Isvik (11 page)

He suddenly burst out laughing. ‘A reg'lar card, Nobby was. And so instead of gettin' meself clapped in irons an' sent to some bloody Borstal to learn new ways o' maintainin' the standard o' livin' to which I was becomin' accustomed, I found myself at a middle-class prep school learning to speak posh the way the poor cuff-frayed masters thought the Queen's English should be spoke. You ever been to a prep school?'

I shook my head. ‘I was state-educated.'

‘Well then, you wouldn't know what the little buggers get up to after lights out. They were on to the hard stuff, some of them, when I got there. Got themselves caught, of course, in the end, and the headmaster flogged the lot of them. This was the early seventies. The tabloids got on to it and tore the place apart. The
Guardian
even had a leader on it – hands off our poor little misguided darlings, not their fault. Blame the parents, the state, the social workers, private enterprise, down with the system. Needless to say, the school went bust. And I went to Eton.'

He stopped there and I was left wondering whether he had made the whole thing up. No trace of an accent now, and speaking copybook English. ‘Why Eton?' I asked him.

‘It was in Nobby's will. The trustees were to get me into Eton. Nobby didn't say how, and to this day I don't know what strings they pulled, but to Eton I went. Why?' He shook his head, smiling. ‘Lesson number one, I suppose – never get caught. The trustees, they even congratulated me on keeping my nose clean – very upright behaviour, my boy, model of rectitude. Well, what did they expect? I wasn't throwing my chances away by peddling drugs in a prep school, and I certainly wasn't getting myself addicted. Seen enough of that. Anyway, I got a nice little racket going in stolen car radios. Flogged them to unsuspecting parents on match days, speech days, and through other boys at half term and end of term.'

‘Are you serious?' I asked. ‘You really were educated at Eton?'

‘That's right. Old Nobby had written me a note, which the trustees solemnly presented to me in their Gray's Inn offices. I read it there and then, but I didn't tell them what was in it, though they wanted to know, of course. I think the best line – and the one that concerns you perhaps – was,
“I don't want you to finish up a small-time crook like me. At Eton, you'll learn to do things right. They don't get caught. Remember that. At least not often.”
' There was a smug look on his face. ‘Good advice, that was. And I haven't been – not yet anyway.'

‘So you never made a million on the pools.'

‘Never done the pools. Waste of time when your life's as full as mine. After Eton, instead of going to a university, I decided to see a bit of the world. The trustees were far too straight-laced to switch money earmarked for university education to supporting my wanderlust, but if you've been trained at the back side of an East End antique barrow it's surprising how much you can make dealing here and there, especially across frontiers, and at that time Europe had plenty of them despite the Common Market.'

‘Is that how you made it?' I asked.

‘What? Oh, the million.' He shook his head, leaning close again, the claw gripping my arm. ‘Know something? If I knew I was worth a million it'd mean I was too busy counting it to lash out on an expedition into the Weddell Sea. I don't know what I'm worth. I've got four mammoth great sleeper trucks running stuff through Turkey into the Middle East and the Gulf. I'm a trader, see. My money's all tied up.'

‘But that cheque …'

‘What cheque?' And when I reminded him of the press cuttings he had shown us on the
Cutty Sark
, he just laughed and said, ‘Any promotion outfit with a graphics department can run up a little thing like that and get it photographed. I had to have something visual, see, something I could show them that they'd believe in and at the same time that wouldn't upset them on moral grounds. If I'd said' I was running arms, wheeling and dealing with Arabs, Iranians, Israelis, all that gang, and using odd intermediaries, they wouldn't have had anything to do with me. But a pools win …' He winked at me, and suddenly I had a vision of him as a bookie in a loud check suit on Newmarket Heath, even a ticktack man. He had that sort of a face – battered and slightly coarse. But you didn't really notice that because the essence of the man was his vitality. Coarse-featured he might be, that big beak of a nose, but because the energy that drove him constantly showed through, it was his personality, not his features, that stamped themselves on the memory, so that after a while I wasn't even conscious of the bulge in the half-empty sleeve. And when he smiled, as he was smiling now, the battered features had a warmth and vitality that gave them quite extraordinary charm. ‘Bit of a mixture, aren't I?'

He was certainly that – if all he had said was true. ‘Was your mother really a prostitute?'

‘Sure.'

‘And you never knew your father?'

‘No.'

I thought he must be making at least some of it up, and in the close proximity of an aircraft it didn't seem to matter that I'd asked him two such personal questions. ‘So why have you told me this?'

‘Look,' he said. ‘Ah don't know where we'll land up, how long we'll be together or what will happen. But this isn't a fun ride, and one thin' is certain, if we take this boat she's persuaded me to buy down into the Antarctic, you and me and the Sunderby girl, a Norwegian engineer Ah've never met and a guy she thinks has seen the ship and is a competent navigator, all five of us are goin' to be livin' cheek-by-jowl in the close confines of a very small vessel. Ah know all about ye. Ah made a few enquiries, and anyway yer character is written all over yer face. Ah needn't have bothered. Ye're reliable and Ah know Ah can get on with ye okay. The question is, whether ye can get on with me and Ah thought maybe this was as good an opportunity as any to give ye a glimpse of my background. Just so as when the chips are down and thin's get tricky ye'll have some idea why Ah'll behave the way Ah probably will.' He suddenly grinned at me. ‘Ah'm no' an easy man, ye ken. So if ye've any more questions, now's the time.'

‘Well, of course – the obvious one.'

‘Sunderby?' He nodded. ‘Ye don't believe she phoned me, is that it?'

‘No, not quite. But are you sure you've got the right day? Thursday, you said. In the evening.'

‘That's right. She was flyin' to Paris, de Gaulle airport, then to Mexico City and on to Lima.'

‘Are you saying the body they pulled out of South Dock that Wednesday morning wasn't hers?'

‘Couldn't have been, could it?'

‘But her handbag …'

‘She must have thrown it into the water. It was the only positive evidence of identity the police had produced.'

‘Did she say she'd done it?'

‘Thrown the handbag in? No, she didn't say so. She didn't need to, and anyway she was talkin' about something else. About that student fellow, Carlos. She was very hepped up, excited. D'ye think she takes drugs?'

‘I wouldn't have thought so.' She had seemed much too sensible.

‘Nor would Ah. But the excitement in her voice –' He hesitated, his eyes staring past me at the cloudscape billowing up to the west of us, a great rampart of convoluted cu-nim towering in fantastic shapes and back-lit by brilliant sunlight. ‘Was he good-looking? You saw him, you said.'

I shrugged. ‘He was slim, with a somewhat serious face. Yes, he was good-looking all right in a rather Spanish way.'

‘Italian, you mean. The boy's Italian.'

‘How do you know?'

‘His mother was Rosalli Gabrielli, a Neapolitan lady of very doubtful virtue whose one period of respectability was when she was married to Iris's father, Juan Connor-Gómez, the playboy son of a chain store millionaire. Carlos's father was a Sicilian named Luciano Borgalini. Luciano's brother Roberto used to pimp fur Gabrielli.'

So that was why he was sending Kirsty Fraser to Naples. But when I asked him what more he needed to know about Carlos, he shook his head. ‘There's nothin' further Ah need to know about him. It's his uncle, Mario Ángel Connor-Gómez, Ah'm interested in. He's the issue of that brief marriage between Iris's father and Rosalli. Ah'm beginnin' to build up quite a dossier on him, but Ah need to know a whole lot more about his background. He was one of the
Montoneros. Ángel de Muerte
, they called him, and that's a nasty reputation to have. Maybe that nephew of his is no better. Maybe it's in the family. And if they're both killers …' He paused there, looking suddenly thoughtful. ‘Some women like playin' with fire. So if she's a bit of a nympho – and don't forget this, they're related in an odd sort of way – if that vitality of hers runs to sex …' A lift of the eyebrow and he left it at that.

What he was suggesting was that Carlos had a fatal attraction for her and that she had got a kick out of the thought that the police might arrest him on suspicion of having dumped her body in the water. ‘You think he was planning to kill her?'

He shrugged. ‘Seduce her, more likely. If his uncle had told him to find out from her why she was so determined to get an expedition mounted to locate that ship. And that,' he added, ‘would suggest there's somethin' more to her interest in the vessel than just a matter of proving her husband right.'

‘And she was flying to Lima?'

‘Yes. It's on the way to Punta Arenas.'

‘But she could fly to Buenos Aires and on from there. It would be quicker.'

‘Quicker, yes. But my guess is she's gone to Lima to talk to the boy's uncle.'

‘Why?'

‘Maybe there was seduction on both sides.' He said it slowly, the hint of an amused smile lighting his eyes. ‘Maybe he let slip somethin' she needed to know. Lyin' in bed after a tumble people say things they didn't orter, right?'

The erotic mental flash produced by his words reminded me of the spark that had seemed to leap between us that moment by the
Cutty Sark
when she had been walking towards me and our eyes had met. ‘I don't believe it,' I murmured. ‘She didn't strike me as the sort of person …'

‘No? Ah've often wondered,' he murmured reflectively, ‘why some women always seem to fall fur the worst sort of men. It's not the size of their pricks. At least not in my experience. Ah'm fairly well endowed –'

‘Good on you, mate!' A man had risen from the seat in front, hanging a lined, leathery face over us. ‘But don't wave it around here – frighten the stewardesses.' He winked and nodded, then stepped out into the aisle, weaving his way with care towards the loos.

‘Bloody Australians!' Ward growled. And then he said something about women having reforming natures, wanting to mould men to the image of their desires. ‘It's one explanation, the motive moral as well as emotional, the drive not so much sex as the desire to exercise power, female power, over the male.'

Remembering her energy, her single-purposed drive to get backing for her expedition, I thought that a much more likely motive. But when I said so, he laughed and shook his head. ‘Don't ye believe it. Oh, Ah grant ye she's obsessed with the idea of searchin' fur this ship, but Ah still reckon it's somethin' more than just the need to prove her husband right.' And he added, ‘Because ye're the sort of person ye are, ye leap to the conclusion that others are as straightforward and sensible as yerself. What dae ye know of women?' And when I began to protest, he said, ‘Italian women. Girls whose genes are crossed with those of a whore. Yes, a whore,' he repeated, as I asked him what the hell he was talking about.

He was silent for a moment, then he said, ‘Oh well, we'll see what Iris Sunderby makes of Mario the Ángel. Either she'll eat him, or he'll eat her, and if Ah had to bet on it, bearin' in mind his reputation …' He shrugged. ‘That's why Ah'm in a hurry to get to Lima. Ah'd like to catch her at her hotel before he does. Iris Sunderby's name incidentally, before she married, was Iris Connor-Gómez. Gómez.' He said' it again, slowly, as though savouring the name. ‘Same as the Ángel. I need to find out if Juan Connor-Gómez was also his father. His mother was almost certainly Rosalli Gabrielli. She was a cabaret singer at the Blue Danube in BA.'

He was silent after that, leaning back in his seat and finishing his brandy. I tried to get more details out of him, but he shook his head. ‘Rosalli Gabrielli originally came from Catania in Sicily, but she grew up in Naples. She went back there after Juan threw her over. That's about all Ah know.' He leaned down to his briefcase and pulled out a paperback with the title
¿Muerto O Vivo?
in bold red print on a white background.

‘Spanish?' I asked him.

He nodded. ‘By a journalist.' He opened it at a marker. ‘It's about the
Desaparecidos
, the Argentinians who disappeared. There are still about ten thousand of them unaccounted fur. Ye don't speak Spanish, dae ye?'

‘No.'

‘Pity. If ye read this … Ah could have got it in English. It had a big success in the States when it was first published there just after the Falklands War under the title
Dead or Alive?
But Ah thought Ah'd better start brushin' up on my Spanish.' He reached into his briefcase again and got out a small pocket dictionary. ‘Some words Ah have to look up.'

‘How many languages do you speak?'

He shrugged. ‘Half a dozen, Ah suppose. Ah like the sound of words, ye see, so languages come fairly easily to me. But my Spanish is very superficial. Ah don't speak any language fluently, not even my own. Enough to get by in business, that's all. This man –' He turned to the cover and indicated the author's name – ‘Luiz Rodriguez, he's good. He's done his leg work, interviewed a lot of people, includin' Mario Ángel Gómez. Met him secretly just before he left the Argentine fur Peru. And there's even a bit about Iris's brother Eduardo, who disappeared quite late, in July 1984. He was a scientist. Biology. Incredibly, he was tae years and more at Porton Down.'