The Melting Man rc-4 Read online

  I shook my head.

  'Don't bother. When I take a job I stay with it.'

  He was genuinely concerned for me, surprised, no doubt, at my lack of common sense.

  'Please, Mr Carver, for your own sake. This is not a situation which calls for any high-mindedness or lofty idealism. Just work and money, Mr Carver. Perhaps one thousand five hundred pounds.'

  'No. And don't make it guineas. Just tell them I'm not interested in their money.'

  'Absolutely?'

  'Absolutely.'

  He came by me, as near stunned as he had ever been, I imagine. In the hall he stopped, eyed me, shook his head and said, brightening a little, 'Yes, now I understand. There can only be one explanation. You are eccentric. Very eccentric'

  'Something like that.'

  'Well, Mr Carver, all I can say is that it is your privilege to be that. But it is dangerous. These people — you understand, I only act for them — please be polite they say, this man is intelligent, good-mannered and understanding. But these people may now take other action. D for drastic action, Mr Carver.'

  'And you would act for them?'

  'Well, naturally, if they pay me. One thousand five hundred pounds or guineas — for the first time I meet a sensible chap who says no to it. You know' — hope sprang briefly to life — 'it would be arranged, the payment I mean, so that you would not have to pay tax.'

  'Goodnight, Mr Alakwe.'

  I opened the door for him and he went reluctantly past me and paused on the doormat, carefully scuffing his shoes on it.

  'Tell me,' I said, 'in your dealings with these friends of friends, etcetera and etcetera, did you ever come across a countryman of yours called Joseph Bavana?'

  'Bavana? Why of course. He is my husband-in-law.'

  'Your what?'

  'Well, if that is not right… I mean, he is married to my second wife. Who now, of course, is a widow. So now, of course, maybe, I shall take her back.'

  'You know Bavana's dead? How he died?'

  'Of course. I tell them not to use that way first of all. Joseph always was accident prone. This Mr Carver, I tell them from reading their first report, is not a man to deal with like that, but Joseph persuaded them.'

  'And what are you going to advise them now?'

  'I like you, Mr Carver. You are polite and respectable with me. I shall tell them you ask for five thousand pounds. That gives you a few days to think about it. I know them. They will say, "God man, five thousand — for doing nothing? Offer two thousand five hundred, guineas if necessary." Then I come to you. You accept' — his face began to beam — 'and we shall be happy. You should expect me tomorrow. Don't worry, Mr Carver.' He thumped his chest with the handle of his umbrella. 'A willing heart is mine. For a friend I got all the way.' He tipped his bowler and turned away, borne on a euphoric cloud of human kindness.

  I went back into the flat to be greeted by the smell of burning from the kitchen.

  * * *

  Mrs Meld woke me with a thump on the door and a few exuberant lines of Yellow Submarine. I'd noticed recently that she'd slowly been bringing her repertoire up to date.

  'Good morning, Mr Carver. How was the pie?'

  'Splendid,' I mumbled, rubbing my eyes.

  'What you need,' she said, 'is a woman to look after you — not that you can't cook as well as any woman, but it's the cooking that does it. Time you've done it, as I tell Meld, it puts you right off. And then things like laundry, you never think about them. You going to stay a bachelor all your life?'

  I said, 'Go away. I want two eggs, lightly fried, and some bacon, crisp.'

  'Ten minutes, then. And I'll fix a nice steak and kidney for tonight.'

  I got out of bed. 'Don't bother. Tonight I shall be in France, eating omble chevalier, straight from the lake. You know what omble is?'

  'Well, if it ain't fish, I don't know what it would be doing in a lake. But anyway, that accounts for the spade across the road maybe. He was there when Meld went off at seven. France, is it, and more of your larrikins? You have a nice life, Mr Carver, but you need a good woman to share it with.'

  I pulled oh a dressing gown and went into the sitting room.

  From the kitchen Mrs Meld said, 'He's in the Mini, parked by the letter box.'

  From the window I couldn't see much of him, just his bulk behind the wheel and a pair of brown hands spread over the wheel rim. The bulk of his body looked too big to be my friend Jimbo. But I had no doubt that they were connected. While Jimbo Alakwe tried to negotiate new terms for me, they were keeping an eye on me.

  At half past nine I dropped my travelling case out of the bathroom window at the back of the flat. Mrs Meld caught it for me from below in her garden, and then I followed, moving into her kitchen, pausing to admire the new washing-up machine that she'd finally persuaded Meld to buy for her, and then through the house and out of her side door which opened into the next street. It was a route that I'd used many times before, so many times in fact that I'd probably established a permanent right of way by now.

  I took a taxi to Miggs's place and got him to send a boy up to the office to collect my air tickets and passport. If they were watching the flat they could well be watching the office. I phoned Wilkins and told her what was happening, and then asked her to have someone check at Somerset House and get all they could on Athena Holdings Ltd. Wilkins was in a better mood, and made me run over all I'd packed for my trip to make sure that I hadn't forgotten anything.

  She finished, 'You're not taking a firearm?'

  'No,' I said, 'I'm not taking a firearm.' Mrs Meld would call a spade a spade, but not Wilkins. 'Why? Do you think I should have a gun?'

  'No, I do not. You're much too bad a shot for it to be any use.'

  Well, maybe she had something there. But, now and then, they were comforting things to have to hand.

  I then phoned Guffy and told him about Mr Jimbo Alakwe, Esquire. At the moment I considered this a frank, open approach which might be useful.

  'If there's anything about him or his employers which you Know, which could be helpful to me, I would appreciate it. Let Wilkins know.'

  He said he would consider it.

  At two o'clock I was in Geneva, and there was a red Mercedes 250SL waiting for me. What it is to work for a millionaire and be able to use his name and credit rating.

  I went south like a red streak on the wings of fantasy. I had fishing loughs, grouse moors, town and country houses and reserved hotel suites where I was not to be disturbed after eight. I had a yacht and a handful of cars of which this was my favourite. I daydreamed my way down to Annecy and Aix-les-Bains along a road I knew well. My hands had a millionaire's firm grip on the steering wheel with its large, padded safety boss, and — thanks to the single joint, low-pivot swing axle, the separation of wheel mounting and wheel suspension — the car held the road like a high-speed leech, gentling down the moment I put a foot on the two-circuit servo-assisted disc brakes. Oh, I knew all the jargon. I'd done a year as a car salesman before I had moved into business on my own, chasing other people's troubles and generally ending up with a bag full of them for myself.

  Below Aix-les-Bains, at the end of the lake, I swung across country and then up to the west side of the lake. The Ombre-mont Hotel sat on the hillside above the lake, looking across to Aix. I had a large, bright, chintzy room overlooking the water and when I phoned down for whisky and Perrier water I got it within five minutes, which was something near a record. For records, it was going to be my lucky day. Within the next two hours I had found out something about Zelia which went a long way to convincing me that she had no more lost her memory than I had lost mine — not that there weren't a lot of things in my past that I would have liked to have forgotten. But there it is, things happen to you and things are done by you which are forever on the record.

  Just before dinner I went down to the reception desk and cashed a traveller's cheque with the girl who was on duty. I didn't need the money because I had picked up cash at
Geneva, but it was a way of opening a conversation and letting her get a few minutes of my warm, affable, engaging nature before I started on the small deceits and oblique questions which were part of my other, second, nature.

  She was a girl of about twenty-plus with a little mole at the right corner of her mouth, a pair of dark, wise eyes that had an occasional flash of humour, and she had time on her hands, for all the evening transients had booked in. Her English was streets ahead of my French. I complimented her on it and asked where she had learnt it. It worked, of course. It always does. There's nothing people like more than to have it acknowledged how well they speak a foreign language. In no time we'd got to the point where she asked me whether I was in France on holiday or business. I said that I was on business, that I was the private secretary of one Mr Cavan O'Dowda, and I didn't have to tell her who he was. She knew. If you're in the hotel business you probably know all the millionaires and, anyway, the French have this natural reverence for money which makes the names of the world's millionaires as familiar to them as football players are to the differently oriented Anglo-Saxons.

  Confidentially, shuffling my franc notes slowly into my wallet, I said that I was making some inquiries about his stepdaughter Mademoiselle Zelia Yunge-Brown who was at this moment suffering from loss of memory which had come on at the moment she had left this hotel some weeks ago. For a moment her dark eyes were sad, at the thought of a millionaire's daughter being so afflicted — every memory must be golden, what unhappiness to lose even one.

  I agreed and asked if I could see a copy of Zelia's hotel bill. I didn't think it would give me anything openly to prove a theory which I was nursing, knowing human nature, and that Zelia had been off the direct route down to Cannes. But there was no harm in checking. The girl produced a carbon copy from a file. It was for Room 15 and she had paid for the apartment and breakfast. No dinner charge. Well, she might have eaten out somewhere. I was about to hand it back when I noticed that there was no charge for an item which should have been there.

  'While Mademoiselle Zelia was here she put in a call to her father in England, at about nine o'clock in the evening. There's no charge for it.'

  The girl agreed that there wasn't a charge.

  I said, 'Do you keep a record of phone calls?'

  'From the rooms, when they are to be charged, yes.'

  'Can you check the long-distance calls that evening? From all the rooms.'

  'That would mean checking the copies of the accounts of all the guests who were here that night.' There was no sadness in her dark eyes now, just wisdom. A millionaire was fussing about his daughter and, while anyone in their right mind would be anxious to help, it would mean extra work.

  I said, 'If it will take you a little time, then naturally Monsieur O'Dowda would wish me to acknowledge that.' I pulled out my wallet and handed her a hundred-franc note.

  She took it with a quick, sensible nod of her head; no one in the French hotel business is anything but sensible about money. She said that if Monsieur would look back after dinner, no?

  Monsieur went to dinner. There was no omble.

  I made do with a terrine de canard aux truffes, and a poulet aux morilles with a bottle of Château-Rayas.

  And, after dinner, the information was waiting for me. The only phone call to England made from the hotel that night — and it was just before nine — had come from Room 16 which had been occupied by a Monsieur Max Ansermoz who had booked in the same evening and left the following morning.

  Not bothering with niceties, I asked, 'Is there a communicating door between Rooms 15 and 16.'

  'Yes, monsieur. Normally it is locked but one would only have to ask the chambermaid.'

  'What address did this Monsieur Ansermoz give?'

  She had done her homework. It was a Geneva hotel, the Bernine, 22 Place Cornavin. Instinct told me that it wouldn't be any good making inquiries for Max Ansermoz there.

  Quite genuinely, the girl said, 'I hope this information will not make trouble for Mademoiselle Zelia.'

  'On the contrary. I think it will help her recovery. Her father will be most grateful to you.'

  'It is a pleasure to help, monsieur. If you would wish it, some of the hotel servants might remember this gentleman. Maybe, by tomorrow morning, I could tell you what he looked like, no?'

  I said I would be grateful for any scrap of information, no matter what the cost of the trouble, and then I went up to my room and sat on the little balcony, smoking, and looking across the lake to the lights of Aix-les-Bains.

  So, Zelia had met Monsieur Max Ansermoz at the hotel. It had been careless of her to put a phone call through from his room, but then at that time she probably had not realized that there was any great need for care. Something had happened after leaving the hotel which had brought dull care on to the scene. After leaving the hotel, somewhere along the line, she had started losing things, her car, her luggage, her memory, and who knew what else… my guess was that Max Ansermoz knew. It would be interesting to know what Zelia's present feelings towards him were. It would be even more interesting — for this was my particular baby — to know what he had done with the red Mercedes.

  I went back into the room, picked up the phone and booked a call to Paris 408.8230. It came through about twenty minutes later and I was put on to a duty officer, sitting bored miles away in 26 Rue Arnengaud, Saint Cloud, who was distinctly cagey about the call. I told him he could check my credentials with Commissaire Maziol or Detective Chief Superintendent Gerald Ulster Foley, but either way I would like any information Interpol was prepared to pass on about one Max Ansermoz, if he were on their files; either here if before nine in the morning or to my office in London if later. Reluctantly he said he would see what could be done and then rang off, no doubt to go back to reading his Paris-Match.

  I didn't get my call before nine, but for twenty francs extra I had a description of Ansermoz. The hall porter remembered him well, a tall, dark gentleman between thirty and forty who had arrived with a young lady in a red Mercedes and had departed with her in the car the following morning — and he'd had with him a dog, a white poodle. He was a very nice, pleasant gentleman and was French, or at least he thought so, but, of course, he might well have been Swiss.

  I tipped and thanked him, and then headed south down the Route Napoleon.

  * * *

  I reached Cannes late, largely because I had stopped for a very leisurely lunch and put a call in to Wilkins afterwards, which had taken over half an hour to come through.

  She had had a message for me, through Guffy from Interpol. There was no one of the name Max Ansermoz on their records, but he might easily be there under another name. Would I please supply a description if possible and any other details which might be helpful. I passed the description, the name of the Geneva hotel and the fact that he probably owned a small white poodle, for Wilkins to relay.

  'And Miss Julia Yunge-Brown called on behalf of her father and wanted to know where you would be staying in Cannes. I'm to ring them as soon as I know.'

  'Tell them the Majestic, if I can get a room there, which I ought to do because they've got three hundred. Have you looked into the Athena Holdings set-up yet?'

  'I've got someone on it today.'

  'Good. I'll phone you tomorrow about it.'

  Between that moment and the time I arrived in Cannes somebody, I was to discover, had kept the wires busy. I got a room without trouble, ran the car around the corner from the Rue des Serbes and found a garage for it. I had two drinks, dinner, and then a short stroll down the street on to the Boulevard de la Croisette to get a whiff of the sea breeze and then back to bed. Somewhere in the port was O'Dowda's yacht, the Ferox — which was a name that had not surprised me, knowing his passion for fishing and knowing also something now of the nature of the man… By any standards he was a cannibal trout preying on large and small fry.

  In my room I dropped into a chair, lit a last cigarette before bed and began to think about Zelia and Max Anse
rmoz, and more particularly of the combinations of human experience and passion which, so soon after a no doubt romantic night at the Ombremont, could have made her decide to lose her memory of the events of the next two days and with it the red

  Mercedes. Somewhere along that line somebody had had a change of heart. I didn't get far with the obvious possibilities because the telephone rang.

  There was, the desk informed me, a Mr Alakwe to see me.

  It was nearly eleven o'clock and my first instinct was to tell them to tell Mr Alakwe to go to hell. Then curiosity as to how he could have traced me made me tell them to send him up.

  He came in, dressed now for the Continent in a lightweight fawn linen suit, smiling all over his face, snub nose creased up like a wrinkled black plum. He carried a panama hat with an orange-and-silver ribbon round it. His tie was pale blue with a yellow horseshoe and hunting crop, rampant, over a bilious green shirt with a fine yellow stripe. He still wore his ginger suede shoes. He shook my hand and then presented me with his card.

  I said, 'Don't let's go through that ritual again, Mr Jimbo Alakwe, Esquire.'

  He shook his head, his smile almost cutting his face in half, and said, 'Not Jimbo, Mr Carver. Jimbo's my brother.'

  I looked at the card. He was right. This was Mr Najib Alakwe, Esquire — in the same line of business, but with an address in Cannes in the Rue de Mimont which, as far as I could remember, was somewhere behind the station. I turned the card over. The quotation on the back read: Un bon ami vaut mieux que cents parents. Well, I wasn't going to argue with that.

  I handed the card back and said, 'Twins?'

  'Yes, Mr Carver.'

  'How the hell am I going to tell you apart?'

  'Very simple. I am always in France and Jimbo is always in England.'

  I wanted to ask about the ginger shoes but decided not to because it would be some simple explanation I should have thought of for myself.

  I said, 'How did you know where to find me?'

  'Again very simple. Jimbo telephones me with the information.'

  'And how did he get it?'