Jack Higgins - Midnight Never Comes

'How old is he?'

'Fifty.'

Chavasse was surprised. 'He doesn't look anywhere near that. He seems to live a full life.'

'He can afford to. At the last count he was worth at least a million and moving up fast. Not bad for an ex-Australian infantry sergeant with no formal education.'

The last photo showed Donner on his yacht in Cannes harbour, reclining in a deck chair, glass in hand, gazing up at the young girl who leaned against the rail beside him. She was perhaps sixteen and wore a bikini, long blonde hair to her shoulders, blowing in the breeze, half-obscuring her face.

'Who's this?' Chavasse said, holding up the photo.

'His step-daughter, Asta Svensson.'

'Swedish?'

'Right through to her pretty backbone. That was taken three years ago. She's nineteen now and very, very attractive.'

'I think Donner would agree with you to judge from the way he's looking at her on this picture.'

'What makes you say that?'

'He's smiling on all the others, but not on this one. It's as if he's saying, "You, I take seriously." Where does her mother fit in?'

'She died about three months before that picture was taken. She was drowned skin-diving off some Greek island or other, but you can read through the file later. I'll just give you an outline for the moment. It'll save time.'

He got to his feet, moved to the fire and started to fill his pipe. 'Max Donner is typical of a certain type of man who's rocketed to the top in this country since the war. Mostly they started with nothing and the boom in property and land values helped them along.'

'When did he arrive?'

'1948. Company Sergeant Major in an Australian infantry battalion when he was demobbed in '47. Good solid war record in the Western Desert, and New Guinea. He picked up the Military Medal there, by the way.'

'And how did he set about making a million from scratch in a strange land? I'd love to know.'

'Simple really, or at least he makes it look that way. The Sunday Times did a feature on him the other year. "The Man from Rum Jungle," they called it. There's a copy in the file. First of all he took a job as a salesman. Reconditioned car engines, then textile machinery. Fifteen hundred a year and a company car-good money for the hungry forties. Most men would have been satisfied.'

'But not Donner?'

'Not Donner. He went into partnership with a man called Victor Wiseman. They bought an old Victorian house in Kensington in January, 1950, for three thousand pounds with the aid of a substantial mortgage and converted it into four flats which they sold separately over the next six months for a total of seven thousand, three hundred.'

Chavasse pursed his lips in a soundless whistle. 'And never looked back.'

'Donner certainly didn't. Wiseman dropped out with his half when they reached twenty thousand and bought himself a restaurant in Clapham. You've got to take chances in the property game and he just didn't have the stomach for it.'

'He must have been kicking himself ever since.'

'I expect so. Our friend was doing so well by 1952 that he was able to form the Donner Development Corporation. One of the first outfits to get in on multi-storey office block building in the city centres. Later, he formed his own finance company. Hire purchase for the millions. The biggest golden goose of all.'

'I should have thought he would have been worth rather more than your million by now?'

'You should see what he spends. He believes in living life to the full and he's made some enormous donations to some of the new universities.'

'When did he get married?'

'1955. To Gunilla Svensson, widow of a Swedish stockbroker who'd handled Donner's affairs in Stockholm.'

'A love match?'

Mallory shrugged. 'It certainly looked that way at the time, especially if you go by what the gossip columnists were saying. I should think it quite possible. She was a very beautiful woman.'

'And what about the daughter. Presumably Donner's her guardian?'

'That's right. She has relatives in the States, but none in Sweden or this country. She was at Heathfield till she was seventeen then did a year at finishing school in Paris. She's spent this last year at Stockholm University studying Sociology.'

'Doesn't she ever come home?'

'She's stayed with him frequently in London if that's what you mean and he usually flies across to see her once a month.'

Chavasse nodded. 'Takes his parental responsibilities seriously then?'

'It certainly looks that way. From all accounts there can be little doubt about the genuineness of his affection for her.'

'And what about her?'

'One can't be certain. On the other hand she doesn't have a great deal of choice in the matter. Her mother left her a sizeable fortune, but Donner holds it on trust for her until she's twenty-five.'

'An interesting situation,' Chavasse said. 'But where does it all lead?'

'I'm not really sure. That's where you come in. About six months ago, M.I.6 handled a very minor espionage affair. You may remember it. An Admiralty clerk called Simmons was caught passing classified information to a man called Ranevsky, a naval attache at the Russian Embassy.'

'He got five years, didn't he?'

'That's right. It was all very small beer.'

'Didn't the Russian claim diplomatic immunity?'

Mallory nodded. 'M.I.6. had him for a couple of hours and then he had to be handed over to his own people. They flew him out next morning. The really interesting thing proved to be the fifty one-pound notes he'd passed over to Simmons before they were arrested. They were new notes and M.I.6. managed to trace them to a Bond Street bank where a cashier not only recognised Ranevsky's photograph, but also remembered details of the cheque he'd cashed.'

'Are you saying it was one of Donner's?'

Mallory nodded. 'Genuine, too.'

'What did Donner have to say?'

'He wasn't asked anything, Paul. That side of things was never mentioned at Simmons's trial. It wasn't worth wasting on such an insignificant event. They simply dropped the whole thing fairly and squarely into my lap and told me to get on with it.'

'And you've been checking on Donner ever since?'

'That's right and the deeper we probe, the unhealthier it looks. From Burgess and Maclean onwards, everywhere we dig, we seem to find Max Donner hovering on the outer perimeter of things. And not only here. France, Germany, Canada-he has business interests all over the place.'

'But Donner's a highly successful business man, a respected public figure?' Chavasse shook his head. 'What would he stand to gain? It just doesn't make sense.'

'Neither did the Gordon Lonsdale affair at first.'

'But Lonsdale was a Russian, a professional agent.'

'Who was a Canadian to all intents and purposes. Even now there is some doubt about his real name.'

'Are you suggesting that Max Donner might be another Lonsdale?'

'I'm not sure,' Mallory said. 'It's a possibility: that's all we can say for certain at the moment. Donner's parents were Austrian. He was born in Vienna in 1916 while his father was fighting on the Italian front. After the war, things were difficult and then his father came into a small legacy and they emigrated to Australia in 1925.'

'How did they fetch up in a place like Rum Jungle?'

'Like plenty before him, Donner's father fell into the wrong hands. With what was left of his legacy he bought what he understood to be a thriving cattle station. When they got there, they found a mud hole in the wilderness, a broken down shack and a handful of starving cows. Mrs. Donner wasn't built for that kind of life. She died in 1930.'

'When the boy was fourteen?'

'That's right. He and his father hung on for another year, then sold out for seventy-five pounds and left.'

'Where for-Sydney?'