Running Blind / The Freedom Trap (53 page)

‘Very ingenious,’ said Armitage, and took out a notebook. ‘I’ll suggest that the Navy offer a ship and a diver to help lift the wreck. We’ll choose the diver, of course.’ He made a note with a silver pen.

‘You’d better,’ I said, thinking of that ram which was probably still embedded in
Artina’s
side. ‘A sad end to a popular MP. Most regrettable.’

Armitage’s lips twitched and he put away the notebook. ‘The organization for which you worked before Mackintosh pulled you out of South Africa apparently thinks highly of you. I am asked to inform you that someone called Lucy will be getting in touch.’

I nodded. How Mackintosh would have sneered at that.

‘And the Prime Minister has asked me to pass on his sincere thanks for the part you have played in the affair and for the way you have brought it to a conclusion. He regrets that thanks are all he has to offer under the circumstances.’

‘Oh, well; you can’t eat medals,’ I said philosophically,

I sat in the lounge of the Hotel Phoenicia waiting for Alison. She had been whisked to England by the powers-that-be in order to attend Alec’s funeral. I would have liked to have paid my respects, too, but my face had been splashed in the pages of the British newspapers with the name of Rearden underneath and it was considered unwise for me to put in an appearance until Rearden had been forgotten in the short-lived public memory. Meanwhile I was growing a beard.

I was deriving much amusement from an intensive reading of an air mail edition of
The Times.
There was an obituary of Wheeler which should put him well on the road
to canonization; his public-spiritedness was praised, his financial acumen lauded and his well-known charitableness eulogized. The first leader said that in view of Wheeler’s work for the prisons his death was a blow to enlightened penology unequalled since the Mountbatten Report. I choked over that one.

The Prime Minister, in a speech to the Commons, said that British politics would be so much the worse for the loss of such a valued colleague. The Commons rose and stood in silence for two minutes. That man ought to have had his mouth washed out with soap.

Only the Financial Editor of
The Times
caught a whiff of something rotten. Commenting on the fall of share prices in the companies of Wheeler’s empire he worried at the question of why it was thought necessary for the auditors to move in before Wheeler’s body was cold. Apart from that quibble Wheeler had a rousing send-off on his journey to hell.

Rearden came off worse. Condemned as a vicious desperado, his death in a gun battle was hailed as a salutary lesson to others of his kidney. Brunskill was commended for his perseverance on the trail of the villainous Rearden and for his fortitude in the face of almost certain death. ‘It was nothing,’ said Brunskill modestly. ‘I was only doing my duty as a police officer.’

It was hoped that Slade would soon be caught. There were full security wraps on Slade’s death and I had no doubt that in another ten or twenty years any number of criminologically inclined writers would make a fair living churning out books about the Slade Mystery.

I looked up to see Alison coming into the lounge. She looked pale and tired but she smiled when she saw me. I rose to my feet as she approached and she stopped for a moment to survey me, taking in the cast on my arm and the unshaven stubble on my cheeks. ‘You look awful,’ she said.

‘I’m not feeling too bad; I can still bend my left elbow. What will you have?’

‘A Campari.’ She sat down and I whistled up a waiter. ‘I see you’ve been reading all about it.’

I grinned. ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.’

She leaned back in the chair. ‘Well, Owen; it’s over. It’s all over.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about Alec.’

‘Are you?’ she asked in a flat voice. ‘He nearly got you killed.’

I shrugged. ‘He miscalculated the speed and direction of Wheeler’s reaction. But for that it was a good ploy.’

‘Even though he was selling you out?’ Her tone was incredulous.

‘God damn it!’ I said. ‘We weren’t playing pat-a-cake. The stakes were too great. Wheeler
had
to be nailed down and if the way to do it was to sacrifice a man in the field then there was no choice. Wheeler was striking at the heart of the State. The Prime Minister was considering him for a ministerial position, and God knows where he could have gone on from there.’

‘If all statesmen are like Alec then God help Britain,’ said Alison in a low voice.

‘Don’t be bitter,’ I said. ‘He’s dead. He killed himself, not me. Never forget that.’

The waiter came with the drinks and we were silent until he had gone, then Alison said, ‘What are you going to do now?’

I said, ‘I had a visit from Lucy. Of course I can’t do much until the shoulder heals—say a month to six weeks.’

‘Are you going back to South Africa?’

I shook my head. ‘I think I’m being considered for the active list.’ I sipped my drink. ‘What about you?’

‘I haven’t had time to think yet. There was a lot to do in London apart from the funeral. Alec’s personal affairs
had to be wound up; I spent a lot of time with his solicitor.’

I leaned forward. ‘Alison, will you marry me?’

Her hand jerked so that she spilled a few drops of red Campari on to the table. She looked at me a little oddly, as though I were a stranger, then said, ‘Oh, no, Owen.’

I said, ‘I love you very much.’

‘And I think I love you.’ Her lower lip trembled.

‘Then what’s the matter? We’re very well suited.’

‘I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘You’re another Alec. In twenty years—if you survive—you’ll be sitting in a little, obscure office pulling strings and making men jump around, just like Alec. You won’t be doing it because you like it but because you think it’s your duty. And you’ll hate the job and you’ll hate yourself—just as Alec did. But you’ll go on doing it.’

I said, ‘Someone has to do it.’

‘But not the man I marry,’ said Alison. ‘I told you once that I was like a Venus Fly Trap. I want to be a cabbage of a housewife, living, perhaps on the green outskirts of an English country town, all tweedy and
Country Life.
’

‘There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have that, too,’ I said.

‘And stay behind and be alone when you went on a job?’ She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t work, Owen.’

I felt a sudden resentment, and said abruptly, ‘Then why did you come back here—to Malta?’

A look of consternation crossed her face. ‘Oh, Owen; I’m sorry. You thought…’

‘You didn’t say goodbye and Armitage told me you’d be coming back after the funeral. What was I supposed to think?’

‘I was flown to England in an RAF transport,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve come back to pick up my plane…and to say goodbye.’

‘To say goodbye—just like that?’

‘No,’ she flared. ‘Not just like that.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Owen, it’s all going wrong.’

I took her hand in mine. ‘Have you ever been to Morocco?’

She looked at me warily, taken wrong-footed by the sudden change of subject. ‘Yes; I know it quite well.’

‘Could that aircraft of yours fly to Tangier from here?’

‘It
could,’
she said uncertainly. ‘But…’

‘I need a holiday,’ I said. ‘And I have a year and a half of back pay which I need help in spending. I’m sure you’d make an efficient guide to Morocco. I need one—I’ve never been there.’

‘You’re trying the blarney again,’ she said, and there was laughter in her voice. ‘Maeve O’Sullivan warned me about that.’

Maeve had also told me that I wasn’t the man for Alison Smith. She could be right, but I had to try.

‘No strings and no promises,’ said Alison.

I smiled. Six weeks together was all the promise I needed. A lot could happen in six weeks.