Death and Other Lovers Read online

  “But surely to God,” exclaimed Flynn, “when Hehn knows you know—that you’ve seen the formula—”

  “He’ll invite me to show there was ever any intent, on his part or anyone’s at Deerings, to use the formula as the basis of a manufacturing process. Because unless they intended making the stuff and selling it, there was no need for secrecy. And Deerings is a respectable company, after all, and Hehn a respectable chemist. The bloody man’s won awards. It’s like—well, if I want to accuse Wimbledon Fast Eddie of being wheelman on a bank job, I’m most of the way there if I can show he could have been, he wasn’t doing anything else that day. If I want to level the same accusation at—say—the Archbishop of Canterbury, I need a different class of evidence entirely. The jury isn’t going to exchange knowing looks when he says he was alone in the chantry all afternoon and not even the verger saw him.”

  Dr. Ash looked thoughtfully at Flynn. “What time of day did you take the photograph?”

  “Mid-morning. Why?”

  “If the formula was up on the blackboard, without even a cover over it, during office hours when his assistants were in the lab, they must have been in on what he was doing. Any competent chemist reading that formula would have known it was nothing to do with antibiotics, and would have recognised enough elements from it to guess what it might be instead. He wasn’t doing secret work by candlelight when nobody was about: that was the project his department was working on. If he won’t tell you about it, perhaps someone else there will.”

  “Oh, I’ll give them every encouragement,” Donnelly promised grimly. “But Hehn wouldn’t have been using anyone he had doubts about, and anyone who started getting twittery after the picture came out will long ago have been moved on and the personnel records altered so we’ll never find them. I’ll ask the questions, but I doubt I’ll get the answers I want. It’s so simple for them. They don’t need alibis, they don’t have to agree on a story, they just deny knowing anything about this”—he tapped the formula in the photograph—” synthetic cocaine, you say? Nobody was working on it. So what if Dr. Hehn did scribble it up? It was a joke. Physicists doodle bombs, chemists doodle drugs. There was no research, there’s no product, there ‘s no crime.”

  While they were talking Flynn had roamed away from the desk, pacing the room with his head down and one hand in his pocket. Twice he paused at the window, the long hunched shape of him silhouetted against the day, but he did not seem to see outside and each time after only a moment he moved on, prowling restlessly. The tension growing in him was filling the room. They were all aware of it, all waiting for the explosion. The atmosphere was like a menagerie three seconds before the bear rips the keeper’s arm off.

  Flynn too knew what was happening, and what the likely end would be. It was why he kept moving, trying to absorb the frustration building up in him. He did not worry much about his dignity but he did not want to let fly at Donnelly. The man was doing his best in a difficult, complex situation. Flynn knew better than to suppose, even when his nerves were jangling with the lack of progress, that he was the only one who cared what happened to Flight 98. Everyone here wanted justice for the dead and had contributed time and thought and effort to that end. But Flynn wanted more than justice. He wanted vengeance.

  So he worked to keep his voice low and did not know it sounded like a tiger growling. “Are you saying you’re prepared to let them get away with this?”

  Donnelly bridled. He did not need Flynn to tell him about his own shortcomings and those of the system he served. “Now that’s not what I said. What I said was, we still have a long way to go to make a case against these people. If we jump the gun we could lose them. What I’m telling you, and what I’ll tell my chief when he asks, is that any mistake we make on this one is going to cost us the conviction, and that’s why I am going to take all the time I need to stitch it up tight, regardless of whose blood the popular press is clamouring for.

  “And that is also the reason, Flynn,” he went on, warming to the subject, “why your days of wandering the world like the Flying Dutchman, looking for someone to lift your curse, are over. Such as it is, my case rests on your evidence. As of now you are the only demonstrable connection between Laura Wade and Deering Pharmaceuticals. You’re the only witness to the activities of both in the days prior to the explosion. You’ll be needed for that photograph to be admitted as evidence: courts like to know where photographs come from, who took them and developed them and whether there was any chance of interference.

  “I don’t know what the judge at the Old Bailey’s going to say when I enter into evidence three fragments of a photograph which has since been stolen, which fragments were discarded and dumped and well on their way to being recycled as fire-lighters and environmentally-aware bog-roll before being recovered from God knows how many tons of assorted rubbish. But if I try to enter them without calling the photographer to swear to them, I’m going to be on points duty in East Grinstead before my feet touch the ground.”

  The policeman and the photographer glared at one another like a couple of terriers squaring up for a fight.

  Shimoni said quietly, “I suppose the people at Deerings will also be aware how much of the case depends on Flynn.”

  Donnelly disengaged from the confrontation and took a deep breath and nodded. “Oh yes. So far what I’ve been asking them has been general stuff, there’s been no real reason for them to suppose we’re onto them. That changes now. When I start asking specifics they’ll know that we have the picture; they’ll know that I’ll have it somewhere they can’t get at it; and they’ll know that as evidence it won’t be worth a damn without Flynn.”

  “They’ve already killed two hundred and twenty people to protect their secret.”

  “Yes,” agreed Donnelly.

  Chapter Four

  The postcard was addressed to Flynn but it was lying on Todd’s hall carpet when Shimoni let herself in. She had been calling by to keep an eye on the place until he should be discharged from the hospital. She was not sure what would happen then, whether he would insist on coming back here or if she could persuade him to come out to Windsor. The cottage was under a certain amount of pressure already with her, Flynn, the dog and the police guard they had been allocated, but she felt that with a bit of juggling they could manage. There was an outbuilding in the yard that a previous owner had used as a kennel. At absolute need, Flynn could move in there.

  Shimoni was not afflicted by an over-zealous conscience. She had no reservations about reading Flynn’s mail. But what was written on the back of the full-colour photograph of the Djemaa el Fna in Marrakech made no sense to her. She would have to ask Flynn what it meant when she gave it to him.

  There was no signature, not even an initial. “It’s from Michael Wylie,” Flynn said wonderingly. With Shimoni waiting expectantly at one elbow and the policeman at the other there seemed no point in trying to keep it private.

  The card read:

  “Made some enquiries. British passport—Elizabeth Baron. Works out of Montreal. Word is, she’s back in the U.K. again. Don’t expect she’s visiting relatives.

  “Jacquard reckons she’s in our line of business and I should be helping her not you. Told him that was why: if I don’t stop her killing you this time, nobody’ll believe I didn’t pay her to do it before.”

  Donnelly was round rather quicker than you can drive legally from London to Windsor. He read the card twice. “This man Wylie. Do you trust him?”

  Flynn smiled very faintly. “With my life.” Shimoni was white, Donnelly grim, but Flynn could cope better with this direct threat to himself than with those faced by others on his behalf. “Have you been rattling Deerings’cage?”

  “Yes, I’ve questioned them again. I had to, and I’ll have to again, and soon.” Then he realised that, since Flynn was not on the attack, he had no need to be defensive. He sighed. “I have to go on with this. You know that.”

  “Damn right,” agreed Flynn. “Whatever it costs, they don
’t get away with what they’ve done.”

  Donnelly appreciated that. He did not do a lot of emoting normally—the last month could hardly be described as normal and he had used up a year’s allowance—but his eyes on Flynn warmed. “No,” he concurred softly. “OK. So we have to keep her away from you. It would be nice to pick her up, but the lady’s a professional, perhaps we shouldn’t count on that. We’ll step up the security on you instead. Not here. I think we’ll put you out of sight somewhere, if she’s looking she’ll find you here. I’ll put you somewhere you have no connection with. You’ll be bored, but you’ll be safe.”

  “Boredom has its up side too. When do you want me to go?”

  “Tonight. I’ll have it fixed up for tonight.”

  After he had gone Shimoni decided to take the dog for a walk to unwind. Flynn was going to go with her, but the police guard suggested he think again. It was a first taste of what could be months of virtual imprisonment. Flynn found himself thinking about whisky.

  Back at his office Donnelly found he had a visitor waiting. The name set him back on his heels. He could not imagine what a man who had long been eliminated from the enquiry could want to see him for. So he thought he had better ask. “Would you show Mr. Loriston in?”

  Before Peter Loriston had lowered his classically proportioned posterior into the chair he was offered it was clear that he was deeply unhappy. He moved as if his shirt still had the tailor’s pins in it, as if his shoes had been hand-made for somebody else’s feet. His tongue, which had made his name as a politician and his living in the altogether tougher world of public relations, seemed unequal to the task of explaining his presence here.

  But Donnelly had been in this line of work for a long time, not without his successes, and he recognised the symptoms of conflict in a man doing, or trying to do, something he did not want to do but felt he ought to do. That almost certainly meant that Donnelly would want to hear what Loriston wanted to say, and if it took them a few minutes to get there it would be time well spent.

  Donnelly made no attempt to hurry him, nor did he give him any excuse to say something less or other than what he was steeling himself to say. He waited, patient, solemn and still, for Loriston to do what he clearly conceived to be his duty. He was confident that the man’s sense of honour would be persuasion enough. It was a compliment Loriston would have appreciated.

  Finally he got the words out, chewing them with an expression of distaste like a child eating turnip. “Is it true that you suspect Byron Spalding of Deering Pharmaceuticals of being involved in the bombing of Flight 98?”

  Donnelly’s voice expressed mild shock underscored by disappointment. “Mr. Loriston, you must know that I cannot discuss with any third party any suspicions I may hypothetically have against Mr. Spalding or anyone else.” That was about right: it said everything but “no.”

  For a moment indignation gained the ascendancy over embarrassment and Loriston’s blue eyes glittered. “I don’t consider myself a third party, Superintendent. I’ve already been virtually accused of the crime myself. And Spalding is a member of my club.”

  Donnelly’s natural reticence stood him in good stead. He did not laugh. He did not look as if he was about to laugh. He only said gently, “It’s not a relationship as sanctioned by church or state.”

  Loriston flushed dully. “Perhaps not. But it is relevant. In the normal way of things I would not dream of gossiping about another member’s activities. Possibly the only thing that would induce me to do so is the fear of hampering a serious criminal investigation. If Byron Spalding had anything to do with the deaths of two hundred and twenty people, he may not rely for his protection on any relationship he has with me.”

  Donnelly said levelly, “If you have any information which might assist our enquiries, you should let me have it.”

  “Do you suspect Spalding?”

  Donnelly chewed briefly on the inside of his cheek. “We have had occasion to speak to Mr. Spalding in connection with this investigation.”

  “Do you suspect him?”

  Loriston needed official sanction for breaking his covenant, and perhaps the small victory over Donnelly too, more than Donnelly needed to protect the direction of his enquiry. By now Spalding knew he was under suspicion: there was no real need to keep it from Loriston. “Yes.”

  “Thank Christ for that,” said Loriston, with every sign of meaning it. “I thought perhaps I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  Loriston took a deep breath and said what he had come to say. “About the black girl he met in the foyer of the National Theatre last night. Because if she wasn’t the one that Fleet Street gossip says you’re looking for, the man was doing nothing more dreadful than cheating on his wife, in which case it would be the duty of a fellow club member to have seen and heard nothing.”

  This time Donnelly did not visit Spalding. He had Spalding brought to him. He hoped that raising the stakes might increase the pressure on Spalding to the point where it began to tell. If Laura Wade—or Elizabeth Baron or whoever—was in London and had talked to him, time as a factor was beginning to militate against slow thorough police detection. If Spalding could be induced to waver, it might save a lot of time and Mickey Flynn’s life.

  He said without preamble, “I have a witness to your conversation last night with Elizabeth Baron.”

  Donnelly did not expect him to clap his hands to his face, say, “It’s a fair cop” and make a full and frank confession, and Spalding did not do so. But if he believed himself inscrutable he was mistaken: there was shock there, in his eyes and the drawn lines of his face and in a certain rigidity of his spine, to be seen and exploited by an astute policeman.

  Donnelly had watched very carefully for his response and had the clear impression that Spalding was less appalled at having been seen talking with the woman than by the fact that the police knew her real, or at any event her working, name. A meeting of two people in a crowd could always be explained; but the police had not learned her real name without also learning who she was. Once they knew that, any meeting with her that was not wholly secret was extraordinarily dangerous to him.

  So his muscles stiffened and his eyes stretched, and a dew of sweat gathered in the hollows beneath them; and still the man held onto his self-control, betraying himself neither by word nor gesture, challenging Donnelly to prove what he knew. “Was that her name? I don’t think she said. A witness?—the entire audience must have been in the foyer about then, plus a small jazz band, a book-stall and a girl selling ear-rings from a tray. Why are you interested in a conversation betweenplaygoers?”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said she last saw The Crucible performed in Toronto and there was a powercut.”

  Oh you clever bastard, Donnelly thought, wooden-faced. You know we know who she is, so you feed us a conversation she could have had with anyone. He made a note. “And you said—?”

  “I said I once saw Saint Joan in Dublin when the backdrop fell in on the trial scene.”

  Another note, then Donnelly flicked some pages back. “Toronto and Saint Joan. Was that before or after you said, ‘It’s essential to both of us that this contract is completed’and she said, ‘I’ll do it but it’s going to cost you’?”

  Spalding blinked. It might have been the blink of an innocent man totally mystified by the question. Actually it was the blink of a man seeking a split-second’s thought. When he had had it he shook his head deliberately. “Your witness”—he seemed to hold the word at arm’s length, as if it smelled—”must have been listening to two other people.”

  Donnelly nodded mechanically. “I see. So it wasn’t you, either, who said, ‘This time try and be a bit more discriminating. I don’t want him saved by another miracle and half the population of London wiped out.’”

  Their eyes met. Donnelly waited for the tell-tale flickering that would be Spalding’s defences breaking down. It never came. Spalding’s rather prominent eyes slid half closed, and
something almost like a smile settled on his lips. “No, that wasn’t me either.”

  After a space Donnelly shook his head. “I don’t know what you hope to gain. You must know that, between Flynn and his photograph and the witness to your meeting with Elizabeth Baron, I have all the evidence I need to send you down for a very long time. You must know I’ve taken measures to prevent you, or anyone on your behalf, from tampering with that evidence. We have you, Spalding, and whether or not we get Baron you’re going to pay for murdering two hundred and twenty people.

  “About Hehn I’m not sure. There’s no direct link at present between him and what was done. Scribbling a formula, even a formula like that one, isn’t a crime. We can’t show yet that he did anything about it: everything that we know was done came through you. The lengths you went to suggest that it was more than an innocent doodle on the blackboard, but we may not be able to prove it. In which case the court will have to assume that you did what you did without help or encouragement. That may be less than fair to you, but it’s how it’s going to look.”

  Spalding was a tall, gracile man and he stretched out long legs towards Donnelly’s desk. He said slowly, “I suppose it might look better if I co-operated with you now and helped you to round up those more culpable than myself.”

  “I’m sure it would.”

  His eyes came up then, glittering with amusement, and his thin lips broadened in a smile. “Superintendent, you’ve made a mistake. I had nothing to do with the crash. No-one I know had anything to do with the crash. The formula on the blackboard was a chemist’s exercise, nothing more. Dr. Hehn and I have already co-operated as fully as we can. We have nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of. If you won’t accept that, you must bring that catalogue of coincidence and misapprehension you call evidence in front of a jury and take their word for it. And if you want to discuss it any further you must charge me, because otherwise I have work to do.”