The Melting Man

'Otto Libsch, a friend of mine.'

'Age, nationality, description, residence and occupation.'

'Thirty-odd. Austrian. He's tall, biggish, fair hair, going slightly bald. Walks with a bit of a limp and has the lobe of his left ear missing.'

It was too glib, too fast, so I smacked him on the back of his right hand with the gun barrel. He shouted and swore with the pain.

'Try again,' I said. 'From the start.'

He sucked the blood off the back of his hand, and then, his eyes full of the comforting fantasies of what he would like to do to me, he said:

'Twenty-five. French. He's short, dark-haired, thin, weedy-looking. God knows what he does, or where he lives. He just turns up.'

'Not quite good enough. If you wanted to get in touch with him what would you do?'

He balanced that one for a moment, eyed the gun, and decided to give good measure.

'I'd ring his girlfriend, Mimi Probst. Turino 56.4578. That's 17 Via Calleta.'

Keeping my eyes on him, I backed to the sideboard and picked up the telephone and carried it to him, putting it on the ground where he could just reach it.

'Ring directory inquiries and ask for the telephone number of Probst, 17 Via Calleta, Turin. Then let me have it.'

He picked up the phone and dialled, saying to me, 'I'm telling you the truth.'

'The one thing I always check is the truth.'

I waited while he put the call in. It took a little time and I lit a cigarette one-handed, keeping the other on the gun. After a time he spoke, asking for the information, then he nodded to me and put the phone with the loose receiver on the floor. I retrieved it, eyes on him all the time. After a few moments the girl at the other end came on and my French was more than good enough to follow her. He'd given me the right number.

I shoved the telephone on to the table and said, 'Otto was here when you were here with Miss Zelia, yes?'

'Yes.'

'He stole the car?'

'Yes.'

'And her luggage and any loose stuff she had lying around, watch, jewellery and so on?'

'Yes.'

'Nice man. Weren't you worried?'

'No.' There was the faintest shadow of a smile about his lips, and I was tempted to smash it off his face.

'Was he interested in this car particularly, or was it just a car like any other, fair game if he could see a way of driving off in it?'

'Otto would steal anything. He's my friend. He's amusing — but he is a born thief.'

He was coming back fast, I could sense it.

'How long had you known Zelia before you came here with her?'

'Quite a while — on and off.'

'Where?'

'Geneva. Whenever she was staying at her father's château.'

'You read her letter carefully?' I nodded to where the letter lay on the floor by the chair.

'Yes.'

'Then take my advice. She wants the time she spent here to become a blank. That's how it's going to be. You step out of line over that and I'll do the job of wiping you out for her free. Understood?'

'Don't you want to know what happened here?'

'No, I bloody well don't. I'm only interested in the car.'

He grinned and I began to see red.

'You don't want to know what she's like, this beautiful iceberg when for the first time a man gets his hands on her and warms her up? When for the first time—'

I should have sat tight and blasted his head off from a safe distance. I should have known that he was deliberately provoking me, hoping for some advantage from it. Christ, I should have known, but I didn't care. I just went for him, to stop the dirty words in his throat, and he played my own trick on me, suddenly swivelling the chair round on the polished floor so that the arm crashed into my hip as he leaped from the chair and kicked my legs from under me.

I went sliding across the floor and almost before I had finished moving, he was standing over me with the gun pointing at me.

'Just stay there,' he said. 'You move and I'll blow your head off a little quicker than I intend.'

I lay where I was, and said nothing. It was one of those times for inaction and silence. He had a finger crooked round the lead trigger and I saw his thumb slide the catch off safety.

'And I do intend to,' he said quietly. 'You've annoyed me, assaulted me and entered my house unbidden. I shall say that I came back, found you robbing the place, that you attacked me and the gun went off accidentally. The police won't make any trouble about that.'

'Other people might.' I felt that I ought to make some case for myself.

'No. Not Miss Zelia, as you so nicely call her. Or her father — because she will never say a word about me.' He gave me a warm, evil grin. 'She wants to forget she ever knew me — or Otto. You know she knew Otto as well, of course? No? Well, I want you to know it. I want you to know everything before I shoot you. When I met her in Geneva she was ripe, you know. Ripe to explode — and she did, like a wild thing after a few drinks here, in this room. We all finished up together, upstairs in the one big bed: Otto, dear Zelia, and me—'

'Shut your dirty mouth!'

'Move — and I'll shoot you. It doesn't matter to me now when I do it. Yes, she was wild. She suddenly woke up and began to live and she tried to put all she'd missed in the last ten years into two days.' His eyes sparkled as he spoke. He was thoroughly enjoying himself. 'There were times when even Otto and I found it hard to handle her. But if she went up like a rocket — are you enjoying this? — the charred stick came back to earth eventually. But before it did Otto moved out with everything she had — the car, her luggage, everything. He didn't tell me he was going to do it. At six o'clock on her last morning he was gone from the communal bed… No, no, hear it all. It amuses me to see you hating me and every word I say. He went and she came back to earth, back to what she'd been before I met her. And she walked out too. Just walked. I didn't mind. Except when she was wild, she was rather boring.'

I said, 'It would be a pleasure to kill you.'

'Happily you're not going to have that pleasure. Mind you, I don't want you to get the wrong idea of Zelia's character. Everything was perfectly correct, all those times in Geneva. They were just warming-up exercises. And here… well, just drink wouldn't have released her to such wild heights of inhibition. Oh no — Otto and I doctored her drink. In a way, you could say it was an act of mercy, a form of therapy which she needed. You know, ever since she left I've been wondering whether to be content, altruistically, with having helped her to discover herself, or whether I shouldn't make a charge. Blackmail, I suppose you would call it. What do you think?'

I wasn't thinking. I was just aware of the twin muzzles of the gun a few feet from my face, and of a maddening pressure of rage inside me, mounting to a point which in a few moments would take me off the ground and at him regardless of what happened to me.

He said, 'I asked you what you think? I did it with other women before, of course — until I had enough to set myself up in business. After that I promised myself I would help the cold, frustrated ones like Zelia just for the pleasure of it. But with a millionaire's daughter, perhaps it would be silly not to make a charge—'

At this point I jerked the poodle at him. It had come dancing up on its toes to me as he talked, licked one of my ears and then had begun to worry playfully at my left hand. I grabbed it by its skinny loins and threw it, rolling sideways and jumping to my feet as he staggered back a few yards and fetched up against the table. But I wasn't quick enough to get at him. The gun barrel was out, levelled towards my face.

'Good, monsieur,' he said. 'Now I kill you. But first I tell you I have made my decision. I shall blackmail Miss Zelia. Yes, I shall make her pay, and each time she does it will be necessary for her to bring the money here in person. You understand? Part payment in money and part in—'