‘If you don’t get off her back,’ he said, walking over to the Superintendent, ‘I’ll make the most bloody awful scandal that’ll destroy any public image you’ve built up over this case.
‘It’s all right, lovey,’ he added, taking Bella’s other hand. ‘It won’t take much longer,’ and with infinite tact and gentleness, he took her over the morning’s happenings.
‘And that’s enough,’ he said, when she had finished. ‘I’ve just seen my sister. She’s not as ill as all that. She’ll be perfectly able to give you her story later in the day if you’re capable of showing a little consideration.’
The Superintendent shot Lazlo a look both of dislike and respect.
‘All right, Mr Henriques,’ he said.
‘I’d like somewhere where Miss Parkinson and I can have two minutes alone, together,’ Lazlo went on. ‘Then you can take her straight to hospital.’
They were ushered into an ante-room with a table and two chairs, which smelt of furniture polish and chalk and fear. A potted plant was wilting on the window ledge.
Bella collapsed on to one of the chairs. ‘I don’t want to go to hospital,’ she said in a shaking voice. ‘I’m quite all right.’
‘It’s only for a check-up, so you can catch up on some sleep. Not for long, only for a day or two until I get back.’
She looked up in horror.
‘Where are you going?’
He paused, his face inscrutable.
‘Buenos Aires.’
‘Oh no! So they were bluffing. Juan hasn’t been pulled in yet.’
‘Not yet. But I’ve got all the evidence I need to nail him — and the Argentinian police aren’t going to let a chance like this slip through their fingers. So I’ll get every co-operation.’
‘What’s happened to Steve?’ she said, and felt herself going crimson.
‘Inside,’ said Lazlo flatly. ‘He was picked up yesterday, trying to leave the country.’
‘And he talked?’
Lazlo nodded. ‘Straight away, sang to the rooftops.’
Bella winced. Wretched Steve, not even the guts to protect his own crooked friends.
‘He and Juan had been planning to snatch Chrissie for months,’ Lazlo went on.
‘So contacting me through the personal columns, and pretending to be still madly in love with me. .’
‘Was just a ruse,’ said Lazlo. ‘He read about you and Rupert in the papers, and went through all the personal column palaver, just to lull your suspicions. He realized how cliquey we are as a family, how we resist outsiders. You were the ideal way in.’
It came out more brutally than he had intended.
‘Oh God,’ said Bella, feeling suddenly defeated. ‘So it was all my fault.’
‘Of course it wasn’t,’ said Lazlo irritably.
There was a knock and a policeman’s head came round the door. ‘You’re going to miss that plane Mr Henriques, unless you hurry.’
‘Just coming,’ said Lazlo. ‘Give me a few seconds more.’
The head retreated. Bella was staring listlessly at her hands. For a moment it seemed even Lazlo was at a loss for words.
The tension between them was unbearable. She felt an appalling urge to collapse, sobbing in his arms, pleading with him not to go, but she just went on gazing at her bitten nails.
‘Bella,’ he said gently, ‘please look at me.’
‘I can’t,’ she said in a stifled voice. There was another agonizing pause. He sighed and stood up.
‘All right, I suppose it’s no good trying to sort anything out at the moment. You’re all in. Roger’ll look after you. Get as much rest as you can. I’ll ring you from B.A. as soon as I’ve got anything to report.’
‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ she said, still not looking up.
‘I’ll try,’ he said wearily, and was gone. And Bella was overwhelmed with a terrible sense of anticlimax.
Chapter Twenty-four
They released her after forty-eight hours in hospital. The doctors said she must have an extremely strong constitution. Apart from the fact that at night she was continually woken by nightmares about guns pointing at her, and by day she thought obsessively about Lazlo, she seemed to have made an excellent recovery. Roger steered her through a gruelling press conference when she came out.
The questions about the actual kidnapping and living with the gunmen were bad enough, but soon they moved on to her private life.
‘You were engaged to Rupert Henriques,’ said the gossip writer from the
‘Yes,’ said Bella.
‘But you broke it off,’ he persisted.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we weren’t suited.’
‘Or because you were more suited to his cousin, Lazlo?’
‘No!’ said Bella, going scarlet.
‘Lazlo tried to cut his cousin out with you, didn’t he?’
‘This is
But throughout the press conference, journalist after journalist harked back to the question of her and Lazlo, until suddenly she lost her temper.
‘Will you stop hounding me,’ she screamed. ‘There is absolutely nothing between Lazlo Henriques and me, and I’m not answering any more of your bloody questions.’
It took all Roger Field’s tact to calm everyone down.
‘In considerable distress,’ wrote down the journalists in their shorthand notebooks, as a minute later Bella suddenly stood up, burst into tears and fled out of the room.
‘I can’t stand any more,’ she sobbed to Roger.
‘You won’t have to,’ said Roger.
Five minutes later she and Roger were smuggled out of a side door and into a waiting police car.
‘Where are we going?’ said Bella.
‘To a bolt hole of Lazlo’s in Maida Vale,’ said Roger. ‘He’s been hiding out there since you and Chrissie were kidnapped. Too many people, including the Press, know the address of his own flat.’
They were welcomed at the flat by Roger’s wife, Sabina. She was a tall, slim brunette and her beauty in the flesh and in the photograph on Roger’s desk at the theatre had blighted the hopes of many a young actress who would otherwise have set her cap at Roger. She gathered Bella into a voluptuous scented hug.
‘Welcome home, darling. This flat has to be seen to be believed. I’m sure it’s where Lazlo keeps his first eleven mistresses, all that peach-coloured satin and mirrors in the bedroom.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Roger sharply. ‘Lazlo bought it as a base for visiting clients. It merely happens to be empty at the moment because no-one’s over here. The Arabs go wild about that bedroom.’
‘Business must be disintegrating,’ said Sabina. ‘He hasn’t been near the office for days. A huge pile of mail arrived this morning that hadn’t been opened since before you were kidnapped. I’ve put it all in his bedroom. I’ve put you in there, too, Bella, so you can lie in bed all night and admire your reflection against peach-coloured satin, in the mirror on the ceiling,’ she added, carrying Bella’s suitcase into the room on the right. Several of Lazlo’s sweaters lay on an armchair and on the dressing table were jumbled together cuff-links, nail scissors, bottles of
