Mambo (37 page)

Pagan made one final strenuous effort, and pulled himself over the rail. He dropped without subtlety into the adjoining balcony and stumbled just as a door opened and a man appeared. Not the gunman. He was presumably Caporelli's neighbour, this meek-looking, homely man in the tweed jacket.

“
Qu'est ce qui se passe
?” he asked, alarmed. “
Que voulez-vous
?”

Pagan took out his wallet and showed his ID to the man, who peered at it in the bewildered way of somebody whose life, for so long a placid, plodding business, has just taken a very odd detour.

“Ah, Scotland Yard,” the man said as if these two words explained all. “
Oui, oui. Entrez, entrez,
” and he held the glass door open for Pagan, who turned one last time and looked through the metal rail at Caporelli's balcony – empty and bleak, under the flat noon sky.

The detective who responded to Pagan's phone call was Claude Quistrebert from the Sûrété. He was a tall elegant man who wore a black and white pinstripe suit and a splendid blue carnation in his lapel. Pagan admired his style, which isolated him from his three colleagues, rather badly dressed men who swarmed all over Caporelli's apartment with a clumsy enthusiasm that was almost endearing.

Quistrebert and Pagan talked in Caporelli's study. The Frenchman's English, better than the Englishman's French, relieved Pagan of having to translate.

“Your description of the gunman leaves something to be desired,” Quistrebert said.

“There was nothing exceptional about him. I'd recognise him if I saw him again, I'm sure, but as for striking characteristics or features …” and Pagan shrugged dismally; he'd almost been shot at by a total nonentity.

“Striking?” the Frenchman asked, a little puzzled.

“Prominent,” Pagan explained.

“Ah. Of course.”

There was a crash from the kitchen, the sound of a heavy pot or a tureen clattering to the tiles. Quistrebert seemed not to notice. Perhaps he was accustomed to conducting investigations where his men broke things in their enthusiasm.

Quistrebert, sharp-faced, equipped with a nose that might have been made for burrowing, was at the window, looking out across the Bois. “In the circumstances, I don't think we can expect to apprehend the man,” he said, without turning to Pagan. There was a critical little edge to his tone; he wasn't happy with his British colleague's powers of observation. He'd read of Pagan in the newspapers and considered him, with perhaps a twinge of envy, just another publicity-chasing cop. “Why was Caporelli killed? Do you have light to throw?”

“None,” Pagan replied.

“You had reasons of your own for being here, of course. I will not pry.”

“Routine questioning.” A blanket phrase, a clear signal that meant “Don't ask”.

“Naturally.” Quistrebert strode across the room on long, stalk-like legs. He sat behind Caporelli's desk and surveyed the papers there absently. “Caporelli had business interests in France. A paper mill. A perfume company in Nantes. Also some banking. This much is a matter of public record. I understand he had many commercial interests in Italy also. On the face of it, a wealthy businessman. Such a man would inspire a number of enemies, no?”

“More than likely,” Pagan said. Hadn't Madame Chapotin said that her late husband had a banking concern in Italy? Pagan enjoyed these little correspondences.

Quistrebert stroked the flower in his lapel. “He interests me, this Caporelli. Only a couple of days ago, he was a witness to a fatal accident here in Paris. I read the report.”

Pagan felt his interest sharpen. “What happened?”

“He saw a man run over by a truck and crushed. It was a very bloody affair. Very bad. As an important eyewitness, he was required to give a statement, of course. In any case, he clearly felt a personal involvement. The victim of the accident was an associate of his, a certain Herr Kluger from Hamburg.”

An associate
. Enrico and his associates, Pagan thought, had a knack for unhappy endings. Chapotin, this Kluger, and now Enrico himself. There was a grand design here, murderously neat.

Quistrebert said, “They were walking after dinner, it seems, when a truck hit the unfortunate Kluger and dragged him under the wheels. A terrible mess.”

“You're convinced it was an accident?” Pagan asked.

The Frenchman looked unblinkingly at Pagan. “What else? Scores of witnesses say they saw the truck being driven in an erratic fashion. The driver, a Spaniard, was drunk. I may add that he died of apparent heart failure some hours later in prison.”

Quistrebert was silent a moment. “I will share with you a curious feature of the affair, Mr Pagan. The body of the driver was removed by persons claiming to be his relatives.”

“Claiming to be?”

“They had identification. They were from Madrid. The body was released to them. Again, nothing so very unusual. People want to bury their dead – a fact of life. But then the discovery was made by a diligent officer that the truck had been stolen four days before in Lyon. The driver had carried a false Spanish licence. No such person ever existed. His fingerprints are not on record. Nor can we locate the so-called relatives who came to claim him. We've been investigating the whole affair, but every avenue turns out to be a dead end, provoking what policemen always dread – too many questions. Too many grey areas. No clues.”

This sounded to Pagan as less an accident than a deliberate murder that hadn't worked out as planned. The killer had lost his nerve, as sometimes all men do, and needed the fiercely blind courage of inebriation to go through with the murder of Herr Kluger. The source of the killer's courage had also been the cause of his downfall. Surely he meant to escape after ploughing the victim down but was too drunk to do so. Pagan wasn't about to suggest this to Quistrebert, though. The Frenchman wouldn't take kindly to unsolicited advice; he had a streak of Gallic disdain and stubbornness.

“What do you know about Kluger?” Pagan asked.

“Another businessman. He was Caporelli's partner in the perfume company. But his interests were wide. He was the chief shareholder in a large Pharmaceuticals company in Frankfurt, sole owner of a vineyard in California, the proprietor of magazines in Scandinavia – the list is long. A very rich man. Like Caporelli.”

“Can I have a report of the accident before I return to London?”

“Of course.” Quistrebert smiled for the first time since he'd arrived, a fox-like expression. “Perhaps when you have official business in Paris in the future you will call me prior to your arrival, Mr Pagan?”

“Count on it,” Pagan said.

Glasgow

Foxworth, who had arrived at noon in an unseasonably warm and sunny Glasgow, had one of those little breaks that make a policeman's lot tolerable. It came at about three o'clock in the afternoon after he'd spent several hours with members of the Glasgow Criminal Investigation Division – friendly men, he thought, and level-headed – going over the reconstruction of Jean-Paul Chapotin's movements in Glasgow. There was the usual dogged routine of checking taxi companies and limousine services and car-hire firms, which involved making many telephone calls and waiting for people to get back to you after they'd checked their records and logs. It was a dismal business, actually, and quite uninspiring; or so Foxie thought. He knew dull routine had its place in his kind of work, but he'd inherited something of Frank Pagan's dislike of this plodding aspect of their employment. Give me the bright moment, Pagan had once said. Give me the flash, the sudden insight when lo and fucking behold, you know beyond doubt!

While the investigation of Chapotin's movements had been taking place, a similar inquiry into Enrico Caporelli's trip to Glasgow had also been going on. This had been a little simpler than the Chapotin inquiry in the sense that there was a record, kept by the men observing Rosabal, of Caporelli meeting the Cuban at a hotel in the centre of the city. Caporelli was merely the peripheral figure in this surveillance, an incidental entry in the Cuban's life: But the young detective who'd logged the time and place of the encounter had the brains to record the number plate number of the limousine that had picked Enrico up. Foxie liked this young man's notes, which combined the merit of plain observation with a touch of personal resentment;
subject rode off in a fat limousine, number plate G654 WUS; very small man with white hair and an arrogant strut
. Fat and arrogant; an enjoyable deviation from the prosaic language of police notes.

It was a start – a licence-plate number.

The limousine that had ferried Caporelli away belonged to a company called Executive Motor Cars Ltd, with offices in West Nile Street in the heart of the city. When Foxie called the number, a polite female told him she “needed a wee minute” to check her log – how often had he heard the word “log” since he'd come to Glasgow? – and get back to him. Foxie, during his routine telephoning, had already asked this same woman about Chapotin. My, you're awfully busy, the woman had said on the second call. She had a lilting, liquid accent.

The Break itself happened while Foxworth was drinking tea from a thick china mug and waiting for return phone calls. The woman from Executive Motor Cars Ltd called back to say that the driver of G654 WUS had transported Enrico Caporelli to a house “somewhere in Ayrshire”. As for Foxworth's other inquiry, the one concerning Chapotin, the woman told him that one of the company's other drivers had picked up a man by that name at Glasgow Airport and had taken him
to the same place in Ayrshire
.

Ah-hah! Foxie had one of those rare moments, given only to cops, poets and fishermen, when the object of a search suddenly materialises. Caporelli and Chapotin, transported by the same limousine company, went to the same address in Ayrshire. Since Glasgow wasn't what you'd call Limousine City, it wasn't such a coincidence that both men had been serviced by the same car firm.

“Can I have an address for the house?” Foxworth asked.

The woman was silent a moment as she leafed through papers. “Actually, sir, I don't have an address. Only a PO box number in Ayr. That's where we send our bills. Payment always comes from a company in London. This is an account we've been servicing for about a year.”

“One of your drivers could give me directions,” Foxie suggested.

“Of course,” said the woman. “Always happy to oblige, sir.”

When Foxie telephoned Golden Square to report his progress, Pagan was still in Paris, so he left a brief message with Billy Ewing. Then he drove an unmarked police car to West Nile Street. Executive Motor Cars Ltd was located above a philately shop in whose drab window there was a display of stamps from Third World countries: Cambodia, Togo, Rwanda. (He wasn't sure he'd ever heard of Rwanda.) He entered the building and climbed up to the second floor where he was greeted by the woman, Miss Wilkie, who turned out to be perfectly lovely – late twenties, curvaceous, gorgeous features and skin. In other circumstances Foxie might have been inclined to linger.

She introduced Foxie to a dour man called Roderick McNulty – Rod, as he seemed to prefer – who had actually chauffered Caporelli to Ayrshire. Rod was the kind of person, socially rather stunted, who obliges the requests of other people only reluctantly. With thick, nicotine-stained fingers, he very slowly drew a detailed map for Foxie, and then handed it to him in a grudging manner.

Foxie looked at it a moment. The woman, Miss Wilkie – who had neat little breasts the merits of which were not entirely concealed by a green silk blouse, smiled at him. Terrific teeth, Foxie thought.

“I hope we've been able to help,” she said.

“You've been wonderful.” Foxie meant it too. He thought he might come more often to Glasgow.

She stepped close to him, inclining her head near his shoulder to glance at the map. “Out of the way sort of place,” she said. “Who'd want to live there?”

Foxie caught her perfume just then, a delightful musk. Unashamedly romantic in affairs of the heart, given to falling in love with women he spotted only briefly on the street and could never hope to know, he wished Miss Wilkie would ride along with him to Ayrshire.

Rod McNulty said, “Aye. It's an isolated spot all right.”

“Who lives in the house?” Foxworth asked.

“I wouldn't know,” McNulty said, again hesitant, as if his whole life were one mass of confidences he had to keep. The chauffeur who sees all and says nothing.

With one last smile at Miss Wilkie, who raised a delicate hand in response, Foxworth left.

He drove out of Glasgow under a sunny sky. According to the car radio the weather was fine all across south-west Scotland, although the inevitable cold front was on its way. Outside the city, green fields were bright in the sunlight. Along the coast waters sparkled, suggesting another season altogether.

He stopped briefly in the seaside resort of Ayr, a town of whitewashed cottages, a harbour, a busy High Street, a racecourse. He had a dinner of marvellous fish and chips then headed south again in the direction of Ballantrae. He wanted to reach his destination before dark.

As he drove through the small town of Girvan, the rocky hump of Ailsa Craig appeared ten miles offshore. Crowded by thousands of gulls, it looked as grim as a penal colony. When he reached Ballantrae, an old fishing village that seemed just a trifle despondent, he examined his map. The road he had to follow went inland. Road was hyperbole. It was a rutted path between tall hedges. His car thumped and rattled and the setting sun dazzled in his rear-view mirror. The shrubbery became darker, denser. Now and then he had a sense of flat fields beyond the hedgerows, but he saw nothing of interest – neither farmhouses nor haystacks nor grazing cows.

He pulled the car over, turned on the interior light, examined the map. The house was about a mile away now. He drove the last stretch slowly. What was he supposed to say when he got there?
I am making inquiries. I am sorry to inconvenience you
. Standard police procedure. He thought a better ploy might be the Lost Tourist Strategy; after all, he didn't have a local accent. He was obviously a discombobulated stranger. Feigning that particular pathos of the misguided traveller was always amusing, the dog-like eagerness to get back on the right path, the profuse apologies. Why not?