Bella

Chapter Twenty-three

They had to fight their way out. Photographers were snapping frenziedly, journalists pressing forward, but a row of policemen made a gangway, and the next moment, she, Lazlo and Roger were bundled into a police car and driven off.

She clutched on to Roger all the way, shaking uncontrollably, still feeling hopelessly shy of Lazlo who was sitting beside her. Two other policemen in the car inhibited her even further.

Speechless, she gazed out of the window at the countryside she thought she would never see again — at the angelic greenness of the trees, the wild roses hanging in festoons from the banks, the buttercups golden in the fields. Every time a car passed them coming from either direction, she ducked down. She couldn’t get used to the fact that no-one was pointing a gun at her any longer.

‘How’s everyone in the company?’ she said to Roger.

‘Worried stiff about you.’

‘I was quite worried myself.’ Her laugh wasn’t quite steady enough. She half turned to Lazlo. ‘Is Diego all right? He got through to you?’

Lazlo nodded.

‘And his wife and little boy?’ said Bella.

‘They’re being flown over here tomorrow or the next day. I’ve alerted all the right people at Great Ormond Street, they’ll get the best attention.’

‘Oh I am pleased.’ She still couldn’t look him straight in the eye. ‘It wasn’t too much of a problem? You didn’t mind my saying you’d do that for him?’

‘Christ no,’ said Roger. ‘It was the best hand you’ve ever played darling. You obviously knocked him for six. I said to Lazlo it’s the old Parkinson sex appeal working again.’

She started to laugh, but it strangled in her throat and she started to cry. Roger squeezed her hand harder:

‘It’s all right, sweetheart. We all know what you’ve been through. Give her a slug from your hip flask, Lazlo.’

At the police station there were incredible mob scenes: people standing on each other’s shoulders, hundreds of reporters and television cameras: ‘Let me look at her.’ ‘That’s the girlfriend.’ ‘Look at her hair.’ ‘Good old Bella.’ ‘What was it like?’ ‘Did they hurt you?’

They were all trying to touch her, pulling at her clothing.

Four policemen hustled her inside, where she was allowed to have a cup of coffee and a wash before they started interrogating her. The room was absolutely jammed with cops firing questions from all sides. Roger sat beside her, holding her hand tightly, de-fusing the whole thing when it became over-emotional. Lazlo seemed temporarily to have disappeared.

When they got on to the shooting, she started trembling again.

‘You’re sure it was Pablo who shot Eduardo?’ said the Superintendent.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘But you were blindfolded,’ said an Inspector with a big moustache.

‘I could tell from the direction the shots came from,’ said Bella. ‘And besides, he was the only one with a machine gun.’

‘But at first you thought it was Eduardo who had shot Chrissie.’

‘I know, but only because I was expecting it.’

‘And two machine guns were thrown out of the window.’

‘Well they were only using one at the time, and I know it was Pablo because he’d been so retiring up until then. Then suddenly he took charge.’

‘But you didn’t actually see him fire the shot?’ persisted the Superintendent.

The possibility that they might not believe she was speaking the truth became too much for her. Suddenly they seemed indistinguishable from Ricardo and Eduardo slapping her face back and forth to get information out of her.

‘It’s worse out than in,’ she said, and laying down her head on the table, she started to cry. ‘I’m not up to it. I’m simply not up to it.’

Next moment Lazlo walked in. He had shaved and put on a clean shirt, and seemed to be his old forceful self once again.

‘If you don’t get off her back,’ he said, walking over to the Superintendent, ‘I’ll make the most bloody awful scandal that’ll destroy any public image you’ve built up over this case.

‘It’s all right, lovey,’ he added, taking Bella’s other hand. ‘It won’t take much longer,’ and with infinite tact and gentleness, he took her over the morning’s happenings.

‘And that’s enough,’ he said, when she had finished. ‘I’ve just seen my sister. She’s not as ill as all that. She’ll be perfectly able to give you her story later in the day if you’re capable of showing a little consideration.’

The Superintendent shot Lazlo a look both of dislike and respect.

‘All right, Mr Henriques,’ he said.

‘I’d like somewhere where Miss Parkinson and I can have two minutes alone, together,’ Lazlo went on. ‘Then you can take her straight to hospital.’

They were ushered into an ante-room with a table and two chairs, which smelt of furniture polish and chalk and fear. A potted plant was wilting on the window ledge.

Bella collapsed on to one of the chairs. ‘I don’t want to go to hospital,’ she said in a shaking voice. ‘I’m quite all right.’

‘It’s only for a check-up, so you can catch up on some sleep. Not for long, only for a day or two until I get back.’

She looked up in horror.

‘Where are you going?’

He paused, his face inscrutable.

‘Buenos Aires.’

‘Oh no! So they were bluffing. Juan hasn’t been pulled in yet.’

‘Not yet. But I’ve got all the evidence I need to nail him — and the Argentinian police aren’t going to let a chance like this slip through their fingers. So I’ll get every co-operation.’

‘What’s happened to Steve?’ she said, and felt herself going crimson.

‘Inside,’ said Lazlo flatly. ‘He was picked up yesterday, trying to leave the country.’

‘And he talked?’

Lazlo nodded. ‘Straight away, sang to the rooftops.’

Bella winced. Wretched Steve, not even the guts to protect his own crooked friends.

‘He and Juan had been planning to snatch Chrissie for months,’ Lazlo went on.

‘So contacting me through the personal columns, and pretending to be still madly in love with me. .’

‘Was just a ruse,’ said Lazlo. ‘He read about you and Rupert in the papers, and went through all the personal column palaver, just to lull your suspicions. He realized how cliquey we are as a family, how we resist outsiders. You were the ideal way in.’

It came out more brutally than he had intended.

‘Oh God,’ said Bella, feeling suddenly defeated. ‘So it was all my fault.’

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ said Lazlo irritably.

There was a knock and a policeman’s head came round the door. ‘You’re going to miss that plane Mr Henriques, unless you hurry.’

‘Just coming,’ said Lazlo. ‘Give me a few seconds more.’

The head retreated. Bella was staring listlessly at her hands. For a moment it seemed even Lazlo was at a loss for words.

The tension between them was unbearable. She felt an appalling urge to collapse, sobbing in his arms, pleading with him not to go, but she just went on gazing at her bitten nails.

‘Bella,’ he said gently, ‘please look at me.’

‘I can’t,’ she said in a stifled voice. There was another agonizing pause. He sighed and stood up.

‘All right, I suppose it’s no good trying to sort anything out at the moment. You’re all in. Roger’ll look after you. Get as much rest as you can. I’ll ring you from B.A. as soon as I’ve got anything to report.’

‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ she said, still not looking up.

‘I’ll try,’ he said wearily, and was gone. And Bella was overwhelmed with a terrible sense of anticlimax.