Desmond Bagley - The Freedom Trap

I said, ‘A top-rank Whitehall man, such as yourself, doesn’t turn up in Malta out of the blue so opportunely. Something must have come up.’

‘It did. Mackintosh died. He’d taken out insurance. He wrote out a full account of his actions and posted them to his lawyer just before he saw Wheeler. The snag about that was that the sealed envelope was inscribed, “Only to be opened in the event of my death.”‘

Armitage stared at me. ‘And Mackintosh was in the hands of the doctors. He wasn’t dead, but you’d hardly call him alive although in the legal sense he was. He was a vegetable maintained by modern medical techniques and the doctors’ duty by the Hippocratic Oath, and that was something he hadn’t calculated for. That damned envelope was in the lawyer’s hands for two weeks before Mackintosh died and by then it was nearly too late. It would have been too late were it not for your actions.’

‘That’s all very well,’ I said. ‘But how did that lead you to me? Mackintosh didn’t know where I was.’

‘We went straight for Wheeler,’ said Armitage. ‘We were just wondering how to tackle him when you took the problem out of our hands.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Your methods are direct, to say the least. It was thought that you might be around, so we brought along people who could recognize you.’

‘Brunskill and company,’ I said. ‘So you’ve got Wheeler.’

He shook his head. ‘No; Wheeler is dead, and so is Slade. You saw to that very effectively, if I may say so. The Special Branch is working on the ramifications of Wheeler’s organizations — those that are legal and those that are not. I think it will be a lengthy task, but that is none of your concern.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘However, you do present a problem to the Government, which is why I am here.’

I couldn’t suppress the smile. ‘I bet I am.’

‘It’s no laughing matter, Mr Stannard,’ said Armitage severely. ‘Already the Press has become alerted to the fact that there is something in the wind.’ He stood up and wandered over to the window. ‘Fortunately, the worst of your... er... crimes were committed outside the United Kingdom and to those we can turn a blind eye. But there is the matter of a diamond robbery which may well prove awkward to handle.’

I said, ‘Were the diamond merchants paid out by their insurance company?’

Armitage turned and nodded. ‘I should think so.’

‘Well, why not leave it at that.’

He was affronted. ‘Her Majesty’s Government cannot connive in the cheating of an insurance company.’

‘Why not?’ I asked reasonably. ‘Her Majesty’s Government is conniving in the murder of Wheeler and Slade. What the hell’s so sacred about a few thousand quid?’

That didn’t sit well with him. Property rights come before human rights in British law. He harrumphed embarrassedly, and said, ‘What is your suggestion?’

‘Wheeler is dead and Slade is dead. Why shouldn’t Rearden be dead, too? He can be killed while evading arrest — it shouldn’t be too difficult to stage manage. But you’ll have to gag Brunskill, Forbes and Jervis, and you can do that under the Official Secrets Act. Or you can throw the fear of God into them; I don’t think any of that gang would relish being transferred to the Orkneys for the rest of his days.’

‘And Mr Stannard comes to life again?’ he queried.

‘Precisely.’

‘I suppose it could be arranged. And how do we explain the spectacular death of Wheeler?’

‘It must have been those rockets they were shooting over the harbour,’ I said. ‘One of them must have gone out of whack and hit the ship. It was being repaired at the time — I’ll bet there was some fuel open on deck. I think the Maltese Government ought to be ticked off for not keeping proper control.’

‘Very ingenious,’ said Armitage, and took out a notebook. ‘I’ll suggest that the Navy offer a ship and a diver to help lift the wreck. We’ll choose the diver, of course.’ He made a note with a silver pen.

‘You’d better,’ I said, thinking of that ram which was probably still embedded in Artina’s side. ‘A sad end to a popular MP. Most regrettable.’

Armitage’s lips twitched and he put away the notebook. ‘The organization for which you worked before Mackintosh pulled you out of South Africa apparently thinks highly of you. I am asked to inform you that someone called Lucy will be getting in touch.’

I nodded. How Mackintosh would have sneered at that.

‘And the Prime Minister has asked me to pass on his sincere thanks for the part you have played in the affair and for the way you have brought it to a conclusion. He regrets that thanks are all he has to offer under the circumstances.’

‘Oh, well; you can’t eat medals,’ I said philosophically.

I sat in the lounge of the Hotel Phoenicia waiting for Alison. She had been whisked to England by the powers-that-be in order to attend Alec’s funeral. I would have liked to have paid my respects, too, but my face had been splashed in the pages of the British newspapers with the name of Rearden underneath and it was considered unwise for me to put in an appearance until Rearden had been forgotten in the short-lived public memory. Meanwhile I was growing a beard.

I was deriving much amusement from an intensive reading of an air mail edition of The Times. There was an obituary of Wheeler which should put him well on the road to canonization; his public-spiritedness was praised, his financial acumen lauded and his well-known charitableness eulogized. The first leader said that in view of Wheeler’s work for the prisons his death was a blow to enlightened penology unequalled since the Mountbatten Report. I choked over that one.

The Prime Minister, in a speech to the Commons, said that British politics would be so much the worse for the loss of such a valued colleague. The Commons rose and stood in silence for two minutes. That man ought to have had his mouth washed out with soap.

Only the Financial Editor of The Times caught a whiff of something rotten. Commenting on the fall of share prices in the companies of Wheeler’s empire he worried at the question of why it was thought necessary for the auditors to move in before Wheeler’s body was cold. Apart from that quibble Wheeler had a rousing send-off on his journey to hell.

Rearden came off worse. Condemned as a vicious desperado, his death in a gun battle was hailed as a salutary lesson to others of his kidney. Brunskill was commended for his perseverance on the trail of the villainous Rearden and for his fortitude in the face of almost certain death. ‘It was nothing,’ said Brunskill modestly. ‘I was only doing my duty as a police officer.’

It was hoped that Slade would soon be caught. There were full security wraps on Slade’s death and I had no doubt that in another ten or twenty years any number of criminologically inclined writers would make a fair living churning out books about the Slade Mystery.

I looked up to see Alison coming into the lounge. She looked pale and tired but she smiled when she saw me. I rose to my feet as she approached and she stopped for a moment to survey me, taking in the cast on my arm and the unshaven stubble on my cheeks. ‘You look awful,’ she said.

‘I’m not feeling too bad; I can still bend my left elbow. What will you have?’

‘A Campari.’ She sat down and I whistled up a waiter. ‘I see you’ve been reading all about it.’

I grinned. ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the papers.’

She leaned back in the chair. ‘Well, Owen; it’s over. It’s all over.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry about Alec.’

‘Are you?’ she asked in a flat voice. ‘He nearly got you killed.’