Death Trance (37 page)

'Very well,’ Waverley said. 'Richard will conduct you upstairs, where you will be locked in without food until you change your mind. That is all I have to say on the matter.’

Reece jostled Michael to his feet. Michael was white-faced and gasping for breath. He stared at Waverley with violent disbelief. 'I can't understand someone like you wanting to go into a death trance,’ he said harshly.

'Oh?’ inquired Waverley.

'People want to go into a death trance for one of two reasons. Either they're after money or they want to express their love for someone they lost. Occasionally they're out for revenge, but not often. Well, it seems to me that you already have plenty of money, and it also seems to me that you're quite capable of getting whatever revenge you feel like here on earth, in the real world, without taking it beyond the grave. That leaves love. But you?
Love?
You don't even love yourself.’

Reece began to twist Michael's arm but Waverley held up his hand to restrain him. He studied Michael and then said in a peculiarly dreamlike voice, 'You may be right. Maybe I don't love anybody, not even myself. I lost the capacity to love when I lost Ilona. I loved Ilona and nobody else. You are right, yes. But I wish to enter the death trance so that I might find that love again, that love I lost.’

Michael said adamantly, 'Believe me, it won't be there. The love has to come from you, not from the spirit you're trying to find. Spirits don't experience emotions in the same way we do. The only love you'll ever get from a spirit is your own love, reflected back at you.’

'Will you take me?’ Waverley demanded, abruptly petulant.

'No,’ Michael whispered.

Waverley nodded his head and Reece grasped Michael's arm even more tightly, pushing him out of the conservatory, through the doorway and into the house. While Michael was being locked up, Waverley paced up and down, gently touching the leaves of his plants, admiring his brilliant tropical flowers, stopping now and then to look around.

Reece returned, continuously flexing his muscles like a National Guard gym instructor.

'An obstinate boy,’ Waverley commented. Reece made a face and grimaced.

'Well, never mind,’ Waverley went on. 'He's bound to cooperate sooner or later, if only to regain his freedom. Do you think he's right about the death trance being dangerous or is he exaggerating?’

Reece made a cutting-his-throat gesture with his finger and reminded Waverley of what had happened to Bob Stroup and Jimmy Heacox.

'Ah, yes,’ Waverley said, 'but they were
tampering,
weren't they? Hunter and Randolph Clare managed to get out relatively unscathed, no thanks to you, and it seems to me that with better organization, the death trance would probably be very much safer. Polaroid cameras, he said. We'd better arrange for Williams to go buy some, with plenty of film.’

Reece looked dubious. Waverley turned on his heel, smiled at him and then gave him a playful chuck under the chin with the tip of his cane. If anybody but Waverley had tried to do that to him, Reece would probably have broken his neck.

'You find the idea of ghosts and spirits rather terrifying, don't you?’ Waverley jibed. 'You faced up to flame throwers, didn't you? And mortar bombs, and sharpened bamboo spikes. You even managed to survive after your tongue was cut out. But ghosts and spirits, they really unnerve you. Demons and vampires and loogaroos!’

Waverley laughed and smacked his cane noisily on the floor. 'Well, my friend, you're just going to have to swallow your fear because we can do some good for ourselves in the spirit world. We can silence that Marmie Clare before Randolph can get to her and start digging up evidence to show that it was
you
who disposed of her, and that you have connections with
me.
And we can also talk to my beloved Ilona and prove what I have suspected for forty years. This time without any doubt, without any prevarication, and then we'll have Randolph Clare right there, squeezed, ruined, and that will be even better than killing him.’

Reece listened to this and nodded, although he was used to Waverley's thin-voiced braggadocio by now and he knew that Waverley could never tell the truth to anybody, especially not to himself. Waverley had just said 'my beloved Ilona' with deliberate sarcasm, but Reece had heard him on other occasions when he had argued and shouted to himself and then cried Ilona's name out loud like a man begging a woman. The tragedy of Ilona's death as far as Waverley was concerned was that she had left him no pride and, as with many men of short stature, pride to Waverley was everything, even above money. Even above God.

Reece made a laconic gesture that meant, 'I could still kill Randolph Clare and then we wouldn't have to risk going into a death trance.’

But Waverley said, 'No, Richard. Not now. There are already too many people who have us under suspicion, and if Randolph Clare were to die now… well, I'm not sure that even Chief Moyne could protect us. If you had succeeded in disposing of him in Bali, that would have been a different matter, especially since he was involved in something illegal. But now it's too late. And besides, this way is far more complete and far more discreet. And - how shall I put it? - far more
artistic.
Yes, it's quite artistic.’

While Waverley was talking to Reece, Randolph was trying to discover what had happened to Michael. He had painfully climbed out of bed and gone down to the library, where he was sitting at his desk in his blue silk bathrobe, telephoning everyone who might have some idea of where Michael had gone, and why.

Dr Ambara's phone rang and rang and nobody picked it up. The Indonesian office on Madison Street had never heard of anybody called Hunter. 'We have a Han Tah, sir, if that is of help.’ None of the airlines had received a booking in the name of Michael Hunter, although Sunbelt Airlines was going to fly somebody called Eli Hunter III to Phoenix later that evening. And the desk clerk at Days Inn, where Michael had been staying, had entered his room with a passkey but reported 'everything normal, sir. His baggage is still here, so he couldn't have checked out, and as you know, his accommodation has been paid for a month in advance. Maybe he just took a walk.’

In the end Randolph called Wanda, who had gone back to the office to finish the Petersen contract.

'Michael's missing,’ he told her.

'How could that be? I called him this morning and he was quite happy.’

'Did he say he was going to go for a walk, anything like that?’

'He said he was thinking of going for a swim later on. And he promised faithfully that he-was going to call me before he went down to the pool. He was very serious about his security.’

Randolph rubbed his eyes. 'He couldn't have been followed, could he?’

'I don't think so. We did everything we could to make sure nobody knew where he was.’

'I've been calling Dr Ambara but I can't raise him. Dr Ambara wouldn't have told anyone, would he? I mean, he wasn't strapped for money or anything like that? If Orbus or Waverley had offered him twenty thousand dollars to tell them where Michael was hiding out, you don't think he would have taken it, do you?’

'No, sir, I don't think he would have,’ Wanda replied confidently.

It was then that Randolph's second phone extension began to blink. 'Hold on for a moment,’ he said. 'And I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be disloyal to Dr Ambara, but you know, the way this thing seems to be going -’

He picked up the extension and said, 'Yes?’

It was Charles. 'The Days Inn for you, sir. They said that you asked them to call if they had any information about Mr Hunter.’

Thank you, Charles. Could you put them on?’

It was the same desk clerk to whom Randolph had spoken only twenty minutes earlier. He said flatly, ‘This probably doesn't signify anything, Mr Clare, but one of my cleaners saw Mr Hunter leave the hotel this afternoon with two men. He kind of noticed the men because they were both dressed in some sort of Army uniform and they both looked - well, I can only quote what my cleaner said, sir - "hard-bitten." Please forgive me if they were any friends of yours, sir.’

'No, thank you, they weren't, and you did very well to call me.’

Thank you, Mr Clare. We try to help.’

Randolph got back to Wanda. 'You're not going to believe this. Reece has got him. One of the hotel cleaners saw him leaving his room this afternoon with two men in combat jackets.’

'Oh, my God. Then that means Waverley Graceworthy has him.’

That's what it looks like.’

'But without Michael, you won't be able to make your case against the Cottonseed Association, will you? If you can't get into another death trance and if you can't talk to Marmie…’

Randolph was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'It's not my case against the Cottonseed Association that matters so much.’

Wanda said sympathetically, 'I know.’

They both realized, without sharing the thought out loud, that Waverley Graceworthy was quite capable of killing Michael and making sure his body never came to light. And if Michael were dead, there was no hope of Randolph's producing any fresh evidence against Waverley, and no hope of his ever seeing Marmie.

Randolph suddenly thought to himself that the prospect of seeing Marmie just one more time was the only inspiration that had kept him going these past two weeks and that even the survival of Clare Cottonseed was nothing beside that one burning hope. He took out his handkerchief, wiped his eyes and shakily transferred the telephone receiver from one hand to the other.

'What are you going to do?’ Wanda asked.

'I'm going to call Chief Moyne, for beginners.’

'Chief Moyne and Waverley Graceworthy are bosom buddies. You told me so yourself.’

'All the same, there's been a kidnapping here. That's a serious offence and Dennis is going to have to take some kind of action. He can't ignore it.’

'All right then,’ Wanda agreed. 'But will you call me back and tell me what he said? I'll stay at the office until I hear from you.’

'I'll get straight back.’

Randolph asked Charles to locate Chief Moyne for him. When he did so within two or three minutes, Chief Moyne sounded agitated and out of sorts. 'Randy? I'm just about to rush out of the office. We have the fireworks tonight and the Cotton Carnival Ball, and I'm fifteen minutes late already. Charlotte will just about kill me.’

'Dennis, this is more important than the Cotton Carnival Ball.’

'Tell that to Charlotte. She's been dressing up for it for the past two weeks.’

'Dennis, when I came back from Indonesia last week, I brought a friend with me. A young half-caste, an Indonesian-American. He was staying at Days Inn on Brooks Road. This afternoon when I called him, he was gone.’

There was a long silence. Then Chief Moyne asked with obvious vagueness, 'What's that you said? Who? I'm sorry, Randy, I wasn't really listening there.’

'Dennis, my friend has been kidnapped. He was last seen by one of the hotel cleaners, who saw him being escorted away from the hotel by two men in combat jackets.’

'Kidnapped?’ asked Chief Moyne in perplexity.

'Well, what do you call it when a man is forcibly taken away from his hotel room by two known thugs?’

'Er, well, this is all pretty woolly,’ Chief Moyne replied. 'Hey! I guess I shouldn't be saying "woolly" on the night of the Cotton Carnival Ball, should I? Two men in combat jackets, you say? But was there any clear evidence of forcible abduction?’

'I told my friend to stay in that hotel room and not to move out of it until I gave him permission.’

'Oh, yes? And how old was your friend?’

'I don't know. Twenty-two, twenty-three.’

'Well, I'm sorry, Randy, but no matter how strongly you told your friend to stay in that hotel, he was over the age of consent, right? And he could walk out of there anytime he felt like it. I mean, you understand that, don't you? When a
kid
gets kidnapped, that's pretty straightforward, but when an adult goes walking off with two other adults, with no sign of weaponry or physical coercion, well then, that's different
.
’

'How did you know there was no sign of weaponry or physical coercion?’ Randolph demanded.

'Because you never mentioned it, that's why. And because the very first thing you would have said was, my friend was taken away at gunpoint, or with a rope around his neck, or with his arm twisted behind his back.’

Randolph said, 'Dennis, you're not being very helpful. Those two men answered the description of two of Waverley Graceworthy's hired heavyweights. One of them calls himself Reece, or Ecker. I have every reason to believe that Waverley has kidnapped my friend.’

'Waverley?’ laughed Chief Moyne. It was difficult for Randolph to tell over the telephone whether the man's mirth was genuine or synthetic. 'Now why in the world would Waverley want to kidnap anybody, especially some half-caste guru from Indonesia?’

'I never said he was a guru.’

'Aren't they all gurus? Now listen, Randolph, I really have to run. Maybe we can talk in the morning.’