‘Morning,’ she said.
‘Hi. Whassertime?’
‘Quarter past ten. I’ve been out for a walk to get the papers. Want some breakfast?’
Rocq yawned; having felt wide awake at half past four in the morning, he now felt tired. ‘A cup of coffee would be nice.’
She leaned over and kissed him. ‘Who’s a tired little Rocky?’ she said.
‘Me am.’
She went out of the room; Rocq heaved himself up a few inches against the headboard, and pulled up the pile of papers. He took the Mail first, for easy reading, and glanced at the front page. In his tired and fuddled state, something in the headlines rang a bell, but he had to read it a dozen more times before it fully registered. The first four were to make sure he’d read it properly; the next four to make sure he wasn’t imagining it; the next four to make sure it hadn’t gone away again. He started shaking, and picked up The Times to make sure it wasn’t just some figment of a Daily Mail reporter’s imagination. It wasn’t; it was the second major headline on the front page of The Times. He picked up the Financial Times; it was there, too: ‘SHOCK NEWS ROCKS COFFEE MARKET.’ The Times headline read: ‘WORLD-WIDE COFFEE BAN IMMINENT?’ The Daily Mail’s read: ‘THE KILLER IN YOUR COFFEE CUP.’
Rocq ploughed straight into the editorials; the three newspapers all tallied. The World Health Organization had established definite links between coffee and several types of cancer, in particular, breast, stomach and bowel cancers. Tests and surveys proved that the risk increased in direct proportion to the amount drunk; there was little significant difference between fresh-ground and instant varieties, nor between caffeinated and decaffeinated varieties. The World Health Organization estimated that up to sixty-five per cent of these and other types of cancers would be prevented if coffee were not drunk, and was going to recommend to all governments of the world that an immediate ban be made on the growing, manufacture and sales of coffee and all coffee-based products.
Amanda appeared with the coffee.
‘You evidently didn’t read the papers yet!’ he said.
‘No.’ She shook her head, looking a bit surprised.
‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘what you said last night. Bad news certainly does come in threes.’
13
The girl took careful aim, then slowly and deliberately squeezed the two halves of the plastic gun together. Eight ping-pong balls fired out in rapid succession and bounced hard off the naked backside of Viscomte Claude Louis Santenay Jarre du Charnevrau Ducarme de Louçelle de Lasserre. Trussed up in the corner of the room like a Christmas turkey, and with a gag tightly bound over and into his mouth, there was little the Viscomte could do other than to squirm. The girl picked up another gun, and fired again. The Viscomte began shaking with excitement, and she knew now he was ready. She signalled to the second girl. Seizing him by the arms and legs, they dragged him roughly across the floor and threw him face downwards onto the bed.
‘You pig bastard, you will suffer,’ one spat out viciously.
‘If you don’t get rid of your hard, we’ll break it off,’ said the other.
With four ropes they lashed his arms and legs tightly and firmly, so that he was pinned face down and quite unable to move. Both girls wore outfits that could hardly be described as conservative feminine attire. They were dressed in bras, panties and thigh-high leather boots; the centres of the bras and the panties had been cut away, and the contents beneath bulged through the holes.
One girl seized a cat-o-nine tails leather whip and cracked it down across the Viscomte’s backside. He whimpered loudly enough that it could be heard through the gag. The second marched round, and slapped him hard across the face, twice. The girl cracked the cat-o-nine tails again and then again, repeatedly, and red welts began to appear. The Viscomte started to shake again, shuddering and shaking uncontrollably, whilst one girl brought the whip relentlessly down, and the second slapped him across the face.
An hour later, the Viscomte, dressed in a Prince of Wales check suit, red paisley tie and Charles Jourdan shoes paid the two girls, tipped them generously on top and walked, with some apparent discomfort, out of the apartment, down the steps, and out into the mid-afternoon Limoges heat. He checked his watch; it was ten past five. He would have to hurry. He opened the door of his red Maserati Kyalami and lowered himself gingerly into the leather-covered driving seat; his backside was in agony; the girls had become over-zealous, he decided; he must speak to them next time, it really was hurting much more than he liked. He revved the engine hard and drove off aggressively, leaving a trail of rubber and blue smoke behind him. He headed towards the N21 Perigueux road out of the town.
As was normal, the Viscomte drove fast, flashing his lights and blasting slow-moving traffic out of his path with the car’s piercing air horns. As he drove, occasional important thoughts entered his mind, and he made mental notes that they must all be discussed later that evening.
He was a tall man with a handsome, if somewhat weak, face. He had fair hair with some silver streaks, thick eyebrows that hooded his crystal-clear blue eyes, a long straight nose and an almost feminine rosebud mouth. His skin was of a texture and colouring that exuded health, well-being and wealth; it was a skin that seems only to be found on the faces of aristocrats — the genuine articles, not the self-made first generations. He had been married three times and divorced three times, and had seven children, all living with their mothers; right now he was thoroughly enjoying his fourth bachelorhood. To those who didn’t know him well, he appeared a gentle man; he was soft spoken, deliberate but delicate in his movements, and always appeared deeply and passionately interested in anyone he happened to speak to — something he had learned from carefully studying the English Royal Family. Outwardly, he was the perfect, divinely-mannered image of everything that a French Viscomte should be.
Two hours out of Limoges and one hour past Perigueux, on the N89 Bordeaux road, the Maserati slowed down and turned sharply right into a narrow, straight, tree-lined lane. The Viscomte changed down into first, and flattened the accelerator; the car raced up the lane. At fifty-two miles per hour he changed to second, still keeping his foot flat on the floor, the tyres clenched to the grey ribbon of tarmac between the trees; at eighty he changed to third, and the car leapt over the 120 miles per hour, or, as he was interested in, the 200 kilometre mark; then he began to ease off. It always gave him a kick, hitting 200 kilometres on this straight stretch.
Within a few hundred metres, the trees gave way to wall; a massive wall, over twenty feet high, with broken glass and barbed wire along the top. The wall continued for three kilometres without break, and the car continued at high speed. Then it began to slow down, the right turn indicator started blinking, the Viscomte gave two long blasts on his air horns, and stopped in front of a massive wrought-iron gateway with an elegant beige stone lodge beside it.
A curtain inside the lodge parted and a pair of eyes looked out; the curtains dropped back and, after a few moments, the electrically-powered gates began to swing open. A portly man in his late fifties hurried out of the house and stood at the side of the drive, out of the way of the gates.
The Viscomte was home. He turned in through the gateway.
‘Bonsoir, Monsieur Le Viscomte,’ said Henri Taflé, the gatekeeper.
The Viscomte nodded. ‘Bonsoir, Taflé. Ça va?’
‘Oui, Monsieur Le Viscomte, ça va bien, merci.’