Stealth (3 page)

‘That's right.'

‘Never did like the man. A whole brass band of self-blown trumpets.'

‘You have a point there,' I said, amused by this neat vignette. It was Alan who had helped me immensely when I had first started writing, taking me on when I had not had so much as a short story published. Our relationship had been a slightly stormy one – my fault, especially when Patrick had come back into my life and I was going through emotional turmoil – but Alan had always been able to make me laugh.

‘Tell me, what do you know about Clement Hamlyn?' I requested.

‘Nothing repeatable in the present company,' was his immediate response.

‘Censorship isn't important to me.'

A glimmer of the old gossip-junkie appeared. ‘May I ask why you want to know?'

‘He was supposed to be on a panel with me and a couple of others this morning but didn't show up.'

‘I'm not surprised. He drinks heavily. Probably sleeping off his breakfast.'

‘And? Come on, I'm curious. What have you heard through the agents' grapevine?'

Alan took a deep breath and then said, ‘That he served an apprenticeship for crime writing in London by hitting old ladies over the head to steal their pension money, acted as a paid thug for a couple of minor crime barons as well as having his own little gang on the side. One of his hobbies is rape, both sexes, isn't fussy. Uses it as a weapon to settle old grievances or as a threat to extort money out of one-time partners in crime. Or if he just happens to feel like it.'

‘That last bit was in the present tense.'

Alan nodded. ‘But for God's sake, don't quote me as it's rumoured he has admirers, even eyes and ears, in the world of crime
and
crime-writing. I have enough problems as it is without that bloody monster knocking on my door.'

I rather got the gist of that and changed the subject.

The afternoon passed. To a modest audience – true enough almost everyone seemed to be in the bars – I had given the reading from my latest novel,
Death Calls on Friday
, which seemed to be well received, and then attended a debate on the subject of:
Will Ebooks Mean the End of Libraries?
Still no sign of Patrick or Hamlyn. This was not what I had expected at all, the plan having been that I would monitor the author while he was attending various functions and inform Patrick accordingly via my mobile. I had been rather hoping that this would have allowed him some rest, sleep even, and thus go towards enabling him to draw a line under what had taken place at that farmhouse in Sussex. I found myself wondering what had happened to it: the Keys Estate that had belonged to the Woodleys, a long-established local family.

I was also finding it difficult to get the episode off my mind. Commander Greenway had commended Patrick, and he had been cleared by the subsequent inquiry of any wrongdoing. He had been engaged, as Greenway had emphasized, on account of his Special Forces experience for situations exactly like this. What he had done – and he was not to know at the time that the situation would be saved, bizarrely, by the arrival of a rival gang headed by a mobster referred to as Mick the Kick, now dead – had potentially prevented innocent people from being killed or wounded. Patrick knew all this; he had pointed this out at the inquiry.

I went to Reception to discover that Patrick had checked out of his room, not surprising as we had arranged that he should and I had told the hotel before breakfast that he would be moving in with me and asked for him to be given a key. Whatever anyone thought of this new arrangement I did not care: I had not bothered to mention that we were married. Going up to my room I found that his stuff had indeed been dumped on the floor but there was no sign of the owner.

After circulating generally in the large side lounge where various authors had copies of their books for sale – I had declined to load myself down with extra luggage, which had probably paid off as the bars were still heaving, the writers talking mainly to one another, and themselves – I showered, put my feet up for half an hour and then changed for dinner. We have a working agreement that I do not call Patrick's mobile when he is watching and following someone, which I imagined was the case, and was about to break that rule, my phone in my hand, when it rang.

‘I'm down opposite the ferry terminal for the Lerins Islands,' Patrick reported. ‘Hamlyn's aboard one of the boats on the nearby marina and has been for almost two hours. I don't intend to tail him closely when he leaves in case he sees me but my guess is he'll head back towards the hotel.'

‘Did he walk there?' I asked.

‘Yes, very fast, like a bull at a gate. See you later.'

I went down, the thought of a glass of wine, or two, before dinner appealing. I am not in the habit of drinking during the day.

Just inside the conservatory bar entrance someone tapped me on the shoulder, hard, and I spun round.

‘That bloke who picked you up last night followed me this afternoon,' said, or rather shouted, Clement Hamlyn right in my face, a couple of drops of spittle hitting my cheek.

Heads turned.

‘No one picked me up last night,' I told him icily. ‘We're old friends and if he happened to go for a walk at the same time as you did then—'

‘He's moved in with you though, hasn't he?' the man sneered. ‘And as a matter of fact I spotted him, down by the harbour near where I was calling on someone.'

‘Perhaps he's a fan of yours,' I said, backing away a little so as to be out of his spit range.

‘Don't mess me around!' he yelled, advancing. ‘Just tell him to stay away from me in future!'

‘You're drunk and this isn't doing your reputation one bit of good,' I said quietly.

I got a few obscenities for this and then he stormed out, thrusting a woman to one side as he did so.

A little shakily – the man looked like something really nasty from
Pirates of the Caribbean –
I organized my drink, found a table in a corner and rang Patrick, needing his presence right now, his bird having definitely flown.

A short and dapper man dressed formally for evening with a black bow tie hurriedly approached.

‘Mademoiselle Langley, I am the manager,' he said in an undertone in heavily accented English. ‘I hear from Jules at the bar here that there was a little trouble for you . . .?'

‘Hamlyn's been drinking,' I said. I had smelt whisky on his breath.

‘You are all right?'

‘Absolutely fine, thank you.'

‘Please let me know if he offends you again. I will not tolerate such behaviour.'

A few minutes later Patrick turned up, quick march, slightly out of breath. ‘What happened?'

‘He was rather rude, that's all.' I had decided to play down what had occurred and delay telling him what Alan had said to me as my husband has been known to take drastic measures against men who have, to varying degrees, ‘bothered' me. ‘And he'd spotted you,' I continued. ‘Down by the harbour.'

‘He must have got off the boat without my seeing him.'

‘How, though?'

‘God knows. But I couldn't get that close as it wasn't moored by the jetty but towards the end of a pontoon at right angles to it and, obviously, I couldn't stand right out in the open. If he'd stepped over the rail on to the boat next to it I suppose it might have been possible to go from there up on to the outer harbour wall that the pontoon's fixed to at that far end. There are all kinds of huts and piles of stuff on it. But I still should have seen him.'

‘The worst thing is that he knows you've moved into my room.'

Patrick's eyes narrowed. ‘Then someone's watching
us
.' He got up, went to the bar and returned with a Scotch for himself, another glass of wine for me and for a while said nothing, staring pensively into space. Then he said, ‘I've screwed up again, haven't I?'

‘No, you have
not
screwed up,' I countered crossly. ‘Whoever's watching us
spotted you and called Hamlyn on his mobile. Did anything happen that distracted you?'

‘Yes, a bloke fell in the water and I thought I might have to jump in and rescue him. But when I got to the edge of the harbour wall I saw that he could swim.'

I gave him my best Mona Lisa smile and sipped my wine.

‘Yes, it could have been a ploy,' Patrick conceded.

‘Are you getting changed for dinner?'

‘I'm not really hungry.'

‘Your oracle is about to lose her rag and resign,' I said slowly and through the teeth.

This seemed to shake him slightly. ‘Eh?'

‘Look, Mike asked you to keep an eye on me because Miss Smythe's been murdered. I
need
you with me and I think it's important to act normally. But if you keep starving yourself like this and get any thinner and carry on beating yourself up about what happened on the last job, you'll either go home in a strait-jacket or by ambulance. I've never seen you like this before and it's really upsetting me.'

He just looked at me, driving me to continue with: ‘I know it doesn't make it all right but what you must remember is that one of the men you killed was the subject of a European Arrest Warrant, wanted in Germany for the triple murders of his ex-partner and her two children. The other two were Londoners on the Met's Most Wanted list, again in connection with the murders of women. How many lives did you save by what you did? How many women and children are alive now as a result of it?'

‘Point taken,' he whispered.

‘Can we find out to whom that boat Hamlyn went aboard belongs to?' I asked the following morning.

‘I intend to ask the harbour master about it very shortly,' Patrick replied. ‘I'm pretty sure my SOCA ID will do the trick as he must be aware of what's going on in Spain.'

After surreptitiously watching Hamlyn's second night of heavy drinking in the bar until the author had had to be assisted to his room, Patrick had slept fitfully and was now, under my stern gaze, consuming a modest breakfast. Added to my concerns was the thought that although Hamlyn had given us a wide berth at dinner the previous night he would, after what he might think of as yesterday's triumph, push his luck and go as far as to leer in our direction. He would be in grave danger of getting a fist in his crooked and discoloured teeth. Which would be dreadfully unprofessional.

‘What would?' Patrick said.

I came down to earth. ‘Sorry, I hadn't realized I'd spoken aloud.'

‘So, what would?' he persisted with the ghost of a smile.

‘You flooring Hamlyn.'

‘Yes, of course it would.' Cold-bloodedly he added: ‘And the man's far more valuable to us vertical right now.'

‘I spoke to Alan yesterday.'

‘Oh? How is he?'

‘Dreadful. The poor man looks as though he's about to die.' I then related what he had said about Hamlyn.

‘You used to know Alan quite well. Is he reliable?'

‘Yes. He could be really theatrical and posing sometimes but I've never known him not to be right on the line when I asked for his advice or for information. But please don't quote him.'

‘No, that snippet of info shall remain anonymous.'

Patrick's French is passable, the harbourmaster's English was not, and we discovered that the boat in question,
Ma Concubine
,
was owned by a British consortium based in London, listed only as Jones Enterprises. Not surprisingly the name, according to Google, covered just about everything saleable, worldwide, from rugs for donkeys to cures for piles.

‘I detect Mike's rat's nest,' Patrick muttered as we strolled along the
Allées de la Liberté Charles de Gaulle
on the waterfront.

‘I take it you've abandoned following Hamlyn.'

‘I haven't, just banking that after the state he was in last night he'll sleep it off until around midday. Then if he goes out or has a meal in the restaurant I'll have a look round his room. But right now I'm more interested in who's watching us.'

‘He'd only have had to bribe a member of the hotel staff, someone like a chambermaid, to report our movements.'

‘I agree. There might be someone else as well if the bloke falling in the water yesterday wasn't an accident.'

Patrick had been gazing about in casual fashion, playing the tourist, so I asked him if he thought anyone was tailing us this morning.

‘There is one person I'm suspicious of. No, don't turn round.'

‘OK. So which boat is it?'

‘The large double-decked catamaran with the red hull over there.'

‘It's right next to the sort of stealth boat I noticed the other day.'

‘It is a stealth boat. There have been cases of them being sold for drug-running from Africa to Spain as they were powered to outrun everything else on the water.'

‘It might have been Hamlyn's real destination.'

‘Well, he definitely went below on the one to the right of it.'

‘Shall we stroll down in that direction?'

The man in my life is not stupid. ‘There are bound to be people on board,' he said thoughtfully.

‘And Hamlyn might have given them your description.'

‘Too right. Also, at this stage it would be
exceedingly
unprofessional to start a small war.'

‘What did Mike actually want you to do
about Hamlyn?'

‘You're the one with the mission – I'm here to act mostly as your minder. What did he actually say?'

‘He just told me to watch him in the hotel and share anything I discovered with you.'

‘Having seen how he seems to drink himself into the ground for most of the time my every instinct tells me he's fairly small fry and to leave him alone and await developments when we get back to the UK.'

Nevertheless, we strolled.

The boats jostled against their fenders in the swell, the water gently slapping against the hulls. That and the gentle chinking of metal halyards against masts were the only sounds but for the seagulls and the distant hum of traffic along the seafront. When we got closer a man appeared on the deck of the catamaran, appeared not to notice us – there were other pedestrians around – and went towards the bow, lighting a cigarette.