Samson 09 spy sinker, p.9
Samson 09 - Spy Sinker, page 9
‘Very well. Thank you.’
They walked to his car, talking about the treacherous English weather. His manner now was ultra-considerate and his voice was different in some way she could not define. She smiled at him. He opened the door for her and helped her into the seat. It was a Jaguar XJS convertible: grey, shiny and very new. ‘I suppose Mrs Lindner is worried,’ said Fiona. As the engine started with a throaty roar the stereo played a bar or two of a Strauss waltz before he switched it off, twisted his neck and carefully backed out of the parking place.
‘There is no Mrs Lindner,’ he said while craning to see behind the car. ‘I was divorced five years back. And anyway this girl is not my daughter: she’s my niece.’
‘I see.’
Down the ramp and through the cars and buses he went with no hesitation: he didn’t drive like a man unaccustomed to London traffic. ‘Yeah, well I didn’t want to say it was my niece; the cops would immediately think it was some bimbo I was shacked up with.’
‘Would they?’
‘Sure they would. Cops think like that. And anyway I am a Canadian and I’m here without a work permit.’ He bit his lip. ‘I can’t get tangled up with cops.’
‘Did you give them a false name?’
He looked round at her and grinned admiringly. ‘Yeah. As a matter of fact I did.’
She nodded.
‘Oh boy! Now you are going to turn out to be a cop from the Immigration Department. That would be just my sort of lousy luck.’
‘Would it?’
‘Yeah. It would.’ A pause. ‘You’re not a cop. I mean, you’re not going to turn me in, are you?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘You’re damn right, I’m serious. I was working in Sydney, Australia, and the hall porter turned me in. Two heavies from Immigration were waiting in my suite when I got back that night. They’d gone through my mail and even cut the lining out of my suits. Those Aussies are rough. Mind you, in Uruguay in the old days it was worse. They’d shake you down for everything you had.’
‘It sounds as if you make a study of illegal immigration.’ She smiled.
‘Hey that’s better! I thought maybe you’d given up smiling for Lent. Immigration? Yeah well my cousin buys and sells airplanes. Now and again I take time off to deliver one of them. Then maybe I get tempted to take on a few local charters to make a little extra dough.’
‘Is that what you are doing in London?’
‘Airplanes? No, that’s just my playtime. I learned to fly in the air force, and kept it up. In real life I’m a psychiatrist.’
‘This niece of yours … was she another invention?’ asked Fiona.
‘Now, I’m not completely off my trolley. She is the daughter of my cousin Greg and I was supposed to be looking after her in London. I guess I will have to phone Winnipeg and tell Greg she’s jumped ship.’
‘Will he be angry?’
‘Sure he’ll be angry but he won’t be surprised. He knows she can be a pretty wild little girl.’
‘How come you … ?’
‘Greg was in the air force with me and he owns a big slice of the airplane brokerage outfit.’
‘I see.’
‘Because I’m a psychiatrist, he thinks that I can straighten her out. Her local quack’s treatment was just to keep doping her with amitriptyline and junk like that.’
‘But you can’t straighten her out either?’
‘Girls who …‘The flippant answer he was about to give died on his lips. ‘You really want to know? It could be she has a schizophrenic reaction to puberty, but it will need someone with a whole lot more specialized experience to diagnose that one.’
‘Does her father know you think that?’
‘I don’t know what made me tell you … No, it’s too early to tell Greg. It’s a heavy one to lay on parents. I want to talk to someone about her. I was trying to arrange for a specialist to look at her without letting her catch on to it.’ He stole another glance at Fiona. ‘Now it’s my turn to guess about you. I’ll bet you are a student of philosophy. Am I right, Miss … ?’ he said with a big grin.
‘Mrs Samson. I am married and I have two children.’
‘No fooling? That can’t be true! Two children: they must be very young. My real name is Harry Kennedy. Good to know you, Mrs Samson. Yeah, the girl will maybe come out okay. I’ve seen cases like this before. No call to worry her folks. It’s not drugs. At least I hope to God it’s not drugs. She doesn’t get along very well at school. She is not the academic sort of kid. She likes parties and music and dancing: she’s always been like that from the time when she was tiny. She doesn’t like reading. Me, I couldn’t live without books.’
‘Me too.’
‘You weren’t seeing anyone off, were you?’ he said suddenly without looking away from the road.
‘No.’
‘Why were you at the station then?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘I am being very nosy. But it was my good fortune that Patsy spoke with you. I couldn’t help wondering about you.’
‘I wanted to think.’
‘Sad thoughts?’
‘Everything is relative. I have a good life: no complaints.’
‘You need a drink.’
She laughed. ‘Perhaps I do,’ she said.
He drove right through Marylebone. The traffic was light. She should have said something, made him take her directly home, but she said nothing. She watched the traffic and the rain, the grim-faced drivers and the endless crowds of drenched people. He pulled into the parking lot behind a well-kept block of flats in Maida Vale. ‘Come up and have a drink,’ he said.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said and didn’t move.
‘There is no need to be afraid. Like I told you, my name is Harry Kennedy. I have an allergic reaction to work permits but other than that I am quite harmless. I work in the psychiatric department of the St Basil Clinic in Fulham. Eventually they will get me a work permit and I will live happily ever after.’
‘Or perhaps move on to pastures new?’
‘Could be.’
‘And you really are a psychiatrist?’
‘It’s not something I’d invent, is it?’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s the ultimate deterrent to all social relationships. Look at the effect it’s already having on you.’
‘One drink.’
‘And then home to husband and children,’ he promised.
‘Yes,’ she said, although the children were being looked after by a competent nanny and Bernard was in Berlin for a job that would take three days.
Kennedy’s flat was on the second floor. She followed him up the stairs. This block had been built in the nineteen thirties and, apart from a few chunks of granite chiselled from the facade by bomb fragments, it had survived the war intact.
‘I’m renting this place from a rich E.N.T. man at the clinic. He’s in New York at Bellevue until next April. If they renew his contract he’ll want to sell it.’ The apartment was big; in the Thirties architects knew the difference between a bedroom and a cupboard. He took her damp raincoat and hung it on a bentwood rack in the hall. Then he removed his own coat and tossed his hat on to a pile of unopened mail that had been placed alongside a bowl of artificial flowers on the hallstand. ‘I keep meaning to forward all that mail to him but it’s mostly opportunities to purchase vacations and encyclopedias from the credit card companies.’
His three-piece suit a chalk stripe, dark grey worsted was cut in a boxy American style that made him look slimmer than he really was. On his waistcoat there was a gold watch-chain with some tiny gold ornament suspended from it.
He ushered her into the drawing room. It was spacious enough to take a baby grand piano, a couple of sofas and a coffee table without seeming cramped. ‘Come right in. Welcome to Disneyland. Take a seat. Gin, whisky, vodka, vermouth … a Martini? Name it.’ She looked around at the furnishings. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to keep everything in sympathy with the art deco that had been in style when the block was built.
‘A Martini. Do you play the piano?’
He went into the kitchen and she heard him open the refrigerator. He returned with two frosted Martini glasses, chilled gin and chilled vermouth. Under his arm there was a box of snacks. He poured two drinks carefully. ‘I’m fresh out of olives,’ he said as he carried the drinks across to her. ‘The help eats them as fast as I buy them. She’s Spanish. Yeah, I play a little.’
‘A quick drink and then I must go.’
‘Have no fear. I will drive you home.’
‘It’s an attractive room.’ She took the glass by its stem and held it against her face, enjoying the feel of its icy coldness.
‘You like this art deco junk?’ He drank some of his Martini and then put the glass down, carefully placing it on a coaster. ‘The E.N.T. man inherited it. His parents were refugees from Vienna. Doctors. They got out early and brought their furniture with them. I had to take an oath about not leaving Coca-Cola glasses on the polished tables, and not smoking. He’s going to ship it to New York if he stavs there.’
‘It’s lovely.’
‘He’s a sentimental land of guy. It’s okay I guess but I prefer something I can relate to. Have one of these.’ He indicated the snacks; tiny cheesy mouthfuls in a freshly opened red box bearing a picture of an antique steamship on the Rhine.
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Would it help to talk about it?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘You’re a beautiful woman, Mrs Samson. Your husband is a lucky man.’ He said it artlessly and was not selfconscious: no Englishman she’d met could deliver such compliments without bluster and embarrassment.
‘I am lucky too,’ she said quietly. She wished he wouldn’t look at her: her hair was a mess and her eyes were red.
I’m sure you are. Is your drink all right? Too much gin?’
‘No, it’s just the way I like it.’ She drank some to show him that it was true. She was uneasy. After a few minutes of small-talk Kennedy had been discovering the pleasures of the opera she said, ‘Perhaps you could ring for a taxi? They sometimes take ages to come at this time.’
‘I’ll drive you.’
‘You must wait for the phone call from the police.’
‘You are right. But must you go so soon?’
‘Yes, I must.’
‘Could I see you again?’
‘That would be less wise.’
‘I’m delivering a Cessna to Nice next week Friday, maybe Saturday and collecting a Learjet. It’s a sweet job: not many like that come along. There’s a really good restaurant twenty minutes along the highway from Nice airport. I’ll have you back in central London by six p.m. Now don’t say no, right away. Maybe you’d like to bring your husband or your children. It’s a four-seater.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Think it over. It could make just the sort of break that would do you good.’
‘Is that a medical opinion?’
‘It sure is.’
‘It’s better not.’
‘Let me give you my phone number,’ said Kennedy. Without waiting to hear what she decided he gave her a printed card. ‘This lousy weather keeps up and maybe you’ll feel like a spot of Riviera sunshine.’ She looked at the card: Dr H. R. Kennedy and the Maida Vale address and phone number. ‘I had them done last month at one of these fast print shops. I was going to see patients here but I decided not to.’
‘I see.’
‘It was against the terms of the lease and I could see there would be arguments if my patients started using the car park spaces.’ He went to the phone and asked for a taxi. ‘They are usually very prompt,’ he said. ‘I have an account with them.’ Then he added thoughtfully, ‘And seeing patients here might have set the immigration guys on my tail.’
‘I hope your niece returns soon.’
‘She will be okay.’
‘Do you know the man she’s with?’
Kennedy paused. ‘He is a patient. At the clinic. He met her when she was waiting for me one afternoon.’
‘Oh.’
‘He can be violent. That’s why the police were so good about it.’
‘I see.’
‘You helped me, Mrs Samson. And I appreciate your keeping me company, I really do.’ The phone rang to say the cab was waiting outside. He helped her on with her coat, carefully making sure that her long hair was not trapped under the collar. ‘I would like to help you,’ he said. In bidding her a decorous goodbye his hand held hers.
‘I don’t need help.’
‘You go to railway stations in order to hide your unhappiness. Don’t you think that a marriage in which a wife is frightened to be unhappy in the presence of her husband might leave something to be desired?’
Fiona found his apparent simplicity and honesty disarming. She had no great faith in psychiatry and in general distrusted its practitioners, but she felt attracted to this amusing and unusual man. He was obviously attracted to her, but that had not made him fawn. And she appreciated the way that Kennedy so readily confided his fears of the Immigration Department and the trust he’d shown in her. It made her feel like a partner in his lawless activities. ‘Is that the sort of dilemma patients like me bring along to you?’
‘Believe me, I have no patients who in any way resemble you, Mrs Samson, and I never have had.’
She gently pulled her hand away from his and went through the door. He didn’t follow her but when she glanced up, before getting into the taxi, she could see his face at the window.
She looked at her watch. It was late. Bernard tried to phone about this time each evening.
‘Hello, sweetheart.’ To her astonishment she arrived home to find Bernard, Nanny and the two children sitting round the little kitchen table. The scene was printed upon her memory for ever after. They were all laughing and talking and eating. The table displayed the chaos she had seen at Bernard’s mother’s house: tea in cups without saucers, teapot standing on a chipped plate, tin-foil frozen food containers on the tablecloth, sugar in its packet, a slab of cake sitting on the bag in which it was sold. The laughter stopped when she came in.
‘We wondered where you’d got to,’ said Bernard. He was wearing corduroy trousers and an old blue roll-neck sweater that she had twice thrown away.
‘Mr Samson said the children could eat down here,’ said the nanny nervously.
‘It’s all right, Nanny,’ said Fiona and went and kissed the children. They were newly bathed and smelled of talcum powder.
‘You’ve got a cold nose,’ said Billy accusingly and then chuckled. He looked so like Bernard.
‘You’re rude,’ his little sister told him. She had been raised to the level of the table by sitting upon a blue silk cushion from the drawing room sofa. Fiona noticed that a dollop of tomato sauce had fallen upon it but kept smiling as she gave her daughter a kiss and a hug. She had a special love for little Sally, who sometimes seemed to need Fiona in a way that no one else had ever done.
Fiona embraced Bernard. ‘What a wonderful surprise. I didn’t expect you until the weekend.’
‘I slipped away.’ Bernard put an arm round her, but there was a reluctance to his embrace. For some other wives such a hesitation might have been a danger signal. Fiona knew that it was a sign that something had gone wrong in Berlin. A shooting? A killing? She looked at him to make sure he was not injured. She wouldn’t ask him what had happened, they didn’t talk about departmental matters unless they concerned the both of them, but she knew it would take a little time before Bernard would be capable of physical contact with her.
‘You’re all right?’
‘Of course I’m all right.’ A smile did not hide the hint of irritation. He did not like her to show her concern.
‘Will you have to go back?’ The children were watching them both with great interest.
‘We’ll see.’ He contrived a cheerfulness. ‘Nothing will happen for a few days. They think I’m chasing around Bavaria.’
She gave him another decorous kiss. She wished Bernard would not be so intractable. Deliberately disobeying instructions in order to come home early was flattering but it was the sort of behaviour that the Department found inexcusable. This was not the time to say that. ‘It’s a lovely surprise,’ she said.
‘Eat some dinner, Mummy,’ said Sally. ‘There’s plenty.’
‘Mummy doesn’t eat frozen meals, do you Mummy?’ said her brother.
Nanny, who had no doubt purchased the ‘delicious ready-to-eat country farmhouse dinner’, looked embarrassed. Fiona said, ‘It depends.’
‘It’s not meaty,’ said Billy, as if that was a recommendation. ‘It’s all sauce and pasta.’ He pushed a spoon into the remains to show her.
‘It’s very salty,’ said Sally. ‘I don’t like it.’
The nanny took the spoon away from Billy and then went to get a cup and saucer for Fiona to have tea with them.
Fiona took off her coat and hat. Then she grabbed a piece of kitchen paper in order to see what could be done to remove the sauce from the silk cushion. She knew that in doing so she would be spoiling the gemütlich atmosphere into which she had intruded but she simply could not sit down and laugh and talk and forget it. She couldn’t. Perhaps that was what was wrong with her and with her marriage.
Before she could get started, Nanny poured tea for her and then began clearing the table. Bernard leaned over and said to the children. ‘Now who’s my first passenger on the slow train to Dreamland?’
‘Me, Daddy, me!’ They both yelled together.
Soon Fiona was left alone, dabbing at the stain on the cushion. From somewhere above she could hear the excited calls of the children as Bernard carried them up to bed. ‘Choo-choo! Choo-choo!’
Darling, darling, Bernard. How she wished he could be a wonderful father without making her feel like an inadequate mother.
