“He pushed me down the stairs, and said I shouldn’t be allowed to have children. He said I should be inoculated, so I couldn’t contaminate people with my selfishness.”
Peter picked up an envelope and glanced casually at the handwriting.
The letters swam abruptly before his eyes; he felt shock going through his body in steady, rhythmic beats; a cold knot of tension gathering painfully in his stomach.
“Dear God,” he said.
“Yes. And he told me that if I had a soul it would have dollar signs on it.”
The envelope bore the name and crest of the Pez Espada, a smart hotel a few miles down the coast. Peter’s name, in dreadfully familiar, back-slanted handwriting, gleamed in purple ink (also dreadfully familiar) on the snowy face of the envelope, which bore no stamp. Peter ripped open the envelope, pulled out a single sheet of paper. There was his name again; a room number, 401, and another name, also dreadfully familiar Angela written in a flourish which terminated in a pair of mocking exclamation points.
“No!” he said, and put a hand to his racing heart.
“It’s true, Peter. Every word of it.”
“Get out of here.”
“What?” The word was a startled bleat.
“Get out of here. Wash your face. Get some sleep, you silly child. Stop dumping the dustbins of your psyche in my office. Out.”
She glowed under the rebuke; she believed that men masked passion with exasperation and boredom. “Yes, Peter,” she said gratefully. “I understand.” And crept from his office.
Peter closed the door and dialled the Pez Espada. “Pepe, this is Peter Churchman. I need some information. Who is in room four-o-one?”
“One moment. I’ll see. Ah. Yes. Monsieur and Madame Francois Morel.”
“What’s she like?”
“Pale, dark-haired, petite. Once she must have been very pretty. Like a kitten.”
Christ, he thought; there was no mistake; it was Angela.
“And her husband?”
“Handsome, slender, carries himself well. He seems used to good things.”
A flicker of hope warmed Peter’s breast. Perhaps she had landed a fat one. Perhaps his alarm was premature; she might want nothing but a drink, a toast to the old days. But Pepe’s next words doused this feeble flame like a jet of ice water.
“But he’s not used to paying for them, I think.”
“Listen carefully. They may ask you if I called. Say no. If they offer you money, I’ll go one thousand pesetas over their best offer. Okay?”
“That’s not necessary, Senor Churchman.”
“I don’t want our friendship to work a hardship on you.”
“If you put it in those terms, I can only accept. Thank you.”
Peter left his office and hurried to the bar. Greetings sailed towards him from a half-dozen tables; invitations for elevenses; for golf; for fishing. Peter’s presence turned on smiles; in six years he had become a popular fixture in the life of the village.
He called Mario to the end of the bar and showed him the letter from Angela.
“Who brought this?”
“A man, a Frenchman.”
“Tell me about him, Mario,” Peter said, and the urgency in his tone brought a co-operative frown to Mario’s plump face.
“He’s tall not as tall as you though and slender. He walks well. He may have been an officer. He’s about forty. Dark hair, quite handsome. He wore a blazer, flannel slacks. His manners are good, but I have an impression Mario rocked a hand judiciously that he acquired them by observing. Not at home. Not at school.”
Peter matched Mario’s description against various index cards in his mind, and drew blanks. Someone new then. Not Bendell. Not Canalli.
Not the Irishman.
Wearily he said, “Please give me a double vodka, Mario.”
Mario raised his eyebrows. “Is something wrong?”
“Now whatever gave you that idea?”
Peter drummed his fingers on the bar. Mario shrugged and poured him a double vodka.
Chapter two
In a sense Francois Morel’s eyes were the best of his features; insolent, greedy, but frankly so; the rest might have been made in a factory. When he put on sun-glasses to join the woman sunning herself on the terrace of their suite, his face became a brownly neutral oblong, devoid of weakness, strength, or character of any kind at all.
“You talked to the desk clerk?” asked Angela, without opening her eyes. She wore a bikini and shimmering layers of sun lotion.
“Twice. He says he doesn’t even know Peter Churchman.”
“Did you offer him money?”
“Of course.” Francois sat on the lounge beside Angela. “You said Peter Churchman would come flying to your side. So?”
“So! Most men would. But he’s not like most men.”
She turned on to her back. Under a cap of metallic black hair, Angela’s features were unpleasantly hard and sharp, but, at thirty-five, her body was still tiny and exquisite; when she twisted to a more comfortable position, the movements hollowed out a shining concavity between her ribs and her loins, and caused the muscles in her thighs to tremble like silken cords being gently agitated beneath a satin coverlet.
This excellence was a memorial, in a sense, to an aesthetic father who had worshipped her doll-like fragility, and had embedded in her unconscious the compulsions to preserve it. But none of his gentle injunctions and rebukes and denials had been able to preserve her face.
Once it had been as smooth and pretty as the surface of a pond fed by healthy springs; but then, it seemed, the springs had dried up and the water had become streaked and marred by things from the depths that were forcing themselves to the surface.
This was an irony she had lost the capacity to savour. For many years Angela had been amused by the contrast between certain of her needs, and the shell-like forehead and discreetly masked eyes which hid them from the world. But she was no longer amused by this, for the thing inside her was no longer concealed from view; each year it became more obvious, more recognisable, boldly peering from eyes, lurking insolently at the corners of her mouth. One day the bitch thing would claw through to the surface, to mock at the world it hated through her eyes, to deride it with her lips.”
Life would not be pleasant for the old witch she would eventually turn into, Angela knew; it would, in fact, be sheer, bloody hell, unless she were financially secure. She could not, as a result of her father’s training, ask favours of people; to beg or wheedle caused pains in her head and stomach that were beyond enduring. For several years now the only thing that could brighten her eye or excite her senses was the prospect of money.
Francois took her hand, squeezed it gently. “We need Peter Churchman, my dear.”
She opened her eyes and studied him gravely. “You’re overdressed.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. You’ve dyed your hair. Lost thirty pounds. Put lifts in your shoes. But you still hang yourself like a Christmas tree.”
Francois removed his glasses and studied what he was wearing, puzzled: brown suede shoes, light flannel slacks, a blue blazer, snowy white shirt, a blue cravat; wrist watch, a silver ID bracelet, an opal ring.
“I think I’m dressed quite well.”
“You are not.”
“Don’t be unpleasant, darling.”
“I’m being instructive.”
“It’s the same thing really.”
Angela sighed. “All right. Peter will come here, don’t worry. I want you to remember something. He can fool you with his manner. He makes jokes and appears to take things lightly. He flew with the RAF. before the United States came into the war. I think he enjoys playing the silly ass; it’s something he must have picked up from the British. But I want you to keep this in mind: He is the most dangerous man I ever knew.”