The Avenue of the Dead (34 page)

Afterwards Davina couldn't remember what happened. She couldn't remember reaching for the stone or throwing herself at the broad back and hitting out with all her strength. She only knew that by some miracle the blow caught the nurse on the back of the head. The slashing sideways stroke aimed at her victim's neck and the carotid artery lost its momentum, and the heavy body lurched and fell against the car before it slid to the ground. What Davina did was done by reflex – she didn't even look at the nurse. She found the strength to thrust Elizabeth into the car, jump in and start the engine. She drove over curbs and through bushes and flowerbeds and screeched to a stop where she had left Lomax. He was still alive.

‘Help me! Get out and help me lift him inside!' Elizabeth was speechless and shivering with shock and she obeyed like an automaton, beyond arguing, beyond panic. Lights were coming on in the clinic; the car had roared under the walls and scattered the loose stones like machine-gun bullets. A man's voice called out, ‘What the hell's going on out there?' But Davina didn't hear him. Lomax was a dead weight; she strained and heaved to get the upper part of his body into the back of the car while Elizabeth struggled with his legs. She propped him up as best she could, and after the door was closed she put her hand on his chest to feel a feeble heart-beat. Her hands and her clothes were stained with his blood. She said, ‘You drive! I'll stay beside him.'

‘Where? Where to?'

Their rendezvous was in Mexico City. Davina dismissed it. He wouldn't survive that distance. ‘Tula,' she said. ‘We've got to find a doctor. And we daren't stay here. The place is waking up, we've got to get out fast! Hurry!'

The doctor was at dinner with his family when he heard the frantic knocking on the door. Like all Mexicans they never sat down to eat before ten o'clock. He saw the woman in the reflected light from his hallway, heard the stumbling Spanish and understood. He shouted back into the house and his wife and eldest son came hurrying. They carried Lomax into his surgery. Davina and Elizabeth were left to wait in the parlour. A young girl came in with a bottle of tequila and two glasses. She spoke in Spanish and before Davina could say anything, it was Elizabeth who translated. And while she did so, she took a glass and filled it to the top, so that it slopped over.

‘She says her father will see us in a minute.' She brought the glass up to her mouth and drained it. The young girl watched her in amazement, for in Mexico only men drank like that. Tequila was offered to the gringo women because they were both in shock. Elizabeth shuddered like an animal. ‘Sweet Jesus,' she muttered. ‘That was good.' In Spanish she said to the girl, ‘Thank you. Leave the bottle with us, please.' She poured a second glass and threw herself down on one of the red upholstered armchairs; her eyes closed and her face was the colour of ashes. Davina could see that her whole body was shaking as if she had a violent fever. She herself had no sensation of anything, and didn't know that she looked the same bloodless colour, or that her own hands and legs were trembling. Her dress was filthy with blood and dirt and there was a streak down her face where her reddened hand had wiped the tears away. She didn't feel the tremor round her mouth that threatened to become a fit of uncontrollable weeping. She thought she was calm as she took a little of the tequila to steady herself and stood there waiting. She looked round the room, willing herself to keep clear-headed. Heavy lace curtains, red plush, ornate reproduction gilt frames contained garish pictures of Mexican scenery. A romanticized bullfight, with a matador triumphant in the sun-bright arena. The statue of the Madonna of Guadalupe above the fireplace. There was no Indian influence, no patterned rugs, no sinister carvings – it was modern Spanish Mexico, a house where Quetzalcoatl was just a pagan relic.

The door opened and the doctor came in. She saw him properly for the first time. He was fat and middle-aged, with a grey moustache that drooped either side of his mouth. ‘I have done what I can for your husband,' he said. ‘He is bleeding inside. I don't think he will live. I must send for the police because it is a shooting. You understand, senora?'

‘I understand,' Davina said. ‘Will you let me telephone the American Embassy in Mexico City before you speak to the police? Then I would like to see him.'

‘Of course.' He glanced at her curiously. The American Embassy. This was not a domestic quarrel then, as he at first supposed. ‘Come with me. The telephone is out here.' Davina looked back at Elizabeth; she seemed to have collapsed into a daze after the tequila. She followed the doctor out to the hall and picked up the telephone.

Jeremy Spencer-Barr took the call. He had been waiting at the embassy since early that morning. He had bitten his nails to the quick, reverting to a childhood habit long since abandoned. The cuticles were raw and in some places bleeding. When the call came he grabbed the receiver. The chief intelligence officer in the US Embassy was with him, along with a picked group of action men. They heard Spencer-Barr shout in his excitement.

‘You've got her!' His face flushed bright red. ‘They got her out! Yes, yes, in one piece – isn't that great? Well done, Davina – well done – what? Oh. Oh, that's too bad. All right, leave it with me. Sit tight there and we'll take it from now on. No, don't worry about the police. We'll get that organized. Just stay close to her, for Christ's sake!'

Lomax lay on the examination couch, covered by a rug. A tall angle-poise lamp cast a brilliant light upon him, leaving the rest of the room in semi-shadow. A tube was attached to his left arm and blood dripped into it from a plasma container suspended above. The doctor said, ‘I had a supply of Group O Rh Negative, senora. There is a bull ring in town, and I keep this for emergencies. It can be given to any blood group. But he has lost much blood inside and it is draining into his lung. If you want, I will send for a priest? He has not much time left.'

‘No,' Davina said slowly. ‘I don't think he'd want that. I'll sit with him.'

‘If there is a change,' the doctor said, ‘in the breathing, or if the colour gets worse – call me! I think he will go gently, like sleeping.'

She laid her hand over Colin's; it was cold and still. His breathing was laboured and there was a faint bubble in it, and a dribble of red-stained froth was seeping from the side of his mouth. Outside the telephone began to shrill – she heard the rapid Spanish rise and fall. The phone rang several times. She didn't know how often or how long she sat there, holding his hand. She didn't pray; her mind seemed to have cast loose from her control. It roamed through the past, reminding her of the first time she ever saw him at Marchwood. He had seemed at odds with the civilian world, a soldier out of context. She remembered how they had squared up to each other like two antagonists before a word was spoken.

It had been easy for her, armoured as she was in grief. She had never imagined that anyone could pierce it and find her vulnerable again. When they became lovers she had held something in reserve. He had known it and suffered, suffered as only the proud and sensitive can when they have given everything of themselves to another human being. With humour and persistence, tenderness and passion, Lomax had challenged her determination not to love him. He would die, she thought in icy calm, without knowing that in the end he had won.

John Kidson held Charlie in his arms. ‘She's safe,' he kept repeating. ‘She's perfectly all right. And she's done the impossible. They've got that woman and she's safe in the embassy. My darling, you don't realize what this means!'

She disengaged himself and quickly blinked back the tears. ‘Of course I do,' she answered. ‘But I'm thinking of something else, not just the political side of it.'

‘That's the price, I'm afraid,' he said gently. ‘That's what Lomax's job entailed. He knew it; he knew the risks.'

‘John,' she said, and the beautiful chin lifted and looked as square as her sister's, ‘John, I'd like to fly down to her. She must be feeling pretty miserable.'

‘You said she didn't love him,' he reminded her.

‘I know I did,' Charlie answered. ‘But I want to be with her just the same.'

‘All right,' he said. ‘I'll have to see this woman anyway. We'll fly down together. Now I've got to go. I have an appointment with Fleming. We're going to work out our strategy, before Mr Dave Benson gets any nearer to the truth.'

At that moment, Dave Benson was shopping in the Georgetown supermarket. He was actually pushing a trolley and wandering round the shelves in the wake of Fleming's housekeeper Ellen. He took a packet of cookies and a carton of root beer and manoeuvred himself ahead of her at the check-out. Her trolley was stacked with goods.

‘Let me help you with those groceries. You've got a lot to carry there.'

‘I don't need your help, thank you,' Ellen answered. She had plenty of experience with reporters and she often told friends she could smell one a block away. He was another one, sniffing for news. Her dark face was very hostile as she marched out to the car, Benson following with a load of packages. He put them in the boot for her and then he placed himself in front of the door to the driver's seat.

‘I'm from
America Today
magazine,' he said. ‘You work for Mr Fleming, don't you?'

‘I don't talk to journalists,' Ellen said. ‘Would you just move away? I'm late home already.'

‘What does Fleming pay you, Mrs Charles? Not the same as he'd give a white woman to take care of his house, I'll bet.'

She flashed at him angrily, ‘That's where you're wrong, smart man! Mr Fleming gives me the top wages, more than if I was white – you going to get out of my way, or do I call a cop?'

Benson didn't move. ‘Mrs Charles,' he said softly. ‘Your boss is a lucky man. He's going to need friends like you. What's happened to his wife? Where is she?'

He saw the black eyes widen in alarm. ‘None of your damn business,' she said. She made a determined move towards the car door and he stepped aside.

He took a chance, and it was the kind of intuitive stab in the dark that made him a great investigative journalist. ‘She's dead, isn't she, Mrs Charles? It's a cover-up, isn't it?' He saw the dark skin turn a muddy shade of grey and the panic in her eyes as she stared at him for a second or two before diving into the car. As she drove away, he said to himself, ‘Dave, you just hit the jackpot. Right on the button!' He hunched his shoulders in his excitement and hurried away to his hotel. He spent the rest of the afternoon blocking out a rough draft for his first article, and then he telephoned the Commissioner of Police to ask for an appointment. If there was one way of digging out a CIA cover-up, it was to arouse the rivalry of the Police Department, and Benson was very skilful at playing on departmental jealousies. Before he went to the Commissioner's office, he began a round of the private mortuaries in the city.

For Davina, the next few hours were a blur. Nature was kind and at times she slept, but she woke when they came into the surgery to take Lomax away. Spencer-Barr was there, with three white-uniformed male nurses. The Mexican doctor was with them and another man, who leaned over Colin's body and checked that he was still alive. He didn't say anything; he nodded and the nurses came forward. Davina found Spencer-Barr trying to pull her away, and she turned on him savagely, shouting at him to leave her alone, she wasn't going to let them touch him … and then she collapsed into bitter, hopeless weeping and let him lead her out of the room.

The parlour where she had left Elizabeth was empty now. Jeremy answered the question for her. ‘She's on her way to the embassy.' He faced Davina and said awkwardly, ‘Look, it's no good upsetting yourself. He'll have the best possible chance. The Hospital Juarez is the best in Mexico, and they've got a top surgeon ready.'

She didn't stop crying immediately. Rather unwillingly he gave her one of his expensive silk handkerchiefs, and then she looked at him and said, ‘You mean he isn't dead?' He wasn't sure afterwards whether she was crying again or laughing. But he did hear her say several times, ‘Oh, Colin, love, thank God, thank God …'

‘I can't believe it,' Edward Fleming mumbled. ‘I can't believe it's true – it's enough to send me crazy, just imagining …' He rested his head on his arm, and his shoulders heaved as he cried.

‘I'm sorry,' Humphrey Grant said. ‘There wasn't any point in harrowing you with the truth until we'd found her.'

‘What did they
do
to her?' Fleming raised his head, the tears still streaming down his face. ‘To hold her all that time and then murder her – God, it's unbearable – she was so gentle – she must have been so frightened and alone, and then to die like that …' He got up suddenly and rushed out of the room. Humphrey heard him retching in the bathroom. After some minutes he knocked on the door. Fleming came out, and his colour was putty grey. ‘I'm all right,' he said. He bit his lips and fumbled with a handkerchief.

‘She was under drugs,' Grant said. ‘She wouldn't have known too much of what was going on.'

Fleming blew his nose and wiped his eyes. ‘Why didn't Spencer-Barr tell me when you found this out? Why didn't Kidson tell me?'

‘Because we didn't know whether we'd find the double – the chances were she'd get away and the less you knew about the switch, the better chance you had of holding up when the storm broke. Nobody would have believed the story anyway. But Davina and that poor chap Lomax have pulled the hottest chestnut we've had for years out of the fire. You've got to go down there tomorrow and kill Benson's story dead. Your wife is in Mexico, and you're going to be interviewed and photographed together. The plane leaves at nine o'clock in the morning and you've got to be on it. Those are not my instructions, by the way. Spencer-Barr said this came for you by personal messenger from the Oval Office.' He handed Fleming an envelope.