Mambo Page 22

  “Stolen?” Pagan asked.

  “That’s what it says here. On a routine, approved flight from Fife to Germany, an American C-130, which had flown unspecified matériel into a base in Fife the day before, was apparently hijacked by persons unknown. The location of the craft is also unknown.”

  “How did it take so damned long to provide us with that item?” Pagan said.

  “Injured pride,” Foxie suggested. “The RAF is awfully sensitive.”

  “I suppose,” Pagan said, but without conviction. There was no real co-ordination at times between law enforcement agencies and branches of the military. Each was its own little dominion of egotism.

  “Lose big plane, look very foolish,” said Billy Ewing.

  “How can they lose a big plane?” Pagan asked. “I can see the hijacking. Fine. Anything can be hijacked if you want it bad enough. What I don’t see is the failure to find the thing.”

  With the authority of a man who is halfway to attaining his pilot’s licence, Foxie said, “First, bad weather. Clouds, Frank. And many of them. Second, it’s a big sky, and one plane is very tiny in it, no matter how big it looks on the ground. Third, the Air Force has only a limited number of interceptors at its disposal. And where do they look? The North Sea? The English Channel? The Atlantic? If the transport plane’s flying low enough, radar’s no help.”

  “Do you think the RAF has informed the Americans?” Pagan asked.

  Billy Ewing said, “What a scene. The Air Marshal going on his knees to the Americans.” Ewing assumed a sharp English accent, upper-class, accurate. “Sorry, old boy. One of your planes got away from us. Damndest thing.”

  Pagan rose from his chair very slowly. He walked across the room and turned on a small portable radio. He wanted something raucous and mind-clearing, something to shake up the synapses and cover the quiet drumming noise panic made inside his head. If Steffie Brough was still alive, she was inside an aeroplane with Ruhr and nobody knew where. In his imagination he saw Ruhr skywriting the words Find Me, Frank.

  Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally” roared into the room. The sound, which to some might have been torture – Foxworth, out of Pagan’s vision, winced – was balm to Pagan’s troubled heart. Like most great rock music, it was meaningless if you thought about it. But meaning wasn’t the point. Rock hypnotised you into a condition where you didn’t need to think. That was the beauty of it. Pagan, an old rock buff, knew such arcane things as the names of the original Shirelles, the first hit song recorded by Gene Vincent, and the date and place of Buddy Holly’s death.

  Billy Ewing left. His musical tastes went no further than Peter, Paul and Mary and his own whisky-inspired version of Auld Lang Syne every New Year’s Eve.

  Pagan returned to his desk. He couldn’t remember when he’d last slept. His eyelids felt heavy. He needed a brisk infusion of coffee. He was about to ask Foxworth to bring a cup of very strong brew, when the woman suddenly appeared in the doorway.

  She was in her middle forties and had reached that condition known as her prime. To look at Gabrielle Chapotin was to understand the word in a way no dictionary could ever define. She had a calm confidence about her, and a style found only in women who have both the means and ambition to haunt the salons of high fashion and those expensive clinics where clever cosmetologists concoct creams and lotions to halt the ruin of the flesh. She had the air of a fortress against whose buttresses decay and deterioration may batter but make little headway.

  She was beautiful in a daunting way. The high cheekbones, the hollows in the cheeks that suggested a sour lozenge of candy in her mouth, the long, groomed red-brown hair, the tailored trouser-suit that was pinstriped and authoritative; she was a woman who knew herself very well. She reminded Pagan of a former fashion model, somebody of well-trained elegance.

  “Frank Pagan?” she asked in very good English.

  “You must be Gabrielle Chapotin.” Pagan rose, walked to the radio, turned it off.

  Foxie scurried with a chair for her. She nodded to him as she would to all servants, then sat down with a very straight back. She gazed up at the big silk screen of Buddy Holly, as if she were amused.

  “My regrets,” Pagan said. He extended a hand. Gabrielle’s clasp was slack and quick. She wanted out of here in a hurry.

  “Regrets?” she asked.

  “Your husband. The tragedy.”

  “Some marriages are in name only, Mr Pagan,” she said.

  Madame Frost, Pagan thought. He cleared his throat, asked Foxworth for coffee. Gabrielle declined, saying she couldn’t drink what passed for coffee in England. Pagan made a mild joke about the similarity between British coffee and transmission fluid, but Madame didn’t even smile politely. Foxworth brought coffee in a plastic cup and Pagan sipped. The temperature of the room had fallen; the woman had ushered in a brisk chill.

  “I have so much to do,” she said. “There is tape red.”

  “Red tape,” Pagan said. “But your way sounds more poetic.”

  “However you say it. Also funeral arrangements. I have to ship my late husband’s body back to Paris for burial. You understand, of course.”

  “I don’t intend to keep you for very long. A few questions, nothing more.” Pagan set his cup down. “You realise my interest isn’t in solving your husband’s murder, don’t you? This isn’t a homicide operation.”

  She looked surprised. “Then why am I here?”

  “Because I sent for you, Madame. When I learned you’d come to London, I thought it would save me a trip to Paris.”

  “By why, if it has nothing to do with my husband’s murder?”

  “I’m more interested in your husband’s life than his death.”

  “Which life would that be, Mr Pagan? After all, he had more than one.”

  It was a good point. Which life? Did they overlap? Had old Jean-Paul kept them completely separated? One world in Paris with Madame, another in London with his doomed Melody. Was there perhaps even a third life, something he kept apart from the other two? J.-P. Chapotin, grandmaster of deception.

  “Your late husband rented a farm in the countryside,” Pagan said.

  “He hated the countryside.”

  “Just the same, the information we have is that a farmhouse was leased to him by an estate agency in Norfolk. So far as we know, he never occupied the house personally.”

  “Why does it interest you if he never lived there?” she asked. She was impatient. She sat defensively, as if she thought a prolonged stay in this room might contaminate her.

  “I’m intrigued by the connection between your husband and the people who did occupy the house. They were … criminals. I’m simply trying to work out the relationship between these men and Monsieur Chapotin.”

  “Criminals? I don’t know why he would associate with such types. I can’t help you, Mr Pagan. You see, I know so very little.”

  She placed her hands in her lap and looked down at them. They were excellent hands, long fingers, strong nails subtly varnished. They were made for summoning head-waiters and dismissing servants. Gabrielle may have been the spirit of winter incarnate, but she had class.

  “Let’s try something simpler. What kind of business was he in?”

  “I paid no attention to his affairs,” she replied, skating over – perhaps ignorant of – the double meaning.

  “You must have some knowledge,” Pagan said.

  “I ran his houses for him, Mr Pagan. That is all I did. I was his housekeeper.”

  Pagan didn’t think she could ever be anybody’s housekeeper. Nor could he imagine Jean-Paul concealing very much from this woman. She was strong, self-willed. She wouldn’t be easy to deceive. He resisted the temptation to scoff. He would press on as if he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. He’d simply tuck his head down and keep charging. The battering-ram principle.

  “Did he have business interests in England?”

  She looked slightly exasperated. “I do not know.”

  “I assume he h
ad a bank account here. He would have to pay household expenses in Chelsea. I could easily find out. With a little luck, I might even discover the source of his income. If there was an account, deposits had to be made somehow. There would be microfilm copies of cheques. The bank manager would probably help. They usually do when I ask them.”

  “I had thought your bankers were more discreet,” she said.

  “Nobody’s discreet when you start breaking their bones, Madame,” Pagan said.

  “Breaking their bones?”

  “Figuratively.”

  “How very colourful.”

  Gabrielle Chapotin was silent a moment. She smiled for the first time, a rehearsed cover-girl smile but gorgeous anyway. “Speaking of banks reminds me that Jean-Paul had an interest in an Italian financial institution. I don’t remember the name. ‘Commerciante’ something. It should not be too difficult to find if you need to. He also had, I believe, some South African investments.”

  Ah. Pagan found it fascinating how responsive people could be when they imagined a stranger poking around in their bank accounts. There was always something to hide, and it was usually money. Obviously Madame knew more about Jean-Paul’s business than she was saying, at least enough to become communicative when she faced the prospect of Pagan interviewing a bank manager. What other financial irregularities might be uncovered? What fiscal misdeeds might be stumbled upon? Whatever they were – and Pagan wasn’t interested in them – Gabrielle surely knew. It was a great smile, though, and it warmed him.

  “I’m glad to see your memory’s finally working,” he said.

  Gabrielle shrugged. “Sometimes a small connection is all you need. A spark, you might say. Memory is a strange thing.”

  “Very strange,” Pagan said. “What about his business interests in this country? Can we find a spark for those?”

  She opened her purse and took out a Disque Bleu. Foxie found a match, struck it, held it to the cigarette. She smoked without inhaling. Blue clouds gathered around her head, making her look wistful. She gazed at Pagan and for a second he enjoyed a certain intimacy with her, the meaningful locking of eyes, the vague feeling that at some other time they might have met in circumstances more conducive to, well, mutual understanding. He was flattered.

  He pushed his chair back against the wall, glanced at Foxie, then waited for Madame to go on. She held out her cigarette and Foxie, the perfect butler, produced an ashtray in which she crushed the butt vigorously. Too vigorously, Pagan thought. She was tense.

  She looked away from him now. “He went to Scotland.”

  “Do you know why he went there?”

  “He had some kind of business meeting, I believe. But I don’t know the details.”

  “Do you know exactly where he went?”

  Madame Chapotin said, “I understand he flew to Glasgow. I happened to see the airline ticket when his secretary sent it to the house.”

  Pagan was sure that things didn’t just “happen” in Gabrielle’s life. She probably found the ticket and sneaked a look at it; she would have spied like an expert. He wondered if she’d known about Chapotin’s other life all along but chose to ignore it for reasons of her own.

  “Did he stay in Glasgow?”

  She didn’t know the answer. Nor did she know his business there, or if he hired a car, or whether he was picked up at the airport. She only knew the date of his airline ticket, which she was happy to remember. Pagan believed her. The interview was coming to an end. Foxie, who knew what was expected of him in the light of Gabrielle’s slender information, had already slipped out of the room. Pagan stood up.

  She said, “You know, the more I think of this, the more I consider it unlikely that Jean-Paul rented the farmhouse. I cannot imagine him ever doing that. He hated quiet. He loathed country living. Perhaps another man with the same name was responsible. Could that not be?”

  “Chapotin’s a pretty unusual name,” Pagan said.

  “You can check it out, no?”

  “My assistant obtained a photograph of your late husband from the police conducting the homicide investigation. A copy is on its way to the woman who rented the farmhouse. If it turns out that the renter wasn’t your husband, why would somebody want to pose as him? What would an imposter stand to gain?”

  Gabrielle Chapotin had no answer for that one. She drifted out into the corridor, where she stood for a time in thoughtful silence. Then she smiled half-heartedly at Pagan and was gone, leaving behind the faintest trace of expensive perfume.

  Pagan didn’t like the idea of an imposter. He’d assumed that Jean-Paul had rented the place on behalf of the terrorists, that some connection existed between Chapotin and Ruhr. Perhaps Chapotin was even the man behind Ruhr. To introduce the hypothesis of a fraud at this stage was a complication Pagan didn’t need. If J.-P. hadn’t rented the place, then why would somebody use his name to do it? Of course, there might be two different Jean-Paul Chapotins, but in England the chances were remote.

  Foxworth came back into the room. “I just had a word with the Glasgow Police. They’ll get back to me.”

  “Soon, I hope.”

  “A.s.a.p. I leaned on them, Frank,” Foxie said, enjoying the phrase. He had a familiar manila folder tucked under his arm, his dogeared odds and ends file. He opened it on Pagan’s desk and began leafing through sheets. He found what he wanted, plucked it out and said, “When I heard Madame say Scotland, I thought I remembered this titbit. Tell me it’s mere coincidence.”

  Pagan looked at the sheet, spreading it on his desk.

  It was one of the sheets Foxie had somehow contrived to coax out of his old school pal in intelligence. It reported the movements of Rafael Rosabal, complete with dates and times – when he entered the country, where he went, where he stayed, who he saw. There was no mention of Magdalena, which meant that Rafael had presumably given his followers the slip during that interlude or that somehow they’d lost him for a while. Busy sort, Pagan thought. Buzzing around. London to Glasgow.

  Pagan raised his face and looked at Foxworth. “Can you tell me what’s so special about Glasgow at this time of year?”

  “It must have its attractions,” Foxworth replied. “Chapotin went there. So did Rafael Rosabal. At precisely the same time too. Do you think they might have met, Frank?” Foxie looked puzzled. His otherwise smooth young forehead was creased with a severe frown.

  “What for?” Pagan asked. “What kind of connection could there possibly be between Chapotin and Rosabal? And if a connection existed, why go all the way to Glasgow to get together? They each had, shall we say, interests of the heart right here in London, so why travel four hundred miles north to meet? Frankly, I’d hate to see any connection between them. I don’t want to unravel some damned mess that involves Rosabal because if a Cuban’s up to his arse in this mischief it could turn out to be a real can of worms. I’d be quite happy with just Chapotin.”

  Pagan looked beyond Foxworth to the window. The darkness over Golden Square was laced with a thin rain that had begun to fall. He tried to imagine Rafael Rosabal and Chapotin meeting in Glasgow – for God’s sake, why? (He remembered the closed bathroom door in Magdalena’s hotel room, the light beneath it, the presence of Rosabal: was that why he was so anxious to discount Rosabal – because it meant Magdalena had no involvement either?) And even if he established a link, so what? How would it bring him any closer to Ruhr?

  Too many questions. Too few answers. A coincidence of place and time and people he didn’t like at all. He had so little to go on. Chapotin was the only thread he had to Steffie Brough and Ruhr, and a dead man’s name wasn’t much.

  As if he’d just trespassed on Pagan’s ragged thoughts, Foxie said, “One wonders where Steffie Brough is right now.” There was a grim note in his usually cheerful voice.

  Pagan was restless. He got out of his chair and walked to the window; everything in the building had gone silent at the same time. No phones rang, no computers buzzed, no printers rattled. A fragile little isla
nd of quiet existed. Pagan looked down into Golden Square. Rain, turned to silver by electricity, coursed through the streetlamps. He took from his inside jacket pocket the small school picture of Steffie Brough, and tacked it to his cork bulletin board.

  “One wonders,” he said quietly.

  Washington DC

  It was a fall afternoon of rare beauty. Washington’s monuments might have been erected less to honour some democratic ideal and more to celebrate the way leaves turned and how the smoky orange sun, larger than any ever seen in summer, burnished landmarks, seeming to isolate them in flame.

  Harry Hurt always felt good in Washington. As a patriot, he considered it his true home. He loved the statues and monuments; he’d stood at the Vietnam Memorial once, reading the names of the dead and feeling a shiver of gratitude toward the fallen. The city touched him like this, made him conscious of his country, the fact he was above all else an American. He had no shame and no embarrassment at being a patriot.

  As he walked along a quiet street some blocks from George Washington University, he was conscious of Sheridan Perry trying to keep up with him. Perry was out of shape. Unlike Harry Hurt, he didn’t jog, play handball, eat the proper foods. He had no pride in his body.

  Both men paused on a corner. Blinded, buffed by a crisp wind that had begun to blow, Harry Hurt stuck his hands in the pockets of his grey cashmere overcoat. His bony face looked more angular than usual; cords in his neck stood out. There was a question he wanted to put to Perry but he wasn’t sure how. There was simply no diplomatic way of asking his compatriot if he was the man behind the murders of Chapotin and Magiwara and Kluger. It wasn’t the kind of question guaranteed to promote mutual confidence.

  Hurt had spent a restless few hours on Concorde from Paris. He hated unanswered questions. Who was killing off the membership? Who had knowledge of their identities? Somewhere over the Atlantic it had occurred to Hurt that Perry, by virtue of his need for control, was as much a candidate as anyone else and that the best way to proceed was to ask a straight question and be damned. Despite the united front he and Sheridan presented to the Society, Harry Hurt didn’t care all that much for Perry in any case, thinking him just a little too self-centred.