A Long Time Dead (30 page)

‘I may be,' Paniatowski said. ‘But only if you can give it a complete re-spray for me.'

The mechanic grinned. ‘That's no problem at all. I'm very good with my spraying. People bring their cars from miles away to have them sprayed by me.'

‘I'm sure you're the Leonardo da Vinci of the paint spraygun,' Paniatowski said.

‘Pardon?'

‘But it's speed, not beauty, that I'm interested in. I'll want it done by six o'clock tonight.

‘Now that
is
a problem,' the mechanic admitted. ‘I've got a lot of work on at the moment, you see.'

‘It has to be by six o'clock,' Paniatowski said firmly. ‘It's no good to me if it isn't done by then.'

‘Well …'

Hating herself for doing it, Paniatowski put her hands on her hips and favoured him with her sexiest smile.

‘I know it's a big job,' she said, ‘but then you're a big man and I'm sure you can handle it.'

The mechanic, who – in point of fact – wasn't that big at all, melted almost immediately.

‘Like I told you, it'll mean putting other jobs off,' he'd said, ‘but if you say it's important—'

‘It's
very
important!'

‘—then I can probably just about do it in time.'

‘Wonderful,' Paniatowski said, giving him another flash of that sensual promise which would never be his to enjoy.

‘What colour would you like it?' the mechanic asked. ‘Red, like it is now? Or would you prefer a nice electric blue?'

‘Neither of those,' Paniatowski told him. ‘I'd like it to be South Western Electricity Board yellow.'

‘That's not a very attractive colour, you know,' the mechanic said doubtfully.

‘Perhaps you're right about that—'

‘I've got charts I could show you—'

‘—but it's the colour I want.'

‘Thing is, you'll probably be having people mistaking you
for
the electricity board,' the mechanic pointed out.

‘Perfect!'

‘Perfect?'

‘That's what I said, and that's what I meant. And just to complete the illusion, I'd appreciate it if you'd paint the electricity company's name on the sides of the van.'

D
arkness had already fallen over Haverton Camp, but under the glare of several powerful searchlights, the work of completely dismantling ‘Hoover City' continued unabated.

There was an almost unseemly haste about it, Woodend thought, as he made his way towards the trailer of the man whose name he could no longer pronounce without putting mental inverted commas around it.

By the following afternoon – at the very latest – everything belonging to the Americans would be gone. The trailers and their generators, the jeeps and the trucks, would all be on their way back to the United States, and the only evidence they had ever been at Haverton Camp would be a few indentations in the ground, and the odd piece of rubbish which the clean-up team had somehow missed. And then, within another day or two more, the bulldozers from New Elizabethan Properties would arrive and plough up the earth with callous indifference to whatever life it had had before.

Case closed! Crime scene gone!

Woodend knocked on the trailer door, and Grant opened it.

‘Oh, hi!' the Special Agent said, without much warmth. ‘What can I do for you, Chief Inspector?'

‘Charlie,' Woodend corrected him. ‘Or you can even call me “Chuck”, if you're happier with that.'

‘What can I do for you,
Charlie
?' Grant said.

‘There's a tradition that us English bobbies like to maintain,' Woodend told him. ‘When we have a result, we like to get together over a few drinks and sort of wind down.'

Grant frowned. ‘As you can see for yourself, Charlie, I'm really rather busy and—'

‘Too busy to give me half an hour of your time?' Woodend asked, sounding surprised – and not a little hurt. ‘Too busy to have a quick drink with one of your colleagues? I thought that in the Agency they taught you to respect the traditions of the country in which you're operating.'

‘In the
what
?' Grant asked.

‘Sorry, did I say the
Agency
?' Woodend apologized. ‘What I meant to say was the
Bureau
! So what do you think? Shall we have a drink together, and chew over the fat?'

‘I … er … I'm afraid that I don't have any kind of alcohol in the trailer,' Grant said.

‘No problem there, my old mate,' Woodend replied, reaching into his pocket and producing a square bottle. ‘I've brought my own booze with me. An' look, Ed, in your honour I made sure that it was the finest Kentucky bourbon. Now you wouldn't want to turn that down, would you? It'd be a bit like insultin' the Stars an' Stripes, don't you think?'

Grant sighed, and gave in to the inevitable.

‘But we'll have keep it strictly to the half hour limit,' he said. ‘I can't possibly spare any more time than that.'

‘Fine,' Woodend agreed. ‘Half an hour should be all I need.'

Monika Paniatowski parked Woodend's Wolseley on the garage forecourt, and walked around the side of the building, towards the repair shop.

The van was standing just inside the door. It was no longer the Post Office red which it had been only a few hours earlier. Now it was a bright yellow colour, and the words ‘South Eastern Electricity Board' had been sprayed on both its sides and bonnet.

It had been a rush job, Paniatowski thought, and it showed. Once she was close to it, she could see imperfections almost too numerous to count. But in the dark – and from a distance – it would probably pass muster.

‘Well, what do you think?' the mechanic asked.

‘Lovely,' Paniatowski said.

‘It's not dry to the touch yet.'

‘That doesn't matter. I'm not a cat.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘I don't have any intention of rubbing my body all over it.'

The mechanic blinked several times, as if he'd just been blessed with a vision of Paniatowski's completely naked body covered in the South West Electricity Board yellow paint.

‘And you're sure painting the van in the electricity board's colours is legal?' he asked.

Was it? Paniatowski wondered.

Probably.

If you had the permission of the company involved.

Which she and Woodend didn't!

‘I'm a detective police sergeant,' she said, as if that answered his question. ‘You know that for a fact, because I showed you my warrant card when I wrote out the cheque.'

‘That's true,' the mechanic agreed. He hesitated for a moment. ‘I was wondering …'

‘Yes?'

‘There's a dance in Exeter tomorrow night, and I was … well, I got to thinking that if you're still around …'

‘I'd love to,' Paniatowski said.

‘You would?'

‘But my husband's always been an awfully jealous kind of man, and ever since he's taken up heavyweight boxing, he seems to have no control of his temper at all.'

‘You didn't say you were married,' the mechanic grumbled.

‘Didn't I?' Paniatowski asked. ‘It must have slipped my mind. But I'll tell you what – if you're prepared to take the risk of getting on the wrong side of the Bone-Crusher, then so am I.'

‘The Bone-Crusher?' the mechanic repeated.

‘That's my husband's nickname,' Paniatowski said. ‘Can't imagine where he got it from, but everybody calls him that – even the people who duck down alleys and hide behind cars when they see him coming. Anyway, as I was saying, if you're willing to take the risk—'

‘I'm sorry, I've just remembered that I'm doing something else tomorrow night,' the mechanic said hastily.

That was the trouble with men, Paniatowski told herself, as she drove the van out of the repair shop. They wanted you – but they didn't want the pain that having you might involve.

She laughed. She had quite enjoyed her amusing little interchange with the mechanic, she thought.

Which was just as well, because there wouldn't be a great deal to laugh at from now on. In fact, if Woodend was right, everything was just about to turn very nasty indeed.

‘Have you ever heard of an English writer called E. M. Forster?' Woodend asked Grant, when the drinks had been poured, and they were sitting, facing each other, across the table.

‘Sure,' Grant agreed. ‘I studied him at college. He was worth half a credit, if I remember correctly. What about him?'

‘He once wrote, “If I had to choose between betrayin' my country and betrayin' my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country”,' Woodend told him.

‘I'm not sure I could subscribe to that idea at all,' Grant said.

‘No, I suspect you couldn't,' Woodend agreed. ‘I don't think Abe Birnbaum could, either, although – without havin' any real idea of what was goin' on – that's exactly what he did.'

‘
Birnbaum
betrayed his country?'

‘In a manner of speakin'. What Birnbaum actually did was to inadvertently put a spanner in the works of an operation run by an agency
representin
' his country,' Woodend explained. ‘Tell me, Ed, my old mate, what's the secret of your eternal youth?'

‘Say again?'

‘Accordin' to FBI records, you're fifty-seven years old, but you don't look a day over thirty.'

‘What is this?' Grant demanded.

‘Also accordin' to FBI records, the last assignment you had before this one was cleanin' out the toilets in the Department of Justice,' Woodend continued. ‘So this particular job is a real promotion for you, isn't it?'

‘You've got your facts wrong!' Grant protested.

‘I don't think so,' Woodend said. ‘My source is right there in the FBI payroll department.'

‘You misunderstand me,' Grant said, shifting his ground. ‘FBI agents will often use an alias when they're out on assignment.'

‘Bollocks!' Woodend said mildly. ‘FBI agents are just ordinary bobbies with guns an' an unnatural fear of anybody mildly liberal. Now the CIA's an entirely different matter.'

‘You think I'm CIA?'

‘I've absolutely no doubt about it.'

‘And could you explain to me how the Company would get itself involved in a criminal investigation?'

‘Ah, that's an easy one,' Woodend said. ‘It's
not
involved in a criminal investigation, because there hasn't actually been any crime – at least, not at Haverton Camp.'

‘This is crazy talk,' Grant told him.

‘Let me tell you what I've pieced together, an' then you can tell me where I've gone wrong,' Woodend continued, unperturbed. ‘Your government wanted the Right Honourable Douglas Coutes, MP, to do somethin' for it. I don't what that
somethin
' was, but the details don't really matter. Anyway, whatever it was, Coutes absolutely refused to play along. So somebody – possibly in the State Department, but more likely in the CIA – decided that what you really needed to do was to get some leverage on him.'

‘The CIA would never—' Coutes began.

‘Never involve itself in dirty tricks?' Woodend interrupted. ‘We're talkin' here about an organization that planned to kill Fidel Castro, by either givin' him an explodin' cigar or a fatal disease. In comparison to that, what the Company's done to Douglas Coutes is no more than a harmless jape.'

‘Castro's a Commie,' Grant said. ‘The Company would never think of using dirty tricks against a British politician. Britain is our ally!'

‘But even allies need to be strong-armed now an' again, if only for their own good,' Woodend countered. ‘Would you like me to go on, or should I just write down everythin' I know an' post it to the Prime Minister?'

‘I suppose I should hear the rest of the story, if only so I can point out how deluded you've been,' Grant said.

‘You started out by examin' Coutes's recent history, but you didn't have much luck there. It's true that the man has the morals of a tom-cat – which looked promisin' at first – but the problem is, he doesn't care who knows it. How can you shame a man who abandons his mistress because she's the wrong side of thirty and then – totally indifferent to how much pain an' sufferin' it might cause her – employs her as a servant?'

‘It would ruin an American politician,' Grant said.

‘But not a British one,' Woodend pointed out. ‘John Profumo, who used to be our Minister for War, didn't lose his job because he was consortin' with prostitutes – he lost it because he
lied to Parliament
about consortin' with prostitutes. An' Coutes isn't even married, so nobody in the government would give a hang about what he does in his private life.'

‘You're so decadent over here,' Grant said in disgust.

‘Now you
are
talkin' like an FBI agent,' Woodend told him, ‘but I still don't believe you are one. Anyway, after you failed to turn up any sex scandal you could use, you probably turned your attention to Coutes's financial dealin's. But you didn't find anythin' there, either. Coutes isn't really interested in money. Never has been. I realized myself, over twenty years ago, that
power
is his drug – an' not power as a means of gettin' somethin' else, but power for its own sake. So, havin' failed on two fronts to get the goods on him, what were you to do next?'

‘You tell me,' Grant said.

‘You started diggin' back even deeper into his past. An' it was probably at that point that some bright spark in Langley came across the disappearance of Robert Kineally. That was a truly wonderful discovery, wasn't it? Because Robert just happened to be the brother of Senator Kineally. An' Senator Kineally, without him havin' any real idea of what was goin' on, could be manipulated into lendin' all of his considerable political weight to your scheme.'