The Eden Inheritance (3 page)

‘What are you doing here?' Guy asked. ‘The last I heard you were in exotic climes – the Caribbean, wasn't it?'

‘The Windward Islands, yes.'

‘Beats England in the middle of January, I'd have thought.'

‘Yep. Especially a bloody car park at two in the morning when the car won't start. You haven't got jump leads by any chance, have you?'

‘Sorry, no. I used to have but I think I must have left my boot unlocked and somebody helped themselves. I've never replaced them.'

‘Well, with motors like you drive, I don't suppose you have much need of them. We can't all afford E-types, though.'

Guy ignored the gibe.

‘So what's the problem? Flat battery?'

‘I think so. I left the car here while I went for a session with some of the boys and I must have left my lights on. They dropped me off out on the road so they'd gone before I realised I had problems. I don't think I'll get her going tonight. You couldn't give me a lift, I suppose?'

‘I was just going to offer. Where are you headed?'

‘I was intending to drive up to Gloucester – I've got a cottage there. But don't worry, I'm not asking you to take me home, just into town so I can get myself a room for what's left of the night You go through town, don't you?'

‘Yes – well, the outskirts, anyway. But there's no need for you to go booking into hotels. Why don't you come home with me?'

‘Are you sure?' Bill managed to sound surprised and in the dark Guy smiled to himself – he was fairly sure a bed for the night was exactly what Bill had been angling for. He didn't mind, though. It was good to see the old son of a bitch. He'd always liked Bill.

‘Come on. Lock up that heap of junk, as you call it. Let's get going. I've had a long flight and I'm tired if you're not.'

‘You're a pal,' Bill replied with alacrity.

‘So – you haven't told me what you're doing back in this country,' Guy said, pouring whisky into two tumblers and handing one to Bill.

‘I'm getting married. In a fortnight's time, as a matter of fact.'

‘Are you? Well, congratulations, I suppose. Diane, is it?'

‘Yep. I reckon it's time I made an honest woman of her.'

‘But why come home?' Guy threw himself down on the low sofa and levered his feet up on to the coffee table. ‘Why not take Diane out to the Caribbean with you?'

‘She won't come. Her mother hasn't been too well and she doesn't want her only daughter on the other side of the world.'

‘Mother-in-law trouble already! Watch it, Bill!'

‘It's not only that.' Bill took a drink of his whisky, his good-natured face, tanned from the Caribbean sunshine, serious for once. ‘The Caribbean is a lovely spot, I grant you, but the pay's not that fantastic. I was hard put to it to keep myself in the manner to which I like to be accustomed. Supporting a wife as well would stretch things to the limits.'

‘Pity.'

‘Yes, but there you are. All good things come to an end, as you'll find out one day.'

‘Not too soon, I hope.'

‘How is the lovely Wendy?'

Guy grimaced slightly at the mention of his girlfriend in the context of marriage. He was fond of Wendy, she was attractive, she was intelligent, and he enjoyed her company. But of late she had been dropping a few too many hints that she would like to put their relationship on a more permanent basis, and her thinly veiled desire to get a ring on her finger was frankly scaring the hell out of him. At his age he should be ready to settle down, he sometimes thought, but it did not make the proposition any more attractive. He didn't want to settle down. At least, not with Wendy. The very thought made a hand grip his insides like a steel vice.

‘She's fine,' he said noncommittally. ‘ She works pretty hard – being the secretary to the managing director of an up-and-coming company like Arden Electrical makes her a fairly high-powered lady.'

‘I thought secretary was just a word for glorified typist.'

‘Not as far as Arden is concerned. And Wendy is very ambitious.'

‘You hope. Just so long as she doesn't turn her ambition to hooking you. You're a confirmed bachelor, aren't you, Guy?'

‘You could say that. I like my freedom, certainly.'

‘And what are you doing now – workwise, that is?'

‘Flying the mail five nights a week. And getting a bit fed up with it.'

‘So why don't you go after the job I'm jacking in – especially if you want to escape from Wendy's clutches? It would suit you down to the ground. All the sunshine you could wish for, and the money wouldn't bother you, would it?' Bill was glancing enviously around the flat, noticing that whilst it was rather untidy and certainly not the height of luxury, Guy certainly managed to live in a style way above that which most freelance commercial pilots could afford. The where withal for that did not come entirely from flying the mail, he knew.

‘I was thinking about going to the States, I have to admit. Or maybe Australia.'

‘The Caribbean is better. St Lucia, St Vincent, Mustique, Union Island … need I go on? I was based on an island called Madrepora. The work is mainly island-hopping, a sort of glorified taxi service from one tiny little airstrip to another, and all surrounded by sea so blue you wouldn't believe it. Sometimes you get to fly celebrities, too. They like their holiday homes in the sun, do the beautiful people.'

Guy drained his glass and reached for the bottle to refuel it.

‘I'm not interested in celebrities, Bill. They bore me. And right now, if you don't mind, I think I'm ready for bed.'

Bill, however, full of the
bonhomie
that came not only from Guy's whisky but from all the others he had drunk earlier in the evening, was not ready to take the hint.

‘There are some amazing characters out there, you know. Nobs and snobs and pop stars, all with their own little hideaways. And they're not the only ones taking advantage of the seclusion, either. I reckon there's a few international criminals living in luxury on their ill-gotten gains, and some still operating. It's a haven for them.'

‘Sure, but … another time, eh, Bill?' Guy stood up. His back was aching and a dull throb of tiredness had started in his temples. He hoped he was not going to have a migraine.

‘There was one I thought was particularly odd,' Bill continued, unabashed. ‘A German geezer who owns Madrepora, I think. There's nothing much there except his mansion and a hotel. I used to have to fly the guests in sometimes. They were all Germans too, and highly suspicious, if you ask me. Of a certain age, if you get my meaning.'

‘No, I don't,' Guy was beginning to be irritated by Bill's persistent garrulousness and regretting his own impulse to offer him a bed for the night. ‘What are you getting at?'

Bill stretched comfortably.

‘War criminals, my son. At least, that's what I think. A lot of them escaped to South America, didn't they, and I reckon that's where these hotel guests come from. Even war criminals living in exile need a holiday sometimes and where better than a hotel on a remote island owned by one of their own? If some of them didn't have a previous existence as high-ranking Nazis then I'm a Dutchman. They all have new identities now, of course, but they still like to keep a low profile. The last thing they want is to be recognised and brought back to face trial. The bastards.'

‘Well, if the job includes playing chauffeur to a load of Nazis I certainly don't want it,' Guy said shortly. ‘I'm half French, remember? A lot of my countrymen – not to mention my own family – suffered too much at their hands for me ever to be able to forgive them.'

‘Christ, yes. I had forgotten. Didn't they kill your father?'

‘They did. My father and my uncle were both shot for resisting. And not content with that, the bastards turned my grandparents out of their home, lived there themselves, and then looted the place when they saw the war was going against them. God knows what happened to the treasures – things that had been in the family for generations just disappeared. They got them out of the country, I suppose.'

‘To places like South America and the Caribbean.' Bill shifted himself to an even more comfortable position. ‘I went to this German geezer's place once – he invited me for drinks. Just drinks, mind you. I thought I'd be getting dinner as well and didn't bother to eat, but no, at seven-thirty sharp I was thrown out – still hungry. That's the form over there, I've since learned. But at least I got a good insight into how the other half live. I've never forgotten that villa. Beautiful place – and stacked to the eaves with treasures I wouldn't mind betting were looted from France. Silverware, porcelain, a bronze, a triptych …'

‘A triptych?' Guy repeated, his tiredness forgotten. ‘What kind of triptych?'

‘Is there more than one kind? Very old, glowing colours, religious pictures highlighted with gold leaf … you know the sort of thing.'

‘Yes,' Guy said. ‘I know.' He was experiencing a strange prickling sensation, as if an electric force field had come into action on his skin. ‘It couldn't have been scenes from the life of the Maid of Orleans, could it?'

‘Could have been, I suppose. I didn't study it that closely. But now you come to mention it, I think I do remember a bonfire.'

Guy ignored the irreligious reference to St Joan's burning at the stake.

‘What did you say this German's name was?'

‘Brandt. Otto Brandt. But I don't suppose that's his real name.'

‘What did he look like?'

‘Tall, white hair, scar on his left cheek, a limp. Why?'

‘You don't happen to have a photograph, I suppose?'

‘God no! I only met him two or three times – him and his wife. I did hear he had a daughter – very beddable by all accounts – but I never got to meet her at all, more's the pity. She's in the States, I understand, but I thought it was a bit peculiar she never came home for holidays. And there were rumours that there was something funny going on on the island.'

‘Funny? What do you mean – funny?'

‘Couldn't really say. Just the suggestion that there was more going on there than met the eye – something not quite as above board as they'd have you believe.'

‘The German visitors, you mean?'

‘No, no, nothing to do with them. Something else entirely …'

‘Well it's the Germans I'm interested in,' Guy said. ‘And your Herr Otto Brandt, with his triptych, in particular.'

‘What are you getting at?'

Guy drank savagely at his whisky.

‘I am probably going quite mad. But for one moment there I wondered if you might actually have stumbled on the Nazi who was responsible for my father's death.'

Bill whistled softly.

‘Bit of a long shot, surely? I mean – there must be hundreds of them scattered around the globe.'

‘True. But from the sound of it your Nazi was probably a high-ranking officer, which narrows the field a bit – the one I'd like to get my hands on was responsible for the whole district where my family live. And when you mentioned the triptych – well, that certainly rings bells.'

‘Your family lost one?'

‘Yes. Very old, very valuable. Depicting scenes from the life of the Maid of Orleans. If the one you saw showed a bonfire, as you called it, I should think there is a pretty fair chance that it was St Joan burning at the stake, wouldn't you say? Most triptychs depict the crucifixion or the Blessed Virgin Mary, not bonfires.'

‘Hmm. Well, fate does play some pretty odd tricks sometimes. If something is meant to be … And in any case, even if Brandt isn't your man, there are a fair few coming in and out from South America, as I told you. Any one of them could be.'

‘Or then again, might not be.' Guy drained his glass and set it down. ‘I'm going to bed. Some of us have to work tomorrow. I'll show you your room.'

This time Bill, too, rose.

‘Yeah. Sorry to have kept you up, Guy. Kick me out as early as you like in the morning. I have to see about getting that car of mine going and Diane will be wondering what the hell has happened to me.' He stretched with the slight clumsiness of a man who has had a little too much to drink. ‘Don't forget, if you change your mind about wanting my job I'll put in a word for you. But don't leave it too long. There will be plenty of others who will find the prospect appealing, even if you don't.'

Guy nodded. ‘Thanks. I'll think about it. But not tonight. All I want at the moment is to get my head down and catch up on some sleep.'

But he could not sleep. Tired as he was, his mind was racing now in wild erratic circles and he lay, staring at a patch of light on the ceiling thrown by the streetlamp outside the window and slanting in through the imperfectly drawn curtains, thinking about what Bill said.

It was crazy, of course. The probability that the German whose island Bill had visited in the Caribbean should be one and the same as the man who had devastated the lives of his own family was so remote as to be almost nonexistent. Yet Guy could not dismiss the possibility, however unlikely. For all the prosaic outer layers of his personality, deep inside a small insistent part of him believed in fate. The bastard had to be somewhere. He had never been caught. Somewhere on God's earth he was living out his life – a life he had denied to Charles, Guy's father. Why not this remote Caribbean island? Why not this – what had Bill called it? – Madrepora?

Guy rucked the pillow up under his neck and closed his eyes. Otto von Rheinhardt. That was the name of the Nazi who had ordered his father's death. It was a name that had haunted him ever since he was a little boy, a name that his grandfather always spat out with hatred. Otto von Rheinhardt. Guy had often thought that if he could find him he would like to kill him. But Otto had disappeared, back into the sewers from which he had come, and Guy had never expected to be given the opportunity.