Part 10 (1/2)

'Not right now.'

'Sensible man. This job offers too many temptations. There's one bar round at the back, and two more over the Vegetable Market - both open all night.' He pointed a big finger at Rawcliff, the back of his hand mottled with liver-spots. 'One drink on this job and you're out. And there's no b.l.o.o.d.y union to protect you. Get my meaning?'

'I've got a fair idea what the set-up is.'

Grant's face took on an expression that was both foxy and brutish. 'So you were the one who busted our CO's ankle? Nearly broke the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's neck too, you did. Lucky you didn't kill him. Anything to say for yourself?'

'Self-defence.'

Grant grinned. 'That's what they all say, isn't it? But you want to look out for Mr Peters - he'll try and get even with you when this little caper's over.' He ran a hand through his crisp, greying hair. 'You just another b.u.m pilot hoping to make your fortune?'

'That's about it.'

Grant took a thermos flask off a ledge and poured the cap full of black coffee. He pa.s.sed it across. 'Got your pa.s.sport?'

Rawcliff nodded. He sipped the coffee, which was just cool enough to drink.

Grant shook himself and stood up. 'That's all the stuff you've got?' He nodded at the flight-bag Rawcliff was carrying. 'Good! I like a man who travels light.'

'Where are we going?'

'Lydd, Kent.' 'Jim Ritchie's outfit? Come Fly with Me? A Beachcraft Duke with seats for four pa.s.sengers?'

'Good - you're on the ball. But don't make the mistake of asking too many questions. Careless talk costs lives. Let's go.' Grant pulled on a donkey-jacket over his suit and led the way across the crowded, covered hall.

'Want to buy any flowers for your loved ones?' he added, with a nasty laugh, then took Rawcliff by the arm. 'I jest, old bean! But seriously. Take it from me, there are reasons for everything - so keep your eyes front and your mouth shut. If you've ever been in the Services you'll know how it is - you're told just enough, and no more. Bad to know too much.'

They pa.s.sed through the automatic doors in the grey of the morning. Grant stopped next to a dark-blue Ford transit van with gilt lettering on the side: GUY HAMILTON GRANT, FINEST EXOTIC HOUSEPLANTS. Twenty-four-hour Delivery - Anywhere in the World. There followed a clutch of telephone numbers and a questionable looking coat-of-arms.

'Your outfit, Major?'

'One has to live, old bean. Hop in.'

'What's in the back?' Rawcliff said, when he was in the pa.s.senger seat next to Grant.

'Codiaeum Variegatum and Begonia Elatior Hybrid - at least that's what's entered on the Customs! papers. For simple folk like you and me, read ”exotic houseplants which grow wild in Thailand and are cultivated by yours truly near Basingstoke”.'

'And bound for?'

Grant had started the engine. 'A little island in the Med: Cyprus. Landing at Paris and Athens to refuel.'

The back of the van was stacked with them - stiff cardboard boxes, about two-foot square and three-foot long, with labels marked FRAGILE - HANDLE WITH CARE, in English, French and Greek.

'Funny sort of stuff to be exporting to Cyprus,' Rawcliff said, pretending to relax as they drew into the one-way system at the end of Vauxhall Bridge. 'Why not send them retsina and olive-oil?'

'It's too early for jokes, Rawcliff. Spare me the wit until we're airborne.'

He turned under the sign towards the M20. There was still almost no traffic: just the occasional snorting juggernaut heading for the coast.

'You do this run often, Major?'

'Often enough. Customs people know my face, if that's what you mean. Why don't you put your head down and have a kip? I'll wake you in good time.'

Tweleve At 8.15 that same morning Room Service rolled the trolley down to Suite 12: half a grapefruit, lightly boiled egg, French rolls and b.u.t.ter. As they knocked, the radio-alarm sounded from within: a breezy round-up of sport andtraffic news, followed by an advertising jingle. But no answer to the door.

They rolled the trolley back to the lifts and waited until 8.30, when the desk clerk rang up to the suite. Again, no answer.

At 8.45 the floor manager was informed, and he arrived at the suite with a pa.s.s-key. Through the door he could hear the rushed words of a newscaster - oil prices up, further price increases on the way, three women executed in Iran. The manager knocked, knocked again, then called out. 'Mr Newby? Mr Newby - your breakfast and your alarm call!'

He waited thirty seconds, then opened the door. The room was tidy, except for an empty gla.s.s and a couple of gold-tipped cheroot stumps in an ashtray. He moved cautiously into the bedroom. Curtains undrawn, bed not slept in, although a set of men's clothes was folded over a chair.

The floor manager looked into the bathroom. He did not look long, but went out and summoned the hotel security officer.

Newby's plump white body lay in the bath; the cold water reached just above his black hairy arm-pits. His neck was twisted at an abrupt angle, as though he were trying to reach something under his left knee. The only trace of a struggle was the sc.u.m of soap embedded under the finger-nails of one hand, and in the small lump of jasmin-scented Roger Gallet soap floating in a melting mist under the green water.

Detective Superintendent Muncaster did not hear about the murder until just before lunch. He was back on duty at his ordinary desk, dealing with some inquiries involving the disappearance of a Post Office official who had last been seen taking his dog for a walk in the New Forest. The dog was now being cared for by the RSPCA.

Several of Muncaster's colleagues remarked afterwards that they had never seen the old fellow looking so low. He had seemed close to tears.

The Run-Up.

One.

The Hotel Lord Byron was a three-storey stone building which maintained a courtly charm behind its flaking facade. The vestibule, beyond a faded red-striped awning, had once been a watering-hole for the poorer cla.s.s of tourist or itinerant scholar visiting the ruins of Kition and the mosque of Hala Sultan. But the Turkish invasion of 1974 had put an end to all that.

The front of the hotel was deserted except for two men at a table behind the awning over the terrace, drinking thimbles of muddy black coffee. One was Rawcliff. He sat rumpled, sore-eyed, barely refreshed by the tepid trickle from the shower in his room, his body still stiff after nearly ten hours'

flying, including stopovers, in Ritchie's little Beachcraft Duke.

Since dawn that morning, on the misty airfield at Lydd, the journey had been smooth and uneventful - even suspiciously so. Ritchie was on familiar terms with the Lydd Customs officials, and Grant's eccentric cargo had been cleared with the minimum of formalities, before the two-hour flight to Paris.

But at Le Bourget there had been a delay, during which Ritchie consulted with some plain clothes men, as well as with French Customs, while Rawcliff andGrant were hustled off to eat a sc.r.a.ppy breakfast in the transit lounge, When they took off again, on the long leg down to Athens, Rawcliff saw that there were now only half a dozen boxes in the back, slightly larger than the others, though made of the same cardboard and printed with the same words, in three languages. Neither Grant nor Ritchie volunteered an explanation, and Rawcliff, heeding Grant's advice, decided not to press for one.

They had been cleared in transit through Athens, where they had stopped only to refuel, and had landed in mid-afternoon at the small airport at Nicosia, which, until the recent flare-up between the Turks and Greeks, had been used exclusively by diplomats and members of the UN Peace-Keeping Force. Civilian traffic had used Larnaca, in the south-east of the island; but following the latest troubles, Larnaca's International Airport had been abandoned, and the polyglot Force, mocked and embattled, their morale sapped by obstruction and frustration, had finally hauled down their pale blue flag and departed, in a state of high dudgeon and low farce, leaving the island's two ethnic groups, and their various armed militias, glaring at each other across what was still prettily called the 'Green Line' - a vague barrier that ran through the centre of Nicosia, fencing off the eastern part of the island, and which pa.s.sed twelve miles north of Larnaca.

When the Beachcraft landed at Nicosia, Customs had again been prompt, almost servile: and Rawcliff guessed that their new cargo was not unexpected. The six boxes had been loaded on to a pick-up truck and driven down to Larnaca by Grant, while Ritchie and Rawcliff had followed in a Suzuki jeep.

Sensing that Ritchie might be more amenable to giving information, Rawcliff had asked half-jokingly what the h.e.l.l they were doing importing exotic house-plants into Cyprus while engaged on a mercy-mission? And Ritchie had said something about a new-fangled aerial guidance-system 'Computer stuff - right above my head, I'm afraid' although Rawcliff suspected that Ritchie knew more than he was letting on. Rawcliff was becoming used to having nothing explained: he would just have to use his wits, to deduce and guess, picking up the odd hint or sc.r.a.p of information as he went along.

At Larnaca he learnt that the full complement of the outfit appeared to be eight. This included the nurse, Jo; an American called Matt Nugent-Ross, who was apparently some sort of scientist and electronics expert; Mason's original contact, the former RAF pilot, Oswald Thurgood; and the Rhodesian mercenary called Sammy Ryderbeit. It was the latter who was now causing some racket upstairs, being in the throes of what sounded like erotically-tainted delirium tremens. Hardly a good portent for a.pilot about to embark on a difficult, possibly dangerous mission.

Apart from Peters, who was in overall command, with Grant as Number Two - or so the man had claimed - the others . fell into two categories. These seemed to imply social status rather than precise rank. While Peters, Grant, Ritchie, the American and Jo were staying at the town's only first-cla.s.s hotel, the Sun Hall, the other three - Thurgood, Ryderbeit and Rawcliff - had been booked into this less salubrious establishment, the Lord Byron. The distinction was clearly-deliberate, since both these hotels had rooms vacant; while most of the other hotels in town were closed.

Rawcliff's companion at the table in the Lord Byron vestibule was ex-Flight-Lieutenant Oswald Thurgood. A tall, awkward-looking man with a stiff oblong face, clipped moustache and oily hair sc.r.a.ped back from his forehead, he had pale bulging eyes that suggested to Rawcliff a possible thyroid condition. The lower half of the man's face was raw with 'barber's rash'. He glanced down, restlessly round the terrace and through the door to the restaurant at the back where vats of tepid mutton-fat simmered over charcoalgrates. The hotel smelt of ripe green peppers and Turkish tobacco and the bitter-sweet scent of ouzo; the air heavy, full of the murmur of flies, the howl of traffic from the street.

'Taki!' Thurgood shouted.