Long Time Coming (35 page)

But it didn’t feel easy. Not anything like. The tram lumbered on through the grey streets of Antwerp, filling up steadily as it went. It crossed the autoroute van Briel had driven me in on two nights before and steadily closed on the centre. Oudermans’ office was a short walk from Groenplaats. The debate with myself would soon be over.

Then I heard a voice in my ear. ‘I’m getting off at the next stop, boy. What about you?’

I whirled round and there, leaning forward in the seat behind me,
was Eldritch, the collar of my father’s old raincoat drawn up almost high enough to touch the pulled-down brim of his fedora.

He gave me half a smile. ‘Those pictures came out well, didn’t they?’

I was too shocked even to speak until we’d got off the tram. Eldritch calmly lit a cigarette as the other disembarking passengers wandered away from the stop. We were in a quiet street, a busier one crossing it ahead of us. He looked around curiously, reacquainting himself with the city he’d once known.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ I demanded at last.

‘Eighty-six, Avenue Cogels-Osy. Or Cogels-Osylei, as they call it now. Antwerp’s changed a lot since I was last here. They’ve built a motorway where there used to be a moat round the old city and—’

‘Never mind all that. What do you mean – eighty-six Cogels-Osylei? That’s next door to Zonnestralen.’

‘Actually, it’s the other half of Zonnestralen. The half I used to live in. And still have the key to. The Wyckxes are away. They go away a lot, apparently.’

‘You’ve been hiding there?’

‘There was nowhere else I could think of to go.’

‘For God’s sake, Eldritch, I’ve been going crazy.’

‘I wouldn’t have helped you by getting myself arrested. They might have sent me back to Ireland. I’ve just spent thirty-six years in prison, Stephen. What did you expect me to do but run?’

‘All right, all right.’ I glared at him in anger and astonishment. I couldn’t argue with the truth of what he’d said. However much Rachel and I stood to lose, he stood to lose more. ‘How did you find me?’

‘Marie-Louise told me where you and van Briel had gone.’

‘She knows you’re using number eighty-six?’

‘I followed her when she went shopping yesterday. It was quite a surprise for her when I tapped her on the shoulder.’ He smiled. ‘She dropped a whole bag of potatoes. We spent the first few minutes of our reunion picking them up. For a while she couldn’t decide
whether to kiss me or box me round the ears. Now I come to think about it, it’s not the first time she’s had that dilemma.’

‘Still, you managed to persuade her to keep your secret.’

‘I assured her it wouldn’t be for long. And I can be very persuasive.’

‘Did Joey rumble you? Is that why he cleared out?’

‘No. The reasons were all his own.’

‘And do you know who I’ve just been with?’

‘Oh yes. I saw Verhoest arrive shortly after you broke in. I was surprised, yet somehow not surprised. You could say the same about the photographs. I followed you on to the tram and managed to bag the seat behind you. You weren’t paying much attention to the people around you – any attention, really. That was careless. It meant someone other than me could have seen what you had.’

‘Verhoest is hanging on to the negatives.’

Eldritch nodded. ‘Naturally. How much does he want?’

‘Fifteen thousand pounds.’

‘Well, we can spare him that with fifty thousand coming our way.’ His gaze narrowed. He’d caught something in my expression. ‘Unless you’re going to tell me it’s not coming our way.’

I shrugged. ‘I’ve had to do a deal.’

‘Really? And what kind of a deal is that – exactly?’

We headed for the riverside as I related all that had happened since Sunday night. Eldritch asked only strictly practical questions, offering neither approval nor disapproval of the moves I’d made and the decisions I’d taken. He knew delivering the negatives to Tate amounted to surrender, albeit conditional. But he also knew, as a moment’s reflection on his own life confirmed, that surrender was sometimes necessary.

The wharves of the Scheldt were lined with old open-sided storage sheds, with a railinged terrace above that led north round the river’s gentle eastward curve. We walked slowly towards the city centre, the ancient buildings around the cathedral massed ahead, modern office and apartment blocks clumped on the opposite shore.

‘I have no choice, Eldritch,’ I said, beginning, at this stage, to repeat myself. ‘Thanks to Ardal’s foresight, we have this one chance to retrieve the situation. Otherwise, it’s only a matter of time before Rachel’s charged with murder. Me too, quite possibly. I have to give Tate what he wants.’

‘And in the process let Linley get away with it. As usual.’

‘You said yourself he has powerful friends. And you were right. Too powerful for us.’

‘
Us
meaning you and Rachel?’

‘She’ll lose more by this than you will. She’s been trying for years to prove Cardale cheated her family. Now I have that proof. But I have to give it up to save her.’

‘Let’s stop for a moment.’ He was breathing heavily from the walk, though that didn’t stop him lighting another cigarette as we sat down on one of the benches facing the river. A spasm of coughing shook him violently. I waited while it slowly subsided.

‘You should give up smoking,’ I said gently.

‘Like I should give up resisting this cosy deal you’ve struck with Tate?’

‘There’s nothing cosy about it. And you know there’s no alternative.’

‘Do I?’

‘I’m sorry. OK?’

‘So you should be.’

‘And so you should be too. This is as much your fault as mine. More, in fact. A lot more.’

He said nothing for the next minute or so, merely puffing at his cigarette and gazing out across the river. Then he said, ‘It’s just as well, I suppose, that old age and long-term imprisonment resign you to disappointment. This isn’t the biggest one to have come my way. It’s a lot of money to miss out on, of course.’ He sighed. ‘But I won’t deny I’d have done the same as you. In the circumstances.’

‘I know. But thanks for saying it. And I
am
sorry.’

‘Of course. We both are. But I think I have cause to be sorrier. It was just along from here that I boarded the
Uitlander
thirty-six years ago. I was supposed to be quitting Europe, probably for
good. In my own mind, the United States was where I was destined to be. The New World. The future.’ He tossed the butt of his cigarette to the ground and crushed it. ‘So much for that.’

‘Why did you pay to have Verhoest’s life spared?’

‘Because I didn’t think he deserved to die. And I didn’t want his blood on my hands.’

‘I’m having trouble adjusting to this idea of you as a man of principle.’

‘No need. Principles have nothing to do with it. It comes down to personality. The kind of man you are. Meridor would have dismissed me on the spot if he’d found out about Verhoest, which I calculated he would eventually, of course. My plan was to have moved on by then to bigger and better things. Meridor had taste and cunning and judgement and a certain sort of wisdom. But he had no scruples. He’d have said I was a weak-willed fool and in many ways I think he’d have been right. I suppose he was rather like Linley. The strength of such men is their certainty. They never falter. They never hesitate. Those who do … become their victims.’

‘What happened between you and Linley in Dublin?’

‘Ah. The great secret you’re helping Tate bury. Is that it, Stephen? You want to know what it’s really all about?’

‘I think I should know now, don’t you?’

Eldritch lit another cigarette and took a long, deliberative draw on it, then slowly nodded. ‘Yes. You probably should.’

It is early on a dank Saturday morning in Terenure, a village on the southern fringe of Dublin, too early for the trams that link it with the city to be running or for more than a handful of people to be about.

There are no signs of life at Doyle’s bar, hard by the crossroads in the centre of the village, nor would anyone expect there to be. Friday night is likely to have been a late one. The door of the general store and newsagent opposite is open, however. The proprietor is standing on the threshold, smoking a cigarette as he contemplates the day ahead.

An hour or so from now, he will take delivery of his stock of daily newspapers and shake his head with concern at the prominent reports of a murder at Seapoint railway station the previous evening. He will make no connection with the figure he barely notices making a sidelong exit from the residents’ door of Doyle’s bar and hurrying off along the street, a figure clad in a brown and gold pinstripe suit, fedora angled low over his eyes, a Gladstone bag clutched in his hand. No one will register or report the going of Eldritch Swan.

A night in Doyle’s one and only guest-room had come cheap, which was ironic, in view of the fact that Swan could have afforded to pay handsomely for accommodation. He had arrived in Terenure on foot after an anxious march of several miles from Seapoint along
the lanes skirting Dublin to the south and had decided it was safer to put up there than to go any further. During the largely sleepless hours since, he had soberly assessed his situation and had concluded that he was a marked man. Linley had placed him in the path of an assassin. He was some kind of dupe, though in what, and
for
what, he could not fathom.

Flight was his obvious course of action and one to which he was instinctively drawn. But hard reasoning told him any attempt to board a ferry at Dun Laoghaire or a Dublin to Belfast train would merely be to invite arrest – or worse. He could hope to evade capture by heading west, perhaps, to Limerick or Galway or somewhere close to the Northern Irish border, but he suspected that would end badly. His major difficulty was that he did not know why he had been targeted or how far-reaching the conspiracy was in which he had become caught up. And turning himself into a fugitive would do nothing to assuage the rage he felt at what Linley had done to him.

In the end, he had decided that his best chance of survival lay in attack. Linley would expect him to run and to hide. Instead, he would attempt to find out exactly what game his treacherous old school friend was playing. He would head for the one place where the truth was surely to be found.

Where the road from Terenure crossed the Grand Canal, he turned east along the towpath. From Leeson Street Bridge he followed back lanes as far as possible, emerging on to Merrion Street just opposite the main gate of Government Buildings. All was quiet. It was still early – not yet eight o’clock – and a sleepy air prevailed. He walked smartly along to the door of number 28 and rang the bell.

Mrs Kilfeather looked surprised to see him, as well she might. ‘What can I do for you at this hour, Mr Swan?’

‘I’m sorry to be a nuisance.’ He treated her to his most ingratiating smile. ‘The fact of the matter is that I’ve locked myself out. I haven’t been sleeping well and I decided to go for a walk before breakfast. Stupidly, I left my keys behind.’

‘Insomnia is a curse,’ said Mrs Kilfeather. ‘My late husband suffered from it. I believe it may have shortened his life, God rest his soul.’

‘It can certainly make one abominably forgetful. I wonder if I might impose upon you for the loan of your set of keys.’

‘By all means.’ She glanced frowningly at the Gladstone bag in Swan’s hand, perhaps wondering why he should have taken luggage on his pre-breakfast stroll. ‘I’ll just fetch them.’

Swan stepped inside the porch while she bustled off, casting a wary glance behind him. There was no one anywhere near by, except a policeman guarding the door into the ministerial wing of Government Buildings further up the street. The morning was still and grey and quiet.

‘Here you are, Mr Swan,’ Mrs Kilfeather announced, returning with the keys.

‘Thank you. I’m obliged. I’ll drop them back to you later.’

How much later that might be he had no idea. He had, in truth, very little idea of what awaited him in the top-floor flat at number 31. It was a mystery. But it would not remain so for long.

He slipped quietly into the house he had entered only once before and started up the stairs. The surveyor’s and chiropodist’s offices were still unstaffed. Silence ruled and he trod lightly, keeping to the edges of the steps to minimize creaks. On the half-landing between the second and third floors, he paused to open the Gladstone bag and take out the revolver. He had already checked that the remaining chambers were loaded.

As Swan reached the top of the stairs, the policeman on the other side of the street broke out of his reverie at the sight of a familiar vehicle approaching from the direction of St Stephen’s Green: a black, gleamingly polished limousine. He squared his shoulders, tugged down his uniform jacket and stepped towards the edge of the pavement.

Swan put the Gladstone bag down, tightened his grip on the
revolver and slid the second key on the ring Mrs Kilfeather had given him into the Yale lock of the door serving the flat.

He entered at a lunge, hardly knowing what he might see. The hallway was empty, the doors to the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen standing open. But the sitting-room door was closed. He strode forward and flung it open.

‘
Damnation!
’

The voice had come from the window. A man who had been crouching by it looked round at Swan, his lean, hard, moustached face creased by a frown. He was dressed in dark trousers and a sweater. An armchair had been pulled close to the windowsill beneath the raised lower sash, its back partially blocking Swan’s view.

Swan pointed the gun at the man and motioned for him to stand up. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘Eldritch Swan,’ the man blithely replied, rising slowly to his feet.

‘I don’t think so. You see, I’m Eldritch Swan.’

‘Really?’ The false Swan glanced through the window down into the street. The sound of a car engine was growing steadily louder. ‘That tears it.’

‘What are you doing here?’ Swan moved to see round the chair and caught his breath. A rifle, with telescopic sight attached, was propped on the arm facing the window.