The Labyrinth Makers (17 page)

'Steerforth is my name. Faith Steerforth. You haven't forgotten John Steerforth, have you?'

'My God!' said Tierney.

'Sit down, Mr Tierney,' said Audley. 'My name's Audley. We'd like to talk to you about old times.'

Tierney tore his glance away from Faith. 'Old times?' He sat down, raised his glass to his lips and then abruptly set it down untasted. His alarm bells were ringing loud and clear.

'Johnnie Steerforth's daughter! Damn me, but I can see it now. Margery Steerforth's baby!'

'Margaret,' said Faith levelly.

'Margaret–of course! How well I remember her!'

Faith took a photograph from her handbag.

'Then you'll recognise her now. And of course you will recognise me with her, won't you!'

Tierney studied the photograph.

'That's good enough then,' cut in Audley. 'We can get on to those old times.'

Tierney looked at him innocently. 'Funny you should be so keen on the old times. I had a couple of chaps asking me about them only this morning.'

Audley leaned forward. 'Don't mess around with me, Tierney,' he said conversationally. 'I'm not Special Branch and I'm not playing old comrades in this crummy little town for fun. I'm here on business and if you're very lucky you'll be able to help me.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.' Tierney picked up his drink and started to get up.

Audley reached forward and put his hand casually on the man's leg just above the knee, squeezing powerfully with his thumb and forefinger. Tierney gave a little snort of pain and sat down again as the leg gave way, slopping some of his drink on to the table.

Tierney looked from one to the other in a mixture of surprise and outrage. Possibly no one had ever done anything like that to him before, certainly not in a public place. Faith had put her glasses on again, and her face was closed behind them.

Audley turned the relaxing squeeze into a gentle pat. Now he had to turn the outrage into fear.

'That's better,' he said quietly. 'I wouldn't wish you to misunderstand me, like your little friend Morrison.'

'Morrison?'

'Sergeant Morrison that was. Your look-out man. He didn't help us at all. So now he's not going to help anybody.'

'Who the bloody hell are you?'

It was not such an anguished cry as Morrison's had been. There was still a hint of fight about it. But this man lacked poor Morrison's years of blameless citizenship: he had no one to turn to.

'I've told you my name. You don't know who I am, but I know very well who you are. You brought it here, but your share in it has lapsed. Miss Steerforth has her father's share and I have the rest. And I might throw you a bone or two.'

Tierney drained his glass slowly, trying to charge his confidence at the same time. There was a sly look about him now, a compound of caution and greed brought to the surface by the prospect of profit.

'I don't even know what it is–or was.'

That could quite easily be true, thought Audley. Morrison hadn't known either. There was no real evidence that Steerforth intended to double-cross his own associates, but whether he did or not it would be a sensible precaution to keep them in the dark about the nature of the cargo.

'We don't need you to tell us that. And if you did know it wouldn't matter. You haven't got the form to dispose of it, not in a million years.'

Tierney smiled obsequiously and gestured to the glasses on the table. It was dawning on him that he might actually be in a bargaining position, and that thought was giving him confidence.

'My round, I think!'

Audley put the palm of his hand over Tierney's empty glass. Now was the precise time to demolish Tierney.

'Nobody's round. I see that I still haven't made myself plain. Morrison's
dead
, Tierney. He stuck out his silly neck and it got broken. He was the victim of a tragic accident–I believe he fell down a flight of stairs. I wouldn't like to think that you were accident-prone too.'

Tierney sat very still, his slyness wiped from his face and his confidence draining away, leaving only a thick sediment of fear. If he knew anything about the jungle in which he was a petty scavenger, then he would also know thg,t there were fiercer predators in it, man-eaters some of them.

'Who was your contact over here–the man you were going to cheat?'

'My contact–our contact?' Tierney stared at him. 'I–I don't remember. And that was Johnnie's job.'

In Steerforth's place Audley would have used Tierney to make the contact, first to report that the cargo lift had been delayed and second to report that it had been lost at sea. Dirty work for Tierney.

'His name was Bloch, wasn't it?'

'It might have been. I don't remember–honestly. It was the hell of a long time ago.'

'It was Bloch, Tierney. And he was a poor swimmer.'

Tierney frowned, uneasily perplexed.

'Which is a pity,' continued Audley, 'because he's been for a long swim. That was a little test for you–and you failed it miserably. You ought to remember Morrison and Bloch. They were both stupid, and they're both dead.'

Two mini-skirted girls settled noisily at the table next to them, but Tierney was oblivious to the disturbance. Audley felt a warm sense of power; with Morrison he had been repelled by his own success, but with this hollow man it was different. He was almost enjoying himself. In fact he
was
enjoying himself.

'Let's try again. How did you unload it at Newton Chester?'

The ferrety man breathed out, as though relieved that he had a simple answer to give. 'We used the Hump.'

'Tell me about the Hump.'

'It's on the runway, when you're taxiing in. It isn't a hump really–it's a sort of dip in the land. But it looks like a hump when you're taxiing in. You can't see the control tower when you're in it, it's down the far end, quite near the perimeter.'

He licked his lips anxiously.

'Johnnie spotted it. I mean, if you can't see the control tower from there, they can't see
you
. We used to just slow down an' drop things there, an' then go on in bold as brass.'

'And what happened to the things then?'

'One of the ground crew was there to pick 'em up. There's a little hut just not far from the runway. There's a firing range further on, just near the old castle–we didn't use it, but when it was a bomber field they kept the range ammunition there I think.'

'In the hut?'

'Yes. It was empty and locked up. Johnnie broke the lock off an' put one of his own on it just like it. He called it his safe deposit–no one worries about a hut if it's properly locked up. And then he came by and picked the things up later–he had some excuse for walking up that way.'

'And that's what you did the last time.'

Tierney nodded. 'We had to stop so Morrison an' me could lower the boxes out–Mac wouldn't help. He wouldn't have anything to do with it.'

Maclean was the odd man out in the crew, the honest one. Morrison was probably basically honest too, but willing and scared–too scared to admit that he had even handled the cargo years afterwards.

'It was a two-man job?'

'It was a two-man job to lower the boxes out of the Dak–some of those boxes were bloody heavy. But Ellis'd got a little trolley from somewhere.'

Audley warmed to the memory of John Steerforth. The minor smuggling was nothing, the artificial crime created by avaricious governments and economics beyond the grasp of ordinary men. The major crime was equally forgivable–a plundering of the plunderers doubly absolved by daring, ingenious last-minute improvisation and attention to detail. Faith's father had deserved his good luck, not his misfortune.

And for him Ellis was a bonus: he was one of the accessible survivors of the ground crew whose address had been traced.

But Tierney was still talking.

'… five minutes, but it seemed like hours. We'd never brought anything so big in before. Johnnie said it was worth it because it was the last time.'

The last time. It had been that all right: the very last time.

'So Ellis put it in the safe deposit. And when did you go and check up on it?'

'Check up on it?' A shadow crossed the man's face, as the resurrected memory of wealth won and lost took hold of him. 'I never did–at least not till much later. Johnnie said it was put away safely, an' we'd have to wait and be careful for a long while.' He stopped and gave Faith an oddly pathetic glance. Like Jones, he'd never quite believed in the death of the clever, indestructible John Steerforth. 'And I trusted him,' he said simply.

'I told that man–the Frenchman–that we couldn't bring it in the first time, and Johnnie was like a cat with two tails.'

'When was it that he told you it was put away safely?'

'It was next day–at the afternoon briefing, just before I went to see the Frenchman. At the Bull I saw him.'

'And you finally checked the hut–how long after?'

'Three weeks–more–I don't remember. I broke my sodding ankle baling out. There was a thunderstorm and we'd lost a lot of height–we were too low.' Tierney was no longer looking at Audley; he was looking through him and far away, back into the thunderstorm.

'Far too low. I thought we were going to come down in the sea. But Johnnie nursed her along–he said the old bitch knew what he wanted, she just hadn't understood her orders properly and he wasn't going to let her spoil everything.'

There was a squeal of laughter from the next table. One of the youths who had joined the mini-skirts had spilt beer down his shirt. Tierney's eyes focused on Audley again.

'But the old bitch got him, didn't she! She bloody well got him! I never thought I'd see her picture again!'

'And how much of this did you tell Bloch and his colleagues?'

'Colleagues? I never saw any colleagues. Only Bloch. He got into the hospital a couple of days after I was taken there. I didn't even know Johnnie was missing — they didn't tell me. So I told him what we'd agreed on: that Johnnie wouldn't dare crashland with the stuff on board and we'd lost the lot.'

'Did Johnnie have a car?'

'A car–no. He didn't even have a licence. I remember he said it was silly, being able to fly a plane and not being trusted with a car.'

That was another bonus, and a wholly unexpected one.

The possibility of handy transport, even in those austerity days, had been the one insuperable danger. It had never remotely occurred to him that Steerforth could not drive. Rather, he'd taken it for granted that he could.

'It's still there, isn't it!' Tierney was looking at him with a look of total incredulity. 'Of course it's still there. It has to be still there, and it was staring me in the face.'

Tierney had really been remarkably slow to follow the drift of the questions. Or slow at least to recover after being shocked into co-operating. Either way he would give nothing more which could be relied on. Audley took out his wallet and extracted five £10 notes from it.

'Fifty?' Tierney's assessment of his value was inflating rapidly with the birth of understanding. 'What I've given you's worth more than fifty!'

Audley was tempted to put the money back in his pocket. But it was more a gift to the blind goddess than to Tierney.

'What you've given me is worth nothing,' he said brutally. 'Nothing to you, anyway. You had your chance long ago, but because you were stupid–and because you didn't trust John Steerforth enough in the end–you missed it.'

'I could still queer your pitch–I could go to the authorities. I could report you! Both of you—'

The threat was empty and Audley was weary of the charade anyway. He reached into his pocket for his identification folder.

'We are the authorities, Tierney. You've been had, I'm afraid.'

Tierney squinted at the folder, then at Audley and finally at Faith. And longest at Faith.

'I could have sworn—' he began.

'Johnnie's daughter?' It was the first time she had spoken since showing him the photograph. 'You weren't had there, Mr Tierney. I'm Johnnie's daughter. But you'd have done better not to have trusted
me
.' She spoke sadly.

'And Morrison–and the other man?' Now Tierney was really empty, with not even fear left.

'You weren't altogether had there either,' said Audley. The least he could do was to warn the man off–and make Richardson's job simpler. 'You're just lucky that we reached you first. There are other people around who wouldn't bluff you. You'd best take yourself and your fifty pounds on holiday–a week would do.'

Tierney reached forward and scooped the five notes off the table, where they lay in a little puddle of spilt whisky.

Audley got up.

'A short holiday, Tierney–and we'll be keeping an eye on you, for your sake more than ours. And don't try to be clever. Don't go poking around Newton Chester trying to make up for lost time. I might see you there, and then I'd have you out of the way before your feet touched the ground again. Is that clear?'

He bent down, close to Tierney's ear.

'And go today, Tierney–go this afternoon.'

Richardson was just across the street outside the pub, peering morosely into the window of an antique shop. 'Tierney's going for a trip somewhere,' Audley told him. 'Just see him on his way. If he isn't off by four, go and remind him. Are you still mobile?'

The long face split in a grin.

'Hugh Roskill didn't fancy my old heap–he whistled up that souped-up racing car of his.'

'Phone Newton Chester and book us a couple of rooms at the Bull. We'll meet you there with the others tomorrow morning.'

'Make that a double room,' said Faith casually.

'Yes, ma'am.' Richardson's eyes flicked between them. He was no longer grinning; it occurred to Audley that he was not only not grinning, but had apparently been struck by some facial paralysis which had stranded his features in between emotions. Certainly no one could accuse him of grinning.

Audley wasn't sure that he approved the way she was setting the pace of their relationship, even if it was one of the logical outcomes of emancipation. But he knew equally well that with a pace maker one either keeps up or drops out of the race altogether.