“Are the police still following me?” Trevor began.
“Yeah. Two of them. They’re downstairs now, one in the lobby and one in a car.”
“I have a luncheon meeting. I don’t want to be followed.”
Dwyer knew about Trevor’s luncheons. This wife or that one and they’d have tea and sympathy in the Dorset for a nooner with the boss. Sometimes Dwyer would pick them up afterward and take them to their cars or homes and he would judge the success of the boss’s courtship on the look on their faces. When they looked dizzy and disheveled and happy, Dwyer figured the boss did good.
“I’ll bring the car around to the mews entrance at eleven twenty,” Dwyer began. “We goin’ to the Dorset?”
“No.” Trevor smiled. “A real luncheon this time. At Chester’s in the City. I just don’t want to be followed. But I want you to mark who I have luncheon with. He’s a man I don’t like.”
Dwyer found a toothpick in his shirt pocket and slipped it between his lips.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Follow him afterward. I’ll make it back to the office on my own. I want to know about this man. And be careful, Dwyer.”
“I’m always careful,” Dwyer said. “What’s it about? Allison and the divorce?”
Trevor nodded. “Yes. About that.” He was already thinking about the strange thing he would tell the man who called himself Cassidy.
The dining room was crowded, elbow to elbow, across white tablecloths. Men in livery moved about the place, and ceiling fans shoved the air back and forth. This was lunch at the highest level and no more pleasant than eating Scotch eggs in a Wapping public house over a pint of beer. In fact, considerably less pleasant.
Henry McGee smiled at Trevor Armstrong as he sat down.
“I’m followed everywhere by the police. Ostensibly for my protection. They’ll take a look in here and see you.”
“Who gives a fuck,” Henry McGee said. His mean, dark face showed enjoyment. “I just wanted to see if you were as smart as everyone says you are. I guess you are.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t have to kill you. Make a mess on the tablecloth. If you’d walked in here with cops, I’d have killed you. Funny thing about getting killed by someone, sometimes you don’t figure you’re only a gesture away from getting it.” Grinned.
“Why did you kill those people in my home?”
“Get your attention. How many were there?”
“You didn’t know?”
“Story didn’t get into the papers. Not yet anyway. Sort of thought that would happen.”
“Four servants. And my dog, Jameson.”
“Funny name for a dog.”
“Look. I don’t have five million. Not even close.”
“That’s too bad. I guess the next thing is to kill your entourage. Or maybe take out the next flight to New York. Two crashes in two months is two too many.”
Henry was still grinning, the waiters were rushing around on crepe soles, the dining room hummed with voices pitched at the low, confidential level of the City, and Trevor Armstrong knew his face had turned white.
“Can I deal with you or are you just crazy?” Trevor said at last. The voice was steady; it was borrowed from a reserve that he would have to pay back later in the form of six double whiskeys or two lines of cocaine.
“What’s the deal?”
“You can ruin EAA. I admit it.” He sighed. He wiped his hands on the napkin on his lap. “Look here. For five million dollars, I’d want more than to be left alone.”
“Being left alone after what’s happened ought to be enough,” Henry McGee said. “Like the surgeon who does a triple bypass. All he guarantees for all that pain and agony is that you’re going to be able to take a walk, something you took for granted before.”
“Jesus.”
Henry was enjoying himself. “Jesus reminds me of what Lazarus said when Christ raised him from the dead. ‘Jesus. Why the hell did you do that?’ ”
“I can get you two million by Friday. And the three million if you’ll perform a service.”
Henry stared at Trevor. He waited.
“The service is simple. In your line. To get the police away from me and onto another target.”
Henry let the silence drift in a sea of voices between them. The waiter came up. They both ordered whiskeys as aperitifs. The waiter announced the special of the day and departed. The din continued around them like perpetual ringing in the ears.
“What do you want?” Henry McGee said.
Trevor had been thinking about it all morning. It was linked with thoughts of Carl Greengold and what eventual effect the deaths in his house would have on the price of EAA. The police would leak the story eventually; there were always leaks. And would it be before or after Carl Greengold made his move and the price of EAA started going through the ceiling? It was all about money, the money borrowed to buy stock and the volatile price of the stock itself.
“A bombing,” Trevor Armstrong said. He stared at Henry with steady eyes. “We have strong rivals for this market.”
Henry said, “You are a murderous bastard.” Grinned again. “You got anyone in mind? Or is this just spin the bottle?”
“Another airline. It’ll work to your advantage as well.” The words were rushing up and Trevor couldn’t stop them. “Muddy the trail. You know the police will eventually settle on you and your… colleagues. Wouldn’t it serve to your advantage to diffuse the trail by diffusing the target?”
Henry accepted his whiskey. They ordered salads without enthusiasm and the waiter departed.
“Cheers,” Henry said and sipped.
Trevor did not touch his whiskey. He stared at Henry McGee.
“The thing is, that’s more work than I intended to do.”
“And you never believed you’d get five million dollars either,” Trevor said. He was very cold now, sure of himself, negotiating with the head of the pilots’ union or facing down a hostile board member. His manner had altered because he had proposed a deal and a deal was something he could understand. Everything before — the mindless terrorism — had panicked him.
Henry sipped the whiskey again. He rarely drank and almost never in the middle of the day but he was coming to the end of something and this was a celebratory moment. The deal was concrete, something to touch and figure out about. Trevor was a little more man than he had expected.
“I don’t know why I have to agree to anything,” Henry said.
“Nor I.”
“Because you’re up to your asshole in debt.”
“How the hell do you know so much about me?”
“Because I do my homework, Trev. Because I spent some money and time finding out about you and your buying all that EAA stock. You don’t have that kind of money so it stands to reason you borrowed it. And if EAA starts dropping its planes out of the sky, the stock will go down the toilet and you’ll be drowning in your own shit. Is that clear to you? It is to me.”
“I want a deal and I need a deal. You’ve put the police on me, they watch me, they want to know what it is about me that someone wanted to murder my household staff. You have to give me room to breathe. If EAA gets hit again, certain… people might get panicked and pull out of the market. That wouldn’t be a good thing. A good thing would be to have someone else blown up in the way EAA was blown up and shift the cops onto another trail. And it’s more than police, I can assure you. A man from a ministry I never heard of was there to question me the night I found… those bodies.”
Henry looked at his fingertips on the tablecloth. There was a certain amount of sense in all this. Trevor was in a bad spot and he might just be stubborn enough to hold back on the blackmail if Henry didn’t go along with his deal. Henry really didn’t have time; the whole thing was a matter of exquisite timing and so far it had worked, right down to setting off the remainder of the poison gas in his own flat and killing the two girls.