The Company of Saints (32 page)

Davina held herself together. The truth, she's telling the truth. One more question to make sure. ‘What gun did you use?'

‘A Walther PPK, with a six-inch silencer. Then I went up to bed and took my sleeping pills. What do you think of that?'

Slowly Davina got up. ‘I think we should take a break,' she said.

Hélène rose to her feet. ‘You didn't think I'd have the courage, did you? You thought I was frightened of you, like I always was. Remember how I used to cry and beg? Now it's your turn.'

And with a low cry she leaped.

The telephone was ringing in the brigadier's office. It shrilled and shrilled, getting on Humphrey's nerves. The monitor showed Davina and Hélène talking. ‘What gun did you use?' Davina asked her. Humphrey wondered why the orderly hadn't come in and taken the call. Never there when they should be. In the end he couldn't stand it. He turned away from the little television screen and picked up the phone. The operator on the internal exchange said, ‘This is an urgent call for Miss Graham. Major Lomax on the line.'

‘Miss Graham can't be disturbed. Put Major Lomax through.' He heard the click and said, ‘Humphrey Grant here – I'm afraid Davina's busy at the moment. Can I help?'

‘Where is she?' Lomax was almost shouting.

‘She's interrogating Hélène Blond. What's wrong?' He could hear the panic at the other end.

‘She's not alone with her, is she?' Lomax didn't wait for an answer. ‘For Christ's sake, get her out of there! I'm on my way down now.…'

Humphrey swung round. What he saw on the monitor made him drop the receiver. Tall and awkward as he was, he moved with amazing speed out of the office and raced down the passage towards the little room.

‘Mama,' Hélène was saying over and over, saliva dripping from her mouth. ‘Mama. Mama.'

She didn't hear the door crash open, she didn't hear the thud of Humphrey's feet across the floor behind her. She was aware of nothing but the face of the woman she was choking to death. He tore at her hair; she didn't feel it. He rabbit-punched her to break that merciless grip, and she fell heavily on top of Davina.

Humphrey knelt down and pulled Davina clear. The brigadier's orderly had joined him, hearing him shout as he ran out of the office. They lifted her up.

Humphrey felt for a pulse in her neck. ‘She's alive,' he said. ‘But only just.'

‘My dear Davina, you really shouldn't have come out of hospital so soon.' Sir James White shook his head reprovingly at her.

‘I didn't want to stay there in the first place,' she said. Her voice was very hoarse. It still hurt her to speak. ‘I'm quite all right, I just can't shout, that's all.'

She was in her flat, her throat wrapped in bandages, and Colin had moved in to take care of her. James White looked at both of them and smiled.

Like to like – first Sasanov, then Lomax. That other unpleasant episode was best forgotten. But plans were in hand for dealing with Mr Anthony Walden. The bearer of expensive gifts. A very expensive gift it had nearly proved to be for Davina Graham. A minute longer, the doctors said, and she would have died. The girl Hélène Blond was hopelessly insane. She had lapsed into a catatonic state and was lying in a secure mental hospital under Home Office order, little better than a vegetable. She had said nothing but that one word – Mama – in the voice of a child, before she sank into permanent silence.

‘Davina's being very difficult,' Colin Lomax said. ‘Wants to go into the office, won't stay off the phone. I've told her she could lose her voice completely unless she rests that throat, but she won't listen.'

‘Well, you must rest,' James White insisted. ‘You've not only had a serious shock and near-fatal strangulation but you have suffered a nasty injury to the oesophagus. So be sensible and take it easy until you're quite fit again. Why don't you take her down to Marchwood, Colin? And cut off the phone so she can't get into mischief?'

‘It's an idea,' he agreed. ‘What about that, Davina? Just a week, that's all. It'd do you a lot of good to get away from the flat and just relax and sit around. I ought to know – I was nursed back to life at Marchwood.'

She didn't want to argue. She didn't want to give in either, but she felt unsteady and weak. She could cope with the pain and the bruising of her throat, even the difficulty in talking at a normal pitch. But the shaking inside hadn't gone away yet.

Everyone had been kind and concerned. Humphrey had saved her life. He had appeared at her bedside in the hospital at Tetbury with flowers and an expression of pained discomfort.

It had been a shock for him too, she could see that. Tim Johnson visited too, bringing magazines and a novel. The selection amused her. Glossy, slick publications, geared to the so-called career woman. Most of the contents were concerned with sex and how to find and keep your man. So little had changed under the surface from the gentle pages of her mother's
Woman's Journal
of twenty years ago. The approach was different but the problems were the same. And there was Colin taking over, seeing the doctor and the specialist sent from London. Driving her back home when she dismissed herself ahead of time. And filling the flat with flowers to welcome her.

She hadn't been in any condition to ask questions for the first few days, even to whisper them. When she woke in the side ward, she noticed that they had removed the bracelet; she felt so dizzy she thought, how funny, they got Cartier to send someone all this way down, and then she drifted back into a drugged sleep. It was Colin who told her when she got home.

‘Walden didn't know,' he said. ‘I paid him a visit. Well, a couple of us did. MacNeil sent a man along with me. He didn't try to hide anything – when we told him you'd nearly been killed, he wasn't play acting. They'd given him the bracelet and told him it had a little homing device which would tell them where you were holding one of their agents. Not a word of truth in it. You can guess the alternative if he said no. So that's cleared up.'

Go down to Marchwood. She couldn't think of anything more calming than to let Colin and Sir James persuade her. Except for one thing. Poliakov had gone out to the nearest pub to Anne's Yard and drunk himself into a stupor. The next morning he had disappeared from his flat, leaving his woman friend with a hangover and no idea where he had gone. They'd looked for him among the few Russian friends he had, but nobody had seen him. And his work was unfinished. The name of the commissar responsible for the massacre at Lukina was not on the computer. It was in his befuddled brain. Davina said, ‘I will go away, I promise. But not until we've found Poliakov. Colin, he was going to break the thing to you that day. We must find him and get him back to finish it off.' She put her hand to her throat. It hurt abominably after the long speech.

‘My dear,' James White said after a pause. ‘I think you're strong enough now to hear. Poliakov has been found. He's dead.'

She reached for Colin and he took her hand. ‘When?' she whispered. ‘What happened to him?'

‘Nothing dramatic,' he said in his bland way. ‘He just poisoned himself with alcohol. Literally. He was discovered sitting on a bench in a public park – Battersea, wasn't it, Colin? With two empty vodka bottles in a bag beside him.'

‘Oh God,' she croaked out. ‘Oh God, what a disaster.… Poor old thing.'

‘Yes, it is a pity,' James White agreed. ‘However, Humphrey hasn't been idle. He's following up that Lukina clue and he'll come up with the answer. An extraordinary thing, that tie-up with the Cheka killing all those years ago. And the conditioning of that girl to kill whoever wore the bracelet. What a lucky thing you read Conan Doyle, Colin! It was a gorilla, wasn't it, in the story?'

‘Yes,' Lomax said. ‘The poor brute was beaten and tortured to the sound of a tinkling bell. Then these women were each given a bracelet with a bell on. They couldn't get them off. And the brute was set on them. Anyway, don't let's talk about it. I'm going to get you something to eat, Davina, and make you put your feet up.'

He got out of his chair and Sir James took the hint. He shook hands with Davina, and said, ‘Mary and I were worried to death about you, my dear. So no more scares like that, if you don't mind. Bless you, and see you soon.'

When he had gone she caught hold of Colin. ‘My throat hurts like mad,' she whispered. ‘But I've got to talk to you. Sit down a minute, darling, please.'

He did so, holding her hand and lightly stroking it. She looked very pale and thin. Whatever she said, he wasn't going to upset her by arguing.

‘We've got to find out who used that device at Lukina,' she said. ‘We can't wait for Humphrey.'

‘No, darling,' he agreed. ‘We can't. So what shall we do? You tell me and I'll do it, so you can stop worrying.'

‘They'll kill again,' she murmured. ‘It must be time for another attempt.'

‘No, it isn't,' he said gently. ‘Don't you see why? You were the next on the list.'

‘I've been thinking. It isn't Borisov. I was wrong about that. He wouldn't set a precedent by killing me. Or any of us in the West. It's a Russian, but it isn't him.'

‘Why don't you put the mind to bed?' he asked her. ‘And the voice. Come on, I'm switching the box on in the bedroom and you're going to lie down and have supper on a tray.' And that was how they heard the news flash that President Zerkhov had died of heart failure at two o'clock the previous morning.

‘Your method failed,' he said. ‘Your fail-safe didn't work. What have you to say to me?' He spoke quite softly.

The doctor dreaded that softness in his voice. ‘The girl attacked,' he protested. ‘She obeyed the signal she was given. My method didn't fail.'

The man behind the desk looked at him and said, ‘I am not concerned with theories. I asked for a result. You haven't given it to me. The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service is not dead. That's all that interests me.' He bent his head and studied a document in front of him.

The doctor didn't know whether he was dismissed or not. But he knew that he was sentenced. He was not a coward, and in his heart he knew the charge of failure was unfair. ‘I cannot guarantee that they will be successful every time,' he ventured. ‘The others didn't fail. This was asking more of the girl than any of them. And she had already proved herself.'

Slowly the head lifted and the angry eyes considered him. The doctor was sorry he had tried to excuse himself one more time. Now the sentence was confirmed.

‘Zerkhov is dead. Everything that went before was only a preparation for what we cannot do now. Get out of my sight.'

Get out and go on your way, but you won't get far. The charges have already been drawn up against you. You will need your own special brand of treatment, my dear doctor. And then you will be as harmless as your patients.…

‘I will do it.'

He looked up in surprise. ‘You will do what?'

‘I will kill him for you.'

The laugh was bitterly contemptuous. ‘You? You wouldn't know how to step on an ant. You're a man of chemicals and drugs and mental tricks. Not a man of action. Put a gun in your hand and you'd shoot off your own foot!'

The doctor's face flushed a dark red. He was a slight man, built like a small bird, with sticklike bones and frail hands like a woman's. Only his brain was strong. He had reduced the physical specimens to slobbering wrecks by means of his brain. ‘I will kill him,' he repeated, ‘in my way. Not with a gun. Give me this last chance to succeed for you.'

‘To succeed for yourself.' The voice was low and menacing again. ‘Very well then. Use your own weapons. I will give you until the state funeral.'

The doctor's colour faded. ‘But that's so soon. How can I find an opportunity?'

‘I don't know,' his tormentor said. ‘But that is your problem.'

When the doctor had gone, he lifted the telephone. ‘Leave him alone,' he said. ‘No, it's cancelled. We'll wait.' Then he went back to his desk and his work.

‘The commissar's name was Rudkin,' Humphrey said. Davina shouldn't have come back to the office – she looked quite shaken still, and he could see the bandages under the coloured scarf. He would never have believed he could feel sympathetic towards her, but he did. He didn't try to analyse it.

‘That's marvellous, Humphrey.' Her voice was stronger. ‘But how does it relate to these people? There's no connection with any of the suspects that Poliakov mentioned within the Soviet hierarchy. It's a common name in the Ukraine, isn't that right? Where do we go from here?'

‘There were twenty men involved in the shooting and burning of the barn,' Humphrey said. ‘There must be a record of their names. But it could take months to track them down, and we'd need to use sources inside Russia itself.'

She put a hand to her neck. He noticed that she did it often and without realizing. ‘Then we're completely stuck. There's a massive power struggle going on there at this moment. We could be facing a new leader like Yemetovsky or that brute Mishkoyan, or someone we don't even know about. It's wide open, according to our sources. And there's another factor.' She glanced at him. ‘You've heard it. What do you think?'

‘That Borisov is a possibility? I don't believe it. They've never elected a leader from the KGB and they won't now. My money is on Yemetovsky.'

‘They've never allowed the Army to hold power either,' Davina argued. ‘Yemetovsky will be stopped by the civilians. And he's too committed to war as the ultimate solution. It's Mishkoyan that worries me.'

‘They all worry me,' Humphrey admitted. ‘I suggest we pass this request to our C Section in Moscow and see what they come up with.'