robbery.'
'I don't think so,' Tweed objected. 'And I've been to see a leading diamond merchant in Hatton Garden I know. I asked him what a parcel of diamonds worth a hundred thousand back in 1944 would be worth today. I got a shock.' He paused, looked round. 'Any estimates? No? My contact could only make a rough guess. Something in the region of one million pounds sterling.'
There was a stunned silence in his office. Nield screwed up his eyes, thinking hard. Paula crossed her legs, tapped her pen against her teeth, then reacted.
'So we may be looking for something – or someone -showing signs of great wealth? What about Barrymore and Quarme Manor?'
Tweed shook his head. 'He bought it years ago. Probably for a song.'
'He has a Daimler,' Paula persisted.
'An old job,' Nield interjected. 'Looks glitzy but wouldn't fetch all that much. A cool million? The only thing I've seen in the area is that modern little estate of de luxe bungalows near Kearns' place.. .'
'We're looking for something pointing to one of those three men we've listened to on the tape,' Paula objected.
Tweed was hardly listening. 'That business of where they landed on Siros. And the missing body. The priest told Newman they had asked the commander of the German occupation troops about Andreas. None of his patrols knew a thing. And Geiger was convinced they were telling the truth. So who else on the island could have spirited away the body? There's only one answer.'
'Which is?' Paula asked.
'It had to be some of the Greek Resistance people. But which lot? And why on earth would they do that? Now our next job is to pay a visit to Guy Seton-Charles. You come with me, Paula.'
'And who might he be?' she enquired.
'A name in Partridge's notebook. A professor of Greek Studies at Bristol University. The intriguing fact is he was based in the Antikhana Building at the time of Ionides' murder.'
'How could he help?' Paula persisted. 'After all this time?'
That's what I want to find out.' Tweed swung in his chair to face Nield. 'You come with us to Bristol in a separate car – then later return to Exmoor to provide Butler with back-up. I want those three men to be aware of your presence. It will put pressure on them, may force one of them to make a wrong move.'
'You've used that tactic before,' Monica commented. 'And it worked. You're doing the same thing with this Seton-Charles, aren't you?'
'Partridge found out something,' Tweed remarked sombrely. 'I am certain he was murdered because he approached the wrong man. Which man?'
The timing was better than Tweed could have hoped for. He was approaching Professor Seton-Charles' room when the door opened and a brunette in her early twenties rushed out. She was in such a rush she almost collided with Paula who was walking alongside Tweed. The door automatically closed behind her on spring-loaded hinges. Very slim, her intelligent face flushed, she stopped abruptly, clutching a green folder.
'I'm dreadfully sorry. I could have knocked you down.' 'I'm pretty sturdy…' Paula began, and smiled.
'You look really upset,' Tweed said quickly. 'Professor in a bad mood?'
The sarcastic bastard! I'm not attending any more classes he takes
…' The girl flushed again. 'Oh, Lord, I'm sorry. Are you friends of his…'
'Hardly.' Tweed acted on instinct. 'We've come to investigate him. Special Branch. What's the matter with him?' he asked persuasively.
'Everything! He's a bloody Trotskyite. Tries to brainwash us.. ,' She paused. 'God, I'm saying all the wrong things.'
'Don't worry, we won't quote you.' He squeezed her arm. 'Do me a favour. We were never here. Agreed?'
'My pleasure. I'd better push off now.' She turned back for a last word. 'And I can keep my mouth shut. Give him hell.'
Tweed waited until she had disappeared round a corner at the end of the corridor. Then he knocked on the door which carried a name in gilt lettering. Prof. Guy Seton-Charles. The door opened swiftly. A man started talking and then stopped when he saw them.
That's my last word, Louise. You have an IQ of minus…'
'Special Branch.' Tweed showed his card. 'You're alone. Good. May we come in…' He was walking forward as he spoke while the man backed away and Paula followed, closing the door. 'You are Professor Seton-Charles? This is Miss Grey, my assistant, who will take notes during the interview.'
'Interview about what?'
'The unsolved murder of a Greek called Ionides in Cairo over forty years ago. We can sit round that table. If anyone arrives to interrupt the interview please tell them you're busy, get rid of them.'
Tweed was at his most officious. He fetched two fold-up chairs from several rows arranged beyond the table. The room was furnished starkly; walls bare, painted off-white; the table for the lecturer to sit behind and address his class; windows on the far wall which looked out on to a roughcast concrete wall.
Guy Seton-Charles was a slimly built man in his early sixties, Tweed estimated. His face was plump and pale, and perched on his Roman nose was a pair of rimless glasses. The eyes which stared at them were cold and bleak and wary. He had thinning brown hair, was clean-shaven, his mouth was pouched in a superior expression. Prototype of the self-conscious intellectual, Tweed decided.
He was dressed informally in a loose-fitting check sports jacket, a cream shirt, a blue woollen tie and baggy grey slacks. Not a man who gave much attention to his personal appearance.
This is an unwarranted invasion of privacy,' Seton-Charles protested in a high-pitched voice.
'Oh, I can get a warrant,' Tweed assured him, 'but then we'd have to hold the interview in London at headquarters. Might not be possible to avoid a certain amount of publicity…'
'There's going to be publicity,' the Professor spluttered. 'I can promise you that…'
'About a murder investigation in which you might be involved? No skin off my nose.' Tweed was seated on one of the fold-up chairs. He pointed to the chair behind the desk. 'Unless you want to sit down and hear why we are here. Make up your mind.'
'Murder investigation? About Ionides? You're a bit late in the day, aren't you?'
His tone was truculent, sneering, but Tweed noted he had sat in his chair, a significant concession. He frowned as Paula sat in the other chair, produced her notebook, rested it on her lap and waited, pen poised.
'Is she going to record my answers? A bit bureaucratic and official.'
'Oh, it's official.' Tweed's expression was grim.
'All about a forty-year-old murder?'
'Which may be directly linked with two more very recent murders.'
Behind the rimless glasses Seton-Charles' greenish eyes flickered. Tweed had the impression he was thrown off balance. He recovered quickly.
'Which murders? If I am permitted to ask. It all sounds so melodramatic.' A tinge of sarcasm in his voice now.
'We may come to that later. Let's go back to Greece -and Cairo during the war. You had a job and an office inside the Antikhana as a young man. Why weren't you in the Forces?'
'Didn't pass the physical, if you must know. My eyesight.'
'What was your job? Start talking, Professor. I'm a very good listener. It's your job – talking.'
'Even as a young man I had an interest in Greece. It's my subject,' he added pedantically. They said I could do my bit for the war effort by going to the Mid-East. I was packed off aboard a troopship round the Cape and landed up in Cairo. My job was to create propaganda to encourage the Greek Resistance…'
'Which side?' Tweed snapped.
'Oh, you know about that battle in high places? The SOE lot – Special Operations Executive – in Cairo had a fetish for backing the right-wing crowd. Wanted to bring back the King after the Germans were defeated. Wrong side altogether. The EDES people. The London end were brighter – possibly as a result of reading my reports.' He preened himself with a knowing smile. 'It was the ELAS organization who were killing Germans by the score…'
'The Communists, you mean,' Tweed interjected. 'After Russia had been attacked by Hitler, of course.'
