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The door behind closed with the snap of a lock and I turned to confront another Arab, an old man with a seamed, walnut face. I didn’t understand what he said but the beckoning gesture was unmistakable, so I followed him towards the house.
He led me through the house and into an inner courtyard, upon which he vanished like a puff of smoke into some hidden recess. A woman lay upon a chaise-longue. ‘Stafford?’
‘Yes – Max Stafford.’
She was oldish, about sixty plus, I guessed, and was dressed in a style which might have been thought old-fashioned. Her hair was white and she could have been anyone’s old mother but for two things. The first was her face, which was tanned to the colour of brown shoe leather. There was a network of deep wrinkles about her eyes which betokened too much sun, and those eyes were a startling blue. The blue eyes and the white hair set against that face made a spectacular combination. The second thing was that she was smoking the biggest Havana cigar I’ve ever seen.
‘What’s your poison? Scotch? Rye? Gin? You name it.’ Her voice was definitely North American.
I smiled slowly. ‘I never take drinks from strangers.’
She laughed. ‘I’m Hesther Raulier. Sit down, Max Stafford, but before you do, pour yourself a drink. Save me getting up.’
There was an array of bottles on a portable bar so I went and poured myself a scotch and added water from a silver jug. As I sat in the wicker chair she said, ‘What are you doing in Algiers?’
She spoke English but when she said ‘Algiers’ it came out as ‘el Djeza’ir’. Then she was speaking Arabic. I said, ‘Looking for Paul Billson.’
‘Why?’
I sipped the scotch. ‘What business is it of yours?’
She offered me a gamine grin. ‘I’ll tell you if you tell me.’
I looked up at the sky. ‘Is it always as pleasant here in winter?’
She laid down her cigar carefully in a big ashtray. ‘So okay, Stafford; you’re a hard trader. But just tell me one thing. Are you here to hurt Paul?’
‘Why should I want to hurt him?’
‘For Christ’s sake!’ she said irritably. ‘Must you always answer a question with a question?’
‘Yes, I must,’ I said sharply. ‘Until you declare your interest.’
‘So, all right; let’s quit fencing.’ She swung her legs off the chaise-longue and stood up. Her build was stocky and she was a muscular old bird. ‘I was a friend of Paul’s father.’
That sounded promising, so I gave measure for measure. ‘His sister is worried about him.’
Her voice was sharp. ‘His sister? I didn’t know Peter Billson 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?’
‘Come with me,’ she said, and led me into the garden where she pointed to the south at a low range of hills just visible in the twilight. ‘See those? Those are the foothills of the Atlas. Paul Billson is way to hell and gone the other side.’
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 Billson 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?’
‘Until he died. I was supposed to come back here in 1934 but I managed to stretch out another year – because of Peter. He used to see me every time he was in Toronto. Then in 1935 I had to come back because my mother threatened to cut off the funds. The next time I saw Peter was when he landed here during the London to Cape Town Air Race of ‘36. I saw him take off from here and I never saw him again.’ There was a bleakness in her voice when she added, ‘I never married, you know.’
There wasn’t much to say to that. After a few moments I broke the uncomfortable silence. ‘I hope you won’t mind telling me a bit more about that. Did you know his flight plan, for instance?’
‘I don’t mind,’ she said a little wearily. ‘But I don’t know much. I was a girl of twenty, remember – and no technician. He had that beefed-up Northrop which was a freight carrier. Jock Anderson had installed extra gas tanks in the cargo space and the plan was to fly south from Algiers to Kano in Nigeria. The desert crossing was going to be the most difficult leg, so Jock came here with a team to give the plane a thorough check before Peter took off.’
‘Jock Anderson – who was he?’
‘The flight mechanic. Peter and Jock had been together a long time. Peter flew the planes and pushed them hard, and Jock kept the pieces together when they threatened to bust apart. They made a good team. Jock was a good engineer.’
‘What happened to him afterwards?’
‘When Peter disappeared he broke up. I’ve never seen a man get drunk so fast. He went on a three-day splurge, then he sobered-up and left Algiers. I haven’t seen him since.’
I pondered on that but it led nowhere. ‘What do you think of Paul Billson?’
‘I think he’s a nut,’ she said. ‘Hysterical and crazy. Totally unlike his father in every way.’
‘How did you get to know him?’
‘Same way as I got to know you. I have ears all over this city and when I heard of a man looking into Peter Billson I was curious so I sent for him.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Where is he?’
‘Gone looking for his Daddy. By now he’ll be in Tammanrasset.’
‘Where’s that?’
Hesther gave me a crooked smile. ‘You go south into the desert until you’re going out of the desert. That’s Tammanrasset, in the Ahaggar about two thousand kilometres south of here. Plumb in the middle of the Sahara.’
I whistled. ‘Why there?’
‘If you’re looking for something in the Ahaggar, Tam is a good place to start.’
‘What’s the Ahaggar like?’
Hesther looked at me for a moment before she said, ‘Mountainous and dry.’
‘How big?’
‘Christ, I don’t know – I haven’t measured it lately. Wait a minute.’ She went away and returned with a book. ‘The Annexe du Hoggar – that’s the administrative area – is 380,000 square kilometres.’ She looked up. ‘I don’t know what that is in square miles; you’ll have to figure that yourself.’
I did, and it came to nearly 150,000 square miles – three times the area of the United Kingdom. ‘Paul Billson is crazy,’ I said. ‘What’s the population?’
Hesther consulted the book again. ‘About twelve thousand.’
‘There doesn’t seem much to administer. People are thin on the ground out there.’
‘If you go there you’ll find out why,’ she said. ‘Are you thinking of going after him?’
‘The idea has crossed my mind,’ I admitted. ‘Which makes me as crazy as he is, I suppose.’
‘Not really. You should find him easy enough. Getting to Tammanrasset is no problem – there are a couple of flights a week.’
‘If I can fly that does make it easier.’
She nodded. ‘Then all you have to do is to wait in Tammanrasset until he shows up. If he’s in the Ahaggar and wants more gas there’s no place he can get it except Tam.’ She considered for a moment. ‘Of course, if you want to chase after him, that’s different. You’d need a guide. Luke Byrne is usually in Tam at this time of year – he might fancy the job.’
‘Who’s he?’
She laughed. ‘Another crazy man. It would tickle his fancy to go looking for a lunatic.’ She lit an after-dinner cigar. ‘If you’re going to Tam you’ll need a permit. If you try to get one yourself it’ll take two weeks – I can get you one in two days. What will you do when you find Paul Billson?’
I shrugged. ‘Persuade him to go back to England if I can.’
‘You’ll find it hard cutting through that obsession.’
‘His sister might stand a better chance, and she said she’d come out. Would you help her, as you’re helping me?’
‘Sure.’
‘What do you believe?’ I asked. ‘Is Peter Billson’s body out there somewhere?’
‘Sure it is – what’s left of it. I know what you mean; I read about that South African son-of-a-bitch who said he’d seen Peter in Durban. I’ve often wondered how big a bribe the bastard took. I’ll tell you this, Max; Peter Billson wasn’t an angel, not by a long way, but he was honest about money. And Helen was the next thing to an angel and no one’s going to tell me that she perjured herself for half a million bucks. It just wasn’t their style.’
She sighed. ‘Let’s quit talking about it now, shall we? It’s not been my practice to look too deeply into the past, and I’m not ready to start now.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I’d better go.’
‘Hell, no!’ she said. ‘Stick around and have some more brandy and I’ll match you for dirty stories.’
‘All right,’ I said obligingly, and told her the limerick about the Bishop of Chichester who made all the saints in their niches stir.
I didn’t see Hesther again at that time, but she certainly had some pull because I was ready to leave in a day and a half complete with permit and a seat booked on the plane at her expense delivered to my hotel by her Arab chauffeur. In a covering note she wrote:
I hope you don’t mind about the plane ticket; it’s just that I’d like to do my bit towards the memory of P.B. If you do find that idiot, Paul, club him on the head, put him in a sack and ship him back to Algiers.
