A Pigeon Among the Cats (15 page)

“We ought to leave tomorrow night if I can fix it,” Owen said smoothly. “Your tour moves on the day after.”

“To Verona,” she answered, deliberately not answering his proposal.

“I'll be back,” he said and was gone before she could protest she had not decided, had not at all made up her mind.

Owen had left his Venice contact at a cafe with a bar open to the street and chairs and tables in a small enclosure of clipped oleander bushes of the kind that divided the two sides of the autostrada behind strong metal barriers. It was most suitably secluded from passers-by, while the hum of their voices and the noise of traffic in the road made low-voiced conversation safe from overhearing.

“Any luck?” Owen asked.

“Fair enough, Mr. Strong. Sorry — Mr. Culver.”

Owen frowned. When had he slipped up? This failed photographer had always known him as Culver. That was the name he'd used at the garage in Florence where he'd abandoned the long black car and thought, when he hired the yellow job, that they would arrange for the other to be sent back to Nice, complete with its log book and hire papers.

“Culver,” he said, putting a little menace into his voice. “Culver, Tito, and don't get confused. O.K.?”

“O.K.” said the photographer, swallowing hard, his eyes flickering.

“You'll bring this new car over here tomorrow morning, hired in the name of Culver, papers all correct. And you'll take the other back to Florence. Here are the papers and the key. You'll pay for it in cash, that I'll give you tomorrow when you bring me the new key and papers, O.K.?”

“O.K.” repeated the other, breathing more easily.

Owen explained a few more details of his plans for the future, after which the two men left the shelter of the oleander hedge. Tito moved off to the quayside to take a vaporetto back to Venice, while Owen, a few minutes later, sauntered away towards the Lido beach.

Earlier that day he had rung up the tour hotel to book a room for two nights and having secured it had packed his suitcase and travelled across the water with it. He had just left the case in his new quarters when he caught sight of Gwen in the garden.

Walking out now to the beach he checked his identity and new address with the attendant at the gate and walked down to the sand, looking about him for familiar faces.

Paper currency or hard cash, that was what he needed, what he must have within the next twelve hours, if his plans were to work out as he intended. But his credit was low at the moment, thanks to that article in the Rome paper about the car he'd hired in Nice from that hitherto reliable friend, Bertrand. A shame, because Bertrand had tempted him to take the thing, a real beauty incidentally, at a very low rental, provided he drove it successfully to its next destination in Naples for private export to Tangier. Which he had done, but Naples wouldn't take delivery, so back to Rome, where he'd read the article and Rollo had not been able to help him unload the thing. So on to Florence and a bit of luck in the shape of a thunderstorm and a very carefully, very slightly bent garage. But expensive. Too damned expensive.

He moved at a leisurely walk along the soft sand, searching in his practised way without attracting any attention to himself. At one point he saw in the distance the tall figure of Mrs. Lawler going down towards the sea and two figures among the waves beckoning to her.

Mrs. Lawler? No. He could engage her sympathy, ask for advice, even help, but never for money. He knew that sort. On to the least hint of a touch, she'd freeze. Very sorry, quite impossible. No, don't apologise, we'll just forget it. Surely the British Consul … A pain in the neck, the old bitch. All old bitches.

He saw a waving hand and with an answering wave moved towards it. The medical pair, Gwen called them. What were the names? Yes, fat jolly Mrs. Franks and her niece, starchy Miss Hurry.

He sank on to the sand beside the stout one, because she had pulled her deck chair into the shade of the hut. Miss Hurry, in a neat costume — no bikini for her, thank you very much — had stretched her very attractive body in the sun: she turned a lazy head as Owen joined them and rolled over on to her back. All women are the same, he thought. Must have their tits admired. He smiled at her to show his admiration. Mrs. Franks giggled.

“Any more of you on the beach?” he asked. “I came down on the off chance.”

“Of seeing Gwen Chilton, I suppose?” said Mrs. Franks, archly. “She's not here.”

“Oh well,” he said carelessly. “But you two are.”

“And the schoolmarms, as we call them. Out there in the sea.”

“So they are.”

“And the Bankses.”

“Really?”

“Not Penny. The daughter, you know. But several of us saw her on the Square at St. Mark's this morning. With a long-haired boy.”

“And a guitar,” Miss Hurry added.

Owen expressed surprise.

“Yes. We didn't expect it. She was supposed to have gone back home when she left hospital.”

“To convalesce,” Miss Hurry again filled out her aunt's remark.

“Oh yes,” Owen said. “Wasn't she whisked off in an ambulance as an emergency? I heard a rumour she'd been in trouble over a drug, but I didn't believe it.”

“She'd be capable of any vice,” Miss Hurry said severely.

“Oh, come now!” He guessed from their manner, the pair of them, some mystery about the case of Miss Banks.

Promising — perhaps. He went on, “Gwen told me it was an acute appendix. Was that just another rumour?”

“You could call it that,” Mrs. Franks said slowly.

“Aunt! Careful!”

The warning was unmistakable.

Owen said seriously, “Of course you two ladies are both medicos, hospital nurses, I believe. Am I right? Well, then, it would be strange if Miss Banks herself or her mother had not asked one of other of you when she began to feel ill. Herself even, before her mother.”

Mrs. Franks said, “Her mother would be the last person she was likely to talk to.”

“She is a very wild, unprincipled girl, Mr. Strong,” Miss Hurry told him. She was sitting up now, showing every reluctance to taking this conversation further.

“My fault, nurse,” Owen said. “I do know that, at least. I was just curious. About the possibility of it being a drug case. So appallingly common these days. I won't ask any more questions. Obviously the poor girl was ill and she appealed to you or your aunt for help, knowing she would get it and your discretion, too.”

“I wasn't going to help her,” Miss Hurry said frankly. “Except to tell her she'd have to go into hospital.”

“I was sorry for her and I don't mind saying so,” the older woman said in spite of her niece's effort to stop her. “You don't have forty years' experience as a fully qualified midwife, as I did, without learning that a bit of sympathy and tolerance don't do anyone in this world any harm and sometimes prevents a tragedy.”

Miss Hurry turned back on to her face, ashamed of her aunt's garrulous give-away. But Mr. Strong hardly seemed to have heard it. He was already talking about the view and the little sailing boats moving about in the light breeze beyond the bathers. He said a few words about two of the three older women as they left the sea and walked back up the beach. He noticed Mr. Banks join them and Mrs. Lawler turn to swim or wade farther out.

Owen stayed talking to the nurses for nearly half an hour after he had coaxed that potential gold nugget from the fat old midwife.

So now he knew for sure — well, pretty nearly for sure — why Penny had been rushed off to hospital. An abortion, of course, begun illegally and inexpertly, as so often in former times in England. Odd no one seemed to have thought of the possibility except these two professionals. They were all so conditioned to drugs being the natural feature of the hippy complex. Freak clothes, long hair, bad manners, sullen temper, violent response to criticism, they'd seen it all displayed by Penelope Banks, the silly twit. So they must pin on crime as well. Even he, himself, had been ready to believe she'd been shipped off inside, not to hospital at all.

While he continued to chat with Mrs. Franks his busy mind darted from one place to another. A fat lot of good to move into the tour hotel; to settle with Gwen to leave for Geneva the following night; to order Tito to rustle up a car and have it in the park ready for the ferry not later than tomorrow afternoon and then find he hadn't enough dough to settle with the poor chap. Not to speak of the journey, petrol, food, servicing, and again petrol. So that interview with Dad Banks, that crucial interview, must be arranged
and must succeed
, by nightfall that day, no later.

Even nightfall might be too late if it meant clearing with a bank … So …

“I can see Mrs. Lawler in the sea and her friends walking back,” he said, pointing to where she and Mr. Banks still wallowed in the waves, “But I don't see Gwen. No, you said she hadn't come.”

“That's right.”

“And there's Mr. Banks, isn't it? But not Mrs. B.”

“She doesn't bathe,” Miss Hurry said. “They were talking about it at lunch. Penny hadn't turned up for lunch. I think she stayed in Venice with the boy-friend. Mr. Banks wanted a swim, so he said he'd come down. I don't think she ever goes in.”

“No, she doesn't,” Mrs. Franks added. “She told me she never goes in, her circulation won't stand it.”

“You mean she gets too cold?”

“I suppose so. It's a common excuse for not learning to swim, isn't it?”

“I wouldn't know,” Owen told her, losing patience.

He watched Mr. Banks come back up the beach, he watched Mrs. Lawler swim out a fair distance and then come in. He waited until he saw Rose Lawler and her friends, changed into their summer dresses, so correct so dull, go past behind the huts towards the gate into the road. Then he said goodbye to the nurses and moved away.

He moved slowly, searching among the nearby huts for his marked quarry. At first he thought the nurses had let him down, but presently he caught sight of Mrs. Banks, or rather of her knitting, borne before her as she emerged from the fourth of the hotel's reserved huts. He stopped to help her out over the step and as he did so glanced inside. A pile of masculine clothes lay at one side of a bench running round three sides of the little building, with hooks in the walls above the bench.

“I thought I saw Mr. Banks beginning to walk up from the sea,” he said, guiding her to a long chair on the sand.

“I wouldn't wonder,” she answered. She gave a quick glance seaward before unrolling her knitting. Owen, who had just had a promising idea, went on. “I came along with that intention myself, but they wouldn't hire me a towel at the gate.”

“They don't,” Mrs. Banks said. “Nor costumes.”

“Oh, I've got trunks with me,” he explained, “I just thought I need not bother to carry a towel down and take it back wet.”

She did not answer, knitting steadily.

“You don't mind if I change in your hut?” he asked.

“Of course not. All these five belong to the hotel, I think. Mrs. Lawler and her friends were here but they've gone back. Reg decided to have a second dip. He came up to tell me.”

Owen went in to the hut and came out very soon, leaving his own clothes on the bench at a little distance from those of Mr. Banks.

“I've just been talking to Mrs. Franks and Miss Hurry,” he said. “They thought I might find you and Mr. Banks. But not Penny.”

“Not —
what
?”

“They said Penny must have stayed over in Venice with the boy-friend, instead of coming back to lunch.”

Put like that, with a suggestion of something not quite discreet about Penny's behaviour set Mrs. Banks to rolling up the knitting and struggling to her feet.

“I think I'll go and talk to them,” she said.

When she had gone Owen gave his short, silent laugh as he walked briskly to the sea. He pushed his way through the first wave, dived neatly through the next and came up, as he intended, about ten yards from Mr. Banks. He flung back his rather thin but shortish hair and said heartily, “Hullo, there!”

“Hullo!” said Mr. Banks. He had been too far off and much too preoccupied with his bathing to notice Strong's arrival, nor was he particularly pleased to see the fellow, whom he still vaguely distrusted.

“Marvellous, isn't it?” Owen said, allowing himself to sink on to his back so that he could float while looking about him. But the water was too shallow and the third wave broke over him so that he emerged spluttering and laughing, but inwardly raging. Mr. Banks, he saw, had begun to move towards the shore.

It looked as if he had done this deliberately as an avoiding action. So much the worse for him if he was going to make the touch more difficult, Owen promised himself. But he decided not to cut short his own bathe. Banks did not know yet that they were sharing the same hut, but he would find that out from his wife if she had gone back there from her visit to the two nurses.

He watched Mr. Banks' progress to the beach, stepping high, pushed forcibly forward when a wave struck him in the back, but making steady progress. His speed increased when he reached the sand. It became difficult to distinguish him from the crowd of beach walkers, games players, child minders and so on. But persevering Owen was able to pick out his intended victim again as soon as he reached the prostrate forms of the sunbathers near the huts. Was that Mrs. Banks in the long chair where he had him self ensconced her? Too far away to be certain. Too far away to see if any of the figures near that hut was knitting. Too far away, but too soon to go out himself. Give Banks time to dress first.

Lazily Owen waded further off-shore. He was not a strong swimmer, nor an elegant one. He could put on a show of the modern crawl for a few strokes at a time, but he soon reverted to the simple froglike breast stroke he had learned as a boy. Nevertheless he managed, part swimming, part walking, to reach the official limit of the swimming area and stood up, the water now shoulder high, to look first at the beach where he could no longer distinguish one hut from another and then out to sea.