The Corners of the Globe (15 page)

Forced to admit to George Clissold that he too had been looking for Soutine, Sam soon realized he would have to explain why. Over a badly needed beer in a café close to the Majestic but not close enough to be overrun by fellow Brits, he told George much of what he had told Morahan. He was determined to keep his promise to Kuroda, whatever happened. He did not mention Count Tomura by name – or Fritz Lemmer. But what remained was a tale he felt marginally better for telling.

‘So,’ said George when he had finished, ‘in some ways James – I mean Max – has left you in the lurch.’

‘He wasn’t to know this would happen, sir. And I’m sure he’s got a fair few problems of his own to cope with.’

‘You’d have a better idea about that than I would, Sam. Care to reveal what you know about his current activities?’

But Sam had a free hand only as far as his own secrets were concerned. ‘Sorry, sir. I gave him my word.’

‘So you did. Whatever he’s up to, though, I assume there’s a connection with le Singe.’

‘I can’t deny that.’

‘And it’s le Singe these people are after?’

‘Yes. And they’re not the sort who’ll give up easily.’

‘Which puts you in a tight spot.’

‘Too tight for comfort.’

‘But it does mean we share an interest in finding Soutine.’

‘We do, sir, yes.’

‘Then I suggest we set about the task without further ado.’

‘How can we? Soutine’s not likely to go back to the gallery again. I reckon he had everything he’d gone there for in that bag he was carrying.’

‘Very possibly. But he may have left behind some clue to his present whereabouts. We ought to go and look for it.’

Sam frowned suspiciously at George. ‘Have you got in mind what I think you’ve got in mind, sir?’

‘You can borrow a few tools from the garage, can’t you? We’ll need to jemmy the gallery door open. There’s probably another door to the flat. But we’ll be inside by then, so we can afford to make a bit more noise if we have to.’

‘Blimey. You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘Absolutely. I’ve always fancied trying my hand at breaking and entering. Like that fellow Raffles.’

‘But he’s not real, sir. Some writer made him up.’

‘Never mind that.’ George consulted his watch. ‘How about three hours from now?’

Appleby had abandoned all thought of catching the Edinburgh sleeper from King’s Cross. Lemmer must have sent Max to the Orkneys, so he could be in little doubt of where Max currently was, or the logical route for Appleby to take to intercept him. They were both in difficulties now.

From Clapham Junction, Appleby took a couple of slow trains north to Willesden Junction. He recalled from pre-war journeys to the north-west that the Liverpool sleeper out of Euston stopped there to pick up passengers. It was a diversion likely to defeat even Lemmer’s resources. It would get Appleby to Birmingham in the middle of the night, but from there he could catch a train north to York, where Max’s southbound train to London was sure to stop. With luck he would be able to dispatch a telegram to Max from Birmingham to greet him in Edinburgh. By the time they met, he would certainly have devised some kind of stratagem to deliver Max’s ‘precious cargo’ to C.

One thing was certain now. What Max was carrying was pure gold. Lemmer’s willingness to expose a highly placed operative in order to wrest it from him proved that.

Standing in the cold and dark on the platform at Willesden Junction, moonlight falling thinly on the rails stretching ahead of him beyond the station, Appleby felt a hard, grim pleasure creep over him. He had been out of the field a long time. But he had not lost his edge. The way he had dealt with Davison had demonstrated that. He had needed to act and he had acted. He was back – where he belonged.

PERKINS BID MAX
a cheery adieu when the train reached the terminus at Inverness. He bounded away with such alacrity that Max was forced to question his suspicions of the man. Certainly, he had done nothing beyond talk too much to justify them. Maybe he was just the bored young Scottish solicitor he appeared to be.

As he climbed down from the train, travelling bag in hand, Max saw Perkins hurrying on ahead, his figure blurred by the steam of the engine. Then he heard a name he knew being called out. ‘Telegram for Mr Nettles! Telegram for Mr Nettles!’ A boy in HR uniform came bouncing towards him, envelope held aloft.

Max did not shout to the boy for fear of attracting Perkins’ attention, but signalled that he was Nettles. He doled out a small tip as he took the message and moved across to a lamp to read it.

You will be met Waverley tomorrow morning. A
.

Well, that was as much as could be expected, he supposed, even though who would meet him was unspecified. It would be good no longer to be operating alone. And the rendezvous was only a night’s journey away.

He hurried to the ticket office, sensing as he moved across the station that a tall, overcoated figure had waited for him to appear before heading in the same direction. It could be a misapprehension, of course. He was beginning to realize the fear of being followed was apt to create evidence of it everywhere. He paused to light a cigarette. The big fellow overtook him, then diverted to study a timetable board, fingering his moustache thoughtfully as he did so. Or was he studying Max’s reflection in a window beyond the board? There was no way to know.

Max walked on to the ticket office and bought a first-class single to Glasgow. The sleeper left in just under two hours. ‘I’ll need a single berth,’ he emphasized.

‘You’ll have to arrange that with the sleeping-car attendant when you board the train, sir,’ the clerk said. ‘But there shouldn’t be any difficulty. So, it’s through to Buchanan Street you’ll be wanting?’

‘Yes.’

Max paid and turned away, to find the big fellow waiting patiently behind him, still fingering his moustache, apparently giving Max no thought whatsoever. But that failed to supply Max with any degree of reassurance.

He made for the Station Hotel then, in search of a late supper. Quite a few passengers off his train, booked through on the sleeper, had done the same. He felt safe in the half-full dining-room, waiting for his order of beef stew. He sipped a well-watered whisky, aware that he must keep his wits about him. All seemed secure and orderly. But it could change in an instant.

He had bought a ticket to Glasgow. That was what the big fellow would have heard him do. But he was not going to Glasgow. The train split at Perth. He would move to the Edinburgh portion then. That was the moment, if there was to be a moment, when they would know they had to strike.

Sam was if anything more anxious than Max as he and George Clissold emerged from République Métro station. The foul weather had done them a favour in clearing the streets of idlers. But it did little for Sam’s confidence. He was never good with tools when his hands were as cold as they currently were and George seemed to expect him to do any jemmying that was required. He was carrying a torch, a tyre lever, a hammer, a screwdriver and a chisel, stowed in a duffel bag he had found behind a cupboard in the garage office. He subscribed to the logic of what they were doing. He needed to find Soutine much more desperately than George did. And there really was nowhere else to start looking for him than the flat above the gallery. But breaking in to do it was risky. And the pessimistic side of his character made him suspect the risk was simply not worth it.

George, emboldened by several more brandies than Sam thought wise, took a different view. Since Soutine was the seller of the fake cylinder-seals, he was fully accountable in George’s mind. He had demonstrated his bad faith by posing as his own partner in order to throw Sam off the scent. They were therefore fully entitled to take whatever steps proved necessary to establish his whereabouts, including forcing the lock at his place of business.

They entered the Passage Vendôme from the quieter end, in Rue Béranger. It appeared wholly deserted. There was mercifully no sign of the loquacious drunkard. The lamps in the arcade had been extinguished, though enough were burning in the rooms above the shops to cast dim squares of light down among the shadows.

There was no light in the flat above
Laskaris et Soutine
. The windows were in darkness. Sam switched on the torch and shone it at the door handle.

‘There’s enough of a gap between the lock and the jamb to apply some leverage,’ whispered George. ‘Shall we give it a go?’

‘All right, sir. But like as not someone will hear us.’

‘Before rolling over and going back to sleep. Let’s get on with it. Here, I’ll hold the torch.’

Sam set down the bag and took out the tyre lever. He slid it gently into the gap George had pointed out, pushing against the snib on the latch.

And the door sprang open.

‘Blimey,’ said Sam. ‘He left it unlocked.’

‘An open invitation,’ said George. ‘I suggest we accept it.’

Sam gathered up the bag and they went in.

George shone the torch beam around the statues and paintings and assembled antiquities. A Roman who could almost have been real, but for the fact that he was only a bust, snarled silently at Sam from atop a fluted column.

‘Do people actually buy this stuff?’ mused George.

‘Shouldn’t we go upstairs, sir? Anyone can see us while we’re down here.’

‘Yes, yes. Quite right. Lead on.’

Sam headed up the spiral stairs, with George following. There was a door at the top. And Sam could see it was ajar. He need not have worried about breaking and entering. Soutine had allowed them to walk straight in.

‘Bet you didn’t think it would be this easy,’ said George from close behind.

Sam certainly had not. What was worrying him now was just how easy it was – altogether too easy, in fact.

He pushed the door of the flat fully open and stepped inside. George followed.

The rooms were small, opening off the cramped lobby in which they stood. There were several crates and boxes stacked on the floor. The air was cold and musty, tomb-like.

George shone the torch through an open doorway ahead of them into a drably furnished sitting-room. There was little sign of luxury. Sam noticed a bureau in one corner. The flap was down, revealing a chaos of papers. The drawers of the bureau had all been pulled open. Two had been pulled out altogether and were lying on the floor.

‘Untidy beggar, isn’t he?’ murmured George, but it did not look like mere untidiness to Sam. He said nothing, though. He felt a keen sense of foreboding, but took some comfort from George’s gruff humour and had no wish to puncture it.

‘We’ll take a closer look at that bureau in a moment, Sam. Let’s see what’s in the other rooms.’

The next one they looked into was a kitchen. Its door too stood open. But the door on the other side of the lobby was closed. Sam turned the handle and swung it open.

The torch beam moved across a bed, over which some strange, looming shadow was cast. George stepped round Sam and shone it directly into the room. And there was the horror, before them.

‘Oh my Gawd.’ Sam recoiled from the sight of it.

‘Dear Lord,’ said George.

A man was hanging upside down from a hook fixed to the ceiling. A chandelier that had once been suspended from it was now lying in pieces on the floor. The torchlight sparkled on its bevelled glass. There was a wide pool of congealed blood below the man’s head. His throat had been cut, very nearly from ear to ear.

It was Soutine. Sam could tell that much from his white hair and Vandyke beard, though his face was otherwise a mask of dried blood. His hands were tied behind his back, his ankles bound together. He was wearing black shoes and socks, a white shirt and the trousers and waistcoat of a grey suit, the hems of the trousers held tight around his ankles by the rope fastening them. A gold watch hung upside down by its chain from one of his waistcoat pockets, the watch glass cracked clean across.

How long Soutine had been hanging there Sam could not have guessed, beyond the fact that it was less than twenty-four hours. Some time during those twenty-four hours, Soutine’s luck and his lies and his life’s blood had run out.

Laskaris et Soutine
had lost at least one of its partners.

GEORGE STUMBLED INTO
the kitchen, where he retched into the sink. He had led a sheltered life when it came to the contemplation of violent death. Sam, who had seen more downed pilots crushed or cremated in their own aircraft than he cared to remember, was less sickened than frightened.

He switched on the electric light in the lobby and gazed at the dead man’s sightless eyes and blood-clotted mouth. That, he knew, was how someone might find him one day soon. He swallowed hard.

The body swung slightly in the draught created by opening the door, causing the knot around the hook to creak ominously. Sam dropped the duffel bag, stepped into the room and laid his hand gently against Soutine’s thigh to arrest the movement, taking care not to tread in the blood as he did so. There was a stench of urine and faeces as well as blood in the closed air. It was obvious Soutine had died in terror as much as pain.

As Sam retreated to the lobby, George emerged from the kitchen, dabbing at his mouth with a towel he had found. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I think it was the smell that did for me.’

‘Don’t worry, sir,’ said Sam softly. ‘It’s a sickening sight, right enough.’

‘What in God’s name has happened here?’

‘They caught him. Like as not they tortured him. And then they killed him.’

‘Why would they torture him?’

‘They want le Singe.’

‘Who are they?’

‘Best you don’t know, sir. Best you stay out of it altogether.’

‘It’ll be the worse for you if I do. We can’t leave the poor devil like this. We have to call the police. There’s probably a telephone in the sitting-room. But you should ask yourself whether you want to be here when they arrive, Sam. Placed as you are. I have the perfect explanation for my presence: Arnavon and the damned cylinder-seals. They’ll be a lot more curious about you.’

‘I don’t really want to meet the police, sir, it’s true.’