THE PERFECT KILL (17 page)

“How long?” Creasy asked.

“Three or four weeks…Everything will be in place. I’ll have a trading licence and make several small export and import transactions. Stationery will be printed. You will be Vice-President of the company, under the name of Henry Vessage. Your French is fluent enough to pass as a Frenchman of indeterminate origin.”

“I don’t like the name much,” Creasy said.

Corkscrew Two shrugged and the razor smile came again.

“Too bad. I have a genuine French passport in that name, with a genuine history. I’ll need some passport photographs tomorrow, at which time I’ll give you your history.”

“I’m going to need another passport, for a nineteen-year-old male of Palestinian origin. He will be a student of archaeology at the Sorbonne. Ostensibly, a resident of Beirut.”

“It will have to be a forgery,” Corkscrew Two said.

“But a good one?”

“Of course…the best…but expensive…around thirty thousand.”

Creasy nodded and stood up. They did not shake hands.

“I’ll be in touch in three weeks,” Creasy said. “Meanwhile if anything comes up, contact me through Blondie.”

Leonie received the phone call just after two o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. It was George Zammit.

“There’s been an accident,” he said curtly, “with Michael.”

“An accident?”

“Yes, a serious one. He’s in St. Luke’s Hospital, in intensive care.”

“What happened?”

There was a silence at the other end of the phone then George said, “I think you better get over here as soon as possible, you can catch the three o’clock ferry. There’ll be a police car waiting for you at Cirkewwa. It will bring you straight to St. Luke’s. I’ll be waiting. Bring some clothes. You can stay with Stella and me.”

“But what happened?”

“Just be on the three o’clock ferry,” he answered.

She heard a click and the line went dead.

Quickly, she ran to the bedroom and put some clothes into a bag, then looked at her watch. She had plenty of time to catch the ferry. She felt a rising frustration at not being able to get there sooner, at not knowing what had happened.

Just then the phone rang. She ran to the kitchen. It was Laura.

Good, practical Laura.

“I’ve just heard,” she said. “Do you want me to come and pick you up and take you to the ferry?”

“What have you heard?”

“Only that Michael’s had an accident and he’s in St. Luke’s, and that you’re catching the three o’clock ferry.”

“Nothing else? What kind of accident?”

Laura’s voice was calming.

“I don’t know, Leonie. George would not tell me. He just said that there was an accident and you may need some support. Shall I pick you up?”

“Yes please…thank you.”

She reached the hospital just after four o’clock and one minute later lost her temper for the first time in many years. Lost it completely. George Zammit met her at the entrance and told his driver to take her bag on to his house.

“What happened?” she asked immediately.

His face was doleful. “It was an accident,” he said. “He’s still in the operating theatre.”

“What sort of accident?”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry, Leonie, a very serious one…he has a fifty-fifty chance.”

The hospital was Victorian, almost Dickensian in its structure. They were standing in the vast entrance hall.

“What sort of accident?” she insisted.

He shrugged again and said apologetically, “It’s a police matter, Leonie. I’m afraid it’s confidential.”

She looked at him incredulously for several seconds, then her temper snapped.

“Confidential!” she screamed at him. “He’s my son…if not by birth, at least legally…and you talk about confidential.”

He glanced around at the many people criss-crossing the hall, then he took her arm and said, “We have a police office upstairs. Let’s go there and wait for the results of the operation. They tell me it will be about half an hour…I’ll get some tea for you.”

Angrily she shook off his hand.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she snapped. “Not until you tell me what happened.”

“I’ll try to explain as much as I can but only in private…it’s a police matter, Leonie.”

She shook her head. “Not to a mother it isn’t. Either you tell me everything or I’ll go straight into Valetta and find a lawyer.”

He had only met her briefly at his wife’s birthday party and he knew her role. But he saw the determination in her eyes and decided that he might have underestimated her. He took a decision.

“Come upstairs,” he said gently, “and I’ll tell you what happened.”

First he arranged for a cup of tea. They sat in a spartan office while she sipped at it.

“Do you know when Creasy will be back?”

“In about a week.”

“Will he phone?”

“Yes, he phones every two or three days. He phoned last night. Maybe he’ll call again Thursday or Friday.”

“I’ll arrange for a policeman to stay at the house twenty-four hours a day. If Creasy phones, he’ll be told to phone me.” He shook his head morosely. “He’s going to kill me.”

Leonie’s temper had abated but her anxiety remained.

“What happened, George?” she asked.

The policeman sighed, stood up and started pacing the room.

“Do you know what my job is?” he asked.

“Only that you’re a policeman,” she answered. “A senior one. Superintendent, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but more than that. I’m in charge of security for the islands and I’m head of our antiterrorist squad. We have training facilities at Fort St. Elmo. Underground shooting ranges, gymnasiums and so on.”

She took another sip of tea, not tasting it at all and watching him pacing, four paces one way and then four paces the other.

He stopped, looked at her and then asked, “Do you know what Michael has been doing over here every Tuesday and Thursday?”

She shook her head. “I only know that he goes to Fort St. Elmo…that he goes to you.”

George started pacing again.

“Yes,” he answered, “he’s been training with my antiterrorist squad…weapons, unarmed combat and that kind of thing.”

“Why?”

“It was a special request from Creasy.”

“But why?” she asked again.

The policeman said, “I will tell you about the accident, but I cannot answer your last question…only Creasy can answer that”

“So tell me about the accident.”

George Zammit sighed and shook his head.

“There’s always a risk in that kind of training. It has to be real life training. We had another accident about two years ago. It’s not a bad percentage over six years since the squad was formed.”

“Just tell me what happened,” she said, impatience back in her voice.

“It was on the shooting range,” he answered. “Michael and two others were practising with 9mm pistols. One of the others got a jammed magazine. Instead of moving away as he should have done, he tried to unjam it on the range. There was still a round in the breech. He was a new recruit and inexperienced. Michael moved to help him. The round went off and hit Michael in the chest…in or very close to the heart. That happened just after one o’clock. He was in the operating theatre here by one forty.”

He glanced at his watch. “He’s still alive now. If he survives the operation, he’ll be in the intensive care unit in about fifteen or twenty minutes.” He stopped pacing and looked at her, shrugged again and said, “Then it’s a question for God and for waiting.”

They let her stay by his bed in a room in the intensive care unit. She sat in a chair and watched him all night. He was on a respirator, with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. Clear plastic tubes snaked down from inverted bottles into both his wrists. The whole bed was covered by a clear plastic tent. A nurse sat at a desk in the corner, reading a romantic novel. Every few minutes she would glance up at the array of monitor screens in front of her.

Early in the evening, Leonie had asked her what would happen if there was an emergency. The nurse had pointed to a button on the desk and said, “I hit that button and they will be here within seconds.”

During the long night, the nurse had hit the button four times. Each time, Leonie had retreated to a corner, while the doctors worked over Michael. They were swift and efficient, talking to each other in quiet tones.

Early in the morning the surgeon had arrived. Again she retired to a corner, while he read all the data sheets, conferred with the doctors and then examined Michael. After lowering the plastic tent back into place he walked over to Leonie.

He had a naturally pessimistic face. Perhaps surgeons acquire such a look as part of their training, but he had a very faint smile on his lips.

“He’s young and very fit,” he said, “otherwise he’d never have made it through the night…he’s still in very great danger but if he gets through today and tonight, he should recover.”

She felt tears forming in her eyes and her voice quivered slightly as she asked, “Will he be disabled in any way?”

The surgeon shook his head.

“No. If he makes it through the next twenty-four hours, he should go on to make a complete recovery…but it will take many weeks, of course.” He looked at her critically, “Did you manage to sleep at all?”

She shook her head.

“Then you should,” he said. “George Zammit will be here soon with his wife. She can stay with him while you get a few hours’ sleep.”

Again she shook her head.

“I won’t leave him during the next twenty-four hours.”

The surgeon studied her face, shrugged and said something to the nurse in Maltese. She picked up the phone on her desk. To Leonie the surgeon said, “I’ll be out of the operating theatre by noon and I’ll look in on him. Meanwhile, he’ll be well looked after.” He turned, looked at Michael and said, “He’s very lucky. If the bullet had been even three or four millimetres to the right he would have died within minutes.”

He left the room and five minutes later the door opened and a porter wheeled in a narrow bed and placed it alongside the broad bed on which Michael lay. He was young and cheerful.

“Would you like tea or coffee?” he asked Leonie.

“Tea please.”

“Something to eat?”

“No, thank you.”

She drank the tea sitting on the small bed looking down at Michael’s face through the clear plastic. Normally, he looked a couple of years older than his age, but now she decided that he looked very young indeed. Just a small boy. She fancied he looked about the same age as her own son when he had died. Tears formed in her eyes again and she remembered her words to Creasy all those weeks ago.

“He certainly won’t raise any maternal instincts in me.”

George and Stella arrived half an hour later. They both gave her a hug and Stella said, “I understand you’re going to stay here for the next twenty-four hours. I’ll bring you a change of clothes and a dressing gown and some food. I’m afraid the food here is not very good.”

“I’m not at all hungry,” Leonie answered, “but thank you.”

Stella’s voice was very firm. “You must keep your strength up…you must eat.”

George was looking down at Michael from the foot of the bed.

“Did Creasy phone?” Leonie asked him.

“Not yet,” he answered. He turned to look at her. “Leonie, you are sure you can’t remember any address or phone number where we might find him?”

“No. He never mentioned anything.”

George sighed.

“Yes, when that man wants to disappear, he damn well disappears.”

Stella returned at noon with a bag and a wicker basket covered by a cloth.

“How is he?” was her first question.

Leonie had been lying on the bed, but not asleep. She swung her feet to the ground and answered, “No change but the doctor says that’s good.”

Stella put the bag and the basket on the bed and tapped the bag.

“Your clothes and toiletries,” she said.

She pulled the cloth off the basket and Leonie immediately smelt the aroma of fresh cooking.

“Fish pie,” Stella said with a smile. “I took it out of the oven twenty minutes ago. It’s still warm. It’s a Lampuki pie. First of the season.”

Immediately, Leonie felt hungry.

As she ate, Stella chatted on in a low voice.

“George is sorry, but he can’t come up until this evening. The internal enquiry has started and he’s up to his ears in reports and interviews. It’s always like that with a gunshot wound. This enquiry is very complicated, because Michael is not even in the police force and strictly speaking should never have been in Fort St. Elmo.”

“Will George get into trouble?” Leonie asked.

“I don’t think so. He’s very close to the Commissioner, whom you met at my birthday party. So is Creasy.”

“Did Creasy phone yet?” Leonie asked.

Stella shook her head.

“Not yet, but George has a man sleeping right by the phone in your kitchen. We’ll know as soon as he calls.”

Michael survived the twenty-four hours. At eight o’clock in the morning the surgeon examined him, studied the data, conferred with the two young doctors in charge of the unit, and then nodded in satisfaction. He walked over to Leonie and said, “Of course, I cannot be certain. Complications can always set in, but as I said, he’s fit and young…it looks like he’s going to make it.”

She didn’t say anything. She was looking at the young man on the bed and was unable to speak. The surgeon noted that and said gently, “The nurse told me you hardly slept at all in the night. Try to get some sleep now. Later in the afternoon we’ll take him off the respirator and the oxygen and move him to a normal recovery room.”

She found her voice.

“When will he become conscious?”

The surgeon thought for a moment and said, “Probably this evening or during the night. Once he’s in the recovery room, we’ll take him off the drug that’s been keeping him asleep.”

“I want to be there when he wakes up.”

The doctor nodded and smiled. “Yes. I doubt that we’d be able to prise you away with a crowbar.”

Michael opened his eyes at two o’clock the next morning. He focused on the ceiling, then closed his eyes and kept them closed for about half a minute. When he opened them again, he could not see the ceiling, he could only see Leonie’s face above his. His eyes focused on the face and its anxious eyes. He felt her hand holding his and heard her voice.