Isvik (10 page)

‘The train was late,' I said. ‘In any case, it wasn't due in to Liverpool Street till nine-forty-five and I had to queue for a taxi.'

‘It don't matter.' He smiled. He was a balding, bustling little man with large horn-rimmed glasses. I don't know what race he was, middle European probably, certainly not English. ‘You wait here,' he said, peering down at my baggage. ‘Keep an eye on it.' And he disappeared into an inner office before I could ask him any of the questions that were in my mind.

He was back almost immediately with two stiff manilla envelopes. ‘Here is Mr Ward's passport.' He handed me one of the envelopes and a form. ‘You sign for it please. All the visas are there, all he asked for.' He produced a pen and I signed. ‘And there is yours. Bolivia is not possible, not in the time. But I think perhaps you don't go to Bolivia. Explain please to Mr Ward. The others are difficult enough.'

I started to ask him how he had managed it at such short notice, but he shook his head, smiling. ‘You don't ask. It is done, that is all that concern you.' But he looked pleased.

‘Mr Ward referred to you as his travel agent, but I see you're a solicitor.'

‘Yes.' The smile had vanished, replaced by a wary look. He began to shut the door, but I had moved my canvas roll into the gap. ‘You must have an interesting variety of clients,' I said. ‘So many Chinese in Soho, all those strip joints and blue cinemas.'

‘I deal only with ladies of the stage, ladies who are in trouble, you understand. No Chinese.'

‘Prostitutes, you mean?'

‘We call them ladies of the stage. They prefer that. Most of them have been in front of the footlights at one time or another.' He glanced at his watch. ‘Now, Mr Kettil, if you'll excuse me. I only came in this morning because of you.' He pushed my canvas roll out of the way. ‘My regards to Mr Ward please and tell him any time …' He nodded, smiling again as he closed the door and locked it.

Back in the street and humping my gear laboriously to Piccadilly Circus Underground, I thought his clients probably included blackmailers as well as prostitutes, or perhaps he did the blackmailing himself. It was the only explanation I could think of that would produce visas like rabbits out of a hat. And if he was a blackmailer, what was Ward? Thinking about that as the Piccadilly Line took me out to Heathrow, I began to consider espionage as possibly his real occupation.

At the airport I had over an hour to wait, and since I had no ticket, I couldn't check in and get rid of my baggage. I bought a paper and sat reading it over a cup of coffee until it was the time Ward had said he would meet me. But one-thirty came and went, and no sign of him, the minutes ticking away relentlessly as I stood by the BA desks, watching the endless flow of passengers checking in. I began to think he might not turn up. Having geared myself to face the challenge of an expedition that might cost me my life, I suppose I was mentally on a high, for I now became fearful lest he might have abandoned the whole project.

And then suddenly he was there, with a porter and a great mound of baggage. He also had a woman with him. I hadn't expected that. ‘Mrs Fraser,' he said. ‘Otherwise Kirsty – my secretary.' She gave me a little nod and a perfunctory smile. She had the tickets in her hand and moved into line to wait her turn at the desk. He turned to me. ‘Ye got the passports?'

I nodded. ‘There are one or two questions …' I began.

‘Later.' He took the manilla envelope I handed him, slit it open and ran quickly through the pages, turning them with the thumb of his left hand as he checked the visas. ‘Good.' He slipped it into the pocket of his Norfolk jacket. His secretary was by then handing the tickets to the BA receptionist and the porter was swinging the baggage, item by item, on to the scales. ‘You are overweight,' the girl at the desk said, and he grinned. ‘Of course Ah'm overweight. Always have been since Ah could afford to eat well.'

The girl didn't smile. Maybe she'd had a long day already, or perhaps it was just that she didn't have a sense of humour. ‘Your baggage,' she said. ‘You will have to pay excess.' I don't know what nationality she was, but her English was very precise.

‘Of course.' He left his secretary to deal with that. ‘Must have a leak before we board. See you in a minute.'

‘We haven't much time,' I said,
and he waved his hand as he disappeared into the mêlée, his head, with its dark unruly hair, raised as he sniffed around like a bloodhound in search of the toilet indicator.

They were already announcing the final call for the Madrid flight when he rejoined us and we hurried along the passageway to the boarding gate. His secretary was still in attendance. Apparently she was coming with us as far as Madrid, and when I asked him why, he said curtly, ‘Business.' And then, apparently thinking I was due some explanation, he added, ‘Spain is becomin' important industrially. Ah've been developin' some contacts there. Kirsty's very good at that.'

She was just ahead of me, and looking at the trimness of her figure and the swing of her hips, I couldn't help it – I said, ‘I can just imagine.'

He looked at me and grinned. ‘It helps,' he muttered. ‘But she's also a clever businesswoman.'

She turned with a quick smile. ‘I'll have that in writing, please.' There was the trace of an accent, but it wasn't Scots, and though the blonde hair gave her a Scandinavian look, she was too small and it was bleached anyway. It was difficult to guess her origins and I wondered what their relationship really was. The easy familiarity between them suggested a long association, at least a close one, and when we had boarded the plane I found myself in an aisle seat separated from them by two rows.

It was the same in Madrid. I don't know where they went, but I was on my own in a hotel near the airport. ‘See ye tomorrow on the plane. Fourteen-thirty take-off. Iberia.' And with a nod and smile the two of them disappeared into the crowd, heading for the exit. I had a feeling he didn't want to be alone with me, even for a moment, or was it that they wanted to be on their own, a last night together before he took off for the Antarctic?

Sitting in the hotel bar, drinking Fundador on my own, I felt as though I were in limbo, waiting for something to happen, a sense of unreality taking hold. I looked at the ticket I had been given – Madrid, Mexico, Lima, Santiago, Punta Arenas. And after that …?

I had some more brandy, and that seemed to do the trick – I had a good night's sleep. And in the morning, when I got to the airport, they were already there. ‘Look, I've got to talk to you, before we depart.' It was my last chance. I couldn't afford the fare back from Mexico City, and certainly not from Punta Arenas. ‘Some questions –'

‘Later. Ah told ye. After we take off.'

‘No, now.'

But he shook his head, and when I insisted he leaned suddenly forward, his face gone hard. ‘Ah said later. We'll talk later, when we're airborne.'

He was so close I could smell the stale sweat of his body. He had clearly had an energetic night and as he turned back to his girlfriend, I seized hold of his arm, my mind suddenly made up. ‘I'm not boarding that plane unless you tell me where the money comes from, why you're in such a hurry.'

I'd got hold of the wrong arm and the hidden claw fastened on my fingers as he swung round on me. ‘Yer baggage is already on the plane.'

‘I don't care.'

The obstinacy in my voice got through to him at last. ‘Very well. Ah'm in a hurry because Ah'm concerned for Iris Sunderby's safety.'

I stared at him. ‘What the hell are you talking about? She's dead.'

‘On the contrary, she rang me from Heathrow just before boardin' her plane.'

‘What plane? When?'

‘Last Thursday evenin'.'

Thursday evening, and her body pulled out of the dock on the Wednesday morning! ‘You say she was boarding a plane?'

He nodded.

‘Where was she going?'

‘Lima.'

Iris Sunderby. Alive! I couldn't believe it.

‘Come on,' he said, glancing up at the departure board, where green lights were flashing against our flight. ‘Time we were boardin' Ah'll explain later.' He turned back to Kirsty Fraser, gave her some hurried instructions about somebody called Ferdinando Berandi, then bent and kissed her. ‘Take care.' And she went clack-clack-clacking away on her too-high heels.

‘When she's finished here,' he said, ‘she goes on to Napoli.'

‘Why?' He was standing watching her, but she didn't look back. ‘What's Naples got to do with it?'

He turned abruptly, peering down at me as though unsure how to answer that. ‘The Camorra,' he said finally. ‘Ah need to know somethin' and she has contacts there. Kirsty knows Napoli well.'

‘But the Camorra is the Neapolitan version of the Mafia, isn't it?'

‘Aye.' He was staring at me, not wanting to be questioned further.

‘I don't understand,' I said. ‘You told me she's your secretary, so presumably she's going to Naples on your behalf.'

‘Ah tell ye, Ah need the answers to one or tae questions.'

‘And she can get them for you? How?'

His lips twitched, a glint of sudden humour in his eyes. ‘Ye don't check up on a girl like Kirsty too closely.'

‘But why the Camorra?' I insisted.

‘Because a lot of them come from Napoli.' And he added by way of explanation, ‘Just remember this when we get to Argentina: the country was swamped at the turn of the century by a mass influx of immigrants, some three million of them Italian, mostly from the south. Full of piss and wind.' His voice was suddenly contemptuous. ‘They call it braggadocio. It was braggadocio that sent Mussolini trampin' into Africa. It sent the Argentinians into the Malvinas. Galtieri was full of it.'

Another boarding announcement, a last call and he turned abruptly on his heel. ‘Come on. Better board the bloody thing and get on with it.' There was a note of resentment in his voice as though he was embarked on something he didn't relish. He picked up his overnight bag, and with a nod to me, walked towards the boarding gate. I followed him. His mind was now so obviously locked in on itself that there was no point in trying to question him further.

I don't know how much was curiosity, how much the sense of excitement I was inevitably feeling at being caught up in something bigger than myself, but whatever it was I found my mind was now made up. I would see it through. And once having taken that decision, I felt strangely relaxed. With the whole flight in front of me there was plenty of time to get the answers to all my questions.

We were travelling first, something I had never done before, so that I was quite content, lying back after the meal, listening to taped music on the headphones and enjoying a brandy. I felt strangely disembodied, not sure that it was really me flying south-west in brilliant sunshine above a white sea of cloud. Another world, a world without worries, a world that had never heard of insects boring into wood, or fungi and damp rot.

‘Ye awake?' The gloved steel hand pinched my arm. ‘Ah said, are ye awake?' He was leaning towards me. ‘Take those earphones off fur a moment.'

I did so and he smiled. It was a switched-on sort of smile that left me wondering what he was thinking. It didn't extend to the eyes. ‘Ye've got some questions,' he said.

I nodded.

‘Well, I've got one for you.' There was barely a trace of any accent now. ‘What decided you to come before I'd given you the answers to the questions you were worried about?'

What had decided me? I shrugged and shook my head. ‘Iris Sunderby, I suppose.'

He nodded, smiling again. ‘Aye. She's a very attractive young woman.'

‘Is?'

‘Either is, or else the person phoning me Thursday evening was a very good mimic.'

I thought of the body I had been shown in the hospital morgue. If it wasn't hers, whose was it? But he wasn't making it up, no point, and his face, close to mine, deadly serious. ‘Are you really Scots?' I asked him. ‘Or do you just put it on as an act?'

‘Och, no. Tha's me natural accent.' And he added, ‘Ye want me life story?' The smile was more like a grin now as he leaned back, half closing his eyes. ‘All right then. Ah was born into the Glasgae Mafia.' He said it as though it was something to be proud of. ‘A Gorbals laddie whose drunken sot o' a mother was pitched out into a grand new high-rise tower when Ah was two years old. She was a whore. Ah never knew my farther. By the age o' seven Ah'd been arrested twice, a real little toughie, livin' on the streets most o' the time, scratchin' a livin' round the docks an' watchin' the unions kill them off. In the end, Ah stowed away in the loo o' a sleeper to London, finished up just north o' the Mile End Road workin' fur a man who ran a bric-à-brac barrow.'

He was silent for a moment, his eyes tight closed so that I thought perhaps he had gone to sleep. But then he leaned towards me again. ‘Clark was 'is name. Nobby, of course. Nobby Clark. Well known in the trade, 'e was – stolen stuff, see.' Brought up as I had been in the East of England, I could recognise genuine Cockney when I heard it, and he had slipped into it so easily. ‘Some of it was straight, nat'rally. 'E mixed it up, Nobby did, and nobody ever nicked 'im. Portobello Road, four ack emma of a Saturday, that was 'is best pitch. The boys used to bring the stuff in as soon as 'is stall was set up an' by six o'clock all the 'ot stuff was gone, 'is pitch as clear as a whistle by the time the first copper come nosin' ara'nd. Cor, stone the crows!' He was almost laughing now, his eyes wide open and alight with the fun of the life he'd led. ‘The things I learned in the three years I was wiv 'im you wouldn't believe.'

He sighed. ‘An' then, when I was risin' ten, an' just beginning to get the 'ang of things, the silly old sod goes an' dies on me. Gawd Christ! I loved that man, I really did. 'E was like a favver to me in the end. The only one I ever 'ad.' His grey eyes, staring past me out of the window, were moist with emotion. ‘Yer know somep'n, Pete. I paid for 'is funeral. 'E hadn't made any provision, like, so I paid for 'im to be buried a't o' what I'd saved. I thought I owed 'im that. Then blow me, if a lawyer man doesn't grab 'old o' me just as I was settin' up on me own. D'yer know what Nobby gone an' done – set up a bleedin' trust for me eddication. Christ! I could'a killed the old bastard. 'Cept 'e was in his grave already.'