The Melting Man

CHAPTER FIVE

It was a pleasant enough family scene. Ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, the sound of church bells coming through the open kitchen window, the smell of coffee from the percolator on a small electric ring, and over everything the warm, steamy smell of baby clothes half dry, strung out on a line across the top part of the window.

The man was lounging in a broken-down cane chair, nursing the baby in his arms. I couldn't tell its sex and never asked, but it had a red face, screwed up like a toothless old man's, and a fluff of soft black hair on its head that looked like the combings from a dog's coat. It was sucking away at the business end of an old fashioned feeding bottle, slipping its mouth sideways from the teat now and then to give a milky belch.

The man manoeuvred a cigarette one-handed from his shirt pocket, struck a match, one-handed, on the sole of his sandal and said. 'After the business with Otto, Mimi lost her milk. Big shock — but she's over it now. In good hands.'

Mimi Probst — I was sure about her because she had answered the door and identified herself — was ironing on the kitchen table. She wore a loose apron affair and had bare legs and bare feet. Her red hair was untidy, and her blue eyes were quiet and mild. She had a thinnish face with high cheekbones and a narrow chin. She looked about eighteen but was probably more. She gave the man an adoring look when he said 'in good hands', smiled and made a silent kissing movement with her mouth. Happy, contented couple, baby giving no trouble for once, all Sunday, the day of rest, before them, and on her wrist she was wearing a small diamond-set watch that was right out of her class and an identical number to the one which Julia wore. When I got back to Julia I wasn't even going to ask if Zelia had a watch like hers. Cavan O'Dowda had probably unloaded a couple on the girls at some time to mark some coup he'd pulled off.

I said, 'You know who I am. And I know who Mimi is — but who are you? Otto is the man I want, and you know why.'

My card was lying on the edge of the chair he sat in. I'd just said that I was looking for Otto to try and recover a Mercedes that belonged to a client of mine. No more, no less, not even how I had come to trace Otto. Right from the start I'd been troubled by their manner. There hadn't been the slightest edge of resentment at an intrusion on their Sunday morning. Every time I'd mentioned Otto so far, they had looked at one another and giggled.

Mimi tested the flat of the iron by spitting on it,' was dissatisfied with the heat and dumped it on another ring alongside the coffee. She turned back, put her hands on her hips and looked at me. Dolled up, she would never have passed unnoticed in a crowd. She winked at the man. 'What do you think?' His English accent would have passed, but hers was surprisingly thick. She could have had a mouth full of sticky toffee.

The man nodded, and eyed me affably as he slipped the teat from the baby's mouth, hunked the infant gently over one shoulder and began massaging its back through the shawl to ease up wind.

'He's doing a job,' he said to no one in particular. 'Been frank. Right to the point. Broad-minded, too, I should say. Would have to be in his job.' Then to me particularly he went on, 'I'm Tony Collard. You're wrong about Mimi. It ain't Probst. We were married last week. I can see you're wondering about my English. No need. My father was a Canadian, volunteered at the beginning of the war into the British Royal Artillery, came over here, changed his mind about war, deserted, settled down, married and eventually had me. He died two years back. I run the garage and repair shop that never made him a fortune.'

I said, 'You jump about a lot. And you're giving me a lot of information that I don't want. Otto is my bird. Where's he roosting now?'

At that they both gave out high squeaks of laughter. When the paroxysm was over Tony said, 'Like some coffee?'

'No thanks.'

He massaged a final burp from the baby and then stuck it back on the bottle. He had nice, easy, comfortable hands, gentle, but I had a feeling that there was far more to him than a smiling frankness of manner and an occasional mad laugh. He was about twenty, plump and big built, and with a face like a young Pickwick, made more so by the steel-rimmed glasses he wore. He had thin, blond-white hair, and would be bald before he was thirty.

'What's the score on the car?' he asked.

'My client wants it back. He's a millionaire. They get touchy about property. You and I worry over the pence. His kind worry all the way up through the cash register. That's why they're millionaires. I understood, from a gent I met recently, that Otto regarded Mimi as his girl.'

Going back to the pile of baby-clothes and diapers, iron in hand, Mimi said, 'I was. That's his baby. I had a bad time with it.'

'Caesarian,' said Tony, proudly almost, and I thought at any moment he would ask her to show me the scar. He gave her a loving look and she angled it back with that silent kissing motion of the lips. I began to feel out of place in so much domestic bliss.

'Being Otto's makes no difference to Tony,' said Mimi.

'Not a scrap,' said Tony. 'I loved Mimi long before Otto came along. Old faithful.' He chuckled. 'But then every girl's due for one stupid infatuation. Come to that, so's a man. More than one, perhaps. Eh?' He winked at Mimi and she brandished the iron, mock angry at him. I began to get the idea that they were either playing with me, or just glad to have a diversion on a warm, happy Sunday morning before they put the kid in its bassinet and wandered down the road to some trattoria for lunchtime spaghetti Milanese and a couple of glasses of Chianti.

I put some lira notes on top of the refrigerator and said, 'Don't be offended. Good information — particularly about bad characters — is worth paying for. And it isn't my money, anyway. Just tell me about Otto. Description, habits, and, maybe, present whereabouts.'

They both went into their side-splitting-giggle act, and then recovered themselves and looked a bit self-conscious.

'We don't need the money,' said Tony, 'but we'll take it on principle. Money is always something you take even if you don't need it. Money, as my old man used to say, is like music. No matter where or in what form it comes we should be glad of it. It cuts across international and cultural barriers and it is a sad person who gets no joy out of it. The other thing he used—'

'Don't start about your father,' said Mimi, shaking her head at him, smiling indulgently, and finishing again with that silent kiss.

He said something to her in rapid Italian beyond me. She blushed in a swift curtain fall from the roots of her red hair down to the point of her pert chin and said something back in Italian, and Tony squirmed in the chair and rolled his eyes behind the spectacles. It was a horrible sight. The baby burped, slipped the teat and was sick all down the front of its shawl. Tony took out his handkerchief and mopped up the mess with the loving unconcern of a devoted stepfather. In my book, there was something wrong about Tony and Mimi. I had the feeling that not only outwardly, but quietly, inwardly and even sadistically, they were laughing their heads off about me. There was, I felt, some monstrous, side-splitting joke going on so that when I left they would collapse on to the floor, rolling over and over as the pent-up mirth oozed out of them.

Tony got up and took the baby to a wicker cradle that stood on a side table. He began to tuck it away, making father noises. Without turning, he said, 'What kind of car did you say?'

'I told you. A red Mercedes 250SL. Number 828 Z-9626. 1966 model.'

He turned, smiled at me and nodded.

'That's the one. Otto brought it to me almost a month ago. I did it over for him. Only an outside job, no fiddling about changing engine numbers and so on. Just a respray and new number plates. Let me see.' He screwed up his eyes in thought, staring at the ceiling. He was a big man, bigger than he'd looked in the chair. 'Yes.' He came back to earth, having remembered, walked to his chair, patted Mimi on the bottom as he passed, and collapsed into the cane chair so that it creaked like a building about to come down in a high wind. 'Yes. I did it up cream, and the new number was something like 3243 P 38. Or it may have been 3423. But it was certainly P and 38. The last two numbers, you know, show what department a car is registered with and he particularly wanted it to be Isere — that's up around Grenoble.'

I said, 'You don't mind sitting there and telling me you did this?'

'Why should I? But you try to put it on the record — which I don't think you will — then I'd deny it. I run an almost honest business. That's as much as any garage can say.' He chuckled, and winked at Mimi. Thank God, she spared him the silent kiss on that one.

'What would he do — resell it?'

'With Otto, he could do anything. Enter it for Le Mans perhaps. Give it to his old mother for a present — if he ever knew who was his mother.'

'What does Otto look like?'

He didn't answer at once. He glanced at Mimi and I could sense the joke bubbling silently between them like a dark underground stream while their eyes lightened with merriment.

'He's four foot nothing and built like an ape. Very strong. Brown hair, long, always tossing it out of his eyes. Smart dresser. About thirty-five. Good dancer. Women fall for him, God knows why, but it never lasts because he's so selfish and unreliable with money. Still owes me for the repaint job.'

'That's all?'

'What more do you want?'

'He's got two heads,' said Mimi.

I sighed as they went into a convulsion of laughter. In fact, I was a bit annoyed. If there's a good joke going I like to be in on it.

I said, 'Anything else you've overlooked? Hare Up, forked tail, or a club foot?'

Mimi said solemnly, 'On the inside of his left thigh he's got a birthmark shaped like the cross of Lorraine.'

They both laughed again and when Tony had squeezed the last tears of delight from his eyes, he said, 'Pay no attention. Just Mimi's jokes. She's a good one for a giggle.'

I said, 'how come Otto let you walk in and take over Mimi?'

'Because he knew I was going to do it anyway, and break him in half if he made trouble. Oh, he knew it. But trust Otto to get out without trouble. A week after he took the car off he phoned, long distance somewhere, saying he was through with Mimi. Right, cara mia?

'Just like that.' Mimi began to put away the ironed clothes. 'Just phoned. Everything was over. It was not unexpected. The baby was a mistake. He never loved it. Never wanted it — but I am naturally shocked until Tony comes and says marry me. Tony is a good man.'

'The best,' said Tony. 'True love triumphs. You know what we're going to do — when the baby's a little older? Sell the garage and go to Australia. No more garage. I'm going to farm. With animals, I am good. Like with children, like with women.' He reached out as Mimi passed and held her by the left knee under the apron and they both made silent kissing motions at one another as though I were not there. He let her go and she moved over to the baby.

I said, 'Any idea where Otto might be now?'

Tony choked on his mirth, pursed his lips, gave it thought, and then said, 'Sitting comfortably somewhere without a care in the world.'

I wasn't meant to see it, but there was a mirror on the wall over Tony's chair. In it I could see Mimi's back as she bent over the cradle. From the movements of her shoulders and head, I thought she was about to have a convulsion. She just stood there, holding down a great, pulsing pressure of laughter.

I was glad to get out of the place, to get away from the homely shrine they'd built to their true love. Going down the street, heading for the nearest bottle of beer, I knew that up in the flat they were letting the laughter flow like red-hot lava. I didn't believe a word they'd said about Otto. But what they hadn't said didn't make me feel sorry for him wherever he was sitting — comfortably and without a care in the world — because always at the back of my mind was the thought of Zelia with him and Max at the Chalet Bayard.

After the beer I took a taxi to the Via Sacchi and the Palace Hotel. Lying on my bed, I put in a call to Paris and got the duty man at Interpol. I had a brief up and down with him, establishing my credentials after he'd told me that Commissaire Maziol wasn't available. I threw Guffy's name at him — told him that my bona fides had already been checked through him once, and what was the matter, weren't they interested in suppressing crime and bringing the riff-raff of Europe to book? He said it was a beautiful day in Paris, and would I make it as brief as possible. So I said in precis: Otto Libsch. Could be Otto Probst. Possible descriptions. Four feet high, strong as an ape, brown floppy hair. Or, maybe, six feet high, round happy face, steel-rimmed spectacles, fair hair, going bald. Associate Max Ansermoz — inquiry already made viz same. Otto floating around possibly in cream-coloured Mercedes 250SL. Index number — 3243, 3234, or 3423 P 38 according to latest inaccurate information, probably different number altogether, possibly car not cream, but green, blue, black or maroon. But certainly Mercedes. For a moment or two I debated dropping in the names of Mimi Probst and Tony Collard and then decided against it. They were a couple I'd like to have up my sleeve just in case anything definite came up about Otto.

Just as I was finishing, Julia came in without knocking and sat at the end of the bed. She wore a cream-coloured silk dress with a little snatch of red scarf at the throat, and I could see by the set of her mouth that she was determined to have things out with me. I looked at her watch and checked it against Mimi's — they were both the same. Otto, before taking off, or Tony, before settling in, had made it a love gift.

I put the phone down and Julia said, 'I've driven you all the way down here. When do I get let into your confidence?'

I should say that Najib had taken my car. He'd left a note on Max's round table saying that Panda was driving it off, and he gave the name of a garage from which I could collect it in Geneva. That was merely to get a head start on me in the chase after Otto. At this moment he was probably a damned angry man without any doubt that I was anything but a bon ami of his.

So Julia had been press-ganged into driving me to Turin and no explanations. She'd been content to wait for the right moment which, as she swung her legs up on to the bed, I saw she had decided was now.

I said, 'There isn't any need for you to know anything. You want to protect Zelia. So do I. Let's leave it like that.'

'I want to know about this Max Ansermoz.'

'He's dead — and I'm heartily glad. A sort of friend of mine shot him just before he could shoot me, and then this friend conveniently carted the body off — and my car. All I need say to you is that Zelia spent a couple of nights at the chalet. Okay?'

She looked at me, head lowered a little, and then slowly nodded.

'Okay. But why are you here?'

'I've got a job to do. Remember? I have to find your father's car.'

'Can't I help you with that?'

'You have, by driving me here. But that's as far as it goes. Look, your concern was Zelia. You've got my word about that. O'Dowda's not going to know anything. But there's still the car, and that's my job. It isn't a game. I'm paid to take bumps on the head and stupid risks. I've a defect of character which forces me to accept it as a way of life. I'm a hard case, hooked. I can't afford to have you along all the time. Somebody might flatten you — and then what chance would I have of a bonus from step-daddy? Business to me is money, and I don't want you involved just for the kicks. Let me finish this job and then, if you like my company, I'll give you two weeks you'll never forget.'

'God, you're impossible.'

Her bosom heaved. It was something I had never seen happen before. She almost burst.

'I dislike you,' she said, 'more than I can say.'

I said, 'The top button of your dress has popped.' It had, too.

She swung off the bed and made for the door, her hands up, buttoning her dress. Halfway there, she turned towards me.

'By the way, while you were out I phoned my father. He wants to see you at once. That's an order.'

'Where is he?'

'Evian — at the château.'

I gave her a big smile.

'You wouldn't care to drive me back as far as Geneva?'

'Not bloody likely. Remember, you don't want any help from me.'

'Okay.'

She went to the door, and then paused before opening it.

She said, 'Tell me one thing — and I'm not asking out of idle curiosity. When you talked with this Max, did he tell you how he came to know Zelia?'

'No. He just said he met her in Geneva and Evian.'

'Secretly?'

'I imagine so.'

'Poor Zelia.'

'Well, she doesn't have to worry about Max any more. And when I get hold of the other bastard I'll do something about him.'

'The other?'

'Yes — it can't hurt you to know. There was another man at the chalet. He's the one who ran off with the car. I thought I might find him here, but I was unlucky.'

'What was his name?'

'Otto Libsch.'

There was a long pause, and then she went

I didn't care for the pause. There was something unnatural about it. I had the impression that for a few seconds she was fighting within herself to decide whether she should move out at the end of the pause or say something.

Somehow I wasn't surprised when, ten minutes later, she phoned through and said that she had changed her mind and would be willing to drive me to Geneva. And that change of heart I was convinced had something to do with the name Otto Libsch.

A few minutes later my phone went again. It was a Paris call. The duty officer out at Saint Cloud was brisker this time, alive, alert, almost commanding. Somebody had not only confirmed my rating with him, but somebody clearly wanted something from me. Where, he asked, could I be found in the next twenty-four hours? I said that I was going to be driving through the night to Geneva, where I should be picking my car up at the Autohall Servette in the Rue Liotard, and then going on to Cavan O'Dowda's château above Evian, and what was the sudden urgency about? He said it was still a splendid day in Paris and wished me bon voyage.

At nine the next morning Julia dropped me in the Rue Liotard. The night drive had been quite an experience, like being crated up in the hold of a jet cargo plane. I croaked appropriate thanks and crabbed my way down the street on bent legs, my eyes gritty for sleep and my mouth dry with smoking too many cigarettes. She swept by me with a wave, smiling and as fresh as a dew-spangled rose.

At the entrance to the Autohall I was met by an old friend, looking, as usual, as droopy and sun-dazzled as a day-trapped owl. He was leaning against the wall, Gauloise dangling from the corner of his mouth, wearing a shabby brown suit, brown shirt without tie, and big brown shoes that turned up at the toes. Over his rusty brown moustache he blinked upwards at me in welcome. Upwards, because Aristide Marchissy la Dole was only just over four feet in height. He looked at his watch and said, 'Good timing. I heard it was a Facel Vega. I had you bracketed to the half-hour.'

I said, 'What the hell are you doing in Switzerland?'

The last time I'd met him he had been with the Sûreté Nationale — Office Central des Stupéfiants. Before that with Renseignements Generaux.

He said, 'I've moved on to higher and no better things. Let's have breakfast.'

He took me around the corner to a pâtisserie where he loaded his plate with a large slice of gâteau Galicien, oozing with apricot jam and stuck all over with pistachio nuts, ordered a large cup of hot chocolate into which he poured cognac from his own flask and then, butter cream fringing his moustache, asked, 'You are well?'

I was feeling sick, but said, 'Yes. And you?'

'I am in good health and appetite, despite a lack of sleep. But sleep is for weaklings. Tell me, are we going to have the usual trouble with you over this?'

'Probably.'

'You know what I mean by this?'

'No.'

He stoked up with more cake and through it said, 'I am very fond of Galicien. It was first made in Paris at the Pâtisserie Frascati, alas no more. It stood on the corner of the Boulevard Richelieu, on the site of what was at one time one of the most famous gaming houses in the city.' He sighed, blinked and went on, 'I wish I were back in Paris at the Sûreté. I do not like International things nor anything that begins with Inter. Despite De Gaulle I am not even in favour of the Common Market. I am parochial. And much as I like you, I am sorry even to meet you briefly on business because I know you will only give me trouble as before.'

He held a brief silence in memory of the troubled past. I lit a cigarette and, reaching for his flask, put the rest of his cognac in my coffee.

He said, 'Let us now play the frankness game. I will be frank with you.'

'And I will be frank with you.'

'Up to a point.'

'Up to a point where individual ethics, self-interest, etcetera, etcetera demand otherwise. So?'

'We have no information on one Max Ansermoz.'

I said expansively, 'Forget him. Requiescat in pace.'

He gave me a look and said, 'We will not pursue it unless it comes up. Without a corpus there is no corpus delicti. Something like that, no?'

'Something,' I said.

'Tell me,' he said, 'before we get down to the real business. Have you engaged yourself — on the side — in another commission which concerns O'Dowda?'

'Like what?'

'Possibly from some member of his family?'

'I've enough on my hands with his Mercedes job. I just stick to one thing at a time — and often that's too much for me.'

He nodded approvingly, and I said, 'Tell me about Otto Libsch?'

'Willingly. He is about thirty-five years old, born in Linz, Austria, of course. Passes as a Frenchman. Five foot ten, dark-haired, good physique, various prison sentences, various names, same crimes — armed robbery. From a description given, and the method used, he is now wanted for a payroll robbery which he carried out with a companion two weeks ago. It was in France and they got away with the equivalent in English money of…' he thought, licking the fringe of his moustache with his tongue — 'say ten thousand pounds.'

'Where did this happen exactly, and how?'

'At the moment my frankness doesn't reach that far.'

'How far does it reach?'

'Let us see. Ah, yes. A car was used in the robbery. It was a black Mercedes 250SL. Index number — different from any that you named.'

'I'm not surprised. Has the car been traced?'

'No. Nor Otto.'

'Or bis companion?'

'No. He was tall, six feet, big build, round, plump face, steel-rimmed spectacles and he had fair hair. He doesn't fit anyone in our records. Naturally we are interested in anything you might have to say about any person of your acquaintance who fits this description.'

I was silent, trying to figure the best way out because I didn't want to declare as good an ace as Tony Collard yet. He got up and went over to the counter and came back with a concoction that made me feel I would never want to eat again.

Seeing my look, he said brightly. 'It is a Saint-Honoré. He was, you know, once Bishop of Amiens and is the patron saint of pastry-cooks for no good reason that anyone has ever been able to discover. So, a big man with big face and cheap glasses — you met someone like that in Turin?'

'No. I got Otto from Max Ansermoz. He also gave me an address for Otto in Turin — but it was a phoney. Nobody knew of Otto.'

Aristide chuckled.

'You want the car,' he said. 'And we want Otto, plus friend. Please try to find a way around this which will trouble no one's ethics.'

'I'll do my best.'

He nodded. 'Of that I am sure. The trouble is that you produce such a poor best at times. Now me, for example, for a friend I always try to give of my best. Take your car in the garage around the corner. The same kind of car that your employer is so mysteriously worried about. You should not drive it away without having a good look under the bonnet. While waiting for you I took the trouble to inspect it only because I am interested in engines… purely that. How large events sometimes hang on the smallest of human curiosities.'

I stood up. 'I'm sure,' I said, 'you'd like to be left alone in peace with your Saint-Honore. But thank you for everything.'

'Nothing at all. I have left my card in your car. When you are ready — just give me a call.' He raised a large round of sugar-iced choux to his mouth and crunched on it hungrily. Then, mouth full, he added, 'By the way, there is one other small point.'

'Nice of you to save it for last. That means it's the real point.'

'Possibly. When you locate this car — you will notify me at once, and say nothing to your employer until I give you permission.'

'And if I don't?'

He gave me a beaming smile, his mouth flecked with crumbs.

'If you don't — then many people more important than me will be angry. Very angry. Influential, official people, who could make life hard for you.'

'When has it been any other?'

He took another bite at his Saint-Honore and winked, his mouth too full for words.

I went and collected my car, but before driving it away I inspected the engine as he had suggested. In the long run, professional ethics are one thing. But if there is going to be a long run there's nothing like friendship.

The Château de la Forclaz was about ten miles due south of Evian, out along the road to a place called Abondance. It had a mile of road frontage, a high wire fence studded with the usual notices, Chasse Interdit, Defence d'Entrer, Propriete Privee, and so on. There was a lodge, a lodge gate with a wide cattle-grid across the road, and then half a mile of private drive up through pine woods, curving and banking, and with more notices telling one to take it easy on the curves and not exceed thirty kilometres an hour. The rich are great ones for notices telling you what not to do, which is odd, really, when you consider that they take no account of warning notices themselves.

The château, with a facade almost as long as that of Buckingham Palace, was big enough to give a millionaire a feeling of not being too cramped. From the corners and roof spaces of the building — which was built of a pleasant grey-yellow stone — a series of round towers with blue slate roofs fingered their way skywards. There was a terrace along, the front with wide steps leading up from either end. In the centre of the terrace a bronze fountain spouted water twenty feet high over a centrepiece of mixed-up mermen, mermaids and dolphins engaged in some nautical frolic that in real life would certainly have led to trouble. Naturally, being O'Dowda's place, there were no goldfish in the fast swirling waters of the fountain's bowl. Just brown trout.

I had a room in one of the towers with a view reaching way back to Lac Leman. I took lunch in a small, sub-guest dining room with Durnford, who was still twitching his eyes and was not particularly friendly towards me. He told me that O'Dowda was in residence and would send for me after lunch.

I said, 'Did you get that list of people in residence here at the time Miss Zelia left?'

'I am working on it.'

It occurred to me that it wasn't something that required all that much work, but I made no comment because I could see that he was in no mood for comments.

I lingered over my coffee much too long for him, so he got up and excused himself, making for the door. But from the door he did a Wilkins on me, turning and saying, 'I think I should warn you that Mr O'Dowda is in a particular mood today.'

I looked at him inquiringly. 'You care to enlarge on that?'

'No.' He opened the door. 'But I thought it only fair to warn you. His staff are used to him but it sometimes disconcerts strangers.' He went.

I sat there and, after a few moments, it occurred to me that perhaps he wasn't as unfriendly as he always appeared and sounded. If he disliked me he would have been happy for me to meet any awkward mood of O'Dowda's head on.

Half an hour later a footman in green livery, silver buttons, and with the face of a professional mourner, came to conduct me to O'Dowda. We went through and up what seemed a quarter of a mile of corridors, picture galleries and stairs and finally landed up in front of a tall pair of doors covered in red leather and ornamented with copper studs.

From a niche in the wall alongside the door he pulled out a hand microphone and announced, 'Mr Carver is here, sir.'

Almost immediately, the double-doors slid back, and the footman nodded to me to enter, looking as though he were muttering a requiem for me under his breath.

I went through the door, heard it whisper to a close behind me, and faced a long room full of people, not one of whom took the slightest notice of me.

It was an enormous room, originally intended for stately balls, masques, routs, assemblages, minor coronations or, maybe, indoor joustings. Tall mullioned windows ran along one wall, draped with heavy red velvet curtains. From the barrel-vaulted ceiling hung three Venetian glass chandeliers. The floor under my feet was polished Carrera marble, and on the wall opposite the window hung four Velasquez portraits.

Although the place was full of people there wasn't a sound to be heard. There were about fifty of them — men and women, more men than women, some black, most white and a few yellow. Their dress was everything from evening gown and tiaras, court dress, rough old working suits, shirt sleeves and denims, military uniforms to national costumes. Some of them were sitting, some standing, and one couple were down on one knee in the act of obeisance, and they were all looking towards the far end of the room. Not a muscle among them moved because they were all made of wax. Nearest to me was a woman in a low-cut evening gown whose shoulders wanted dusting.

At the far end of the room was a raised platform, half-crescented at each side with a pierced marble balustrade. Three low steps ran upwards to a final dais on which was an enormous throne-chair in gold stucco with a back that ran up into a kind of baldachin affair overhead from which fell silver-and-gold curtains. On either side of the throne-chair stood a pair of seven-branched candelabra, all the candles lit. In the chair sat a wax figure, double life-size, of O'Dowda. The big head was decked out with a chaplet of laurel leaves, a purple toga swathed the huge body, and there were gold sandals on the big feet. One fat hand held a silver drinking goblet and the other a long roll of parchment. Take the parchment away and stick a lyre in it and you could ring the changes: Caesar or Nero, according to mood.

Just at that moment, having got over the shock of the Madame Tussaud collection in the room, I was wondering what was the particular mood of the man who sat on the edge of the platform below the effigy. Normally it might have been difficult to guess. It could have been his day to be Caesar, Nero, Hitler, Napoleon, Karl Marx, Sam Goldwyn or Kruschev. But it wasn't. He was all togged up from ankle to neck in one of those blue siren suits Winston Churchill used to wear, and there was a fat cigar stuck in his mouth and a fat scowl overhanging his eyes. In his right hand he held a whippy little cane with which he was gently smacking his right leg.

He just stared at me across a hundred yards of marble floor, waiting for me to speak, I imagined. But I knew my place. You do not speak to royalty until they speak to you first. I knew something else, too. Despite this show, he wasn't mad. He wasn't even eccentric. Everything he did, he did from reason; cold, hard, cash-registering reason. Only the failures in life go mad. It's their way of opting out of the rat-race.

He got up and slowly made his way down the room. He stopped once alongside the figure of a London policeman and gave the blue serge of the man's seat a whippy slash with the cane.

Then, coming up to me, he said, careful all the time to keep the scowl on his face, 'Know why I did that, Carver?'

I said, 'I should think because years ago he was the one who around midnight nobbled you as you came out of the neighbourhood grocer's with the contents of the till in your pocket.'

O'Dowda grinned, but he still managed somehow to keep the scowl going.

'Bad guess. Sure, before I had real hairs on my chest I knocked off a till or two. How the hell do you get capital to start otherwise? No — he nobbled me for drunken driving when I was twenty-two. Licence taken away for six months, meant I couldn't drive the van. Business kaput. They're all like that.' He waved the cane around the crowd.

'You brought me all the way up here to tell me about the people who've crossed you in your life?'

'You'll learn why I brought you up here soon enough. Sure, yes, they are all people who crossed or tried to cross me. I like to come in here sometimes and talk to them, let 'em see where I am now. You know how much one of these figures costs?'

'No.'

'Kermode does them. Clever sod, is Kermode. Used to work for Tussaud's once. Two hundred quid, he charges me.'

'You could save money by having them done in miniature. Keep 'em all in a glass case. That way the dust wouldn't settle on them.' I ran my finger down the V-back of the tiara number and showed the tip to him. 'Now stop trying to impress me.'

'You're fired, boyo.'

'Splendid.'

'You were going to cross me up.'

'You should have let me do it — then you could have stuck me in here. I'd have sent you one of my old suits to make it authentic'

'Watch your tongue when you speak to me. You're just the hired man.'

'You fired me a moment ago. Remember? Anyway, hired or fired I speak as I find. Stop playing games, O'Dowda.'

For a moment I thought he was going to hit me with the cane. He stood there and bulged his big face at me, little blue eyes boring at me, the afternoon sun sparkling on the short copper scruff of his hair, the end of his cigar glowing like a Stop light. Then he wheeled away and went up to the figure of a coloured gent wearing a tarboosh and ten yards of white Manchester cotton robe and swiped the tarboosh off with his cane.

'What did he do?' I asked. 'Sell you a dud lot of dirty photos?'

'As a matter of fact it was a dud lot of industrial diamonds during the war. He lived to regret it. And don't think I'm trying to impress you. For me this is therapy. Every so often I like to review 'em, talk to 'em. Afterwards I fell as clean and pink inside as a baby. And when I'm not here they still have to face me.' He nodded towards the outsize Caesar figure.

I said, 'You should open it to the public. Cover your costs in a couple of years. Kermode could sell hot-dogs and ice-cream on the terrace.'

He scowled at me.

'You're fired,' he said.

I turned and made for the door. He let me reach it, and then said, 'Don't you want to know why?'

I looked at him over my shoulder. 'If you feel you've got to tell me — okay. But in that case let's do it over a drink and a smoke.' I fished out my cigarette case. 'The drink,' I said, 'is up to you.'

He gave me a grin then.

'You're a lippy bastard. But it's a change. You're still fired, though.'

He went back to the other end of the room, smacking the odd rump and shoulder here and there and stopped in front of what was probably a Louis-the-something console and produced brandy and glasses. Again, he gave himself the bigger helping. I went up and sat in an armchair with an elderly diplomatic type in court dress resting one elbow nonchalantly on the back. (He'd probably blocked O'Dowda's bid for a knighthood.)

I breathed the brandy aroma, sipped, let the liquid roll around my mouth like a mixture of ginger and fire, swallowed it, and felt it like the beginning of a young volcano in my stomach.

I said, 'This is bloody awful stuff.'

O'Dowda said, 'You think I'd waste my best brandy on a man I've just fired?' I said, 'Why am I fired?'

'Because, Carver, when I employ someone I demand complete loyalty for my money. Nobody has to love me for it. But they have to earn it.'

'So far as I know I haven't even got round to cheating you on a hotel bill yet. But I'll make a note to do so when you reinstate me.'

He whipped the cane through the air in front of him angrily and said, 'Bejasus, you try me hard.'

I said, 'You're the first Irishman outside of a music-hall I ever heard say Bejasus. Just let me have a few facts about my disloyalty.'

'Two days ago I had a visit from a black number called Alakwe—'

'Was this in England or over here?'

'Why?'

'Because then I'll know whether it was Jimbo Alakwe or Najib.'

'In London.'

'Good old Jimbo, still trying hard. Don't tell me — I can guess the kind of line he would take. I've taken a bribe of, say, two thousand guineas, not pounds, to double-cross you by letting him know before you where the Mercedes is when I find it? Something like that?'

'More or less. You're damned frank about it, aren't you?'

'I'll be even franker. Jimbo's the simpler of the two brothers — twins actually. God knows what the people he works for make of him. He should have known that my price for a double-cross like that would be in the region of ten thousand. I'm happy in my work with you. It gives me a change of scene, luxury living, new faces — some of 'em pretty and feminine — and a life expectancy that would have me booted out of any insurance office. Take a look at this.'

I reached into my pocket and tossed it across to him. It was the size and shape of a half grapefruit, but a good deal heavier.

He held it in one gorilla paw and said, 'What's this?'

I said, 'It's a magnetic limpet bomb, thermo-activated. There's a little sliding pointer on the side which you can set against the scale to any temperature. The temperature readings are calibrated in Fahrenheit, Centigrade and Reamur. No detail overlooked. At the moment it's set to "safe". It was stuck on the side of my car engine in Geneva, set to a reading that would have blown me sky-high after a couple of kilometres.'

'Boyo, what a damned useful gadget.'

'You can keep it. But if I'd taken cash to double-cross you, why would they want to knock me off? Waste of money. They were annoyed because I wouldn't double-cross you. I suppose you've now paid Jimbo good money to double-cross them, whoever they are?'

'Yes, I have.'

I shook my head. 'You'll have him all mixed up. He isn't the kind to carry a double disloyalty in his mind without getting the wires crossed. All right, am I back at work?'

He reached round and put the bomb on the console affair behind him. Then he slewed his big head back at me, lowering it like a bull sighting on the middle point of a matador's cummerbund, and heaved a great sniff of air out of his nostrils.

'What the hell goes on?' he said. 'I just want that car back.'

I said, 'You're going to get it. It was pinched by a crook called Otto Libsch.' I paused, watching him closely as I mentioned the name. It had, I was sure, meant something to Julia. It could mean something to him. If it did he didn't show it. I went on, 'He had a respray job done on it and some weeks after used it to carry out a payroll hold-up somewhere in France. Since then, neither he nor the car has been seen. But I'll lay you ten to one in hundreds — pounds not francs — that I find the car in the next few days. On?'

'No.'

'It's nice you have such confidence in me. Am I reinstated?'

'Temporarily, yes. But by God — you put one foot wrong and—'

'You're jumping the gun,' I said. 'If you want me back, there's a condition on this side. No, two conditions.'

'Nobody makes conditions with me.' He said it with a rumble like a runaway steamroller. As I knew better than to argue with a steamroller I began to get up to leave.

He waved me down. 'Let's hear them.'

I sat back. 'First, I don't want to be badgered with questions about how I traced Otto and the car. And I don't want your stepdaughter Zelia badgered. Like she says, she knows nothing. Secondly, I want to know what's in the secret compartment of that car and who the people are who are employing Najib and Jimbo Alakwe. This I have to know for my own protection. What do you say?'

He stood up slowly and gave me a warm smile. You wouldn't believe it possible, but suddenly that big brute of a face was transformed. He was a solid, bearlike father-figure reaching out his arms with a benign smile, ready to take and comfort the world's weary and sick at heart, the oppressed, the poor and the homeless. It didn't impress me at all, because I knew that he would take them all and make a profit out of it somehow.

'What I say, Carver, is that I've obviously been mistaken in you. Just get on with the job. I've complete trust in you, boyo. And as far as Zelia's concerned, I'll never mention the car to her again.'

'Good.'

He shook his head. 'I'll never understand why you haven't made a million for yourself already. You've got all the gall in the world.'

'What I haven't got is an answer to the second condition. What's in the car and who wants it?'

'Ah, yes, that. Well, that's a little more difficult. Delicate, in fact.'

'Try.'

He chewed the end of his cigar for a while, working up in his mind the lie he was going to tell me. After the write-up he'd just given me he knew it would have to be good. He wasn't long about it.

'In the car,' he said, 'is a very considerable parcel of bonds. Gold bonds. To be exact they're Imperial Japanese Government external loan bonds of 1930, sinking fund 5½ per cent, which are due for final redemption in May 1975, but these bonds are ones that have been drawn for redemption in January of next year. Naturally no further interest accrues to them after that date, but their redemption value is around twenty thousand pounds. Originally they belonged to me. But I was passing them over to a friend in return for services rendered. You with this, so far?'

'Yes. But I shall check that there are such bonds, naturally.'

'Do that, you careful bastard.' He grinned.

'And the friend?'

'He is an important figure in the opposition party of one of the new African states. At the material time this opposition party was the ruling party. Times change. The present ruling party considers that the bonds belong to them since, they argue, the favour done for me by my friend when he was in power was done in his official, not private, capacity.'

'What do you think of that argument?'

'I don't care a damn. I promised him the bonds, and he gets them. And that's all the damned details you're going to get about it.'

I said, 'Where do these bonds have to be delivered for redemption?' It was a quick one but he was up to it, the answer rolling out smoothly.

'The Bank of Tokyo Trust Company, 100 Broadway, New York, NY 10005. Naturally you'll check that, too. But do it on your own time, not mine. Now get the hell out of here and find me that Mercedes.'

I stood up. 'And where is the secret compartment in the car?'

He puffed his cheeks out like a grotesque cherub, exploded air gently, and said, 'That's no affair of yours. You're all right in my book so far, but not so far that I would trust you with twenty thousand pounds' worth of bonds.'

I looked sad, but only for the record, and I went towards the door, past the bobby who had flagged him down for drunken driving, past the Syrian diamond merchant who had switched stones on him, past a slick looking South American type who'd probably sold him a salted gold mine, past men and women who once, for a brief while, had got in his way, shaken him down, held him up, and had eventually lived or died to regret it. And not for one moment did I believe a word about the bonds… that is, that that was what was in the car. Imperial Japanese Bonds existed all right. He'd just used the fact to get rid of me. And I'd accepted it. Why not? A job is a job, and this one paid well, and when I got the car somebody — I wasn't sure who yet — was going to pay well for whatever was in the secret compartment.

I went back to my room, panting up the spiral stairway to my turret, anxious to pack and be away. Waiting for me was Miss Zelia Yunge-Brown.

She was sitting in a chair by the window, in a blue anorak and a blue skirt and wearing heavy walking shoes, looking as though she'd just come back from a long tramp through the pine woods.

I said, 'So you finally decided to come ashore?'

'Yes,' She put up a hand and ran it through one side of her dark hair and did a little brow-knitting act; no smile on her face, but not, I thought, as cold and glacial as she had been at our last meeting.

She stood up as I dumped my case on the bed and began to pack my pyjamas which some flunkey had already laid out.

'I was stupid about the Max Ansermoz letter. I should have guessed that was what you wanted me to do. You must have enjoyed yourself.'

I said, 'Between ourselves, Max is dead.'

'Dead?'

'Yes. You want me to look unhappy about it?'

'But you—'

'No, I didn't do it. But Max is dead and I'm dry-eyed about the whole thing. I'm only interested in a motor car. So's your father.'

'Stepfather.'

'Well, yes, if you're sticking to niceties. He knows nothing. Nobody knows anything, except me — and for some things I have no memory at all. Now stop doing an ice-maiden act on me. Write it off to experience and get into gear again.'

'You have said nothing to anyone?'

'That's right.'

She was a big girl, and she was embarrassed suddenly, and she wasn't very good at carrying it off. For a moment I was afraid that she would come across and embrace me, crushing me in those lovely long strong arms. However, she got it under control and slowly held out a hand to me.

'I am very grateful to you.'

She had my hand in hers and now I was embarrassed. 'Just forget it.'

I got my hand away. She clumped to the door in her heavy shoes and paused before going out.

'I wish there was something I could do to show you how grateful I am.'

I said, 'You could try smiling again. It's a knack that comes back easily.'

'It's not easy to smile in this house. It has too many memories for me… of my mother. I have decided to go away and get a job.'

'I'm all for the job. You'll land one easier though with a smile on your face. Try it.'

It came back easily. She gave it to me, a slow warm smile that was followed by a little shake of her head and then a laugh. Then she went.

I snapped the lid of my case down, glad that Max was dead.

In the hallway, down a long perspective green and white marble slabs Durnford was waiting for me. He came up to me with the practised glide of one used to walking in marble halls, and said, 'You're going?'

'Be glad,' I said. 'Besides, I don't like staying in a waxworks. I presume you've heard from the boss that I'm reinstated?'

'Yes.'

'In that case, could I have the list of people who were staying here before Miss Zelia took off with the Mercedes.'

He handed me a sheet of paper and said, 'I think you should know that I had been given strict instructions from Mr O'Dowda that I was never to make that guest-list available to anyone.'

'Then why me?'

'That's not a question I'm prepared to answer.' I slipped the paper into my pocket and gave him a cocked-eyebrow look.

'You don't like him, do you?'

'He is my employer.'

'You'd like to see him come a cropper, a real trip-up, flat on his face?'

He gave me a thin smile then, and said, 'I'm hoping for more than that. And I've been waiting a long time. Contrary to what you imagine, I have no animosity towards you. I think you may turn out to be the deus ex machina.'

'What you mean is that if I find the car, you hope that I will walk off with whatever is in it. Or hand it over to someone else?'

'Possibly.'

'You really hate his guts, don't you? Tell me, have you ever written any anonymous letters about him to Interpol or Scotland Yard?'

'Why should I?' He was well in control.

'It's just a thought I had. Anyway, whatever game you are playing I think it's a dangerous one. You watch it, unless you want to end up in the waxworks with all the others.'

I picked up my case and went outside to my car. Standing alongside it was Julia.

She said, 'Was everything all right?'

'Fine. Your father almost trusts me, Zelia's grateful, and Durnford is full of hints. What are you registering?'

She said, 'Why is it that you can't talk to me without being cross or vulgar?'

'It's something you do to me. There's nothing I'd like better than a beautiful relationship but I always seem to knock on the wrong door.'

She lit a cigarette as I put my case in the car.

I paused at the door before getting in and said, 'Don't do anything stupid like trying to follow me.'

'It wasn't in my mind. Where are you going, anyway?'

'To find Otto Libsch. Any messages?'

She gave me a quick, almost apprehensive look. 'Why should there be?'

'I had the impression that you knew him, or something about him.'

'I don't know why you should think that.'

'No? I'll tell you. When you came to my room that first night, there was more on your mind than just protecting Zelia. When I mentioned his name in Turin, it was no surprise to you, and right now you haven't said you don't know him. Don't worry, I'm not going to force anything from you. I just want to find a car. That's my brief.'

'Did you mention him to Zelia?'

'No. The less said to her about either of them the better. But I mentioned him to your father, naturally, and his big happy face remained quite unchanged. Now, do you want to talk about Otto, or do I get moving?'

She blinked at me a little and bit her lip. Then she shook her head, and said, 'There's no point. Absolutely no point whatsoever… it couldn't change things from being what they are.' Then, her manner hardening, she went on, 'You go. Go and find your car. That is important. That's money, that's business. Things that really count in this life.'

She turned abruptly away from me and made for the house. I drove off, not pleased with myself, knowing that she needed help, and knowing too that it was no moment for me to get involved in anything else. This car business was all my hands could hold at the moment — particularly with Interpol sticking their noses in.