Permissible Limits (26 page)

I looked for my mother. She was locked in conversation with Douglas, the vicar, on the other side of the room. I picked my way towards her. She looked far from perturbed.

‘
My darling.’ She grabbed my hand. ‘Tell me how I smuggle this delightful man back home.’

‘
Home?’ I was looking at Andrea again. She was telling Jamie some story or other, her eyes hooded, her head cocked at her favourite angle. Maybe Harald was right. Maybe we were in for the full number.

‘
Yes, I keep telling him we need someone with a bit of… I don’t know… vim.’ My mother turned back to the vicar. ‘Douglas, you still haven’t told me how you did it, getting Adam off like that. It was remarkable. He could have been standing there with you. Don’t you agree? Ellie?’

I stayed with them for the next twenty minutes or so, buffering the poor vicar from the worst of my mother. One of the many things she missed on the Falklands was the chance to play the landed gentry. Running six hundred head of sheep on several thousand acres of bog and tussock cuts very little ice in Stanley but here, to my mother’s delight, the numbers had an altogether different impact.

Eventually, as gracefully as I could, I disentangled myself and made for the door. Across the hall, the study door was shut. When I opened it, I could smell bleach and a ghastly pine-fresh airspray Andrea had picked up in the village. There was a damp patch on the carpet in front of the chair, but of Harald and Steve there was no sign.

I went through to the kitchen. One of Adam’s Fleet Air Arm chums was on his hands and knees, mopping up a pool of liquid by the fridge. When I asked about Steve he peered up at me.

‘
Tall bloke?’ he queried. ‘Quite young? Baggy suit?’

‘
Yes?’

‘
With another guy? Older? American? Bit of a tan?’

‘
That’s him.’

Adam’s chum rocked back on his heels.

‘
They were in here a couple of minutes ago. The young guy was pissed out of his head. The American was taking care of him. Said he’d give you a ring.’

‘
He’s
gone?’

‘
Yeah, said it was for the best. And you know what?’

‘
What?’

Adam’s chum gave the floor a last wipe and got to his feet.

‘
He was right.’

Two days later, Dennis Wetherall phoned. He said he was sorry to have missed the memorial service but business had
delayed
him in Barbados. We had the usual exchange about his particular brand of bullshit and after I’d told him what an amazing wake he’d missed, he sounded almost regretful.

‘
How
long?’

‘
Six in the morning. I kid you not. Bodies everywhere. Dennis, it was like a battlefield.’

Our accountant’s appetite for parties was legendary, but there was a quirkier side to him that I was only just beginning to recognise. He had a taste for the surreal, for the bizarre, territory that came with one or two of his clients from the music business. Mixing grief with abandon, the way the English so rarely do, would have been a gig worth treasuring.

He was trying to put the thought into words but I spared him the effort. The memory of my unfinished conversation with Steve Liddell wouldn’t let me go. I’d got so close to finding out, to confirming my worst nightmare, and regardless of the pain that lay beyond it, I was determined to complete our little exchange. As I’d tried to say at the time, the least Steve owed me was the truth. What happened after that would be my responsibility.

Dennis was still musing about the party.

‘
Was it really wild?’ he asked plaintively.

‘
Very. I’m coming over tomorow. I’ll tell you all about it.’

Dennis, ever the gentleman, met me at Jersey airport. With his Barbados tan, his Lacoste shorts and his bougainvillea-print cotton shirt he looked like one of his clients. Crossing the car park, I asked him whether he wasn’t cold.

‘
Freezing,’ he snorted. ‘But a suntan’s like any other asset. The last thing you bloody do is waste it.’

We had lunch at a new place he’d found, a sushi bar in one of the little back streets near the covered market. Only when we were tackling the second course did I make the connection with Adam.

‘
This is where he came that last night,’ I said, ‘with Harald.’

‘
Yeah?’ Dennis had a mouthful of raw squid.

‘
Yes, Harald mentioned it. That first day he flew over. When it had just happened.’

I looked round. The realisation that Adam had been here invested the little restaurant with a new luminance. What had he eaten? Where had he sat? Had he looked at the waitress? The local girl with the purple nails and the big chest?

Mention of Harald had finally tugged Dennis away from Barbados.

‘
Interesting bloke,’ he grunted, ‘your friend Meyler.’

‘
You think so?’

‘
Definitely. He’s well-connected, too. Shrewd of you to stick so close.’

‘
You think I’m interested in all that?’

‘
Of course you are. No point otherwise, is there?’ He eyed me over his napkin. The notion of friendship, of a loyalty untainted by anything remotely commercial, was utterly alien to Dennis. Whatever you did in life, whoever it touched, there was always a deal.

‘
He’s a friend,’ I protested. ‘Adam’s friend first. Mine now.’

‘
You don’t know about the rest of it?’

‘
No.’

‘
He’s never told you?’

‘
Never. He doesn’t tell me anything. Except how to cope with my problems. And at that, I have to tell you, he’s brilliant.’

I was thinking about Steve Liddell throwing up all over the house. Only Harald would have had the quiet presence of mind to clear it up and remove Steve before it happened again. As a small act of friendship - unfussy, unsung - it was altogether typical.

Dennis was still having trouble fitting Harald into the right box. Money and connections, in his world, equalled power. And powerful men always,
always,
talked
about themselves.

‘
Not this one,’ I said.

Dennis sat back, openly incredulous.

‘
So here’s a guy, brings you a hundred and sixty grand for some beaten-up old aeroplane, and you know sod-all about him?’

‘
You banked the cheque?’

‘
Of course I did. What else would I do with it?’ He looked round the restaurant, glowering. ‘But that’s not the point. The point is, what’s he up to?’

‘
He’s a friend. He helps me out.’

‘
Sure, but why? What’s the angle?’

‘
There isn’t one.’

‘
Are you dreaming? There’s always an angle.’

‘
Not this time.’

‘
Bullshit.’ He paused, bunching and unbunching the napkin in his hands. ‘Is he in love with you?’

I’d once or twice asked myself the same question - not love, exactly, but maybe some passing fancy - but the longer I’d thought about it, the less likely it seemed. Men who are in love with you drop hints, act out of character, make moves, give themselves away. Not once had Harald done any of these things. No, Harald - as far as I was concerned - was exactly what he seemed. Steady. Dependable. A good, good friend.

Dennis was unconvinced.

‘
He’s an arms dealer,’ he said. ‘Merchant of death.’

The phrase, heavy with moral outrage, made me smile. Dennis’s clients included a couple of businessmen on the fringes of the rock scene who Adam had been sure were major drug-dealers. To be frank, I’d no idea how Harald made his money, but heroin, I suggested quietly, was just as lethal as anything in Harald’s armoury.

Dennis feigned indignation. He never touched drugs. Never touched people who dealt in drugs. Harald, on the other hand, bought and sold pretty much anything that would make a hole in you.

‘
How do you know?’

‘
Because I do,’ he said belligerently. ‘Because it’s my business to know.’

‘
But who told you?’

Dennis suddenly grinned at me and touched the side of his nose. One of his favourite hobbies was withholding information. It gave him an enormous kick. Information, after all, was power. And power, for Dennis, was the only currency that really mattered.

‘
Arms.’ He nodded. ‘All over the bloody world.’

‘
What sort of arms?’

‘
Planes, mainly, and all that fancy stuff that goes with them. The radar set-ups, the fuelling gizmos, plus all the hardware you can strap on. Rockets. Cannons. Bombs. He’s a trader, Ellie. He’s the guy in the middle. He finds a market, meets needs, and from what I hear he’s bloody good at it, too. Mind you, arms dealing?’ He spread his arms wide. ‘You’d be stupid
not
to get rich.’

‘
How come?’

‘
How come? You really want to know? One, it’s non-cyclical. One half of the world’s always trying to kick the shit out of the other half. Two - you listening to me?’

I’d remembered something Adam had told me a while back, when he first met Harald. He’d said he was a player, a real pro, and that -
in Adam’s terms - was praise indeed.

‘
Go on,’ I said.

‘
OK, so two, the world’s awash with weapons, good solid stuff, most of it Russian, or East German, or Czech, or whatever. These guys, they’ve lost a war, they don’t need it any more. Plus they’re flat broke, most of them. So along comes someone like your friend Harald and offers them hard currency, and bingo, it’s party time. For dollars, they don’t mind who screws them. He can name his price. Literally.’

‘
You’re still talking about aircraft?’ I was thinking about the Yak and Harald’s connections in Romania. It certainly fitted the story. Dennis nodded.

‘
Aeroplanes, sure. And more or less anything else you’d want. Armour. Small arms. Mines. The whole gig.’

‘
But Harald specialises in planes?’

‘
That’s what I hear.’

‘
So who does he sell all this stuff to?’

‘
Central America, right on his doorstep. Contras. Guatemalans. Salvadoreans. Then you go further south. Venezuela. Colombia. Ecuador. Anyone with an insurgency problem. Anyone with bank facilities in Miami. It’s money, Ellie. Money has no smell. Guys want to buy aeroplanes, something rugged, something not too fancy, Harald Meyler’s the guy they phone.’

I gazed down at my plate of sea bass, still wondering where Dennis had picked up this information. Maybe he’d met someone in Barbados. Maybe he really had been there on business, in between the lazy days at the poolside. Then I had another thought, much closer to home.

‘
That bank manager we met,’ I said slowly, ‘the one with the funny name.’

Dennis pretended he’d lost the plot. Finally I coaxed the name from him.

‘
You mean Ozilio?’ He frowned. ‘Ozilio Sant’Ana?’

‘
Yes. Does he know Harald?’

The momentary hesitation gave Dennis away. I tried to stifle a grin. At heart, like Adam, Dennis was just a kid.

‘
Meyler does a lot through Tony’s bank,’ he conceded. ‘Since you ask.’

‘
Sant’Ana told you that?’

‘
No, someone else did.’

I nodded, struck by another connection, another name.

‘
Steve Liddell,’ I said. ‘Is that why he went to Sant’Ana’s bank for the loan? Because Harald fixed it up for him? Was that the way it was?’

Dennis was getting in deeper than he’d anticipated and I took the grudging nod as a kind of compliment. I was Adam Bruce’s pretty little wife. I wasn’t supposed to ask questions like this. I wasn’t even supposed to be interested. Amazing what a month of widowhood can achieve.

Dennis was leaning forward, eager now to qualify what little I’d managed to tease out of him.

‘
Your friend Meyler’s a class operator. He’s made sackfuls of money in a very competitive business. He knows the moves. He’s very sharp. He can handle himself. That’s all I’m saying.’