FORTY-ONE

Night was falling by the time Eusden reached Vantaa airport. He left the Saab in one of the car parks, with Lund’s wallet locked inside. He had only taken it to slow the man down. He had no faith in Lund’s promise to say nothing to Tolmar Aksden. He tossed the key into some bushes next to the car park. Using the Saab again would be too risky.

Not that he had any clear idea of what he was going to do from this moment on. How much to tell Regina Celeste was the first problem he had to confront. She would soon realize all was not well with him. He cleaned himself up as best he could in the airport toilets, but his reflection in the mirror told its own story. He looked haggard and distraught. He looked like a man whose resources were failing him.

They undeniably were. The grief he felt for Pernille Madsen, a woman he scarcely knew by all logical criteria, had shocked as well as sapped him. Her death cut off a future he had just begun to dare to imagine. It had stripped him of hope. What remained was an urge to avenge her. He had come closer to killing Lund than the Dane probably imagined and certainly closer than he himself would ever have expected. If Tolmar Aksden had been in the car instead of Lund, Eusden would have pulled the trigger. He had no doubt of that. And he still had the gun.

He used a wad of euros from Lund’s wallet to buy a warm coat from one of the airport shops. It had pockets large enough to conceal the gun and made him look rather less like a man who has recently been roughed up by gangsters. He checked the arrivals board for news of Regina’s flight. It was expected in on schedule. Then he noticed another flight due in a quarter of an hour earlier, from Z"urich. He remembered Brad’s reference to the Orson Welles jibe about cuckoo clocks and wondered if Bruno the fingerprint expert would be on board. If so, there would be no one waiting to meet him. Unless Eusden did the honours.

There were several limo-drivers holding up name cards when the first of the Z"urich passengers made it to the arrivals hall. Eusden loitered among them, with BRUNO blazoned on the lid of a box he had cadged from a fast-food kiosk.

The man who approached him was short and tubby, clad in well-cut tweed and a python of cashmere scarf. Groomed dark-brown hair, clipped moustache and tortoiseshell-framed glasses gave him the appearance of a vain and fussy professor.

‘Who are you?’ he demanded in Italian-accented English.

‘A friend of Brad’s.’

‘Name?’

‘Marty Hewitson.’ Recourse to Marty’s identity as a pseudonym was so instinctive that Eusden was surprised when he heard himself say it.

‘Brad’s never mentioned you. Why isn’t he here?’

‘Unforeseen circumstances.’

‘I should have had a message if there was a change of plan.’

Eusden shrugged. ‘Sorry.’

Bruno pulled out his phone with a put-upon harrumph and stabbed in a number with a cocktail-sausage forefinger. The response did not please him. He tried again, with the same result. ‘There’s something wrong. Brad’s phone is dead.’

‘Look, Bruno, I-’

‘My name is Stammati. I am Bruno to my friends. You I have never met.’

‘OK, Mr Stammati. Sorry, I’m sure. Now, as you know, Brad wants you to confirm a match between two sets of fingerprints. I have one set with me. The other’s arriving with a Mrs Celeste on a flight from Copenhagen due in very shortly. Any objection to casting your eye over them while we wait for word from Brad?’

Stammati looked as if he did object, but was constrained by his obligation to Brad. His moustache twitched querulously, then he said, ‘I will wait in that caf'e’ – he pointed to a coffee-bean logo in the middle distance – ‘for one half-hour.’ And with that he bustled off.

Eusden decided against following Stammati. He suspected attempts to charm the man would prove disastrous and was not equal to making the effort anyway. He did not have to stick it out long in the arrivals hall, although Regina was not among the first clutch of Copenhagen passengers to emerge from Customs. Delayed by collection and trolleying of a gigantic suitcase, she finally appeared with only five minutes of Stammati’s allotted half-hour remaining.

‘I expected a triumphant greeting, Richard,’ she said, looking him up and down. ‘What in the world’s happened to you?’

‘It’s been a stressful day.’

‘So I see.’

‘I have a not-so-tame fingerprint expert parked nearby, Regina. He’s liable to walk out on us if we don’t step on it.’

‘Who needs an expert? You and I are perfectly capable of judging whether two sets of fingerprints match. And match I’m confident they will.’

‘Me too. But we may as well get a neutral opinion while it’s available.’

‘All right, all right. Just let me catch my breath. And steer this for me, would you?’ She swung the handle of the trolley towards him. ‘Then we’ll go see this so-called expert. Where’d you find him?’

‘It’s a long story.’

‘Can I at least take a peek at what you have before we meet him?’

Eusden took the envelope from his pocket and showed it to her. At the sight of the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs, her eyes rolled.

‘Be still, my beating heart,’ she gasped.

The pastelly plasticated decor of the Caf'e Quick appeared to have done nothing to soften Stammati’s temper. He broke off from glaring grumpily at his pseudo-espresso to announce, ‘Brad has not phoned me.’

Eusden synthesized a smile. ‘Mr Stammati, this is Regina Celeste.’

‘Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,’ trilled Regina, extending a hand.

Stammati’s Italian genes belatedly kicked in. He rose and clasped her hand in both of his. ‘Buonasera, signora.’

‘Which part of Italy are you from, Mr Stammati?’ Regina asked as they settled at his table.

‘The Swiss part, signora.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘How, may I ask, do you know Brad?’

‘Who’s Brad?’

‘A mutual acquaintance,’ Eusden cut in. ‘Why don’t we look at what we’ve got?’

‘This is an exciting moment for me, Mr Stammati,’ Regina enthused, opening her handbag and pulling out a square brown board-backed envelope.

‘Please, signora, call me Bruno.’ The southern belle was evidently chiming with him. ‘Two sets of fingerprints require matching, I believe.’

‘Oh, they match, Bruno. You can rely on that.’ She opened the envelope and slid the contents out on to the table: two record cards, yellowing at the edges, one headed RECHTE HAND and the other LINKE HAND. There were squares filled with the prints of each finger and thumb and a larger square below where the palm and fingers had been pressed down together.

Stammati peered at the details typed at the base of the cards. ‘Prints of a Frau Tschaikovsky, taken in Hanover, ninth July 1938. A long time ago. Is this lady still living?’

‘Sadly, no. She passed away more than twenty years ago. But we’re about to restore her to life in a sense, aren’t we, Richard?’

‘Richard?’ Stammati frowned suspiciously at Eusden. ‘I thought your name was Marty.’

‘Marty’s a nickname,’ said Eusden, pressing his knee against Regina’s under the table.

‘And a silly one too,’ Regina laughed, casting him an intrigued sidelong glance. ‘I never use it.’

‘The other set of prints,’ Eusden hurried on, taking the sheet of paper out of the double-headed-eagle envelope and placing it next to the two cards.

Stammati looked at it closely. ‘Fourth of August 1909,’ he murmured. ‘Even longer ago.’

‘When she was a child.’ Regina’s tone suggested she had a vision of the child in her mind’s eye as she spoke.

‘That does not matter,’ said Stammati, his gaze switching from the sheet of paper to the cards and back again. ‘The prints acquire their uniqueness in the womb. They never change.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Yes. It is. Now…’ Stammati glanced reproachfully at the ceiling. ‘The light is not good. Tuttavia…’ He opened the briefcase that appeared to be his only luggage and removed a small leather pouch, from which he slid a magnifying glass. He squinted through it at the fingerprints and a couple of minutes slowly elapsed. Then he sighed and laid the magnifying glass down on the table. ‘Who is A.N., may I ask?’

‘They’re Frau Tschaikovsky’s maiden initials,’ Regina replied.

‘I think not, signora.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean that these are not matching prints. A full ridge count is unnecessary. One set is looped, the other whorled. They are, obviously and undoubtedly, the fingerprints of two different people.’