Dying to Tell (10 page)

"How serious was this romance?"

"For Haruko, very serious. She hoped to marry Rupe, I think. That is what her mother has told me."

"And for Rupe?"

Hashimoto sighed. "I am sorry to say this, Lance. You are his friend. You must think well of him. But the truth is ... he strung her along. He did not want to marry her. He wanted something else. Once he had it ... he was gone."

"What was it he wanted?" (Somehow, I already knew it wasn't anything obvious.)

"Something that belongs to Haruko's mother my sister, Mayumi." Hashimoto stopped and looked at me. "Rupe stole it."

"Stole? I don't believe it. Rupe's no I broke off. No thief? No con artist? No double dealer? Whatever I'd previously have said you couldn't accuse Rupe of, his own actions seemed to tell a different story.

"Rupe used Haruko to get close to Mayumi. He knew she had this thing that he wanted. Eventually, he persuaded Haruko to show him where it was hidden. Then he stole it. And ran away. Like, as you would say, the thief in the night."

"What did he steal?"

"A letter. Let us call it ... the Townley letter."

"Townley? You know about him?"

"I know. And yet I do not know. Mayumi does not tell me more than she thinks it is safe for me to know. She is fifteen years older than me. Always she has thought she is a better judge of what is good for me than I am. But her judgement is not as acute as she believes. She should not have kept the letter. She should have destroyed it."

"What's in it?"

"I do not know." (Was he lying? It was a fifty-fifty guess. His expression gave nothing away.) That is one of the things Mayumi does not think it is safe for me to know."

"But it's a letter from Townley?"

"No. About Townley."

"To Mayumi?"

"Yes."

"From .. ."

"I do not know."

"Written when?"

"A long time ago. Many years."

"Thirty-seven, maybe?"

"Maybe."

"Did Mayumi know Townley?" (Hashimoto looked to be in his mid to late forties, which put his sister in her early sixties. The arithmetic, such as it was, seemed to stack up.)

"Yes. When she was very young."

"In Tokyo?"

"Yes."

"What was he doing there?"

"He was a soldier. American. Based in Japan."

"And Mayumi was his girlfriend?"

"Not .. . exactly."

"What then .. . exactly?"

"It does not matter." (It did, of course. But seeping through Hashimoto's inscrutability was the implication that he was genuinely unsure about quite a lot himself. His sister was holding out on him. But nothing like as much as Rupe had been holding out on all of us.) "What matters is that the letter is dangerous to Townley. It harms him. It can be used against him. That is why Rupe wanted it. So, can you tell me why Rupe is interested in harming Townley?"

"Not really. Something to do with his brother, I think."

"Revenge?"

"Sort of." (But what sort of? Even if Townley had murdered Dalton and made off with some of the Train money, why did that matter to Rupe? Why did he care?)

"The letter is not just dangerous to Townley, Lance. It is dangerous to Mayumi. I have to get it back. This is more than honour. This is life and death."

"It can't be as bad as that."

"It can. Rupe has strayed into a very dark place."

"Come off it." (But the dark was what I was whistling in now.)

"We have to find him."

That could be a problem .. . Kiyofumi. I haven't the foggiest where he is. The consensus seems to be..." I shrugged. "Find Townley and you find Rupe."

"I do not know where Townley is."

"What about your sister? Does she know?"

"No. She has not seen him has not heard from him for more than forty years."

"I thought we settled on thirty-seven."

"You settled on thirty-seven."

"OK. We can agree on a bloody long time?"

"Yes."

"During which Mayumi has had absolutely no contact with Townley?"

"Correct."

"Then can you explain to me how Rupe knew they'd ever been acquainted?"

"Ill fortune."

I waited for him to continue, but he didn't, merely gazing solemnly at me through the shadow cast by the brolly. "That's supposed to be an explanation, is it? Because I '

"Excuse me, gentlemen."

I don't know if Hashimoto was as surprised as me by the interruption. He certainly couldn't have been more surprised. A figure had materialized next to us, his approach screened perhaps by the brolly. He was a tall, faintly stooping bloke in a dark, neatly tailored raincoat. He had short grey hair and a narrow, lugubrious face. His voice was soft and precise, matching his gaze, which moved slowly but studiously from me to Hashimoto and back again.

"My name is Jarvis. You don't know me. But I know you. Mr. Hashimoto. Mr. Bradley." He nodded politely at us. "I also know Rupert Alder. He is, let's say, an interest we have in common."

"Did you follow us here?" Hashimoto's question had a tetchy edge to it and I can't say I blamed him.

"Not just here. Speaking corporately, that is."

' What?" The guy's oblique style of speech was needling me as well.

"Forgive me. Surprise was inevitable. Antagonism is unnecessary. My card."

He plucked two business cards out of his pocket and handed us one each. Philip Jarvis evidently represented a company called Myerscough Udal, boasting an address in High Holborn and a clutch of telephone, fax and e-mail numbers. The nature of their business went unspecified.

"We handle confidential enquiries," Jarvis continued, anticipating the question. "We're one of the largest operations in the field worldwide. Pre-eminence in such a field is by its nature un trumpeted of course. We rely very much on personal recommendation."

"And you have been enquiring into us?" asked Hashimoto.

"Not exactly."

"Then what .. . exactlyT (The guy was definitely getting to me.)

"Mr. Rupert Alder is a client of ours. We, like you, are concerned about him."

"Owe you money, does he?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. But I think he would pay us if he could. Even our fees would not gobble up the proceeds of his aluminium fraud." (Everyone, apparently, knew all about that.)

"What did he hire you to do?"

"Can't you guess?"

"Find Townley," said Hashimoto.

"Precisely."

"And did you?" I pressed.

"No." Jarvis allowed himself half a smile. "You could say he found us, though. That indeed is why I'm here."

"Meaning?"

"Let's step down to the Serpentine. Rippling water calms the mind, I find. I'll explain as we go."

We started along the straightest path to the lake. And Jarvis, as he'd promised, started to explain. His soft voice forced us to stick close to him if we were to catch every word, as I for one was determined to do. I wondered if it was a deliberate anti-eavesdropping technique on his part. And then I wondered if thinking that was a symptom of paranoia on my part.

"Strictly speaking, gentlemen, I ought not to be telling you any of this. Myerscough Udal's reputation has not been built on sharing its secrets with third parties. But these are exceptional circumstances. Wholly exceptional in my experience, which is far from inconsiderable. I shall elaborate on that a little later. To begin at the beginning, Mr. Alder engaged our services through our Tokyo office four months ago to locate one Stephen Townley, using such limited information as Mr. Alder was able to give us."

"How limited was that?" I asked.

"Very, for our purposes. Mr. Alder knew only that Townley was an American, probably in his sixties, who'd served in the US Army and been based at one point in Japan. He also supplied us with the names of two former acquaintances of Townley, one of them deceased."

"Peter Dalton."

"You have him. The other was '

"My sister," put in Hashimoto.

"Quite so. I do not know how much Mr. Hashimoto has told you about his sister, Mr. Bradley, so forgive me if I bore you with information already in your possession. In seeking to trace Townley, we went back to his roots and worked forward: standard procedure in our line of work. US Army records and other obvious databases yielded certain simple facts. Stephen Anderson Townley was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on May seventeenth, nineteen thirty-two. An only child of a single mother. She is long since dead, by the way. He enrolled in the Army straight from high school in the summer of nineteen forty-nine, aged seventeen, and served thirteen years in all,

leaving with the rank of sergeant. He saw a good deal of action in Korea at the start of his military career. After that he was shuttled around like thousands of other soldiers. Particularly significant for our purposes, however, was the year and a bit he spent in West Berlin in the mid Fifties."

"Why's that?" I asked, as Jarvis paused, either for breath or effect.

"Because Peter Dalton, a farmer's son from Somerset, was serving with the British Army in West Berlin at the same time. We must assume the two men became acquainted during that period. Also because Townley married a German girl while based there. Rosa Kleinfurst. Rosa went back to the United States with him when he was transferred home early in nineteen fifty-five. Later that year, their first child, Eric, was born. A daughter followed eighteen months later. By then, the marriage seems to have been on the rocks. The couple separated, Rosa keeping the children. Townley transferred to Military Intelligence, which means there's very limited information on his activities from that point on. We believe he was based in Japan for the next two or three years, during which period he patronized a bar in Tokyo called the Golden Rickshaw, the proprietress of which was '

"My mother," said Hashimoto.

"Indeed." Jarvis nodded. "Who knows, Mr. Hashimoto? You may have glimpsed Townley sipping his beer at the counter on your way home from school some days."

"It is possible." The admission sounded painful.

"Your sister entertained the customers?"

"She was young and pretty. People liked her."

"Quite so. Innocently so, one might say. And her daughter has followed in her footsteps?"

"Yes."

"I understand the Golden Rickshaw's walls are decorated with photographs of former patrons, taken over the years."

"It is."

"I further understand Stephen Townley appears in one of those photographs."

"He does."

on

"Which is how Mr. Alder knew your sister had been acquainted with him, possessed as he was of another photograph of Townley, taken a few years later."

"Yes."

(So, an earlier question of mine was answered. Rupe had known Townley was an old customer of the Golden Rickshaw and hence likely to be known to Mayumi Hashimoto. There were plenty more questions where that one came from, though. Had Rupe gone to that particular bar by chance? Or had he already suspected a connection with Townley? And did Jarvis know what Rupe had stolen from Mayumi? Did he, in fact, know about the theft at all?)

"We believe Townley left Japan in the spring of nineteen sixty," Jarvis continued. "Frankly, we haven't a clue what duties he was assigned to for the remainder of his service. He left the Army two years later. All official trace of him ceases at that point." (We'd reached the Serpentine by now and begun a slow tramp towards the boathouse. The wind was raising quite a few ripples on the lake, but I was immune to their supposedly calming effect.) "Mr. Alder presented us with a photograph of Townley, apparently taken by his brother at a railway station near Glastonbury in August nineteen sixty-three. The date was of Mr. Alder's own computing. He said Townley had been a friend of Peter Dalton and our investigations have certainly shown that to be possible. Dalton committed suicide on August nineteenth, nineteen sixty-three. Mr. Alder suspected that Dalton was actually murdered by Townley to cover up his part in the, er .. ."

"Great Train Robbery," I put in.

"Quite so." Jarvis stifled a wince. "Since Mr. Alder declined to share with us his reasons for harbouring such an apparently outlandish suspicion, it was difficult to know whether to take it seriously or not. He specifically forbade us to approach his brother, for instance."

"I doubt you'd have got much out of Howard."

"Perhaps so, perhaps not. Either way, all that can really be said is that it remains an open question. I know Mr. Alder had some contact with a Sixties villain called Prettyman, but I have

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to tell you Prettyman is a highly unreliable character in his own right. It is unclear whether he was actually a participant in the robbery or not. What those who definitely were participants seem to agree on is that the original impetus for the crime came from an anonymous source who fed them vital information."

"Might that have been Townley?"

"Frankly, Mr. Bradley, your guess is as good as mine. The allegation takes us nowhere in the absence of a single hard fact about Townley's life after he left the Army. The 'sixty-three material is fragmentary and uncorroborated. It is also the end as far as Townley goes. When I say that we know nothing from then on, I mean literally that: nothing. Townley is a dead man without a death certificate. A blank. A void. If he's still alive, it's in another man's skin. And we have absolutely no idea who that man might be."

"What about his wife? His children?"

"Naturally, we pursued that avenue of enquiry, but it yielded nothing. Although the Townleys have never divorced, that appears to be because Mrs. Townley has had no way of contacting her husband since he left the Army. He ceased to pay maintenance to her at that point. She has consistently told friends and acquaintances that she believes him to be dead. Their children take the same line. They may be right. They may be wrong."

"Or they may be lying."

"That too, of course." Jarvis smiled faintly. There are .. . discrepancies ... in the banking records of all three."

"What sort of discrepancies?"

"The sort that imply financial assistance from an unidentified source."

"Townley," said Hashimoto.

"It's possible. Mr. Alder took the view, indeed, that it was distinctly probable."