Blood Wine (23 page)

“Excuse me,” he mumbled, doing a two-step, trying to let her get by.

“Stand very still,” she said. “I'm going due west. We should be able to manage this.”

“Sorry,” he said, nodding to her as he ambled on toward the traffic on Brompton Road.

“Not at all,” she said as he moved away. Her voice lingered with a familiar cadence, but when he allowed himself to look back she was gone, swallowed up through one of the doorways.

He shook his head, trying to get a grasp on the moment. Surely, he thought, she had copper-red hair. But that was twenty years ago. Susan Croydon has long since settled into the sweet life she deserved, and this other woman, this was a ghost, nothing more.

By the time he reached the South Kensington tube station he was tired, but he walked on, cutting up along the Fulham Road. The woman who might have been Susan had faded like a dream on awakening, and he could only remember what he thought he had seen, not the encounter itself.

Half an hour later, when for the first time he was beginning to feel lost, he turned a corner and came upon a massive exhibition hall. There were flags all around, flapping in the evening breeze, some familiar but most intimating parts of the world that had been renamed so many times in their surge toward sovereignty, he would not have been able to find them on a map. There were faces of every hue, and most of the people wore military uniforms of one sort or another, some resplendent, some even more resplendent.

From the posters displayed in the close vicinity, Morgan determined that there was an Arms and Armaments show. He walked up to an entrance.

“Sorry, sir,” said a uniformed bobby. “You can't go in there.”

“Isn't it an exhibition?”

“You might say that, sir. It's more what you might call a sale.”

“I've never seen anything like it,” said Morgan congenially.

“Nor have I, sir. I'm afraid it's not open to the public.”

“Thanks anyway, Constable,” said Morgan as he prepared to walk down the steps and find a pub before taking a taxi back to the Vanity Fair.

“Excuse me,” said the bobby. “You're a Canadian, aren't you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I have a brother in Toronto. In Ontario. I haven't seen him in twenty years.”

“Toronto's a big place.”

“But you might know him. You ever run into a Donald Smith?”

“No, I don't think so.”

“He's a policeman with the city police.”

“Really?” said Morgan.

“Yes he is. He works at the Headquarters, a lump of a building all granite and glass. He sent me a postcard.”

“That's where I work,” said Morgan. “It's rather a nice building.”

“You're a policeman, are you?”

“Detective. I work in Homicide.”

“Well then, this is the exhibition for you.”

“Donald Smith?” said Morgan, trying to decide if the bobby's features were familiar. “There's a Don Smith, he's been around for a long time, he works on the desk.”

“He's older than me, Guv. He's been gone twenty-five years. Came back once for a visit, just a year or two after he went. I was still a little gaffer, but I know my old man was proud he was a copper. So there you are, and here I am.”

“I do know him, ” said Morgan. “Yeah, sure. I'll say hello.”

“Thank you, I'd appreciate that. Tell Donnie his brother Ronnie sends his regards.”

“I will.”

“You over on business, Guv?”

“Yes, I am. Just arrived. I'm still a bit jet-lagged.”

“You carrying credentials?”

“Yes.”

“And no sidearms?”

“No.”

“Then why don't you slip on in, Guv, and look around.”

The bobby shrewdly took Morgan at his word about having police credentials and carrying no guns and waved him through.

Inside the cavernous exhibition hall, Morgan was overwhelmed by the sounds of hell: the clatter of military hardware, the clacking of lethal keyboards, and most ominously, the cheerful conversations about demolition potential and kill-power. People seemed as enthusiastic about death as attendees at an undertakers' convention. They stood in groups beside displays of weaponry, from rocket launchers to hand grenades, as shills declaimed the kill-to-cost ratios and hostesses recruited from east-end hair-dressing salons demonstrated intricate mechanisms and fluid operational modes, sealing in the minds of potential buyers the direct correspondence between female breasts and the capacity of men to destroy.

Morgan was fascinated, and cynical. He stood close to a man who was describing to several Arabs in flowing white robes how his particular version of a bunker buster known as the Jolly Roger could surgically penetrate cement, steel, or rock, and once inside burst into a paroxysm of orgasmic intensity, scouring the interior cavity with shrapnel guaranteed to leave no survivors.
Sounds like a monstrous spermicide
, he thought.

Another display featured a young woman narrating a computer-generated display of an exploding cluster bomb, cleverly called a Weapon of Masses Destruction, that would break up just before impact into a thousand small bomblets that could rip flesh from the bodies of people spread over the space of an entire city block with minimal collateral damage to surrounding buildings and infrastructure. The young woman explained to the small crowd gathered around her that the advantage of their WMD was it could be launched from a plane no larger than a crop duster with suitable adaptation.

Picking up a free coffee in a Styrofoam cup, Morgan ambled through the crowd, falling deeper and deeper into a curious sense of dissociation, as if he were unreal within his own skin. Here was an array of destruction, the arms, the armaments, the personnel, that could demolish the world. Yet it was all so carnivalesque. There was virtually no security; generals of ancient democracies mingled with aspiring terrorists, liberation fighters with the henchmen of dictators, almost exclusively men. They all leaned in to hear the spiel, to observe breasts tumbling over oiled steel.

Here was the world being saved or destroyed — it was impossible to tell the difference. He felt claustrophobic, sick to his stomach. He made a sustained lunge for the nearest exit and found himself standing beside Constable Ron Smith.

“All right, Guv?”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Morgan, drawing himself upright against the knot in his gut. “I just need a pint.”

“Try Guinness, they say it's good for you.”

“Yeah,” said Morgan as he walked down the stone steps away from the exhibition hall. “I'll say hello to your brother,” he called back over his shoulder.

“Goodnight, Guv.”

“G'night, Constable.”

When Morgan arrived back to his hotel on Thackeray Street, there was a message waiting for him. He was to call a room number at Claridge's.

“It's probably a joke, now, isn't it?” said the concierge when she gave it to him. “I doubt that you nor I would know anyone staying at Claridge's, would we, or we wouldn't be here in the Vanity Fair?”

Morgan smiled and went to his room to phone, then returned to the desk in the small lobby.

“There's no telephone in my room,” he said.

“No sir,” said the concierge. “There's a television, though.”

Morgan searched for an appropriate response. None came to mind. “Well, could I have one put in,” he said.

“A telephone?”

“Yes.”

“No sir. We'll take messages for you. Privacy assured, we're very discreet.”

“That phone over there?”

“In the kiosk?”

“In the kiosk.”

“That's for the public, sir, you could use that one if you wish. It's an outside line.”

“As opposed to what?”

“The house phone, sir. That's the red one over on the table.”

“Which connects you to where?”

“To me, sir, at the desk. Or you could use this phone here, but there's no privacy then, is there?”

“And you can't connect to the rooms.”

“No, sir. But you could leave a message, like your lady friend did.”

“It was a woman who called?”

“It was a woman, your caller, yes sir.”

“Thank you,” said Morgan, “you've been a great help.”

As he stepped into the kiosk, he noted the red telephone no more than two strides away from the front desk.
The English do things differently
, he thought as a wave of nostalgia swept through him.
The past is a presence here, and that's lovely.
There was an infectious resistance to modernity that both charmed and appalled him.
It's a good place to live, but you're not always comfortable visiting
, he thought, turning the conventional axiom on its head.

Morgan dialed Claridge's Hotel and asked for the room number he had been given.

Elke Sturmberg answered the phone.

Morgan was so thrown he didn't respond.

“Silence,” she said. “It must be Detective Morgan.”

“It is. And why would the elusive Elke Sturmberg be calling me? I'm supposed to be tracking you down.”

“I hope you're not disappointed?”

“Not yet.”

“We need to talk,” she said.

“That's an understatement. I'll be right over.”

“Morgan! Morgan, don't hang up.”

“What?”

“You don't know where I am.”

“Claridge's.”

“It's the technology thing again, Morgan.”

“What do you mean?”

“Things aren't always what they seem,
et cetera
. I'm not at Claridge's. I am at, as they say, an undisclosed address — a friend answered at the hotel, patched me through. Even she doesn't know where I am.”

Morgan felt his heart sinking. He had been irrationally annoyed she had turned up so quickly; now he was irritated she was being difficult to pin down.

“So where do we meet?”

“Meet? I said talk,” she responded.

“Elke, listen to me. You've got to help us sort this out. We start with a corpse in my partner's bed and end up with a suicide bomber in New Jersey.”

“How's Tony?”

“Tony, well you wandered off with his arm, how do you figure?”

“He's okay?”

“Do you care?”

“Yes, and I care about Miranda. I heard she's in hospital. Just smoke inhalation, I hope?”

“No thanks to you.”

“I owe her, I owe you both.”

“Well, it's payback time. I want a face-to-face meeting.”

“You're not exactly in a position to insist.”

“Practically, no. But morally, I think I am.”

“And what makes you thing I care about your sense of morality?”

“Because I saw you at Miranda's. You weren't faking it. Because we steeped in the same marinade together and were shot at, and when you got out, you reached down and hauled out Miranda. Stuff like that. We're not so different, Elke. You're not convincing as a bad guy.”

“God, Morgan, what a terrible thing to say. I'll meet you on London Bridge at midnight. How's that? The middle. Alone. Is that dramatic enough?”

“See you there, then.”

London Bridge

M
organ
took a taxi down to the Thames and walked along the Embankment. When he got to the bridge, he admired how the towers cast columns of shadow into the air from light reflected off the water roiling below. Before he reached halfway, he knew she wasn't there. He walked right across then back to the middle. He checked his watch. It was almost twelve.

He stared up into the convoluted planes of darkness and light, marvelling at the stolid weight of the towers even in the dead of night.

He felt apprehensive. A trickling of cars went by, a few taxis. He was very exposed. He wondered how he was able to reconcile the violence this woman spawned all around her and his trust. She had killed at least one man, the kid under the bridge, and she had, perhaps, manipulated the death of her ex-boyfriend. She had attended the explosive deaths of others on two occasions. Even if she were innocent, he realized, she was a magnet for danger.

Miranda, who trusted Elke from the beginning, felt completely betrayed. She would be annoyed with him right now. Morgan suspected he was setting himself up for a fall. Perhaps it was just as well if Elke didn't turn up.

He leaned against a low stone wall of the bridge and gazed upriver at a sequence of other bridges spanning the rippling surface of the Thames.

“London Bridge is falling down,” he hummed in a sonorous rumble. “London Bridge is falling down, falling down.…” He didn't know the next line. No longer aloud, he let the words play over and over in his mind. He gazed up the broad sweep of the river. Westminster Bridge, London Bridge — suddenly, he realized, he was on Tower Bridge! Tourists were always getting it confused with London Bridge. He should have known better.
Damn
, he thought,
damn, damn, damn
.

Morgan seldom swore, but he rarely felt such a fool. If she slipped away because of his stupidity, he would return to the church of his childhood and become a cleric, all for absolution in the eyes of an absent God.
Damn, please God, let her be there
.

His desperation surprised him. He knew he'd catch up to her sooner or later. She wanted to connect. It was feeling stupid that oppressed him in religious proportions.

Clocks all over London began to chime and peal and toll and clang, marking the stroke of midnight, and Morgan began to run.

He ran along the Embankment all the way to the real London Bridge, where she was visible in the middle of its sleek expanse from the river's edge. Why meet here? There was no place to hide.
Precisely
, he thought.
She's making certain neither of us will ambush the other.

“Slow down,” she called as he approached. “I've waited this long, there's no hurry.”

When he drew up beside her and doubled over, trying to catch his breath, she said, “I've been watching you, Morgan. You have the makings of a runner. I've watched your progress almost from Tower Bridge. I knew that's what happened when you weren't here on time. Everyone does it. There's no way you'd have been intentionally late. I'm your whole objective for being in the U.K., right?”

“I know the difference between Tower Bridge and London Bridge,” he mumbled between gasps. “I lived in this town, I know it better than,” he clutched at a stitch in his side, “better than parts of Toronto.”

“Morgan, if I wanted to escape your clutches, I imagine I could outrun you at this point.”

“Not in those shoes.”

She held out one foot for him to admire her sandal. “Thank you. Actually, these are understated preppy chic Cole Haans. I figured if Miranda could, so can I. I bought them at Harrods. And for anything short of a marathon, they'd be first-rate.”

“If Miranda could what?”

“They're expensive. It's good to see you, Morgan.”

“Miranda sends her love.”

“I doubt it.”

“You really did a number on her, you know.”

“Walking out? I had no choice.”

“No, the whole business with the Sebastianis.”

“She's right, I did.”

“Did you set up your boyfriend?”

“Ivan Muritori? Not to be killed. He was a moron, walking out into a street full of armed police waving a gun in the air.”

“So much for speaking ill of the dead. It wasn't the police who killed him, you know, it was a sniper.”

“Morgan, I was there. That doesn't make him less of a moron.” She paused. Perhaps for a moment she was letting good memories breach the protective shell of disinterest. “I had no reason to want him dead.”

“Not because he turned you over to the cops, because he sent you north into the jaws of hell?”

“I've never heard Canada described that way. No, I understood what I was doing.”

“What
were
you doing?”

“In Rochester, Buffalo, Niagara, Toronto?”

“Take your choice. Why not start with the Sebastianis, how do you know them, what's the connection?”

Elke leaned against the bridge railing and gazed down the Thames in the direction of Tower Bridge. The lights of the city glimmered through the trees along the Embankment and sparkled on the south bank, where most of the buildings had been reconstructed since Morgan was there last. Elke's blond hair shimmered in the light summer breeze. Morgan stepped back to consider how she had changed. He had not seen her since the night she had disappeared under the portico of The Four Seasons, bedraggled at the end of a long and difficult day.

Her accent had migrated a little. In Toronto she sounded North American, from Michigan or southwestern Ontario, with a slight Scandinavian inflection that could have come from an immigrant parent. Now there was a touch of upper-class English. Not aristocracy, he thought, but well-educated. Strange, she seemed more Swedish here, but a Swede who obviously moved in the right circles, among people who appreciate fine vintage wines.

In the perpetual twilight of the urban night she looked surreal.

Eventually, she spoke, ignoring his questions. “Morgan, I won't be coming with you, you know, not just yet.”

“And the wheels of Canadian justice grind to a halt until you condescend to pay us a visit?”

“If you like.”

“I've been sent here to take you back. New Scotland Yard is on side. You can come willingly, or not. It doesn't matter.”

“Oh, it does matter. Morgan, I have things to do. When they are done, I am all yours. Until then, enjoy London.”

He reached out and touched her on the arm, gently but with authority.

She smiled again, but this time with a disarming ambivalence. “David, if you care to glance downwards, you will find I am holding a diminutive but powerful gun in my hand. It is in firing mode. I promise, I will shoot only to wound. I will be, might one say, quite surgical. How cruel that word is, in a context like this. Please back away just a bit.”

Morgan could not see her hand in the shadows, or the gun. But her voice left no doubt of her sincerity. He released his grasp on her arm and stepped back. The aura of menace made her seem even more attractive.

“Then why this meeting?” he asked.

“I owe you, David. I heard you were in London. I assumed you were looking for me.”

“Then perhaps you could answer a few questions before disappearing again.”

“Possibly.”

“What in the hell is going on? How's that for starters.”

“As I have said over and over, nothing is quite what it seems. And much is.”

“Riddles! Elke, I need answers.”

“You
want
answers. To need is something else. All I can tell you is this, you'll have to be patient. And yes, I did know the Sebastiani family, yes, I do know a lot about wine, and no, I did not betray your partner. In fact, she left me a prisoner.”

“In the house of your friends.”

“I told you I knew them, I did not say they were my friends.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Like, who do you work for?”

“I don't work for anyone, Morgan.”

“Come on, everyone works for someone.”

“How very cynical.”

“Even freelancers work for someone. Is that what you are, an independent agent? Independent from whom? The wine syndicate? Is there a connection with drugs? The Mafia? What?”

“Morgan, I'll tell you who I'm not working for.”

“Who?”

She handed him her gun, slipping the safety on as she did so.

“Them.” She nodded toward the Embankment. There was a car in shadows at the end of the bridge. It was rolling slowly in their direction.

“Who are they? What's with the gun?”

“The gun is to prove we're on the same side. And them? They followed you.”

“Why?”

“To get to me.”

“Why?”

“Morgan, in ten seconds they're going to break out of the shadows, then watch the rubber burn, they're coming to get us. Perhaps we should leave.”

“One car, two directions. They can't get us both.”

“Very gallant, Morgan. They don't want us both. They could have taken you out anytime. Here they come.”

As the large sedan at the end of the bridge suddenly accelerated, Morgan and Elke both looked around them. There was nowhere to hide. Morgan could see what looked like the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun protruding from a window of the onrushing car.

“Come on,” he yelled above the engine roar.

They both swung over the rail of the bridge, dangling precariously below the stonework, ducking their heads as the shotgun exploded. Another shot, and another shattered the air.

The car screeched to a stop. Car doors snapped open and slammed. Morgan and Elke exchanged desperate glances.

They reached out and grasped hands, released their grip on the bridge and leaned into the air, plummeting toward the water, falling down, falling down, and the air above them rained shot pellets all around.

When they hit, their grasp on each other was torn by the force of the fall. Morgan went deep and could see up through the murky water the radiance of London's night sky, and he could see Elke's legs flailing above him. He grabbed hold of her ankle and hauled her under, touching her body to reassure her it was him.

She stilled in his arms, and they drifted underwater. Finally, both desperate for air, they surfaced. London Bridge was receding. They could see figures at the centre, but there were no more shots. The water was cold, but for northerners, a Swede and a Canadian, it was not a shock, and they swam gently so as not to attract attention, and came ashore at stone steps leading down from the Embankment close to Tower Bridge.

When they stepped up out of the water, Morgan was incredulous to see Elke had clasped firmly in one hand her new shoes from Harrods.

Nothing could have redeemed her more in his eyes than this wonderfully irrelevant gesture of an inveterate survivor.

“Now what?” he said, acquiescing to her superior knowledge of the situation. He did not have any idea who was trying to kill them. She obviously did, and was not surprised.

“Do you have money?” she asked.

He felt for his wallet. It was still in his hip pocket.

“Yeah, did you lose your purse?”

“It's okay. There was nothing in it. We lost the gun, I imagine.”

“No,” he said,” as he struggled to fish it out from where it had slipped down into his pants. When he retrieved it, without thinking he handed it to her. She held it in her open palm.

“No,” she said, handing it back to him. “You hold on to it for now. I've nowhere to put a gun.”

He looked at her in the mottled illumination from a light standard. Her clothes were wet and slick to her body. Even as she pulled them away to create a layer of warmth close to her skin, the cloth slumped back in a clammy caress, leaving no place on her form not fully defined.

“We'd better get you out of those clothes.”

She looked up at him with a wry smile. “And you out of yours?”

“Honestly,” he said, feeling awkward, “you can get hypothermia in the middle of summer. Water drains away body heat forty percent faster than air.”

“Morgan, you are a sweet man. Miranda was right.”

“Miranda? What did she say?”

It did not matter what she had said. Bringing her into the scene, Elke aroused in Morgan a feeling of constraint, the sexual intimations suddenly inappropriate. Still, as he began to shake, and as Elke shivered, he could not help but respond to her radiant and dangerous allure.

“Come on, Morgan. We can't go to my place, and yours isn't a good idea, they'll be watching the Vanity Fair. Let's grab a taxi, explain we've tipped our canoe, and get him to drop us at a comfortably anonymous hotel by Victoria Station.”

In the morning, Elke was gone. They had washed their clothes in the small bathroom at the Excalibur Hotel, using the hair dryer to dry them. Elke towelled her hair after a long, hot shower. Morgan let her towel his hair dry as well. No one had done that since he was a child. Sometimes his father used to. He did not remember his mother touching him, except for the occasional cuff, although he had long since forgotten why.

He was not surprised she was gone. Nor did he regret not following her or trying to prevent her from going. They had flagged down a taxi with no trouble, in spite of looking like they had just emerged from the Thames, and the driver had been very English and pretended not to notice. The only thing the concierge asked when they checked in was how long they were staying. As they climbed the narrow stairs, Elke giggled that Morgan had answered only one night. She explained he was being asked how many hours. It was that kind of hotel.

He glanced around for the note he knew she would have left. Beside his wallet, he found a scrap of paper on which she had written,
I.O.U. £10. Taxi Fare. Thanks for a good night. Elke
. There was no other evidence that she had been in the room, apart for a lingering fragrance that clashed as he inhaled with the stale tobacco smell emanating from the furnishings, although the room was designated a non-smoker.