The Chalon Heads (12 page)

‘Eight fifty-five?’

Finally Starling’s card lifted, and a sound of people taking a deep collective breath came over the loudspeaker in the upstairs room.

‘He was quite a poker player, I believe,’ Brock said.

The man at the telephone whispered and raised his hand almost immediately.

Once again Starling dragged out his own counterbid, which, when it finally came, was accompanied by another great sigh from the room.

‘They’re on his side,’ Brock said. ‘Willing him on. One of
us
against some faceless tycoon in Tokyo or Toronto.’

The bidding dragged on in five-thousand-pound steps, each painfully attenuated by the stoic figure at the front of the hall, until they reached nine hundred thousand pounds. This time it really did seem as if Starling had reached his limit. Conway urged, he teased, he created silences against which the whole room strained, but Starling moved not a muscle. Finally, reluctantly, Conway moved into his final patter.

‘Nine hundred thousand pounds I am bid, for lot fifteen, the telephone bid, going once . . . going twice . . .’

Starling lifted his card majestically above his head and said, in a clear voice that his opponent might well have heard over the telephone line, ‘One million pounds.’

There was a stunned silence, and then a wave of applause swept round the room.

As it died away, all attention turned to the telephone operator. He sat hunched over his instrument, free hand covering his forehead as he spoke urgently with his customer, repeating, waiting. He looked up at Conway, who was repeating the bid. He shrugged, he spoke again into the phone. Then, finally, he lifted his head, eyes bright, and gave a nod to the stage. The audience drew in its breath. For a moment the auctioneer seemed at a loss. He blinked, then recovered and said calmly, ‘One million and five thousand, ladies and gentlemen.’ He turned towards Sammy and repeated, more firmly, ‘One million and five, I am bid.’

Starling responded immediately, as if he had fully expected this. He lifted his number card. From those close enough to see, scattered applause broke out.

‘One million and ten,’ Conway said.

Again the telephone bidder took an age to respond. He seemed to be interrogating the operator about his opponent, and the man was tugging at his hair as he whispered rapidly into the mouthpiece. Then he nodded again to Conway.

‘One million and fifteen.’

Sammy’s hand came straight up again. On the TV monitor his face had taken on a pugnacious expression, lower lip thrust forward. He didn’t flinch when his bid was topped once again, and immediately brought up his numbered card.

Yet the unseen telephone bidder was equally tenacious, and slowly, still in five-thousand-pound steps, the bidding reached one million one hundred thousand, then one million two hundred thousand.

When Sammy reached one and a quarter million, someone in the audience, unable to contain themselves, let out a whoop of excitement. Conway paused, and the expression on his face, one eyebrow somewhat raised, sent a ripple of laughter round the room, which turned into a roar. It seemed to break the tension, which had become almost intolerable. Perhaps, too, it broke the heart of the man hanging on the other end of the phone line. He heard it quite clearly over the satellite link, sighed and quietly told the Cabot’s operator that enough was enough. He picked up the renewed roar of applause that greeted this, and sadly put down the phone.

‘Quite a performance,’ Brock said, watching Starling on the monitor, rising to his feet to the cheers of the room. He stepped out into the central aisle and stood for a moment, letting them all see his face. There was no sign of excitement or triumph there, and its impassivity startled those close enough to see, so that their clapping faltered. He began to walk unhurriedly up the aisle to the door. Brock glanced at his watch. ‘Two minutes to three. Better tell our people outside the building. We want photographs of everyone who leaves between now and four.’

A few minutes later Sammy Starling appeared at the doorway to the upstairs room. At close range he looked more stunned than composed, his eyes unblinking, breathing shallow. At his shoulder the young man who had sat beside him in the auction was grinning with excitement. Behind him, two security men in uniform brought in a plastic pouch, which they laid reverentially on the table in the middle of the room.

Starling stared down at the tiny envelope. ‘It is very strange,’ he said, ‘to see everything you possess boiled down to just that.’ He looked at Brock. ‘They’ve cleaned me out. They couldn’t have got any closer to what I was worth if they’d been my fucking accountant.’

Another man had appeared at the doorway, solemn-faced and bearing a sheaf of documents. He gave a respectful little cough. Sammy turned to him and said wearily, ‘I hope you’re not expecting a tip, sunshine.’

The man gave a wan smile. ‘Of course not, Mr Starling,’ he murmured. ‘The total damage is the bottom figure, here . . .’

Sammy looked, shrugged. ‘Not a problem, old son.’ He flashed his brilliant white teeth.

Fresh coffee was brought up, the Cabot’s people retired, and the room settled into a tense wait. While Brock and the SO10 officers conferred on possible contingencies, Kathy sat down beside Starling.

‘How do you think she’s coping?’ she asked, stirring her cup.

She sensed that he didn’t welcome the approach. ‘With blind terror, if she’s got any sense,’ he said softly. ‘How do you think?’ Any euphoria from his auction triumph had evaporated.

‘Sorry. I just meant, is she the calm type or is she likely to panic if there’s a crisis?’

‘Christ . . .’ He rubbed a hand across his face. ‘No, she isn’t the calm type. Yes, she’ll jump out of her skin with panic, especially after five or six days and nights with them.’

‘I just have no idea what she’s like as a person. She’s obviously very beautiful.’

‘She’s beautiful . . . She’s bright, she’s wilful, she’s proud, she’s got fantastic taste, a terrific imagination. And none of that’s going to be the slightest use to her. I don’t know if she’s very brave . . . I don’t suppose she’s ever had to be. Having something like this happen to you . . . How brave would you be?’ He looked at Kathy, appraising. ‘How much experience have you had, eh? How much experience have you had of the kind of bastards who’ve done this to Eva?’

‘We don’t know who—’

‘Oh, yes, we do.
I
know.’ He turned and stared out of the window at the luminous blue sky high above the Strand. ‘I lived among them for years, people like this. And it scares the fucking shit out of me, Kathy, believe you me.’

Kathy felt a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, which the sight of Gallows and Health calmly checking schedules on a clipboard didn’t allay.

Then Starling added, the tone of his voice low now, confiding, ‘If anything goes wrong, get in touch with Sally for me, will you? Sally Malone.’ He pulled out a business card and wrote the name on the back, and a London phone number. ‘Tell her I said . . .’

When he didn’t finish the sentence, Kathy prompted, ‘Yes?’

He shrugged. ‘That I’m sorry.’

The phone call came at four precisely. They were all sitting expectantly round the table, staring at Starling’s mobile lying in front of him, and watched him flinch as it began to ring. The exchange was brief.

‘Did you get the stamp, Sammy?’ A disguised voice.

Probably male.

‘Yes, yes. I have it here.’

‘Have you told the coppers?’

‘No I swear!’ Starling’s brow was glistening with sweat.

‘Get a taxi, now, fast. Head west. Brentford. Take the M4. I’ll ring again in twenty minutes. Got that?’

‘West, Brentford, M4. Let me talk to—’ But the line had clicked off.

And then a rush of activity, Starling flustered, grabbing his phone and the brown envelope in which was sealed the Canada Cover, the others bunching around him.

‘The earpiece, Mr Starling!’ Gallows yelled, as he bundled out of the door.

The room emptied, leaving Brock, Kathy and a couple of radio operators. Brock and Kathy went to the window and watched a taxi slide to the kerb just as Starling ran out of the front door. He jumped in, unaware that the driver was one of Gallows’s men, and they heard his hoarse instructions over the loudspeaker: ‘Take us to the M4, quick as you can.’

The taxi pulled out into the traffic, and after a minute they heard the driver’s voice, ‘M4, guv? You going to Heathrow?’

Brock turned to the others. ‘That’s a possibility.’

Starling’s voice said, ‘I’ll let you know when we get on the motorway. I’m expecting a phone call.’

‘Fair enough.’

The driver kept up a muttered commentary on their journey, ‘Usual traffic in Trafalgar Square . . . getting clear now . . . no problem in the Mall . . . past Buck House now . . . I’m taking the Cromwell Road route—OK with everyone?’ His radio squawked an affirmative.

Brock and Kathy sat down at the table with London street maps and waited, watching the time.

‘We’ve traced the call, sir,’ one of the operators said. ‘It came from a mobile phone. From a West London location. The phone is registered in the name of Eva de . . .’ She made the person at the other end repeat the name ‘. . . de Vasconcellos.’

‘Eva’s maiden name,’ Brock said. ‘What address do they have?’

There was a delay, then the operator repeated a Canonbury address.

‘That’s not the flat,’ Kathy said.

‘No.’ Brock had a
Yellow Pages
directory open in front of him, searching. ‘Here it is. La Fortuna. She’s given the restaurant as her address.’

The taxi was on the M4, passing through Osterley Park, when the phone, which Starling was gripping in his right fist, rang again.

‘Heathrow, Terminal One,’ the voice said. ‘Have him drop you at the arrivals level and then you stand outside the main exit doors, under the canopy, beneath the sign for the Terminal Four transfer bus, and wait for my next call.’

Starling passed on the instructions to the taxi driver, who played dumb. ‘Going on a trip, guv? Somewhere exotic, I hope. Nice little Greek island, maybe?’

‘I bloody hope not,’ Starling muttered. ‘I haven’t brought my passport.’

‘You did say the arrivals level, though, guv?’

‘That’s right.’

Back in the Strand, Brock and Kathy listened to the reports from SO10 cars converging on Heathrow. The consensus seemed to be that Terminal One would only be a transit stop. ‘There’s every kind of transport there,’ Gallows’s voice droned reassuringly, ‘taxis, coaches, car rentals, transfer buses, the underground, the fast train . . .’

‘Should we join them, Brock?’ Kathy asked, but he shook his head.

‘This is what Gallows and his crew are supposed to be good at. We’ll keep out of their way—we can hear what goes on better from here, anyway.’

Knowing their destination, Gallows overtook the taxi on the M4 and reached Terminal One some minutes ahead of it, positioning his car fifty yards beyond the exit doors and in sight of them. He switched on the emergency lights and his partner got out and made a play of searching in the boot.

‘Taxi’s arriving now,’ he said. ‘Starling’s taken up position . . . OK, his phone’s ringing! They must have seen him arrive. They must be in sight of him.’

The message on Starling’s phone was relayed to those waiting in the Strand.

‘Go in the doors, Sammy. There’s an information desk straight ahead. There’s a package waiting for you there, addressed to Mr S. Starling, for collection. Do what it says inside. Don’t question it or think about it. Just do exactly what it says, and everything will be all right. Eva’s waiting for you, Sammy. Don’t screw this up.’

The phone clicked off, and Brock and Kathy heard Gallows come on. ‘We heard everything, Sammy. Just do what he says. Read the instructions, then tell us what they say, the way we showed you.’

He got a snuffling grunt by way of reply.

After a couple of minutes, Gallows came on the air, talking softly, slightly out of breath. ‘I’m inside the building. He’s reading his instructions. It’s quite a big package . . . several bits of paper . . . I can’t see exactly . . . There’s a hell of a crowd of people here. Looks like several planes have just arrived, and there’s building work going on . . .’

An unfamiliar voice came on. ‘Sonny boy,’ it said, ‘we’re approaching now. Shall we join you inside?’

‘Stay outside for now,’ Gallows replied. ‘Keep your eyes peeled. For the moment . . . Sammy, talk to me! What do the instructions say?’

The line went silent as everyone waited for his reply. It came finally, two words, almost indistinct in the middle of a burst of muffled sniffing, as if Starling were disguising the movements of his mouth behind a handkerchief. ‘Left luggage.’

‘OK.’ Gallows sounded relieved. ‘Go ahead. I’m not far behind. Tony, get in here, will you?’

Gallows tracked the small figure of Starling through the crowd, past the foot of the escalator leading to the departures level overhead, towards a sign for left luggage. It pointed the way to a staircase, which Starling took, climbing above the heads of the crowd, then passing out of sight when he reached the landing. Gallows followed barely ten yards behind, reaching the landing a few seconds later and seeing the counter of the left-luggage office beyond. Several people were queuing there, but Starling wasn’t one of them. Gallows double-checked, then turned to the stairs continuing upward. No Starling.

‘Sammy, you’re not at the left luggage. Where are you?’

There was no reply. Gallows ran up the flight of stairs and found himself, with several thousand others, at the western end of the huge departures floor of Terminal One.

‘Sammy . . . Mr Starling,
sir
!’ Gallows whispered into the ether. ‘Where are you?’

At Cabot’s, Brock, Kathy and the others strained forward in their seats, hearing the change in Gallows’s voice as he ordered units up from the floor below.

Then, like a message from deep space, came the snuffling and almost incomprehensible whisper from Starling. Two more words. ‘Gate thirteen.’

‘Good!’ Gallows breathed. ‘Slow down now, Sammy. Take your time. Let me catch up with you. Let me find gate thirteen . . .’