Mark Mills - Amagansett

‘Rosa Cossedu,’ said Milligan, reading off a name from the notes in front of him.

‘Yes. Routine stuff.’

‘Anyone else?’

Shit, thought Hollis, he knows.

‘Her ex-fiancé. Julian…something.’

‘Penrose. And it’s Justin.’

‘Right.’

Milligan had bought it. If Hollis couldn’t even recall the name, then that conversation must also have been routine.

‘And the purpose of these discussions?’

‘I was just trying to establish Miss Wallace’s state of mind, eliminate the possibility of suicide.’

‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ said Milligan, ‘but hasn’t the coroner’s inquest already returned its verdict?’

‘Yes.’

‘Accidental drowning.’

‘Like I say, sir, it was just routine.’

‘By the book.’

‘Right.’

‘Well, sometimes you got to put that book of yours aside.’ Milligan was quite calm, his self-importance leaving no place for anger. ‘You missed something, Hollis. Labarde was seeing Lillian

Wallace.’

‘Seeing…?’

‘Seeing. Screwing. The maid knew all along.’

‘I don’t understand.’

But he did, he just needed time to assimilate the news. It explained Rosa’s nervousness when he’d pushed her on the matter of her mistress’s bed, which hadn’t been slept in. He had read her right, she’d been holding out on him, but this realization gave him little satisfaction, for he’d utterly failed to grasp the true nature of the Basque’s involvement.

‘What’s there to understand?’ asked Milligan.

What had he thought, that the big fisherman was playing at the amateur sleuth, doing his bit for local law enforcement? Christ, had he grown so blind in the last year?

‘Hollis?’

‘Is it relevant? I mean…to the question of her death?’

‘It’s relevant, Hollis, to the fact that Labarde has been harassing the Wallaces. The girl’s brother, Manfred, he was round here earlier raising a stink.’

‘Harassing?’

‘Hartwell’s bringing him in.’

‘Bringing him in?’

‘What is it with the goddamn echo in here?’ said Milligan. ‘Yes, bringing him in. The Wallaces are worried. So would you be if you’d read these.’

He tossed a couple of files across the desk.

‘They’re Labarde’s military records. The guy’s a fucking fruitcake.’

Hollis read the files in the privacy of his office. He felt bad, soiled. No one had the right to peer into the depths of a man’s soul uninvited.

The Basque clearly felt the same way. The reports by the English psychiatrist were peppered with references to the patient’s stubborn resistance to discussion. The doctor’s building frustration leapt off the page. At least he seemed to care. There were several mentions in the handwritten notes of the brother, Antton, and his death some years before the war; but again, it was a line of discussion Labarde had refused to co-operate with.

Statements by fellow soldiers pointed to a marked deterioration in his state of mind following the First Special Service Force’s assignment to southern France. There was a detailed account of an assault by the 2nd Regiment on a German position on the Île du Levant, wherever that was. Ironically, in the light of what happened next, Labarde’s growing recklessness and disregard for his own life had only won him more accolades.

Labarde claimed to recall nothing of the incident near the Italian border that had ended his war and almost his life, but there were enough other testimonials to piece together the sequence of events. Labarde had been out scouting German positions in the mountains just back from the coast when some kind of fire-fight had erupted and he’d called in an artillery barrage. When the rest of his squad arrived on the scene, they found him badly wounded by shrapnel, barely alive. The Germans were all dead—from gunshot wounds. It was possible that other Germans had retreated before the barrage hit, but there was a chilling statement from a lieutenant that suggested otherwise. He had been watching from across the valley through his field glasses, and he described how he’d seen Labarde climb to the top of a large rock on the spur and just stand there in the open, facing the incoming shells. Everything pointed to Labarde killing the Germans then calling in the barrage—right on top of himself.

Hollis closed the files and lit a cigarette. He had heard of men losing it in combat—shell-shock, battle fatigue—catchphrases known to all. But this seemed different, more like a gradual heaping up of war, pressing down on a man, buckling him slowly. He reached for parallels in his own life, but there were none. What had he ever really seen that came close, what had he ever really done?

It was a sobering realization. He tamped out his cigarette and stared at the wall clock, the second hand ticking interminably by, hammering out the inescapable truth: he had lost the initiative, events had outrun him in the last few days while he’d been dallying around with Mary, at the mercy of his own lust like some overheated schoolboy.

Voices in the squad room brought him round. He entered as Chief Milligan was ushering the Basque into his office. Hollis caught the Basque’s eye, but there was no sign of recognition.

‘What’s going on, Tom?’ asked Bob Hartwell.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said, entering Milligan’s office.

His earlier display of ignorance, stupidity even, had earned him the right to watch the great man at work.

Milligan went in hard, way too hard. There was no teasing, no coaxing, no insinuation designed to unsettle; he just slapped it on the table like a side of meat.

‘I’m not sure I know what you’re saying,’ was the Basque’s response.

‘I’m not saying anything, I’m asking.’

‘You mean, why did I keep quiet about my involvement with Lillian Wallace?’

‘What else do you think I mean?’

‘Probably the same reason she didn’t mention it to anyone.’

‘But she did—to the maid.’

‘They were very close,’ said the Basque.

Hollis was beginning to understand how the English psychiatrist must have felt.

‘I’m waiting for your answer,’ said Milligan.

‘I guess I think what happened between us wasn’t anybody else’s business but ours. I still don’t. That’s my answer. Will it do?’

‘Don’t you get smart with me, son. You’re the subject of a formal complaint.’

‘By who?’

‘Manfred Wallace.’

‘Oh,’ said the Basque indifferently. ‘You mind?’ He pulled his tobacco pouch from the pocket of his pants. Milligan gestured impatiently that it was okay, then he launched into an account of a fishing trip the previous weekend. It was the first Hollis had heard of it.

‘There was some tension, yes,’ said the Basque.

‘He’s accusing you of intimidation.’

‘He screwed up. He could have killed someone with a keg.’

‘A keg?’

‘We were swordfishing,’ said the Basque, as if that explained everything, knowing full well that it didn’t.

Milligan was floundering now, but he had a trump left to play. Holding it back was the only thing he’d done right.

‘That’s all fine, Mr Labarde, except for the small matter of your war record.’

The Basque visibly stiffened. Milligan allowed the silence to linger.

‘If you’ve got a problem with Manfred Wallace I’d say he has cause for concern. Wouldn’t you, if you were me?’

The Basque lit his cigarette with the Zippo. ‘I can’t imagine,’ he said, ‘what it’s like to be you.’

Milligan’s eyes narrowed. ‘You watch yourself.’

‘It was a long time ago,’ said the Basque.

‘Two years?’ Milligan glanced at Hollis. ‘You think that’s a long time?’

The last thing Hollis wanted was to be drawn into the exchange, but both men were waiting on his reply.

‘It’s more like three years,’ he said.

Words for which he would be made to suffer later.

‘Two, three…ten,’ said Milligan, leaning forward in his chair. ‘You leave the Wallaces well alone. I don’t want you anywhere near them, you hear me?’

‘I hear you.’

Milligan looked at Hollis and nodded towards the door: get him out of here.

Hollis followed the Basque down the stairs and out of the building. The sunlight was spilling into Newtown Lane.

‘I had nothing to do with that,’ said Hollis.

‘I figured as much.’

‘I’ll run you back.’

‘I’ll walk.’

He walked at a pace most men ran at, with a long easy stride. Hollis felt foolish hurrying along beside him, dodging the pedestrians.

‘It’s him, isn’t it—Manfred Wallace?’

‘Is it?’

‘He knows you’re on to him. He’s trying to head you off.’

‘Is he?’

‘Talk to me.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos you did before.’

‘I was wrong to.’

‘You need me. What are you going to do, put a bullet in his head?’

The Basque drew to a halt, his cold gray eyes fastening on Hollis. ‘Now why would I want to do that?’ he asked. ‘Killing’s easy.’

From anyone else it would have sounded like an empty boast, but Hollis had read the files and the words chilled him. He was being closed out, and it was a moment before he figured a way to penetrate the Basque’s guard.

‘Just tell me one thing. Were you in her room the day she died?’

He could see the Basque battling with his curiosity.

‘Why?’

‘Because someone was. A man.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The toilet seat in her bathroom…it was raised.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘Then that’s where they were waiting for her.’

Hollis had run through the last moments of Lillian Wallace’s life many times in his head, armed with information only he possessed. Now he was proposing to share those insights—an opportunity he figured the Basque was unlikely to pass up.

And he didn’t.

‘That offer of a ride still stand?’

They drove in silence until they reached the village limits, then Hollis began to speak. He explained that there’d been no visible signs of a struggle on Lillian’s body, which suggested she’d been incapacitated in some way. Chloroform was a possibility. Some small residue of the drug would show up in an autopsy, but only if you were searching for it, which the Medical Examiner hadn’t been. One possible scenario, the most credible one, was that Lillian had been drugged in her room, dressed in her swimsuit, carried to the swimming pool and drowned. He explained that the autopsy was inconclusive regarding the sand in her lungs. The proper test hadn’t been conducted. Only an exhumation and another autopsy would prove the theory, and that was out of the question right now.

The Basque stared out of the window while Hollis spoke, the muscles in his jaw clenching as he listened.

‘They drowned her in the pool and dumped her body in the ocean later that night, didn’t they?’ said Hollis.

‘They?’

Something in the Basque’s voice hinted at a greater knowledge.

‘They…he—you tell me.’

‘There was just the one.’

‘How do you know?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Manfred Wallace?’

‘What do you think?’

‘A professional,’ said Hollis. His mind turned to the bull-necked thug on duty in front of the church the day of the funeral, but he dismissed the idea. It was unlikely they’d thrust the killer into the limelight like that.

They had reached Amagansett by now and were heading east on Main Street.

‘You can drop me here.’

Hollis slowed, but didn’t pull over. To stop would mean ending the conversation.

‘I’ve got things to do,’ said the Basque firmly.

Hollis pulled to a halt beside the Presbyterian church and turned the engine off.

‘Why?’ asked Hollis.

‘Why what?’

‘Why kill her?’ The question hanging over the investigation from the very first—the motive.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Sure you do,’ said Hollis. He offered the Basque a cigarette—a delaying tactic—but he declined. ‘Tell me what you’re thinking. I can help.’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘I’m helping already. If I shared what I knew with Milligan, you’d be a suspect. Maybe that’s what they were hoping.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Is it? You keep quiet about your relationship with Lillian, that’s already pretty suspicious. She’s rich, you’re not, different worlds, she wanted to end the affair, you fought…“Isn’t that how it happened, Mr Labarde? In fact, where were you on the night in question, Mr Labarde?”’ He paused. ‘Any lawyer worth his salt would have a field day with it. It was a neat move of his, going to Milligan. Unless you have evidence. He figures you haven’t, or he wouldn’t have done it. Do you?’

The Basque sat for a moment, his hand on the door lever. ‘Like I said, there’s nothing you can do.’ He unfolded himself from the patrol car.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Hollis, ‘about Lillian.’

The Basque eyed him, judging the sincerity of the words, then he said, ‘She was a good person. She deserved a longer life.’ He shut the car door, but hesitated, stooping and peering through the open window. ‘Lizzie Jencks,’ he said.

Lizzie Jencks. The rag doll in the hedgerow.

‘What about her?’ asked Hollis.

But the Basque was gone.

Twenty-Seven

The man was unremarkable in almost every regard. He was of medium height and build, he was neither handsome nor plain, and his hair was a neutral brown. His clothes, the cheaper end of smart, looked as though they’d been ordered from a Sears catalog. He wore dark gabardine pants and a lightweight hound’s-tooth sports jacket. The geometric design of his hand-painted silk necktie was discreet and not too colorful.

In fact, there was nothing whatsoever memorable about the man. Which was just the way he liked it.

As he climbed down from the train at East Hampton Station, a casual observer might have taken him for a furniture-polish salesman, and assumed that the brown leather case he was carrying held a selection of his wares.

It did indeed contain the tools of his trade, but these consisted of a leather cosh, a three-foot wire garrotte, a Colt 1911, a nonregistered .357 Magnum with a variation 83/8-inch barrel for extra punch and accuracy, and a hunting knife. He carried his other blade—an ebony-handled stiletto—in an ankle scabbard.

He examined the small station building, flashing white in the afternoon sun. He hadn’t noticed on his last visit, but it was perfectly symmetrical, its pitched roof extending at both sides to provide identical covered seating areas open to the elements. It was, it occurred to him, exactly the sort of station building any kid would be proud to have sitting beside the rails of his toy train track.

People were already queuing for taxis in front of the station. The man strolled past, heading west on Railroad Avenue, then south on Race Lane. The car was parked in front of a laundry. It was a black pre-war sedan, a different one from the last time. He slid his case across on to the passenger seat, climbed in, started the engine and pulled away.