“That wasn’t the first time you’ve been in this kind of situation was it, Miss Fox?” Gilby said then.
I took a slug of brandy, trying not to wince as it ripped down the inside of my throat like bleach. Whatever the Major siphoned into his decanters, it certainly wasn’t a five-star Cognac.
“Not exactly,” I agreed. “No.”
He nodded slowly. “I thought not,” he said. “Venko isn’t a man who would allow himself to be held captive by a woman unless he believed absolutely that she would kill him.” He paused. “You have that air about you.”
If only you knew . . .
“Yeah, well,” I muttered into my glass. “It’s a knack.”
“Yes,” the Major said. “Yes, I suppose you could say it is.”
I looked round a little then, tried to pull it together, and said, “Where’s Herr Krauss?”
“I’ve persuaded Dieter to let me handle things. It’s going to be difficult enough tomorrow without having to cope with an emotionally unstable civilian.”
“You can hardly blame him. The poor bloke’s obviously frantic.”
“Yes,” Gilby agreed, his voice giving away neither sympathy nor irritation. “But that makes him unpredictable. A liability.”
I took another gulp of brandy. It seemed to be improving as I got into it. Maybe it had just burned away all the more vulnerable taste buds.
“So what’s the connection between you and Krauss?” I asked.
For a moment I thought the Major was just going to tell me to mind my own damned business, then I saw his gaze skim over the weaponry on the desk top. If I had minded my own business. If I hadn’t interfered . . .
“He owns fifty per cent of this place,” he said at last, circling a hand to indicate the Manor as a whole. “He bought in about six months ago.” And having decided to be frank, he really pushed the boat out. “Got me out of a bit of a hole cash-wise, if you must know,” he added stiffly, burying his nose in his glass. “It’s only since then that I’ve been able to pay the staff decent wages.”
Talking about money was a subject the Major clearly found rather vulgar. It was probably how he’d managed to get himself into a financial mess in the first place.
Six months. The words suddenly clicked. Six months ago was about the time that the money Madeleine uncovered had started arriving in the school’s accounts. Gilby had re-equipped, put in a new heating system, hired some decent cooks. And once he’d done that, he’d bought himself a flash car.
It fitted, I couldn’t deny. Better still, it had the ring of truth about it.
“So when Gregor Venko kidnapped Krauss’s daughter, you naturally offered to kidnap Venko’s son to get her back?”
“I didn’t offer, but Dieter was convinced that unless we had some kind of sword of Damocles hanging over Venko’s head, he would kill Heidi. He was probably right.” Gilby glanced at me. “But good God, woman, it was a ludicrous idea. Venko’s organisation across Eastern Europe makes the Mafia look like the Women’s Institute.”
“My mother’s in the Women’s Institute,” I said dryly. “They’re a pretty tough bunch.”
I was rewarded by another near-miss of a smile. “I didn’t know they had a SWAT team.”
“You be amazed,” I said, “what she can do with knitting needles.”
The smile broke out fully. He paused for a moment, then shook his head. “What the hell are you really doing here, Charlie?” he asked, and there was no anger, just a kind of tired amusement.
I hesitated for a moment, drained the last of the brandy, made my decision.
“I came,” I said bluntly, “to find out if you’d murdered Kirk Salter.”
That shook him. He sat up straight, the fatigue momentarily dropping away. “Good God,” he murmured. “We knew there was something about you.” His eyes slid away unfocused into thought, then flicked back to my face, turning shrewd. “And if I had?”
I shrugged and found that shrugging hurt, too. “Find some evidence and take it home,” I said. “I’m not here on a vengeance kick. Hell, I didn’t even like the bloke.”
“So why did you come?”
“I made a promise,” I said, thinking of Sean. And because the Major seemed to be waiting for more than that, I added, a little reluctantly, “Kirk saved my life once.”
“I see,” Gilby said. I noticed his eyes had shifted to my throat, where the scar lay hidden under a high-neck sweatshirt.
Sean had once made the mistaken assumption that the injury dated from the same time as Kirk’s opportune intervention. I hadn’t corrected him, either. Maybe it was just easier that way.
“So,” I said carefully, “are you going to tell me what happened to him?”
There was silence while the Major rose, walked over to the drinks cabinet and refilled his brandy glass. He turned and waved the decanter at me, but I shook my head. There was only so much of that stuff I could take and still hang on to the lining of my oesophagus.
When he was seated again he said, “I’d been following the kidnappings since they started, so when Heidi was snatched I already had a pretty good idea that Gregor Venko was the man behind the operation. I also knew that Heidi’s chances of survival were very poor.” He allowed his distaste to show through. “The man’s a monster.”
I watched him sample his drink. He saw me watching and set the glass aside, as though he’d had enough already. “Anyway, I had Dieter going ballistic for me to do something, so I pulled in a few favours with contacts in the security services. Getting anywhere near Venko himself was going to be impossible without months of preparation, but I did manage to find out the location of his son, Ivan.”
He scanned me for any sign that I considered the targeting of Gregor’s only child made him a monster, too. I kept my face neutral.
“Taking him seemed the logical thing to do at the time.” He gave a wry smile. “Perhaps if I’d had the chance to think things through more I would have hesitated, but I didn’t. We had less than a week to put a team together. Salter was here when Dieter arrived, overheard enough to know what was going on and volunteered immediately.”
There was a hint of something close to admiration in the Major’s voice as he reached for his drink again. “I was glad to have him,” he muttered fiercely. “Damned good soldier.”
“So what happened?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Gilby admitted. “We had a plan of attack. Not a foolproof one, by any means, but a good plan nonetheless. Somewhere along the line somebody blew it. We were compromised. It was a miracle we made it out with so few casualties and still managed to achieve our objective.”
“And Kirk was one of those casualties?”
The Major lifted his head and looked straight through me, his eyes blank to everything but the recall. “He was last man out,” he agreed. “Told us he’d cover our withdrawal, but the field of fire they put down was incredible. They were using machine pistols and just emptying magazine after magazine at us. Made the Gulf look like a picnic.” He shook his head, grim-faced at the memory. “We got him into the truck, did everything we could, but our medic was injured too. Salter didn’t make it.”
Our medic? Ah, so that was the problem with O’Neill.
“So you dumped Kirk’s body in the forest,” I said. I didn’t think I had any feelings about that, one way or the other. I was mildly surprised therefore, to hear the contempt in my voice. “Nice way to treat a damned good soldier.”
Gilby ducked his head in acknowledgement of the jibe, but he didn’t flinch. “I agree,” he said. “Officially, we couldn’t explain to the authorities what we’d been up to, so we left him. It was a tactical decision, but not an easy one, I can assure you. Making choices like that is one of the burdens of command.” It should have sounded pompous, but somehow it didn’t.