Yes, Mr Yamatoku’s hostility was plainly audible. Unfortunately, the idea, comforting though it might have been, that Frank had merely been indulging his personal dislike of me must be put aside. No doubt he had enjoyed giving me his bad news; but he hadn’t invented it. He would certainly have taped our conversation, as I had, but his tape would have to be played back to Mat. With that hypercritical audience in mind, an audience prepared to evaluate every intonation, Frank Yamatoku wouldn’t have dared to depart from the brief he had been given.
In my own mind the conviction was growing that Frank had a well-prepared, all-eventuality script in front of him when he had been talking to me; but I wasn’t quite ready then to start explaining, or trying to explain, Mat Williamson to anyone except myself.
There was something else I had to be sure of first.
Meanwhile, I thought, it might be advisable to get Melanie on my side again.
‘You were right,’ I told her; ‘I ought to have reviewed the standard security procedures before committing them to your care. I apologize. But now, I think, it’s time we started formulating decisions.’
‘Decisions on whether or not you take his friendly advice, Patron?’ Yves had hooked up the small tape-deck to the bugging amplifier and had been replaying my conversation with Frank through the earphones. He flipped a switch. ‘What does this bit mean?’
Frank’s voice came through the monitor speaker. ‘He’s still fond of you, in spite of everything, and he still wants to protect you if you’ll let him.’
Yves switched off. ‘In spite of everything, Patron? What is this everything?’
‘He means that he forgives me the inconvenience I have caused him by allowing myself to be seen years ago by a Dutch criminologist in a Swiss crematorium.’
‘I am being serious, Patron.’
‘I wasn’t joking. That’s simply Mat Williamson’s way of informing me that I am what you call ditched.’
‘And this?’ He had wound the tape on. ‘What does this mean?’
Frank’s voice again. ‘That’s only advice, mind. He still has too much respect for you as his old bossman, Paul, to presume to tell you. He’s only asking you to accept a piece of friendly advice.’
‘That was put in,’ I said, ‘with the idea of making it difficult for me to play the tape to Krom. Frank’s idea, probably. I’d say Mat let it go through to humour him. He himself wouldn’t have bothered. He knows I’ll let Krom hear the tape.’
Melanie almost squealed her protest. ‘And give him one more excuse to call you a liar? While you were upstairs with Yves, they were talking about you as if I had not been there. You have not convinced them of anything that we hoped and planned for them to believe. Do you know what Dr Connell calls you? “Mr Kingpin”, that is what! Paul, you will never succeed now with Krom and these others. You have cut off your own nose with your denials of truth and spit in your own face. You have boasted of your amorality, that everything you say is a lie, and they are virtuously ready to believe that there, at least, you tell the truth. They have made up their minds, and nothing you can now do will change them.’
In an effort to keep my temper, I corrected her before answering. ‘You cut off your own nose to spite your face, not spit in it, Melanie,’ I paused to swallow a bit more anger. ‘The situation’s completely different now. Can’t you see it? Hasn’t the penny dropped?’
Yves gave her no chance to reply. He was having trouble with a different anxiety. ‘You haven’t yet answered the question I asked you, Paul. Do you or do you not take this friendly advice of Mr Williamson? Oh yes, the situation is a little different now, but there is still only one way out of it. Those bastards outside were not put there just to make you call London. We’re being set up for a kill, I feel it.’
‘You may be right.’
‘Well then, Paul, let’s do what I said. Let’s forget about the guests. This was their idea anyway, and they don’t matter now. We should think of ourselves. No consultation. No argument. We choose the right moment, we take the rental car, we head for the safe-house and then stay there until this place has been disinfected by paid bastards of your own.’
I tried to say what had to be said. ‘It doesn’t work, Yves. There’s no right moment for us to choose. For one thing, it’s too easy for them around here, too easy to stage an accident. You know? One of those accidents in which all the occupants of a small car are killed when it runs off the road on the corniche? It’s happening every day for real. No one would even notice.’
He slapped his right elbow with the palm of his left hand, and then stabbed a forefinger at me. ‘Paul, I give you a guarantee! If I am driving, anyone who tries to run us off the road — anyone, even if he is an Italian kidnap driver — will kill himself before he can scratch our paintwork. That little buzz-box is not heavy, but she steers well and on these roads that is good enough. Good enough, with me driving, to get us away from this fly-trap, free and clear to the safe-house. Paul, I guarantee it!’
I glanced at Melanie.
She shrugged sullenly.
My eyes went back to Yves. He thought I was still trying to make up my mind and out came the forefinger again, moving stiffly from side to side this time, to dispel lingering doubt.
‘You think I can’t do it, eh?’
I said: ‘Our cut-out point was the hotel in Turin. Remember?’
‘What of it?’
He hadn’t even begun to understand. It was possible that his mind was still doing immaculate skid turns on the hairpin bends of the corniche while the opposition cartwheeled down the hillside in flames. A good technician, Yves, but unreliably romantic. There was nothing left to do but speak plainly.
‘Yves,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry, but this fly-trap is the safe-house.’
His look of anguish was of the predictable kind and I didn’t waste time consoling him. I knew at this point where the score stood. I also knew, more or less, what I would have to do to change it.
‘A remarkable man,’ Krom said, ‘remarkable by any standards.’
He knew, or thought he knew, all about Mat Williamson and had instructed his witnesses on the subject. He had never heard of Frank though. I spelled Yamatoku for him. They wrote it down, and then we all went into the dining-room.
I played the tape through twice. During the second playback both Krom and the witnesses took notes. Finally, Krom sat back and looked questioningly at Henson.
‘Any comments, my dear?’
She stubbed out a cigarette. ‘Only obvious ones, I’m afraid. A shadowy figure named Vic has been added to the supporting cast headed by Kleister and Torten. I shan’t be at all surprised if we find this Vic popping up again, wearing a devil’s suit and a smell of brimstone next time, in a later discussion paper.’
‘A note of scepticism is sounded.’ He nodded sympathetically and looked at Connell.
‘I had that very same thought, Professor. And one or two others.’ Connell consulted his notes. ‘This Mr Yamatoku, for instance. His speech sounds American — could be from my own home state — and I’m sure we’ll find when we check it out that the Placid Island banker, Williamson, has a Nisei accountant of that name on his staff. But that still leaves us with the question of provenance. In this Frank-and-Paul show we’ve been listening to, is the Frank character the real Yamatoku or is he some bit player hired by the old bossman here to read lines? I am assuming, by the way, that the lines contain hidden meanings that are going to be revealed to us later. To give one example, there is an allusion to the game of polo which at present makes no sense at all.’