Connections (39 page)

Peter Strauss asked the banker's question. “How much?”

“I'll take twenty-five million. It's all OK – in trusts and those things. He will tell you.” He gestured at Jethro with his gun and Jethro nodded. “I will have it now,” Tallinn said.

“August,” Jethro said desperately, “you've had three already. The rest will take three days.”

“I think you have stolen my money,” he said to Jethro. “I want it. Will you give me?” he asked Peter Strauss.

“With the proper guarantees I can get the money to anywhere you choose.”

“And take it back when I'm gone,” he said. “I want the money now, in my hand.”

“You can't have it, Tallinn. It can't be done,” said Dickie Jethro. He advanced towards Tallinn. Fleur gasped.

Tallinn halted him by pointing the gun straight at him. “The police come soon,” he said. “Give me the diamonds of the woman under the table.”

Hugh, very pale, bent down and spoke to Maria Haussman. Slowly, her white hand came up holding the string of diamonds. As if they were playing some terrifying version of Pass the Parcel, Hugh passed it to his neighbour, Valentine Keith, who passed it to Peter Strauss. The others watched the glittering necklace travel from hand to hand in complete silence. Peter Strauss held it aloft for Tallinn to grasp.

Tallinn bent, put his arm past Jethro and took it, his gun still pointed at Jethro's head. From her seat, only an arm's length away from the two men, Sophia Jethro gazed at her husband, her face a mask of terror.

Tallinn expressionlessly pocketed the necklace and said to Peter Strauss, “I want my money. You will get me my money?”

Peter Strauss said, “I can't. Not now. If you will wait—”

There was no change in Tallinn's expression as he shot Dickie
Jethro through the head and it seemed almost before he fell Tallinn had leapt back through the broken window and was gone.

Sophia screamed, “No!” and fell beside her husband on the floor.

Fleur screamed. Valentine Keith was on his feet, talking into his mobile phone. Sophia was shouting, “He's dying. He's dying.” Keith went to her and said, “I've called an ambulance.”

Beside Fleur, Emily Strauss was saying, “Oh God. Oh God.” She was shaking so hard Fleur could hear the legs of her chair rattling on the floor. Maria Haussman lay on the floor on the other side of the table, sobbing, her husband beside her.

Hugh Cotter stood up, said, “Sorry,” and bolted from the room with his hand over his mouth. Fleur stood and began making her way slowly, as if in a nightmare, towards Sophia and her father, when, astonishingly, Peter Strauss, at the head of the table, tapped on his glass. It was as if he were about to deliver an after-dinner speech, he appeared just as calm.

He said, “Please listen very carefully. The police will be here soon. It's in all our interests, especially Dickie's, that we all tell the same story. This hideous crime is the result of an interrupted burglary. Dickie tackled the criminal when he came in and was shot. That's it. That and no more. None of us will give the man's name, if we know it. We will describe him as tall, with a London accent. We will say he made us close our eyes. It happened too quickly for us to be able to describe him accurately. The episode took only moments. Dickie tackled the intruder and was shot. Is that quite clear? It is most important to do as I say.” He added, “Haussman – will you go and tell this to the man who just left the room? Keith – ring Sir Henry Standing. Say there's been an accident. Ask him to stand by.”

He went to Jethro's side. Fleur, also approaching, saw scraps of bone and flesh on the polished floor beneath her feet. Sophia was crouching beside her husband, who lay on the floor, a large pool of blood spreading beneath his head. His face was grey but his eyelids flickered. He seemed to be feeling no pain. Sophia was holding his hand and murmuring to him.

Peter Strauss stood gravely, with Fleur, at Jethro's feet. He said
to Sophia, “Keith's ringing Sir Henry Standing. He'll ask him to go straight to the hospital and get ready for surgery.” Sophia did not acknowledge this.

Fleur looked into Strauss's bone-white face and felt a reluctant admiration for him. He had just seen a close colleague shot, must have known at that point that he might have been Tallinn's next victim, yet now he had organised a cover story and a surgeon within minutes. She looked at her father and wondered whether he would live.

The police arrived and, moments later, the ambulance. Fleur's father was lifted on to a stretcher. Fleur got a coat and put it over Sophia's shoulders as she left the house, bent over the stretcher and still holding her husband's hand. She followed them to the front door where she heard Peter Strauss tell the ambulance men firmly, “A bullet wound. He tackled an armed burglar. Sir Henry Standing will be at the hospital in half an hour. Please tell them that.”

While the police were questioning the other guests Fleur went upstairs to Sophia's small sitting-room and rang up the Andriades in Athens. They were not there but, she was told, were in Paris, at a hotel. She rang the number given to her and found the couple in their suite. She gave George Andriades the account of the matter dictated by Peter Strauss but added carefully. “There may be a little more to the story than that.”

He paused for a moment, then said, “I see.” He continued, “The important thing is Dickie. We'll be with you in two hours at the most.” As he spoke she could hear Zoe, sobbing.

Just as she put the phone down Peter Strauss came into the room. He said, “Who were you ringing?” His face was set and his eyes challenging.

“Sophia's parents,” she told him. She added, “I told them what you wanted us to say but I mentioned that there might be more to it than that.”

He took the phone, pushed the redial button and got through to the hotel and, as Fleur watched, asked, “Have you a Mr George Andriades staying with you?” When the receptionist had satisfied him that George Andriades was there he put the phone down and
turned to Fleur. “The police want to see you,” he said. “You will do as I asked?”

“Yes, I will,” said Fleur.

“Mercifully Cotter is translating for Mrs Haussman,” he said to her. He stared hard at her. “Please do as I've asked,” he told her. “Until I know what's going on it's essential the story we tell is very simple. The police want to see you now. You'd better go.”

As Fleur left the room she heard him asking Directory Enquiries for the number of the Press Association.

Fleur looked into the drawing-room. Diana Keith was standing by the window, her stance rigid, her expression, when she turned, angry. “They say we can't go home,” she announced. She stared furiously at Valentine, who was getting himself a drink. “Haven't you had enough, Val?” she asked. “Christ – what is all this going to look like?”

“Shut up, Diana,” her husband said. “Dickie's in hospital fighting for his life.”

Francisco Haussman was bending over his wife, who was in a chair, half fainting. Emily Strauss and Hugh Cotter were talking. Hugh turned and said, “The police want you in the study, Fleur.”

Fleur crossed the hall and entered the small study beside the dining-room. Behind a handsome glass and bronze desk sat a man in chinos and a leather jacket. At the secretary's small desk, on which a computer was set, sat a uniformed sergeant.

The man behind her father's desk introduced himself and asked her name. “Fleur Stockley,” she told him. “Sir Richard is my father.”

“Do you live here?” he asked.

“I'm staying here. I've been here since last night.”

“All right,” he said. There was a pause. “You're the last,” he said. There was a longer pause. Fleur thought it best to say nothing. “So – please tell me what happened this evening, starting when you all sat down to dinner.”

She told him about the man with the London accent who had made them close their eyes. How he had taken the necklace, then shot her father. She had to go through her account again,
and then once more. She struggled to remember in exact detail everything she had already said and to add no more, realising that if this man had any brains at all, and it seemed to her he had, he must have begun to notice discrepancies between the different accounts he had received. Or noted that there were none. Either way he was likely to be suspicious. She thought she detected scepticism behind his carefully controlled expression. He asked few questions, which surprised her. It was possible that he was by now just comparing the eight different, but all equally untrue, accounts he had been given.

Fleur, mechanically repeating her story, felt very unhappy. It was obvious now that her father had been the man crucially involved with the attack on Vanessa. This had contributed, Dominic and Joe had said, to the feeling of helplessness which made it easier for her to go on taking drugs, harder to get off them. So Vanessa had died.

She felt she couldn't deal with all this. But here were the police, questioning her. She had to try, though, tired and disillusioned, she didn't really care whether the cover-up worked or not.

During her third recital of the evening's events the inspector ceased to conceal his incredulity. Finally he looked over at his sergeant and said, “OK, Sergeant Connor. Have you recorded accurately what this young lady's chosen to tell us?” When Connor confirmed this, he said, “We'll want a formal statement later.” He added, “You realise there are penalties for making a false statement to the police.”

Fleur stood up. “You know this is a murder enquiry, don't you?” he continued.

Fleur thought her father must have died and no one had told her. “My father …?” she asked, alarmed.

“The security man posted in the garden was killed,” he told her. “And his dog, as it happens.”

“He killed them?” Fleur asked.

The man nodded, “With a knife, quietly and skilfully.”

“It's like a nightmare,” she said.

“Yes, Miss Stockley,” he said, “it is.”

She went back across the hall. This bad dream had been going
on since the night before when Dominic and Joe had recognised the picture of Tallinn, when Sam Hope had turned up in the pub, when she had decided to come to Eaton Square. She could have been killed while Tallinn was in the dining-room. If anyone had made a false move he might have shot any one of them. The fate of the security guard, someone who had left his base that day thinking it was just a routine bit of work, had brought it all home to her suddenly.

She was trembling as she reached the drawing-room. Valentine Keith held the phone out to her. “For you,” he said and they all listened as she spoke.

“Hullo?” she said.

Sam Hope was at the other end. He said quickly, “Are you all right? Someone's left the house on a stretcher.”

“My father,” Fleur told him. “A burglar shot him.” She could feel Peter Strauss's eyes on her.

“Came in through the garden?” he asked.

“That's right,” said Fleur.

“A burglar,” he repeated. “Plainly you can't talk. Was it Tallinn?” She didn't answer. “You're not answering,” he told her.

“It was an intruder,” she said.

“OK – I get it. Fleur – look after yourself. I'll be in touch. Ring me if you can.”

“All right,” she said.

“All right, Uncle Sam,” he instructed.

“Bye, Uncle Sam. Don't worry,” she told him.

“Who was that?” asked Peter Strauss.

“Just my uncle – Mum's brother. He seems to know about the accident.” Peter Strauss looked at her very hard.

“It's been on the news already, I expect,” said Emily Strauss. “Hugh – be a sweetheart and go and ask the police when we can leave. I'm dropping. I feel dreadful. And I really want to look in at the hospital and talk to Sophia. She's entirely alone. It's frightful.”

Hugh went off to talk to the police while Fleur wondered how it was, if Sam had got the story from the news, he knew someone
had come out of the house on a stretcher, but, apparently, not who it was. He must be outside the house, she thought. The idea didn't comfort her. She didn't trust him. She didn't trust anybody, now.

Hugh returned with the information that the police were ready to let everyone go home shortly and was despatched on another errand.

“Henry Jones will be here very soon,” Peter Strauss told him. “Could you possibly hang about outside discreetly until he turns up and then whisk him into the house with as little fuss as possible? In view of Dickie's condition there are things he and I need to go into urgently. But I don't want it to be obvious.”

“Confidence is everything in these situations,” Francisco Haussman said, but there was an edge to his voice. He continued, “Since we're here without the police, would you like to tell me, perhaps, who the intruder was? Dickie evidently knew him. You, perhaps not. Am I right?”

Emily Strauss, a seasoned campaigner, stepped in. “I think we should save all this for the morning, with Dickie in hospital,” she said.

Mercifully for Peter Strauss the inspector came into the room and told the party they were free to go, though they must expect to be called on next day. Diana and Valentine Keith left immediately after Peter Strauss's call to the hospital, when he was told Fleur's father was in surgery and nothing else could be said until the operation was over.

Henry Jones, pale with shock, was ushered in by Hugh. Emily Strauss left by cab, having asked Fleur to let her know if she needed any help and giving her the phone number of the London flat where she and her husband would be staying. Then Peter Strauss and Henry Jones hurried into the study together.

Fleur decided she was now in charge. She sent for the housekeeper and asked for a room to be prepared for George and Zoe Andriades in case they returned with Sophia from the hospital later on. She sent the rest of the staff to bed. Then she sat down with Hugh and they both had a brandy. He said, “Do you want
me to stay? If Peter and Henry leave later, you'll be alone in the house.”