Time out of mind v1 0, p.6
Time Out Of Mind (v1.0), page 6
“O.K. then,” he agreed. “It seems stupid not to if I’ve got the chance.”
A green light began to wink on the control panel. Carol cut the master switch and retrieved the first card. Then she slotted home the second one, reprogramed the machine and started it off again. “You hang on here,” she said, “and I’ll pass this lot along the line. If we’re in luck they may be able to do it straight away.”
Three minutes later she was back. “How’s that for inter-service liaison?” she grinned. “They’re putting it through right now.” She glanced at the dial on the memory bank. “Aha, this looks more hopeful. Something seems to have struck a chord somewhere. There! What did I tell you?”
An amber light had started flashing hysterically on the top of the bank. Carol pressed down the button immediately below it; the light went out; there was a rattle like a Lilliputian machine gun and a little tongue of paper poked out of a slit. She tore it off, examined it, then walked across the room and coaxed a video-spool out of its cell. This she slotted into the back of a viewer. Then she dialed a number on the side of the cabinet and beckoned to Laurie.
The machine hummed and a series of numbers and symbols flickered rapidly across the bottom right hand comer of the screen. After about thirty seconds they stopped, the screen brightened precipitately, and a man’s face appeared on it. As they watched he turned his head slowly from left to right then back again, finishing full face. “Felicien Nadler,” said a neutral voice, “alias Felicien Daniel. Nickname Lepreux—’the Leper.’ Bom Nice 1959, Height 172 centimetres. Weight 65.63 Kilograms. Eyes, brown. Complexion, dark. Special identification mark, white laser-bum graft scar left angle of jaw. Active fields—narcotics; currency. Criminal record—1975, armed robbery, Marseilles: sentence, probation. 1979, robbery with violence, Marseilles: sentence, 3 years’ penal servitude. 1982, currency smuggling, Toulon: sentence, fined 30,000 N.F. 1985, narcotics smuggling, Naples: sentence, 2 years’ penal servitude. 1987, joined Fabre syndicate. 1988, acquitted “narcotics charge, New York U.S.A. 1990, Narcotics charge, not proven, Istanbul. Associates, see Benoit, Gabriel 74/0109.” The screen darkened. “What charming people you know,” murmured Carol. “Would you like to see him again?”
“Could I have a look at this Benoit type first?”
“Your wish is my command,” she grinned. “He sounds like the original fallen angel to me.”
While she was hunting out the appropriate spool the intercom gave a rude burp and the O. in C.’s voice said: “Message from the boys in blue, Carol. Re. your inquiry. No dice. O.K.?”
’Thanks, Chick.”
“I’m off to the trough now, lass. Shunting all incoming calls through to you till Steve gets back.”
“I hear and obey, O Master!”
The line clicked, and then clicked again.
“He seems a’ pleasant sort of boss,” observed Laurie.
“Oh, Chick’s fine,” she chuckled, “providing you know your Karate. Well, your Jim character doesn’t seem to have ended up in the river. Unless someone’s fitted him up with a pair of concrete boots.”
“Would you put that past an ape like Nadler,” said Laurie. “I wonder what they have done with him?”
“Co-opted him, maybe.”
“But why him?” mused Laurie.
Carol shrugged. “I only know what you’ve told me. Here, do you want to see Benoit?”
Gabriel Benoit proved to be an altogether more substantial specimen then “the Leper,” but he looked correspondingly less of a villain. In fact, as Laurie justly remarked, those plump, bland features could have beamed out reassuringly from any number of company reports in the glossy pages of Euro-finance. And, since Gabriel was recorded as “Company Director,” they probably had. Furthermore, unlike most of his hirelings, he had never seen the inside of a penitentiary. Yet there seemed little doubt that he was what the Surete would have termed un gros legume. His official nationality was Swiss and his place of residence was given as Geneva, but his business connections were scattered all around the world—Mexico, Ecuador, Cyprus, Burma and Japan were just some among those listed. His field was pharmaceutical products and his main base of operations was a factory at Carouge which formed a part of the huge Mondiale complex. His taste in associates appeared somewhat less than eclectic. Besides Felicien Nadler at least five other unsavory characters were noted as having had some sort of connection with Benoit, but he was also credited as being on intimate terms with at least two French Deputies, several South American heads of state, and a number of permanent civil servants in the higher echelons of the Confederation of European Industry. Indeed, the list of his memberships in a dozen international organizations would not have disgraced a senior world citizen.
When the play-through finally ended- Laurie sat staring at the blank screen for several seconds until Carol roused him by asking: “Well, has it helped?”
He seemed to recall himself with a conscious effort. “Have you ever been swimming along then put your foot down to reach for the bottom and found it wasn’t there?”
“Yes,” she admitted. “Not often, but it has happened.”
“Well, I’m doing that right now.”
“Oh, there are bigger fish than Gabriel,” she said.
“But we hardly ever get to see them. Just what is this line you’re following?”
Laurie gave her an abstracted smile. “If you’d asked me that question yesterday I’d probably have said it wasn’t a line at all—just a sort of casual favor laid on by Major Gross for Doctor Manders.”
“Jimmy Manders? The Director of the R-H. Center at Bromley?”
“Yes, that’s him.”
The intercom clicked and a male voice said: “Calling Red Leader! Calling Red Leader! O.K. delectable. Big Brother’s holding the fort.”
“Thanks, Steve. No messages. By the way, what’s left up top?”
“Ravioli. Personally I’d settle for an omelette if I were you.”
“Message received and understood. Over and out.”
The intercom clicked off. Carol extracted the video-spool from the viewer and restored it to its cell. “If those two villains haven’t taken away your appetite you’re welcome to sample the primitive delights of our cuisine.”
“Thank’s very much,” said Laurie.
“Save that till you’ve tasted it,” she grinned. “Come on. This way.”
The panoramic view from the rooftop restaurant across, the river to the Houses of Parliament more than compensated for any deficiencies in the menu. Having Carol to share it with helped too. Laurie watched her forking in a large and recalcitrant lettuce leaf and smiled. “What were you doing in Rome last month?”
“Getting my tail pinched among other things.”
“What other things?”
“Being a fake courier mostly.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “Really and truly.”
“Weren’t you scared?”
She appeared to consider the question. “A bit, maybe. At the time I was mostly just bored. There was a terrible lot of hanging around.”
“Aren’t you a part of the permanent staff here, then?”
“Good Lord, no, I’m on the payroll at Brussels. I get sent around to relieve people who’re on refreshers and what not. I’m only here till June.” -“You’re English though.”
“Channel Islands. My mother was French.”
“What made you join NARCOS?”
“When I could have been a throbbing pulsar of the So-Vi screen?” she queried ironically. “I’ve sometimes wondered that myself. Can it have been ’the Challenge’?”
Laurie laughed. “Well, it certainly couldn’t have been the salary.”
Carol wiped a shiny smudge of salad oil from her chin. “You were going to tell me what you’re doing for Jimmy Manders,” she said. “I’m sure that’s far more interesting than my sordid life history.”
“You’re being unfair to yourself.”
“And who’s the best judge of that?” she retorted. “What are you being so cagey about?”
“I don’t mean to be,” said Laurie. “The fact is, in your sense of the term, what I’m working on isn’t an official inquiry at “all. To tell the truth I don’t know what it is. But I do know that it seems to be getting more and more mysterious with every new bit I turn up.”
Carol glanced up at him from under her long eyelashes. “Look, why don’t you just start at the beginning?” she said. “There must have been a beginning.” He regarded her somberly for a moment and then proceeded to relate everything that had happened since he had first walked into Manders’ study that evening in March.
Not once did Carol interrupt him. When he finally reached Nadler and Benoit he spread his hands and said: “Well, that’s it.”
Carol pushed her empty plate to one side and beckoned for coffee.
“Perhaps I told it badly,” he said apologetically…
“On the contrary,” she assured him. “You told it very well. I just don’t know what to make of it, that’s all. If I hadn’t met Jimmy Manders I’d have said he was behaving like a paranoid. I mean that stuff about the M.I.S. spiriting this girl away. Do you believe it?”
Laurie blinked. “Why, yes,” he said.
“And his not being able to go to the police because they’re in the plot too? Oh, come off it!”
A waiter approached their table and poured out their coffee. When he had retreated Laurie said: “Well, I did believe him. I still do.”
“Maybe that’s why he asked for you particularly,” she suggested slyly.
“Maybe.”
“But you don’t think so.”
Laurie picked up his coffee spoon and shoveled sugar into his cup. “No,” he said. “I think he asked for me because I’d seen Lynn.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“I can’t explain it, Carol. There was something—well, spooky, about her.”
” ‘Spooky’?”
He frowned. “Maybe that’s the wrong word. But it occurred to me—not then but when I was thinking about it afterwards—that maybe someone has come up with something quite new—something that doesn’t just turn you on (but alters your whole personality, changes you into something altogether different—a sort of different psychological species or something.
That kid was—I honestly don’t know how to describe it—in a different world than ours. ‘In ours but not of it,’ was how Manders put it. You can’t see what I’m getting at?”
“I can see that she might have been on some new sort of kick,” said Carol.
“Yes,” he pursued eagerly, “kind is right. New in kind not just in degree.”
“That still doesn’t explain why the M.I.S. of all people should want to grab her the moment they find out where she’s holed up.”
“But if they already knew about it—or about her—then it might.”
Carol pulled a skeptical face. “Ah, you’ve been watching too much So-Vi, Laurie.”
He nodded. “I know just what you’re thinking. It’s been in and out of my mind ever since I spoke to that nurse yesterday. These things don’t happen in real life. But, Carol, just think how many people would say what you’ve got stacked away in your video-spools doesn’t happen in real life either! But we know they do! So maybe this does too!” ‘
Carol stared at him and the first faint tinge of doubt crept into her voice as she said: “Well, tell me then. Who do you think she is?”
“I honestly haven’t a clue. But yesterday, when Angie told me that Jim had fished her out of the river, it crossed my mind that she might conceivably be some sort of human guinea-pig, who’d escaped and tried to do herself in.”
Carol gaped. “Well if that doesn’t deserve the Nobel Prize for fantasy, nothing does! ‘Human guinea-pig!” You’re crazy!”
Laurie flushed.
“No, I didn’t mean that,” she recanted hastily. “But it just doesn’t make sense, Laurie. I mean this is England in 1996 not Germany in 1942! Who’s supposed to be doing it, for God’s sake? Where’s it supposed to be happening?”
Laurie shrugged and remained silent.
“Ah, you shouldn’t have joined if you can’t take a joke.”
“Thanks,” he muttered.
She shook her head in mock despair. “Well, what’s your next move?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “I’d thought of going back to have another session with Angie.”
“Would you like me to come with you?”
He glanced up to see if she was laughing at him again but she seemed perfectly serious, even contrite. “I’d like it very much,” he said. “Do you eat chips?”
“Chips?”
’
He nodded. “Angie lives on them—washed down with copious draughts of some jungle juice called FRUTTO.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to put me off by any chance?”
“Far from it. I just wanted you to know what you might be letting yourself in for.”
“Well, as long as that’s the worst,” she chuckled, “count me in.”
They reached Gravesend just before five. During the afternoon a scurf of high cloud had crept in from the North Sea and, as Laurie drove down toward Culver’s Wharf, a thin, dispiriting drizzle began to fall.
Carol peered ahead through the pimpling windscreen. “Cast care aside and gambol in glorious Gravesend,” she muttered, eyeing the slag-gray waters despondently. “Is-Angie supposed to be meeting you here?”
“We didn’t fix anything. I just wanted to have another look at the place.”
“What queer tastes you must have. Is that it?”
Laurie nodded. “The one this end with the bit of sacking over the—”
“What’s the matter?”
“That’s odd,” he said. “It’s gone.”
“What has?”
“There’s someone in there,” he whispered. “Look, the chimney’s smoking.”
Carol’s eyes widened. “Jim?”
Laurie clicked open the door “of the Koyota. “There’s one sure way of finding out.”
“Wait,” she said. “I’m coming too.”
“You don’t have to, Carol.”
“Are you telling me not to?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, then.” She removed the ignition key, handed it to him, and climbed out on her side.
They walked over the uneven bricks to the halfopen door of Number 6. Laurie slapped the warped panels with the flat of his hand and called: “Anyone in?”
There was a scuffling noise from the inner room. A tin clattered. Someone swore.
“Jim?”
“Fuck off, whoever you are!” came the shouted response.
Laurie glanced round at Carol and raised an interrogative eyebrow.
“Well, go on.” she whispered. “What are you waiting for?”
He shrugged, strode down the narrow hall and turned into the room with the mattress.
A black-bearded man in a rigger’s reefer jacket was squatting before the grate feeding the fire with splinters of broken wood. He looked up and glared at Laurie.
“You deaf or something?” he growled. “I thought I told you to fuck off.”
Laurie grinned. “After we’ve just spent a whole day combing the morgue files for you? Have a heart!”
“And who the hell are you?”
“My name’s Linton. She’s Carol Kennedy.”
The man’s eye flickered in the flamelight as he glanced from one to the other. “You up Ma Forrest’s this morning?”
Laurie nodded.
The man spat into the heart of the fire and wiped his red lips with the back of his hand. “She said someone had been around.”
“We’re with NARCOS.”
The man picked up another billet of wood, scratched out a nest in the flames and lifted a blackened billycan into it. “And what the hell’s that?”
“United Nations. Narcotics Security.”
Jim gave a laugh like a dog’s bark. “Jesus!” he exclaimed. “You could have fooled me! Honest!”
Laurie decided this was a remark to ignore. “We’re trying to find out what happened to Lynn.”
“And who’s Lynn?”
“The girl you were looking after.”
“Oh ar?” said Jim, opening his mouth and eyes very wide. “Who says so?”
“Angie.”
Jim gave an ironic guffaw. “Fuckin’ marvelous that is!” He turned to Carol. “How does he do it? Can you tell me?”
“We aren’t the police,” said Carol. “We want to help her too.”
He rounded on her sharply. “Great!” he said. “Then do me a favor, will you? Just piss off and do it! And good luck to you!”
“So you won’t help us?”
“Will I hell!” . ‘
“Why not?”
“Because one of these days I aim t’draw me old age pension, that’s why.”
“You’re afraid of Benoit?”
“Who?”
‘
“She cats who leaned on you last time,” said Laurie. “What the hell are you talkin’ about?”
“Where have you been for the last six weeks?”
“Mindin’ me own bleedin’ business, mate. Why don’t you try it?”
“On the rigs?”
“Sod the rigs.”
“Where then?”
Jim tilted his chin toward the window through which could just be seen the tangle of distant derricks that was Tilbury. “On the bleedin’ Beltain Abbey. Docked in this morning from Teneriffe. Satisfied?” Laurie stared at him. He knew he was hearing the truth and he knew too that he was hearing only a part of it. But he had no skills which would enable him to extract the rest. He sighed and turned to Carpi. “Dead end,” he said.
She nodded. “Well, at least we’ve tried.”
Jim looked at them hard then squatted down again and pushed another splinter under the billycan. It began to rumble faintly. “How is she?” he grunted. “Lynn? We don’t know.”
“You said you’d seen her.”
“Not for weeks,” said Laurie. He looked down at the man’s tangled hair. “Is it true you fished her out of the river?”
