Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 (33 page)

Not until the drug business was safely over, and the leaders identified and caught. Not while van Diemen might get himself caught and exposed as a member of the precious Department.

And Johnson was a bastard, because he forced Roger van Diemen to sit there and tell me about it. Tell me that he was, in a way, to blame even for Kim-Jim’s death. The Curtises didn’t want their prize contact removed by the police because he’d made some wild attack on his rival. So they forestalled him.

Van Diemen didn’t know then who they were. He didn’t know if they knew Kim-Jim was ill. He thought they were afraid Kim-Jim knew something about them. So Kim-Jim had been killed, and through a faceless go-between, whom he now knew had been Ferdy Braithwaite, he had been warned and rushed out of Madeira.

He spoke in a flat, dry voice, his hands locked together between his knees, accepting a very bitter medicine, and making the best of it. Johnson was absolutely silent. I sat holding my drink, and then put it down because the ice kept making a noise.

I listened, and thought my own thoughts. When Ferdy had driven me selflessly up that rotten hill to Eduardo’s, he had already warned van Diemen to leave.

It didn’t really matter to Ferdy if Kim-Jim was dead. I remembered how, more than once, he had tried to pump me about all I knew about Natalie. They must have hoped I would be a good source of blackmail material. It must have been disappointing to find I wasn’t.

And, of course, in time van Diemen had come to his senses, and had begun to give Johnson the help he needed to open up the smuggling racket and expose the leaders.

I wondered when that had happened. After the row with Natalie in the Barbados house, maybe. That was when Johnson suddenly had all the information he required about the Brighton Beach meeting and the rest.

Or perhaps, as soon as Kim-Jim was removed and I came into his money. Then he could afford to turn back to his job again.

Van Diemen was talking about the Carifesta meeting as the turning point in the chase. It had narrowed down the number of suspects. Because of the scare about intruders, it had resulted in the change of plan.

The premature load of cocaine had been scheduled for Miami. Instead, much more handily, it was going to St Lucia, and to Amy Faflick’s underground caverns. Braithwaite already knew of them from Natalie. The Curtises had been told. Van Diemen had encouraged the idea.

It let the Department go into action, with some prospect of keeping van Diemen’s part in the business private.

At that point, I said, ‘Wait a minute.’

Johnson moved, and lifted his glass. Van Diemen raised his pale eyes and waited.

I said, ‘The Brighton Beach meeting. We didn’t need to listen in to that, or try and bug it. You were there, reporting on everything that happened.’

‘That is correct,’ van Diemen said.

‘So that all we were there for was to be discovered?’ I said.

I glared at Johnson. ‘That was why you wanted the disguises? You knew we’d be seen. We had to be seen, to make the scheme work.’

Another thought struck me. ‘What would you have done if my bloody watch hadn’t conked?’

‘I’m sure,’ said Johnson peacefully, ‘we should have thought of something. Anyway, it didn’t matter. The storm diverted the plan for us anyway. Everyone had to go to St Lucia for safety.’

‘And you
expected Dolly
to be boarded?’ I said.

Johnson said, ‘After what we turned up in Tobago, it seemed very likely. The unsolicited violence was a bit of a facer. As… Braithwaite told us himself, it wasn’t his fault. Clive’s, perhaps. Or just that the men got out of hand. The storm was a bit unfortunate too. But it let us take Clive himself, and end it there. And we were able to whip Roger away unseen, after the fake shooting at Amy’s.

‘Natalie won’t mention him. He returns to being a perfectly respectable Financial Director of Coombe’s without any stain on his character.

‘That, O my prosthetic soul,’ said Johnson, ‘was why it was so important that you shouldn’t give vent to your perfectly just and understandable anger and denounce Roger all over the countryside.

‘And if you were determined to pursue him as the murderer of Kim-Jim, all we could do was give you your head, within limits, and see that you were protected, as far as possible. And hope that you did uncover the right man, and didn’t catch up with Roger and make things awkward for him. You may now slap me down.’

They had no need to go through this. In sitting there and letting me fire at them, they were doing the right thing, and it was up to me not to take advantage of it. But all the same, there was one item that needed airing.

I’ve tried most things, but I’d never get into the heavy drug scene. That’s a killer, to yourself and everyone you know.

I said, ‘I see why you had to go on using Mr van Diemen until the Coombe business was out in the open. I don’t see how the Department can go on using and protecting someone who injects, mainlines drugs.’

Roger van Diemen said, ‘I am stupid, but not so stupid. I don’t inject, Miss Geddes..’

‘I saw the tracks,’ I said.

Johnson said, ‘Then you know how they are done. Collodion, liner and nail polish. It was done by make-up, Rita. He had to appear vulnerable. He was, but not to that extent.’

Make-up is my business, as Johnson said. And I had seen van Diemen’s arm only twice, in the dimness of the Mercedes, and through a window in Barbados when he was speaking to Natalie.

But these tracks, when they are real, stay and can’t be disguised. If I was being lied to, I wanted to know it.

I said, ‘Show me your arm.’

Today, no one was going to refuse me anything. Without speaking, van Diemen took off his jacket. Under, he had a formal shirt with long sleeves and fine cuffs. He prepared to unbutton them. ‘Which?’ he said.

I couldn’t have told. Johnson said, ‘Show her both arms.’

Head bent, my one-time attacker undid both sets of buttons and began to roll the sleeves up.

I watched him. Because he had been stupid, as he said, it was right that he should pay for it, but only as much as was due.

I had thought of him over many months as the killer of Kim-Jim, and hounded him. He was not, and I shouldn’t forget it.

I hoped that he hadn’t been lying. For if he had, it would be Johnson’s lie too.

The arms were bare, and he held them palm upwards and looked at me.

There were no tracks. Instead there were the pale pink, wrinkled blotches of recent burns. I had them myself, all over my body.

I looked at Johnson, and he in his turn looked, smiling a little at van Diemen, who drew his arms back.

This time, neither of them helped me, and I had to ask. ‘The man with the megaphone?’

The man who, long familiar with every inch of the banana islands, had stood still at the lip of the caldera, ignoring the flurries of steam. The man who, with his hands upraised to his hailer, had steered me, patiently and clearly, out of that boiling mud in St Lucia.

To me
and
Away from me
.

‘It was the least I could do,’ said Roger van Diemen.

Revenge and jealousy. It isn’t often that they unravel so easily, or that the punishment is so light.

We had lunch, the three of us, and talked about nothing serious, at which Johnson was very good; and Roger van Diemen did his best. I was rather glad when it ended.

After the coffee, van Diemen left. I have never seen him since. He owed me a debt, and Johnson let him pay it.

Half an hour after that, I left myself, to let him rest.

Alone, he had talked to me of a lot of things. About my work, and my mother.

I didn’t think Robina would live long.

When I said so, he said, ‘Another cat. Do you know, Rita, that that’s how I traced you? Marguerite Geddes, born to Robina Curtis, or Souter, of Kirkcaldy. Your nice yellow cats with their flowery coats are Kirkcaldy cats. Not from Ayrshire at all.’

‘I shall have two more,’ I said. ‘Three, when Robina dies. You wouldn’t like one?’

We were still sitting at table. He took off and put down his glasses, and then looked up.

He said, ‘I should be honoured. A woman with the courage and determination of Genghis Khan. Look it up, and don’t be annoyed: it’s a compliment.

‘You don’t need any help from us now. You’re on your way. But if you would like it, Raymond could add a little seamanship to your accomplishments, once
Dolly
is herself again. Racing is a game for you.’

He broke off and was quiet for a bit, fingering his spectacles. I didn’t interrupt.

Then he said, ‘Rita? What do you really feel about it all? It was your decision, to come out of your safe hole and look for your family.

‘It wasn’t your fault what hit them after that. It would have happened anyway. It was our fault, though, that you had such a rotten time. You were in a lot of danger. We might well have killed you amongst us all…

‘You’ve got such a bloody heart that it mayn’t have occurred to you to hate us for it, but you may very well wish you had never left home. Do you?’

‘And that’s a silly question,’ I said.

He laughed.

‘I hoped it was,’ he said. ‘And I’m really very glad. And so is Roger, whom you were kind to as well.’

He put his hand on the table and got up, to come with me to the door of the room. He was wearing the bifocals again.

Standing there, saying goodbye, he said, ‘Tell me. Will you change your hair? Maggie has.’

I smiled. ‘I saw,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. Should I?’

He said, ‘I liked it when it was orange. If you want a life of battle, go ahead. You’re in the illusions business. You know the dangers to keep clear of. And I’m all for reminding people that there’s a lot of illusion about, and that it’s quite a good idea now and then to have a look under the paint.

‘You don’t need to keep in touch with us. Raymond will keep in touch with you,’ he said. ‘More often than you want, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Which was as nice a way of parting as I had ever heard of.

Connie took me to get my coat.

That was where I saw the photograph. In fact a lot of photographs, that had never been there before, but one that struck me particularly, because I’d first seen it in Lady Emerson’s house.

The picture of this pretty, open-faced girl. Smiling, and good-looking enough to be in pictures.

Connie saw me looking at it. She said, ‘It’s nice that he’s got it out. And the things from the house. It was a great worry, for a while.’

I said, ‘Who is she?’

She didn’t answer, just looked taken aback. Then she said, ‘He hasn’t told you?’

I felt cold. I said, ‘What?’

Connie Margate said, ‘But that’s his wife. Judith. Judith Ballantyne, daughter of the judge.

‘She’s dead. She died when… he was the only survivor.’

‘Of the plane crash,’ I said.

She didn’t answer. Then, ‘Of the plane crash,’ she agreed.

I don’t remember leaving 17
b
, or taking the lift, or walking out into the bright streets of Mayfair, and looking for a taxi to take me the few paces I had to go.

I was thinking of Johnson, and of 17
b
, and of all those terrible letters.

‘You’ve been a great help,’ Lady Emerson had said.

She’d taken a bloody great risk in sending me to 17
b
. I understood Raymond’s fury.

It nearly hadn’t worked, either. Johnson had resented Natalie and Ferdy and being forced to think of Roger van Diemen. What had made him change his mind, you couldn’t tell.

But I could see that, in a way, I had been of use, and not just because of the quiche, and the dog. Even the jazz and the phone calls and things must have dragged him out of himself a bit, anyhow.

I was glad I had helped him.

I gave Cohn to Celia, though. I’m told he’s now breeding in Jersey.

That’s fine.

I don’t mind bifocals a bit. But I find parrots are asthma.

[Dorothy wrote a number of detective novels which were first published under her maiden name Dorothy Halliday with different titles in the UK & USA, and were subsequently retitled again in the UK when they switched to Dorothy Dunnett. The US changes were made to avoid any possible offense to the then US President's wife - Ladybird Johnson.]

[A Note on Series Numbering: this is not the first Johnson Johnson book written, it is the first in the internal chronology of the series.]

[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[June 15, 2007]