From my room the next morning I telephoned Mrs Burtenshaw at the office. She was to contact my friend at Lloyd’s and get a list of Leon Pelegrina’s shipping interests if he still had any. I said I wanted a reply by the afternoon.
After that I called Gloriana and told her that I had met Leon Pelegrina but he had been unable to help me about Freeman. This was true enough and I did not bother her with the incidental details. In fact, enjoying myself as I was beginning to, feeling the elan vital coming back and not wanting to lose it, I had decided that I was not handing over any incidental details to anyone. I would stick to bald and, as far as possible, true facts. At the moment I didn’t think that Gloriana was letting me in on the whole truth or, more charitably, didn’t know it all herself. The Treasury angle seemed unnatural. So did the attitude of my friend the Chief Superintendent in ‘C’ Department of New Scotland Yard. Usually if I came up on the inside of any horse they were running I could expect to be bumped into the rails. Here they’d hauled off and let me through. Monsieur Robert Duchêne for my money was a phoney. Just at the moment I wasn’t prepared to lump Paulet in the same category, but if I got a chance I was going to carry out an analysis for purity.
I phoned him too. He was staying in a cheap hotel near the Stazione Centrale. I told him to get round to Piazza Santo Spirito and keep an eye on things. Also, later, he was to try and contact Monsieur Duchêne. He said yes, yes, yes, full of eagerness. Too much eagerness, perhaps.
I gave him twenty minutes, and then I walked around to his hotel. On the way I thought about La Piroletta, and the python bracelet. Freeman was married to Jane Judd, and Jane Judd had been instructed that no matter what she heard she was to wait for the call from him to take off for pastures new. Pelegrina, I felt, could have been the man who had spoken to her and Gloriana on the phone, reassuring them about Freeman. As for Freeman… well, maybe he was the kind that kept one woman on a string while he played around with others, a game that usually ends up with a man getting the string snarled up around his feet and tripping over. In my book I was prepared to lay odds that the python bracelet was no love gift, but had been sold for hard cash.
At Paulet’s hotel the reception desk was empty. The number of his room was 17. I took a look at the key rack. Number 17 wasn’t there. Paulet had taken it out with him. That didn’t worry me. I reached over and took Number 15.
On the second floor I fiddled around at the door of Number 17 with the Number 15 key, cursed aloud because I couldn’t open it and then went to the chambermaid’s room at the end of the corridor and asked her to open my room for me. I’d been given the wrong key at the desk. She obliged and took key Number 15 off me. The world is full of unsuspecting women always ready to help a man out of trouble.
I did a quick and neat turnover of Paulet’s room. Quick, because there wasn’t much to see, and neat because I didn’t want him to know anyone had been in the place rummaging. I learned that he was in a poor way so far as pants and shirts were concerned, and was halfway through a livre de poche called Vipere au Poing by Herve Bazin; that his second pair of shoes wanted resoling, and that men have a way of stuffing things in their dressing-gown pockets and forgetting them. For him I suppose there was some excuse because he had actually found the letter in his pocket. It had been put there by the woman he lived with in Paris – his estranged wife would never have written in the same terms. I sat down and applied my rather fractured French to it. The first sentence explained that she was packing it, unknown to him, in his dressing-gown pocket – so that he would have a nice surprise when he found it. After that it was mildly erotic in a pleasant way. The woman was obviously stuck on him. She signed herself Thérèse and had added a footnote which came out in my translation as:
You rightly have a high regard for Monsieur Carver’s reputation, so please be careful. Men who are both pleasant and clever can be dangerous. I know this because that is the way you are. So watch yourself. To lose you, my darling, would make life empty for me. A thousand embraces. T.
Pleasant, clever, dangerous. I didn’t know whether to be flattered. It was interesting to know, however, that she put Paulet in the same category. Very interesting. I made a mental note of the address on the headed notepaper. You never knew when a detail like that might be useful. If I had been Paulet, knowing me as he was supposed to do, I would – if I’d been up to anything – have destroyed the letter. That he hadn’t was a point in his favour. Or did it mean that he just wasn’t quite clever enough to appreciate how clever I was? I decided to defer a decision but to keep my eyes open.
I went round to the Piazza Santo Spirito. Paulet was sitting on a bench under a tree opposite Number 23. He looked gloomy.
‘Buon giorno, François,’ I said cheerfully.
‘She has gone, Monsieur Carvay.’ He nodded across the street. The white Thunderbird was no longer there.
‘You saw her go?’
‘No. She went at eight o’clock this morning. This I learn from the woman in the opposite flat. I pretend to be from one of the city stores. Come to measure the big room for new curtains. With women it is always better to be something to do with furnishings. That is their world.’
‘What did you get out of her?’
‘Coffee. She is a compulsive talker and has bad breath. The woman in the opposite flat, I mean. She wants my opinion on the purchase of a new carpet, and she is watching us from the window up there now, but that is all right because I said I have to wait here for my assistant who comes from another job.’
‘What did you get about the Pelegrinas?’
‘The flat belongs to La Piroletta. She does some cabaret act, has money, and is not often here. Just a flying visit like this one. The woman does not like her but that is because she is beautiful and this woman is not. Leon Pelegrina was there more often, though not lately. His last visit was only for four or five days. She did not like him either. She would not want to be quoted but she thinks he is a crook and lucky not to be in prison. There was, some years ago, a scandal about him over some holiday villa development on the coast near Viareggio, but nothing was ever done about it for lack of proof. Also, she did not care for his taking women into the flat.’
‘Where else would he take them?’
Paulet raised a sad eye to me. ‘These women were puttane.’
‘Well, he’d still need a flat – unless he didn’t mind frightening the horses in the street. Come on, let’s go.’
‘You do not want to go in and have another look around?’
‘It wouldn’t help. Besides, I want to get down to Rome and take a plane to Tripoli.’
‘Tripoli? But that will be expensive.’
‘My client pays – for me. What about yours?’
‘I must contact him.’ He made a face. ‘He hates spending money.’
‘If you want results you’ve got to. Where is he?’
‘I think in Naples.’
‘What do you mean, you think? You know, don’t you?’
‘I am reasonably sure, yes.’
‘Then ask him to meet us in Rome. I’d like to talk to him.’
‘But why Tripoli?’
‘Because I am reasonably sure that that is where Freeman is.’
‘How you know this?’
I’d noticed that in moments of depression or excitement Paulet’s syntax was inclined to slip.
‘Later, perhaps, I’ll tell you.’
Actually, in my pocket was a cable from Wilkins which had arrived for me early that morning at the hotel. It read:
M.F. DEFINITELY HERE SIX DAYS AGO STOP ADVISE ARRIVAL STOP
INQUIRY BLANKET LOCAL BOGEYS STOP REGARDS H.W.
It was the first time in her life that Wilkins had sent me her regards. Best wishes, of course, I got every year on a Christmas card, but that didn’t count. And when it came to it she could use underworld slang with the best of them. The local police in Tripoli clearly weren’t encouraging inquiries about Freeman. Wilkins didn’t care for the police any more than I did, but she could be much more vocal about it, and I knew she would be – with me – the moment I arrived.
We took a train down to Rome that afternoon and we booked into the Hotel Eden together. Paulet was a bit fussed about staying in a four-star job, but I told him to relax and try and get in touch with Monsieur Duchêne. He went off to do this, while I had a large Negroni in the bar and sat considering the information which Mrs Burtenshaw had phoned me at the Excelsior just after lunch. My Lloyd’s friend had said that the only maritime interest Pelegrina had at that moment seemed to be a steam yacht of some vintage called La Sunata – though the name had been changed a few times over the years – which was Greek registered at Piraeus, and which he let out on charter.
Monsieur Robert Duchêne arrived at the hotel at eleven the next morning. Paulet had said that he would not want to carry on a discussion in the bar or any of the hotel lounges so we held a conference in my room.
He was a tall lean man, wearing big-rimmed glasses, and he was in a bad temper. I put him at about fifty; his skin was like stained vellum and he smoked long Swiss cigars, each one having its own mouthpiece attached to it. He seldom took the cigar out of his mouth, talking expertly around each side of it, which gave a curious sideways waggle to his lips. It put them out of phase with his words as though his speech was being badly dubbed. However, he made himself clear in about ten minutes flat.
Talking exclusively to me, while Paulet sat humbly in the background, he said, ‘I will be perfectly frank with you, Monsieur Carver. I understand from Paulet that following your interview with Leon Pelegrina an attempt was made on your life. Also my flat in Paris was ransacked. All this is in some way connected with Freeman, yes?’
‘Yes.’ His English was good, but I was trying to place the accent behind it. It didn’t sound like French to me.
‘Then let me make this clear – but at the same time stress its confidential nature. I am in the art and antique world. And by that I do not mean I put in any appearances at Christie’s or Sotheby’s. I buy and sell in a twilight world.’
‘Nice way to put it.’
He frowned. ‘There is always a nice way to put even the most unpleasant things. Freeman stole certain coins from me and I thought their recovery would be a simple matter. With simple matters like theft and recovery without aid of the police I am at home. Let the matter become complicated and I want no more to do with it. Frankly, the coins were illegally acquired by me in the first place. Equally frankly, I do not wish to pursue their recovery if it is to lead into deep and unfamiliar waters. In other words I do not like my flat being searched and I do not like being involved in an affair which has room for attempts on people’s lives. I am dropping the whole matter. Monsieur Paulet will be paid off, and whether you find Mr Freeman is now a matter of indifference to me. Am I understood?’
I looked at Paulet. This had obviously come as a surprise to him. He looked like a small boy who has had a Christmas present taken from him because he had got it by a mistake in the first place. He didn’t at that moment look like the man Thérèse loved and described as pleasant, clever, and capable of being dangerous. He was just crestfallen.
I said, ‘Since you’ve never been a client of mine, Monsieur Duchêne, it is a matter of indifference to me what you decide about Freeman. I still have my own client to satisfy. Would I be right in thinking you’re not in the mood to answer any questions about Freeman?’
‘On the contrary, Mr Carver, I will tell you what little I do know. I met him almost a year ago in the Georges Cinq bar in Paris, and he subsequently sold me a Rajput painting of the late eighteenth century. It was of the Kangra school and was called “The Hour of Cowdust”. It showed Krsna returning with the herds to Brndaban at sundown.’
He paused for me to register how impressed I was and I did register – but something quite different. I was prepared to lay fifty to one in fivers that this long streak of snap and bite had me figured for an ignoramus when it came to art and antiques. And maybe I was. But what he hadn’t figured – though Thérèse could have given him a pointer or two – was that what I didn’t know about I checked against the best references. And I was damn well going to check this Rajput load of cowdust which he was throwing in my eyes. I could do it at the British Council library in Rome. He’d slipped up over ancient coins once, he could be doing the same over old Indian paintings.
He went on, ‘I met him once in Rome after that, and then not long ago he came to my flat in Paris and tried to sell me an antique Indian gold python bracelet. We could not agree on a price and he left. After he had gone I discovered that he had taken a collection of ancient coins I was holding for sale to a client.’
‘And you sent Paulet off to try and find him at his cottage in Kent, a cottage which, apparently, very few people knew about. How did you know about it?’
Duchêne rolled the cigar to one corner of his mouth and the movement produced a fair imitation of a smile. ‘He got drunk the evening I bought the Rajput painting and he told me about it. When drunk, Monsieur Carver, he was most tedious with his confidences. I say tedious because they were mostly about women. You will agree that women are only interesting at first hand. Is there more you would like to ask?’
‘No.’
‘Very well.’ He looked at Paulet. ‘I am staying at the Bernini-Bristol. Come there at three this afternoon with your account and I will give you a cheque on my Paris bank.’
He picked up his hat, dished out two brief nods, and left.
I looked at Paulet. ‘You expected this?’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s happened. I’m sorry. I’ve enjoyed your company.’
‘You would not care to hire me as an assistant?’
‘No thanks. My client wouldn’t wear it and I can’t afford it. Anyway, it’s now the hour of cowdust in the eyes. Let’s go down to the bar and have a couple of double Rajputs.’
He gave me a quizzical look, but said nothing.
I stopped at the desk and asked them to try and get me a late afternoon booking on a plane to Tripoli. Paulet and I then had our drinks and he was a very subdued man.
‘Always,’ he said, ‘when I begin to enjoy myself, or meet someone interesting, bam! – the guillotine comes down.’
‘Stick a ten per cent surcharge on your bill for loss of expectations.’
I skipped lunch and went along to the British Council library. It was no surprise to me to find in the article on Indian and Sinhalese Art and Archaeology in Volume 12 – HYDROZ to JEREM – of the Encyclopaedia Britannica a full-page reproduction of ‘The Hour of Cowdust’. Well, well, even in the most careful of us there’s always a point of laxness. But what, I asked myself, was it all in aid of? It wasn’t the first time in my life the question had arisen and I knew that if I didn’t come up with an answer then time eventually would reveal it – probably with unpleasant consequences.
The hotel desk had got me a reservation on the half-past four plane to Tripoli. I said goodbye to Paulet and made the Leonardo da Vinci Airport by taxi with ten minutes to spare.
There were not many people on the plane so there were plenty of spare seats. I sat down on the port side close to one of the wings and we took off out over the Mediterranean heading for Sicily, Malta, and then Tripoli. I settled back with a Pan book and promised myself that in an hour’s time I would have a large whisky and soda. Just before the hour was up I began to get that feeling that someone was watching and taking an interest in me. It’s a sense that becomes highly developed in my trade, like the sense of hearing in a good mechanic who notices at once from the note of an engine when it goes slightly off tune. I glanced across the gangway. A fat number in a mohair suit and a red fez, brown as a coffee bean, was sleeping happily. I turned to take in the seat behind him.
La Piroletta had the outside berth. The inner one held her handbag and a bunch of newspapers and magazines. She was dressed exactly as she had been in the Florence flat – except that she was not wearing the python bracelet. And she was looking at me thoughtfully. Whatever expression she had on her face suited me. It was the kind of face that could make more than the most of any expression and still be beautiful. I gave her a smile and a nod. She just remained thoughtful then she gave the faintest of nods and there was a tiny movement of her mouth which wouldn’t have needed much more to make it a smile. Anyway, it was enough for me.
I got up and went back to her.
I said, ‘I was just thinking of having a drink. Would you care to join me?’ At the same time I handed her one of my cards.
She looked at it and then with a nice, flowing, graceful movement got up and moved to the inner berth. If you think that’s easy to do, gracefully and flowingly in an aircraft seat, you can never have tried it.
I sat down and asked her what she would like to drink.
‘Gin and tonic.’
I caught the stewardess’s eye and gave her order and while I did I was sorting out two problems. One, the line I was going to take; and, two, this business of coincidence in life. I don’t have any great faith in coincidences – though I’ll admit they happen more often than most people think. But with me, so far as business was concerned, coincidences generally turned out not to be. I decided not to lay any bets either way on this one. As for the line I was to take, I thought it might make a nice change to be reasonably honest and straightforward. After all, one mustn’t get stuck in one routine all the time.
I said, ‘You’re going to Tripoli or farther?’
‘Tripoli.’
‘So am I.’
‘Where do you stay?’
‘I don’t know until I get there. A friend is booking a hotel for me. And you?’
‘The Uaddan.’
‘I’ve begun to wonder what that name means.’ I hadn’t, because I didn’t care, but I wanted to keep the preliminaries on a drink-chat level so that she would not feel rushed.
‘It is’, she said, ‘the Arab name for some kind of mountain goat or deer. Something like an ibex, I think.’
The drinks came. I lit a cigarette for her. She sipped her gin and tonic and there was an unembarrassed pause in the talk while we both decided the next move in the game. Daintily she picked the slice of lemon out of her drink and sucked it. That, too, she did gracefully, and with a nice little wrinkle of her nose at the citric sharpness.
I said, ‘I gather you haven’t a very high opinion of your father?’
She considered this, then nodded.
‘Why not?’
Without hesitation, and there seemed to be no question of her sincerity, she said, ‘Because he’s the world’s champion scrounger and he has king-sized dreams in a pea-sized brain. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t a protective feeling towards him – so long as he doesn’t ask me for money. At least, not too much.’
‘You’ve got plenty?’
She looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘I suppose we shall come presently to the point of all this, but for the moment, since I don’t actively dislike you and I like company when I’m flying to take my mind off the twenty thousand-odd feet below me, I don’t mind talking. Yes, I’m very well off. And I did it all myself. How’s your bank balance?’
‘Reasonable at the moment – which is a rare state of affairs.’
‘And you are going to Tripoli on business?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not, I hope, connected with my father?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because if you are you will either be cheated or lose your money.’
‘I’m not in any deal with your father. I’m looking for a man.’
She smiled. ‘I’ve been doing that for some time, but the quality isn’t what it used to be. I suppose it’s because they’re mass produced or something.’
‘If I can find time off from work I might take you up on that. I’m one of the last custom-built models, real leather upholstery and at a hundred miles an hour all you can hear is the ticking of the clock. How much did you pay Martin Freeman for that gold python bracelet you were wearing yesterday?’
She took it without a flicker, shook the ice around in her glass, glanced out at the strata cirrus over which the setting sun was slapping gold and scarlet in action-painting frenzy, and then said, ‘In lire the equivalent of two thousand pounds.’
‘It’s been valued at five thousand.’
‘I got a bargain then.’
‘It was also stolen.’
No flicker again. ‘That’s his problem. Not mine.’ There was a touch of the father’s daughter there.
‘My client wants it back.’
‘Your client can have it for two thousand five hundred pounds.’
‘I’ll consult her.’
‘Her?’
‘Yes. His sister. He makes a habit of financing himself out of her collection.’
‘She’s wealthy?’
‘Very.’
‘The price has gone up to three thousand. Now ask the next question.’
‘Which is?’
‘Where did I get to know Martin Freeman and why did I buy it?’
‘Well – where did you and why did you?’
‘He once helped me with some publicity work in Rome. He’s a likeable layabout and the same kind of dreamer as my father. Maybe his brain is a bit bigger. I wanted to help him – in return for what he’d done for me years ago.’
‘You go for him?’
‘No. Even among the mass-produced goods he’s strictly a reject – with me, anyway.’
‘Somali mother, Italian father, you speak English almost too well.’
‘I’m a fast studier, an international cabaret star, and English, French, and German are obligatory. I weigh a hundred and thirty, have a Greek passport, and a star-shaped mole on the inside of my left thigh. If you are custom-built I might show it to you sometime. As for the Greek passport, I thought I would like to be a member of one of the most illustrious civilisations of the past. By the way, I get most of my clothes at Courrèges, don’t care for oysters much, but am inclined to make a pig of myself over pasta. I’d like another drink and suggest that from now on we just keep to this kind of small talk. Unless, of course, you want to tell me the story of your life?’
It was a sudden dismissal, and I wondered what had prompted it. However, I didn’t quarrel with it. Small talk suited me. The big fat facts of life often show for a brief, shy moment in small talk.
‘Suits me,’ I said. ‘As for the story of my life, I really think it began when you walked into the Piazza Santo Spirito flat. Stout Cortez and a peak in Darien and all that.’
‘You will have to do better than that. Why not order the drinks?’
I did and we talked. I had a feeling that I was doing better, but it was hard to tell. I didn’t doubt that she felt that she had my measure. And I didn’t doubt that I hadn’t anything like got hers – except that she knew how to handle herself and wasn’t going to let anyone else do it unless he passed muster. And nothing came out of the small talk, except the pleasure of making the time to Tripoli pass quickly and enjoyably.
As we parted in the beginning of the stampede into the customs sheds, under a dusky blue velvet sky lit with little yellow star sequins and a crescent moon to symbolise the Arab world, I said, ‘Some evening soon, perhaps, we might make pigs of ourselves over pasta and a bottle of Orvieto?’
‘Could be, but it would have to be Chianti Ruffino.’
With a smile she flowed ahead of me and I couldn’t help noticing that the customs boys fell over themselves to deal with her and get her through as fast as possible.
I came out into a warm night that smelt of dry dust, burnt-up palm fronds, goats, and exhaust fumes from the waiting taxis.
One of the taxis was under the charge of the faithful Wilkins. She was wearing a woolly cardigan, a tweed skirt, sensible shoes and a wide-brimmed straw hat so that she wouldn’t get burnt by the tropical moon. Just seeing her there gave me a warm feeling of belonging and nostalgia. She certainly wasn’t any Gloriana or La Piroletta, but she was my girl Friday, one in a million, and that’s what a man has got to have if he’s going to make a success of business and have his filing system kept in order.
It was half an hour’s drive into Tripoli from the King Idris Airport. The Arab taxi-driver took it at top speed and with the radio wailing out snake-charm music at top volume. Now and again Wilkins and myself were thrown about as he deliberately just missed the odd pedestrian, goat, or camel. Conversation was difficult but we managed.
I said, ‘Why didn’t Olaf come with you?’
‘He has a stomach upset.’
I didn’t make any comment. The taxi ride was bad enough; I didn’t want Wilkins turning a broadside on me.
‘Where am I staying?’
‘At a hotel on the sea front called Del Mehari. I got you a room with bath.’
‘Why not a room at your hotel, or the Uaddan?’ La Piroletta was still very, very fresh in my mind.
‘Because all of them are fully booked. This is a booming oil town and hotel rooms are at a premium. And, anyway, I thought you might like to stay where Martin Freeman and William Dawson had stayed.’
‘How did you find that out?’
‘Olaf was responsible. I told him about the case. We checked all the hotels to see if either man had stayed recently – with no result. Then Olaf said that if Bill Dawson had said in his letter to Freeman that he could have his revenge at the Wheelus course, then – if the hotels were covering up about them for any reason, which now I am sure they are – the police or whoever it was who had instructed them might not have thought to put a cover on the Seabreeze golf course, particularly as it is American owned. So Olaf said—’
‘Let’s go out and see if they did play there and enter their names in the book?’
‘Yes.’
‘And they had?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clever Olaf. He’s in the wrong business.’
‘They played there about twelve days ago and they both gave the Del Mehari as their hotel. But at the Del Mehari when Olaf and I made inquiries—’
‘They just looked blank and said no?’
‘Very blank. And since they don’t use a hotel registration book but do each guest on a card which goes into a filing system we couldn’t ask to see the register. How long do you think it will be before Olaf and I can go to Cairo?’
‘Don’t tell me you’re losing interest? You’ve done so well.’
‘I’m entitled to my holiday. Also—’ an even primmer note came into her voice – ‘I don’t like being followed by the police everywhere I go. The car behind us now is one which followed me out to the airport.’
I screwed my head round. Through the back window I could see headlights following us.
‘Sure?’
‘Positively.’ Then disapprovingly, ‘I thought this might be a straightforward case, but I’m sure now that it isn’t. You know how much I dislike complications.’
‘You, and Monsieur Robert Duchêne. What’s Olaf’s reaction? Doesn’t he find it exciting?’
‘I told you he had a stomach upset. I’m sure it’s a nervous one. I’m worried for him.
She had reason to be. In a man Olaf’s size a stomach upset was no minor matter.
I said, ‘Did you get anything on Bill Dawson?’
‘Nothing, except—’
I lost what she said as the radio began to whack out an Arab nuptial dance or something and we swerved to miss a donkey loaded four storeys high with sacks.
‘Except what?’
‘Except that I keep thinking that I ought to know something about him. Something at the back of my mind. It is most irritating.’
‘I get the feeling too. Maybe it will come. Did you check the hire-car services? This golf course is some way out of the town, isn’t it? They could have hired a car to go.’
Wilkins nodded. ‘Olaf suggested that. We went round them all. And they were all very cooperative, looking through their books and apologising when they had no record recently of a Freeman or a Dawson. All except one – it’s a place near the centre of the town called the Magarba Garage. They just said at once without reference to their books that they had not hired out any cars to any such persons.’
‘The police or whoever had been at them?’
‘Yes. Did you bring any firearms in?’
That was typical Wilkins. She could call a spade a spade with the best of them, but a gun was always a firearm.
I said, ‘Yes. It’s strapped to the inside of my left leg now and damned uncomfortable.’
‘Then if you don’t want to become persona non grata I should get rid of it. Firearms can only be imported if declared on arrival and a licence obtained.’
‘I’ll be careful. And you’ve done a good job – or, at least, Olaf has. He’s a bright boy. Why don’t we offer him a job with us and then you wouldn’t have to make the Cairo trip every year? Carver, Wilkins, and Bornjstrom. Sounds good.’
‘The car behind is coming up to overtake us.’
I squinted back. It was. And it did. And then about a hundred yards ahead it pulled up and a man jumped out into our headlights.
Wilkins said, ‘The firearm.’
I jerked up my trouser leg and did some quick unstrapping. Wilkins took it from me and calmly put it into her handbag like a schoolmistress coolly confiscating a catapult.
Our driver hesitated for a moment or two, considered whether he would notch up another pedestrian on his steering column, and then changed his mind as the white holster webbing, navy blue uniform, and peaked cap said ‘Police’ very plainly.
He pulled into the side of the road behind the police car which I saw now was a Land-Rover. The police corporal or sergeant or whatever he was came round to the side of the car and spoke through the drivers open window. Our taximan switched off ‘Return to the Oasis’ or whatever was playing and shrugged his shoulders.
The policeman came back to the rear window and signalled for me to wind it down. I did. A warm gust of night air came in and I gave him a big smile.
‘Trouble, Officer?’
He was a Libyan, small, stocky, hard material all the way through and very correct. Even his English was correct.
‘You are Mr Carver?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you stay where?’
‘At the Del Mehari Hotel, when I get there.’
‘This lady?’
‘She is my secretary.’
‘It is requested that you come with us, Mr Carver. Be good enough to ask your secretary to take your luggage on to your hotel.’
‘I hope I’m going to be allowed to join up with it later?’
‘Certainly.’
I wondered why they hadn’t picked me up at the airport. The only answer I could come up with was that they wanted the minimum of public display. Interesting, since I was only looking for a man who’d stolen money and a bracelet from his own sister.
‘Shall I be back there tonight?’
‘Certainly, Mr Carver.’
I turned to Wilkins. ‘Drop my stuff and come round and have breakfast with me in the morning. Bring Olaf if he’s in a breakfast mood.’
I got out and the policeman waved the taxi on. It roared away, leaving a dust cloud behind it and I could hear the radio going full blast.
They put me in the back of the Land-Rover and we headed for town. One of the things about strange towns is never to reach them at night. You have no sense of topography or direction and if you have to take quick action you are at a loss to know which way to head. Not that I thought this might be necessary tonight. But you never knew. Some of the politest police opening gambits lead up to nasty end games sometimes.
There was a nasty end game this time. But not the kind I could have anticipated. We drove into the town and I didn’t try to make any sense out of it until for a few moments we swung along a wide esplanade with the sea on our right and the lights of shipping somewhere way ahead from a harbour. Then we turned into a side-street and pulled up in front of a blank-faced building with double wooden doors. From a socket over the door projected a Libyan national flag.
I got out with my police escort and he took me by the arm and through the door. He said nothing and I went with him his palm on my elbow, feeling like some old man being helped across the street by a good Samaritan. We went down a tiled corridor that smelled of old cooking and stale tobacco, up a stone flight of steps and then through a half-glass door into a large, low-ceilinged room. One wall held what looked like a collection of large metal filing cabinets. There was a bare, chromium-topped table in the centre and sitting on one edge of it was another Libyan in a white overall. My guide said something to him in Arabic and the man got up and jerked a half-smoked cigarette into a drain way under the table. For the first time I got the smell in the room and a flicker of familiarity trembled inside me.
The man in overalls went over to one of the filing cabinets and pulled it open. It didn’t surprise me now to see it come out about six feet on its rollers. He made a motion with his hand for me to come over. I did.
It wasn’t a pretty sight. I stood there and took out a cigarette. The policeman who had come up alongside me held out a lighter. The man in overalls watched me guardedly. Neither of them said anything.
Lying in the container was a naked man. I inhaled smoke to get the chemical smell out of my throat and to fight down an edge of nausea. I’d seen plenty of dead men, and even a few who had been in the water a long time, but to stand there and look down at this one took more out of me than any of the others had. I let my eyes go from what had been the head down the length of the body to his feet. I did it deliberately, slowly, and with half my thoughts a long way away. Then I stepped back, turned and heard the cabinet roll back behind me.
To the policeman I said, ‘What now?’
He said, ‘Please to come with me.’
I did, avoiding his helping hand, moving alongside him and wondering how Jane Judd and Gloriana Stankowski were going to take the news, because tabbed neatly round the right wrist of the body had been a label, marked Martin Freeman, British.