Cut to the Chase (18 page)

Wallace crept furtively down the stairs as he decided not to trust the lift. He didn't want to be seen nor did he want to risk a lift breakdown when he was in it. He reached the ground floor and opened a door at the bottom of the stair well. He was in a yard and could see a street through a narrow and short alleyway. He looked up and down the street and began walking.

He found a telephone box and dialled McKay's number. It was still in the ticket pocket of his trousers. Despite the harrowing circumstances Wallace even found the time to feel indignant about McKay's reaction. Admittedly it was in the small hours of the morning, but presumably if one was a full time and active member of a security organisation, being roused by a telephone call at three in the morning was not out of the ordinary. The call box was at the end of the next street well away from the apartment block, despite Wallace's shattered state he had had the nous to realise that any call made from or near the apartment could and would be traced by the police.

‘You what?' McKay said incredulously. ‘Do you know what time it is?'

Wallace indicated somewhat forcibly that he did have a rough inkling.

‘Well just go and sleep off whatever you're on,' McKay said irritably. ‘Whatever it is we'll talk in the morning.'

‘If we wait until later in the morning our meeting will be in a police cell, they're due to arrive at 4 o'clock.'

‘You what? Arrive where?' he snapped. ‘What the hell are you talking about?'

Wallace told him. There was a short silence; McKay had clearly cast aside whatever shreds of sleep he may have had. Wallace told him about the evening with Kalim and the fate of Ravindran.

‘If the police do arrest me for murder, I'll sing loud and long about ASIO.'

That did it, McKay began to see reason.

‘Where are you?'

‘I don't know, I'm in a telephone box. I think I may be somewhere in Knightsbridge.'

‘Don't you know where the apartment was?'

‘It's about three blocks away from the Surinam Restaurant.'

‘Never heard of it! What's the name of the street you're in?'

‘How the hell should I know?'

‘You're in a bloody call box, aren't you?'

Wallace signified that he was.

‘Well, the location should be up in front of you somewhere, they put it there so people making emergency calls know where they are calling from.'

‘Ennismore Gardens,' Wallace read off the street name.

‘Well get the hell out of it quickly, I'll pick you up at Hyde Park Corner by the Underground Station. Have you got that?'

‘But what about Ravindran?'

There was a short silence.

‘Ravindran?'

‘Look I've just told you, we can't leave the poor bugger there…!'

‘And what are we supposed to do with him, take him to a funeral parlour or a cemetery? If it's as you say it is, then he's beyond caring now. We can't start humping dead bodies out of apartment blocks in the middle of the night and lugging them down the main street. Try explaining that to a passing policeman. Just get to Hyde Park…are your finger prints scattered around the place?'

‘I don't know, but I brought out the glass with my finger prints on it. I've got it with me in a plastic bag. I've got the bloody gun as well.'

‘Jesus! Just get to Hyde Park Underground Station.' Then he hung up.

Wallace started walking up the street, peering suspiciously from side to side and melting into the shadows if he saw any movement, furtive behaviour that would be enough to arouse the suspicions of even a rookie policeman.

He heard the sound of vehicles and sirens from afar and saw the headlights flickering in the air. He dropped behind a wall as the police cars surged by, he reacted a little late and thought he may have been seen, while the plastic bag caught on the brickwork and hung invitingly over the wall onto the pavement. Whoever was in the first vehicle clearly had his eyes fixed firmly on the road; he failed to see the bag and missed his chance of early promotion. They roared up the street that Wallace had just left and entered the street that housed the apartment where Ravindran lay, presumably they screamed to a halt outside the apartment block and poured out like tea from a pot.

He crawled to the end of the wall and found he was at an intersection. He turned right and then ran with the plastic bag in his hand. He prayed he wouldn't meet a policeman on the beat. He could maybe explain the brandy glass, but the gun might prove a little difficult.

He ditched the glass into a rubbish bin attached to a lamp-post, he was fairly sure all the prints were gone, and that this was far enough from the scene of the crime. He carried the plastic bag to the next bin and dropped it in that. Then he headed for Hyde Park Corner.

Possibly the one factor that convinced McKay that Wallace wasn't suffering any delusions was that fact that he vomited as he approached his vehicle. Wallace was astonished that he had any more left to come out. McKay leant against the bonnet trying to look inconspicuous as Wallace approached and puked over the pavement. McKay watched dispassionately, in truth there wasn't much else he could do. He waited until Wallace had finished and then opened the rear door, clearly not fancying having Wallace in the front with him. He also pointedly left the rear window open, but said little as they drove off.

When they reached his apartment, his face was inscrutable as Wallace tried to tell him the story in full. Then he gave Wallace some Alka Selzer and tucked him up in his spare bed and left him.

Wallace awoke late, McKay gave him some black coffee that was as strong as hell but tasted like nectar. He asked if Wallace fancied breakfast. He did as he was ravenous. Technically Wallace had not eaten since lunch the day before having brought up the rest. He still felt a little fragile and his stomach was burning a little, and he also had a bad attack of diarrhoea but that didn't affect his appetite. McKay made Wallace go through his story again and briefly nodded as his adventures finally reached the Hyde Park Underground Station.

‘That tallies with your story last night, did you clean up afterwards?'

‘Yes,' Wallace answered. ‘As far as I know, I'm not a bloody expert when it comes to hiding police forensic evidence. I wiped off every surface I could think of and I brought my brandy glass out with me. I ditched it in a rubbish bin.'

‘Rubbish bin? Christ! Where? In the building?'

‘Some distance down the street, in fact, in the next street.'

‘It may have been better if you'd brought it here…!'

‘Jesus Christ, if I'd been stopped by some blasted copper what the hell could I have told him. I was still carrying the bloody gun.'

‘All right…all right!' McKay made a placatory gesture with his hands. ‘It was certainly better than leaving it in the apartment. Where is the gun?'

‘In the bedroom.'

‘Well give it to me, I'll take it into the High Commission and stash it away. It should be safe there, certainly safer than in here.'

Wallace went into the bedroom and placed it on the table, remembering to hold it in his handkerchief.

‘So there is nothing to connect you with the murder of Ravindran?'

‘No, I don't think so.'

‘And we also have the gun!' McKay held the gun and turned it over in his hands. Wallace shuddered as he did so. He was holding it in a cloth.

‘Not much chance of there being any dabs on it, apart from yours,' he said. ‘The forensic boys can have a look at it.'

‘Forensic?' Wallace was incredulous. ‘What? Here?'

‘Don't be bloody silly, we're hardly likely to hand it over to Scotland Yard to examine it.'

‘Christ I know that! Have you facilities here in the High Commission?'

‘No, in Canberra,' McKay gave a wry smile. ‘Do you seriously think that Australia can supply her security services with sophisticated facilities here? It's all we can do to run departments in Australia, the stupid nitwits, the do-gooders and the so called people of conscience and lefties ensure we receive bugger all funds and then try to stifle what little funds we do get…as if we were something immoral. Then when the Russians, Chinese, bloody Iranians or Indonesians come trooping in it will all be
our
fault because we failed to see it coming.'

Wallace recalled that a bitter Bramble had voiced much the same sentiments when he had seen him in Australia. Wallace avoided his eyes; there had been occasions when he had been guilty of espousing those very opinions.

‘What will they find out?'

‘Christ, I don't know – you tell me,' snorted McKay. ‘Anyway, we do have one advantage in this mess, you got out without anything to link you to the murder, so you're in the clear.'

McKay left Wallace in the apartment the next morning as he went off to the High Commission, with strict instructions that he was not to go out. Wallace had no urge to leave the place, he sat back in his armchair and read the Daily Telegraph and the Independent, McKay had them both delivered. There was nothing in either paper about the incident, but as it occurred in the small hours Wallace hardly expected it, but there was a reference to it on the television news.

“Police are investigating a mysterious affair in Knightsbridge where the body of a man of Indian origin has been found in a room on the fifth floor of an apartment block. It has been reported that the man was shot and is thought to have been murdered. It is believed that it could have been a drug deal gone wrong.

Police are conducting enquiries and are anxious to interview the owner of the apartment who it is thought may be able to assist them with their enquiries.”

‘Up yours, bloody Kalim! Let's see you talk yourself out of that one!' Wallace thought viciously and went to make himself another cup of coffee. He found himself grinning as he envisaged Kalim having to explain how the body of Ravindran came to be found in his sitting room. Then he thought of the likeable Ravindran, and stopped grinning. That wasn't so funny!

McKay had a face like thunder when he returned at midday. He entered the apartment, slammed the door so hard that the whole building must have reverberated, flung his brief case against the wall and stalked straight to the whisky bottle.

‘When were you last in London?' he asked.

‘It was some years ago. I didn't stay here long. Why?'

‘What did you do while you were here?'

‘Well, I don't know, I can't recall exactly. Saul Prosser got me a couple of small assignments and I obtained some temporary work with an insurer who needed extra claims staff. That was after that cyclone went through the Southern Counties and ripped all those trees out. But I was only here about two months then I went up north. Why?'

‘Why in-bloody-deed!' McKay snapped angrily. ‘When did you take out a lease on that apartment?'

‘Apartment, what apartment?'

‘The apartment where you were last night, you bloody idiot! Apparently it was leased in your name about eight months ago!'

T
here was a stormy half hour or so, at the end of which it began to dawn upon McKay that perhaps Wallace was telling the truth. He slowly calmed down, ceased his pacing up and down the room and finally sat down in one of the chairs at the table.

He made Wallace go through his life story for the umpteenth time, he had been making notes upon a clip board and it seemed that once again everything tallied.

‘Do I pass?' a note of sarcasm crept into Wallace's voice, he was becoming extremely incensed. Ever since bloody Bramble had persuaded him, against better judgement, to carry out this wretched Jakarta caper everything seemed to have gone pear shaped. Wallace was heartily sick of the whole business and felt that the sooner he reached the United States the better.

McKay tore off the top sheet, screwed it up and hurled it against the wall. He did not condescend to answer Wallace but merely muttered something that could have indicated anything.

‘Do I pass?'

‘Yes, it seems so. There's something funny going on and I don't figure it – yet!'

‘Well, you can figure it out at your leisure, I'm off to the Midlands and then the United States and the sooner the better. Let me know what happens.'

‘Pigs arse!' McKay ejaculated. ‘It's not as simple as that, if only it could be. A man is found dead in an apartment that nominally belongs to you. The dead man is well known and is involved in an independence and freedom movement in a country just to the north of ours.' McKay placed a slight emphasis on the word ‘nominally' that Wallace didn't like. ‘You are the prime suspect the police want to interview, and who can blame them. They wouldn't allow you to leave the country – they'll pounce on you before you even reach the departure desk.'

On reflection, Wallace had known that all the time, he was hoping by ignoring it that it would go away. He had been trying to banish it from his mind and to forget the inevitable flow on from the discovery of Ravindran' s body.

‘What the hell do I do? Give myself up?'

‘No,' said McKay shortly. ‘That will implicate us – and you can't stay here either, I have a feeling that it won't be long before anyone connected with the Australian High Commission will be investigated.'

‘So what do I do?'

‘You disappear for a while, while we nut this out.'

‘Disappear!'

Adrenalin coursed through Wallace's veins. In view of recent events the word “disappear” had too many unpleasant connotations for comfort.

‘Disappear; go under cover,' McKay gave a grim smile as he read Wallace's thoughts. ‘We'll have to work something out.'

‘And then what?'

‘I'll do some investigating, particularly on that lease. The High Commission will be justified in asking questions and wanting to see the paperwork if one of their nationals is implicated, particularly with an international aspect involved.'