Found Wanting (3 page)

Marty’s aunt lived in a chocolate-box cottage beside the village green in St Helens, one of the Island’s more picturesque settlements. She was, as far as Eusden knew, Marty’s only living blood relative. It was plausible enough that she should be storing something for him. But that fact did not banish every hint of a set-up. It merely rendered the set-up, if there was one, more arcane. ‘So, Shadbolt could spare the time to look up Aunt Lily, could he?’

‘He had business on the Island, according to Marty.’

‘Friends in Parkhurst to visit, maybe.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Is there something you’re not telling me, Gemma?’

‘No. It really is very simple. One of us has to go. We can’t just . . . abandon him. I’d be grateful if you went. I think it might be good for you. And Marty. But I can’t force you to go. It’s up to you.’

The café at the eastern end of the Serpentine had just opened when they reached it. Gemma did not object when Eusden suggested going inside for a coffee, even though she already had what she wanted from him. He had agreed to take the package to Brussels, as she had doubtless been confident he would.

They sat by a window table, looking back up the Serpentine to the bridge they had driven over twenty minutes earlier. They sipped their coffees, a silence looming towards awkwardness.

‘When I first set eyes on you,’ Eusden said at last, ‘you had blonde hair and an Alice-band. And you were wearing a dress with a flower pattern on it and a petticoat showing beneath the hem.’

‘Are you making some point, Richard?’

‘Just reflecting . . . on your change of style.’

‘Well, no one could accuse you of changing.’

‘Would it really be so hard for you to see Marty again?’

‘Yes. It would. OK?’

‘OK.’

‘Have you got your passport with you?’

‘What do you think? I wasn’t planning to leave the country today. I wasn’t planning to leave the office.’

‘I’m sorry for the short notice, all right?’ Gemma’s mouth tightened. ‘I hardly slept last night. I was still intending to go myself when I went to bed. Tossing and turning, I eventually realized . . . I couldn’t.’

‘You could have phoned me.’

‘I had to get on the road. Besides, I thought you’d react better . . . face to face.’ She sighed. ‘My mistake.’

‘I’ve agreed to go, Gemma. Isn’t that enough?’

‘I suppose it’ll have to be.’ She drank some coffee, glanced at her watch, then drank some more. ‘We need to collect your passport before we meet Shadbolt. And the train’s at twelve forty. So, I suppose we should start moving.’

‘If you say so.’

‘The flowers on the dress were forget-me-nots, by the way,’ she said as she stood up. ‘It went to Oxfam years ago. I don’t have any dresses now.’

THREE

The round trip to Chiswick to collect Eusden’s passport took the best part of an hour. It was nearly eleven o’clock by the time Gemma drew up in the yard of Shadbolt & Daughters Ltd, Car Repairs and Servicing, Blue Anchor Lane, Bermondsey. Trains into and out of London Bridge were rumbling overhead along a weed-pocked yellow-bricked viaduct, three arches of which, plus two aged Portakabins, constituted Bernie Shadbolt’s business premises. And business seemed to be brisk, to judge by the number of cars on view in various stages of dismantlement and the flashes of an arc welder that periodically floodlit the cavernous recesses of the archways.

They headed for the Portakabin with a fluorescent striplight shining through its chicken-wired windows and entered a paraffin-heated fug of cigarette smoke. The smoking was being done by a preposterously busty blonde in a low-cut T-shirt and straining jeans, currently engaged in a telephone conversation. The space was shared by a younger, slimmer woman wearing jeans that were under much less stress and a capacious cardigan over a higher-necked T-shirt. She had dark, shoulder-length hair and a pale, anxious face. She looked up from a computer screen as they entered and smiled. There was a sisterly resemblance despite their many dissimilarities. Eusden took them to be the eponymous daughters.

‘Can I help you?’

‘I’ve an appointment with Bernie Shadbolt,’ said Gemma. ‘My name’s Gemma Conway.’

‘Oh, yeah. He’s expecting you. Hold on.’ The daughter reached up to a wall-mounted telephone, took it off the hook and pressed a button.

A bell started ringing somewhere in the vicinity. The response was swift. Eusden could hear the growled ‘
Yeah?
’ from where he was standing.

‘They’re here, Dad.’ Eusden did not catch the response to that, but the daughter supplied one as soon as she replaced the receiver. ‘He’ll be right with you.’

It was odd, Eusden thought, that she had said ‘They’re here’ so naturally, almost as if his presence had been foreseen, an idea he found far from comforting. His gaze strayed to a noticeboard just inside the door. Amidst various flapping print-outs of health-and-safety regulations and fire precautions was a postcard, held by a single drawing-pin. The picture looked uncannily like an Amsterdam canal-side scene. He was about to prise it back for a sight of the handwriting, when the door opened behind him.

‘Mornin’,’ said Bernie Shadbolt. He was a tall, wiry man of sixty or so with crew-cut grey hair and a boxer’s face, sea-grey eyes regarding them cautiously over the flattened bridge of his nose. His clothes – Crombie, polo-neck, tailored trousers and stout-soled shoes – were in varying shades of black. He looked like a man who meant business even when he was not engaged in it.

‘I’m Gemma Conway,’ said Gemma.

‘Got any ID?’

‘Do I need any? I thought you were expecting me.’

‘I was. But you can’t be too careful.’

To Eusden’s trained eye, Gemma was finding it difficult not to be riled. But she managed it. ‘My passport’s in the car.’

‘Can I take a look?’

‘All right.’

As Gemma headed for the door and Shadbolt stepped back to make way for her, he turned his attention to Eusden. ‘Who are you?’ He was clearly not a man who wasted time on niceties.

‘My name’s Eusden. Richard Eusden.’

‘Ah. Right.’

‘Heard of me?’

‘Yeah. Packing your passport too, are you?’

‘I am, yes.’

‘Good.’ Shadbolt gave a taut little smile and waved him on ahead.

Passport inspection was a cursory affair. Shadbolt did not seem seriously to suspect they were impostors. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said when he handed them back. ‘Just playing safe.’

‘Richard’s an old friend of Marty’s, Mr Shadbolt,’ said Gemma, who evidently felt some kind of explanation was called for.

‘Call me Bernie.’ Shadbolt grinned at her wolfishly, then looked at Eusden. ‘Marty told me all about you, Richard.’ His instant familiarity was disturbing. ‘He reckoned it was fifty-fifty you’d go along for the ride.’

‘You’ve got what we’re here to take?’ asked Gemma, who had clearly decided against mentioning that only Eusden would actually be going.

‘Yeah. It’s in the boot of my car. But look . . .’ Shadbolt glanced at his watch – a chunk of pseudo-Rolex. ‘Why don’t we hop round the corner for a drink? You’ve got time before your train.’ Marty had obviously briefed him well. ‘It’s only twenty minutes from here to Waterloo.’

Gemma frowned. ‘I think we should probably—’

‘Great,’ Shadbolt declared. ‘Let’s go, then.’ He grinned. ‘My shout.’

The pub round the corner was the kind of place Eusden was happier visiting on a Monday morning than a Friday night. Signs advertised karaoke and meat raffles. The island bar was reached through a sparse array of utilitarian tables and chairs. The only upholstery in sight had been ripped, the foam innards spilling out like a fungus. It was barely ten minutes past opening time, but they were not the first customers. A couple of elderly derelicts had already started on pints and cigarettes.

The landlady’s wary face lifted marginally at the sight of Shadbolt, who ordered himself a Scotch and a packet of crisps. The crisps, it transpired, were for the pub dog, much the friendliest of its inhabitants. Gemma’s request for a Perrier and Eusden’s for a half of bitter elicited a frisson of disapproval.

‘Cheers,’ said Shadbolt, starting on his whisky. Eusden reciprocated half-heartedly. Gemma said nothing. ‘I couldn’t let the two most important people in Marty’s life come and go without at least standing them a drink.’

‘The two most . . .’

‘That’s right, Richard. You and Gemma. It’s what he called you when he filled me in on this little fetch-and-carry operation.’

‘Really?’

‘I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know, now am I?’

‘I suppose . . .’

‘You’re with the FO, right?’

‘Er, yes.’

‘Any chance you could put me wise on that dodgy dossier, then? Only, I’ve got a nephew in Iraq. He’d be interested in exactly how you Whitehall wallahs managed to get it so wrong. If you did get it wrong. Know what I mean?’

‘It’s good of you to have done this for Marty,’ said Gemma, taking pity on Eusden.

‘Well, I owed him one.’

‘What exactly is the package?’ asked Eusden, feeling no keener to discuss the nature of Shadbolt’s debt to Marty than the calibre of government intelligence.

‘Don’t you know?’ Shadbolt shot back at him.

‘No. How could I?’

‘You’re his childhood chum. I reckoned you’d know all about it.’

‘’Fraid not.’

‘So, what is it . . . Bernie?’ asked Gemma, smiling tightly. ‘The package.’

‘Some old attaché case. I mean, really old. Locked. Marty’s got the key, natch. You could force it open easily enough. But that wouldn’t be playing the game, would it? Marty didn’t say what was in it. I guess he’s keeping us all on need-to-know.’

‘Didn’t you ask his aunt?’ Eusden put in.

‘According to Vicky, she didn’t know either. Or, if she did, she wasn’t—’

‘Who’s Vicky?’ queried Gemma.

‘My daughter. You were just speaking to her.’

‘So, you didn’t go yourself?’

‘Nah. Too busy. Besides, I thought Vicky’d go down better with the old biddy. Plus it gave her a break from all that secondary smoking Jules inflicts on her.’

‘We ought to make a start for the station,’ said Gemma, polishing off her Perrier. ‘You’re supposed to check in half an hour before the train leaves.’

‘No worries,’ said Shadbolt, passing his glass to the landlady for a refill. ‘I’ll drive you. You can leave your car at the yard. Want the other half, Richard?’

‘No, thanks. I . . .’

‘I’m not going, Bernie,’ said Gemma, uncomfortably but emphatically. ‘It’s just Richard. So, I’ll drive him to Waterloo. Thanks all the same.’

Shadbolt smirked at her. ‘I must have misunderstood.’

‘Like you, I’m rather busy at the moment,’ she said defensively.

Eusden smiled grimly. ‘Whereas I have all the time in the world.’

‘Crying shame about Marty,’ said Shadbolt during the short walk back to the yard.

‘So it is,’ agreed Eusden.

‘Tell him from me if there’s some specialist he needs to see who could pull off a miracle cure, he doesn’t have to worry about the money.’

‘That’s very generous of you,’ said Gemma.

Shadbolt beamed at her. ‘That’s what friends are for.’

He led the way across the yard to his car – a vintage Jag polished to a fine sheen. Eusden caught a glimpse of Vicky watching them through the window-mesh of the Portakabin as her father unlocked the boot and swung it open.

‘There it is,’ he announced.

And there it was. A battered old leather attaché case. Very old, as Shadbolt had said. Probably Edwardian, Eusden judged. But he had an advantage in dating it. There were initials stencilled on the lid: CEH. And he knew what they stood for.

‘Seen it before, Richard?’ Shadbolt asked.

‘No.’

‘Funny. You look as if you have.’

‘I’ve never seen it before.’ Eusden looked Shadbolt in the face. ‘But I recognize the initials.’

‘Reckoned you might.’ Shadbolt raised an index finger across his lips. ‘But don’t tell, hey? If Marty didn’t think I needed to know, we’d better keep it that way.’

FOUR

‘I recognized the initials as well,’ said Gemma as they drove away from the yard.

‘I suppose you would.’

‘I guess they confirm what Marty told me. A family keepsake.’

‘Strange Aunt Lily doesn’t know what it is, then.’

‘Maybe she just pretended not to know.’

‘Yeah. And maybe she’s not the only one.’

‘You think Shadbolt was holding out on us?’

‘I’m certain he was.’

‘Why would he?’

‘I don’t know. But Marty can explain everything when I see him. He’s bound to tell me the truth, isn’t he?’

‘You’re getting this out of proportion, Richard.’

‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I am. Give me a call when you get back. You’ll see things differently then.’

‘I wonder.’

Gemma’s return ticket was for the six o’clock train from Brussels, due into Waterloo, thanks to the time difference, at 7.30. If everything went according to plan, Eusden would be back home an hour later, his simple task accomplished. And he would have seen his old friend Marty Hewitson, probably for the last time.

The attaché case passed unremarked through the X-ray machine at the Eurostar terminal. Eusden was momentarily tempted to ask the operative what he could make out of the contents. The weight, about equal to that of his own briefcase, suggested they might be documents of some kind.

He waited in the departure lounge for boarding of the 12.40 to be called. It was a quiet day for Eurostar. Most business travellers would have caught an earlier train. And it was a slack time of year in the leisure market. He sat alone, flanked by his two items of luggage: his briefcase and the battered old attaché case.