Red Crystal (48 page)

A pair of uniformed policemen were walking slowly through the crowd towards her, examining the faces of the people hurrying by. One looked straight at Gabriele. He hesitated in his stride, then continued his professional swagger. But his eyes stayed on her and, inclining his head to his partner, he muttered a few words.

Hastily Gabriele thought: It means nothing. It’s just the dark glasses. Or they like eyeing girls.

It means nothing.

The two policemen halted a few yards away. One reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. His partner peered over his shoulder to look at it.

Gabriele felt the first flutterings of excitement and fear.

The two men looked at her again, as if comparing her to something on the sheet of paper. She stared back at them through the dark glasses.

They were coming towards her now. Casually she turned her head away and changed her attitude, moving her weight to the other leg, and putting her hand in her pocket. Her hand closed over the grip of the Walther.

‘Excuse me, madam.’

She turned slowly. ‘Yes.’

‘What is your name, please?’

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘My name? It is Anneke van Duren.’ She put on the slightest accent.

‘Your nationality?’

‘I am Dutch.’

‘Could we see your passport, please?’

She took her hand out of her pocket, and reached into the shoulder bag. Opening the inner zip compartment, she brought out the Dutch passport.

They examined it, looking carefully at the picture.

‘Could we ask you to remove your sunglasses, please?’

Slowly, Gabriele took them off and put them in her coat pocket. She grasped the Walther again.

The two men compared her face with the passport photograph and the information on the sheet of paper. Gabriele craned her neck and took a quick look over the top of the piece of paper. There was a photograph on it.

Her stomach lurched.

She said, laughing, ‘Is that someone who looks like me?’

They both stared at her. One said, ‘Whereabouts in Holland do you live?’

‘Amsterdam.’

‘Do you have any other form of identification?’

She shrugged happily. ‘Sure.’ She reached into the same compartment of her handbag and pulled out a driving licence.

One took it and asked, ‘What’s the address on this?’

Treating it like some great joke, Gabriele gave them the correct address in a suitably guttural Dutch accent.

The two men glanced at each other. It was obvious that they were uncertain about what to do. Feeling more confident, Gabriele said brightly, ‘I’m sorry if I’m not the right person.’

One nodded at her and handed back the passport and driving licence.

Gabriele smiled, ‘Thank you. I hope you find the person you are looking for.’

The two men pulled back and stood some distance away, talking between themselves. Gabriele turned her attention to the Avis desk. A second girl was just coming on duty and waved Gabriele forward. Gabriele forced herself not to look at the policemen again until all the paperwork had been done. Then, gathering up the keys of the hire car, she turned to go.

The policemen were nowhere in sight.

Nevertheless she was exceptionally careful. She went to the ladies’ washroom and spent several minutes there. Coming out, she took another look round. Then she went by a circuitous route to the hire car pick-up point, going downstairs, through the departure hall, then back along the outside of the building, as if she were slightly lost.

When the Avis bus arrived, she took a seat near the back so she could keep watch on the road behind. By the time the bus dropped her at the Avis depot she was certain there was no one following her.

But it had been a close thing.

Once safely in the hire car – a Ford Escort – she took stock.

The photograph. She had recognized it immediately. It had been taken when she was eighteen.

Linda Wilson.

They knew all about her then.

How?
Not through Max.
Never
Max.

How?

She went through all the possibilities – but there was really only one.

Nick Riley. It had to be.

Just the thought of him made her wince.

He must have gone to the mews house, and guessed she had done a bunk. He must have combed his records, just like the filthy little spy he was, and finally linked her to Linda Wilson.

He must be gloating at his success.

Or was he?

Suddenly she saw the other side of it. He’d had a terrorist right under his nose,
in bed
… And never realized. What a humiliation for him. What a fool he must look to his colleagues. He must be sick at having been taken for such a ride.

The thought took some of the edge off her anger and made her feel slightly better.

And as for the police having her identity – in a way she was rather pleased. Now they knew who they were dealing with. No one would ever take her lightly again. They would broadcast her name on television. Petrini would hear about it, and the Lotta in Milan, and Raymond in Paris. From now on her name would be synonymous with active struggle … And that pleased her.

She drove on to the A4, heading west towards the farmhouse.

A new worry nagged at her mind.

It was a potentially serious one. It would be unwise to use the Dutch identity again. Which left just one passport – the Argentinian one hidden in Chelsea – to get her out of the country. A single passport. And no margin for error.

It was all a matter of control.

Dear God
.

The longing to move was so powerful that Henry had to grit his teeth to stop himself from trying to break out of the box. His mind had accepted the necessity to stay still, but his body hadn’t. The muscles in his legs were burning with a terrible energy that was independent of his brain. He had the awful feeling that, if he stopped concentrating for a moment, his legs would spring out from his body and force open the lid of the box.

After a while he tried moving his toes in the hope that this would alleviate the pressure on his legs. But it only encouraged his leg muscles to scream out for action, and the burning sensation was almost more than he could bear.

Control
. He must
not
lose control.

In the wild rangings of his imagination the loathsome package on his stomach seemed, at one moment, to be benign and incapable of causing the slightest harm, and the next moment, to be so evil that he could almost feel it burning a hole in his stomach, like a ball of virulent acid.

Reaching for lifelines, he tried concentrating on work, on a new bill the PM wanted ready for the next session. He made himself go through the proposed clauses one by one.

On the fourth clause his mind wandered to Caroline …

With an effort he brought his thoughts back to the bill, but her image floated into his mind again.

Yielding, he indulged himself for a moment, and thought of her sweet face and her lovely smile and how much he loved her.

But thinking about Caroline was a slippery slope. He imagined her now, worried to death and having to face the full horror of the situation without him, and he felt so angry at the savage inhumanity of these people that he wanted to assault them physically.

But that of course was exactly what they wanted: to provoke him. Whatever happened, he must never give them that satisfaction.

Control
.

Oh, but it was hard …

Thinking about Caroline gave him a desperate appetite for life. It was impossible to face the idea of death with any equanimity at all. Death would be an outrage, an appalling waste. The thought was so painful that he had to clench his fists to force the emotion out of his mind.

The voice, when it came, seemed to float on the air. ‘Henry – would you like some water?’

Victoria.

He opened his eyes. The light was on. She was kneeling beside him. He said, ‘Yes, a little …’

She held the water cupped in her hands and dripped it into his mouth. She said, ‘They left the water in a bowl. I didn’t want to risk spilling it all over you.’

‘Thank you.’ He took a little more, then shook his head. He didn’t want to take too much liquid. He had already had to relieve himself where he lay. A singularly unpleasant experience, but a necessary one which was surprisingly easy when one had no choice in the matter. Since then he had deliberately ignored the uncomfortable wetness of his clothing; as a matter of principle he refused to let it bother him. None the less, it was something he would rather not have to repeat too often.

‘Have you managed to sleep?’ Victoria asked.

‘Not really.’

‘I left you – in case.’

She offered him food, but he refused.

She said, ‘Do you want to talk?’

He looked at her. She was much more composed now, as if she had made an enormous effort to suppress her feelings. The expression on her round freckled face was cool and concerned. He remembered his own word: businesslike.

He said, ‘Yes, let’s talk.’ Talking would be useful; it would help take his mind off the object on his stomach.

She looked relieved. She asked rather formally, ‘Is there anything in particular that you would like to talk about?’

He could think of a dozen things he
didn’t
want to discuss. He sighed deeply. It was all too much.

She said immediately, ‘What about talking about all the things the police are doing at this very moment to find us?’

The place was in darkness but they took no chances.

First ultra-sensitive listening devices were put against the walls. Then marksmen with Enfields were positioned on the roofs opposite. When they finally went in, the first men through the broken door carried Smith and Wesson .38s.

They had taken no chances. But they need not have bothered. The flat was empty.

Nick went in behind Kershaw and Conway. As soon as the armed men had withdrawn, Kershaw’s detectives got silently down to work.

Nick went quickly from room to room. Everything was neat and tidy. There were no signs of hurried departure. Nor had Victoria Danby been away for very long. The milk in the fridge was fresh, the soft fruit on the small dining table was not overripe. There was only one letter lying on the mat inside the front door, and that had been posted the day before.

The flat looked so normal that Nick had the dreadful feeling he’d got it all wrong again and that Victoria Danby bore no connection to anything at all.

He wandered around the living-room. Behind the sofa a pillow and eiderdown lay carefully folded in a neat pile on the floor.

An extra guest.

In the bedroom the bed was made and the coverlet smoothed over without a crease. In the bathroom the towels were folded over the hot rail and some women’s underwear was drying on a rack in the bath.

All horrendously normal.

Back in the living-room Kershaw was on the phone, a letter in his hand. He gestured Nick towards an expandable cardboard file which someone had put on the table. Covering the mouthpiece, Kershaw said, ‘Go through the rest of this lot, will you, Ryder?’

The concertina-type file had twenty compartments. The Danby girl was very orderly. Each was carefully marked with a category. Nick began with cars. There were two registration documents: one for a camper van, one for a Mini. He waved them in front of Kershaw just as Kershaw said into the telephone, ‘Is this Mrs Danby? My name is Commander Kershaw of the Serious Crimes Squad at Scotland Yard …’

Nick placed the papers in various piles. There was a passport – the details matched those obtained half an hour ago from the passport office; three sterling travellers’ cheques for ten pounds each; an outer folder showing that two cheques had been cashed only a week before, in Paris. Some French money. A ferry booking – again for only the week before.

Kershaw was saying, ‘So you have no idea where your daughter might be, Mrs Danby? We wouldn’t find her at work somewhere?’

Another compartment contained bills, marked ‘Paid’ with a date scribbled underneath. Another, bank statements. There was certainly no shortage of money. Nick wondered where it all came from.

Kershaw was asking patiently, ‘May I ask, Mrs Danby, does your daughter still have two vehicles, a Mini and a – VW camper van?’

Nick went to the next compartment marked: Hunter’s Wood. In it were more bills for a property somewhere in Wiltshire. There were also letters from a firm of solicitors called Makepiece & Makepiece, concerning the purchase of the property in May of 1968. Then another series of letters, which were much more recent, relating to a sale.

As Kershaw said, ‘It is vital we find your daughter, Mrs Danby, to eliminate her from our inquiries,’ Nick put one of the solicitor’s letters in front of him and pointed to the Wiltshire address.

Kershaw said, ‘Mrs Danby, does your daughter have any connection with a property in Wiltshire, a place called Hunter’s Wood?’

Nick went quickly through the last few papers: letters from someone who might be a sister; an old diary; some invitations to weddings and parties – all very grand, he noticed.

Kershaw was bringing his conversation to a close, murmuring the appropriate thanks and apologies. He put the phone down.

‘Nothing much,’ he said, ‘She doesn’t work. Money of her own. The mother has no idea where she is. Oh, and that place, the farm, has been sold. The girl hasn’t lived there for some time.’

Nick had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. This was getting nowhere. He couldn’t believe it. The Danby girl had been at the pre-demo meeting that Wheatfield and Black Beard had attended. And she knew the Attorney-General. There had to be a connection.
Surely
.

He wandered round, watching the team of men at their work. They were taking the place apart, ripping the bottoms out of the sofa and chairs, pulling up the floorboards, emptying all the food out of containers … Kershaw’s orders had been simple: he wanted information at any cost, even if it meant losing fingerprints.

In the bathroom a man was bent over the bath removing hairs from the surface enamel with a tweezer. He said, ‘Straight black hair here. Isn’t the Danby girl fair?’