The Follower (23 page)

He felt even more disembodied now. Even the shock of Ellie’s death was fading into something small and far away. Frankie was looking at him bleakly. He didn’t want her to feel sorry for him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’ll be all right. I’ll get you out of here.’

‘Not me.’ She said that sharply. ‘You go. We’ll get you off the boat and hide you somewhere. Then you get away. You’ve done enough. But I’m going to stay.’

‘Stay?’

‘I’ve got to. George sent me here to get that stuff. I’ve got to find it. It’s the only actual proof.’

It took him a moment to understand. The stuff? You mean the dope in the radio?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘You’ve got it!’

‘Yes. And I’ve got Oscar waiting in a car too.’

Her look of astonishment somehow touched him. He smiled at her faintly.

‘You’d be surprised about water buffaloes. There’s no holding them once they get up momentum.’

She stood looking at him for a long, enigmatic moment. Then she hurried to the cabin porthole. He watched her peering out, very slim and tense. Suddenly she gasped. He crossed to her side.

The porthole gave a view of the pier and the gardens stretching up to the villa. In the brilliant sunshine he saw a number of men collecting at the foot of the pier. For a second, he thought: ‘So this is the end. Gonzales has heard the shots and got himself a posse.’ Then the figures started up the pier towards the yacht and he saw that most of them were in uniform — policeman’s uniform or soldier’s uniform. And, improbably, leading them, were George and Oscar.

‘George!’ Frankie’s face broke into a radiant smile. Obscurely, it hurt him like the wound in his arm to see that expression of joy on her face. ‘George.’

She turned sharply from him and ran out of the cabin. He followed down the corridor towards the companionway. He climbed it laboriously, pulling himself up with one arm. He stood on the deck, the heat of the tropical sun pounding at him. Oscar, George and the police — he counted seven of them — were running towards the yacht and Frankie was running towards them. As he looked, she reached George and was throwing herself into his arms. The policemen and Oscar swarmed around them and on. In a few seconds they were climbing on to the yacht. Oscar, his eyes sparkling with excitement, ran to his side.

‘Mr Liddon, you are safe?’

‘I’m safe.’

‘And the others?’

Mark nodded towards the companionway. ‘There’s no danger.’

Oscar called imperiously to the policemen like a young captain exhorting his men into battle. They started towards the companionway. The boy lingered at Mark’s side. His gaze settled on the sling and his face darkened with distress.

‘But you are wounded!’

‘Yes.’

‘Is bad?’ Delicately Oscar touched Mark’s arm. ‘Is much pain?’

‘It’s okay.’

‘What a terrible thing.’ Oscar cocked his head on one side and then added very diffidently: ‘And my wallet? In the danger, the shooting, you do not lose my wallet and the ring?’

‘I’ve got them.’

‘Ay.’ Oscar beamed.

George and Frankie were coming along the gangplank with three more policemen. George’s arm was around Frankie’s waist. Automatically, although he didn’t care, Mark asked: ‘How did George get here?’

The old familiar look of guilt spread over Oscar’s face. ‘Perhaps what I do is bad. Perhaps you do not forgive me. But, as I followed you in the car, I got more and more mad. I think: “Mr Liddon is my friend and he steals my wallet. What sort of friendship is that?” Finally when I come to the villa I begin to think: “Maybe George is my better friend.” So I leave the car, find a little tienda and call the number George gave to me in Mexico. I …’

George and Frankie were at their side now. George’s intense, zealot’s face was glowing with excitement.

‘Mr Liddon, I’ve got to apologize and I’ve got to thank you. Until Oscar called about an hour ago I hadn’t any idea Frankie was in danger. I got on to the police as quickly as I could. But I would have been too late. It was you who saved her.’

Mark didn’t say anything. The feeling of numbness was returning. All this noise, confusion and excitement jarred on him like the blaring jukeboxes in the Mexican cafés. Okay, okay. In a pet, Oscar had pulled off his last and biggest double-cross and had managed to save the day. Police were everywhere. Senor Gonzales would be arrested. Mr Riley — if he was still alive — would be arrested. Victor’s ring was broken. Frankie was restored to her boy-friend.

And Ellie was dead.

Okay, okay. Let them all dance boleros, throw confetti and shoot off rockets in the public squares. What did it matter now?

The deck under his feet seemed to be swaying slightly as if they were at sea. George’s eyes, under the flopping blond forelock, were fixed on his face.

‘Frankie tells me you got the radio. That’s wonderful. Wonderful. But there’s still a couple of things I’ve got to ask you. I …’

‘Not now, George.’ Frankie’s hand was on Mark’s arm. ‘No one’s going to ask him anything. I’m going to take him to a doctor.’

‘But …’

‘He’s in pain, can’t you see?’

‘Yes,’ broke in Oscar. ‘I know a most good, a most inexpensive doctor. I drive.’

Frankie and George were arguing. Mark didn’t bother to listen. In a few seconds or minutes he and Frankie and Oscar and one of the policemen were walking back towards the house. Frankie’s hand was still on his arm, steadying him. They passed the house and went through the orange grove back to Oscar’s car.

When they reached it, Oscar ran ahead, plunged into the back seat and came out gingerly holding the portable radio. He carried it to Frankie, his eyes round with doubt.

‘Perhaps I do wrong,’ he said. ‘When Mr Liddon leaves it there in the car I am bored, bored. I try to play it; it does not work. I open the back to fix it and is all full of white powder. Some of it spills on the floor of the car. Just a little not much.’

The policeman took the radio and returned towards the villa. Oscar jumped into the driver’s seat. Frankie helped Mark in and climbed in herself.

Majestically, Oscar swerved the car out of the track and down the road back towards Acapulco.

Now that the villa was left behind, he was starting to feel again. The car was speeding past a tropical landscape, bright and gay as a travel poster.
Come to Mexico, the Land of Sun.

Frankie’s hand with the slightly roughened knuckles lay on her lap only a few inches from his own. The sight of it took him back to the first clash he had had with her in the Hotel Reforma when he had looked at that same hand, lying on the couch close to his, and had felt the immense strangeness of another human being.

Although she had become the most important thing in his life, he knew practically nothing about her — except that she was George’s girl. Perhaps, if he found out more, if he tried to put everything on a basis of plain, impersonal fact, he would feel less lost.

He said: ‘So you’ve been working for the police?’

She turned to him. ‘I suppose so. In a way. But I only did it for George.’

‘And what you told Victor about George was true?’

She nodded. ‘For a long time the narcotics squad suspected Victor was the head of this ring, but they couldn’t get anything on him; they weren’t even sure how he brought the stuff into the country or from where. So they let George out on parole to try it his way. It was a terrific gamble for them and for him having him play a lone hand — but he pulled it off.’

He resented the pride in her voice — foolishly. What right had he to object to her being proud of her boyfriend?

‘And you?’ he asked. ‘What are you? Not a torch singer with the wrong papers.’

‘Not with the wrong papers. But I’m a torch singer. A lousy one. Half the time I spend washing dishes in hash houses. I’m not important. I just came in on it when George found out that Victor was sending Ellie down the grapevine to pick up a shipment. It seemed his big chance to catch them all red-handed, not only Victor but the whole chain of them. But once he had the idea he needed someone to take on the impersonation. He used me.’

She said that as easily as if it had been the offer of a job in the Girl Scouts.

He asked: ‘And the danger didn’t bother you?’

She shrugged. ‘So I ended up on somebody’s marble slab. Who cares if a fourth-rate torch singer bites the dust? There are plenty more where I come from. This meant everything to George. I’d seen him before he was cured. I knew what he’d gone through. I’m not anything on a white charger the way he is. But I know a job that’s got to be done when I see it.’

He thought wryly: ‘That’s how I felt about Ellie. I was trying to save Ellie; Frankie was helping George to redeem himself.’

And she was the one who had succeeded.

He said: So you both followed Ellie to Mexico City. George took her to Oscar’s house, you contacted Mr Riley as Mrs Liddon and then later he sent you on to Gonzales in Acapulco.’

‘That’s all I had to do. I couldn’t be Mrs Liddon at the Granada, of course, even with my short-order dyed hair, because they’d seen Ellie there. That’s why I switched to the Reforma.’ She glanced quickly at him. ‘We weren’t going to hurt your wife. Please believe that. We were just going to keep her out of the way until I’d finished the impersonation.’

She’d always said that, of course; and he’d never believed her. It was one of the many things he had never believed.

‘And I butted in,’ he murmured. ‘I did my best to louse everything up.’

‘Of course you butted in. If I’d been you I’d have done the same thing. You didn’t know what it was all about and we couldn’t explain. You realize that. We couldn’t risk everything by taking a stranger into our confidence. Besides’ — her voice faltered — ‘I couldn’t have done it, not once I’d seen you, got to know you. I couldn’t have told you the truth about Ellie.’

He knew he would have to face this. If he put it off, if he let it turn inward, it would form an ulcer in him which would infect all the rest of his life.

‘Tell me about Ellie. I’ve got to know sooner or later. She lost a lot of money gambling. She couldn’t raise it. She got scared. But even so, how could she have done this thing? How could she have let them…?’

‘You really want to know?’

‘Yes.’

Her hand moved to his. It would have been easier if she hadn’t tried to be comforting. But he couldn’t explain that to her.

After a few seconds she said: ‘There was more to it than the money she lost.’ She paused again. ‘You didn’t know her. Not really. You just met her, got dazzled and jumped into marriage. You didn’t really know her.’

That was true. All the time he had been following Ellie that fact had been brought closer and closer to home. He had loved her, been ready to do anything for her, but he hadn’t known her.

Frankie was saying: ‘It was her life — the life she’d led before she met you. I can’t understand people, I can’t judge them. I’m a jerk about psychology. She was young, attractive, rich. She had everything. God knows why she got herself tied up with Victor.’

‘With Victor?’

‘Something was missing, 1 guess. Something she thought would be there with Victor. She was only nineteen, anyway, when she first fell for him. It must have been something a little new for Victor — corrupting a young debutante. But the rest of the pattern was old as garbage cans. I don’t know when he started her on dope. I don’t even know when he got bored with her. But she never got bored with him. It couldn’t have been encouraging hanging around the Lorton Club seeing him chuck a different little cookie under the chin every night. No, it couldn’t have been terribly encouraging.’

In his memory Ellie was standing now in the oleander grove by Oscar’s car, gazing at him despairingly.
He said he’d tell you things about me, terrible things, things that would make you never want even to touch me again
. He knew now what those ‘terrible’ things had been. He remembered the Rosses’ chilly hints and Arlene’s bitter attack.
You think she loves you. Don’t make me laugh. Victor is her type of person. She married you just because she bad a mood …

‘Listen to me, Mark.’ Frankie’s voice sounded almost angry. ‘You mustn’t think she didn’t love you. Don’t fall into that trap. When she met you you were something strong, something she could cling to. She was scared to tell you the truth about Victor, the dope — all that. But she did love you and with you she might have been able to pull out of it. But you went away too soon. You left her alone, and she wasn’t strong enough without you. That’s why she drifted back to the Lorton Club, that’s why she started taking dope again. And then she lost the money and she was right back where she’d started, far more under Victor’s thumb than she’d ever been. When he decided to use her as a carrier — she couldn’t say no. She was in too deep. She didn’t have that kind of courage.’

No, he could see that now. She could have told him the truth in the beginning and he would have stood by her. She could still have confided in him at the Hotel Mirador instead of pretending to be doped; she could have done it again in the bedroom at the villa. Even then, if she’d trusted his love, everything might have been all right. But she had always chosen to be devious; to play along with Victor rather than to stand up to him; to deceive Mark rather than to ask for his help; to let Frankie be tortured or killed rather than face up to reality. No, Ellie hadn’t had that kind of courage. Frankie was right.

But in the end, when it was too late, she had found a courage of her own. She had brought him a gun and thrown herself in the path of Mr Riley’s bullet.

He had expected disenchantment, disgust, even hatred. But all he felt now was pity and a stirring of remorse. Poor kid, she had needed such different things from the things he had tried to give her. As it had turned out, now he knew the truth, he hadn’t made her much of a husband.

Oscar at the wheel was very quiet and self-effacing. The wound in Mark’s arm pulsed uncomfortably. Frankie was looking straight ahead at the white, brilliant road.

After a long pause, she said: ‘You want to hear the rest?’

Already he was beginning to realize what the rest would be. But it wasn’t going to hurt much more. He had the picture of Ellie now. The details, however tragic, couldn’t alter the general outline.