The Melting Man

CHAPTER ONE

I had my feet up on the window sill, watching the pageantry of life outside. It didn't amount to much. The cab driver at the head of the rank was reading the morning edition of the Evening Standard and smoking a cheroot. A handful of early fallen leaves from the plane trees did a little dervish dance in the wind. A coloured gent went by in a big, blue bedspread. He had a beaming 250-watt smile on his large face that could only have come from transcendental meditation or a new and satisfactory addition to his harem. A traffic warden was booking a Mini-Austin for parking on a yellow kerb line. Two girls went by on the far pavement; one had blonde hair and a face that would have made Botticelli's eyes pop, the other carried a transistor set and sucked at an ice-lolly. A porter polished a brass plate. A pigeon bullied a couple of sparrows in the gutter. Two businessmen hurried towards Trafalgar Square, bowlers set, briefcases and umbrellas at the ready.

I got tired of the pageant and looked at my feet. The suede shoes wanted a good going over with a wire brush. My green socks didn't look good with a dark suit. I didn't care much. At this time of the year lethargy and sloppiness always seemed to set in. In another five days I would be off on holiday. The battery wanted recharging. Pretty soon, I thought, I must decide where I was going.

The office door opened behind me. I didn't turn. I knew it was Wilkins: Hilda Wilkins, thirty-five, spinster, rusty red hair, honest blue eyes (too honest), thick tweed skirt, plain white blouse, sloppy grey cardigan — no oil painting, my partner, and the bond between us unshakeable. There was little about me that she approved of. I sometimes wondered why she stayed. Certainly not for the salary.

She said, 'I'm going to the bank.'

I turned.

'Put or take?'

'Take,' she said. 'I've switched the office phone through here.'

I said, 'I didn't think there was any to take.'

'A little. Have you decided where you're going?'

'No. Nor who I'm going with. Or should it be whom?'

She sniffed, and backed for the door. She had no opinion of my morals or my grammar.

I said, 'I thought about the Gritti Palace in Venice.'

She said, 'Why not — if you're only staying one night? You'd do better with your sister in Honiton. You'd eat free.'

'It's a point. Devonshire cream and cider, great rashers of bacon, fried eggs, chitterlings, black puddings, roast pork, boiled beef and dumplings… Yes, I need feeding up.'

She looked pointedly at my lowest waistcoat button and said, 'That's not the impression I get.'

She went, and I looked down. Maybe she was right. Life had been sedentary lately. I looked at the calendar on the wall opposite and because I had nothing else to do I wondered how many more shopping days there were to Christmas. I couldn't bother to work it out.

The telephone rang. I let it ring a while and then picked it up.

I said, 'Carver and Wilkins. Can I help you?' A man's voice said primly, 'I wish to speak to Mr Rex Carver.'

I said, 'Hold on a moment, I'll see if he's in.'

I put the phone down and lit a cigarette. It was a small office, just Wilkins and myself and a little outside help when we were pressed. It didn't hurt, though, to give the impression of a big organization. And, anyway, years of experience had given me a sixth sense that could always pick a new client on the line. I was going on holiday, somewhere, and I didn't want to be tied up just then with some crumby recovery job or an insurance fiddle or wearing my feet out looking for some man or woman who didn't want to be found.

I picked up the phone.

'I'm sorry, Mr Carver is not available at the moment.'

'You mean he's not there?' He sounded as though he weren't used to people not being there when he wanted them.

'I'm afraid not. He's out.'

'Then would you take a message?'

'Certainly.'

'Tell him it's from Mr Cavan O'Dowda's secretary. Mr O'Dowda's car will call for him at three today. I think it would be advisable if he brought an overnight bag.'

I said, 'Does Mr Carver know about this appointment?'

A little irritated, the voice said, 'Of course he knows. I wouldn't be phoning to confirm it otherwise. The car will be there at three o'clock. Thank you.'

There was a click and he was gone.

Interesting. But not enough to make me get up and check the O'Dowdas in the London telephone directory. I needed a holiday, not work. Mind you, I needed money too. I always needed it, and sometimes when the need was great I wasn't too fussy how I got it. But just now — so long as there was a little in the bank — I needed complete rest and relaxation. I sat there and thought of all the places I could go to. I had a friend who'd retired to Malta to beat the tax game — but that would mean sailing and I hated pulling away at sheets, the kind you find on yachts, anyway. The Costa Brava? Fish and chips, ghastly gazpacho, and even ghastlier flamenco singing. Biarritz? Quiet, Edwardian — only it wasn't any longer. Just big, bustling and noisy, the streets full of Citroens and the Atlantic filling your face full of wind-blown spume and sand the moment you went over the dunes. Somewhere quiet, way up at the back of Cannes? Well, I might find that; peace, solitude and relaxation under some grape-festooned arbour, swigging vin rosé in the morning to taper off from the previous night's Pernod. Fine, all except the solitude. I'd have to have company to beat that. I'd almost worked up enough energy to reach for my address book in the desk drawer when the phone rang. I changed my hand direction and picked it up.

Wilkins said, 'I'm back.'

'Good. The office wasn't the same without you.' When she didn't reply, I said, 'Did you make an appointment for me with a Mr O'Dowda?'

'No.'

'That's good then.'

I put the receiver down and forgot about my address book. They'd all have some excuse, anyway. I could break fresh ground, of course. Perhaps a cruise, if I could get a booking. No, they were all so damned hearty, betting on the day's run, deck quoits, table-tennis and that bloody fancy dress thing, and, anyway, all the unattached girls were too soon swiped by the officers. You can't compete with a uniform and that deep sea-tan.

My private outside line rang. I got the receiver to my ear with an effort. 'Carver here.'

Miggs's breezy, booming ploughman's voice made me wince.

'How are we, me old cock? Haven't had you here for a workout in a month. I'll bet you can't see your Poupart's ligament for fat and if there's a depression over your great trochanter I'm a Dutchman.'

'Go away and carry on with your drinking.'

'Stone sober. Have to be in this job. But come round and we'll have a couple. Also, I've got something for you.'

'Anything you've got you can keep. But I'll come for the drink — that's if my rectus muscles can make it.'

In the outer office Wilkins was knitting something in a bilious yellow wool and doing the Daily Telegraph crossword.

'Going to see Miggs,' I said.

She gave me a look and said, 'Don't forget to have some lunch. And why did you ask me about Cavan O'Dowda?'

'I didn't say his name was Cavan.'

She nodded to the equipment panel on her desk. 'I left the recorder on.'

'Know him?'

'I've heard of him. He's—'

'Don't bother to tell me. I've only one problem at the moment. Where to go for a holiday.' I flexed my legs and went out.

I went down the stairs and stood in the doorway, looking out into Northumberland Avenue. Away up to my left Nelson was standing on his column turning a blind eye to the assault of pigeons and starlings. To my right the brass plate which said Carver and Wilkins wanted polishing. It had just been Carver, until in a more than usually bad year Wilkins had insisted on emptying the old tea-caddy on the mantelshelf at home (where she lived with her father, a retired ship's steward and an indefatigable but not very successful player of the horses) and coming to the rescue — with a look in her eyes which dared me to show even a two-second flash of gratitude. Without saying anything to her I had had the plate changed. From its present state I knew that somebody soon was going to get hell about it.

I went down to Miggs's place. It was hard work for a man in my lackadaisical state but I stuck to it, the whole of four hundred yards.

Behind his garage Miggs had a gymnasium. His charges were salty, but his appointment book was always full. Miggs had once been a sergeant in the Commandos. After a work-out with him, a really fit man would discover he was aching in about a dozen muscles he never knew he had. For special clients — and he had quite a few of them — he ran a course in unarmed combat which comprised some very fancy ways of killing a man swiftly and silently.

He was finishing a session when I got there, so I went and sat quietly in his office. He came in, his red face shining from a shower, took one look at me and said, 'My God — a young man in an old man's body. You'd better let me book you in for a dozen sessions. Special price for you.'

'I'm happy the way I am. I like to put it on around September. Live off my fat during the winter. Bears do it. What about a drink?'

He opened a cupboard and brought out the whisky.

We sat and drank and he shook his head sadly at me, his eyes running disappointedly over me as though he were a sculptor and I his first clay mock-up for a Greek athlete which had gone wrong everywhere it possibly could.

'A job is just what you need. But before you get stuck into it, you report here for a few days.'

'A holiday is what I need — and what I'm having.'

'A holiday can wait — but good money can't. You take the job. There could be a lot to make on the side, too. That's what you like, isn't it? Anyway, the cropped-headed bastard has got more than he knows what to do with — not that he throws it around without being sure of a return. These millionaires never do.'

'What I like,' I said, 'is someone who doesn't talk in riddles, and a higher percentage of whisky to my soda.' I pushed my glass towards him and he obliged.

'Didn't you get my message?'

'No.'

'I phoned your Mrs Meld last night and gave it to her.'

'Today is Monday. I spent the weekend at Brighton and came straight into the office this morning off the train. Do I gather you've been trying to fix me up with a job?'

'Have done. He said he'd send a car for you at three today.'

'Presumptuous.'

'Not when it's a millionaire. His son was killed alongside me in Italy. He's always had a soft spot for me and gives me all his car business. Makes Jack Barclay and those types mad because it's all Rolls and Bentley stuff and he changes on whim four or five times a year sometimes. I delivered a Facel Vega to him yesterday — he's giving it to his daughter as a birthday present.'

'I always wanted a millionaire daddy. What do you think of Ireland for a holiday?'

'Nothing. All those bars they call Select which turn out to be a table and three chairs in half a grocer's shop. And then their screwy attitude to the weather. You step out of your hotel into driving rain and wind and the doorman says, "It's a grand day, sor." In addition I don't like Guinness or John Jameson.'

'Ireland's out then.'

'So take the job. I gave you a good write-up. Honest, reliable, intrepid and the soul of discretion. Quick in a tight corner, resourceful, and a contempt for all hazards.'

'Nice. Add a pair of wings and I'd be Batman. I presume you're talking about Mr Cavan O'Dowda?'

'Didn't I say?'

'No. But don't bother. I don't want any job. I'm going on holiday.'

'You take the job.'

'Which is?'

'Somebody stole one of his cars.'

I laughed. Anyone at Scotland Yard would have done, too. By now it would have been cannibalized — number filed off the engine block and restamped, gear-box changed, number on the chassis plate changed — resprayed and up for auction with a phoney log-book in some car mart, or sitting abandoned around Hackney after a couple of villains had used it for a job.

I said, 'Let the police worry. Not that they will.'

'There's more to it than that. It wasn't stolen in England.'

'Where?'

'Abroad somewhere. He didn't say. And I don't think it's the car he's really worried about, though he pretended it was.'

'I don't want a job. September I always take a holiday.'

'Just go and see him. After all, I said you would, and if I let him down he might take his business from me.'

'I'd weep if I didn't know you were lying.'

'Just see him. If you turn him down, that's okay. But I gave you the build-up of all time. The daughter was there, the Facel Vega one — you should have seen her eyes shining as I painted your picture. Though I must say, I thought you were in better shape than you are. Still…'

'Thanks for the drink.' I reached for the door.

'You're going?'

'To have lunch. I've been instructed not to miss it.'

'You disappoint me.'

'I disappoint me, sometimes. But I need a holiday. Sometimes a man has got to get away.'

'What for?'

'I'll send you a postcard and let you know.' I went.

And there it was. A man should always know what he wants to do and, if he can, why he wants to do it. And what I didn't want to do was to chase some stolen car. Let O'Dowda buy another car. And if there was more to it than just a stolen car, well, let someone else worry about it. That's what Scotland Yard, Interpol, the Deuxieme Bureau and the Garda Civile were for. Yes, eleven months of the year I worked, if it was there to work at, but come September, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, I took a holiday. But not this September.

At four o'clock that afternoon I was sitting in a Rolls-Royce going like a hot knife through butter along the A21, heading down into Sussex.

The explanation was very simple and touchingly human. Herrick had the lines for it of course, not only because he had her name right, but because he was a Devonshire man like me and, contrary to the ploughboy school of thought, Devonshire men are great romantics, particularly when as in silks a woman goes and all that about how sweetly flows the liquefaction of her clothes to finish with the real punch line — 'O, how that glittering taketh me!' It took me, in twenty seconds dead.

At two minutes to three I had my heels on the desk and was reading for light relief the August copy of The Criminologist — for some reason the Forensic Publishing Co. Ltd always sent me complimentary copies. I was well into an article on 'The Forensic Aspects of Dust' when the intercom buzzed like a tired hornet and Wilkins came on.

'Mr Cavan O'Dowda's car has arrived for you.'

'Send it away.' I switched off.

Analyses of ordinary household dusts, I read, show a fine line-up of materials like silica, oxides of aluminium and iron, magnesia, lime, titanium oxide, alkalis—

The buzz came again.

Wilkins said, 'Mr O'Dowda's driver would like to see you.'

'Tell Mr O'Dowda's driver,' I said, 'that I made no appointment to go to his employer. Tell him — if he's interested in personal details — that I don't want a job. I want a holiday. Tell him—'

Wilkins cut me off, fearing no doubt some more telling expression.

Three seconds later the door of my office opened. I looked up, and of course that was fatal. I was hit straight between the eyes.

She looked at me for a moment or two in silence while I blinked to get the glittering out of my eyes. Then she closed the door and came slowly across to the desk. It was pure liquefaction with even a little sweet disorder in the dress. Not much, just a hint of it. It was a grey silk dress shot with tiny gold and silver threads that helped to roll the light over each moving swing and curve and stretch. If you can imagine a dress that might have been made out of water with gold and silver sun-ripples on it, then I needn't say more. There was a jaunty little bow at the lowish vee of the neck, like some butterfly poised for flight. If it took off, I thought, it would kindle in her clothes a wantonness.

She said, 'What is all this? I've come all the way up to London for you.'

With an effort I said, 'If you're Mr O'Dowda's chauffeur, that's a wonderful uniform you're wearing.'

'Don't be an ass. I'm his daughter, Julia.' I stood up. I wouldn't have done it for a chauffeur, but a millionaire's daughter was different. And even if she hadn't been a millionaire's daughter I would have done it. She was in her early twenties and her hair was as dark as a raven's wings and her lips cherry bright. Her face was tanned, her dark eyes had a what-the-hell look and there was a suggestion of stubbornness about the nicely pointed chin. Her face was beautiful, a bit gipsyish, but full of self-confident sparkle. Angry or excited, I decided, she would be hard to handle.

She was taller than I, but I didn't mind. You can't have too much of a good thing. I just stood there, quivering finely like a pointer, waiting for the command to flush game. She said, 'It's a nice dress, isn't it? Jacques Fath.' I said, 'I can't keep my eyes off it. I'm Rex Carver.' With a little lift of her eyes for my persisting stupidity, she said, 'I know you are. But you don't quite come up to the description Miggs gave of you. Sort of blurred around the edges somewhere.'

'Come autumn,' I said, 'I begin to disintegrate a little. My best month is May.'

She looked at her watch — I caught the faint sparkle of a diamond setting — and said, 'I can't wait until then, neither can my father. Are you coming or not?'

'I was thinking,' I mumbled, 'of taking a holiday.'

'You look,' she said, 'as though you could do with one. I'll tell my father you're not available.' She turned for the door.

I went across the room and picked up my weekend case.

'You're bullying me,' I said. 'But I don't mind. For you I would go anywhere.' I gave her a big smile. It was an effort, but I thought it worth it. 'Julia O'Dowda. It's a wonderful name. Wild Irish, a strong Connemara wind whistling through your hair and—'

She moved to the door, saying. 'I'm his stepdaughter. The name's Julia Yunge-Brown. And on the way down you'll sit in the back. I don't like a hand on my knee as I drive. Okay?' The dark eyes, faintly smiling, fixed me.

'Okay,' I said.

Obediently I followed her through into the office. Wilkins looked up at me woodenly.

I said, 'The next time you use the word "driver" over the phone, qualify the sex. I'm being led into captivity.'

Julia, ahead of me, giggled. It was a nice sound, like a fast brook tumbling over stones.

Wilkins said, 'I'll phone Mrs Meld to say you won't be back tonight.'

It wasn't the Facel Vega, but a big black Rolls, looking a bit like a hearse and as quiet in the back as a funeral parlour. Clipped into a silver holder alongside me was a speaking horn.

Going over Westminster Bridge, I whistled down it and then said, 'What happened to the regular chauffeur?'

Horn to my ear, I got the reply: 'Tich? He's gone fishing with my father. Stepfather.'

I said, 'What's all this about a stolen car?'

'Something to do with Zelia. She's always messing things up.'

'Zelia?'

You had to be quick with the trumpet thing, but it was fun for a long journey. 'My sister. You'll get all the details.'

'Where are we going?'

'Sussex. Near Sedlescombe. You'll be just in time for the evening rise.'

'Evening what?'

She nipped between a bus and a petrol tanker, and then said, 'Stop talking. There are magazines in the rack in front of you.'

I fiddled for a bit and got the rack down. It held the latest numbers of Vogue, The Field, Illustrated London News, Playboy and Reveille. And also a half-empty box of cigars, Bolivar Petit Coronas. It lit one and settled back with Playboy.

Once we were clear of London she drove the car as though she wished to God it had wings, half hoping, maybe, that if she did go fast enough it would take off. Anyone riding in it might not have been able to hear the clock ticking in the silence, but they would have heard my heart going bump, bump against the roof of my mouth. I began to regret my hasty impulse. A good-looking gipsy girl walks into your office, wearing a Fath number that would cost more than your cigarette bill for a year, gives you a what-the-hell look and there you are — every good resolution gone, back at work again when you should be on holiday.

I didn't try to keep track of where we were going, but it took us an hour and a half. Finally we turned in through lodge gates, the pillars ornamented with stone greyhounds, each holding a shield. I couldn't see the device on the shields because we went by too quickly. We then did a half a mile of drive through parkland. Up ahead I saw the big bulk of a country mansion, but I didn't get a long look at it because we turned off, away from the drive and down a long slope through beech and fir trees with dirty, dank-looking rhododendron growths under them.

We came through the trees and the side drive ended in a wide circular turning space below a high grass bank. Julia swing the car round and stopped. She sat in the driving seat while I got out and went up to her.

'Stimulating drive,' I said. 'Tonic for the nerves. When you get her back in the stables, give her a good rub down and a handful of oats. But don't let her drink for a while. Some time you can take me out in the Facel Vega and we'll really enjoy ourselves.'

She looked at me thoughtfully, up and down and then down and up, as though I were a piece of antique furniture, a tallboy or something she fancied she might fancy, and then she said, 'You've got something. Just something — but I suspect you're trying too hard with it.'

'Or just out of practice. All I need is a few days' country air. Where's daddy?'

'Daddy is someone you want to be bloody polite with.'

I knew then what it was that had boosted me off my office cushion. She was a border-line girl. Somebody you could go either way with. Get her wrong, rub the knap the reverse way, and you had, not an enemy for life (there's always hope there), but someone who just obliterated you from her memory. But get her right, handle her with the capable, finessing touch of a master, and you had a star-spangled carnival stretching ahead of you. But there wasn't any hope of that unless you were at the top of your form.

I winked at her. 'I've dealt with millionaires before. They handle easily so long as you let them know it's their money you're after. Where is he?'

'Up over the bank. Just ring for him. You can leave your bag. I'll take it up to the house.'

She started the engine.

Before she could move off, I said, 'What is it about step-daddy that you don't like?'

I got it then, full and square for the first time; a cold, dark stare that came from surprise she was not quite able to hide. She put her foot down and the Rolls swung away from me and back into the beech trees.

I lit a cigarette and climbed a flight of stone steps to the top of the grass bank. It was a dam, grassed on this side and faced with concrete slabs on the other. Along the top of it ran a grass walk, mowed tight. Stretching away from it was an artificial lake of about thirty acres. It was fringed with pine woods and backed at the far end by a hill studded with great oaks. On the far bank, away to my left at the end of the dam, was a boathouse and a landing pier that projected twenty yards into the water. Way out in the centre of the lake I could see a rowing boat with two men in it.

I walked along the dam towards the landing pier. A couple of pigeons came over the pines, a pheasant called from somewhere back in the beeches and a flight of duck got up from shallows at the far side of the lake. It was a good spot and, from the state of damworks, the boathouse and pier, I guessed that it hadn't long been constructed. It must have cost

O'Dowda a packet. Nice, I thought, when you couldn't get away to Ireland or Scotland, to have your own fishing on the doorstep.

I made my way past the boathouse on to the pier. A fibre-glass hull with an outboard was tied up alongside. At the end of the pier was a vertical wooden post, rather like a small gallows, with a big brass bell hanging from it. I gave the tongue of the bell a whang or two. The noise rolled out across the water and I sat down, legs dangling over the edge of the pier, to wait for the rowing boat to come in.

The men in the boat took no notice of me, though they must have heard the bell. I sat where I was, content to finish my cigarette. They'd heard. They would come when they were ready. One thing you can't do is to hurry a millionaire. If I took the job, I decided, I'd add 5 per cent for being kept waiting. A water-rat swam leisurely out from under the pier and headed for the iris beds up the bank. A swallow dipped near the dam and made a ring like a trout rising. A hundred feet up a heron went over the pines, legs trailing, unhurried, a real dowager of a bird. There was sun and some cloud, a little ripple on the water from a faint breeze, a perfect day. Out on the lake I caught the sudden shine of sun on wet lines as one of the men false-casted. I didn't mind waiting. It suited my mood. I was almost at peace with the world.

The next moment I was almost right out of it.

Two things happened, simultaneously it seemed to me. First the crack of a rifle, and then the thud of a bullet smacking into the bell-post three inches above my head. A chip of wood flipped by me and curved out over the water. Before it hit the surface I was on my feet, running for the shelter of the boat-house.