The Broker’s Men
CHARLES HAD A lot of wine inside him as he drove along the Strand on his way back, but he was thinking with extraordinary clarity. Suddenly Nigel had two secret trips to Streatley to explain, not one. If he had been at the Sex of One… party, he must have driven down some time between the small hours of the Sunday morning and when he rang Keith Battrick-Jones on the Monday morning. That was, of course, assuming that he had gone down on his own. It was possible that he had been in the Rolls with his father on the Sunday night.
If that were the case, and Charles’ other conjecture was correct, he must have witnessed Marius shooting Bill Sweet on the roadside at Theale. That might well explain the twitchiness which Joanne had noticed during the ensuing week. Possibly Nigel had shot Bill Sweet himself? But no, that was nonsense. He had nothing to do with the Sally Nash affair, and the Sweets represented no threat to him. If anyone had committed murder on the lonely turnoff from the M4, it must have been Marius.
At Hyde Park Corner, a taxi travelling from Knightsbridge suddenly cut across the front of the Cortina and Charles had to slam on all his brakes. The shock jarred every bone in his body and he felt as if he was about to pass out. There was nothing else coming. He swung the car across the yellow line and stopped by the marble colonnade at the roadside. His body was in agony. Slowly the total blinding pain broke down into individual centres of hurt. First there was his arm, with its bone bruised by the bullet. That pain seemed to swell and swamp the others. Then there were the bruises on his knees and elbows that he’d received from the fall over the trip-wire at Jacqui’s. And then, lower down the league of pain, there was the dull ache of an old bruise on his ankle.
Suddenly, he saw in his mind the utility room at Streatley and a scattered pile of boxes. Some words of Gerald Venables reverberated in his head. Dr Lefeuvre’s role came clearly defined into focus, and Charles Paris knew what Nigel Steen’s crime was.
As he walked up the stairs at Hereford Road, he was glowing with the intellectual perfection of it. Not the intellectual perfection of the crime-that was a shabby affair-but the intellectual perfection of his conclusion. Suddenly, given one fact, all the others clicked neatly into position. As he drove back, he had tried each element individually, and none of them broke the pattern. He was looking forward to spelling it all out to Jacqui and Joanne. Actual evidence was still a bit short on the ground (burning the vicious letter to Jacqui and the Sweet photographs had shown a regrettable lack of detective instinct). But he felt sure facts would come, now the basic riddle was solved.
The door of his room was open, the lock plate hanging loose. A cold feeling trickled into his stomach as he went inside. It was dark. He switched on the light. A body lay tied, gagged and struggling on the floor by the bed. Joanne. There was no sign of Jacqui.
He fumbled with the knots of Jacqui’s tights which had been tied cruelly round Joanne’s mouth. She gave a little gasp of pain as he tightened to release them, and then she was free to talk. ‘Two men
… someone must have let them in the front door… they took Jacqui…’
‘Did you see them?’
‘They had stockings over their heads. One was big and burly, the other was smaller…’
‘Yes. I know who they are.’ He cut her other bonds free with a kitchen knife. ‘Come on. We must follow them.’
‘Where to? How do we know where they’ve gone?’
‘I think it’s Streatley. And I pray to God I’m right. For the sake of Jacqui’s baby.’