Читаем Flyaway полностью

Her voice was sharp. 'His sister? I didn't know Peter Bill-son had a daughter.'

'He didn't. His widow remarried during the war to a Norwegian who was killed. Alix Aarvik is Paul's half-sister.'

Hesther Raulier seemed lost in thought. After a while she said, 'Poor Helen; she sure had a tough time.'

'Did you know her?'

'I knew them both.' She went over to the bar and poured a hefty slug of neat rye whisky. She downed the lot in one swallow and shuddered a little. 'Paul told me Helen had died but he said nothing about a sister.'

'He wouldn't.'

She swung around. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'He treated her pretty badly. People don't talk about those to whom they've been unkind. I'll tell you this much – Paul wasn't much help to his mother in her last years.' I picked up my glass again. 'Why should you think I'd hurt Paul?'

She gave me a level stare. 'I'll have to know a lot more about you before I tell you that, Max Stafford.'

'Fair enough,' I said. 'And I'll need to know a lot more about you.'

She smiled faintly. 'Seems we're going to have us a real gabfest. You'd better stay to dinner.'

Thanks. But tell me something. Where is Paul now?'

By the time we went in to dinner our stiff-legged attitude had relaxed. I was curious about this elderly, profane woman who used an antique American slang; any moment I expected her to come out with 'twenty-three, skidoo'. I gave her a carefully edited account and ended up, 'That's it; that's why I'm here.'

She was drinking whisky as though she ran her own distillery at the bottom of the garden but not one white hair had twitched. 'A likely story,' she said sardonically. 'A big important man like you drops everything and comes to Algiers looking for Paul. Are you sweet on Alix Aarvik?'

'I hardly know her. Besides, she's too young for me.'

'No girl is too young for any man – I know. You'll have to do better than that, Max.'

'It was a chain of circumstances,' I said tiredly. 'For one thing I'm divorcing my wife and I wanted to get out of it for a while.'

'Divorcing your wife,' she repeated. 'Because of Alix Aarvik?'

'Because the man in her bed wasn't me,' I snapped.

'I believe you,' she said soothingly. 'Okay, what's your percentage? What do you get out of it?'

'I don't know what you mean.'

A cold blue eye bored into me. 'Look, buster; don't give me any of that Limey blandness. You tell me what I want to know or you get nothing.'

I sighed. 'Maybe I don't like being beaten up,' I said, and told her the rest of it.

She was silent for a moment, then said, That's a hell of a concoction – but I believe it. It's too crazy to be a spur-of-the-moment story.'

'I'm glad to hear you say that,' I said feelingly. 'Now it's my turn. How do you happen to live in Algiers – for starters.'

She looked surprised. 'Hell, I was born here.' It seemed that her father was of French-Arab mixture and her mother was Canadian; how that unlikely match came about she didn't say. Her mother must have been a strong-minded woman because Hesther was sent to school in Canada instead of going to France like most of the children of the wealthy French colonists.

'But I haven't. been back in years,' she said. That would account for her outdated slang.

She had met Peter Billson in Canada. 'He was older than I was, of course,' she said. 'Let's see; it must have been 1933, so I'd be seventeen.'

And Billson was thirty. Hesther was on vacation, visiting the home of a schoolfriend, when Billson came into her life. She was the guest of McKenzie, a wealthy Canadian who was interested in the development of air travel, particularly in the more remote parts of Canada. Billson had begun to make a name for himself, so McKenzie had invited him for a long weekend to pick his brains.

Hesther said, 'It was like meeting God – you know what kids are. These days they go nuts over long-haired singers but in those days the fliers were top of the heap.'

'What sort of a man was he?'

'He was a man,' she said simply. She stared blindly back into the past. 'Of course he had his faults – who hasn't? – but they were the faults of his profession. Peter Billson was a good pilot, a brave man ambitious for fame, an exhibitionist – all the early fliers were like that, all touting for the adulation of the idiotic public.'

'How well did you get to know him?'

She gave me a sideways look. 'About as well as a woman can get to know a man. 1933 was the year I lost my virginity.'

It was hard to imagine this tough, leathery woman as a seventeen-year-old in the toils of love. 'Was that before Bill-son married?'

Hesther shook her head. 'I felt like hell when I had to talk to Helen over the coffee cups. I was sure I had guilt printed right across my forehead.'

'How long did you know him?'