Judas Country

I said gently: 'It could just be the suicide note the Inspector wanted him to have left. I suppose there's no law about posting one instead of sticking it on the mantelpiece.'

'To somebody in Beirut? When his own daughter's next door?'

'Are you looking for logical behaviour in a suicide?' I finished my last egg. 'I suppose it'd be more proper for Mitzi to read it than for Lazaros, and he'd certainly open it, but then again – if it is a suicide note, it might cause her unnecessary grief, right?'

'You're achieving new standards in logical hypocrisy.' He poured himself some of my coffee. 'So what now?'

'We wait until we're alone, Josephine.'

He half grinned. The puffiness was fading and his face was taking on the old lean, shrewd alertness. He nodded briefly and leant back in the chair. 'What happened to that girl at the Gat-wick pub…'

*

It took five minutes before the cop decided he couldn't go on reading his future in the bottom of the little coffee-cup and wandered out. I twitched my chair to get my back to the glass doors and slid the envelope across the table.

Ken shook his head, barely a quiver. 'Pierre Aziz? Don't know him.'

'Nor me, though maybe I've heard something… Anyway, Beit Mery's no refugee camp.'

'It's that hill with the fancy great hotel, isn't it? The Al Boustan.'

'That's the place.' I worked one fingertip in under the envelope flap. 'Well, jog my elbow.'

He grinned, reached and bumped my aim. The envelope ripped open. 'Dear me, it seems to have come undone…' I unfolded the single piece of good-quality ten-by-eight writing paper with the single line Professor Doktor Bruno Spohr engraved across the top. No address; a professional travelling man. And underneath… a big slab of type-written German, ending in two signatures, one of them Spohr's. I don't read German much beyond'Bier' and'Flugplatz' and I was pretty sure Ken still didn't either. The sheet had a slightly lop-eared, worn look; certainly older than last night. I shrugged and passed it across.

Ken frowned down at it. 'Oh Christ, why didn't we think of a German speaker writing in German… Das Schwert das wir in der Gruftin Akkaentdeckt haben… Ohhell. Akka must be Acre, but what'sa Schwert anda Gruft?'

'Dunno. What's the other signature?'

'Franz Meisler.The Prof's assistant, maybe, it's dated eighteen months ago; before Bruno got pinched.' He skimmed down the rest of the text. 'There's some dimension in here, too… what does 1003 millimetres sound like?'

'Like just over three feet. Maybe it's a treasure map in words: one metre north-west of the lonesome pine…'

'Well, a suicide note it ain't. And we'll have to show it to Mitzi. How do we explain how it got opened?'

'We blame the Sergeant, of course.'

'Stupid of me.' He held it up. 'You or me?'

'You know the lady best.'

*

But Lazaros and his band of merry men turned up before Mitzi did. They set up at a bar table and took our formal statements in chronological order: the chambermaid finding him, Sergeant Papa confirming the finding, me arriving to reconfirm andtell Papa, to get his finger out and into a telephone dial.

When I'd finished, I asked Lazaros: 'Was it cancer?'

He thought for a moment before answering. His shirt was clean now, but his long face still looked weary. 'Yes. The patho-logist's preliminary report says it was well advanced.'

'So now we know.'

'Yes. Read the statement over, please, and sign if it is correct.'

Mitzi got back from wherever as I was reading, and Lazaros called her in. She was smartly but quietly dressed in a mid-length charcoal grey skirt, short-sleeved white blouse and what looked like a small antique gold coin on a chain around her neck. She gave me a polite, pale smile as we passed in the doorway.

Ken was leaning on the counter outside; Lazaros hadn't wanted anything formal from him. 'Half past eleven. When's it respectable to start drinking in this town?'

'When the cops are out of the bar. It's an old Cypriot custom.'

'I was thinking more of strolling round to the Ledra.'

'Well, unless you do it for the exercise, stop thinking. We're busted after last night. We can't pay for what we drink so we'll have to drink it here.'

Kapotas came out of the office in time to get the tail-end of that, and glared at me. 'It is all being charged in the end! '

'Sooner or later it's going to get cheaper to pay me and let me fly home.'

He waved a piece of paper. 'I can do nothing until Harborne, Gough tell me… And what about the Professor? Will his daughter be able to pay? All that champagne and caviar! '

'Delicious it was, too,' I said, just to cheer him up. Then, to Ken: 'How was the Professor fixed, moneywise?'

He shrugged. 'Middling well, I'd guess. He didn't talk about it, but I'd say he was used to living well.'

'He'd had a year without income.'

True, true…'

A woman came up to the desk and said in an American accent: 'Good morning. Is this where Professor Bruno Spohr was staying?"

We all looked at her. After a moment, Kapotas said nervously: 'I am afraid the Professor is-'

'I know all about that. But I think he had his daughter with him; I was wondering if I could talk with her.'

I nodded at the bar doors. 'She's making a statement to the police in there, but she shouldn't be long.'

'Why, thank you. I'm Eleanor Travis.' And she held out a firm, slim hand.

She must have been about thirty-five, slim and a bit tall and with a general air of tautness. Something in the way the skin was pulled tight over the high suntanned cheekbones, the way she cocked her head and smiled, showing a lot of big white teeth, the cat-like precision with which she moved. Her hair was longish and blonde and a little likely to separate into straggles; she wore tight blue trousers – and had a bottom small enough for it – a blue denim shirt and a bright yellow silk neckscarf.

I said: 'Roy Case. And this is Ken Caviti.' She shook his hand, too.

Then he asked: 'Did you know Professor Spohr?'

'I never met him, no, but I've heard a lot about him."

'Oh?'

'I work for the Met in New York.'

"The which?'

'Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'm a medievalist.'

I said: 'Forgive me asking – but how did you know where the Professor was?'

Her whole body tautened another notch. But the smile stayed. 'It was on the radio this morning, the desk at the Ledra told me. I'd tried ringing him at a dozen hotels yesterday – including this one – and they'd all said he wasn't staying.'

Ken and I glanced at each other and he nodded about a millimetre. It sounded reasonable.

I said: 'He was trying to stay secret. I imagine a hotel guest is entitled to that. I suppose you didn't-' But then I said: 'Skip it.' I'd been going to ask if she'd played games with delivering those green envelopes all over town, but if she had she certainly wouldn't admit it.

Ken said. 'You really are from the Met, are you?'

This time the smile was long gone. Kapotas stood up straight and made worried twittering noises.

She said coolly: 'And who are you two?'

'He's an old friend of the Prof's,' I said quickly, 'and I'm an old friend of him. Sorry if we sound snoopy, but a man doesn't commit suicide every day.'

'I'd guess once is the most anybody ever did.' Her voice was quite calm. She reached into a big shoulder bag made of fringed white buckskin, rummaged around and handed all three of us visiting cards. It said: Eleanor Travis Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. TR9-5500.

Instinctively I ran a fingernail over the lettering to see if it was engraved. I hadn't had cards of my own since I'd left the RAF, where all officershad to have them and theyhad to be engraved, to show we were gentlemen as well.

'It's engraved,' Miss Travis said, voice still freeze-dried.