James Benn - Rag and Bone

The next moment I was walking on a long, circular path in a garden. There was a fountain in the middle, with flowers and hedges all around. Other paths emptied into the garden, but at an angle so you couldn’t see them until you had walked past. Suddenly, it all made perfect sense. There was only one circle, and all the other paths flowed into it. The circle wasn’t only about this investigation, it was about everything: life, love, war, birth, and death. You kept walking, and sooner or later everything would come to you. Everything was in the circle, and it never ended. Every path led into it, and if you waited long enough, you would see everyone you’d ever known. People were coming down the other paths, but I couldn’t recognize them. Shouldn’t I see someone I knew? I looked for Diana, I looked for my parents, running, darting in between the strangers who were filling the circle, but I couldn’t find anyone I knew. Part of me knew I was dreaming, but most of me was afraid this was heaven, or maybe hell.

Then I was on the promenade, watching the couple I’d seen earlier, except I knew the guy had to be Joey Adamo. He was walking with a beautiful woman on his arm. She wore jewels, and winked at me.

I thought I saw Diana, finally, ahead of me. I pushed through the growing crowd and grabbed her by the arm. But her hair had turned black, and it wasn’t Diana at all. It was Dalenka again, wearing a plain beige coat with a blue scarf. She looked perplexed, but stopped and took my hand in hers. We stood silently for a while, as people brushed by us, scurrying around the great circle, before she spoke. “What are you holding?”

I opened the palm of my hand, and saw two small pebbles.

“Stones,” I said.

“Why are they in your hand, Billy?” Dalenka asked me, then turned and melted into the crowd. I looked at my hand again, and it was empty.

The pounding on my door was real, not a dream. It was either a battering ram or Big Mike back from London. I groaned, remembering that I had meant to call him or check for messages last night. I rolled out of bed and opened the door.

“Billy where have you been? Jeez, you look like hell. I left messages last night, and called the castle this morning before I left.”

“What time is it?”

“Quarter to eleven. Why are you sleeping in?”

“Because I spent all night with Kaz while Inspector Flack interrogated him,” I said, rubbing the grit from my eyes. “Rak Vatutin was found with his head bashed in, and Kaz leaning over him.”

“Did he do it?” Big Mike asked matter-of-factly.

“No, but Flack still arrested him. They need someone to feed to the dogs, or at least keep them at bay. The Russians and the British government are demanding the Egorov case be wrapped up, and more bodies don’t help. I got in after dawn and plain forgot to check at the desk. What did you find out?”

“It’s gold,” Big Mike said, his voice excited and his eyes wide as he delivered the big news.

“What is?”

“The shipment. It’s gold. Russian gold. Payment for arms and vehicles we sold them.”

“That’s Lend-Lease. The Russians don’t have to pay for it.”

“Right. Lend-Lease took effect in October 1941. But we’d been selling them trucks and planes since June ’41. According to Sam, anyway.”

“And they had to cough up real dough for those first four months?”

“Yep, gold bullion, no less. This shipment is the last installment. It came on a destroyer from Murmansk, escorting a convoy home to Scapa Flow. Comes to half a million dollars’ worth.”

“Russian gold,” I said to myself. “Time and place.”

“Sam said the Russians insisted on making the pickup from the dock in Scotland. Then they’ll drive it to their embassy and in a couple of days make a big show of handing it over to the American ambassador.”

“When,” I said, nearly frantic as I washed up. “When is all this happening?”

“Now,” Big Mike said, looking at his wristwatch. “They were scheduled to unload the cargo at 0900 this morning. The Russians should be on the road by now.”

“With an escort, I hope?”

“Not much of one. One car and one truck, with a few guards inside. Sam said they insisted on running the operation themselves, and wanted to keep a low profile.”

“How did Harding know all this? Is he in on it?”

“No. Cosgrove made the calls and came up with the answers. He got us in to see a Russian lieutenant, Andrei Belov, who was in charge while his boss was away. Cosgrove must’ve pulled some strings; the kid didn’t hold out on us.”

“Who’s his boss? Vatutin?”

“No. Our pal Kiril Sidorov. Andrei said he’s been trying to contact him by telephone all morning.”

“Something tells me Sidorov isn’t going to return the call.” I threw cold water on my face, rinsing away shaving cream and a little blood from where I’d nicked myself. Slow down, I told myself. You’re forgetting something. What is it? The dream. I’d had a bunch of crazy dreams, and I struggled to remember, as they seemed to evaporate in the face of daylight. I stared at my reflection, then closed my eyes. The dream had explained everything, or so it had seemed at the time.

“Circles,” I said out loud.

“What?” Big Mike said from the next room.

“Circles. There’s only one circle, and everything connects to it.”

“Are you OK, Billy?” Big Mike leaned on the bathroom door, studying me, his eyebrows knitted in worry.

“Yeah, it was just a dream. I’d been trying to figure out how things were connected in this investigation, and in my dream, everything was connected in one big circle. Kind of hard to explain, but it all made sense, like I’d solved the case.”

“Yeah, well if dreams were horses, beggars would ride. Or is that wishes?”

“Wishes, I think,” I said as I knotted my field scarf. Diana had been in my dream, but sometimes it had been Dalenka. One of them had told me something.

“Where to now?” Big Mike said.

“The castle,” I said, trying one last time to remember the dream before it was gone for good. “See if Sidorov turned up.” Sidorov. He’d been in the dream, too, on the road to Canterbury. “Big Mike, did they ever positively identify Joey Adamo?”

“The guy in the trunk?”

“Yeah.”

“Jeez, Billy, I don’t know. He was chopped up in pieces, from what I heard. They didn’t call Homicide, that’s for sure. Zerilli let Angelo Adamo have the body back, so I guess he was satisfied.”

My dad was a big believer in the subconscious. He always said the answers to most questions were lying around in plain sight, like the jumbled pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. According to him, the hardest job was to see all the pieces, to understand them, without worrying about how they fit, especially the ones that didn’t make sense. If things don’t fit a pattern, most people ignore them. But a good cop notices everything, then lets his subconscious work it out.

I’m pretty sure that sometimes, sitting in his armchair and staring out the window, Dad was taking it easy. Or when his eyes closed and his head went back, he might have been taking a nap. But once in a while, late in the evening, or after Sunday dinner, he’d jump up, pace a few times around the living room, tapping his index finger against his lips. He might shake his head no once or twice and stop the pacing, but then there would come the snap of the fingers, as if all the pieces had fallen into place.

I was close, but I was stuck at the head-shaking stage. I knew I had to look at this as one case in which all the parties were connected. I didn’t know how, but I trusted my subconscious wouldn’t steer me in the wrong direction. I hoped I could listen to it as well as Dad listened to his.