11 Harrowhouse (36 page)

Rosilli claimed he had found the diamonds in the street, a lie obviously inspired by the Hatton Garden melee. Coglin put the pressure on him. Rosilli glanced furtively at the fists being made by two of Coglin's biggest men and quickly changed his story. He'd found the diamonds in one of the Marylebone dump trucks. With the strange affinity diamonds have for grease, they'd stuck where the tailgate mechanism was heavily lubricated. He'd noticed them while riding in the back of the truck. Marylebone supervisors used the company trucks for personal transportation to and from work and around town. Sometimes they gave the workers a lift home. Rosilli said he hadn't recognized the stones as diamonds right off, not until he'd seen the photographic coverage of Hatton Garden in the
London Illustrated News
.

Coglin almost believed him. “Which truck?” Coglin demanded.

“The white one,” replied Rosilli.

All the Marylebone vehicles were assembled in the parking area next to the firm's headquarters. They were each identical, stark white. However, instead of six dump trucks, there were now eight. And five panel trucks instead of four—a discovery which astounded Marylebone's young owner, who believed it incredible that he'd overlooked something that could be mortgaged into spending money.

It required the better part of an afternoon to search the company's disorderly files and find the registrations of the authentic vehicles. Engine numbers were matched and, through elimination, it was determined which of the trucks were the extra three.

Coglin stared at them intensely, as though hoping for a miraculous after-image of the person or persons who had been behind the steering wheels of those trucks on the night of June thirtieth. His face skin felt tight and the hair in his ears tingled. He was, he believed, getting closer.

His specialists went over the trucks. They vacuumed and brushed, tweezered, magnified, and microphotographed. They worked all night in their laboratory.

The following morning Coglin was presented with a fact sheet.

There were fifty-two different finger and thumb prints on the three trucks, twenty-five clear, and the rest partial or smudged. Four were prints of women. None matched any in Security Section's memory bank.

Eighteen hairs had been recovered, of which fourteen were from males and four from females. Three were from an area other than the scalp.

Analysis of dirt particles taken from the tires and under-chassis revealed nothing exceptional, just ordinary English dirt.

Blood stains, type O, ten days old, definitely female, were found on a handkerchief stuffed beneath the seat of the panel truck.

Also recovered were several cotton and wool fibers, miscellaneous metal and food particles, tobacco shreds, four cherry pits, eight nails, and two paper matchbook covers from a Soho strip club called The D-Cup.

Conclusion: the extensive and varied use of the vehicles since the robbery prevented any clear determinations. Coglin turned the fact sheet face down on his desk. He'd hoped for more.

An hour later he got it.

M. J. Mathew, 1096 Uxbridge Road, Shepherd's Bush, W12.

That was the name and address that appeared on the official registrations of the three trucks, according to the National Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Coglin examined photostat copies of the three separate registrations. The signatures were dissimilar, back-slanted, extreme vertical condensed, and large-looped loose. However, Coglin's experienced eye strongly suspected they were all made by the same hand.

Getting somewhere, he thought.

But a computer check on the name got nothing. Mathew had never been connected with diamonds in any way, legitimate or otherwise. And the Uxbridge Road address turned out to be a Catholic bookshop.

Coglin sat there at his desk and gazed across at number 11. He encouraged himself with three swallows of straight whiskey from a sterling, old-school tumbler he'd bought from a Portobello Road tinker. He didn't feel any inside glow from the whiskey; he was that distracted. He slouched as though pressed by defeat but immediately recognized that old enemy and pulled himself up out of it.

For consolation he created a mental panorama of the robbery and credited his ingenuity with the pieces that were already in place. To fill in a couple of the blanks, he asked himself where the thieves had kept the trucks when they weren't using them. A garage or warehouse, he decided. Actually, to avoid such complication, they'd parked the trucks on a minor street in the vicinity of Marylebone, Ltd., close enough not to seem out of place, yet where Marylebone itself might not notice them. And after the robbery. Coglin was right about that. The thieves had abandoned the trucks at the Marylebone parking area, where they became part of the confusion of the Marylebone fleet.

Coglin reviewed the fact sheet and decided the direction of his next move. He noted that lab had determined the original color of the three extra trucks. Black. That meant somewhere they'd been given a professional paint job. Agents were already questioning the firms where the trucks had been purchased. The paint shop would provide verifying identification.

A full, accurate description of M. J. Mathews was forthcoming, Coglin believed.

His agents reported in.

M. J. Mathew was gray-haired, about fifty, stoop-shouldered, wore a built-up shoe because one leg was shorter than the other.

M. J. Mathew was red-haired, about forty, blotchy complexioned, with bifocals, prominent nose, bad smoker's cough, tattoo of anchor and halyard on left bicep.

M. J. Mathew was black-haired, with mutton chop sideburns, full moustache, overgrown brows, spoke with a stutter, did not have total use of his right arm.

M. J. Mathew was a Negro, dark West Indian type, had two diagonal scars on left cheek, gold filling in upper front tooth, walked very knock-kneed.

M. J. Mathew had, in every instance, paid cash.

M. J. Mathew, whoever he was and whatever he looked like, was a bloody smart professional son of a bitch, brooded Coglin.

Rosilli was released. He'd come out honest on his lie-detector test, even after being injected with a double dose of sodium pentathol. Not really knowing what he was into but sensing it was too deep, Rosilli forfeited the diamonds he'd found and gladly accepted one hundred pounds for signing without reading a document which exonerated The System of any charges he might make, including abduction.

CHAPTER 24

M
ORE THAN
a week had passed. But neither Chesser nor Maren mentioned leaving Ste. Marguerite. As so often happens, especially with lovers, they began claiming their surroundings with their experiences.

Each night they transferred the mattresses from the beds to the floor. A personal ritual kept secret by their remaking the beds first thing each morning.

The fat hotel owner turned out to be remarkable. A woman with abundant energy devoted to pleasing them because their love was so apparent to her. She had been in
la résistance
during the war and always wore a tiny, soiled Legion of Honor rosette pinned over her heart. She cooked special dishes she hoped Maren and Chesser would like, even gathered fresh thyme and rosemary for their seasoning. Her son voluntarily took time to squeeze cold fresh raspberries into a thick juice. For them. Pure and quenching.

The other guest, Catherine, did not intrude, kept to herself, sat in the sun, pensive, and took long, thoughtful walks. Only one night did she join Chesser and Maren for dinner, and the talk was mainly about fashions. She ate with the serious efficiency typical of her nationality. Frequently, she was seen using the hotel's only telephone, which was located in a little hallway between the kitchen and the bar. Calling for mercy, was Chesser's opinion.

Each day it was the same island, but each day Maren and Chesser discovered it. Lemons hung like bright decorations from branches, and a big, old fig tree next to the hotel had a ladder propped up into it so the higher fruit, sweeter and ready to drop, could be picked for spontaneous eating. There were untended geraniums along paths, and the entire outer side of the island was a grove of tall spruces, bedded with years and years of aromatic needles and scattered with huge fallen cones.

One morning, early, Maren and Chesser stood on the roof-balcony and watched pairs of islanders in ordinary rowboats poling slowly in the waveless shallows. It was explained that they were after squid and that it could only be done early when the sea was placid enough for the bottom to be seen. After that, Maren and Chesser watched with greater interest, hoping that the men would have good luck and expressing delight whenever they saw it come true.

The sea had never offered so much—not Biarritz, nor Portofino, nor the Costa del Sol, or anywhere of that sort. Unlike those resorts where the sea served as an excuse for everything else being there—merely the major element of the setting—on Ste. Marguerite the sea was, for them, an intimate explanation of anemones and sea urchins, bulby fragments of strange weeds, water-bleached sticks, and not extraordinary pebbles, all of which had to be taken up and closely examined.

One day they climbed to the fortress, up the steep rise of hundreds of shallow steps to unscalable old walls and into it, where an underfed dog came running at them, barking, followed by a little skeleton of a lady-keeper yipping remonstrations in French and brusquely calling attention to the sign that proclaimed the site historical and stated the legal visiting days and hours. As soon as a twenty-franc note was in the woman's bony hands, the dog discontinued its threats, as though its behavior were conditioned to that condition. Wtihout smile or gratitude, the keeper and dog went off somewhere, leaving Chesser and Maren with the run of the place.

They found the fortress and its inner grounds delightfully unkempt. Either the government made no appropriation for maintenance or, more likely, such funds were intercepted by hands money couldn't possibly pass through. Thus the fortress structures were being allowed to deteriorate, and acquire more valid character. Tall, yellow grasses overgrew, thistles clumped up, brambles reached, knotted, and spread. There were wild blackberries everywhere. In the sunlit air shiny, flaxen particles floated amidst the natural frenzy of bees and flies. It was all much more pleasant than if the place had been restored and self-consciously manicured.

Such things contributed to the reason why Maren and Chesser, on the morning of the fourth day, were happy to notice that the
Shangri-La
and all the other units of the Sixth Fleet were gone from the bay. Maren fancied that she'd made them disappear, erased those grim, gray war things. Because she had been silently telling them to go.

Late that same day, they were on the toe of the island. Nearby were the Nazi fortifications they had previously explored. An enclosed concrete bunker, above ground, evidently once the placement for a coastal artillery gun, and adjoining that, a long, rectangular underground bunker that must have served as quarters for the German soldiers. More recently, according to evidence noted by Maren and Chesser, both bunkers had been used frequently for acts of love.

About a hundred feet from the bunkers was an unusual rock formation. Connected sections of granite, diagonally upright, like individual troughs. It was as if some powerful giant hand, when slipping back into the sea, had clawed them out with its fingers. Slanted as the rocks were, and smooth, and warm, Chesser and Maren found them a pleasant place to lie.

They relaxed there, confronting the Mediterranean, with isolated pools at their feet.

“What day is it?” asked Maren.

“July something. I don't know exactly.”

“I mean, Tuesday or Wednesday, or what?”

He guessed it was Friday. “Why?” he asked. He thought she might be getting bored with the place.

“No reason,” she replied and stretched langorously. “It's indulgent not to know, but it's nice, isn't it?”

For a long while they said nothing. Their hands were joined. Chesser turned his head and marveled at Maren's eyes, which were aimed at the sky but fixed with thought. He asked her what she was thinking.

“About time,” she answered. “You know what I believe?”

He truly wanted to know, was fascinated with the way her voice was coming to him then, with the sea's sounds underscoring it.

She told him, “I believe love is the reason we live lifetimes rather than one long endless forever.”

“Go on.”

“That's what makes time precious. We're eternal, of course, but the doubt that we're not is important. If we knew for certain we'd never die, time would be meaningless and then lovers would have nothing of value to give one another.”

The idea of living forever, together, just as they were, seemed ideal to him. He wished there was some guarantee of that eternity.

“Time is the currency of love,” she said. “Each lifetime is an allowance for us to spend in love.”

“You make me feel wealthy,” he told her, “despite my recent loss.”

“Let's make a promise,” she suggested enthusiastically. “Right now, this time.”

“All right.”

“Next lifetime you be me and I'll be you.”

“Maybe that's what we're doing now,” he said. “Maybe we promised that to one another last time.”

She considered that. “It's very possible,” she murmured and brought her look around to him.

“Anyway,” he said, “we might as well promise, just to be sure.”

“I want you to feel everything I feel. Promise?”

“Promise,” he vowed.

He thought more about her philosophy. “Is that why you're never afraid?” he asked, believing it was.

“There's nothing to be afraid of.”

“There's dying.”

“Did you ever think that perhaps people are even more afraid to be born?”

“Perhaps,” he conceded.

The sun was going, its circumference defined. It looked like a big precise hole punched in the sky. They could gaze directly at it without squinting. The sea was acting up a little, just entertaining itself some with the wind before it calmed for the night. Maren was wearing only a long shirtdress of lightest georgette. Pale pink patterned white. Chesser could see her nipples firm through the fabric. He cared that she might be cold.