The Gigantic Shadow (8 page)

That was the beginning of the plot, the kidnap plot, to which up to the end he never acknowledged himself committed. It would be fun, he agreed with Anthea, at least to talk about the plot and see how nearly foolproof they could make it, but with his agreement went the mental reservation that this was, after all, only talk. He told himself that he put it in the same category as speculations about what one would do after winning the pools.

From the first Anthea was so dazzled by the brilliance of the idea that she lacked much interest in working out its execution. It would be enough, she thought, for her to disappear, taking a train to some little place in Devon or Cornwall and staying there for a few days until the ransom money was paid. But he refused even to consider this, and they spent hours in arguing about the need for and possibility of disguise, the planting of false trails and the leaving of some misleading message. When she had accepted the idea that a simple disappearance would not be enough, Anthea was inclined to over-elaborate, and wanted to leave a note in her bedroom, saying that she was being forced to leave by a masked man, and a subsequent note written in her own blood, to be posted presumably by a friendly jailer.

All such ideas he vetoed. All that was necessary in the way of disguise, he thought, was that she should screw her hair up in a bun at the back of her head and wear a pair of glasses, but he was reluctant to let her register at a seaside hotel as a casual visitor, for fear that somehow she would reveal her identity. He was reluctant, also, to let her go abroad before the money had been paid, because a single woman passenger might engage notice. The essential thing, he insisted, was a place in which she could stay for anything up to a week without being seen. Really without being seen – that meant, with no possibility of being spotted by some busybody who informed the police. They talked about it for a long time without result until suddenly, one day, she snapped her fingers.

‘I’ve got it. The den.’

She went on to explain that her stepfather owned some three hundred acres of land, adjacent to Bassington Old Manor. Most of it was pasture, but there were a few acres of woods and in these woods was tucked the ruined little old stone shack which she called the den.

He was doubtful about it. ‘It’s on his estate. I don’t like that. Then what about gamekeepers? Poachers? Or just tramps?’

Nobody ever came near it, she insisted, and the fact that it was on her father’s estate was a positive advantage. All she had to do was to get in a stock of provisions, with a little primus and a sleeping bag, and hole up there for a week, which would be fun. Nothing could be simpler.

He was not persuaded at the time, but when they paid a visit to the den he saw what she meant. They got off at Blanting, a small railway junction, turned off the road outside the village, and walked three miles over fields without meeting anybody. Then they got under some barbed wire, and she told him they were now on the estate. She led the way with certainty over paths that seemed almost invisible to him, until they came to a dense, dark wood of poplars. Now she led him on for another few minutes until they came to a small glade.

‘Here we are.’

He looked round. There was nothing to be seen all round but the poplars. There was one overgrown path that seemed to lead on through the wood. Otherwise, nothing.

‘I don’t see anything.’

‘You’re not meant to.’ She pointed towards a spot where the undergrowth was most thickly tangled, and began resolutely to push a way through it. Hunter rather gingerly followed, protecting his face against brambles which clung like hands to his tweed jacket. The house, invisible until you reached it, was within a few yards of where they had been standing. House was a grandiose name for the place, yet it was more than a hut, a brick-built structure with a sound stone roof. The one small window was broken, the thick wooden door creaked as they opened it, and the one room contained a rickety table and a chair. There was no fireplace.

Anthea looked round with delight. ‘Haven’t been here for, oh, ten years, but it looks just the same. Nobody knows about it. Don’t you think it’s the most marvellous secret place? Terrific fun.’

He agreed that it was. ‘Supposing a tramp –’

‘I tell you
nobody
comes here. You can see that. Look at the dust.’

‘And you wouldn’t mind being here for five days?’

‘Of course not. It would be fun.’

‘What about water?’

‘There’s a little spring a few yards away in the wood.’

‘Supposing you’re seen coming here –’

‘If I meet anyone on the way from Blanting here I telephone you, we call it off, and try again later. I mean anyone who might even possibly recognise me.’

‘Anyone at all,’ he said firmly. She looked at him, and he laughed uneasily. ‘I agree it’s an ideal place – that is, it would be if we were going to do it.’

So the place was settled. Then the ransom notes. They agreed that there was an element of risk in using a typewriter, and that the notes should be made up from old newspapers, stuck on ordinary thin bank paper. They bought all the daily newspapers for two days and then began to make up the notes from them, wearing rubber gloves and sticking down the letters with gum. Making up the words proved to be a laborious process, with which Anthea got very bored, but at last two letters were done. They did not do the third, because they had not worked out a plan for collection of the money.

About the amount of money itself they argued violently. Hunter insisted that sixty thousand pounds was still far too much, and also increased immensely the danger that her father would go to the police. If they were modest, and asked for ten thousand, he suggested, they would greatly diminish the risk. Anthea appeared to regard the mention of such a sum almost as an insult to her. Reluctantly she agreed at last to an amount of thirty thousand pounds. For Hunter, this was a sum that still left the plot in the region of fantasy. He had never had in his possession a tenth of thirty thousand pounds.

It was still no more than a game. They had done nothing decisive, as he told himself again and again. Yet he knew that, although this was literally true, he was emotionally more deeply committed with every hour of argument, every new speculation about the way in which the ransom should be collected. Anthea regarded the kidnap plot as settled, and thought him tediously slow and cautious.

Her ideas about collecting the money were not subtle. She suggested that they should instruct her father to leave it in a specific place, a certain garbage tin somewhere in the suburbs, say, and that they should then pick it up. She was convinced that he would not approach the police, and that they were therefore perfectly safe. Hunter did not share this conviction, and in any case wanted a plan that would be as far as possible foolproof. It took him three days to work out something with which he was reasonably satisfied, and another day to test it in company with Anthea, who played the role allotted to her stepfather. He felt a sort of pure intellectual pleasure that the plan worked well. She rather impatiently admitted that there seemed to be nothing wrong with it.

At this time they were seeing each other every day, in the mornings and afternoons as well. In the evenings, she said, her stepfather expected to know what she was doing, and he accepted this explanation, although he felt that she probably went out quite often with Roger Sennett. She had suddenly become bored with the Cosmos, and some of his dreams about her were made into a distorted reality. They went to Hampton Court, Battersea Fun Fair, took out a boat at Richmond, but it was not as he had imagined it, because they talked of nothing but the kidnap plot. They were now, indeed, less like lovers than like slightly quarrelsome partners in a business enterprise. As a partner, he felt some doubts of her.

‘You’re sure nobody – your father or anybody else – knows where you go to in the daytime?’

‘Of course not. I told you I lead my own life, have my own friends. Daddy doesn’t try to interfere as long as I don’t get into trouble.’

‘What sort of trouble?’

‘Oh, you know. Like that time at the Dance Rooms. If I’d been arrested like Roger, he’d have made a fuss.’

It seemed to him that there was something evasive about her answer. ‘You’re quite sure you’ve not told anybody, anybody at all, about me?’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said irritably, ‘don’t be so –’

‘So what?’

‘Nothing.’ She kissed him. ‘But tell me. Are we going to do it or not?’

They were in a boat on the river, just below Richmond Bridge. She wore a white sleeveless frock that made her look cool, beautiful, young, and infinitely desirable. What are you hesitating for, he asked himself, you’re a lucky man.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We’re going to do it.’

Now that it was decided – although, as he continually reminded himself, he still retained the possibility of choice – he rang up Charlie Cash.

Charlie seemed pleased to hear from him. ‘Bill, boy. How’s tricks?’

‘All right. Charlie, do you remember talking to me a few weeks ago about currency fiddlers, saying it might be an idea to build a programme round one?’

‘I remember. But there isn’t a hope in hell of your doing that now, Bill.’

‘I know that. I’ve got an idea for a couple of newspaper articles that I might sell. What do you think?’

‘I suppose you might.’ Charlie did not sound encouraging.

‘You said at the time that you could get me an introduction to a couple of them.’

‘That’s right. Westmark and Dawes.’

‘Can you do that?’

‘Nothing easier. But I honestly don’t see what you’ll get out of it. These are tough boys, you know. They play around with other things besides currency fiddling. It was a pretty crummy idea in the first place.’

‘Let me worry about that. If you can arrange for me to see one of them, Charlie, I’ll appreciate it. The name’s Smith, Bill Smith, and just say it’s a business deal, nothing more than that.’

‘What are you up to, Bill?’

‘I told you, I may be able to write a couple of articles.’

‘I know what you told me. It’s no skin off my nose, but I don’t like the sound of it. I’ll give you Westmark’s telephone number, that’s Theo Westmark. It’s an ex-directory number. You can say you got it from me. That’s as far as my name will take you. If you don’t have any luck with Westmark, try Dawes. I’ll give you his number too.’

He took down the numbers. ‘Thank you, Charlie. That’s a great help.’

‘You’re welcome.’ There was curtness, less in the words than in the way they were spoken.

Theo Westmark lived in a penthouse at the top of a small block of flats in Park Lane. There were gilt cupids in the lift, and three of its sides were covered with striped wallpaper. A Chinese girl opened the door of the flat. Her face was a cosmetic mask. The shape of her lips was completely obscured by a thick mass of lipstick formed into a huge, grotesque cupid’s bow. The effect was rather as though a moustache had been scrawled on to the photograph of a film star. The girl wore a long coat embroidered with what seemed to be some sort of shining stones. It was cut away at top and bottom like a morning coat, to reveal her breasts and thighs.

The girl murmured something, and left him. Inside the flat there was a rich, warm smell. Hunter felt as though he were inside a particularly spicy fruit cake. The little hall he stood in was dimly lighted by indirect shades on the walls. They illuminated, more than anything else, several pornographic drawings.

The Chinese girl came back and murmured again. Hunter followed her down a dimly-lighted corridor with more drawings on the walls. He walked through an open door into a huge room flooded with light. This room was furnished with elegant chairs and spindly sofas, all covered with striped brocade. There were several small, finicky, perfectly respectable paintings. China ornaments, shepherdesses and milkmaids, stood on shelves. One wall of the room was a great sheet of glass, a vast window overlooking the Park.

The man who came to meet him was big, fleshy, smiling. His smooth face was tanned and healthy, his air relaxed. He wore a silk shirt of pale lemon yellow, and a dark grey tie with a large ruby pin. His cuff-links were diamonds, his suit a very pale grey.

‘Mr Smith? That is a good anonymous name – yet where will one find a name more probable? You will drink a glass of Madeira with me.’ Westmark poured two glasses of rosy wine from a crystal decanter. ‘This is not ordinary Madeira. It has an interesting history. The wine was bottled in 1803, and for something like a hundred years lay in the cellars of the Earl of Clarnish. The Earl, a man unaware of what constitutes the good life, did not touch it. His son was alive to its virtues, but was also – what shall I say? – upon occasion, indiscreet. I was able to assist him in one or two small matters, and this was part of my reward. A reward not beyond price, perhaps, but one I value more than quite a sizeable cheque.’

The wine was rich and sweet, and held for Hunter a reminiscence of the smell that seemed to pervade the flat. Westmark drank it greedily, and poured another glass. He went on talking about various members of the aristocracy whom he had been able to help, about the ways in which they had repaid him, all with a kind of vague grandiloquence that Hunter found disagreeable.

‘The good life,’ Westmark said meditatively, ‘it is what we all want, is it not, Mr Smith? For the fakir his bed of nails, a strange pleasure that I can never understand. For young Landing, about whom I have been telling you, the thrill of putting more money than he can afford on the fall of a card. For me wine – not any wine, but one like this Madeira that has age and prestige, history in its colour and smell. And women – not any women, but those like my Chinese kitten, who have been trained to obedience. For each of us something different.’

He’s a show off, Hunter thought contemptuously, he likes to talk. Aloud he said, ‘I came to talk about a currency deal.’

Now Westmark’s loquacity disappeared, as a conjurer’s patter is changed for action. ‘How much, and to what country?’

‘It would be quite a lot of money.’

‘How much?’

‘About thirty thousand pounds.’

Westmark showed no surprise. He was looking at his Madeira, turning the glass round and round.

Hunter continued. ‘The country is not important. Somewhere in Europe, Italy, Switzerland, Spain. It doesn’t matter.’

Westmark nodded his large head. ‘That can be arranged.’

‘How?’

‘You pay me the money. A banking account is opened for Mr William Smith in Zurich, say, or Berne, or Genoa, by my agents. They will pay the money into the account to await your collection. My charge is modest, no more than five per cent.’

Hunter shook his head. ‘I don’t want a banking account. It can cause complications.’

‘Very well. Then you go direct to an agent, and he will pay you the money. Is that what you want?’

‘Yes. But I have to trust you. I want some proof that I’m safe in doing that.’

‘What sort of proof do you expect, what proof can I give you? You can speak to anybody who knows me, and ask if Theo Westmark is to be trusted.’ The big man was watching Hunter carefully. ‘I have been trusted not for thousands of pounds, but for a quarter of a million. But trust is not necessary. A property can be bought for you, an account can be opened on which your own agent can draw the very day your cheque here is cashed. If you do not wish to use such an agent, if you want to receive the cash from my own representative, then – you must trust me.’ Westmark’s voice was soft as he said, ‘Mutual trust is the basis of business dealings, Mr Smith. You are not trusting me very far when you do not tell me your name.’

He had no agent abroad whom he could trust. Nor was it a cheque that he would hand over to Westmark, but cash. Once the money was in Westmark’s hands he could in any case cheat Hunter if he wanted to do so. On the other hand, Westmark had no means of knowing that Hunter would not return to England. All this passed through his mind while he said, ‘My name is Smith.’

Westmark shrugged.

‘I trust you. But I ought to add that I have friends here who will look after my interests.’

Westmark said gently, ‘Mutual trust should exclude threats, Mr Smith. Come to me when you are ready. You will always find me here, with my Madeira and my kitten.’

The taste of Madeira was in Hunter’s mouth, and the spicy fruit cake smell strong in his nostrils as he left the flat.