Unholy Ghost Page 22

  ‘But you said you were mixed up with the crowd who had McBride shot.’

  ‘Mixed up is a vague and imprecise term. They are under the impression that I am working with them. The reality is slightly different. I am, in fact, spying on them. That is why you posed such a nuisance. Unless I had stepped in when you made your presence felt in Paris I fear they would have eliminated you. As you already know they are great believers in direct action. I felt I could not let that happen but preventing it made my position somewhat equivocal with my temporary friends. They appeared to accept that getting you put on a plane and told by the police not to return was satisfactory but they are suspicious people. Unfortunately that couldn’t be helped. For Professor McBride’s sake I couldn’t let them kill you, could I?’

  Jimmy thought about the naked body spread over his bed. He was supposed to the one who handled the violence, took the big risks, and got a bullet in the head if things didn’t go right. But he was sitting here drinking beer and she was the one in the morgue with a hole in her head. It wasn’t where she’d expected to end up. He felt sorry for her in a way. But not too sorry.

  ‘She didn’t understand violence. She thought it was something that happened to other people, something you pay someone to deal with.’

  ‘Do not shed any tears for Ms Heppert. Her aim was to go right to the top, to become a person of international consequence. Being a part of making all this business happen would have put her well on her way to where she was going.’

  ‘If she picked the winning team.’

  ‘Yes, she had to judge which of the parties involved would serve her purpose best, which side would give her the best deal. She was very much a loose cannon and the stakes were too high to wait and see what damage she might do.’

  ‘OK, it’s all a big deal, as big as it gets, but I’m not trying to climb any ladder. I’m one of the little people, so for me it still comes back to the little questions, like did you kill her?’

  ‘Yes and no.’

  ‘For God’s sake give me a straight bloody answer. I’m too tired for any more of your fucking act.’

  ‘I arranged for her to be where my friends wanted her to be. While they were busy I was able to pick you up and ensure that you would be out of the way while they did what they did.’

  ‘But why kill her? Was she such a danger? Why not listen to her and then tell her to bugger off? It was a deal she wanted, a crooked deal perhaps, but still a business proposition. There was no need to kill her.’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid there was.’

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Ms Heppert told me that she had a claimant for the Colmar estate who would be completely acceptable to the Swiss authorities. Not only that, this claimant is mentally unbalanced and all her affairs would have to be handled by someone with power of attorney. Naturally she proposed herself as that person. She also assured me that the claim submitted by her own firm would go ahead as planned and would fail.’

  ‘She told you? She’d made contact with you?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Costello. You don’t honestly think she relied solely on your efforts in this matter? If you succeeded with the people you approached, well and good, but if you failed, and she felt there was a strong possibility of that, she had to be sure of another avenue of progress. I was that avenue. I think your role in this was to act as her stalking horse. If you survived a face-to-face meeting with those she wanted to contact she would feel safer in arranging such a meeting for herself. That would bring one more option into play for her. If not, well, she had made contact with me and no doubt would explore other avenues as well. She was a careful woman who knew the value of what she was offering.’

  ‘So why didn’t you take up her offer?’

  ‘Because she would have wanted more. She would try to use me just as she used you and Serge Carpentier and everyone else. She would have been worse than Mme Colmar who wanted nothing but money. As I said, Ms Heppert wanted power, she wanted a place at the top table of business. No, she would have been totally unreliable. But I wanted what she offered. That meant disposing of her but keeping you alive. If I told my friends that I had been approached by her I knew their response would be simple and brutal, they would want her dead.’

  ‘And you told them?’

  ‘Yes, and offered to arrange what they wanted done. What I didn’t explain to them was that it would be done in such a way that you would be left in a co-operative frame of mind, a mind open to suggestion and persuasion.’ The Comedian waited a moment to let what he had said sink in. ‘The situation now is that either I disappear and Ms Dahl denies all knowledge of me and the police investigation takes its course, or I tell them that you and I were together in a hotel room lent to me by my good friend Kirsten Dahl who will return and confirm what I have said. But you must decide quickly. My power to assist you ticks away as we speak. Once my friends realise what has happened they will no doubt arrive at the inevitable conclusion that I have my own agenda in this matter.’

  ‘And in return for your alibi I give you the claimant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jimmy didn’t have to think about it. A police investigation into him at this point in time would turn up too much even if it didn’t manage to pin the Heppert killing on him. There was still Serge Carpentier to consider. He just wanted to be free of the whole mess.

  ‘OK, get me out of the Heppert thing, clear of the Munich police and your friends, and I’ll give you the claimant.’

  ‘I’m afraid I will need more than your assurance of that. If you could give me some details of who she is and most importantly where she is at the moment.’

  ‘Her name’s Veronique Colmar, or at least her papers say that’s what it is, and she’ll say that as well. God knows whether it’s true. She was born in Saigon and her mother was Colmar’s daughter. She has the right kind of paperwork, even including a baptismal certificate, and she’s like Heppert said, a bit away with the fairies. She thinks God’s got it in for her, that he’s punishing her for turning down a vocation. The place she’s staying is …’

  And Jimmy gave the Comedian all he had and the Comedian listened.

  ‘Very well, it all seems suitable. I never doubted that it would be otherwise. If Professor McBride arranged for a claimant I knew there would be no problems, except finding her of course. Now I think we should be going, don’t you?’

  As the Comedian was in a giving mood Jimmy had one more question.

  ‘Did you have McBride shot?’

  ‘No, but if I had been responsible I would not admit it to you. You are a violent man, Mr Costello, however much you try to suppress or deny it. People who get near to you have a habit of dying. I found that out in Copenhagen.’ The Comedian waited but there were no more questions. ‘We really should be going if we are to see the police. On the way we can fill in the details of our story. What did you tell them?’

  They stood up.

  ‘You’re a friend of a friend, I said I’d get in touch and we’d have a drink.’

  ‘Not good, Mr Costello, in fact positively weak. I expected better.’

  ‘I know, but I didn’t have time to think of anything better. I wasn’t exactly expecting what happened.’ They left the bar and began to walk back towards Jimmy’s hotel. ‘You got the police to spring me, didn’t you?’

  ‘Not me personally but I made sure the call was made. I needed us to have our little talk. I will confirm your story that we met last night after you left the club and invited you to Kirsten’s room for a drink. You stayed the night because you fell asleep in a chair after we had been drinking. I woke you early the next morning. You see, it is almost as it really happened, no lies, no acting.’

  ‘But it’s still weak.’

  ‘Yes, but the police have no murder weapon and no motive. If you can account for your time when the murder was committed I don’t see how they can build any sort of case.’

  Jimmy couldn’t p
ut his finger on it, but it was all going wrong somewhere. The whole thing seemed to be turning into one great, bloody fairy story, but if it was, who was the storyteller? He desperately tried to separate what he knew as fact from what might very well turn out to be fiction. Heppert was dead, her body had been real enough. The Munich police were real as well, there’d been no play-acting there. Greta Mann and the gambling club, probably, but he wasn’t so sure about them. He mentally pencilled it in as a grey area. That left the Comedian. There had to be something wrong with the Comedian. He said he’d ordered the killing of …

  It happened too quickly for Jimmy to realize what was going on. There was the blare of a horn and the scream of a motorbike’s engine as it roared away, the Comedian grabbed his arm and half pulled him to the floor. Jimmy shook off the hands and pulled himself upright and the Comedian slipped to the floor and sat there. A car skidded to a halt with its front wheel up on the curb. By the time the two men in the car were out the bike had disappeared. The men from the car pushed past Jimmy and knelt down beside the Comedian. A crowd began to gather, people came out of doorways and across the road. One man from the car stood up. He was talking on his mobile. The other was supporting the Comedian who was sitting on the pavement holding both hands to his right side just below his ribs with blood beginning to show between his fingers and a sort of blank look on his face. Jimmy knelt down beside him.

  ‘Is it bad?’

  The Comedian turned his head and his eyes blinked a couple of times then focussed.

  ‘I have no idea. It doesn’t hurt yet but that is no sign.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’

  ‘No, these men will have help here very quickly.’ He managed a half smile. ‘I didn’t realise how quickly …’ but the words stopped and his face twisted and his eyes screwed shut. The pain had arrived, but that was still no sign, it was just pain.

  Jimmy stood up. There was nothing he could do. It all depended on how much damage the bullet had done. Everybody waited. After a short while a siren sounded, far away but coming fast. The man who had done the phoning cleared everybody away from the kerb to give the ambulance team clear access. He ignored Jimmy who stood alongside the Comedian and the man squatting down supporting him. The man was talking urgently but gently, probably trying to keep the Comedian from slipping into unconsciousness. Jimmy felt useless, like a privileged spectator with a ringside seat, but uninvolved in any of the action. Then the ambulance arrived and the paramedics got to work.

  Jimmy forced his mind to work. There was another siren, more than one, and they were also coming fast like the ambulance. In a few minutes the place would be crawling with police, putting out tape, taking names, setting up a serious crime scene. He stepped back into the crowd. The Comedian was being put into the ambulance. He edged back through the bodies until he was at the back of those trying to see what was happening. The siren of the ambulance went off and it pulled away. Jimmy turned and began to walk down the street towards his hotel as the first police car arrived. He walked slowly and didn’t look back. Act normal, blend in, be one of the crowd.

  What the hell had happened? More important, why had it happened? The team on the bike had got a shot off and hit the Comedian but the bike was already moving away because of the car. So did they hit the one they were aiming at? Was the bullet meant for him or the Comedian?

  Jimmy turned the thing over in his mind until he came to the doors of the hotel.

  Why was he still alive? They’d tried for McBride, they’d killed Heppert and the journalist, now they’d shot the Comedian. They’d had a go at everyone who’d poked their nose into this Colmar thing. Except Carpentier. I, God forgive me, did that job for them. Everyone except me. Why am I the exception? What keeps me alive in all this carnage?

  There were answers somewhere, there had to be, but this was all someone else’s story and the thing about stories was, you only got told what the storyteller wanted you to know.

  The flush of adrenalin from the shooting had worn off, the weariness was flooding back. He felt old and worn out. He felt too tired to go on caring what it was all about, too tired even to be frightened. All he cared about was rest. He went into the hotel and up to his room where he threw off his clothes and climbed into bed. He just wanted to sleep. He closed his eyes and closed down his mind. And slept.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  He woke the next morning at six o’clock. He couldn’t remember what time it was when he had gone to sleep so he didn’t know how long he’d slept. All he knew was that he felt one hundred per cent better. He showered and got into his clothes, yet again. He might have felt better but from what he saw in the mirror he looked considerably worse. The clothes were deteriorating as quickly as his face, where the thick, greying stubble spoke more of homelessness than any fashion statement. He was certainly beyond what anyone could mistake for designer dishevelled. Unkempt and soiled on the outside he felt much more well ordered on the inside. Somehow things had clicked into place while he slept.

  Why go to the trouble of planting Heppert’s body in his room if later in the day they were planning to kill him? The Comedian had indeed been the target. But did that mean he had been telling the truth about arranging the killing of Heppert, or was he being clever, using what had come to hand when he saw he could use it to apply pressure? Either way somebody wanted Heppert dead and was using her murder to get him out of the way. That had to mean something, didn’t it? Jimmy began to put his ducks in a row.

  The old Nazi wouldn’t play ball so he had to go. McBride had been a target because she was gearing up to get control of the estate. The journalist was unlucky, when he turned up to talk to Young Hitler’s daughter the suicide was their idea of a neat and simple solution. Heppert must have overplayed her hand somehow and that was that. Now the Comedian had been targeted. Did that mean they’d been friends and fallen out or wasn’t he ever on their side. And who were “they”? The Americans? Unlikely. The Americans were working through law firms like Henry and Parker, not blokes with guns on motorbikes. The Saudis? The Chinese? India? God, it could be anyone, anyone with enough money to be a player and no bit of the Arctic of their own to play with.

  Which leaves me. Why am I still standing?

  And finally he got somewhere. ‘They’ didn’t know about Veronique. If they’d known they’d have used him or Heppert to go and get her. But they’d killed Heppert and framed him. They didn’t know about Veronique! But the Comedian knew. And if he knew it had to be because Heppert told him. Who else knew? All of which meant he was been telling the truth, Heppert had contacted him, or the other way round.

  He was pleased with himself, he was thinking at last, getting somewhere. But thinking cuts both ways, it shows you everything, not just the things you want to know. If he was right, then Heppert probably hadn’t gone to the heavy mob and overplayed her hand. The more likely scenario was that he’d given her to them by trying to be clever, by trying to play Jack the Lad at the gaming club – ‘Parker and Henry, an American firm, I’m working with a woman of influence from their Paris office. Nadine Heppert, Parker and Henry, got that?’ Another bloody brilliant judgement that managed to get somebody killed. The brief feeling of self-satisfaction passed. God this was a mess, a total, bloody disaster.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a loud internal call. His stomach reminded him that though he might have slept he hadn’t eaten. Jimmy took the call. He left his room, went out of the hotel, and found a café where he ordered breakfast.

  What would McBride want him to do? The very last thing she’d told him was to carry on, to keep going. Well, he’d certainly kept going and the result was two dead bodies and the Comedian in hospital with a bullet in him. True he now had some idea what it was all about, but that still didn’t tell him what was it she wanted as an outcome? Did she want the Colmar estate and, if so, why? He thought as he ate but got nowhere. This wasn’t detective work, it was big business, finance. He knew as much about that as he did about won
derful, magnificent sex. And even if he found out who ‘they’ were, if he put names and faces to the killings, where would that get him? It wouldn’t stop any of it. At best, at very best, he might give a couple of people to the Munich police for murder or complicity to murder. But he would never get within sniffing distance of whoever was giving the orders. What more could he do? And to that question he still only had one answer. There was still Veronique, and if the wound wasn’t too bad there was still the Comedian. That was enough. With that he could try to do what McBride had told him to – keep going.

  Once he’d silenced his stomach with breakfast he went back to the hotel and got Reception to call him a taxi. When it came he headed off to the police station where he’d been interviewed.

  If the Comedian was on the side of the good guys then he had to be working with the Munich police, which made sense if he’d been the one who got him sprung, and who else was there who’d do that? In the taxi he made a call to McBride’s hospital.

  The improvement slowly continued but she was not yet allowed visitors or to receive calls. Maybe if she continued to improve, but there was no way they could say how long that would be. There could be further surgery and …

  He put away his phone.

  There was no help coming from McBride, not for the foreseeable future. He was on his own so he’d do what she’d told him to do, keep going.

  In the police station they put him back into the same interview room. An hour passed but he waited. It was the only line of enquiry that looked like it might get him anywhere so he’d wait for as long as it took. The door eventually opened and the same woman officer as the previous day came in and sat down opposite him. She was on her own and said nothing into the recording machine. She sat and looked at him and waited.

  ‘I need to speak to …’ but he still didn’t have any name and he could hardly call him the Comedian. ‘I need to speak to the Danish commander, the one who was shot yesterday.’