Adrian Magson - No Tears for the Lost

‘You don’t know where the money comes from?’ Riley asked softly. She felt her mouth go dry and asked herself how far this was going. For some reason, she still hadn’t been thrown out on her ear and Lady Susan was still talking about matters she must have found deeply upsetting, not to say humiliating. Yet there was an almost rehearsed manner in which she was speaking, as if the words didn’t quite match the emotion she must have been feeling.

‘No. I don’t.’ She stood up and looked through the window into the street, and Riley stood, too, feeling the interview was over. But Lady Susan hadn’t finished. ‘To be frank, that’s why I agreed to talk to you — talk to someone, anyway. I’m terrified it may have something to do with Christian’s death.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Riley was stunned. Death?

‘I’m not stupid, Miss Gavin. My son is dead, I know that.’ Her lower lip trembled, then became firm as her chin lifted again. When she spoke, it was as if she was alone in the room, her voice as soft as velvet but as cold as permafrost, the rehearsed tone absent. ‘We had our children late in life. Christian was the youngest. He should never have gone to America in the first place. There were lots of other places he could have visited. But Kenneth knew best. It would make a man of him, he insisted; broaden his horizons and show him the real world.’ Her words dripped with a coating of bitter sadness. ‘As if Kenneth had ever experienced the real world himself.’

‘But the trip was Christian’s idea, wasn’t it?’

Lady Susan turned with a faint frown. ‘Is that what Kenneth told you? I suppose it was, really. At first, anyway. Christian hated Colebrooke, said it was like a mausoleum for old things and old people. I quite agreed with him. He desperately wanted to travel, to see the world just as his friends were doing. But he was concerned about me and decided to stay here with me in London and get a job. Kenneth objected most strongly. He felt spending a year away would be good for Christian. A year away from me, is what he meant, foolish man. Not that he ever understood our son.’ She turned away again and a tremor ran through her slim frame. ‘I’ll forgive him for many things, but never that.’

There was nothing more to say and Riley couldn’t ask any more questions without feeling that she was turning the knife in an already open wound. She wanted to ask if she was aware that her ex-husband had now lost his position in the diplomatic corps, but decided against it. Maybe she knew about it anyway, along with all the other indignities he’d heaped on her during the marriage.

She quietly left Lady Susan to her sadness.

‘He’s some hero, that Sir Kenneth,’ she told Palmer later.

They were waiting in Palmer’s office in Uxbridge. After leaving Lady Susan, Riley had received a brief call from Mitcheson. He was on his way from the airport, and suggested she might like to get together with Palmer, to hear some interesting information. He had ended the call without saying why, but he’d sounded serious. She had immediately called Palmer and arranged to meet him at the office.

It was small and lacking in light, and bore the wear and tear of the years. But Palmer had demonstrated his dislike of innovation by using ancient furniture and never moving anything, not even the dust. That included pot plants, desk, chairs and filing cabinets, all of which were probably welded to the carpet by the passing of time.

Pride of place on Palmer’s scarred desk was a Rolodex, a present from Riley, who thought that all private detectives should have one, and a flat-screen computer monitor, with an impressively flashy power unit tucked away on the floor underneath. When he wasn’t out working, this was where he could usually be found, playing games and surfing the Internet as if he had all the time in the world.

‘How so?’ Mention of Myburghe made him check his watch. The former ambassador had gone to ground in London with his butler/bodyguard, and told Palmer to take some time off. Palmer was plainly expecting a call anytime soon to get back on the job at Colebrooke House.

‘He cheats on his wife, gambles away her family fortune, lets her go without a fight, then kicks his son out into the world where someone kidnaps him and chops off his finger. And all the time he’s maintaining his image of probity and spending money like his balls were on fire. Money his wife claims he doesn’t have. Can’t have. Doesn’t that strike you as unusual?’

Palmer said nothing but stared at the desk top as if he was half asleep. He hadn’t said a word since Riley had begun talking. After a few seconds, he sat up and spun the Rolodex with a dry clatter. ‘We need to find out more about Colombia, and what happened over there. That’s where it started.’

‘What about your mate, Charlie, in Whitehall?’ she suggested. Charlie was a records man deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Defence who knew all manner of useful people and secrets. He had been very helpful in the past, when she and Palmer had needed information available only through official MOD channels.

‘I already asked him. Whatever is out there won’t be on any of his records. We need information of the other kind. Preferably inside information — even gossip.’

‘Where are we going to get that?’

Before Palmer could answer, the office door swung open and John Mitcheson walked in.

**********

‘Well, it’s not FARC you’ve got to worry about.’ Mitcheson dumped his flight bag on the floor and dropped into a chair. ‘The Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarios de Colombia are too busy fighting off a government crack-down at the moment to send nasty surprises to foreign diplomats.’ He sounded tired, but the sombre tone in his voice wasn’t entirely due to jetlag. He leaned across and kissed Riley, then nodded at Palmer.

‘Jeez,’ Palmer breathed. ‘I’m glad you got that the right way round.’

Riley stared at Mitcheson, then craned her neck to study the baggage reclaim ticket affixed to his bag. ‘Me, too. Where have you been?’

‘I had a delivery job to do down in old Panama. After what you told me, it seemed a waste to go all that way and not do some digging.’ He looked at Palmer. ‘You wouldn’t have some tea in this place, would you? I’ve had enough bad coffee to kill a wombat and if I drink anything alcoholic, I’ll fall over.’

Palmer swung his feet from behind his desk. ‘Breakfast or Green?’ He walked over and poured hot water from a kettle into a mug. ‘Actually, make it Typhoo — the mice like the Green.’ He turned back and bent to examine the luggage tag, peeling off the top layer to reveal another ticket underneath. ‘I see you’ve been to Colombia.’

‘What?’ Riley was stunned. Apart from the surprise of hearing where he’d been, she knew how dangerous it was for Mitcheson to go anywhere near the country he’d once been flown out of in such a hurry. ‘What the hell did you go there for?’

‘For you, of course.’ He smiled back at her. ‘It’s okay, I was there less than an hour.’ He stretched out his legs and yawned. ‘I know a tour guide down there who used to be with the British army. He knows as much as anyone about what goes on, so I asked him to sound out some people for me.’ He nodded as Palmer handed him a mug. ‘Turns out he didn’t have to do much. He did a tour with the Close Protection unit guarding Sir Kenneth Myburghe.’

‘What did he say?’ asked Riley.

‘Nothing too electric to begin with. There had been vague threats because the British were trying to persuade the hill farmers to grow other cash crops instead of poppies and coca. Unfortunately, the farmers weren’t happy because the price of alternative crops like fruit, coffee or exotic flowers didn’t match what they could get for poppy cultivation. Neither could they harvest more than one crop a year. Some of them became very militant and that’s when FARC got involved.’