Bloodline (21 page)

Detective Max Hornung was thinking. The detective bureau was filled with the noise of typewriters clattering, voices raised in argument, telephones ringing, but Hornung saw and heard nothing of these things. He had the single-minded concentration of a computer. He was thinking about the charter of Roffe and Sons, as old Samuel had set it up, keeping control within the family. Ingenious, Max thought. And dangerous. It reminded him of the tontine, the Italian insurance plan devised by the banker Lorenzo Tonti in 1695. Every member of the tontine put in an equal amount of money, and as each member died, the survivors inherited his share. It provided a powerful motive to eliminate the other members. Like Roffe and Sons. It was too much of a temptation to let people inherit stock worth millions, and then tell them they could not sell it unless everyone agreed.

Max had learned that Sam Roffe had not agreed. He was dead. Elizabeth Roffe had not agreed. She had narrowly escaped death twice. Too many accidents. Detective Max Hornung did not believe in accidents. He went to see Chief Inspector Schmied.

The chief inspector listened to Max Hornung’s
report on Sam Roffe’s climbing accident and growled, “So there’s been a mix-up about the name of a guide. That hardly constitutes a case for murder, Hornung. Not in
my
department, it doesn’t.”

The little detective said patiently, “I think there’s more to it. Roffe and Sons is having big internal problems. Perhaps someone thought that getting rid of Sam Roffe would solve them.”

Chief Inspector Schmied sat back and eyed Detective Hornung. He was certain that there was nothing to his theories. But the idea of having Detective Max Hornung out of sight for a while filled Chief Inspector Schmied with a deep pleasure. His absence would be a boost to the morale of the entire department. And there was something else to consider: The people Max Hornung wanted to investigate. No less than the powerful Roffe family. Ordinarily, Schmied would have ordered Max Hornung to keep a million miles away from them. If Detective Hornung irritated them—and how could he not!—they had enough power to have him thrown off the force. And no one could blame Chief Inspector Schmied. Hadn’t the little detective been forced on him? And so he said to Max Hornung, “The case is yours. Take your time.”

“Thank you,” Max said happily.

As Max was walking through the corridor toward his office, he ran into the coroner, “Hornung! Can I borrow your memory for a minute?”

Max blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“The river patrol has just fished a girl out of the river. Will you take a look at her?”

Max swallowed and said, “If you wish.”

This was not a part of the job that Max enjoyed, but he felt that it was his duty.

She lay in the impersonal metal drawer in the chill of the morgue. She had blond hair and was in her late teens or early twenties. Her body was bloated from the water, and naked, except for a red ribbon knotted around her neck.

“There are signs of sexual intercourse just before death. She was strangled and then dumped into the river,” the coroner said. “There’s no water in her lungs. We can’t get any fingerprints on her. Ever seen her before?”

Detective Max Hornung looked down at the girl’s face and said, “No.”

He left to catch his bus to the airport.

When Detective Max Hornung landed at the Costa Smeralda airport in Sardinia, he rented the cheapest car available, a Fiat 500, and drove into Olbia. Unlike the rest of Sardinia, Olbia was an industrial city, and the outskirts were an ugly sprawl of mills and factories, a city dump and a giant graveyard of once-beautiful automobiles, now useless old hulks, good only for scrap. Every city in the world had its automobile junkyards, Max thought. Monuments to civilization.

Max reached the center of town and drove up in front of a building with a sign that read:
“QUESTURA

DI SASSARI COMMISSARIATO DI POLIZIA OLBIA.” The moment Max entered, he felt that familiar sense of identity, of belonging. He showed his warrant card to the desk sergeant, and a few minutes later he was ushered into the office of the Chief of Police, Luigi Ferraro. Ferraro rose to his feet, a welcoming smile on his face. It died as he saw his visitor. There was something about Max that did not spell “detective.”

“Could I see your identification?” Chief Ferraro asked politely.

“Certainly,” Max said. He pulled out his warrant card and Chief Ferraro examined both sides of it
carefully, then returned it. His immediate conclusion was that Switzerland must be very hard up for detectives. He took a seat behind his desk and said, “What can I do for you?”

Max started to explain, in fluent Italian. The problem was that it took Chief Ferraro some moments to figure out what language Max was speaking. When he realized what it was supposed to be, he held up a horrified hand and said,
“Basta!
Do you speak English?”

“Of course,” Max replied.

“Then I beg of you! Let us speak in English.”

When Max was through talking, Chief Ferraro said, “You are mistaken, signore. I can tell you that you are wasting your time. My mechanics have already examined the Jeep. Everyone is agreed that it was an accident.”

Max nodded, unperturbed. “
I
haven’t looked at it”

Chief Ferraro said, “Very well. It is in a public garage now, up for sale. I will have one of my men take you there. Would you like to see the scene of the accident?”

Max blinked and said, “What for?”

Detective Bruno Campagna was elected as Max’s escort. “We’ve already checked it out. It was an accident,” Campagna said.

“No,” Max replied.

The Jeep was in a corner of the garage, its front still dented and splashed with dried green sap.

“I haven’t had time to work on it yet,” the mechanic explained.

Max walked around the Jeep, examining it. “How were the brakes tampered with?” he asked.

The mechanic said,
“Gesù!
You, too?” A note of
irritation crept into his voice. “I been a mechanic for twenty-five years, signore. I examined this Jeep myself. The last time anyone touched these brakes was when this car left the factory.”

“Someone tampered with them,” Max said.

“How?” The mechanic was spluttering.

“I don’t know yet, but I will,” Max assured him confidently. He took a last look at the Jeep, then turned and walked out of the garage.

Chief of Police Luigi Ferraro looked at Detective Bruno Campagna and demanded, “What did you
do
with him?”

“I didn’t do anything. I took him to the garage, he made an ass of himself with the mechanic, then he said he wanted to go for a stroll by himself.”

“Incredibile!”

Max was standing on the shore, staring out at the emerald Tyrrhenian waters, seeing nothing. He was concentrating, his mind busily puting pieces together. It was like working a giant jigsaw puzzle. Everything always went neatly into place when you knew where it fitted. The Jeep was a small but important part of the puzzle. Its brakes had been examined by expert mechanics. Max had no reason to doubt either their honesty or competence. He therefore accepted the fact that the brakes of the Jeep had not been tampered with. Because Elizabeth had been driving the Jeep and someone wanted her dead, he also accepted the fact that they
had
been tampered with. There was no way it could have been done. Yet someone had done it. Max was up against someone clever. It made things more interesting.

Max stepped out onto the sandy beach, sat down
on a large rock, closed his eyes and began to concentrate again, focusing on the pieces, shifting, dissecting, rearranging the bits of the puzzle.

Twenty minutes later the last piece clicked into place. Max’s eyes flew open and he thought admiringly, Bravo! I must meet the man who thought of this.

After that, Detective Max Hornung had two stops to make, the first just outside Olbia and the second in the mountains. He caught the late afternoon plane back to Zurich.

Economy class.

The head of the security forces of Roffe and Sons said to Elizabeth, “It all happened too fast, Miss Roffe. There was nothing we could do. By the time the fire-fighting equipment got into action, the whole laboratory was gone.”

They had found the remains of Emil Joeppli’s charred body. There was noway of knowing whether his formula had been removed from the laboratory before the explosion.

Elizabeth asked, “The Development Building was under twenty-four-hour guard, was it not?”

“Yes, ma’am. We—”

“How long have you been in charge of our security department?”

“Five years. I—”

“You’re fired.”

He started to say something in protest, then changed his mind. “Yes, ma’am.”

“How many men are there on, your staff?”

“Sixty-five.”

Sixty-five!
And they could not save Emil Joeppli. “I’m giving them twenty-four hours’ notice,” Elizabeth said. “I want them all out of here.”

He looked at her a moment. “Miss Roffe, do you think you’re being fair?”

She thought of Emil Joeppli, and the priceless formulas that had been stolen, and of the bug that had been planted in her office that she had ground under the heel of her shoe.

“Get out,” Elizabeth said.

She filled every minute that morning, trying to wipe out the vision of the charred body of Emil Joeppli and his laboratory full of burned animals. She tried not to think about what the loss of that formula was going to cost the company. There was a chance a rival company might patent it and there was nothing Elizabeth could do about it. It
was
a jungle. When your competitors thought you were weak, they moved in for the kill. But this wasn’t a competitor doing this. This was a friend. A deadly friend.

Elizabeth arranged for a professional security force to take over immediately. She would feel safer with strangers around her.

She phoned the Hôpital Internationale in Brussels to check on the condition of Mme. van den Logh, the wife of the Belgian minister. They reported that she was still in a coma. They did not know whether she would live.

Elizabeth was thinking about Emil Joeppli and the mongoloid child and the minister’s wife when Rhys walked in. He looked at her face and said gently, “As bad as that?”

She nodded, miserable.

Rhys walked over to her and studied her. She looked tired, drained. He wondered how much more she could stand. He took her hands in his and asked gently, “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Everything, Elizabeth thought. She needed Rhys desperately. She needed his strength and his help and his love. Their eyes met and she was ready to go into his arms, to tell him everything that had happened, that was happening.

Rhys said, “There’s nothing new on Mme. van den Logh?”

And the moment had passed.

“No,” Elizabeth said.

He asked, “Have you had any calls yet on the
Wall Street Journal
story?”

“What story?”

“You haven’t seen it?”

“No.”

Rhys sent to his office for a copy. The article enumerated all the recent troubles of Roffe and Sons, but the major theme of the story was that the company needed someone experienced to run it. Elizabeth put the newspaper down. “How much damage will this do?”

Rhys shrugged. “The damage has already been done. They’re just reporting it. We’re beginning to lose a lot of our markets. We—”

The intercom buzzed. Elizabeth pressed the switch. “Yes?”

“Herr Julius Badrutt is on line two, Miss Roffe. He says it’s urgent.”

Elizabeth looked up at Rhys. She had been postponing the meeting with the bankers. “Put him on.” She picked up the phone. “Good morning, Herr Badrutt.”

“Good morning.” Over the phone, his voice sounded dry and brittle. “Are you free this afternoon?”

“Well, I’m—”

“Fine. Will four o’clock be satisfactory?” Elizabeth hesitated. “Yes. Four o’clock.” There was a dry, rustling sound over the phone and Elizabeth realized that Herr Badrutt was clearing his throat. “I was sorry to hear about Mr. Joeppli,” he said.

Joeppli’s name had not been mentioned in the newspaper accounts of the explosion.

She hung up slowly, and found that Rhys was watching her.

“The sharks smell blood,” Rhys said.

The afternoon was filled with phone calls. Alec telephoned. “Elizabeth, did you see the story in the newspaper this morning?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said.
“The Wall Street Journal
was exaggerating.”

There was a pause, and then Alec said, “I’m not talking about
The Wall Street Journal.
The
Financial Times
has a headline story on Roffe and Sons. It’s not good. My phones haven’t stopped ringing. We’re getting heavy cancellations. What are we going to do?”

“I’ll get back to you, Alec,” Elizabeth promised.

Ivo called.
“Carissima,
I think you’d better prepare yourself for a shock.”

I’m prepared, Elizabeth thought wryly. “What is it?”

Ivo said, “An Italian minister was arrested a few hours ago for accepting bribes.”

Elizabeth had a sudden feeling of what was coming. “Go on.”

There was a note of apology in Ivo’s voice. “It wasn’t our fault,” Ivo said. “He got greedy and he was careless. They caught him at the airport, trying
to smuggle money out of Italy. They’ve traced the money to us.”

Even though Elizabeth was prepared for it, she still felt a shock of disbelief. “Why were we bribing him?”

Ivo said matter-of-factly, “So that we could do business in Italy. It’s a way of life here. Our crime was not in bribing the minister,
cara
—it was in getting caught.”

She sat back in her chair, her head beginning to pound.

“What happens now?”

“I would suggest that we meet with the company attorneys as quickly as possible,” Ivo said. “Don’t worry. Only the poor go to jail in Italy.”

Charles called from Paris, his voice frantic with worry. The French press was full of Roffe & Sons. Charles urged Elizabeth to sell the company while it still had a reputation.

“Our customers are losing faith,” Charles said. “Without that, there is no company.”

Elizabeth thought about the phone calls, the bankers, her cousins, the press. Too much was happening too quickly. Someone was making it happen. She
had
to find out who.

The name was still in Elizabeth’s private telephone book. Maria Martinelli. It brought back long-ago memories of the tall, leggy Italian girl who had been a classmate of Elizabeth’s in Switzerland. They had corresponded from time to time. Maria had become a model and she had written to Elizabeth that she was engaged to marry an Italian newspaper publisher in Milan. It took Elizabeth fifteen minutes to reach Maria. When the social amenities had been disposed
of, Elizabeth said into the phone, “Are you still engaged to that newspaper publisher?”

“Of course. The minute Tony gets his divorce, we’re going to be married.”

“I want you to do me a favor, Maria.”

“Name it.”

Less than one hour later Maria Martinelli called back. “I got that information you wanted. The banker who was caught trying to smuggle money out of Italy was set up. Tony says a man tipped off the border police.”

“Was he able to find out the name of the man?”

“IvoPalazzi.”

Detective Max Hornung had made an interesting discovery. He had learned that not only was the explosion at the Roffe and Sons laboratory set deliberately, but that it had been caused by an explosive called Rylar X, made exclusively for the military, and not available to anyone else. What intrigued Max was that Rylar X was manufactured at one of the factories of Roffe and Sons. It took Max only one telephone call to learn which one.

The factory outside Paris.

At exactly 4
P.M.
Herr Julius Badrutt lowered his angular figure into a chair and said without preamble, “As much as we would like to accommodate you, Miss Roffe, I am afraid our responsibility toward our stockholders must take precedence.”

It was the kind of statement, Elizabeth thought, that bankers made to widows and orphans before they foreclosed their mortgages. But this time she was ready for Herr Badrutt.

“…My board of directors has therefore instructed
me to inform you that our bank is calling in the notes on Roffe and Sons immediately.”

“I was told I had ninety days,” Elizabeth said.

“Unfortunately, we feel that the circumstances have changed for the worse. I should also inform you that the other banks you are dealing with have reached the same decision.”

With the banks refusing to help her, there would be no way to keep the company private.

“I’m sorry to bring you such bad news, Miss Roffe, but I felt that I should tell you personally.”

“You know, of course, that Roffe and Sons is still a very strong and healthy company.”

Herr Julius Badrutt nodded his head, once. “Of course. It’s a great company.”

“Yet you won’t give us more time.”

Herr Badrutt looked at her for a moment, then said, “The bank thinks your problems are manageable, Miss Roffe. But…” He hesitated.

“But you don’t think there’s anyone to manage them?”

“I’m afraid that is correct.” He started to rise.

“What if someone else were president of Roffe and Sons?” Elizabeth asked.

He shook his head. “We have discussed that possibility. We don’t feel that any of the present members of the board have the overall ability to cope with—”

She said, “I was thinking of Rhys Williams.”