his ear, tried in vain to form a coherent picture of what had occurred. In the end he was left with a series of chaotic images, an insane jigsaw puzzle in which though the pieces all fitted the final picture made no sense at all. A huge wooden house blazing into the night sky. Someone inside this inferno fending off firemen with a heavy machine-gun. Bears. Hutchmeyer and Sonia on a yacht in a hurricane. Cruisers hurtling across the bay and finally, most bizarre of all, Piper being blown to Kingdom Come in the company of Mrs Hutchmeyer wearing a mink coat. It was like a glimpse of hell.
'Have they no idea who did it?' he asked.
'Only some terrorist group,' said Sonia. Frensic swallowed.
'Terrorist group? Why should a terrorist group want to kill poor Piper?'
'Well because of all the publicity he got in that riot in New York,' said Sonia. 'You see when we landed...'
She told the story of their arrival and Frensic listened in horror. 'You mean Hutchmeyer deliberately provoked a riot? The man's mad.'
'He wanted to get maximum publicity,' Sonia explained.
'Well he's certainly succeeded,' said Frensic.
But Sonia was sobbing again. 'You're just callous,' she wept. 'You don't seem to see what this means...'
'I do,' said Frensic, 'it means the police are going to start looking into Piper's background and...'
That we're to blame,' cried Sonia, 'we sent him over and we are the ones '
'Now hold it,' said Frensic, 'if I'd known Hutchmeyer was going to rent a riot for his welcome I would never have consented to his going. And as for terrorists...'
'The police aren't absolutely certain it was terrorists. They thought at first that Hutchmeyer had murdered him.'
'That's more like it,' said Frensic. 'From what you've told me it's nothing more than the truth. He's an accessory before the fact. If he hadn't...'
'And then they seemed to think the Mafia could be involved.'
Frensic swallowed again. This was even worse. 'The Mafia? What would the Mafia want to kill Piper for? The poor little sod hadn't...'
'Not Piper. Hutchmeyer.'
'You mean the Mafia were trying to kill Hutchmeyer?' said Frensic wistfully.
'I don't know what I mean,' said Sonia, 'I'm telling you what I heard the police say and they mentioned that Hutchmeyer had had dealings with organized crime.'
'If the Mafia wanted to kill Hutchmeyer why did they pick on Piper?'
'Because Hutch and I were out on the yacht and Peter and Baby...'
'What baby?' said Frensic desperately incorporating this new and grisly ingredient into an already cluttered crimescape.
'Baby Hutchmeyer.'
'Baby Hutchmeyer? I didn't know the swine had any...'
'Not that sort of baby. Mrs Hutchmeyer. She was called Baby.'
'Good God,' said Frensic.
'There's no need to be so heartless. You sound as if you didn't care.'
'Care?' said Frensic. 'Of course I care. This is absolutely frightful. And you say the Mafia...'
'No I didn't. I said that's what the police said. They thought it was some sort of attempt to intimidate Hutchmeyer.'
'And has it?' asked Frensic trying to extract a morsel of comfort from the situation.
'No,' said Sonia, 'he's out for blood. He says he's going to sue them.'
