Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 (7 page)

As arranged, Aurelio dropped me in Funchal on his shopping trip.

Before we parted, he came with me to the house of the driver with the placard, and at my request, asked him questions in Portuguese about how his Mercedes was borrowed. By, of course, the camera thieves.

It was as well Aurelio was there, as the driver’s wife wasn’t keen to let me in, and kept shuffling about as if I was infecting the furniture.

In any case, we didn’t learn anything new. He had been bopped on the head from behind, dragged into a toilet and his uniform pinched. End of story.

We came out, and I thanked Aurelio, and he went off with the car and his shopping-list, leaving me to explore the glories of Funchal.

It took me some time, I can tell you, to find the place where the Mercedes had parked with me in it. The town was steep, and crowded and foreign. There were a lot of striped buses, but I couldn’t read where they were going. I got myself over a river and walked and walked and kept walking until I saw the view I had seen in the last of the light, when the car slowed down and stopped at the end of nowhere.

I might not have been sure even then, except for the tyre marks. And the fact that it was eleven o’clock on the dot when I got there, and something chirped from the grass.

My executive watch. You’d better believe it.

And beside it, what the telly crime man calls the marks of a struggle.

I never miss a crime series. I browsed all over the grass where the car had been, finding a few things that looked much the same in Troon and Madeira.

Plus the pin I had used to jab with. Plus a gold cufflink with a crescent engraved on it. Cannon would have been proud. I was proud.

I put it in my purse, and went off to find a taxi.

All the roads in Madeira seem to run down from the mountains. They make a big holiday thing of the sledges that once brought stuff to market. Everyone I know, just about, has sent me this postcard, showing the sledges like baskets with tourists in them, and the men who steer them in white, with straw boaters on. And here in real life they were. Big deal, Rita.

I wondered, now my fedora was bashed, if a boater would suit me.

There were a lot of flowers about, likely committing misconduct, but no taxis. In the end, I paid a boy to lead me to the nearest rank, which was at the harbour. I walked towards it, looking about me.

The Clyde is full of harbours. This one was quite big. There was a slipway with four fishing-boats on it, and a row of empty cradles for yachts, and some groups of tanned Portuguese perched on walls chatting in checked shirts and cardigans.

A wee white tunny fishing-boat was making out to the open sea through the entrance, rocking some nice yachts lying over at anchor. One of them, a tall white beauty with glittering brass, flew a British flag. I wondered what port it came from.

Outside the long harbour wall, a handsome cargo ship had arrived, big and clean as a liner, and covered with tackle. The flag at the masthead, a blue square with a yellow C on it, lifted now and then on the breeze.

It had got quite hot, and I could feel my cheeks glowing all round my sunglasses, and remembered I hadn’t taken off my newly-found watch, and therefore would have one brown and blue wrist and one white and blue.

As I thought about it, the digital pipsqueaked for noon, and the cathedral clock clanged.

There was a water-skiing kiosk. I didn’t need to be back until evening.

I stopped with my hand on a taxi, and looked out at the sparkling water. Then I looked again, I don’t know why, at the cargo ship.

The driver was saying, ‘Where to?’ but I didn’t answer him. I said, ‘That’s a big ship. Does she call in here often?’

‘Often. Where to?’ said the driver.

I was thinking. I said, ‘What is she called?’

Behind his moustache, the driver’s face was getting red. He stuck his elbow out.

‘Is called
Coombe Regina
. Is banana ship. You want this taxi?’ said the driver.

Bananas.

‘What,’ I said, ‘do you think I’m standing here for? You know the Funchal address of Coombe’s Bananas?’

He did.

‘O.K.,’ I said, and got in. ‘Turn round and take me two blocks beyond it.’

Cannon. Smiley. Move over.

The Madeira headquarters of the Coombe Banana Company stands among the banks, the consulates and the other good-looking buildings near Queen Amelia’s Municipal Gardens in the Avenida Arriaga (I looked it up).

It is also near the highly geared-up cellars of the Madeira Wine Association, from which, it being lunchtime, warm-looking tourists were coming out in a steady flow with some of their Madeira wrapped under their arms and the rest of it no doubt already in their blood streams.

People were beginning to come out of Coombe’s Bananas too, as I found when I paid off the taxi and walked back along the street on the opposite side.

It was a very fancy building, with double doors made of black curly iron and glass, leading into a tiled hall with plants in it. As the doors began to swing more and more, I could see that there was a reception desk and some armchairs further in, and a flight of white stairs on one side.

The bananas, I worked out, occupied the middle and top floors of the building, and the staircase was the only exit.

I worked it out because the crest of Coombe’s Bananas, the yellow C, was embossed on all the upper parts of their windows, just as it appeared on their flag.

And on the cufflink of the guy I’d had this little disagreement with, in and out of the Mercedes.

The door opened and another typist came out. So far no one very important-looking had been struck by hunger. No doubt the top agents, or such as could afford good suits and cufflinks, were still taking phone calls from Southampton or Hamburg or Tenerife, or wherever banana growers and banana eaters find one another.

The door swung again, and a man in a cheap shirt and tie came out, carrying a jacket. He glanced across the street, saw me, and stared with such interest that he crashed into a woman with three children under four and another on the way.

All of them yelled at him except the one who wasn’t born yet, and it taught me something. If I wanted to spy, blue and orange hair was a drawback. Telly Savalas didn’t have it. I needed a headscarf.

I looked about. On either hand were touts with trays of embroidered hankies, standing firm in the way of outgoing customers of the Madeira Wine Association like battered steps in an off-season fish-ladder.

None of the hankies would cover the blue or the orange, and there were no likely shops that were near enough.

A man in a straw boater came along, this time on my side of the road. He grinned all the time he walked up to me, broke stride as he passed, and murmured something in Portuguese while pinching my patchwork. He then walked on, gazing backwards and winking. He was heading for a bicycle.

It happens all the time. He looked normal. He had a loop of rope round one shoulder, and a jersey slung over a creased white open-necked shirt. His trousers were white, and he had little boots on. He also had a big black moustache and black eyes.

He was one of the sledge-hammers who ran down the hill with the tourists. I said, ‘Mind the bike!’ and pointed behind him.

He grinned, showing awful teeth, but the sense got to him just a little too late. He turned to see where I was pointing, and fell over the bike.

I picked him up.

There is an art in letting a fellow know that, although you don’t grudge a pinch, you don’t want another one. We got it worked out, as I handed him his rope with one eye on the opposite doorway. He understood that I was Scotch, and staying in one of the villas, and would fairly enjoy coming on one of his sledge rides.

But first, that I wanted to hire his hat for an hour or two.

For a bet. For a fair sum of money. And if he wanted I’d bring it back later.

The distance between a come-hither and a friendly exchange between sexes is not so well marked in Portugal and her colonies as it is in Troon, for example, and it took a bit longer before we got everything straight. But we did in the end, and a handful of my escudos disappeared into his pocket.

Outside, the hat was plain with a brown ribbon round it. I wouldn’t have minded knowing what it looked like inside, either; but he had it whipped off and fixed on my head before I could take a quick look. It had a nice concealing brim.

He was not all that pressed for time, it then seemed. His name was Eduardo. After five swings of the door and the exit of three girls and two men without cuffs, never mind cufflinks, I explained that he’d ruin the bet if he stayed, and I’d bring his hat back in no time to the sledge station. He kissed my hand in the end, and crossed the street grinning, nearly causing two old Austins to crash. I was so busy watching him, I nearly missed the Coombe door open yet again, and a tall man come out, for a change.

A tall, well-dressed man wearing a collar and tie, and grasping a briefcase.

A man with a lot of fine, dark-brown hair that kinked over his ears and at the back of his neck. Dark brown, but not black like Portuguese hair. And with it, a square face that had tanned to a shiny red-brown, making a pair of light eyes seem even lighter.

Then he turned his head, to check before crossing the road, and I saw that one side of his face was marked black and blue and red by a long, scraping graze. And that the hand holding his case had a bandage on it.

I took cover as soon as I glimpsed him, but even if I had been standing full in the sun, I doubt if he’d have seen me. He was making for a sports car parked nearby under the trees. He flung his briefcase in, opened the door, and in a moment was edging out into the traffic, going away from me. I was surprised the noise in my chest hadn’t stopped him.

The moment he was out of sight, I crossed the road and went into the hall of Coombe’s Bananas.

Behind the desk, the girl was on her feet, just going for lunch, and not too keen to be bothered with tourists in men’s hats who likely needed to be told the way to their consul, but quickly.

Before she could walk to the door, I said, ‘Excuse me. I have something to return to one of your company men. The one who’s just driven away. Do you expect him back soon?’

She spoke English, but not well enough to do two things at once. She stopped putting things in her bag, and looked at me.

‘No. He has gone to the airport. He will not be back. If it is for the company, I can take it.’ She looked at a clock on the wall.

I said, ‘No, it’s personal, sort of. Do you have an address for him?’

If I was going to handle it, she was happy to do anything that would get rid of me. She said, ‘He moves about; you will know. But I give you a card with the company offices.’ She opened a drawer, and spread out a handful of pasteboard.

‘And his full name,’ I said. ‘If you please.’

There was no reason why she couldn’t give me it, and she did. A company card, with two addresses in the Caribbean, one in Liverpool and one in Rio de Janeiro.

And the name of the well-dressed man who had just driven off to the airport. Who had a grazed cheek where I had hit my assailant, and a bandaged hand where I had stabbed him.

He was well-dressed because of his position.

And he hadn’t been lying when he claimed to know Natalie Sheridan.

The pasteboard I was reading told me that eventually, when I worked through the Portuguese writing.

The pasteboard which said, in full:

COOMBE INTERNATIONAL

Financial Director

Roger van Diemen

I suppose I thanked the reception girl. I remember she went out of the door ahead of me. I was still stuffing pasteboard into my bag, which was a sort of silver hoversock I was fond of, and thinking.

Of Mrs Sheridan, chiefly.

There were taxi ranks all up and down the Avenida, and I had just decided that I needed one when an estate car pulled over and a face I knew poked out of it.

Aurelio was quite cheerful. He called: ‘You O.K.? The hat is wonderful.’

I’d forgotten the hat. I suppose he recognised what I was wearing. The back of the car was full of odd veg. and spillings, but no shopping. I said, ‘Where are you going?’

‘To the airport,’ said Aurelio. People started hooting behind him, and he banged his horn a few times and bellowed a swearword before going right on talking.

He said, ‘Good news: a nice cable, after you left. Mr Curtis is arriving from Lisbon. You like me to pick you up on the way back?’

‘
Mr Curtis is coming back to Madeira
?
Now
?’ I said.

‘Sure,’ Aurelio said. ‘The plane’s running late, or there would be problems to meet it. The cable just came.’

I stood there in the din, breathing. Then I hauled at the handle. ‘Let me in. I’m coming with you.’

‘Sure,’ he said again. He wasn’t worried, even when my elbow changed the gear. ‘Take your time, Senhora Rita. No one comes quickly away when the Lisbon plane is late. The luggage. The crowds waiting to board.’

‘To board?’ I said.

‘To board the same plane, to fly back to Lisbon. It turns round. When late, very quick.’

Very quick was how he was driving now, in spite of what he was saying. Weaving through the traffic in the direction the sports car had taken.

Roger van Diemen’s sports car, taking to the airport Mrs Sheridan’s friend Roger van Diemen, who hated Kim-Jim and wanted to kill him. And who, without a doubt, was about to board the Lisbon plane Kim-Jim was about to get off.

There was no way they couldn’t meet. And there was no way that Roger van Diemen, seeing Kim-Jim arrive, was going to fly obediently out of the country and leave Natalie Sheridan and Kim-Jim together.

So a meeting between Kim-Jim and my banana nut case had to be prevented. And I knew who was going to help me.

I waited until we were on the northbound road out of Funchal. Then I spoke in a lovely clear voice to Aurelio.

‘If you see a green BRM on the road ahead of you, try and pass it. It’s got Mr Roger van Diemen inside, on his way to the airport.’

If I needed proof that Mrs Sheridan and her damned butler/ chauffeur had been holding out on me, I got it then.

His hands went slack on the wheel, and a couple of bullocks drawing a tourist cart nearly became Funchal McDonald’s.

To do him justice, he didn’t say, ‘Who is Roger van Diemen?’ or ‘How do you know?’ or ‘What does that matter?’ He only said, hollowly after a space, ‘To meet Mr Curtis?’

‘To take a plane out himself. I don’t think he knows Mr Curtis is flying in. But of course he’ll see him, unless you and I stop him.’

There was another long silence, but the car had steadied. Aurelio said, ‘This morning, you did not know.’

‘This morning, I was a softie from Troon. Now I know better,’ I said. ‘He’s on mainline drugs. Why should Mrs Sheridan protect him? Because of what he could tell?’

‘Mrs Sheridan?’ Aurelio said. His tone said that he understood her, and I didn’t. ‘Nothing Mr van Diemen could say would harm Mrs Sheridan. Only, she wants to save him from himself.’

‘But not the folk he attacks,’ I said.

He glanced at me. He looked dead worried, and nervous with it. ‘But that was terrible,’ he said. ‘Mrs Sheridan could hardly believe it. But what to do? To tell you would not cure the harm. Only to get Mr van Diemen out of the country.’

‘So this flight away is her idea,’ I said. ‘Where is he going?’

He looked at the clock. ‘Now, you are right, there is no flight from the airport but this one back to Lisbon. Why there, I do not know. Business, maybe. From there, of course, anywhere.’

‘Barbados, St Lucia, Liverpool or Rio,’ I said. ‘Unless he’s left his job, too?’

I could feel him give in. If I knew all that, I knew everything. He said, ‘It is Mrs Sheridan to think of. You work for her too.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. ‘I don’t say I don’t see life in my line, but junkie lovers is something else. I got beaten up.’

‘You got a thousand pounds,’ said Aurelio, scowling at me.

I looked at him. He wasn’t jealous. He just thought I was being unfair to Mrs Sheridan. It was clever of Mrs Sheridan to have told him what she paid me. She sure knew how to handle people. But of course, I had seen that already.

I said, ‘All right. Let’s save Mrs Sheridan some pain. How do we make sure Mr Roger van Diemen leaves the country?’

Buttling in the Algarve does nothing for the imagination, maybe because nothing is left to the imagination in the Algarve in the first place.

We arrived at the airport with nothing decided, and it was just as well, because between the scrum of people waiting to board the late plane and the scrum of people waiting to meet the late plane you couldn’t have picked out a winkle, never mind a tall, well-dressed Dutchman with a ring-scar all down his left cheek.

The Customs and baggage bit for incoming passengers was barred off. But anyone with their health and strength and sharp elbows could get into the lounge, which was full of families, business men and tourists hugging polythene coffins with orchids in them, and neat carrier bags with Madeira in them, and large broken parcels with Whicker in them.

The chairs were orange plastic, which reminded me. I took my hat off, and fifteen people either smiled, or turned their children away.

There was no point now in hiding myself. Fright and politeness between them had got Aurelio halfway through the crowd, but no further. He knew half the people there. A scene in Portuguese would have been beyond him, never mind in English.

If anyone was going to stop van Diemen and Kim-Jim meeting, it had to be me.

Being four feet eleven is a bugger. Someone half-rose from his chair to wave at someone. As soon as his bottom was clear, I slid his seat out and then stood on it.

The jolt as he sat down again, on the floor, fairly rocked me, but I managed to stand long enough to see round the place.

I didn’t much like what I saw. Through the glass windows all round the lounge there was a very good view of the control tower, and the airfield, and a TAP plane slowing down on it.

Also, there was a big outside balcony, to which welcome-parties bearing their welcomes were struggling, in order to look down at the welcomed and wave.

Among those making towards it, drink in hand, was this tall, well-dressed man with brown hair and a bruise on his suntan.

I got off the chair before I was pushed off, and fought towards him.

Four hundred Portuguese voices and several jet engines said that there was no way even my voice would carry. The Financial Director of Coombe’s Bananas crossed the balcony and paused to lift up his glass. I picked up a packet of peanuts and lobbed them into it.

Tennis is one of my games. The bag drop-landed fair and square in his drink and most of it went up his nose. There was a short spell of whooping and choking, during which someone banged him helpfully on the back and a woman, passing, tut-tutted about the streams on his trousers. Then he got his eyes clear, and his mouth open to threaten… and saw me.

Latins love drama. Behind me, the crowd had seen nothing. But as I battled the last two or three yards, the grinning crowd about van Diemen parted, and I found I had no trouble at all walking right through and staring up at him.

‘Remember me, Mr van Diemen?’ I said. I looked round at my audience and beyond them. The steps for the incoming TAP were in position.

When I looked back and up, I hit a violent glare. ‘I certainly do not,’ said Roger van Diemen. ‘But you may be sure from now on that you will be remembered. You threw that object just now?’

He still held his near-empty glass in one hand, its cuff dripping, and in the other, a soaked mopping-hankie. He sounded bloody annoyed, but not frightened.

I said, ‘You were lucky.’ The door to the aircraft had opened.

‘Lucky we didn’t have flying glass everywhere, I suppose,’ he said. ‘There are children about, you know. I don’t know what airports are coming to. Excuse me. I have to clean up.’

The tarmac began to look busy. An air hostess came out and stood to one side of the door, while another walked to the foot of the steps. A group of officials wandered out, followed by a fuel wagon and then by a luggage truck.

I stood plumb in front of the Flying Dutchman, and moved when he did. I said, ‘You were lucky I didn’t louse up the other cheek. What’s the sentence for rape in Madeira?’

People had begun to walk down the steps from the aircraft. Now he had his back squarely to the balcony and I could watch it round one of his shoulders.

He said, ‘Let me pass. I’ve never seen you before. What do you want? Money?’

The enjoyment round us went up a notch. Among the laughter and the exclamations, I risked another quick look behind him.

The last of a group of heads disappeared under the edge of the balcony, heading for the Arrivals area. Another bunch, in no hurry at all, were filing out and down the steps of the aircraft.

None of them was Kim-Jim.

Kim-Jim might be among the passengers that I’d missed. Or he might still have to disembark. I had to keep it up somehow.

Everyone wasn’t off the plane. The air hostess still stood on the top step, smirking at someone inside, and a small man in some sort of uniform walked to the foot of the stairs with a wheelchair.

There was some chat between him and the airline man, and then they both stood, looking up at the exit door.

I had looked too long, and too hard. Roger van Diemen was looking where I was looking. At the TAP plane from Lisbon on the tarmac, with every passenger out but for one.

I had nothing left to throw. I couldn’t get at his legs for a rugby tackle. If I dropped dead on the spot, Roger van Diemen was unlikely to remove his eyes from the plane, now he guessed why I’d held his attention.

Outside on the tarmac, there was an extra movement at the top of the gangway, and a steward began to come out, shaking hands with someone. And by the law of Rita’s filthy luck, it was bound to be Kim-Jim who would walk out on the steps, so that Van Damned Roger would see him, and cancel his flight, and stay on in Madeira and take Kim-Jim for a ride in a Mercedes as well, but this time a permanent one.

I was rescued by Ferdy.

Ferdy of all people, who had heard Kim-Jim was coming and rushed to the airport to meet him and was told by Aurelio where I was. Who waded through the entire crowd behind me and lifted me up by my Old English Patchwork so that I dropped my straw hat and every face in the lounge turned in my direction, including Roger’s.

I didn’t listen to what Ferdy was saying. I was shrieking into his ear.

‘Do something! That’s my nutter! The van Diemen guy! Throw me at him or something! Kim-Jim’s coming, and he mustn’t see him!’

Ferdy grinned into my face. My toes dangled just short of his kneecaps.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Natalie rang him and told him to get out. And don’t worry. Kim-Jim got smuggled off first. He’s waiting in the VIP lounge. Roger won’t see him.’

I could have killed Ferdy. For Mrs Sheridan’s sake, he had held out on me. He knew who my attacker was. He had lied. He was a bastard.

He had maybe saved Kim-Jim’s life.

I kissed him. I looked over his shoulder. The aircraft steps, I could see, were now empty.

Then Ferdy swung me right up, and I looked for Roger van Diemen.

He wasn’t there. A sort of swirl showed where he had been standing. I said, ‘The bastard has gone.’

‘Shall I throw you anyway?’ Ferdy asked hopefully.

He did, on to the counter, and was starting to raffle my hat when I got it off him and shoved until he agreed to take me to where Kim-Jim was waiting.

Overhead, the tannoy was apologising for the late incoming plane and promising passengers flying to Lisbon that boarding would shortly begin.

I looked about all the way to the special room, but there was no sign of my vanished banana case. I hoped he was solidly in the Departure area, being unzipped by airport security. I wondered what had made him lose his cool all of a sudden, since the tannoy hadn’t then called. Perhaps Nature had. Or perhaps…

I said to Ferdy, ‘Wait a minute. This banana guy knows you?’

‘Everyone knows me,’ said Ferdy. He saw my foot go back and said quickly, ‘But O.K., my artist in non-toxic animal greases. He’s seen me with Natalie. A big scene with me on top of a big scene with you was probably more than he could stomach. Could you stomach it, Rita? A big scene…’

He talks like that all the time. I paid no attention, because he was certainly right. Roger the Lodger had spotted Ferdy and scarpered.

We went down some stairs. A kid came by in a sweat shirt with writing all over it that I didn’t need to read, because I’d seen it before. It read: