‘In custody,’ I said. ‘One of Serafino’s boys took a fancy to it.’
He went very still. ‘You’d better explain.’
I moved to the side of the stream away from Jaeger and Legrande and sat on a boulder. Burke lit a cigar-ette and squatted before me, his rifle across his knees.
‘Okay, what happened? You were supposed to scout, not make contact.’
‘I found the girl up here on her own having a swim. No guards, no restraint. When I told her who I was from, she expected me to kill her.’
‘She what?’ A look of astonishment appeared on his face.
‘As for Serafino and his boys,’ I went on. ‘They aren’t sweating over her fair white body in turn as
Hoffer implied. They’re working for her. By staying up here, she says alive, it’s as simple as that.’
I gave him the whole story in detail, even the girl’s suspicions about her mother’s death and I watched him closely all the time. When I was finished, he got to his feet and stood there, staring down into the water, jig-gling a handful of pebbles.
‘At least it explains a few things. Hoffer had a word with me just before we left. He said he was worried because the girl had a history of what amounted to a kind of mental instability. That she’d had treatment a couple of times without success. He said she was sex mad and probably enjoying every moment of her ex-perience. He seemed to think she might kick up a fuss about coming with us. He said she very easily became hysterical and was capable of making the wildest accusations.’ He turned. ‘You’re sure she isn’t…?’
I shook my head. ‘I’ve spoken to Serafino. He told me he was hired to kill the girl and changed his mind because he wanted to do Hoffer down. He doesn’t like him.’
‘The bastard.’ Burke threw the pebbles he was hold-ing into the water viciously. ‘Neither do I.’
The main thing which had worried me was now ex-plained and I was conscious of a definite easing of ten-sion and a sudden rush of affection for Burke, coupled with a kind of guilt because I had even admitted the possibility that he was capable of such an act.
He produced his packet of cigarettes for the second time. It was empty and he threw it into the stream. I gave him one of mine and when he lit it, I saw that his hands were shaking. He stared out across the water.
‘God, what a fool I’ve been. I knew there was some-thing phoney about the whole thing. From the begin-ning I knew that, and yet I still let it all happen.’
‘Why, Sean?’ I asked.
‘Oh, the money was good and it was the only offer I was likely to get.’ He shrugged. ‘You change when you get old, you’ll find that out. You grab at straws, take the wrong chances, look the other way when you shouldn’t, because all of a sudden, the years are rolling by and you’ve had it.’
He choked suddenly on a mouthful of smoke and doubled over, struggling for breath. While it lasted, it was anything but pleasant. I got an arm around him and he leaned hard on me as he coughed up half his lungs.
After a while, he managed to get his breath and smiled wanly. ‘Okay now.’ He slapped his chest. I’m afraid the old lungs aren’t what they used to be.’
And in that, there was the answer to many things.
‘How bad is it?’
He tried to smile and failed. ‘Bad enough.’
And then he told me. Not, as I was beginning to be-lieve, cancer, but something as bad. Some rare disease in which a fungus-like growth spread like a poisonous weed to choke him. There was no cure and drugs could only halt what was an inevitable decline.
To say that I felt guilty at the general way in which I had misjudged him would be an understatement. I was sick to my stomach. There was no excuse. I should have realised from my knowledge of the man that there had to be some logical explanation for his unlikely be-haviour.