“All I know is that his name is Max and that he brings new girls for Harry. He is not always here. I have never talked to him.”
Annie imagined that when Mazuryk knew Carmen had talked, he or Max had brought Lambert in to handle damage control, and that was what had been going on all week. Mazuryk had also sent Artyom and the driver to keep an eye on Jennifer, watch where she went. Perhaps Lambert had talked to Roy and managed to assure Mazuryk that no one would be ringing the police, but negotiations were tense; then something else happened, something that changed it all.
“Do you know a man called Lambert?” Annie asked.
“Lambert? No,” said Carmen.
Annie gestured toward her stomach. “What’s going to happen to you?”
“I’m going to have my baby. It makes them take good care of me. I get food and they leave me alone. I get bored sometimes. The only times I can go out is to see Dr. Lukas, and then Artyom usually takes me. But it is much better than before.”
“Do you know who the father is?”
Carmen gave her a scornful look.
“And what about the baby? Dr. Lukas told me it was going to be adopted.”
“Yes. They want to sell the baby to a rich man. She will go to a good family and have a good life. That is why they treat me well, to keep the baby healthy. Harry always jokes when he sees me, how he must keep me healthy for Mr. Garrett.” A sudden anxiety came into her voice. “But Harry is dead. What is going to happen me now?”
“I don’t know,” said Annie. “I really don’t know.”
Banks remembered something on his way out and opened the door to Roy’s garage. The Porsche still stood there gleaming and immaculate. He opened the driver’s door and sat down, reaching into the side pocket for the AA road atlas. It was still open to the same page as it had been before, and this time Banks spotted Quainton on the top right. Well, he thought, it was hardly conclusive, but a bit of a coincidence nonetheless. Perhaps Quainton had been Roy’s port of call before he got home, rang Banks and went off to the Albion Club with Lambert. What had he found out there that had disturbed him so?
Banks took the AA atlas, locked up the car, garage and house behind him and headed for the M41 and Quainton. As far as he could gather, after a number of diversionary maneuvers, there was no one on his tail. He had his mobile on the seat beside him and just beyond Berkhamsted Annie rang and told him about the raids, the deaths of Hadeon Mazuryk and Artyom, and about her interview with Carmen Petri. It put a few things in perspective and persuaded Banks that he was certainly heading in the right direction.
An hour and a half after leaving London, he was there.
Quainton stood at the bottom of a hill, a straggling sort of place scattered around a village green. Banks parked there, near the George and Dragon. He paused a moment and glanced at the brick windmill at the top of the hill, then went into the pub. He hadn’t got an address from Dieter Ganz, just the village name, but he guessed the place was small enough that they would probably know Lambert and his Spanish wife at the local pub.
It looked like a good place to eat. Blackboards offered steak and Stilton pie, French country chicken and Thai red curry. Maybe he’d come back after talking to Lambert and his wife. The barman knew the Lamberts and told him they lived in a big house on the Denham Road, and he couldn’t miss it. Banks thanked him and set off.
He found the house easily enough on the outskirts of the village. It looked the sort of place that had had a few additions over the years – gables, an extra wing, a garage – so it was hard to tell in what period the original building had been erected. Banks pulled into the gravel drive, parked out front and went to ring the doorbell.
In no time at all a young woman answered, smiled at him and asked what he wanted. Banks didn’t want to alarm her, so he showed her his warrant card but told her that he was Roy Banks’s brother.
The woman made a sympathetic face. “Poor Mr. Banks,” she said. “Please come in. Gareth is still in London at the moment, but you are welcome to a cup of tea. I know you English love your tea. I am Mercedes Lambert.” She held out her hand and Banks shook it lightly.
Her accent matched her sultry Mediterranean looks and Banks could indeed believe that she had been a Spanish actress and pinup girl. She still had a fine figure, shown to advantage in the shorts and sleeveless green top she was wearing. Her olive skin stretched taut over an exquisite bone structure and her long chestnut hair fell in waves over her shoulders.
When they got inside she led Banks to a large living room, big enough to hold a grand piano along with a damask three-piece suite. Every inch the English country lady, she called the maid and asked her to bring tea. Banks should have known she wouldn’t be taking care of a place as big as this by herself. He wondered if she was bored being stuck out in the country and whether she often stayed at the Chelsea flat with her husband. She looked a good few years younger than Lambert, but not as young as Corinne or Jennifer. Banks pegged her at mid-to-late thirties.
“I understand you were an actress in Spain?” he said, sitting in a chair with carved wooden arms.
She blushed. “Not very good. I was in… what do you call them, films where monsters come after me and I scream a lot?”
“Horror films?”
“Yes. Horror films.” She shrugged. “I do not miss it.”
I’ll bet you don’t, thought Banks, glancing around the room. French windows opened on a patio beyond the piano, and Banks could see sunlight shimmering on the blue surface of a swimming pool like a Hockney painting. “Did you know Roy well?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “I met him only once, last week, when he came here. But Gareth told me what happened. It is terrible.”
She pronounced the name “Garrett,” too.
“When did you meet him?” Banks asked.
“I think it was last Friday.” She smiled. “But sometimes the days all seem the same here.”
“What did he want?”
At that moment, the maid came in with the tea and set the tray down on the table between Banks and Mercedes Lambert. After she had added milk and poured, she left as soundlessly as she had entered. Banks didn’t usually take milk, but it didn’t bother him.
Mercedes frowned. “I don’t really know why he came,” she said. “He wanted to talk to me about a girl called Carmen and her baby, but I said I didn’t know her. Carmen sounds very Spanish, I know, but you also find it in other countries.”
“What did he say next?”
“He told me this Carmen was pregnant and he understood that she was selling her baby to me for adoption.” Mercedes frowned. “He said Gareth told him this was so.”
“Are you adopting Carmen’s baby, Mrs. Lambert?”
“No, of course not. That’s what your brother asked me. I didn’t understand why he would think such a thing.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, as I told your brother. Then a very strange thing happened.”
“What?”
“Little Nina cried, and I showed her to him and told him all about her, and Mr. Banks said he was sorry he’d made a mistake, and he left very quickly.”
“I’m sorry,” said Banks. “I don’t understand. Who’s little Nina?”
And then he heard it himself. A baby crying upstairs. Mercedes Lambert smiled. A few moments later, a nanny brought the baby down – it couldn’t have been more than three months old – and Mercedes held the tiny bundle, tears in her eyes.
“She is sick,” she explained to Banks. “This is what I told your brother. There is a problem with her heart. It is, what do you say? Con… con…”
“Congenital?”
“Yes. Congenital. And if she does not get a new one very soon, she will die.” Then her expression brightened. “But Gareth says we are high on the list. He has arranged with a clinic in Switzerland – the best in the world, he says – to be ready at a moment’s notice. So maybe my Nina will be lucky, yes?”