The Cilla Rose Affair (27 page)

CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES

VOLUNTEER FOR FLYING DUTIES

Posters Anthony had seen in the shop at the Imperial War Museum, faithful reproductions.

“‘Is your journey really necessary?’” he inquired, facetiously, sweeping his light along the tunnel, until he discovered the greatest prize of all.

The lift.

Anthony paused at its open doorway, then stepped inside, reverently. It was as old and as pristine as the one he remembered from his early childhood at Chalk Farm, before systematic upgrading had done away with history, and replaced it with automation and stainless steel. He shone his own light around. The floor was fitted with slats of wood, the same wood that was nailed to the steps of the oldest of the unrenovated escalators that still creaked up and down in the most ancient of the tube stations. There were signs posted over the doorway:

BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS

KEEP CLEAR OF THE GATES

And a proud brass plate:

WAYGOOD-OTIS LTD.

LIFT-MAKERS

“This way, Ant,” his brother reminded him, and Anthony followed him into the darkness, and the tunnel where Robin had found the wooden boxes. “Here we are.”

Putting his own light down, he levered up one of the nailed lids with the crowbar.

“Gold bullion?” Anthony guessed.

“Weapons,” Ian said, investigating further. “Quite a collection. Just waiting for a buyer, I expect. Nice little earner for Nora Darrow, eh?”

Anthony peered into the crate over his brother’s shoulder.

“What is it you’re trying to prove with this Barnfather person? What’s he supposed to have done? Aside from this.”

“Among other things, he sold secrets to the Soviets.”

“Why hasn’t he ever been caught?”

“No evidence,” Ian said, banging the lid down again with the handle end of the crowbar. “Whatever they’ve been paying him, he’s been stashing it away safely somewhere. He’s never made the mistake of flashing his extra wealth around. That’s what usually gives them away in the end.”

“And these?”

“I’m pretty certain Victor’s not involved. He’s still on active service with British Intelligence. He relishes a nice retirement with a comfortable pension. This would be far too dangerous a sideline for him.”

Anthony was still thinking. “Have you considered Victor Barnfather’s extra money might be hidden in this travel agency?” he said.

Ian looked at him.

“I sing and dance, too,” his brother added, helpfully, proving his point with some flash footwork on the concrete floor.

Young and Dailey was not a modern travel agency—not modern by American standards, anyway. Sara had seen their offices: colour-coordinated, selected brochures in perfect rows on neat racks; the latest computer terminals, one to a desk; telephones that memorized two dozen numbers at a time and dialled them up for you at the touch of a button.

Young and Dailey’s office interior had changed very little in the years following its grand inception. Somewhere along the way a false ceiling had been fitted and embedded with fluorescent lights, but the walls were still coated with a nondescript beige paint that had turned altogether brown in places. Part of the paint was obscured along one wall by a large map whose numerous pink bits had long ceased to have any political meaning. Much of Africa, in fact, was now called something else—Ouagadougou being a notable exception: Sara had looked it up.

To attempt to employ the map as an accurate tool of reference would be to invite calamity: the bold red air corridors and impressive shipping lanes stitched across disputed seas hadn’t existed in two decades. The map was merely a decoration now, a souvenir from a far more glamorous era—a cousin to the hand-tinted photo of the
Empress of Canada
sailing past the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, and the cream-and-gold deck plans of the
Queen Mary
Sara had discovered one day in a dusty cardboard box in the back.

She folded up the last of the paper ticket wallets for tomorrow’s clients and dropped them into her desk drawer. It was nearly half past five and she had long since been abandoned by both Harry and Maureen—Harry having taken himself off to a cocktail party at a Marble Arch hotel hosted by a European tour firm specializing in Seven Countries in Fourteen Days, Maureen catching an early train for a scintilating evening of ballpeening and shimming with her architect.

Lounging in Maureen’s chair, Ian Harris chatted with his father over the telephone.

“The boxes are full of weapons,” he confirmed, playing with a little brass cable car paperweight Maureen had picked up in San Francisco. “I’ll bring you an inventory, but it’s safe to say they probably would have found a home with the usual global troublemakers.”

He glanced over his shoulder as his brother emerged from the rear of the office, struggling with the last of the wooden crates.

“Right then. See you tonight. Good luck and don’t forget your Wellies.”

He disconnected.

“Our computer’s still not working,” Sara reminded him.

“Sorry.” Ian pulled a small black device out of his jeans pocket and clicked a switch. “Try it now.”

Sara stared at him, aghast. “And that’s all it takes? Nothing whatsoever to do with coaxial cables and local networks?”

“He’s a devious miscreant, once you get to know him,” Anthony said, appropriating one of the chrome-and-vinyl chairs reserved for clients. “He wants to ask a favour of you.”

“So much for my going home on time for a change. What is it?”

“I’d like to have a look through Harry’s files.”

“What, all of them?”

“Not all of them, no. Just the ones from the last six months or so. So I can get a good idea who his customers are. Where they’ve been going.”

Sara locked the front door from the inside. “Why?” she asked, suspiciously.

“It’s my idea, actually,” Anthony apologized. “I mentioned I thought there might be a spot of money laundering going on. Cash coming in from less than legitimate business doings and going out again in a respectable disguise.”

“What’s Flash Harry been up to?” Sara asked, suspiciously.

“I’m not sure he’s actually been up to anything,” Ian said. “It’s his friends and acquaintances I’m concerned about.”

“I don’t think I ought to let you,” Sara said, doubtfully, shutting the safe. “I mean, he’s bound to notice if someone’s been going through his bookings—”

“I’ll be very careful,” Ian promised.

Upstairs, Sara unlocked Harry’s upright filing cabinet. “There you are. Active bookings, top drawer, dead ones underneath. He keeps everything for a year after his people have travelled, and then it all gets bundled up and stowed in boxes downstairs. And don’t ask me what happens to them after that—I haven’t been working here long enough to know.”

She sat on top of Harry’s desk while Ian fingered through the folders, and Anthony examined a large piece of machinery that had been left bricked into the wall when the tube station had reverted to offices.

“I guess what I’m after,” Ian said, “is proof of some kind of elaborate front for moving cash from Point A to Point B. It wouldn’t even have to be all that complex—as long as it looks legitimate to anyone who might go digging, without really understanding the intricacies of the travel business.”

“The thing is,” Sara said, “Harry specializes in group bookings. Maureen and I handle all of the traffic from the street, the individual phone calls, that sort of thing. Harry concentrates on incentive travel.”

“Which is…?”

“Trips given out as rewards for top-selling sales people…special interest tours. He does a lot of conventions, too.”

“So this entire cabinet’s full of travel arrangements for large groups of people.”

“That’s it,” Sara said, sliding off the desk. “Anywhere from ten to a hundred at a time. The average is probably only 20 or 30—but he does a lot of repeat business—you know, a large firm sends its top sales force off on a cruise round the Greek Islands in the summer, and then, for Christmas, it’s a ski holiday in Switzerland. Or this one—”

She pulled out a thick file folder.

“Model railway enthusiasts. They’re always trotting off to attend conventions. There’s one coming up, in fact. Las Vegas, next month.”

She gave Ian the folder and he placed its contents on the floor, carefully, spreading them out following the same order in which they had been placed in the file. A booking sheet, a couple of brochures—one on Las Vegas, one showing their hotel, another detailing the agenda of the model railway convention itself. Receipts, letters, lists of names and copies of cheques written against Young and Dailey’s account.

“No tickets,” he said, surprised.

“No, it’s too early. And Harry doesn’t usually issue them, anyway. The entire thing’s handled by a wholesaler—Gallimore Tours. That’s their brochure. They specialize in group bookings and conventions.”

“Isn’t that what you do?” Anthony asked.

Sara shook her head. “No, you see, it’s the wholesaler who puts the packages together—air, hotel, ground transportation, little extras—like a Hawaiian luau and a tour of a muumuu factory when you’re in Honolulu. They print up the brochures and then they market the packages through the travel agencies. We’re the retail end of it all. The wholesalers don’t generally deal directly with the public. They leave that part to us.”

Ian sat on the floor, pondering the various bits and pieces of information spread out in front of him.

“So if I wanted to arrange a trip through these people,” he said, “how would you handle it? Take me through the transaction.”

“You’d come in,” Sara said, “probably with a list of names and a fistful of cash, tell Harry what you wanted, and he’d ring up Gallimore and make the booking. You’d put down a deposit—or the full amount, depending on when everything was due—and then Harry would send Gallimore a Young and Dailey cheque to secure the booking. If it was a final payment, he’d make it out for the net amount—the cost of the trip minus our commission. And then, about two weeks before your travel date, the tickets would arrive.”

“This is the deposit cheque,” Ian said, pointing to the carbon copy clipped neatly to the booking sheet.

“For that particular trip, yes. Harry keeps the file open—he’s got all the previous payments at the back—here.” She pointed to the little stack of copies, stapled together, that Ian had put on the floor to his right. “The balance is always due a month before they travel.”

“And that entire filing cabinet’s full of files just like this?”

Sara nodded.

“All booked through Gallimore Tours?”

“Usually, yes.”

“Harry must be their best customer,” Ian marvelled. “Have you ever actually met any members of this merry band of model railway enthusiasts?”

“Only one. The same fellow comes in to make the arrangements every time. He pays cash and we issue him a single receipt.”

“What about the others?”

“Sometimes they’re done over the phone. Sometimes people come in person. It’s different for every group.”

She knelt on the floor.

“The only thing is, Ian, I don’t see how this could be anything but above board. Gallimore Tours is a very large, well-respected firm. They’ve been around for years. And how could any money be laundered when it’s going to pay for legitimate travel expenses?”

“If these people actually do any travelling,” Ian replied, collecting the receipts and cheques and lists of names.

“Nothing’s ever cancelled,” Sara said, doubtfully.

“Not at your end, no. But for all you know, once the names and the money have been forwarded to Gallimore, the process ends. No seats are ever reserved with an airline, no hotel reservations made, no tickets issued.”

“Ah,” she said, “no. Tickets are issued. I’ve seen them.”

“Real tickets? As in, the kind that’ll get you aboard a plane?”

“Actually,” Sara said, thinking, “no. You’re right. A little cardboard wallet comes for each person, and it’s full of things like itineraries and luggage tags…and they’re issued vouchers instead of actual tickets. The tickets are with a Gallimore rep. who meets them at the airport.”

“There you are,” Ian said. “Have you ever double-checked the passengers’ names against a real airline manifest?”

“No, Harry likes to do that when he rings up to confirm flight times.”

“So you never really know, do you, whether they’re real travellers or not.”

“I suppose not. No.” She shook her head. “I never would have suspected Harry of anything like this, Ian. I mean, he may be doing a bit of a fiddle when it comes to free passes on airlines and the odd tour to the Canary Islands…but whole stacks of passengers who aren’t even legitimate—it’s just not like him.”

Ian got to his feet, taking the file and its contents with him.

“Harry doesn’t actually own the agency, does he?”

“No, he only manages it. His name’s over the door—but that’s apparently an arrangement he came to when he took over. There never has been a Young, as far as I can make out.”

“Then perhaps, as a condition of his continuing employment, he’s required to perform certain functions for certain people.”

“The owners, you mean.”

Ian nodded. “That’s one possible explanation, anyway. Anthony—job for you. Sara—where’s the nearest photocopier?”

It was early in the evening, and the daytime scramble and commerce of the City had dwindled into the long shadows and empty thoroughfares of bankers’ hours.

“This way, sir,” Rupert said, hurrying the Deputy DG of X Branch around the corner. He stopped in front of one of the grey stone monoliths of trade. “I think this must be it.”

The door was black and nondescript, and recessed into the masonry wall. It had been propped open with a large brick, revealing a glazed brick entranceway and an old and footworn circular staircase, descending beneath the street.

Victor poked his nose into the gloomy passage. “Smells like a bloody mausoleum,” he said, with a distasteful sniff.

“I’ve got a light,” Rupert answered, helpfully.

“How far down is it?”

“Seventy-five feet, Mr. Lewis said.” He noted Victor’s hesitation. “Will you be all right, sir?”