man who had been done a great disservice by nature. It had thwarted his endeavours from his earliest days. Time and again it had prevented him from fulfilling his full potential. It had made men distrust him, and attracted to him the sort of women who could only damage his career. Colleagues had to work hard to take him seriously, the press did not try. Once or twice he had stood poised on the brink of actual greatness when the old curse had reared its head again and left him floundering. Peter Loriston was a seriously handsome man, and he had paid the price of it all his life.

  He met them at the lift and showed them to the rooftop conservatory. Like the hall porter he was surprised by Shimoni but he made a better job of hiding it. He ordered drinks for them, revealing as he turned a profile of Greek perfection. He had tried to disguise it with a moustache once, but even the moustache came out beautifully shaped and bright gold. Peter Loriston genuinely hated being that handsome. A less particular man might have neglected himself deliberately, but he would still have been just the ideal few fractions over six feet tall and built like an athlete.

  Todd asked for a pint of beer, and it came in a pewter tankard. Shimoni tried to think of something frilly-sounding and settled on a Pink Lady. She had no idea what one was. Neither had the barman. That too came in a pewter tankard.

  Loriston leaned back in his chair and smiled handsomely over the single malt in his cut-glass tumbler. “So what is this story you’re working on, Mr. Todd? You said on the phone, something about Wren churches and tower-blocks?”

  He had. He had said he was writing about those modern buildings that, with the benefit of a century’s hindsight, would be considered the architectural gems of their day. He had asked what architects currently working in London considered the flag-ships of their profession.

  He had lied. He said with disconcerting candour, “I misled you. Actually I’m not here to talk about architecture at all. It was just a pretext to see you. Tell me,” he went on quickly before Loriston could recover his composure, “have you had a visit from the police in the last few days?”

  “The police?” Loriston stared. “No. About what?”

  “No. You see,” Todd confided, “they think it was Fahad. Or Obregon. Or possibly both. They’re probably right. But it occurred to me that, if they’re wrong, then it could be you and you might not still be here by the time they get round to asking.”

  Half a dozen different questions formed in Loriston’s clear blue eyes. None of them got past his lips. Finally he managed, “I don’t understand. If you’re not a reporter, who are you?”

  “I’m a reporter, all right,” said Todd, swallowing his irritation. Even important people no longer really read newspapers. If he had been some twenty-five-year-old blonde TV announcer with a Filofax, a Mot Juste computer and no idea how to drag the truth kicking and screaming out of people who had no wish to tell it, Loriston would have known his name then. Or at least his cup-size. “I’m just not writing about modern buildings. You can tell me about an old building if you like—a warehouse that got burned. No? How about an aeroplane that crashed, then?”

  Loriston was either totally bewildered or else a great loss to the stage. But he had not risen to be a government spokesman without learning how to think on his feet. “Mr. Todd, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The time has come either to tell me or to leave.”

  “Fair enough,” said Todd. “You remember Mickey Flynn.”

  The bewilderment was replaced not by comprehension but by a black hatred totally independent of it. It was an almost Pavlovian response: he did not need to understand how Flynn fitted into this to react violently to his name. Colour rushed into his cheeks; a vein throbbed at his temple. His classically proportioned nostrils flared and his lip curled. Gouts of flame surged in his eyes. The hand that was not holding his glass actually formed a fist. “Yes. I remember Flynn.”

  “A few days ago,” Todd went on conversationally, as if he had not noticed the effect his last remark had had, “somebody fire-bombed his apartment. He and his girl got out by the skin of their teeth. He decided to leave London and fly to New York. You’ll never guess which plane he was booked on.”

  Loriston’s expression was changing again, less abruptly this time, from blank black hatred to an avid interest incorporating a small, indecent glimmer of hope. “You mean he’s dead?”

  Todd gave that a moment’s thought. “I wouldn’t stake my pension that he’s still alive, but he certainly survived the crash. He missed the plane. What I’d like to know from you, Mr. Loriston, is what you know about (a) the fire at Flynn’s warehouse and (b) the bombing of Flight 98.”

  Loriston had travelled sufficiently far through the unholy succession of blind hatred and vicious optimism to be on his way back to the softly lit conservatory and the smell of damp compost, and with the return of his senses came the awareness that he was being accused of something monstrous. “Bombing?” The word exploded in his mouth. “Me? Are you serious?”

  “Deadly serious,” Todd affirmed stolidly.

  “You think I bombed a plane? That I bombed a plane with—what was it?—two-hundred-odd people on board, in order to kill Flynn?” Quite soon the calumny of that suggestion would provoke in him an anger to dwarf even what he felt about Flynn. But for just a moment yet it was held in check by shock.

  The shock of a man unjustly accused of a crime against humanity? Or that of a man discovered in his guilt? Todd wondered. “You had a go at him once before.”

  Clearly Loriston had thought no-one knew about that, not even Flynn. He had thought it had been accepted as an accident. But he did not deny it. “That was different. Him and me. I didn’t push him. But no, it wouldn’t have grieved me if he’d leaned out too far.”

  “Would it have grieved you if he’d burned to death trying to rescue his girl?”

  “Actually, no. But I still had nothing to do with it.”

  “And the plane?”

  The anger was beginning to filter through. “This is outrageous.”

  “When you thought he’d died on that plane, you looked thrilled.”

  “That’s right,” Loriston said then, his voice hardening. “For just a moment, before you spoiled it, I thought Christmas had come early. I thought, That’s the answer to the question ‘Why does God permit such things?’ Perhaps somewhere in every crashed plane, every sunken ship, every massacred wagon-train, every Guernica, there’s a Mickey Flynn—someone who deserves it enough to make up for no-one else there deserving it at all.

  “Thrilled? Yes. I thought, Before that plane crashed there must have been a little time—maybe not long, maybe only a few seconds, but time—when he knew he was going to die. When he knew what was going to happen, and that there was nothing he could do to save himself. When he could see it coming and imagine what it was going to be like—the rending of flesh, the breaking of bones, blood exploding in his eyes and in his brain, fire licking at his body if he lived long enough to feel it.

  “And maybe in those few seconds he knew the sheer helpless terror of waiting for an inevitable destruction. God knows how many people he did that to: took what he wanted and left them to await the consequences, robbed of hope and dignity and even the achievements of their past. He ruined me. For the sake of one cheap photograph that wasn’t even revealing a vital truth. I served my country honestly and well, and he carved me up for the cash he could make. Oh yes, I was glad to think he was dead. I just hoped he’d lived long enou
gh to know what being a burnt offering feels like.”

  Todd knew the answer before he asked the question; he felt he had to ask it anyway. “Somebody put a bomb on Flight 98. It seems likely that the target was Mickey Flynn. Did you do it, or have it done?”

  Loriston rose to his feet with a sort of slow violence, like a gathering storm. Todd stood too. Shimoni stayed where she was, watching the two big men jousting with words for lances.

  The outrage in Loriston’s eyes was an almost palpable force, a radiation. He was too angry to shout: he growled. “You’ve some damn nerve, Todd. You come here, under false pretences, and accuse me of killing two hundred and twenty people. You’ve no evidence; all you know is that I have reason to wish him dead. Well, I doubt if I’m alone in that.

  “The answer to your question is no. I didn’t burn his flat and I didn’t bomb his plane. Not because I’ve forgiven what he did to me. Not because I don’t want him dead; not even because of the practical difficulties of finding someone with the necessary expertise to do it. The point is, I’m not the sort of man who does that sort of thing.

  “Flynn has no need to fear a stab in the back from me. If I take him on, it’ll be like last time: just him and me, alone, out of sight, no-one else to get hurt, no-one else to get involved. Not even you. But he’ll know. If I decide to pay him back some day, he’ll know who and why.” He grinned suddenly, savagely. “Duelling is much more my style than mass murder.”

  It would have suited Todd not to believe him. But Loriston had always been a long shot, and now he had met him Todd could not imagine him acting as he would have had to in order to be guilty of this crime. He sighed. “If I see him again, I’ll tell him. I’m sorry you’ve been troubled. We’ll find our own way out.”

  Shimoni got up then. But she was not quite ready to leave. She stood about five-foot-two, Loriston a little over six feet: somehow she contrived to look down her nose at him. “You blame Flynn for what happened to you? Flynn did nothing but record a moment in time. You are responsible for your actions and the consequences of them. It wasn’t a spicy photograph that cost you your career, it was your inability to conduct your personal life in a manner becoming a man entrusted with state affairs. A man who cannot govern himself has no business trying to govern a country.

  “You consider yourself victimised because Flynn’s photograph stirred up a witch-hunt. You think it was unjustified because you never behaved corruptly. Actually, the issue of corruption hardly enters into it. That photograph revealed you as a man willing to put his own desires above the needs of his colleagues, his government and his country. Your actions were so ill-considered and so arrogant as to prove you unsuitable for authority. A photograph disclosing that was an entirely proper demonstration of public interest over-riding the right to privacy.” Then she grinned too, a feral gleam splitting her small watchful face. “You want to meet me with pistols on Hampstead Heath?”

  As she drove them back to Kensington, Todd said with admiration and some awe, “When you have a go at someone you really go for the throat, don’t you?”

  She did not glance round. “Not always. I can’t always reach the throat. But there are vulnerable spots lower down.”

  Todd thought a little longer about what had been said, then sighed. “He really didn’t have anything to do with it, did he?”

  “No,” she agreed. “An arrogant man, a self-centred man, a man of poor judgement and no sense of perspective; but no, not a man who bombs aeroplanes. Perhaps Mickey’s had more luck.”

  Todd shrugged his coat up round his neck. His voice was gruff. “How lucky can you get when you’re looking for a man who wants you dead? If he’d been lucky he’d have been stopped at Bogotá airport and deported as an undesirable alien, in which case he’d have been back by now. I don’t think it makes much difference whether Obregon bombed Flight 98 or not. When Mickey turns up on his doorstep he’s going to do what he’s been waiting to do for the last eighteen months.”

  “You think he’ll kill him?”

  “I think he’ll rip him limb from limb. It wasn’t just what he cost Obregon in financial terms, or even in annoyance. He made a fool of the man, and Obregon couldn’t stop him. That undermined his credibility in a business which depends on people believing you can and will carry out your threats. Even if Obregon has got over the anger—which is a big if—as a matter of strict commercial necessity he has to be seen collecting his debts. Killing Mickey may be worth millions to him.”

  “Do you suppose it was him that planted the bomb?”

  “I think he’s the likeliest contender. He had the motive, the opportunity and the means, and he wouldn’t be deterred by the moral implications. Yes, I think probably it was him.”

  “Then—”

  “Yes. I think probably by now he’s finished the job.”

  Chapter Three

  Two more days passed without word from or about Flynn. Shimoni called Todd twice, on different pretexts but mostly to find out how he was, and he called her once to discuss the resumption of normal services.

  Superintendent Donnelly called on him—a very angry Superintendent Donnelly who had come straight from Peter Loriston who had failed utterly to be surprised at his name being linked with the loss of Flight 98.

  Todd shrugged. “He wasn’t involved.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t. Or perhaps you gave him the time he needed to get his head and his story together enough to lie convincingly.”

  “He wasn’t lying when I talked to him.”

  “Damn it, you can’t know that!”

  “Superintendent, I’ve interviewed as many people in the course of my work as you have, and a lot of them were lying and a lot of them had something to hide. If I couldn’t tell when I was being strung along, I’d still be writing dog-show results for the Todmorden Chronicle.”

  “You had no right to approach him.”

  “I had every right to approach him. What’s more, if I saw any need to do so I’d approach him again. I am ready and eager to assist in your enquiries, Superintendent, because we’re on the same side and anyway I am a law-abiding man. But there are more ways of skinning a cat than one, and my profession as well as yours brings guilty men to justice. After four days it was time somebody talked to Loriston and you were clearly too busy.”

  After that they stopped spitting tacks at one another, split a pot of coffee and talked through what Loriston had and had not said. They agreed there was no more mileage in him and wondered where the real trail led.

  “You’ve heard nothing from Flynn?”

  Todd shook his head. “I don’t expect to.”

  “He shouldn’t have gone.”

  “No. But no-one else, could. Colombia isn’t in your jurisdiction. He needed to know.”

  “Do we know now? Does it follow, if he’s killed Flynn, that he bombed that plane?”

  “I wouldn’t think so.” Todd sighed wearily. It was getting to feel a long time since he had had a proper night’s sleep. “Whether he did the plane or not, he was never going to let Mickey leave. I doubt if we’ll ever know for sure now.”

  “And Fahad? Should we still be looking for him?”

  “You’ve been looking for him,” Todd reminded him, “for at least the last three years. He’s on Interpol’s terrorist list. It didn’t stop him getting into the country, though, and I don’t expect it’ll stop him getting out again. I don’t know what his role in all this was. I doubt you’ll ever get the chance to ask him.”

  Donnelly left then, and Todd took the cups into the kitchen and thought about washing them, and then the doorbell rang and he thought Donnelly must have remembered something else he wanted to say and he answered the door with the battered silver pot, bought in the souk in Marrakech on the occasion of King Hassan II’s accession to the throne of Morocco, still in his hand.

  Mickey Flynn looked at it and said, “Great idea.”

  He looked like death warmed up. Under the ragged fringe of his lank brown hair his face was w
hite, except for a smudge of black like coaldust under one eye and a faint rainbow ring around the other. His mouth was swollen out of shape on the side where his lip was split, and a long deep scratch reached from its corner almost to his ear. Also his right hand was encased in plaster, from above his wrist to his fingernails.

  For several long seconds Todd’s broad face would not make its mind up what it wanted to express. It tried shock, and delight, and amazement, and then a brief detour into concern, then back to delight. His lips rounded on words to start half a dozen different sentences but he got none of them out. He hugged the coffee-pot to him and was glad of something to do with his hands. Finally he managed, “I thought you were dead.”

  Flynn raised one eyebrow no further than he had to. “Reports were exaggerated.”

  Todd looked again, taking in the weary stoop of his shoulders and the heavy-lidded eyes as well as the fading bruises and the slightly grubby plaster. “Not by much.”

  “Jet-lag.” He shouldered past Todd, still clutching his coffee-pot in the doorway, and dropped his bag on the floor, and walked to the nearest chair and went down into it without taking his jacket off. Todd thought that if the chair had not been there he might not have made it as far as the sofa. “Can I crash here?” He winced at the unhappy phraseology.

  Todd started to grin. He could not help it. He knew it was tactless or worse, and he did not care. He felt like a man witnessing a clash of ideologies between his mother-in-law and a traffic-warden: he did not care how this had happened, he was just happy that it had. Explanations could wait.

  He went to make the coffee. Another man might have rinsed the cups under the tap, but Todd did the washing-up while he waited for the pan to heat. When he took the tray into the livingroom Flynn was asleep in the chair.

  Todd put the tray down quietly and stood over him, inspecting the damage more closely than he could have done with Flynn awake. It was days old now and, apart from the hand, superficial anyway. He looked exhausted and in need of a change of clothes. For a man who should have been dead a week, he looked wonderful.