"I've kept you alive, you stupid bitch — alive!" He yelled it like an accusation. Then his hand covered his mouth as if he had been caught out.
Marian brushed slowly at the beaded jacket, feeling its roughness, then touched the pearls at her throat. She smoothed the hair at her temples; all as if anticipating being photographed.
"I see," she murmured.
A young couple passed, seemingly amused at their parody of some minor marital quarrel.
Campbell looked at her intently, as if he sought some kind of guidance.
His breathing was louder than the traffic. Changing lights turned his features from sickly green to shamed red. The masks he had discarded and replaced during the evening were all gone. His flesh was as white as bone as he moved his head.
"All right, Ben," she announced. Tell me what you're supposed to do for them, as far as I'm concerned."
"You don't think I wanted to, do you?"
"Probably not. But David owns you sorry, employs you, and this is just another of the favours you do for him. What, exactly, was it?"
"It doesn't matter… it's over now. It was supposed to be earlier."
"What do you mean, over?"
"I kept you off the streets, in company, away from dark places! Does that answer your question? I didn't do what I was supposed to do hours ago…" Again, the effort at something akin to truth seemed to exhaust him.
"I just oh, shit…"
Thank you whatever you did. Thanks for not being the Judas-goat, the one with the bell."
"I tried to warn you off before."
"I know."
Marian lit another cigarette and drew on it slowly. Traffic, pedestrians, the long street of shops beyond which jutted incongruous church spires. She felt sorry for Ben Campbell; for his weakness, his ambition, and his present violent fear. He had failed David.
"I can we get in the car, just drive?" he asked, as if he had become newly afraid of the open street, or of other people. His BMW was parked no more than a hundred yards away. He looked ill in the purpling light of the nearest streetlamp, as she must have done herself.
"Just drive for a bit…?"
"Yes," she nodded.
He walked like a quick marionette to the BMW and got in, slamming the door.
She got in beside him, fugging the interior with cigarette smoke and nerves almost immediately. He seemed to resent the intrusion of both.
He started the engine and pulled out with a squeal of tyres into the thin stream of vehicles, heading north.
Traffic lights were against them at the Boulevard Baudouin. Marian exhaled smoke that rolled back at her from the windscreen.
The misting of the screen was erased at once by the air-conditioning.
Her mind was clearing with much greater reluctance. Ben Campbell had colluded with David, then lost his nerve. Because of that, of him, she was alive, and for no other reason. The car moved away from the lights, across the intersection and along the Rue de Brabant, towards the port and the Laeken park.
The anger came back again, like a recurring bout of malaria, making her head ache, her body tense against her situation, against David. She had to do something, anything.
Traffic lights at the junction with the Avenue de la Reine. He had switched on his left indicator. He was heading for the park, it seemed, as if towards a wilderness where he might lose himself.
Suddenly, she flung open the passenger door. He turned a stunned face to her.
"I'm getting out now!" she snapped at him.
"David can find me for himself—"
"No, please-!"
The lights changed.
"I can't if you, Ben I have to watch out for myself! This could be a trick—"
"No!" he all but wailed, shaking his head. The first horns had started behind them, impatient even at that hour.
"Get in for God's sake, get in the car!" he bellowed, his features drained and desperate, pleading with her.
"Will you help me, Ben? Will you talk to me?"
His face was ashen, his eyes furtive, moving rapidly like those of a dreamer. The car horns were louder, like the sounds of threatening creatures in the dark. Ben Campbell was utterly unnerved. His lips were wet as he nodded.
Cars pulled out and passed them, faces glaring at the BMW. Campbell flinched at each one, as if seeing enemies he recognised.
She climbed back into her seat, closing the door.
"Will you tell me everything?" she asked quietly.
He continued to nod like an automaton, something clockwork. David had asked too much of him. Broken him, the butterfly on the wheel. She could feel no anger towards him, just pity' He shouldn't have asked me
… he shouldn't! Campbell muttered as he put the car into gear and the BMW screeched away from the lights.
"What do you know about the aircraft sabotage?"
He looked at her as if she had asked the question in an unknown language.
"I don't under—" She waved it dismissively away.
"It doesn't matter. Tell me about the fraud with the regional redevelopment funds. Everything you know."
"I know everything! he confessed mournfully.
She removed a tiny recorder from her purse and switched it on.
"Never mind, Ben," she sighed, exhausted.
"Just talk. The fraud. Begin at the beginning…"
It was probably because of his heightened, strained nerves, Winterborne decided.
His mood lit his imagination like a succession of flares over a battlefield at night.
He could not stop thinking about her. Marian kept coming out of the shadows of the large bedroom of the hotel suite, announcing in her careless way that he was wrong wrong to think, say, act as he did.
There were new leasings, firming-up purchase enquiries, acres of beneficial newsprint and television reportage. Skyliner and Artemis
Airways were in the process, like Hilary and Tensing, of planting the flag on the summit of the mountain they had had to climb. The banks were like eager children pursuing them, desperate to become part of the game with debt rescheduling and new loans alike. The European Commission was dining to bloating on the turnaround that he had achieved.
And yet there she was, in his imagination, her expression quizzically mocking and long familiar.
David Winterborne brushed his hair back with long fingers, then rested his hands once more on the duvet of the bed. He studied them, watching them curl involuntarily. They were like those end-of-pier machines, a pair of clawlike grabs which hovered over but hardly ever held small and useless presents. However many times you put pennies in the slot and the arms moved out and the claws grabbed, nothing ever seemed to be won, picked upHe smoothed the duvet with straightened fingers. That was an image Marian would have used and enjoyed. The cranes, the diggers and the grabs were working again on the Urban Regeneration Project sites. The parliamentary rumour machine was in high gear, whispering that no one was any longer making disapproving noises concerning Winterborne Holdings or European funds. Except Marian who would be warned off, told to keep her lips firmly together. The Whips' Office had promised-and if you could see your way to making a contribution to Party funds, with a General Election in the offing…?
The knighthood remained unmentioned but palpable. Unless it came soon, of course, it would never come. American citizens did not qualify. He smiled, as if a bout of indigestion had passed. The last General Election had cost him a quarter of a million. It had bought him much gratitude, latitude and influence. This one might well cost him a half-million in contributions. More if he hedged his bets and contributed to the Opposition's campaign. The money would buy him immunity-there again. Like a tormenting ghost, walking towards him across the litter of faxes, newsprint and notes that were the confetti of celebration. He had dined Coulthard, Tim Burton and a dozen movers and shakers after the formal reception.