The chief inspector was silent for a moment.
‘There was something else the Dutch police learned — they found out he’d been a member of a chess club and used to play there regularly. He was better than average, according to other members, but they knew little about him. He would arrive, play a game or two, drink a glass of schnapps and then depart. When he first joined, one or two tried to engage him in conversation, but they gave up. It seems he had nothing to say for himself. All the same, the police were told an interesting story …’
‘What was that?’
‘It came from one of the members of this club, a lawyer who played quite often with Meiring. He said that once in the mid-Thirties — he thought it was in 1934 — he had travelled to Brussels on business and while he was there had caught sight of his chess opponent. At least he had thought it was him, though Meiring looked different. He was wearing spectacles and his hair seemed to have greyed somewhat. The encounter was fleeting. This lawyer was hurrying to board a train to return to Amsterdam and he only caught a glimpse of the man he took for Meiring.’
‘Took for him, you say?’
Sinclair nodded. When they met again a few weeks later at the chess club, the lawyer remarked that he thought he’d seen him in Brussels, but Meiring said he was mistaken. He hadn’t been away for some time.’ The chief inspector grunted. ‘Our friend Duval was intrigued by this and went through the records — their own collection of IPC messages — and found there’d been an unsolved murder in Antwerp in June of 1934. The director of a shipping firm had been shot dead in his office late one night. There seemed to be no motive for the killing other than the fact that he’d threatened to expose one of his partners for embezzlement. Duval recalled what Bok’s widow had said about her husband hiring out his pet killer from time to time and wondered if this was another of Marko’s victims.’
‘It sounds as though they had a financial arrangement,’ Madden remarked. ‘Bok arranged the contracts and Marko executed them.’
‘And given the amount of cash he was carrying when he left Holland, he must have been well paid. His life’s savings lost at a stroke! That may explain why he set up that Wapping business. He needed the money — for when he makes a run for it.’
‘Yes, but that’s what bothers me …’ Madden stirred unhappily in his chair.
‘You mean the haste he acted with? What you said before?’
‘It was a strange way to behave. Rosa was dead. She wasn’t a threat to him any longer. He could afford to take his time. Yet he acted at once, setting up the robbery and using an accomplice he normally wouldn’t have touched with a bargepole. Something was goading him on. But what?’
Gnawing at his lip, Madden peered into the dregs of his beer, as if the answer might lie there. Then he shook his head again, this time in frustration. ‘You were saying — they missed him at the hotel, the French police?’
‘He must have realized they were waiting for him; the trail went cold after that. Mind you, the fact that the first German units entered Paris the day after Sobel’s murder didn’t make things any easier. Though policing continued as normal during the Occupation, there must have been a hiatus which Marko may have used to his advantage. Duval says they weren’t sure at that stage who he was, but they already suspected he might be the same man who had killed the Lagrange family because of the link with Eyskens and through him to Bok. Later, when they received a copy of Bok’s widow’s statement from the Dutch police, they could be certain. By that time, of course, it was clear Marko had left the country, and since they had no idea of his destination, they checked with the Spanish and Portuguese authorities and also got in touch with the FBI in Washington. We know now it was England he came to, and since it seems unlikely he travelled via Spain and Portugal, he must have found some way of crossing the Channel.’
Sinclair stretched in his chair. He was feeling his years.
‘His details had been noted at the hotel where he stayed in Paris. That’s how the Surete got hold of the name he was using. Later they were sent to the Dutch police, who used them to ferret out the identity he’d been living under. The point is, Marko seems to have been in possession of papers and probably a passport that to all intents and purposes looked genuine, and he could have used them to enter this country if he’d wanted to. There was no way we could have learned they were bogus: not with France and Holland occupied. He could have sat out the war here as Klaus Meiring and no one would have been any the wiser. But instead he chose to abandon the name, which suggests he had another ready-made identity to step into. One that was clean.’
‘And most likely his own.’ Madden nodded his agreement. ‘He was coming home.’
‘That’s what it looks like. But unfortunately we can’t dismiss the possibility he arrived here under another alias, so we’re going to have to check on all foreigners who entered the country in the weeks following the occupation of Paris. The same goes for British subjects, the ones who bothered to report their return. It’s going to be a long job, I’m afraid, which means Marko will have all the time he needs to cover his tracks, something he’s had plenty of experience doing. I should have listened to you, John. I was too cocksure. I thought we’d catch him easily once we had him in our sights. I was wrong.’
He looked at his watch at the same moment that Madden glanced at his.
‘So you’re going back to Highfield tomorrow — is that right?’
Madden nodded as they rose from the table.
‘We’ve been hoping Rob will be with us for Christmas. But it’s only a week away now and there’s still no word from him. The trouble is they won’t tell you when his destroyer is due back. They won’t tell you anything.’
Sinclair pressed his arm: there was little else he could offer in the way of comfort. But once they were outside, making their way down the dark street towards the tube station at Tottenham Court Road, he turned to a more cheerful subject.
‘And what of Lucy? You haven’t said a word about her.’
‘She’ll be home for Christmas. I can tell you that much. They’ve given her a few days’ leave. But the fact of the matter is I’ve hardly set eyes on her since I came up. She’s never in. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Helen.’
‘You arrived with instructions, did you?’
‘You might put it that way. Helen wanted me to have a serious talk with her. Father to daughter. I’m supposed to find out what she’s been doing since she came up to London.’
‘Dear me.’ Angus Sinclair contrived to look grave. ‘No easy task, I imagine.’
‘I told you — I haven’t been able to sit down with her, even for a minute. She’s always in a rush. But try explaining that to Helen …’
The hint of self-pity in his old friend’s tone brought a gleam of mischief to the chief inspector’s eye. He was finally deriving some enjoyment from the evening.
‘She expects you to be firmer, does she?’
‘In a nutshell. Though I don’t think she holds out much hope. She says Lucy has always known how to get the better of me. Like most daughters with their fathers, according to Helen.’
He meditated on his own words in silence as they walked on. Then he sighed.
‘It seems I’m putty in her fingers.’
17
The truth of this judgement, harsh though it seemed, had been only too evident to Madden during his stay in London. Anxious to see his daughter before she went on duty, he had caught the early train from Highfield, but as often happened nowadays the service was delayed — this time by a breakdown in the signalling system, or so the passengers were told as they sat motionless for more than an hour in Guildford station — and it was not until mid-morning that he’d reached his destination, only to discover that Lucy was still asleep.
‘Poor dear — they work her something dreadful,’ Maud Collingwood’s maid, a woman he had known for twenty years but only by her first name, which was Alice, had confided to him on his arrival. ‘Until all hours. She has to catch up on sleep as best she can, poor child.’
Not entirely surprised — it was Helen’s contention that Lucy’s vagueness on the subject of her working hours arose from a confusion in her mind (she was unable to distinguish the Admiralty from Quaglino’s and the Stork
