The Company of Saints (21 page)

Elsa said through lips stiff with terror, ‘Stuff yourself!'

Modena shrugged. He put the cigarette back in the packet and away in his pocket. ‘You're a brave girl,' he said. ‘I have to admit that. That's why I brought you here. I knew that telling you about this place wouldn't frighten you. You had to see it with your own eyes.'

‘I haven't been tried!' she cried out. ‘You can't hold me for ever.'

‘Not for ever,' he agreed. ‘But for a year or two. And by the time you do come to a court, you won't be fit to plead. You saw the room, didn't you? You know why it's fitted up like that? Women go mad in this place. You will go mad like the others.' He spoke to the impassive woman at the door. ‘You can wait outside.' The warden glanced towards the girl. Modena shook his head. ‘I can manage. If I need you, I'll call.' She went outside and closed the door. Then he sat down. ‘If you don't talk to me, you will be sent here by the end of the week. Everything is prepared for you. Nobody cares, Valdorini, what happens to you now. Your family have abandoned you. You realize they haven't even tried to help you. You're not news any more. The world has forgotten you. Your friends, the ones who recruited you and let you take the blame for something you didn't do – they've forgotten you too.'

Elsa didn't answer. He sat patiently, smoking his cigarette down to the filter. Her head sank, and her hands came up and covered her face. He listened to her crying. After a while he said, ‘Are you going to condemn yourself to this, for the rest of your life? You didn't throw the bomb, Elsa. But you sheltered the person who did. Think of yourself now, while you have the chance. And it's the last chance. If you refuse me, I shall forget you. Like all the rest. Then you'll be really lost. Buried alive, in that cell I showed you. Talk to me, Elsa.' He waited. Very slowly she lifted her head, wiped her blotched face with her hand and then the hand on her skirt.

‘It was a man,' she said. ‘He stayed for two nights.'

6

Lomax spent the next three days following Hélène Blond. He followed her from her aunt's flat to the Lycée every morning. He noticed that she frequented a small café two streets away for lunch. He also noticed that she seemed to avoid her fellow students.

Lomax, hiding behind a newspaper and dark glasses, watched her carefully, and judged that she was definitely not part of any group. She didn't talk much or laugh with the others. Her companions were typical of their age: cheerful, disputatious, or conspicuously in love and holding hands. Hélène Blond didn't fit in anywhere. Perhaps the ordeal she had gone through had made her withdrawn. Perhaps she didn't feel at ease among her contemporaries any more, after the death of her friends the Duvaliers. Her best friend had been the daughter. But there was no obvious sign of nerves. She seemed to have a good appetite. She was a very cool young woman, Lomax decided, aloof and self-sufficient.

After the third day he made himself noticeable. He followed her from the Lycée to the café, took a seat quite close, and let her catch him watching her. He did this for two days until the weekend. Then he shadowed her home. He parked on the other side of the road in his hired car with the window down, and made a clumsy job of pretending to read a newspaper when she came out. He followed her on foot when she went shopping with her aunt. She knew he was there – he saw her glance behind her, scowl, and hurry on. She didn't lose him; she wouldn't until he decided to step out of sight. He passed the house three times during the Sunday morning, and glanced up at the windows. He saw the curtains move. On Monday, her aunt drove her to school. He wondered what excuse Hélène had given.

But now she knew he was there and she was rattled. She actually went white when she saw him come through the door into the café and sit down. He didn't look at her. He ordered something to eat and, while he waited, pretended to read a paperback. She didn't finish her lunch. She paid her bill and hurried out. Lomax put his book down and caught her eye. He looked away. He didn't get up and go after her. But he was parked outside the Lycée when she came out.

Hélène dived down into the Metro. She was nearly running by this time. She bought her ticket, jumped in the train and settled back out of breath. Who was the man who was shadowing her? He didn't look French. He wasn't even very skilful about it. She wished her heart would stop jumping up and down. She wasn't afraid: she had faced the professional inquisitors of the SEDECE and the police, and kept her head. She had rather enjoyed the challenge.

But then she was prepared. Geared up to the game of wits on which her life depended. She wasn't expecting this. She cursed under her breath. Her language was vile by any standard. Her aunt wouldn't have believed she even knew such words. She never used them out loud. What did he want, this clumsy shadower? Should she report it? No, the publicity had died away. The police weren't interested in her any more. She was out of the limelight and safe. Perhaps she should challenge him. Maybe he was some kind of crank, picking on her because of her involvement in a mass murder? She didn't like to think that. It made her nervous.

When she left the Metro station and came up into the street, she paused, looking this way and that. Lomax saw her, but she didn't see him. He saw the furtive look, and the relief on her face.

By the time she reached her front door, he was well ahead of her, and standing with a map in his hand only a few yards away. He actually heard her gasp when she saw him. He didn't move. He didn't look up. She opened the door and he heard it bang as she slammed it shut. The way a woman shuts a door when she's afraid, not angry.

The next day he didn't go near the house, the Lycée or the café. He spent the day in Paris, enjoying himself, wandering round the Tuileries and the Louvre. He thought how surprised Davina would be if she could see him. Art collections and museums used not to be high on his list of activities. But he had changed since they parted. His life had slowed down from the old hectic momentum. He had set out to enlarge his horizons. After all, he should have been dead on at least two occasions. Once in Ulster and again in Mexico. Medical science and old-fashioned luck had given him a second chance each time. He made up his mind not to waste it. By seven o'clock the next morning he was outside Hélène's Metro station, and this time he followed her down and onto the train. She jumped out at an early stop, but he didn't attempt to follow. It was an old trick to suspend the harassment and give a victim a brief feeling of security. When it started again, the impact was doubled. He wondered how long she would go before she either faced him or did what he hoped – made a contact and asked for help. If she went to the police, then she would be quite a way to establishing her innocence. Lomax felt instinctively that she wouldn't.

She didn't leave the Lycée that lunchtime. That meant she was getting really jumpy. At the end of the day Hélène Blond was not among the crowd that flowed into the street. Lomax drove away, parked his car and slipped back to watch. She came out an hour after everyone else had gone. She hurried down the road, not looking to right or left. She thought she had given him the slip. He was well satisfied to let her think so – until she arrived home.

He had decided to take it one stage further, to precipitate a move on her part. There were areas to each house; he got there ahead of her and went down the basement steps of the house two doors away. From there he could see her approach. She was at the front door, taking out her key, when he came up behind her. She gave a cry and swung round; the key clattered to the ground. Lomax picked it up. He held it out to her. For a moment her eyes blazed at him, fierce with terror and defiance. It was a look he had seen before, and it had nothing to do with an innocent girl afraid of being molested. In that second, Lomax knew that Davina's instinct had been right again. The answer to the Duvaliers' massacre was standing in front of him. ‘You dropped your key, mademoiselle,' he said.

‘Get away from me! Stop following me or I'll call the police!'

‘I want to warn you,' he said carefully, speaking his slow precise French, ‘the others have been killed. You will be next.'

The words meant nothing to Lomax. But they did to her. He could see by the instant contraction of her pupils. He had made a meaningless threat and it had worked. He turned away before she could say anything and hurried off down the street.

From now on, he would be watching but she wouldn't see him.

Brunson of the CIA was as good as his word. His investigator in Venice had turned up some information and followed it through. The results were sent through to the SIS. Davina handed them to Humphrey. ‘We have enough here to put pressure on Modena,' she said, ‘And let him know we haven't just shelved what happened in Venice.'

She looked tired, Humphrey thought, and she was visibly irritated by trifles. The strain was telling on her, and he couldn't help feeling pleased. First her love life goes up in flames; he had been given the brief instruction what to leak about Tony Walden and to get it through immediately. So the affair was over. Out, out, brief candle, he thought maliciously. He was snug in his own relationship. He didn't sympathize with Davina, but encouraged the ambitions of Tim Johnson by remarking how pressure was affecting the Boss Lady. To his surprise, Johnson snapped back that it wasn't surprising. Humphrey's mind, jaundiced and incapable of judging a man's reactions to a woman, wondered whether there was something brewing between those two. The idea made him wince. If he was right, he confided to Ronnie that evening, she was nothing better than a tart, like her sister.

Ronnie nodded in agreement. He didn't know what his friend was talking about and he had never met any of the people mentioned. He didn't know exactly what Humphrey did in his official guise. He accepted that he worked for the Foreign Office in some way, and thought no more about it.

But Humphrey did as Davina instructed. He leaked through their East German contact that Davina Graham had parted from her lover. While he was absent in Australia, she had taken up with another man. They could make what they liked of that. He had only made one comment. ‘Isn't this letting Walden off too lightly?'

She hadn't raised her head when she answered, ‘I think that's my business, don't you? Just see the information gets through.'

Tim Johnson suggested that he fly to Rome and put the American evidence in front of Alfredo Modena. Telexes could be acknowledged and responses delayed. A direct contact might force out the vital information.

He caught a morning flight, and was in Modena's office by mid-afternoon. There he was told that the head of Security was at the prison. After consultations in rapid Italian between subordinates and a telephone call made out of Johnson's hearing, he was driven to the prison.

He found the Italian sitting in a little improvised office, shirt-sleeved and puffy-eyed with tiredness. As soon as they shook hands, Johnson detected that the man was tired, but very excited. He put the CIA report in front of him. ‘Miss Graham wanted you to see this,' he said. ‘It probably just corroborates your own information.'

Modena glanced up at him. ‘And you have come all this way to bring me something that you think I may already know? Come, my friend, you and the Americans have been trespassing in my country without my agreement. Not for the first time, nor the last. But please don't treat me like a fool. Let me see what they've found out. And please, it's very hot. Take off your jacket, make yourself comfortable.'

Johnson sat and waited. Hot wasn't the word. There was no air conditioning, and the smell of human beings in a confined space was sweet and sickly. Prisons smelt the same wherever they were; only some, like this one, smelt stronger.

Modena said at last, ‘I am grateful for this. It ties in with some very important facts I have established myself.'

Johnson didn't hesitate. ‘In view of the assassination of Father Marnie ten days ago, I hope you'll share them with us.'

‘You believe the two are related?' Modena inquired.

‘Yes.' Johnson was emphatic. ‘So was the multiple Duvalier murder, and the so-called accidental death of Soviet Minister Nikolaev. Four separate incidents with a common denominator.'

Modena raised his eyebrows. It gave his saturnine face a rather devilish look. ‘What common denominator is there between the killing of a right-wing American, a left-wing Frenchwoman, a Soviet Minister and a leader of the antiwar movement? It seems to me that the only common denominator is the lack of any connection.'

Johnson had expected this. ‘That's exactly our point. Whoever is organizing these murders isn't following a pattern as expected. The victims are quite unrelated, but the method of killing them is not. A single assassin, a public place, guaranteed maximum publicity. And before you counter this with what happened to the Duvaliers, it couldn't have caused a greater sensation if it had been done in the middle of the Place de la Concorde. So the objective was achieved. I hope you will take us into your confidence, Signor Modena, as we have done with you.'

Modena wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. ‘You've put forward a very convincing case.' He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Come with me. We'll take this report with us.'

‘Now, Elsa,' Modena said, ‘I want you to look at these. Do any of them look like the man who stayed with you?'

Brunson's agent had been patient and thorough. Every hotel and pensione had been visited, and questions asked about who stayed there during the week of Henry Franklyn's murder. Continuous probing and handouts of money had produced a number of candidates. Out of these, the expert had drawn up a list of a dozen. And the drivers of the taxi launches were searching their memories for passengers on the day of the killing. The police had tried to cover up the death of their colleague as a drowning accident, but rumours spread and the truth was soon known.