Read Online Isvik by Hammond; Innes - Free Book Online

mean?’
    â€˜The Disappeareds. Don’t you remember?’ This over his shoulder as he walked across the room to a bank of filing cabinets. ‘All those silent women holding a weekly vigil in that square in Buenos Aires. There was a lot about it in the press two or three years back. A mute accusation for the loss of their loved ones. About thirty thousand of them. Just disappeared. Surely you remember?’ He pulled open one of the drawers. ‘Connor-Gómez. That was the family name, her name before she married, and her brother was Eduardo. She talked about him briefly when she first came to see me. He was a scientist. Biology I think she said.’ He found the file he wanted and lifted out a sheet of notepaper. ‘Here we are. Just an ordinary thank you letter for arranging that meeting on board the Cutty Sark , and then at the bottom a PS.’ He handed me the letter. ‘I gave a copy of it to the police, of course.’
    It was a typed letter, short and to the point, with a wild flourish of a signature sprawled across her name typed at the bottom, and below that the postscript, hand-written and difficult to read: Other people are after the ship. Don’t let them discourage Ward please . The please was heavily underlined.
    â€˜Have you been in touch with him?’ I asked.
    â€˜Ward? No. What’s the point? Nothing I could do about it and he’ll know she’s dead. The media gave it full coverage, all the gory details.’ He held out his hand for the letter. ‘So ironic, just at the moment when she’d found a backer, and an interesting one, too. He came and saw me here the day after our meeting, wanted to know a little more about her.’ His glasses caught the light as he turned back to the filing cabinet. ‘I couldn’t tell him much, but I learnt a little bit more about him, enough anyway to realise he could contribute quite a lot to the expedition. He’s not just a truck driver, you see. Not any more. He has his own business now and runs a small fleet of those transcontinental monsters they use on the Middle Eastern run down through Turkey. That’s the modern equivalent of the old silk road.’ He paused, searching for the folder he had taken the letter from. Then, when he had found it, he said, ‘I asked him about the cargoes he was running, but he wouldn’t say much about that, or their destination. I don’t imagine it was drugs. He didn’t seem that sort of man. But it was cértainly profitable. Arms most likely, and the destination probably Iran or the Gulf States.’
    He pushed the drawer to and returned to his desk. ‘A pity,’ he said again. ‘She had been trying unsuccessfully for over six months to raise the necessary funds in South America and the States. Finally she came to England and got herself a room in Mellish Street, where she’d be close to the Museum here and at the same time handy for the City where she hoped to fund the expedition. Then, when the institutions turned her down, she began advertising in a few selected magazines. That was how she landed Ward. Rather similar, the two of them – wouldn’t you say? Both of them with a lot of energy, a lot of drive.’
    Wellington had resumed his seat and he leaned across the desk, staring at me as he said abruptly, ‘How do you drown a woman?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘I asked the Inspector that. You hold her head under water, of course. But to do that in the South Docks you’d have to be in the water yourself. How do you get out? And when you have found the ladder, or whatever it is, you’re sopping wet as well as scared. Somebody surely would have seen the man. I mean, you don’t forget a sight like that, do you? At least, that’s what the Inspector is banking on.’
    â€˜She could have been drowned in her lodgings, in the bath, something like that,’ I said. ‘Then driven to