Алистер Маклин - Prime Target

‘But it dawned on Emily there were no signs in the house that the men had come back from the trip. She looked everywhere. Finally, when she got frightened and was frantic with worry, she called the police. They mounted a search straight away and they found the bodies around sunset.’

‘It happens,’ Sabrina said. ‘I had a school friend died the same way.’

‘Me too, a cousin. The boat capsized, he was in heavy fishing clothes and couldn’t swim as far as the shore.’

‘But the accident wasn’t what Emily asked you to keep quiet about, was it?’

‘No.’ Dilys flipped away her cigarette and lit another. ‘After it happened Emily’s neighbours, her colleagues, the authorities at Cornell and the police were all saying the same thing. It was what we just said – it was the kind of accident that’s always happening. But Emily didn’t believe it was an accident at all.’

‘Did she have any reason?’

‘The pathologist who did the autopsies gave her one. His evidence was skimmed at the inquest. There was pressure on the system, cases were backed up, so it was more like a rubber-stamping than a hearing. Cause of death, drowning. No evidence was brought to show that the deaths could have been anything but a mishap. But the pathologist tried to object, he had misgivings and he wanted to air them. No dice. Emily heard him complain to a police officer that the inquest had been rushed, and she went to see him.’

Dilys broke off and pointed to her cup. ‘Look, I know I’m a sad old thing, but the truth is I’m also addicted to caffeine. If you wouldn’t mind hanging on…’

She made to get up but Sabrina insisted it was her turn. She went inside and asked for two more coffees. Before she returned to the veranda she went to the rest room and put through a call to UNACO on her mobile. Philpott’s secretary came on. Sabrina gave her the names and rough date of the Selby-Stramm boating accident, and asked her to get a printout of the autopsy report.

She walked slowly back with the brimming cups and sat down opposite Dilys.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

Dilys explained that Emily had gone to the hospital where the pathologist worked as a teaching consultant. At first he had been reluctant to speak to her, because in his view, as an accredited Medical Examiner for the State of New York, he would be committing a breach of ethics if he expressed a controversial opinion of any case to an interested party.

‘But she had no trouble wearing him down,’ Dilys said. ‘He was miffed at the way the court steam-rollered him when he tried to raise a few points. His sense of justice was injured and his pride was too. So in the end he told Emily about his uncertainties. There was no doubt, the pathologist had said, that both Emily’s husband and her father had died of drowning. But he was not at all sure they had simply fallen out of their boat when it capsized.

‘Both bodies showed signs of trauma,’ Dilys said, ‘things like bruising on the neck, a gash on Desmond’s forehead and one on the old man’s scalp. There were grazes, contusions around the eyes and even a sign of hip dislocation in Desmond’s case. The pathologist said the marks and injuries were not the kind he would associate with an accident of that sort. These looked like the signs of assault and serious struggle with an assailant.’

‘What did Emily do about that?’

‘She told me she tried to get the case re-opened, but the authorities brushed her off. For a while the pathologist tried to help her. He made representations to the police. He prepared a long statement explaining that in addition to the unusual marks on the bodies, the men also showed strange internal signs, the kind of thing that just didn’t chime with what was supposed to have happened to them. But he was up against a wall, same as Emily, and a month after he started lending her his support, he was diagnosed as having some kind of cancer. She called it by initials, NLH, something like that.’

‘NHL,’ Sabrina said. ‘Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.’

‘Whatever. He died soon after. So Emily’s one and only ally was gone. She was bitter then, but she went quiet and I never found out any more. After the pathologist died, though, I don’t think she tried to get the case re-opened.’

‘Do you think she knew of a reason why somebody would kill her husband and father?’

‘I’m sure she had suspicions,’ Dilys said. ‘I mean, she found the suggestion of foul play easy to accept, didn’t she? The one thing she mentioned to me on that angle was about her husband’s death. She said she believed he died because he got in the way of a person or persons sent to kill her father.’

‘She actually said that?’

‘Once only. Afterwards, she seemed to regret it, and she wouldn’t discuss it any more.’

They sat in silence for a minute, drinking their coffee. Finally Dilys looked at the clock and said she had to rush.

‘I’ve got a date, and at my time of life I take such an event very seriously. I go to extravagant lengths to look right. I’m at the stage where it takes me an hour just to prepare the ground.’

‘Don’t sell yourself short,’ Sabrina said. ‘You look great.’

‘If I looked even a tenth as good as you, honey, I’d let up on myself.’

They made their way back through the coffee shop. At the door Sabrina held out her hand.

‘Thanks for your time, Dilys.’

‘It was a pleasure. Have I been any help?’

‘A great help. I’ve got a clearer picture of Emily now, and you gave me some avenues to explore.’

‘Well, that’s something, huh?’

‘It’s more than I expected,’ Sabrina told her.

At approximately the time Sabrina Carver was leaving the White House, Peter Leder was finishing dinner at Alfons, in Blisse Strasse in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin. It was almost 10.20 in the evening, and Leder always tried to be in bed by eleven. He decided he had had enough pudding and put down his spoon.

‘That was excellent,’ he said. ‘This is the only restaurant I know where they put vanilla in the zabaglione.’

In 1969, at the age of thirty-four, Peter had undergone an emergency gastrectomy operation following the rupture of a duodenal ulcer. He almost died of the haemorrhage, but the operation was a success and after a long period of recuperation he was restored to health.

After the operation Peter’s stomach was smaller than a tennis ball. He had to eat very small meals for the rest of his life. If he ate too much at one time the results were distressing, and by the time he was forty he had learned never to swallow another morsel, or drink another drop, once the pressure in his gut told him he had touched his limit.

‘This has not meant I can’t enjoy my food and my wine,’ he said now, after explaining to his dinner companion why he had such tiny portions, and why he took so long to eat them. ‘I simply have to be prudent, and rely on the patience of those unfortunate enough to be dining with me.’

His guest, Stefan Fliegel, said he had hardly noticed anything unusual. It was obvious that could not be true, since the host had gagged, spluttered and hiccuped his way through the entire meal. But Fliegel knew that Peter Leder was susceptible to boot-licking. It had helped engineer this meeting, and Fliegel saw no reason to abandon the tactic.

‘My only regret,’ Leder said, ‘is that my condition has aged me in a number of ways. Doctors have explained that it is a nutritive defect, a failure of the body to take in nourishment at the rate I need it. My reliance on food supplements, while sustaining me, has meant my tissues have aged ahead of their time.’

‘You don’t look any older than your years,’ Fliegel said smoothly. ‘I happen to know you’re sixty-one, which is a year younger than I am.’