The Company of Saints (9 page)

He said, ‘Never mind. Good night.' Davina had been due back from Washington on Saturday morning. He'd calculated the time changes, and allowed for her stress after a gruelling session with the Americans and a night flight. She didn't sleep on planes, as he well knew. She would need the whole of Saturday and a good night's rest. Sunday morning she ought to have awakened to his call. But she wasn't in the flat. He should have cancelled the Australian trip, but he'd never ducked out of a business commitment in his life. He couldn't change a schedule that had been worked out three months ahead.

He checked his watch again. He'd rung at a stupid time, too late to catch her if she'd woken and decided to slip out. He undressed slowly, asked the operator to try the number again in an hour, and lay on the bed waiting. The headache had lost its thunder. The painkillers were working. There was no answer when they tried the second call.

He shrugged aside his fears. She hadn't come back from Washington. As soon as he decided that, he fell asleep.

While the telephone shrilled in the empty flat, Davina drove down to the village with Sir James to fetch the Sunday papers. ‘Did you have a good night? Mary thought you looked tired,' he said.

‘I slept very well,' she answered. ‘I always do, when I've seen my way clear.'

He glanced quickly at her, and then switched back to the road. ‘And what have you decided? About your friend Walden?'

‘I've decided to take him at his word.' The car stopped outside the village papershop. The days of delivery were long past. ‘I'll get the papers.' Davina opened the car door.

‘They're ordered and paid for,' he called out. Take him at his word. How irritating of her to say that and then go into the shop, while he had to wait outside. Irritating and yet enjoyable, like a tooth that threatened to ache. Retired be damned, he was still sharper than any of them. And in due course he'd let his clever protégée find out exactly how much.

‘
Telegraph, Times
and the
Mail on Sunday
. There. One colour supplement missing, I'm afraid.'

‘That won't worry me,' he retorted. ‘I never read them. They're full of rubbish pretending to be bargains. Mary's an absolute child when it comes to this mail-order thing. She sends off for saucepans and electric waffle toasters and God knows what. Do you ever read the
Mail?
'

‘No.
Telegraph
and
Times.
'

‘Don't be such a snob, my dear. It's very lively. And I wouldn't miss Ivor Herbert on racing for anything. What do you mean, take Walden at his word?'

They stopped in the front drive and Davina got out. They walked into the house together, Sir James calling to his wife, ‘We've brought the papers, where's the sherry?'

‘In the decanter.' The voice sounded tartly from the kitchen. ‘And don't sit there hogging it, James. Bring one out to me!'

‘Now,' he said pleasantly, eyes shrewd under their thatch of white, ‘now tell me.'

Davina sipped her sherry. ‘Tony said if I resigned there'd be no problem.'

‘Good God, what a bloody cheek!' Two red spots flared on his cheeks.

‘It makes sense if you think about it for a second,' she said. ‘If he's being blackmailed to get information out of me, then the best solution is my giving up the job. Surely that's true love's answer?'

‘You can call it what you like,' he said shortly, ‘but I call it a bloody impertinence. Resign? Just to keep him? It's the most conceited thing I've ever heard in my life.'

‘He said he'd divorce his wife and marry me,' Davina went on. ‘I'm going to take him at his word, Chief. If he's genuine he'll jump at it. If it's a bluff, I'll have called it. That way I'll know.'

‘It is a bluff,' James White insisted. He frowned, tapping his fingertips together. ‘But it can work two ways. He can play it back to you. You realize that?'

‘Of course – but not for very long. I know him – he's not the type for a siege situation. If he's what you think, he'll back away, and pretty quickly. Then I'll know.'

‘And no investigation?' he inquired softly. ‘Why not let Humphrey get his people in Germany to dig a little?' He paused and coughed slightly. ‘I can suggest it for you, if you'd find it awkward. That way it doesn't have to go on the records. You don't want to be implicated on file.'

Davina nodded. ‘I'll tell him myself, thanks, Chief.'

James White let a silence develop. She had given him a bad shock for a moment. His whole life had centred round intelligence, from the time he was a young officer after the war. His twenty years at Anne's Yard were the happiest in his career. He loved the Service, and it filled him with rage to suspect even for a moment that his successor could value her private life more. A bad fright, but not for long. He sighed with relief. He hadn't made a mistake when he broke with precedent and recommended Davina Graham over the heads of experienced men. She had been shaken the night before, but she was quite recovered now. He relaxed. He would ring Humphrey up as soon as she had gone and forewarn him. Life would be full of interest in the coming weeks. ‘Changing the subject,' he said, ‘what is the CIA view of that affair in Venice?'

‘The same as mine,' Davina said. ‘Borisov's people took Franklyn out. Just to chuck a spanner into American relations with Europe. To stir up a political storm in the States and get a very able opponent out of the way.'

‘If they start using left-wing groups to do their killing for them, it's going to cause a lot of problems,' he remarked. ‘I don't see Borisov's hand in this myself.' He paused for her reaction.

‘Nor did Humphrey,' Davina answered. ‘But the attempt on the Pope was Soviet-inspired.'

‘It's not proved yet,' he countered. ‘And besides, it was an exceptional circumstance, because of Poland. Borisov may have given it a tentative blessing, but they usually make certain of their victims. I've never known a KGB target recover, have you?'

Davina shrugged. ‘Maybe it was prayer,' she suggested. ‘There was enough flying around.'

James White gave a little chuckle of contempt. ‘If you believe in things like that, my dear, you disappoint me. Damn, there's the telephone. Oh, Mary's answered it.'

The call was for Davina. It was Tim Johnson. ‘I've been trying to contact you since yesterday evening,' he said. ‘I've being going up the wall.'

‘Well, you've found me.' Davina was brisk. ‘What's the panic?'

‘They've picked up Franklyn's killer. The news came through from Rome yesterday. Nothing official, but they've got her.'

Davina said slowly, ‘You did say “her”, didn't you?'

‘Yes – it's a girl. She must be a real blossom. Rome isn't issuing any invitations, but you could bring pressure to bear if you want someone to sit in.' She could tell by his tone of voice that he was hoping to go himself.

‘I'll think about it,' she said. ‘I'll be in the office by four. Get Humphrey along too. Sorry about your Sunday.'

‘Can't be helped.' He didn't sound as if he minded. ‘See you at four.'

‘A woman – how appalling!' Mary White exclaimed. ‘A woman planted a bomb and killed all those people?'

‘Women are just as violent as men,' her husband countered. ‘They haven't got the physical strength but they've got the will if you give them the weapons. I haven't had any illusions about your sex for many years.'

‘You haven't had any illusions about anyone, Chief,' Davina said. ‘You'll forgive me if I rush back after lunch?'

‘Of course. They haven't got the name of the organization, I suppose?'

‘Johnson didn't say. But they'll get it. The Italians can play very rough.'

‘I hope they do,' Mary White said. ‘She'd jolly well tell if I got my hands on her!'

Sir James raised his sherry glass. ‘To the gentle sex,' he said, and laughed his mirthless laugh.

‘You can stuff yourself!'

Alfredo Modena wasn't troubled by insults. The prisoner could spit at him as she'd done at his colleagues but, unlike the less experienced, he wouldn't have hit her. She had a cut and swollen lip. ‘You're being very stupid, Elsa,' he said calmly. ‘We know you threw that bomb. You were seen. We've got witnesses.'

‘You're lying,' the girl shouted. She wasn't frightened – she was defiant and sustained by anger. He knew the type; he also knew how hard they were to break. And the women were often tougher than the men. ‘You haven't got a witness. I was nowhere near the Grand Canal that day!'

Modena didn't look at her. His office was air-conditioned, but he'd taken off his coat and loosened his tie, making himself comfortable. He had iced water on his desk and a supply of cigarettes. He didn't offer anything to Elsa Valdorini. She was standing, because after she spat at the first interrogator, they'd removed the chair. She stood with legs apart, arms akimbo, glaring at him. She had been in detention for forty-eight hours, without food or sleep, and with only a few sips of water.

Very tough, Modena decided. But I have all the time in the world and she knows it. She would be more than capable of killing. ‘You took a boat,' he said. ‘You hired one of the little taxi boats, and as you passed the launch Franklyn was travelling in, you threw the bomb. Did you see his daughter? She was only nineteen. Didn't you mind killing her?'

‘I didn't kill her,' she sneered back at him. ‘But it wouldn't bother me if I had!'

‘Any more than murdering the boatman afterwards?' Her flash of surprise was his first breakthrough. She hadn't known about that. Which he had gambled on. He leaned a little towards her. ‘You broke his neck, the poor bastard,' he said slowly. ‘Just a poor working man, hiring his boat out on the Grand Canal, and you murdered him. What kind of socialist revolutionary are you?'

She recovered her nerve, and managed a chilling smile on her swollen mouth. ‘Too bad about him,' she said. ‘I'm going to piss on your floor.'

Modena pressed a buzzer on his desk. The door opened immediately. ‘Take Valdorini to the lavatory,' he said. The man caught her arm and dragged her out. Modena poured himself some water. She hadn't killed the boatman. The blow needed a man's strength. She hadn't thrown the bomb, either, but she had sheltered the man who did. And that was the pearl he intended to prise out of this particular oyster. Even if he had to crack the shell to pieces. He was smoking when she came back. ‘Feeling better?'

‘Fuck off,' came the reply.

He thought of her parents, respectable Venetian traders, the mother weeping, the father's stricken face when his daughter was arrested. How do we breed them, these children of violence, he wondered? How can a pretty girl like this one become a merciless little savage? He put the question aside. ‘After you murdered the boatman, you sank his boat and swam ashore.'

She glared at him in triumph. ‘I can't swim,' she said. ‘You'll have to think of another lie.'

‘I can think of any lie I like,' he remarked. ‘I say you took the vaporetto, threw the bomb, killed the boatman, and swam ashore. I can prove it.'

‘Then go ahead,' she snarled at him. ‘Charge me. Just let me get into court and I'll prove every word you say is a lie! I've got witnesses who'll swear I never left the house that morning!'

‘They won't be believed,' Modena answered. ‘But my witnesses will swear to anything I tell them.' She stared at him. ‘You look surprised, Elsa. Did you think you and your friends had the monopoly on violence? I won't do violence to you, and I'll reprimand the officer who hit you. But I'll kill the truth as surely as those unfortunates in the launch were killed. There are many kinds of violence, not just physical. I'll charge you with the crime, and I'll see that you're convicted. Although I know for certain that you didn't do it.'

She hissed a long Venetian obscenity at him. And for the first time he sensed that she was afraid. ‘I know you're not guilty, and you know that when you go to the Isola Santa Maddalena, it will be for the rest of your life, for something you didn't do. I think it'll send you mad, Elsa, after a few years.'

‘You,' she said, ‘I can't think of a word for you –'

‘Pig? Swine? Policeman? I'm indifferent to insults. Haven't you realized that? Jews are insulted from the time they're born. I don't care what you call me. I'm only concerned with one thing. Who stayed at your house after the assassination?'

‘Nobody,' she shouted back. ‘Nobody.'

That was her first mistake, he thought, and decided to goad her with it. ‘There were traces of a man,' he reminded her. ‘He used a disposable razor – you forgot about that. Your mother found it. You changed the bed sheets and forgot to empty the wastebasket in the bathroom. Very careless of you. Why didn't you just say it was a lover? Why did you lie and pretend nobody was in the house?'

‘All right then,' she jeered back at him, ‘it was a boyfriend.'

‘Then all you have to do is tell me his name,' Modena suggested gently.

Tim Johnson arrived on the afternoon flight. He was met and driven direct to Modena's office. The Italian was cordial and much more relaxed than at their first meeting in Venice. He's got a suspect, Johnson thought; that always makes them happy. He wondered whether he'd be allowed to see her.

‘I don't think it's advisable,' Modena explained. ‘It'll only make her feel important. At the moment she's on a kind of high, a sort of exaltation, like a martyr. About to die for the cause, you understand what I mean? It's necessary to bring her down to earth. To make her feel that she's forgotten, that nobody knows or cares.'

‘Have you established that she's part of an organization? How much has she actually admitted?'