She stopped on another paved area round a kidney-shaped pool and unfastened some clips on her yellow dress, which came off in one piece, and left two more in view underneath. Her body was slender and well cared for, but not at all a young girl’s. Middle to late forties, I thought: and the sort of woman who would have been uninteresting under thirty.
She slipped into the water and floated, and I watched the sun make watered silk ripples over her brown stomach.
‘Come on in,’ she said. ‘There are plenty of swim suits in the hut.’
I smiled and shook my head, and sat down on one of the soft plastic pool-side chairs. She took her time, humming and splashing gently with her hands. The sun was hot, but not like in the city. I took my jacket off and felt heat baking into my skin through the white cotton shirt. Peacefulness gradually seeped in too. I was in no hurry for her to rejoin me, which she presently did, the water drops shining singly on her oiled skin.
‘You’ve hardly touched your drink,’ she observed accusingly. ‘Surely you’re not one of those soft buggers who can’t hold their liquor?’ She picked up her own glass and went on proving that she, at any rate, wasn’t.
‘Chrysalis...’ I began.
She interrupted immediately. ‘Do you ride?’
‘I can,’ I said, ‘but I don’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I haven’t a horse. Nor a kingdom to give for one.’
‘Drink your whisky,’ she said, smiling.
‘In a while.’
‘Then strip off and get in the pool.’
I shook my head.
‘Why not?’
‘I like it as I am.’ And I had too many bruises, from the weir.
She shrugged, half annoyed. ‘Don’t you do any bloody thing?’
‘How many people knew at what hour Chrysalis would leave Kennedy Airport?’
‘God,’ she said, ‘you’re a bloody bore.’
‘Don’t you want the horse back?’
‘No,’ she said vehemently, ‘as far as I’m concerned, we’d be far better off with the insurance.’
‘Two hundred thousand dollars’, I agreed, ‘is a heck of a gamble. Supposing he never sired another like Moth?’
‘There’s no stopping Dave, when he’s set his mind on something.’ She sat on the edge of a full-length chair bed and smoothed cream on to her face from a dusky pink tube. ‘And he had meant to sell off a bit of that, when he got back. God knows what will happen now he’s strung up in those goddam pulleys.’
‘He’ll be home in about four weeks.’
‘Yeah. So he said.’ She lay down flat and closed her eyes. ‘I told him to take his time. It’s too bloody expensive being ill over here.’
Five quiet minutes passed. A single jet plane flew across, a silver streak so high up one couldn’t hear it until it had gone. The air was still. The oiled brown body in the yellow bikini took in a hefty dose of ultra violet and the ice cubes melted in the drinks.
‘Take your clothes off, for God’s sake,’ she said, without opening her eyes. ‘Or are you ashamed of that pink-white slug of a body the English usually bring over here?’
‘I’d better be going.’
‘Do what you damn well like.’ She fluttered a lax wrist in a double gesture which said, equally well, stay or goodbye.
I stood up and walked over to the hut, a large beautifully made pinewood structure with a protruding front roof, for shade. Inside were a bathroom and two changing rooms, and in the tiny lobby some shelves in a cupboard held bright coloured towels and swimsuits. I took a pair of blue shorts and put them on. The bruises on my legs very nearly matched. I left my shirt on, picked up a towel for a pillow, and went back and lay down on the next bed to hers.
She merely grunted with her eyes still shut, but after another minute she said, ‘If you want to know about the timetable for Chrysalis, you’d better ask Sam Hengelman in Lexington. He fixed the van. He runs a private service from here. Dave called me and told me the date the horse was being shipped over, and I called Sam Hengelman. And he took it from there.’
‘Who else did you tell the shipping date to?’
‘It wasn’t any goddam secret, for God’s sake. I called six or seven of the syndicate to let them know. Dave asked me to. Half Kentucky knew about it, I guess.’
She suddenly sat up straight and opened her eyes.
‘Why the hell does it matter how many people knew when Chrysalis was coming? It wasn’t him the hi-jackers wanted. They simply made a balls of it and took the wrong truck.’
‘Supposing they got just what they wanted?’
‘Were you born yesterday? The blood-line is what breeders pay stud fees for. Chrysalis isn’t worth a sou to anyone, if they can’t use his pedigree. No one’s going to even send a decent mare to a stallion someone just happens to have handy, which has no name in the stud book, no history, and no papers; let alone pay fifteen thousand dollars for the privilege.’
‘Buttress Life have been looking for an insurance swindle.’
‘They can look till they’re blue in the face.’ She picked up her glass, swallowed, and grimaced. ‘This drink’s as warm as that pool and just as sodden. Mix me another, will you?’ She held out the glass to me and I unwound myself from the bed and took it and my own back into the house. I mixed her the same size dose as before, concocted a different one for myself, and took them both back, the ice clinking coolly as I walked.
‘Thanks.’ She sank almost half. ‘That’s better.’
I stood beside the pool and put one toe in the water. It was blood warm, or more.
‘What’s the matter with your legs?’ she said.
‘The same as your husband’s, only mine didn’t break.’
‘What’s under the shirt?’
‘The sun’s too hot. I can do without a sunburn.’
‘Yeah.’ She lay flat again. ‘Pink-white slug.’
Smiling, I sat down on the edge of the pool with my back towards her and dangled my feet in the water. I ought, I supposed, to go away and do something more useful, like interviewing Sam Hengelman. But Walt would no doubt have thought of that, and done it, since his threatening migraine would only have lasted until the car we had rented had taken me out of sight. Walt and Dave’s wife hadn’t exactly clicked.
‘Mr Hawkins,’ she said from behind me.
‘Mm?’
‘What do you do for a living?’
‘I’m a civil servant.’
‘With this?’
There was a sharp metallic click, the one sound guaranteed to raise the hairs on my neck as if I’d never left the jungle.
‘Do you know what you’re doing with that thing?’ I asked, as conversationally as I could.
‘Yes.’
‘Then put the safety on.’
She didn’t answer, and I stood up and turned round, and looked straight into the barrel of my own gun.
I deserve it, I thought. Slow, careless, and stupid. I was anything one cared to mention.
She was sitting with her legs curled underneath her, the Luger lodged unwaveringly in her fist. The gap between us, five yards at least, was too great for anything constructive in the way of action, so I simply stood still.
‘You’re a cool bastard, I’ll say that for you.’
‘You won’t shoot me,’ I said, smiling.
‘Why not?’
‘I’m not insured for a million and a half.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Does that mean that you think that I... I... shot Chrysalis?’
‘It’s possible.’