Serafino and Joanna Truscott sat on a log by the stream and he produced from somewhere another piece of cigar and lit it. He looked up into the grey morning. “Still it doesn’t make sense.” He shook his head. “I’d give a lot to know what Hoffer is playing at.”
“Perhaps the whole thing is simpler than we think,” Joanna said. “Maybe he assumed you would do anything for money.”
“He could be right there,” I agreed, but somehow it didn’t sound too funny because it sent me off on another train of thought, one I wanted to avoid, but Serafino wouldn’t let it alone.
“These friends of yours, you can trust them? They’re not making a monkey out of you?”
I thought about it hard and tried to sound confident. “Anything is possible in this life, but I don’t think so. There’s one way to find out, of course.”
“And what is that?”
“I’ll go and see them.”
He nodded, biting on his cigar, a frown on his face. Joanna Truscott said, “You could make them an offer on my behalf if you like. It would be nice to turn the tables on my stepfather for once.” She picked up a stick, snapped it between her hands. “He married my mother for money, did you know that? When she wouldn’t give him any more, he got rid of her.”
“Are you certain of that?”
She nodded. “Not that I could prove it. He thought he’d get everything because he knew she loved him – loved him to distraction – but he made a mistake. She left me everything, and now he’s in trouble – bad trouble.”
“What kind?”
“He needs money – a great deal of money. He’s frightened, too.”
So Mafia was in this after all?
“All right, wait for me here.” I looked at my watch, saw that it was an hour since I had left Burke and the others which meant they would already be on their way down. “I’ll be about half an hour.”
I thought they might stop me from going, but nobody moved. When I looked back from the edge of the trees, Joanna Truscott had taken off her red scarf and the blonde hair gleamed as the first rays of the early morning sun broke through the clouds.
I ploughed up the steep slope, pushing through the undergrowth and the going was so hard that I had little time to concentrate on anything else except making progress. But I wasn’t happy. The trouble was that, in my heart, I’d never believed Hoffer’s story for a moment. Certain aspects of it were always manifestly impossible and if I’d seen the flaws, why hadn’t Burke?
But then I couldn’t believe the second possibility. He’d done many things in his time – aided and abetted by me on occasion. Killed ruthlessly and often without compassion, but as a soldier. It was inconceivable that he would have agreed to murder a young girl for money. In any case, it would not have been possible with the rest of us there.
So deep in thought was I that it was with a sense of surprise that I found myself at the spot by the stream where I had met the Honourable Joanna earlier. I paused to catch my breath and a stick cracked behind me.
“Hold it right there.” Piet Jaeger stepped from behind a tree, his assault rifle levelled at my belt.
“Stacey, what happened? We were getting worried.”
Burke moved out of the trees with Legrande and Piet Jaeger went to stand point at the edge of the little clearing automatically. He was a good soldier, always had been, I’ll say that for him.
“Well, what happened?” Burke said again. “Did you have any luck?” He frowned suddenly. “Where’s your rifle?”
“In custody,” I said. “One of Serafino’s boys took a fancy to it.”
He went very still. “You’d better explain.”
I moved to the side of the stream away from Jaeger and Legrande and sat on a boulder. Burke lit a cigarette and squatted before me, his rifle across his knees.
“Okay, what happened? You were supposed to scout, not make contact.”
“I found the girl up here on her own having a swim. No guards, no restraint. When I told her who I was from, she expected me to kill her.”
“She what?” A look of astonishment appeared on his face.
“As for Serafino and his boys,” I went on. “They aren’t sweating over her fair white body in turn as Hoffer implied. They’re working for her. By staying up here, she stays alive. It’s as simple as that.”
I gave him the whole story in detail, even the girl’s suspicions about her mother’s death and I watched him closely all the time. When I was finished, he got to his feet and stood there, staring down into the water, jiggling a handful of pebbles.
“At least it explains a few things. Hoffer had a word with me just before we left. He said he was worried because the girl had a history of what amounted to a kind of mental instability. That she’d had treatment a couple of times without success. He said she was sex mad and probably enjoying every moment of her experience. He seemed to think she might kick up a fuss about coming with us. He said she very easily became hysterical and was capable of making the wildest accusations.” He turned. “You’re sure she isn’t…?”
I shook my head. “I’ve spoken to Serafino. He told me he was hired to kill the girl and changed his mind because he wanted to do Hoffer down. He doesn’t like him.”
“The bastard.” Burke threw threw the pebbles he was holding into the water viciously. “Neither do I.”
The main thing which had worried me was now explained and I was conscious of a definite easing of tension and a sudden rush of affection for Burke, coupled with a kind of guilt because I had even admitted the possibility that he was capable of such an act.
He produced his packet of cigarettes for the second time. It was empty and he threw it into the stream. I gave him one of mine and when he lit it, I saw that his hands were shaking. He stared out across the water.
“God, what a fool I’ve been. I knew there was something phoney about the whole thing. From the beginning I knew that, and yet I still let it all happen.”
“Why, Sean?” I asked.
“Oh, the money was good and it was the only offer I was likely to get.” He shrugged. “You change when you get old, you’ll find that out. You grab at straws, take the wrong chances, look the other way when you shouldn’t, because all of a sudden, the years are rolling by and you’ve had it.”
He choked suddenly on a mouthful of smoke and doubled over, struggling for breath. While it lasted, it was anything but pleasant. I got an arm around him and he leaned hard on me as he coughed up half his lungs.
After a while, he managed to get his breath and smiled wanly. “Okay now.” He slapped his chest. “I’m afraid the old lungs aren’t what they used to be.”
And in that, there was the answer to many things.
“How bad is it?”
He tried to smile and failed. “Bad enough.”
And then he told me. Not, as I was beginning to believe, cancer, but something as bad. Some rare disease in which a fungus-like growth spreads like a poisonous weed to choke him. There was no cure and drugs could only halt what was an inevitable decline.
To say that I felt guilty at the general way in which I had misjudged him would be an understatement. I was sick to my stomach. There was no excuse. I should have realised from my knowledge of the man that there had to be some logical explanation for his unlikely behaviour.
I came up with the most banal sentence in the world. “I’m sorry, Sean.”