The Chalon Heads (13 page)

It took several minutes of confused exchanges between the police team and the airport police, who had now been brought into the operation, before it was established that there is no gate thirteen at Heathrow’s Terminal One.

‘One to twelve and sixty to ninety are domestic gates, accessed through the departure gate in zone east,’ an unfamiliar voice intoned. ‘Fourteen to fifty-six are international, opposite check-in zone H.’

‘I’ve got him!’ Heath’s voice broke in, excited and breathless. ‘At least, I think I have . . .’

Running up the escalator from the lower level, Heath had jostled his way through the crowded departures concourse ahead of his partner. Beyond a block of duty-free shops he had spotted a small figure of Oriental appearance, dressed in a dark business suit as Starling had been, hurrying through the crowd. The man was carrying a bright yellow plastic carrier bag, with ‘duty free’ in large black letters across its sides, and was making his way towards the security checkpoint in zone east, giving access to the domestic gates. It seemed to Heath that his air was one of resolution, chin up, like a soldier advancing bravely towards the front line. Heath watched him drop the carrier bag in a rubbish bin near the doorway, then proceed beneath the large sign PASSENGERS ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT. He disappeared behind the screen wall beyond, empty-handed apart from a white boarding card clutched in his right hand.

‘Shall I try to talk my way through the gate, chief?’ Heath said. ‘Might be a problem.’

Gallows told him to stay where he was. ‘We’ll get airport security to take you through. Where the hell are they?’

After a short pause, Gallows came on again, bursting with frustration. ‘Sonny boy? Get up here. I want you to keep watch on a rubbish bin.’

‘He could have dropped the envelope in the bin,’ Brock said. ‘Why isn’t Sammy talking to us?’ he growled. ‘He’s up to something.’

By the time the SO10 men had been met and escorted through to the departures area, it had been established that a Mr S. Starling was booked on a British Midland flight to Glasgow, due to be called from gate eighteen in half an hour’s time. The computer showed that he had checked in forty minutes previously, using the self-service check-in machine in the Terminal One departures concourse. Trying to appear unhurried, though filled now with the same foreboding as Brock, Gallows and his colleagues searched the domestic departures area from end to end. They went through all the gate lounges, the bars and cafés, the book and souvenir shops, the toilets and executive lounges, without success. They watched the final travellers queuing through gate eighteen, and ten minutes later stared gloomily through the observation windows as the Glasgow flight lifted slowly into the late-afternoon sky, without passenger S. Starling.

Out in the general concourse, no one had been seen making any attempt to remove anything from the waste bin. Finally Gallows asked airport security to arrange for a cleaner to rummage through the bin and report on what was inside the duty-free bag. The answer came back after an interminable wait: one mobile phone, one Rotary lapel badge, one pink plastic earplug, and a small transmitter.

Sammy Starling had vanished.

6
A Feminist Theory of Stamp Collecting

W
hen he became reconciled to the fact that Starling had given them the slip, Brock’s first reaction was that the missing Eva had been a blind, and that it had been Starling’s intention all along to steal a million-pound rare stamp. Yet when he questioned Melville and the Cabot’s finance expert again about Starling’s arrangements for payment, he was assured that his houses, cars and all other assets were now inescapably in the hands of Cabot’s bankers.

After he’d gone, Brock turned to Kathy and drew up his shoulders in a great shrug, turning up his palms. ‘Well, what the hell do we do now?’ It was the first time Kathy could remember seeing him so completely at a loss. For some reason that no one could fathom, Starling had apparently run them all round in circles, and as far as anyone could tell, the only one worse off was himself. Unless Eva really was missing, of course.

‘We’ll wait for another hour,’ Brock said, without much conviction. ‘He may have hidden somewhere in the terminal and be planning to leave on a later flight under an assumed name.’

By six fifteen they had picked up all their gear and were on the point of leaving, when Kathy’s phone rang. She heard Desai’s voice.

‘Hello,’ he said, and hesitated a moment as if he weren’t quite sure which of several openings he might use. Then he said, ‘Are you looking for Sammy Starling?’

‘Yes. It’s a strange story . . .’

‘He’s here, with me. Do you want me to put him on?’

Kathy stared at the instrument in her hand, astounded. ‘Where are you?’

‘At the Canonbury flat. I came back here to have another look round, and Mr Starling just walked in the door.’

He was sitting on the white hide sofa with a glass of brandy in his hand, looking pale and puffy. Brock burst in and glared down at him, Kathy following.

‘This had better be good, Sammy,’ he barked.

‘I can’t stop long,’ Starling said. He had the unhealthy sheen to his skin that Kathy had noticed before, and the asthmatic wheeze back in his voice. ‘I only called in here to pick up my car. I left it here this morning. I have to get back to Farnham. They’ve told me to wait there.’

Brock sat down facing him. ‘What happened?’

Starling took a deep, laboured breath. ‘They told me to go to Heathrow . . .’

‘Yes. I know that. Terminal One. You were to go inside and pick up instructions at the information desk. What then?’

‘There was a big envelope waiting for me. Inside were three smaller envelopes, each with a number, one, two and three, and a note, hand-printed, like the others. It told me to open envelope number one, and do what it said inside.’

He took a gulp at his brandy, choked and broke into a coughing fit. Desai, standing by the door to the kitchen, disappeared briefly and came back with a glass of water. Starling waved it away and continued hoarsely. ‘Inside was a plane ticket, a boarding pass, an empty duty-free carrier bag, and another note telling me to go to the stairway marked for the left-luggage office. When I got to it I was to continue up the stairs to the departures level and head for the domestic departures area. I was to go through the passengers-only checkpoint, and make my way to the lounge at gate eighteen, where I was to open envelope number two.’

‘You told us gate thirteen,’ Brock growled, leaning forward as if he might be about to grab Starling and shake the truth out of him.

‘Did I? Yes, that’s right, I remember. I misread it the first time. It looked like it could have been thirteen, only it was eighteen. I was in a state, Mr Brock, believe me.’

Brock glared at him. ‘Go on.’

‘The note also said that the metal detectors at the security checkpoint would pick up any electronic devices about my person, and that, if I wanted to see Eva alive again, I should put any such equipment, together with my mobile phone, into the carrier bag, and deposit it in the waste bin near the entry to the departures area.’

‘That’s nonsense, about the detectors,’ Brock said.

‘Is it? But how was I to know? If I walked through that gate and the alarms went off, where would Eva be then? I couldn’t risk that. I did what I was told.’

‘Go on.’

‘I reached gate eighteen. There was a big crowd around and I couldn’t sit down. I opened the second envelope, and it said I was to keep going along the departures concourse and then follow the signs for the flight connections centre. It said I had to hurry. When I reached it, I was to open the third envelope. I did that. Envelope three told me how to go through the security gate there and take the escalator down to the Terminal Two link, and follow it until I came out in the Terminal Two concourse. Honestly, it’s like a maze, that place. I was completely lost. I just followed the instructions.’

He took another deep breath and reached forward for the glass of water. At the same time there was an urgent buzz from the doorbell. Desai went over to the intercom and they heard Gallows’s voice. In a few moments he was inside, facing Starling, who avoided his glare.

‘We’re in Terminal Two,’ Brock said softly. ‘From domestic departures in Terminal One he walked to the flight connections centre, and from there to Terminal Two.’

Gallows swore softly.

Brock nodded at Starling.

‘So I came out on to the main concourse of Terminal Two, just opposite international arrivals. And there’s this big notice-board there for people to leave messages for people coming in. It’s got like tapes across it to stick your messages behind, with the name showing. There were a dozen or more messages already there. My note told me to address the envelope with the Canada Cover to Mr Chalon, and put it on to the board, dump all the envelopes and messages they’d given me into the rubbish bin next to it, then walk out of the building, get a cab and head straight home to Farnham. It said they would contact me there once they’d checked the cover to make sure it was genuine. Sometime within the next twenty-four hours, it said.’ He looked around, eyes wide. ‘That’s exactly what I did.’

Gallows pulled out a phone and walked over to the window. He spoke rapidly for a couple of minutes, then returned to the others. He took a notebook from his pocket.

‘How long did it take you to walk from Terminal One to Terminal Two, you reckon, Mr Starling?’

‘I don’t know. Ten minutes? Quarter of an hour?’

‘You went through the departures checkpoint at Terminal One at four thirty-two. So you would have caught your cab from Terminal Two by five, yes? And you arrived here at what time?’ He looked at Brock and Desai.

‘Six eleven,’ Desai said.

‘Traffic on the M4 and into the city is light this afternoon. I made it here in eighteen minutes with the sirens going. Your taxi would have done it in twenty-five, thirty minutes, no problem.’ He made some calculations. ‘That leaves three-quarters of an hour unexplained.’

Starling looked confused. ‘I must have been inside the terminals longer. The taxi was slow.’

‘We’ll get you to retrace your movements, and time you, but I would have thought ten or fifteen minutes would have been long enough for what you described.’

‘Look, I—’ Starling’s protest was interrupted by Gallows’s phone. The policeman turned away and listened, then rang off.

‘Sergeant Heath. He says there’s no envelope addressed to Mr Chalon on the noticeboard at Terminal Two now, and no notes or envelopes in the rubbish bin next to it.’

‘Look,’ Starling spoke with a low intensity, ‘I don’t give a fuck whether you believe me or not. I’ve just given away everything I own, and all I want to do is get back to Farnham and wait for the message. Are you going to stop me?’

Brock said, ‘No, Sammy. But we’re coming with you.’

‘No! Not until Eva’s free! I’ve played it by the book this far. If they want me in Farnham, it must be because they’re going to release Eva near there. I’m not having them frightened off by coppers crawling over the place.’

Brock thought about that. ‘All right. But Sergeant Kolla goes back with you, and stays with you until we hear something.’

They agreed on that, Gallows insisting on searching Starling anyway. He had no Canada Cover about his person, nor any evidence of the afternoon’s events to confirm his version.

Kathy had some difficulty finding the way. She drove fast to Farnham and made the double left turns out of the main street as she’d been told, the road climbing into the wooded slopes of the North Downs. Commuterland came to an end, and she found herself in forest country, suburban gardens giving way to stands of woodland conifers. She wound down the window and breathed in the pungent smells of pinewoods baking at the end of a fine summer day. In the golden glow of the late afternoon, the landscape seemed entirely unspoiled, dappled sunlight on trunks and foliage playing against the deep dark shadows of the woods. But from time to time, at the edge of the gravel road, a discreet sign would advise the presence of secluded homes with rustic names—Timber Glades, Oak Rood, Still Ponds.

She realised eventually that she must have gone wrong, and drew in at the side of the road. She was beyond the limits of the London
A—Z,
and the Surrey road map she had didn’t show enough detail. A man approached over the crest of the rise ahead, a retired resident of the forest community by the look of him, jauntily swinging a walking stick and heralded by two enthusiastic Labradors.

‘Lost?’ he said cheerfully as he drew alongside. The smell of pinewoods was very strong.

‘I’m looking for a road called Poacher’s Ease,’ Kathy said. ‘At least, I think it’s a road.’

‘Ah! Looking for Sammy Starling, are you?’ he said, in a clipped public-school accent.

‘That’s it,’ Kathy said. ‘You know the place, then?’

‘Prime spot. I’m a neighbour. You’re quite close.’

He gave her directions and made her repeat them before he and his dogs would let her go. She watched him in the rearview mirror, striding off down the track, whistling, the dogs competing to find the most interesting smells along the way.

She did as instructed, continuing on over the crest of the hill until she came upon the high rhododendron hedge he’d mentioned, and beyond it the turning into a side lane with its name, Poacher’s Ease, carved into a wooden sign. Lined with hedges, the lane twisted up the ridge, deeper into pinewoods, an occasional set of gates identifying hidden house lots, the last and most private of all being marked with brick gate-posts and a wrought-iron sign, The Crow’s Nest, and the figure of a flying black metal bird. Beyond the iron gates Kathy saw the gravel forecourt of a substantial house, brick and half-timbering, forming one side of a clearing in the woods.

There was no sign of Sammy’s Mercedes in the drive, and Kathy realised that, despite her delay, she had arrived ahead of him. She parked near the front door, got out, stretched and waited, listening to the sounds of bird calls coming from the woods rising towards the ridge. There was a small track just outside the gates, she noticed, winding up through the trees, and when Sammy still didn’t appear she thought it would do no harm to get a sense of the surroundings of the house. She followed it through the bracken that bordered the lane and began to climb up the hillside, catching glimpses back down through the dark foliage of the weathered tile roof of the house.