A Dead Man In Trieste Page 3

  Koskash nodded.

  ‘All right so far,’ he said; but there was still a note of doubt in his voice.

  Seymour went on through into Lomax’s room. Apart from the pictures it was sparsely furnished. There was just a desk and a few chairs. Files, presumably, were kept outside in Koskash’s room.

  Seymour sat down at the desk and went through the drawers. They were practically empty. In one of them, stuffed away without interest, was a list of diplomatic representatives in the area, but that was all. On top of the desk were an in-tray and an out-tray, both empty. There was also an appointments book. That was empty, too.

  The room felt as if it hadn’t been inhabited for a long time. Perhaps it hadn’t been, if Koskash hadn’t been exaggerating when he had said that Lomax spent all his time down in the piazza. But if that was the case, then where had he done his work? If, that was, he had done any.

  Later in the afternoon Seymour got a key from Koskash and went to Lomax’s apartment. It was in a large, crumbling house. The rooms were high and dark, but that made them cool, a thing to be sought after in Trieste in the summer. For the same reason, perhaps, the furniture was mostly wickerwork. Again there wasn’t much of it: one or two chairs, a small table and a dressing-table. It looked as if Lomax hadn’t spent much time here, either.

  In the bedroom there was a wardrobe with a few suits. Seymour went through the pockets and found only a letter from an Auntie Vi who lived in Warrington and a surprising number of ticket stubs. The bed was a large wooden one with a single sheet and a Continental bolster-like pillow. When Seymour bent over it he caught a faint whiff of a woman’s perfume.

  Afterwards Seymour went back to the Consulate. Koskash had gone now and Seymour sat at his desk, in the darkening room, thinking.

  He didn’t know what he had expected to find but this wasn’t it. He had been sent out to Trieste to find a man or at least to find out what had happened to him. But he hadn’t found a man, either here or in the apartment. Where was Lomax’s life?

  In the piazza, apparently. That was what Koskash had said, what Kornbluth had said, and what the artists had said and Seymour seemed to have no choice now other than to accept it.

  But . . .

  This was a consul, after all. Was that how consuls usually spent their time? One part of Seymour would have liked to think it; but the other part, the strict, conventional part which came originally from his family’s strongly Puritanical background on the Continent and then from two generations of life as a new immigrant, with all its pressures to keep your head down and not stand out, to make yourself invisible by observing the norms of your adopted society and becoming more English than the English, was faintly shocked.

  Seymour was at heart a bit of a conformist; and Lomax didn’t seem to conform at all! How did that play in London, Seymour wondered? Not very well, if his own experience at the Foreign Office was anything to go by. And not very well with officialdom in Trieste, either, judging by what Kornbluth had said.

  But Kornbluth had said something else, too, or, at least, had hinted at it. He had gone out of his way to link Lomax with that strange group of artists and the artists with . . . what? Nationalistic activity of some sort? Political trouble-making? Had Lomax allowed his sympathies to run away with him and identified himself too closely with their preoccupations? And had that had something to do with his disappearance? Or death? Was that what Kornbluth had been hinting?

  And was that, too, what those men at the Foreign Office, in their obscure, supercilious way, had been suggesting?

  Were those the currents that they feared Lomax had allowed himself to be drawn into?

  Later, Seymour walked down to the piazza. The lamps in the cafes were coming on. The tables were filling up. The space in the middle of the piazza, which had been empty when Seymour had been there earlier in the day, was now crowded with people. There were whole families, grandparents, parents and children, the children running on ahead or pushing themselves after on wheeled wooden horses, all out together; there were young girls arm in arm, young men, always apart from the girls, usually in groups, older couples turning aside from time to time to chat to people they recognized at the tables. There were uniforms everywhere. Was this a garrison town? But they didn’t look like soldiers. And then he suddenly realized what they were. Officials. Alfredo had said that there were a lot of officials in Trieste, and hadn’t Seymour read somewhere that in the Empire all officials, from the topmost civil servant to the bottom-most postman or clerk, wore uniforms?

  They were all walking in the same direction towards the seaward end of the huge piazza, where the lamps in the trees around the bandstand had come on too, and where, beyond the trees, rows of little lights indicated the positions of the liners in the bay.

  And suddenly Seymour knew what this was. The word came floating up in his mind: the passeggiatta, that great Mediterranean ritual, the evening stroll to take the air.

  Seymour had learnt the word from old Angelinetti, standing in the doorway of his shop back in the East End, looking out mournfully on the grey-green fog which came up from the docks every evening at that time of year. He had spat out the taste and then told Seymour, the young Seymour, about the passeggiatta. Seymour had caught some of the feeling that the word contained, the sense of release after the work and heat of the day, the communal taking of pleasure. Now his own experience caught up with the word.

  Almost despite himself, despite his English stiffness, he felt a kind of inner easing. Had Lomax, too, he wondered, felt an easing when he came to Trieste? Some sort of reaction, perhaps, against the constraint and formality of life in the Foreign Office? Was that what had led him to stepping over the traces? If over the traces he had stepped.

  The artists were still at the table. He hesitated a moment and then approached them. At once he was hauled into their circle, welcomed with embraces, plied with wine. He felt his reserve - and Seymour had plenty of reserve - melting.

  A puff of wind came up from the sea front. It smelt of flowers and of the sea. In the bandstand the band was playing a waltz and beneath the trees people were dancing. Seymour could see bright dresses and the flash of gilt from the uniforms. He thought that perhaps he should go back to his hotel but found it difficult to move.

  ‘It will be big,’ Marinetti was saying.

  He seemed to be talking about some event that he was organizing.

  ‘And noisy,’ he added with satisfaction.

  ‘Will there be drink?’ asked Lorenzo.

  ‘Oceans!’

  ‘Who’s paying?’ asked Alfredo.

  Marinetti frowned.

  ‘There are some details yet to be settled,’ he said.

  There was now a counter-flow to the movement down to the sea front. People had begun to make their way back. They dropped off into the cafes or into the side streets. Several turned aside to greet the group at Seymour’s table.

  ‘No James tonight?’ one of them said.

  ‘Not yet. I think he’s probably still at the police station,’ Alfredo said.

  ‘No, no. I saw him coming into the piazza,’

  ‘Well, where the hell is he, then?’

  Another, hearing that Seymour was Lomax’s friend, came specially round the table to shake his hand.

  ‘How can it be,’ he said, ‘that someone can just disappear? In a place like Trieste?’

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ said Marinetti belligerently. ‘In the same way as James has disappeared.’

  ‘James has not disappeared - ’

  ‘And Maddalena - ’

  ‘Maddalena probably hasn’t either!’

  ‘In the same way as we’re all going to disappear,’ roared Marinetti. ‘They take us in and they let us out. Then one day they take us in and they don’t let us out. Not ever! Ever!’

  He burst into tears.

  ‘Poor Lomax! The bastards!’

  He collapsed, sobbing, across the table.

  ‘I think perhaps I’ll - ’ began Seymour, start
ing to get up.

  The others sprang up, too.

  ‘Your hotel - ’

  ‘Do you know the way?’

  ‘We’ll show you - ’

  ‘It’s all right, thanks.’

  ‘No, no! We’ll come with you.’

  They all got up, apart from Marinetti, and began to accompany him across the piazza. As they were turning off into one of the side streets, they nearly tripped over someone lying drunk in the middle of the road.

  ‘Why, it’s James!’ Lorenzo said.

  Chapter Three

  Seymour was used to covert operations and that, he told himself, was all this was. But this was very different. In the East End he had been part of a team and there had been a certain sharing of information. Here he was on his own and although Kornbluth had promised to keep him informed he knew he could not rely on that in the same way. Yet Kornbluth was the man conducting the investigation and there were things he could do that Seymour couldn’t. He could openly question witnesses, for example, or people who might have witnessed something: Lomax leaving the piazza, for instance. But any information that Seymour gleaned would have to be gathered indirectly.

  He was already beginning to find it frustrating. In England if he was starting on a case there were obvious things he would have done. Here he could do none of them. He would have to wait for Kornbluth to do them and then hope that he would tell Seymour about it afterwards. How did you begin if you were having to operate covertly but without the larger operation around you?

  But perhaps he was being too impatient. What was it that the two men at the Foreign Office had said? That they had had doubts about Lomax because of the kind of man he was: and they had been afraid that he would involve himself too readily in ‘the situation’ out there in Trieste. Perhaps he ought to start there and, for the moment, leave what happened on the night that Lomax had disappeared to Kornbluth.

  So far he hadn’t got much of a picture of Lomax the man and why he had seemed frankly out of place. There must be more to Lomax than that. He must, for a start, have done some work.

  Oh, yes, said Koskash, slightly offended, Signor Lomax was very conscientious. He would never, he insisted, neglect his work.

  What was this work? Well, of course, most of it was to do with the port. There were always English ships coming in and sometimes they had problems or they needed help with the paperwork. Or perhaps there was some problem with Customs or with the Port Authority which required Lomax to go down and sort things out. He was very good at that, Koskash said.

  Seymour was relieved to hear it. Up till then he had been getting the impression that Lomax’s day consisted largely of sitting around and drinking.

  No, no, said Koskash, or, at least, not entirely. That was where he sat, his base, as it were, where people always knew they could find him. After he had been down to the port, or wherever, he would come back there and that was where people would go if they needed his help. A little odd, perhaps, but this was Trieste and the Mediterranean and a lot of things were conducted outside, al fresco, so why shouldn’t a consul be al fresco too?

  Why not, thought Seymour? Or a policeman. It seemed a good idea. But what exactly would people be coming to see him about? Could Koskash give an example?

  Certainly, said Koskash obligingly. Take seamen, for instance. They were always coming to the Consulate for loans. They would be paid off at the end of the voyage and then spend all their pay in the tavernas or brothels. And then they would come to the Consul for a loan until they signed on again.

  ‘And he would give it them?’ said Seymour incredulously.

  ‘We would recover it when they signed on again. It was just a temporary loan. They would come to him at the cafe and he would make out an order to pay. Then they would bring it to me and I would pay them. Look, I will show you,’

  He went away and came back with a pile of slips of paper.

  ‘But these are all bills from the Caffe degli Specchi!’

  ‘No, no.’ He turned them over. On the back of each one was written ‘Order to Pay’ and then a sum, together with a name, and Lomax’s signature.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t pay for anything on the other side?’ said Seymour suspiciously.

  ‘Certainly not!’ Koskash was offended. ‘I would never do a thing like that. It would be quite improper.’

  ‘Well, yes, but would you call this’ - he held out a handful of bills - ‘exactly proper?’

  ‘It is unusual, I admit. But as an accounting system it is certainly proper. An order to pay for every payment. No payment without an order to pay - you can check the cash ledger if you like. The books are all in order.’

  Seymour checked them. They were.

  ‘It’s hardly usual,’ he said weakly, handing the books back.

  ‘Well, no, and I was very concerned about it at first, when Signor Lomax introduced the system. But I had to admit that, accounting-wise, there was nothing wrong with it. And in fact it seemed to work very well.’

  Seymour made a mental note to check Lomax’s bank account and see if Lomax’s talent for creative accounting extended further.

  As Koskash began to gather up the slips of paper, Seymour turned them over and looked at the other side.

  ‘These sums are quite sizeable. If you are sure you didn’t pay, who did? Lomax?’

  ‘You can’t tell from the bills,’ said Koskash, ‘but I think that, as a matter of fact, he often did.’

  That brought up another issue. What exactly was Lomax’s relationship to the artists? He was interested in art, yes, the pictures on the walls of his room were evidence of that. But he hardly spent any time in his room so possibly he didn’t look at them much. Wasn’t that odd, if he loved art so much?

  Another thought, prompted by the sight of the bills, struck Seymour. Was Lomax, for some reason, their financial provider? Was that why he had bought the pictures? And was that why he had contributed, so generously, apparently, to their drinking bills?

  But if he was their financier, then why? Love of art? Or was there some other reason? As, perhaps, Kornbluth had suggested.

  ‘These artists,’ he said: ‘can you tell me something about them?’

  Koskash shrugged.

  ‘We have a lot of artists in Trieste,’ he said. ‘And people who think they are artists.’

  ‘And which category do these fall into?’

  ‘Marinetti is good. Preposterous, but good.’

  ‘And the others?’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t mean anything to me.’

  ‘But it did to Lomax?’

  Koskash hesitated.

  ‘I don’t know how much it meant to him really. He didn’t seem to have this enthusiasm when he came. But then he suddenly developed it.’

  ‘After he met the artists or before?’

  ‘After he met Maddalena,’ said Koskash drily.

  ‘Maddalena? I’ve come across her name before.’

  ‘She hangs out with the artists. I think she acts as a model for them.’

  ‘And she introduced him to them?’

  ‘Or vice versa, I can’t remember which. But suddenly she was very important, and so was art.’

  Well, it was another bit of the picture he was getting of Lomax: drinking, idling - all this al fresco stuff - and now sex! Seymour was hardly surprised that one day he had simply disappeared. It seemed in keeping.

  But then there was this other side, this possible involvement in ‘currents’, the possibility that he had not wandered off but been killed.

  ‘What about these artists?’ he said. ‘What sort of people are they?’

  Koskash shrugged.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘they’re artists. They don’t always behave like other people.’

  ‘They seemed to me, when I was speaking to them, to have got across the authorities.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Koskash. ‘They have a talent for that.’

  ‘Kornbluth seemed very down on them. With justification, do you think?�
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  ‘That depends on how you see it,’ said Koskash cautiously.

  ‘Kornbluth seemed to see them as troublemakers. Political troublemakers.’

  ‘Political?’

  ‘Nationalist.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Koskash, ‘in Trieste, everyone is a nationalist.’

  It ought to be easy to find that out, thought Seymour. The artists didn’t seem to hold things back. But then there was the question of Lomax’s own sympathies and how far he had allowed them to carry him. It might even be possible to find that out from them too. Or maybe he could talk to that girl.

  He wasn’t altogether happy, though, about the direction in which his enquiries were leading him. In the Special Branch there was a political side and that was, in fact, the side to which he had naturally gravitated. Or, rather, his superiors had gravitated him, chiefly, he suspected, on the grounds that he was ‘languages’ and languages were foreign and political trouble - in their possibly not unprejudiced view - tended to come from foreigners. In the East End, with its high proportion of political refugees, it probably did come from ‘foreigners’; but, then, since there were so many ‘foreigners’ in the East End, that was true of the rest of the crime as well.

  Seymour had never been entirely happy about his drift towards that side of the Branch’s activities. Partly that was because of his family’s unhappiness. With their history of falling foul of the police in their original countries, they hadn’t been happy about him joining the police at all. But to go into the Special Branch, and on to the political side, which was the side that tended to impact on them, seemed to them the heights, or depths, of eccentricity.

  But Seymour had his own reservations, too. Some of these were psychological, the traditional immigrant distrust of getting involved in politics; but others were to do with principle. He retained sufficient of his family’s restiveness under government to feel uneasy about working for government himself. It was an issue he had still not resolved, was still debating with himself.