apart with only a few of the stars from each side coming into collision. But the lawn lunch-eaters weren’t representative. Behind closed pub doors and in smoky studies the drinkers and hairy politicians gathered to plot the overthrow of society within the next semester. The deadly swots were still in the library and the smooth-talking professionals who would control this place and most others like it in a few years, were debating, or running the tennis club or sipping sherry somewhere with their masters. I ate the sandwiches and watched a pair of tight- jeaned women parade slowly across my field of vision. Their breasts jogged gently under linen shirts, their bottoms rode high and tight and their legs seemed to go on forever. I sighed, got up and brushed grass off my clothes. I was sweating. It was a fine day. Maybe I was too warmly dressed.
17
I caught a taxi to Paddington and was met at the door by a flushed and anxious-looking Madeline. She had a couple of dresses over her arm and there were shoes on the floor in the passage behind her.
“Leaving?” I asked.
She bit her lip. The white chunky teeth went into the moist purple lip and sent a sexual shiver through me. She saw my reaction and it didn’t throw her one degree off course.
“I am if you must know. Ted’s impossible. All that money for that worthless slut… the police…”
“She’s his daughter.”
“Maybe – if her mother was anything like her who could say?”
It was nothing to me except that men being left by their wives are apt to act irrationally and Ted couldn’t afford to. I said so and she spun away and started to gather up shoes. I came a couple of steps into the passage and tried to keep my mind off the yard of deadly stocking she was showing under a white crepe dress. She saw me looking, straightened up and smoothed the dress down. My mouth went dry.
“You haven’t the time,” she said softly. “Ted got a call half an hour ago. He was to wait for another call at his office. He’s there now with the money – off you run, Mr Hardy.”
“Where’s the office?” I croaked. She walked off down the hall; she’d spent hours on the walk and it was worth every minute. She came back with a card and I took it.
“Don’t leave,” I said. “See it through. You’re being childish. See how it looks after we get the girl back.”
She threw the dresses down and burst into tears. She dumped the shoes and ran off down the hall.
Well done Hardy. Terrific work. So subtle. I closed the door quietly and backed out to the gate. A white Celica was parked outside the house with some clothes on the back seat. The key was in the ignition and Madeline’s perfume was in the air. I slid in behind the wheel, started the car and drove off towards the city. I didn’t like the new twist. It had an amateur feel. It’s easier to watch a house than a city building, easier to spot reinforcements. Then I swore at myself for not scouting Armstrong Street. If there had been a look-out he’d have got the message loud and clear. Maybe it wasn’t an amateur play after all.
Ted’s office was in a tower block across from Hyde Park. The Celica had a sticker on it that let me drive into the car park under the tower and almost got a salute from the attendant. Ted’s suite of offices had a lot of shag pile carpet, stained wood and tinted glass. Here he was Tarelton Enterprises and looking like he could spare a hundred grand, but you can never tell.
An ash blonde stopped pecking at her typewriter and showed me into Ted’s lair. The carpet was deeper and the wood more highly polished than outside; there was an interesting-looking bar at the end of the room and that’s where Ted was standing. He greeted me and dropped ice into a second glass and built two Scotches. He walked back to his quarter-acre desk and set the glasses down carefully; it wasn’t his first drink and it wasn’t his second. He waved me to a chair; I picked up the Scotch and sat down – it was a drink to sit down with.
“Got the money?” I asked.
“Sure.” He reached down, missed his aim and had to steady himself on the desk. He pulled up a black, metal-bound attache case. “Wanna see it?” He was aping confidence and assurance but it was a bad act.
I nodded. He sprung the locks and pushed the case across the desk. The money lay in neat rows held by the case’s straps. It looked what it was – a hell of a lot of cash.
Ted said the call was due at four o’clock and we were twenty minutes short of that. I drank and looked at my employer. He seemed to have shrunk inside his clothes; the expensive tailoring hung on him indifferently and his patterned, Establishment tie was askew. Normally Ted had a high colour – the product of good health, good times and good brandy. Today he was pale with a couple of vivid spots. Bristles that had survived a shaky shave outcropped on the pale skin. His hand shook as he scrabbled a cigar out of a box on the desk. I rolled and lit a cigarette. We drank and my nerves started to twang in the silence.
“I pinched your wife’s car,” I said. “I think she was planning on leaving. Why don’t you ring her?”
“You a bloody marriage counsellor now?”
“Just an idea. You’re going to need help through this.”
Panic leaped through the liquor and into his eyes. “Why? You don’t think they’ll… they won’t kill her?” He looked at the money.
“You can’t tell. I don’t think so, but it might not be easy getting her back.”
“You’re saying she’s in with them? I told you that’s crap. I don’t want to hear any more of that.”
“Mr Tarelton,” I said wearily, “this is nice Scotch but this isn’t a nice job. You don’t know your daughter, you don’t know the first thing about her. I’ve found out things about her that’d make your hair curl. That’s my job. I rake muck and mostly I keep it to myself when I can. Sometimes I can’t and this looks like one of those times. Please don’t tell me what you don’t want to hear. It doesn’t help.” I’d started to raise my voice. Now I dropped it back to as comfortable a tone as I could manage. “I think it would be a good idea if you called your wife.”
He was in no shape to fight. He drained his glass and took a long pull on the cigar. “Alright, alright, you know your business. Jesus, I thought I knew about strain but there’s nothing to touch this.”
He was getting gabby and I had no use just then for the full story of his life. I pointed at the phone and he picked it up and dialled. He held it to his ear for a minute then slammed it down.
“Engaged,” he snarled. “At least she’s still there. That blasts your theory…”
The intercom buzzed. “I said no calls,” Ted barked. He flicked the switch. “No calls till four!” The black box spoke back: “I’m sorry Mr Tarelton, it’s your wife on the line, she sounds upset.”
“Put her through.” Tarelton picked up the receiver and swung half-away from me. He suddenly jerked upright in his chair.
“What!” His voice broke and he stammered, “What? What?”
I mouthed at him to play the call through and he flicked switches clumsily. Madeline Tarelton’s voice cut harshly into the room, its elocution-lesson tones pared away by fear.
“Ted, Ted,” she gasped, “there’s a man here with a gun.” Her voice was cut off by a short scream and Tarelton yelped into the phone. “Madeline, Madeline, what does he want? Do what he says.”
There was a pause and she spoke again, fighting for control. “He just wants me to tell you to do as you’re told.” The line went dead. Tarelton looked at the receiver in his hand. He was clutching it as if he could squeeze more information from it. I got up and took it away from him. Then I picked up his glass, went to the bar and made him another drink; he had another phone call to get through and he wasn’t going to do it without help. I went back and he took the glass.
“What does it mean?”
“They’re making sure. It doesn’t change anything.”
He sensed my uncertainty and turned his cornered frustration on me.
“It’s your fault, you took her car, she’d have been…”
“Where? Would you rather that? It’s not true anyway. They’d have moved when they were ready. She’ll be alright. Shut up and let me think.”
He bridled. “Don’t…”
I flapped a hand at him and he subsided, then the box spoke again.
“A call for you sir. It’s just past four o’clock.”
“Thank you,” Tarelton said weakly. “Put it through please.”
“Pay-out time, Ted.” The voice was male, not rough, not educated. Australian, not foreign. Tarelton croaked
