CHAPTER EIGHT: Photos and Phone Calls

The photographer’s name was Croft. He was parked on Pennsylvania Avenue in Grantham’s Volvo, because it had a phone. The pay phone was easy to see, about fifty yards in front of the car. With his powerful camera he could almost read the names in the phone book. A large woman was using the phone at the moment.

At 12:20 the woman put the phone down and walked away. From nowhere a young man in a suit appeared and walked over to the phone. Croft felt sure that this was the man. He picked up his camera and looked through it. The man was pushing numbers on the phone and looked nervous. He kept looking this way and that. Croft took a couple of pictures.

The phone in the car went three times. Croft didn’t pick it up. It was Grantham at the office, signalling that this was their man. Croft used a whole film on the first camera. When the man had finished talking on the phone, he walked straight towards the Volvo along the pavement. Beautiful. Croft took several more pictures with a second camera and stopped well before the man could possibly see inside the car. An easy job.

Grantham got plenty of excellent pictures from Croft. Garcia didn’t look Spanish, despite the name he had chosen. He looked like thousands of other young lawyers up and down the country.

From Garcia he got nothing. It didn’t matter. He let him talk about his wife and child, and how frightened he was. One day, and one day soon, Garcia would give him the information, whatever it was.

From Sarge he got a copy of a White House document naming Khamel as the probable killer of Rosenberg and Jensen. This was good. There was little in the office files about Khamel, and only two pictures, which looked like two different people, but he wrote it up into a story and they decided to use both pictures and the story on the front page the next day.

The phone was going. After twenty-four hours on the run, she had drunk a bottle of wine the night before and fallen asleep on her bed in the Marriott Hotel. But first she had cut off her long red hair and coloured it black; they would be expecting blonde. They would also be expecting her to run away, so despite her fears she stayed in New Orleans. They would be watching all the police stations, so she had stayed away from them.

The phone was still going. She picked it up and heard ‘Darby? This is Gavin.’

Now she was awake. ‘How did you find me?’

‘We are the FBI. We have our ways.’

‘Wait. Let me think. Of course, you can trace me when I use my cards to pay for things. How stupid of me! But if you can find me, they can find me too. They could be outside the door now.’

‘Stay in small hotels, then, and pay with cash. Now, listen. I’m coming to New Orleans; it’s Thomas’s funeral tomorrow.

‘I think we should meet tonight. You have to trust me, Darby.’

‘What did Voyles say?’

Gavin hesitated. ‘We’re taking no action at this time.’

‘That’s lawyer talk, Gavin. What does it mean?’

‘I don’t want to talk on the phone. That’s why we have to meet.’

‘No. Tell me why Voyles is doing nothing about this.’

‘I’m not sure why. Honestly.’

‘What do you think, Gavin? Do you think Thomas was killed because of the brief?

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks. If Thomas was murdered because of the brief, then we know who killed him. And if we know who killed Thomas, then we know who killed Rosenberg and Jensen. Am I right?’

‘Probably.’

‘That’s good enough – “probably” means “yes” when a lawyer says it. But the FBI is still doing nothing about my suspect.’

‘Calm down, Darby. Let’s meet tonight and talk about this. I could save your life.’

She carefully put the receiver of the phone under the pillow. She threw her things into a bag and left the room. She walked up two floors to the seventeenth, then took the lift down to the tenth. Then she walked down the stairs to the ground floor. She hid in the women’s room for half an hour, and then left the hotel.

On Dumaine Street, in the French Quarter, she found an empty cafe with a phone at the back. She called Verheek.

‘Where will you stay tonight?’ she asked him.

‘At the Hilton.’

‘I’ll call late tonight or early in the morning.’

‘Can you get the Washington Post down there? You should read it today.’

‘I can’t wait. I’ll speak to you later.’

She bought a Post and read it at another cafe. If the report was right, it fitted in with her theory. The local paper had a picture of Thomas on the second page, with a long story about the explosion. The police were looking for a white female whom several witnesses had seen there at the time. She looked slowly at the photo of Thomas. He was so handsome. Tears filled her eyes.

Alice Stark, Darby’s best friend, got the key to the apartment from Mrs Chen and let herself in. She had been there plenty of times before, and everything looked all right. Nothing was out of place; the whole apartment was tidy. The kitchen smelled of stale food.

It was dark when she got there, but Darby had told her not to switch on the lights, and certainly not to open the curtains. She used a torch to see her way around.

She sat down at the computer and turned it on. She looked for the files Darby had mentioned, but they weren’t there. By the light of the torch she looked in the boxes of diskettes; they were empty.

Alice returned the key to Mrs Chen and walked half a mile to where she had left her car. She met Darby as arranged in the restaurant, and she told her what she had discovered. Darby did not seem surprised, and refused to answer Alice’s questions.

Verheek was angry. She had said she would call him. Now it was midnight and she still hadn’t called. He could save her life if she called. He had to do something. He decided to visit a few student bars to find out if anyone knew her and had seen her recently. He got back to his room at three in the morning. There were no messages. She hadn’t called. Was she still alive?