The Python Project Read online

  Private investigator Rex Carver accepts a mundane commission to recover a gold python arm bracelet and steps right into a spider’s web of intrigue involving the secret services. As the plot ricochets between Paris, Italy, Libya, Tunisia and Ibiza, with Carver dodging bullets from all sides, Canning justifies his reputation as one of the finest thriller writers in the world.

  The Python Project

  A REX CARVER MYSTERY

  Victor Canning

  THE PYTHON PROJECT Copyright © Victor Canning 1967

  All rights reserved including the right of

  reproduction in the whole or in part in any form

  CHAPTER 1

  Sunshine in a Shady Place

  His name was Hawkins and I knew him very well. I’d worked for him—or his company, rather—on and off for the last five years. He was always embarrassed when he had a dubious client—as though it reflected somehow on the good name of his company, though I couldn’t think why because since they had been first established in 1870 they must have been gypped, swindled and cheated hundreds of times. After all, that’s what most people think insurance companies are there for.

  ‘I’m not saying there’s anything wrong about her,’ he said, ‘but I just get a feeling. If she’d been an old customer I wouldn’t be so sensitive, but she only switched her insurances to us about six months ago. Yes, I’ve a very definite feeling about her.’

  Usually when he had that sort of feeling he was right, and he always came to me. It was handy to have someone do your dirty work for you.

  He slid a glossy photograph across the desk to me and it skidded fast and fell to the floor. I reached down and retrieved it and felt my arm muscles stiff from my last session with Miggs. The bastard had enjoyed himself for half an hour teaching me new arm-holds and throwing me all over the gym. You couldn’t see more than a yard ahead for the dust from the mats when he had finished.

  I looked at the photograph without interest.

  ‘I don’t want a job. I’ve made some big money lately and it’s put me off work.’ It always did. Besides, outside in Northumberland Avenue it was spring, the cock pigeons chasing the hens around, the cab drivers watching the mini-skirts go by, and an icy wind coming up the street canyon from the river. I thought of golden sands, golden girls, golden nights in casinos, and wondered if they would do anything for the tired feeling I had in the mornings or whether just a bottle of the old tonic from the doctor up the road from my flat wouldn’t be cheaper and more effective. Cheaper, certainly.

  ‘What I want,’ I said, watching Hawkins’s moist, pebble-grey eyes on me, ‘is a real lift. Salt in the blood. A different beat in the pulse. A sense of discovering a new man inside this weary old frame. Something you can’t get from Ovaltine or Metatone but maybe from the Mediterranean. Certainly not from work. Not from chasing around trying to find out if some woman is trying to cheat your company over a jewellery claim. The odds are high that she is.’

  I tapped the photograph.

  ‘This is the most ghastly bit of Oriental bazaar work I’ve seen for some time.’

  ‘It’s Indian, seventeenth century, and it’s worth about five thousand pounds. The eyes are diamonds, somewhere around fifty carats each, and each coil is studded along the whole length with emeralds. And the body-work is pure gold.’

  ‘I still think it’s vulgar. I don’t want work. I want rejuvenation.’ I slid the photograph back to him.

  He fielded it with one hand, neatly, and flipped another photograph across with the other. For a moment there was the suggestion of a twinkle in his watery eyes.

  ‘That’s the owner,’ he said. ‘I brought it along because Wilkins said it was going to be difficult to get you off the ground. She’s worried about you.’

  ‘She always is. There’s no pleasing her. Hard up or well off, she worries.’

  I let the second photograph rest where it had skidded off the desk to the ground.

  ‘You’re lucky to have Wilkins,’ he said. ‘I’d give her a job any day at twice the salary you pay. I’ve written all the details of the owner on the back of the photograph. Incidentally, she’s a widow and worth about a quarter of a million—and she’s only twenty-seven.’

  Just for a moment I felt a flicker of interest. But it died quickly. I just didn’t have the blood count to boost my imagination into orbit. Wilkins was right. Something was wrong with me and it was going to be difficult to get me off the ground. Wilkins was my secretary—and also a partner in Carver & Wilkins. She was thirty-five, spinster, and lived in Greenwich with her father, a retired ship’s steward. She had red hair, blue eyes, no dress sense, and mostly thought nothing of me. She was zero to look at and I don’t know what I would have done without her. She had a fiance, a Swede who was a Suez Canal pilot, and saw him about once a year. I didn’t think he represented any threat.

  Hawkins said, ‘Have a look at it. Or haven’t you got the strength to pick it up?’

  ‘Just,’ I said. I reached down for the photograph. It was face down, the back covered with Hawkins’s notes. The chair tipped a bit and I nearly went over. I came back to a level keel with the photograph, the right way round, a foot from my nose.

  I didn’t say anything. But somewhere inside me the motor turned over, fired, missed a few cycles, and then steadied to a quiet tick-over. I stared at the photograph, not hypnotized, but quietly, almost happily, absorbed. Somewhere inside me a thin trickle of adrenalin began to seep into the blood stream.

  ‘This,’ I said, ‘is not a woman of twenty-seven.’

  ‘Taken when she was nineteen. The year before she married. She used to do that kind of thing, professionally.’

  ‘Judging by this, she did it very well. Where did you get it?’

  ‘Sources. Interested?’

  He stood up, which I thought was taking a lot for granted. He buttoned his overcoat and adjusted his neck-scarf which was red with little white horses all over it.

  ‘Could be,’ I said.

  ‘Good. Usual terms. I’ve left the company file outside with Wilkins.’

  ‘Any particular line?’

  He put the photograph of the Indian piece of jewellery on the desk. ‘I think it was stolen, but not the way she describes it. Have a word with her. I’m sure you’ll feel better when you have.’ He nodded at the photograph in my hand. ‘It’s things like that which cheer up a dull world.’

  ‘Personally, on a freezing day like this, it just makes me feel colder.’ It wasn’t true of course, but I didn’t see why I should admit that his tactics had paid off. Since there isn’t much dignity in my profession I had to cling to the little I could muster.

  He looked at me, decided not to wink, and went out. Wilkins was in ten seconds later, carrying the company file. I was still holding the photograph in my hand.

  She put the file on my desk, sniffed hard to keep abreast of the cold she had picked up three months before, and said, nodding at the photograph, ‘Disgusting.’

  ‘Absolutely. But maybe what I need.’

  ‘For a reasonably nice person,’ she said, ‘you respond to the coarsest stimuli. Sex, alcohol and gambling.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  She turned away, but when she got to the door she paused and cocked her head back at me. I knew all about that pause and half-turn of the head and waited for one hand to go up and touch her hair. Something was coming.

  ‘Mrs Burtenshaw, my sister, will take over next Monday.’

  ‘Christ!’ It was out before I could stop it. At least some reflexes were working properly.

  She gave me a chilly look.

  ‘Sorry. Why is she coming?’

  ‘Because I am going to Cairo, to be with Olaf. It’s my annual visit.’

  Olaf was the Su
ez Canal pilot. His other name was Bornjstrom, or something like that. I’d met him once and kept a very clear impression of a blond giant, about eight feet tall and three feet wide, who made the ground shake beneath him as he walked. Any ship he went aboard was in danger of capsizing unless he kept dead centre on the bridge. Whenever Wilkins made her annual visit her sister came and did for me. And there is no more accurate description. She was three times tougher and more efficient than Wilkins and I couldn’t get into the office if there was the faintest whiff of beer on my breath. In my present low state of health she was all that was needed for my sister in Honiton to be able to collect my death insurance money.

  ‘Think he’ll pop the question this time?’ I asked.

  Wilkins changed the chilly to her basilisk look, and said, ‘I suggest you read the file before you visit Mrs Stankowski.’

  ‘That can’t be her name.’

  ‘Her late husband was a Pole who made a fortune from scrap-metal dealing. He had a thrombosis almost two years ago.’

  ‘Couldn’t stand the pace.’ I looked at the photograph. The subject was clearly death to anyone with a weak heart.

  ‘Before her marriage she was a Miss Freeman. Gloria Freeman.’

  Eyes still on the photograph, I said, ‘Gloria. It’s just the name I would have chosen.’

  ‘I find it, myself, rather common. Are you going to see her today?’

  ‘If I can find the strength.’

  Wilkins looked at her watch. ‘That shouldn’t be difficult. They’ve just opened.’

  *

  I went across Northumberland Avenue and into the public bar of the Sherlock Holmes.

  Although it had only been open ten minutes, Dimble was there. Half an hour later and I would have had to go to the Chandos Arms. Dimble had a strict routine for the lunchtime session. Everyone who knew him, professionally, that is, knew it. At any time of the day during licensing hours it was possible to say exactly where Dimble would be, or be between being. He was doing the quick cross-word in the Daily Mail, using a stump of pencil half an inch long. Dimble got the maximum use out of everything he possessed. When he struck a match he transferred the spent number into another box, saved the boxes and burnt them on his fire at night. He was a dedicated miser, about fifty, and never got crowded on a bus or the tube because he applied his miserly principles even to the matter of personal hygiene.

  I bought a couple of Guinnesses and sat down two feet from him. I reached over and put one of the Guinnesses in front of him.

  ‘’Lo, Mr Carver,’ he said.

  ‘’Morning, Dimble.’ I raised my glass and drank to him. He looked at his and decided to save it for a while.

  I put my glass down and passed him a photograph. Dimble’s profession included knowing every fence worth knowing in London and having an unrivalled knowledge of the movement of stolen tomfoolery. Quite a big slice of my work was recovery and Dimble had worked for me often.

  I nodded at the photograph. ‘If you’ve seen that anywhere around lately I’m willing to pay for its return.’

  He looked at the photograph without touching it and his face stiffened in Presbyterian disapproval. Then he edged it away from him with the tip of one finger and said, ‘Contrary to most, Mr Carver—I have a higher opinion of you than that.’

  I saw that I had given him the wrong photograph. Hastily I corrected the mistake. You’d be surprised how many people in Dimble’s world have very old-fashioned ideas about women.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I meant this.’

  Dimble picked up the other photograph and examined it. It showed the piece of Indian antique jewellery, an arm bracelet in the form of a coiled python. Stretched out straight, I suppose, it would have been about two feet long. Personally I don’t go for snakes or for the snake motif in jewellery. I think both can bring you bad luck. Thinking that then, of course, I didn’t know that I was casting my own horoscope for the weeks ahead.

  ‘Haven’t seen it around,’ said Dimble. ‘Leastways, not up until the day before yesterday. I’ll ask and give you a ring.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I took back the photograph.

  ‘Where would it have come from?’

  I gave him Mrs Stankowski’s address and he fished out a cheap notebook and wrote it down. He picked up his glass and drank carefully, timing himself for his departure for the Chandos Arms.

  ‘How’s Miss Wilkins?’

  ‘Blooming.’

  ‘Heart of gold that girl’s got. Always sends me a Christmas card.’

  ‘Once you’re on the list, only death gets you off.’ I stood up to go.

  He cocked his head up at me and said, ‘You didn’t ought to carry that other photo round with you. Say you got knocked down and they went through your pockets? Look bad. I mean, at the hospital, and so on.’

  I walked through the passageway under Charing Cross Station and got a taxi in Villiers Street. The cabby told me there was a sharp nip in the air and I gave him Mrs Stankowski’s address.

  I didn’t believe in making appointments. That always gave people an hour or so to think about what they would say or not say. If she were not at home I could always call again. And again, and again, I decided, as I sat in the back of the taxi and studied her photograph. It was neither disgusting, as Wilkins had said, nor calculated to shock any doctor or nurse, as Dimble had suggested. It was just a reasonably modest study of a naked girl richly endowed by Mother Nature.

  The cabby slid back the glass partition and from the corner of his mouth said, ‘What you think of this business in China then? Old Mao and the Red Guards and seven hundred million of the little yellow bastards all trying to make up their kinky little minds which way to go. Some situation, eh? That’s if you’re interested in international affairs. Worry you stiff really, international affairs, I mean, if you thought about it.’

  I always got the chatty ones. Always. Years ago I had decided that it was some sort of punishment settled on me by the gods and only they knew for what.

  I said, ‘The only thing worrying me at the moment is that you’re going a long way round to get to my destination. That makes you a deviationist too.’

  He closed the glass partition and frowned at me in the driving mirror. I put Mrs Stankowski away and smiled back at him. Suddenly I realized that I was feeling better, only a little, but better.

  Upper Grosvenor Street it was; a fourth-floor flat in a place called Eaton House. The door was opened by a maid, about thirty-odd, with a strong Scots accent and an unfriendly glint in her eye. I gave her my card and asked if Mrs Stankowski would be kind enough to see me about her recent jewel robbery. She said she would find out, not letting any hope slip into her voice, and shut the door on me. I stood in the narrow hallway that served the three or four flats on that floor and waited. A plump woman, cuddling a miniature poodle inside her mink coat, came out of one of the other flats and I reached out and punched the lift button for her. The poodle yapped bad-temperedly at me. The woman nodded bleakly at me, then kissed the beast on its muzzle and stepped into the lift. I felt unwanted. What was I doing here anyway, I asked myself? At the moment I had plenty of money, which was unusual for me; although I admit that you can’t really have too much of the stuff or fuss overmuch about the way you get it. But the last thing I wanted at this moment was a job.

  The flat door opened and the James Barrie character said something like, ‘Will ye cum in the noo.’

  I did, wiping my feet without being told.

  I didn’t pay much attention to the hall, which was about the size of a large pantry, except for a semi-circular, marble-topped table with ormolu-crusted legs. I stumbled against this as a rug slipped under my feet and had to make a quick grab to stop a heavy eight-branched silver candelabra from going over. The Highland number frowned, not sure whether I was drunk or about to make a quick snatch-and-run.

  The main lounge was very big, overheated, the air faintly laced with scent. The maid announced me and I looked around and made a quick inventory of the
main features. Either side of the fireplace, on small tables, were a couple of porcelain lemon trees, the soft light gilding the yellow fruit. In a corner was a television set with the biggest screen I had ever seen. Next to it was a bar alcove, hard stuff on the lower shelf, a bottle of Chivas Regal rubbing shoulders with a Glenlivet, and the shelf above holding the biggest private collection of liqueurs and aperitifs I’d seen in a long time. The Slivovitz was half empty and the Strega Alberti unopened. The whole alcove was backed with mirrors and flooded with concealed pink lighting. I felt thirsty. The carpet was ivory and I could feel myself slowly sinking in it. Just off centre of the room was a low walnut table with some coffee-table books on it, and a centrepiece in silver of a benign Buddha holding one hand on his navel and looking as though he wanted, or had just taken, a dose of bicarbonate. At an angle to the window wall was a black-and-ivory-striped settee big enough to hold about six people and ensure that each had complete privacy. Sitting on this, her legs curled under her, and wedged up on either side with black-and-white silk cushions, was Mrs Stankowski. I had saved her until last, which was just as well, otherwise I would never have noticed any of the other things.

  She was wearing a little jacket, collar high at the neck, which tipped her chin up slightly, and lounge trousers, the whole suit made of some silvery material. It was a perfect fit and looked as though it had been sprayed on to her. Her figure had matured a little over the last eight years but not to an extent that would prompt anyone to shout ‘objection’ to the stewards. She had red hair which made Wilkins’s look like rust chippings from some old tanker, and it was short and curly and full of bright lights and must have cost her a packet every few days at somewhere like Vidal Sassoon’s. She had blue eyes, cornflower blue; and it’s not my fault if that’s corny, because that’s exactly what they were. In addition they weren’t very friendly, but I wasn’t worrying about that. It was a just challenge, and I realized there and then that that was what had been missing from my life for quite a while . . . challenge. Somewhere the adrenalin tap was turned on a bit more. She was the most gorgeous—no, glorious—thing I’d seen for at least two months. I gave her a warm smile and I could see that she thought nothing of it.