Gently Heartbroken

Book 0: George Gently

by Alan Hunter

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

The burning of a light aircraft in a lonely field in Scotland and the daring kidnap of French industrialist Hugo Barentin are, on the face of it, two unconnected incidents. But there is a tenuous link: the mysterious Gabrielle Orbec has suddenly checked out of her home and disappeared. Chief Superintendent Gently, shortly back from France himself, is called on again as events from the 'Hornfleur Affair' are thrown into a new, and painful, relief. Is Gabrielle still involved? And, if she is, will Gently be quick enough to beat her to the showdown and to deflect his colleague, Empton, from precipitating a bloodbath? With no time to spare Gently pits himself against the hooligans on both sides of the law, and against a woman determined to sacrifice herself to save a man who was kind to her and to salvage her conscience.

Release date: June 30, 2016

Publisher: Constable

Print pages: 162

Sample

IN THE EARLY hours of the morning of Tuesday August 22nd there was an explosion near the B851 road between Urchal and Daviot, Inverness-shire. It woke a farmer, Donald Geddes, of Ashtree Farm, about a mile distant; he started up in bed and, after a moment, shook his wife.

‘Ailsie! Did you not hear that?’

‘Ach, Donnie! What’s there to hear?’

‘There was a bang, woman. It sounded like a bomb.’

‘Now who would be dropping bombs on Drummossie Muir . . .’

‘But I heard it, I tell you.’

‘Ach, go to sleep. We’ve a heavy enough day coming on tomorrow.’

Nevertheless Geddes rose and went to the window to draw the curtains. In the dullness of first light he saw a column of black smoke strangely burnished with nettings of crimson.

‘My God – it’s a petrol fire. It must be a tanker that’s blown up.’

‘Donnie man . . . come back to bed.’

‘Woman, it’ll be on our Long Pasture!’

Hastily Geddes pulled on clothes and went down to the Land Rover in the yard. The explosion had also woken his shepherd, James Cameron, who came running across from his cottage.

‘Jump in, man – there’s trouble for certain.’

Together they slammed down the shadowy road. The fire, very fierce, was behind oak trees that fringed the long level of the moorland pasture. A gate stood ajar. Geddes turned in. They bounded and bumbled through the trees. Then they saw a shambles of white ash and twisted metal from which orange and crimson flame was towering.

‘Almighty God . . . a bluidy airplane!’

‘There cannot be a soul alive in that . . .’

Sobbing, keening, they leapt from the Land Rover and ran up and down before the wreck. But heat drove them back; an invisible wall, it kept them pinned at a distance of yards.

‘Oh the poor bastards . . . the poor bastards!’

‘Search around, Jamie – maybe some were thrown out.’

‘They can not be living – no, they can not!’

‘Search – search – there may be just one!’

Wildly they raced about the pasture, part lit by the dawn, part by the flames. Wrenched metal, debris were strewn about the area, but if there were bodies they found none.

‘They’re dead, Donnie, dead – let them be dead!’

‘Oh God, the poor souls – pray God it was quick.’

‘I dare not look longer – oh my heart!’

‘A phone – let’s get to a phone.’

Somehow Geddes drove back to the farmhouse, though his every limb was ashake. Babbling, he told of that blazing horror he had found behind trees on his Long Pasture. Stay with the incident, they told him, stay until our patrols get there. He swallowed whisky, got back in the Land Rover, but couldn’t face the wreck again. He waited in the road.

At 5.30 p.m. on Tuesday 22nd the phone went in Gently’s office. Distastefully he limbered it up: the voice was the Assistant Commissioner’s.

‘Drop what you’re doing. I want you.’

In point of fact he’d been drawing a car. The latest of a long line, it sprawled ineptly across his desk pad. The car was a Deux-Chevaux; since he’d come back from France the cleaner had found batches of them in his waste basket – Deux-Chevaux drawn from every angle, but always with tall trees in the background.

Another thing since he had returned: he’d taken to coming out with phrases in French: phrases with a certain intonation, a cadence that he listened to while he spoke them . . .

Irritably he tore off the Deux-Chevaux, crumpled it and sent it after the others.

‘Sit, Gently.’

Two other men were already seated in the AC’s office, one of them Empton, a Special Branch hawk between Gently and whom rapport was limited. The second man was a stranger, aged around forty, his face gaunt, deeply tanned. He stared hard at Gently. His clothes suggested un-English origin.

‘Empton you know. Meet Superintendent Buchy of the French DST.’

So that was it: Cartier’s mob. No wonder Buchy was giving him the eye. The Frenchman rose and offered his hand.

‘Enchanté, monsieur.’

‘Enchanté.’

‘I have heard of you, it goes without saying, in connection with the affair of the terrorist Starnberg.’

‘Bruno.’

‘Indeed yes. Permit me to congratulate you, monsieur. In that encounter you displayed great gallantry, and I understand that an award is contemplated.’

‘Though,’ Empton said to no one, ‘the grapevine has it that delight was tempered in certain quarters.’

Empton would be a buddy of Cartier’s, naturally, thinking, probably acting like him. Buchy on the other hand seemed more civilized. One didn’t see him shooting men through the head.

‘Yes, well,’ the AC said, giving his glasses a hitch. ‘Your amazing exploits are fresh with everyone. Which is why you are here incidentally, and not because there’s anything in it for you. But minister has spoken to minister and the can has descended to me. So tomorrow you fly north with Empton – and do your best to keep out of his hair.’

‘I fly north . . .?’

‘To Inverness.’

‘Keeping out of my hair,’ Empton said. ‘That’s the way the French want it, old man. You make such influential friends when you go abroad.’

No penny dropped. The AC took pity.

‘Very briefly it goes like this. You impressed a top industrialist, one Hugo Barentin, who is related to a certain French minister. So now there’s a flap on at Inverness and the cry goes up: “Send Gently”.’

Still it didn’t make sense. ‘What flap?’

‘Ah,’ the AC said. He looked at Empton.

‘Oh, tell him, sir,’ Empton said. ‘It’ll hit the fan sooner or later.’

‘Buchy, perhaps you will explain.’

Buchy gave a snap of his head. ‘My dear colleague, it amounts to this. Unidentified agents have kidnapped Barentin.’

‘Kidnapped him . . .?’

‘He was ambushed, monsieur. Last night while driving home to his château from Deauville. His car, a Rolls-Royce, was found parked on the verge with the chauffeur dead behind the wheel. Regrettably we were not informed until several hours after the event. A red-alert produced no results. We still await a message from his captors.’

‘The PFLP?’

‘Brilliant,’ Empton said. ‘It looks as though your heroics were wasted, old man. They failed to shoot him in July, so now they’ve kidnapped him in August.’

‘They’ll kill him.’

‘Ça va. They’re so damned un-British, old man. But they’ll keep him alive for a time – until they’ve squeezed out the last drop of milk.’

Gently stared at nothing. Barentin! The man who had taken into his protection . . . Still he could hear that voice, so dry, so leisurely, recall the sparse figure, feather-light with age. A spiritual man. A man willing to die for a vision of brotherhood between Jew and Arab . . .

‘What is it they want?’

Buchy shrugged. ‘Until we hear from them we do not know. There are certain prisoners they wish to see freed, and Barentin is good for many millions. It may be they will deal directly with Tel Aviv for some political advantage.’

‘But – if we know they’ll kill him anyway?’

‘Some arrangement may be offered that will save his life. But that is not in our hands, monsieur. Our brief is to locate him and to deal with his captors.’

‘Before’, Empton said, ‘or perhaps after. Once he’s dead they’re cold meat.’

Buchy slid a glance at Empton, who smiled pleasantly and flicked his cuff. Empton had hard blue eyes, narrow features, high-bridged nose.

‘But what has this to do with Inverness?’

‘I’m glad you asked that,’ Empton said. ‘By now you can see that this is none of your business. You’re just a cherry the French want on the cake.’

‘Is Barentin in Scotland?’

‘Full marks, old man.’

‘Let me give you the picture,’ the AC said. ‘This morning the Inverness police were called out to a plane that apparently had crashed on Drummossie Muir. The wreck was located in a pasture beside a minor road leading to the A9. It was a complete burn-out. The police called out a team from RAF Kinloss. They found no bodies, identified the plane as a 10-seater Piper Chieftain, could discover no identification, satisfied themselves that the burning was deliberate. Enquiries were made with no result: no Piper Chieftain was overdue. But then we heard from Kinloss that they had found extra fuel-tanks, meaning that the plane could have come from outside. We checked round the compass. Paris had a Piper Chieftain overdue on a flight from Deauville to Marseilles. The times and place match. The plane would have taken off within an hour of Barentin’s leaving the Yacht Club at Deauville. The wrecked plane still hasn’t been identified, but we’re hoping to get at it through engine serial numbers. Inverness police have found evidence of a car having been parked at the scene of the wreck.’

‘We too have made enquiries,’ Buchy said eagerly. ‘That plane was bought recently by an ex-airline pilot. Last month he threw up his job with Air France and commenced in business as a charter-flyer. Where the money came from is not clear, but he is a man we have had our eye on before. He once flew charter for some people in Algeria who we suspected of drug and gun-running. He has a flat in Montparnasse and his name is Henri Hénault.’

‘Hénault!’

Buchy paused. ‘You have heard of him, monsieur?’

‘His name – occurred – in the Starnberg case. But the Honfleur police checked him out.’

‘None the less an interesting coincidence. What precisely was the connection?’

Gently’s knuckles were white. ‘He was formerly married to one of the . . . one of the people involved.’

‘Which one, monsieur?’

It was ridiculous that he couldn’t keep his calm! Empton’s stoat-like eyes were on him, the AC peering, hand to glasses.

‘One of the two women associated with Starnberg.’

‘Ah yes – Mademoiselle Orbec. That was the one kept out of the case – at the insistence, I believe, of Barentin himself.’

‘She was unaware of Starnberg’s identity.’

‘I have no doubt of her innocence, monsieur. Yet the coincidence stands. She was connected with Starnberg, and now we find her former husband involved with his colleagues.’

Damn the fellow!

‘The situation was this. He could have been the gunman we were seeking. In the event he was shown to have been flying between Paris and Rio at the time of the incidents.’

‘Yet . . . some connection was suspected?’

‘It was purely conjectural.’

‘Go on, old man,’ Empton grinned. ‘It gets amusing. When someone was potting at you, what made you think it was this lady’s ex-husband?’

Gently said evenly: ‘A theory was suggested by Inspector Frénaye of Honfleur. It was tested and found untenable. Hénault had no connection with the Starnberg case.’

Empton laughed scornfully. After a moment Buchy hoisted a shoulder.

‘Very well then. Perhaps that is the case. But should we not have a word with Mademoiselle Orbec? It may be she has information about the associates of her ex-husband.’

Curse him!

‘To my knowledge they have been separated for several years.’

‘At the same time, if you have an address . . .?’

‘I know only that she lives in Rouen.’

He could feel sweat chill on his temples, the ache from his clenched hands. And they – they were missing nothing, eyeing him in a moment of silence. Suddenly the suppressed name blazed in his brain, making his eyes smart . . . Gabrielle!

‘I’d like to make a point if I may.’

‘Please do,’ the AC said.

‘If in fact the PFLP have kidnapped Barentin, how likely is it that they would take him to Scotland?’

‘Ah yes,’ the AC said. ‘That thought has been flitting through my mind too. At the moment we seem to be building unduly on our burned-out unidentified flying object. This Hénault has been a smuggler you say, but he has not yet been connected to international terrorism. I would find it easier to swallow a shipment of cannabis than a leading Zionist and his bloodthirsty captors.’

Buchy looked at Empton. Empton smiled distantly, then reached for a briefcase standing beside his chair. A pigskin affair, it had a combination lock which he spun with deft fingers. He took out a file. It was stamped SECRET, XXX. From the file he took a photograph. It showed, rather fuzzily, a bearded man in the act of getting into a car. Empton skimmed the photograph to the AC.

‘McGash.’

‘And who or what is McGash?’

‘James Hector McGash.’ Empton stretched out his legs, leaned back and took sight at the ceiling. ‘Born Glasgow 1947, son of a respectable lawyer, educated Glasgow High School, LSE, Patrice Lumumba University, Moscow, and Lebanon. Associated with Starnberg code name Bruno in his later operations. A fixer, an accomplished tactician, man with a preference for neutralizing witnesses. Consequently we have but that one photograph, taken by chance in Paris.’

The AC quizzed the photograph blankly.

‘The theory is that this man is involved?’

‘Let’s put it this way,’ Empton said. ‘If they wanted to hide Barentin in Scotland, they have a fixer who knows the ropes. And conversely, if Barentin is in Scotland, then McGash is the man we’re dealing with.’

‘Seems a back to front argument,’ the AC said.

‘But no,’ Buchy said. ‘Permit me to explain. Since the Starnberg affair last month there has been a big clean-up operation in France. We have raided many safe houses, made numerous arrests, impounded enough weapons to furnish an armoury. France at the moment is very hot for terrorists, and what happened to Starnberg will not have been forgotten.’

‘It makes Scotland look a soft touch,’ Empton said. ‘Scots wha hae and shoot only at their legs. McGash will have contacts and local knowledge, and at the worst it will only be Come oot wi’ yer hands oop.’

‘Also,’ Buchy said earnestly, ‘is there not disaffection in Scotland?’

The AC stared over his glasses. He flipped the photograph to Gently. Mc. . .