No doubt thinking he had nothing to lose, and perhaps hoping for more lenient treatment in court, Michael Barrow confessed to the murder of Terry Preston, and then sang like an Italian tenor. Names and information poured forth from him in a flood. A few days later, after docking in Dubai, the captain, first officer, and several crewmembers of a certain Polish container ship were arrested at the request of Scotland Yard and the Polish police, thus causing considerable inconvenience to the vessel’s owners. At one o’clock in the morning, a Chinese anti-corruption squad descended on an opulent home belonging to an official of the Shanghai Port Authority, flinging him into a van in his night attire, while at the same time arrests were being made in Beijing and Jinan. On the other side of the world, two Panamanian diplomats found themselves in prison, and later that week, in Jakarta’s Jalan Surabaya market, the Indonesian police dragged the owner of stall number twenty-three out into the street and bundled him into a car, much to the consternation of tourists and locals alike.
Those arrests yielded information which led to yet more arrests as the net widened. Graham, arrested at Heathrow attempting to board a flight to Buenos Aires, at first confessed only to burglary, but under Foy’s questioning he revealed the background to a murder in Romania Scotland Yard knew nothing at all about. After several high-level phone calls between Commissioner Drake and his Romania counterpart, therefore, a woman calling herself Anna was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Bucharest, and shortly thereafter two motorcycle policemen turned hit men were apprehended as they arrived for work. Later, a terrified young museum guard was taken into custody as he attended his mother’s funeral.
And finally, the net closed. In Berlin, Gabriella Becker, now near death and no longer able to speak, was arrested and conveyed to a prison hospital. At the same time, Sylvia Becker sat smoking in her sitting room in London with Lombardi at her feet.
“They’ll never get to us, boy,” she said to the dog. “Everyone has orders to stay silent, and they’ll obey my orders. They always do, you see. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Leaning forward, she felt for Lombardi’s glossy, golden head. As she stroked him, his ears pricked up at the sound of distant sirens, but Sylvia paid no attention. The braying wails grew louder, and louder still, until they abruptly ceased outside the building, but Sylvia sat where she was, unperturbed, smoking her black Turkish cigarette.
The End