Gordon Ferris - The Unquiet heart

“I swear, McRae. I didn’t touch her.”

“But you watched while they did! There are other ways of hurting a person. And by Christ, you hurt her!”

“McRae, I really don’t know where she is. As God’s my judge. It wasn’t my doing.”

“Is she alive?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” He was whimpering now. I could see blisters forming on his shoulder and leg. I tried a change of tack.

“Why are the Yanks so pissed off at her?”

“She was screwing up their network. She killed their top man in Berlin.”

“Why did you let her go, then. Why did you let her out?”

“Can you imagine the trial?”

“And besides, you knew the Yanks would take care of her once she was out.”

He was silent.

“Didn’t you?” I nodded to Stan who leaned forward with his flame.

“Can you blame them? This was the second agent she killed.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“The Angel pub in Rotherhithe. The man you met.”

I froze. “He was American? Central Intelligence?” I remembered his one word to me – McRae? – and how it sounded Irish. It was. Boston Irish.

“That’s why they were after her.”

“She wasn’t there. She wasn’t there, I tell you.”

“But her Jewish pals were. She set them on him.”

“Why did he agree to meet me?”

“They’d lost track of her. Didn’t know what she was up to. They thought you could help track her down.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because you wanted her back. You’d had a fight. She dropped you.”

Why should I believe this man? He’d lied so often to me.

“And knowing all that, Wilson, you set her up in that flat. A sacrificial offering for your Yankee pals. Is that it?”

His silence was deafening. I’d had enough. I was past caring, one way or the other. The likelihood was that Eve was dead. And this man had put her in front of the firing squad. If I’d had a gun in my hand I would have shot him like a dog and left him to die. I was barely aware of the rattle of locks and the door opening behind me. The lads jumped and were quick to get into defence mode. Had the police tailed us after all? Then I smelled the cigar.

“Hello, Danny.” Pauli Gambatti stepped over the threshold followed by three of his men. They were all carrying guns.

“Hello, Pauli. Fancy meeting you here. We were just tidying up.”

“I can see.”

He walked over and stood alongside me, gazing at Wilson’s shaking body.

“Got what you wanted, Danny?”

“As much as I think I’ll get.”

“Then we’ll take over. You can leave him with us.” Stan handed over his blowlamp to one of the musclemen. The man grinned in anticipation.

“That wasn’t the deal, Pauli.”

“I gave you the premises. I didn’t say nothing about your guest. I owe this one.”

“What for?”

“We used to have some deals going. Him and me. Must have paid him a couple of grand in backhanders. For turning a blind eye. Ain’t that right, Bertie boy?”

Wilson’s wide eyes said it all. Gambatti continued. “Set you up too, Danny.”

“What?”

“He heard you was looking for me. And after our little rendezvous here, he called me. I told him we’d had words. He asked me to arrange the meeting at the Angel for you. Depending what you knew, they were going to kill you.”

I thought of the man’s knife dropping from his dead hand. “You bastard!” I said to Pauli, but it covered both of them.

Pauli shrugged. “Business. Shit-head here was holding my cousin and good friend Alberto. He said he’d fix things with the judge.”

“Let me guess…”

“Oh, he fixed it all right. Alberto is rotting in Dartmoor now. Twenty years, wasn’t it, Bertie boy?”

“I tried, Pauli! I tried. For god’s sake man, I can’t buy all the judges,” pleaded Wilson.

“We had a deal. You broke it. It’s payback time. You can go, Danny. And let me know your answer ’bout the other thing, won’t you?”

I looked at Wilson. I looked at Pauli. I knew my answer. I’d sooner rot in Dartmoor with his cousin than join forces with this hoodlum. Instead, I smiled.

“I’ll be in touch, Pauli. Go easy on him.”

Wilson thrashed in his ropes. “Don’t leave me, McRae! Don’t go. They’ll kill me!

I’ll help you find her. They’ll listen to me. Don’t go…!”

I led my lads from the warehouse, and never looked back. Even when I heard the screams. There was nothing I could do for Wilson. Not against three guns. Even if I wanted to.

Two months passed. Eve had vanished without even a mention on the inside pages.

No one noticed, no one cared. Though I took comfort from the fact that they hadn’t reported finding a body. I clung – stupidly – to the idea that the Yanks would let her go eventually. In the meantime, the only evidence of her existence was her notebook. I’d worked through every coded phrase and deciphered every word to see if I could pin down this butterfly that had flitted through my life.

Given the notebook’s importance to her I wondered why she’d left it behind. I would have loved to bounce the matter around with Prof Haggarty, but he’d signed me off a month ago. Still, it was worth a phone call to the lovely, tight-hipped Vivienne.

“Hi, Viv, it’s Danny McRae. Are you doing anything on Saturday? Fancy the Palais? I bet you’re a great dancer.”

“Certainly not!”

“In that case, I’d like a word with your lord and master.”

I could almost see her cheeks sucking in as she fought for her dignity. “That’s quite impossible. The Professor is in consultation all morning. Besides, you are no longer one of his patients.”

“Viv, it’s not impossible. Not for a girl like you. Leave a message for the Prof and ask him to call me, there’s a good girl. And if you change your mind about Saturday…?”

“Hmphh.” She cut me off.

Haggarty called me within the hour. “You’ve been upsetting my lovely receptionist again, Danny. She’s going to be a bag of thorns all day.”

“Sorry about that, Professor. It’s hard to resist. She needs to loosen up a bit.”

“I do the analysis around here, thank you. I thought I’d cast you adrift? You’re not having a relapse? Need a dream deciphered? Your bumps read?”

“Do you ever get off duty? Can I buy you a beer? I mean drop the patient-doctor thing? Now I’m not on your list?”

“Why not? A quick one, mind. After work tonight. There’s a pub round the corner here. Marylebone High Street. The Cambrai.”

His first Guinness hardly touched the side. He was a big man and I could see that he planned to get bigger. We batted the breeze for a while and then I got down to it, at his urging.

“This girl I was seeing.”

“The reporter lassie?” He started on his second pint.

“That’s the one. Turns out she was a spy.”

“All women are.”

I laughed. “A real spy. A German spy, as it turns out.”

“Sounds like a good story. A four pint story. I’ll line them up.”

Over the barrier of brimming black glasses I told him about her. Told him of Berlin and how I tracked her down with her notebook.

“That was the strange thing, Prof…”

“You don’t drink with me and call me Professor. It’s Mairtin.”

“Mairtin, then. It was precious to her. She never went anywhere without it. Why did she leave it for me to find?”

“Maybe you’ve just answered that.”

“She could have done it to make it look good. The kidnapping.”

Haggarty was shaking his grizzled head. “No need, if I understand your story.

No, I think she left it for you to find. She wanted you to come after her.