'If you have a coloured skin like mine, Mr Carver, and live in a white man's world, then you know all about embarrassments, most of them more damned awkward than a couple of cadavers. Give me the address or it is D for drastic'
He waggled the gun. Panda got up off the floor.
'Be reasonable, lover-boy,' she said. 'You gonna miss all them lovely things otherwise. That extra drink you shouldn't take. Lovin' arms around you in the night and the first cigarette with your hangover in the morning. Why, I just couldn't bear to see so much good manpower go down the drain.'
She was right of course. And anyway, I felt I had stalled long enough. I flapped my hands and let my shoulders collapse.
'Okay. I'd hate to arrive at the pearly gates next in the queue to Max Ansermoz.'
'Splendid.' Najib beamed. We were all friends again.
'Otto Libsch,' I said. The Bernina Hotel, Geneva. That's in the Place Cornavin.'
Najib beamed. 'Thank you, Mr Carver. This Max may have lied, of course. That I accept. But if I find that you have lied then you go right down the drain. Now, please, turn round.'
'Why?'
'Do like Najib says,' said Panda. I turned.
Najib hit me on the back of the head with his gun and I went down and out.
When I came to, I was lying on the floor with my head on a cushion. My face was wet and my shirt-front was soaked with water. Sitting on a chair close to me was Julia Yunge-Brown, holding a glass jug of water in her hand. She flicked half of it into my face as my eyes blinked at the light.
I said, 'If you really want to help you might find something stronger than water.' This was my morning for girls and cognac. As she moved away I sat up and looked around.
'Where's the body?' I said.
Over her shoulder, she said, 'What body?'
I didn't answer. What a nice chap Najib was. He had carted off the body to save me embarrassment. I really felt bad about lying to him. But I knew that the next time we met he was going to be anything but nice, and would want to take all the lovely things away from me.
CHAPTER FIVE
'We ride, and I see her bosom heave.'
It was a pleasant enough family scene. Ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, the sound of church bells coming through the open kitchen window, the smell of coffee from the percolator on a small electric ring, and over everything the warm, steamy smell of baby clothes half dry, strung out on a line across the top part of the window.
The man was lounging in a broken-down cane chair, nursing the baby in his arms. I couldn't tell its sex and never asked, but it had a red face, screwed up like a toothless old man's, and a fluff of soft black hair on its head that looked like the combings from a dog's coat. It was sucking away at the business end of an old fashioned feeding bottle, slipping its mouth sideways from the teat now and then to give a milky belch.
The man manoeuvred a cigarette one-handed from his shirt pocket, struck a match, one-handed, on the sole of his sandal and said. 'After the business with Otto, Mimi lost her milk. Big shock — but she's over it now. In good hands.'
Mimi Probst — I was sure about her because she had answered the door and identified herself — was ironing on the kitchen table. She wore a loose apron affair and had bare legs and bare feet. Her red hair was untidy, and her blue eyes were quiet and mild. She had a thinnish face with high cheekbones and a narrow chin. She looked about eighteen but was probably more. She gave the man an adoring look when he said 'in good hands', smiled and made a silent kissing movement with her mouth. Happy, contented couple, baby giving no trouble for once, all Sunday, the day of rest, before them, and on her wrist she was wearing a small diamond-set watch that was right out of her class and an identical number to the one which Julia wore. When I got back to Julia I wasn't even going to ask if Zelia had a watch like hers. Cavan O'Dowda had probably unloaded a couple on the girls at some time to mark some coup he'd pulled off.
I said, 'You know who I am. And I know who Mimi is — but who are you? Otto is the man I want, and you know why.'
My card was lying on the edge of the chair he sat in. I'd just said that I was looking for Otto to try and recover a Mercedes that belonged to a client of mine. No more, no less, not even how I had come to trace Otto. Right from the start I'd been troubled by their manner. There hadn't been the slightest edge of resentment at an intrusion on their Sunday morning. Every time I'd mentioned Otto so far, they had looked at one another and giggled.
Mimi tested the flat of the iron by spitting on it,' was dissatisfied with the heat and dumped it on another ring alongside the coffee. She turned back, put her hands on her hips and looked at me. Dolled up, she would never have passed unnoticed in a crowd. She winked at the man. 'What do you think?' His English accent would have passed, but hers was surprisingly thick. She could have had a mouth full of sticky toffee.
The man nodded, and eyed me affably as he slipped the teat from the baby's mouth, hunked the infant gently over one shoulder and began massaging its back through the shawl to ease up wind.
'He's doing a job,' he said to no one in particular. 'Been frank. Right to the point. Broad-minded, too, I should say. Would have to be in his job.' Then to me particularly he went on, 'I'm Tony Collard. You're wrong about Mimi. It ain't Probst. We were married last week. I can see you're wondering about my English. No need. My father was a Canadian, volunteered at the beginning of the war into the British Royal Artillery, came over here, changed his mind about war, deserted, settled down, married and eventually had me. He died two years back. I run the garage and repair shop that never made him a fortune.'
I said, 'You jump about a lot. And you're giving me a lot of information that I don't want. Otto is my bird. Where's he roosting now?'
At that they both gave out high squeaks of laughter. When the paroxysm was over Tony said, 'Like some coffee?'
'No thanks.'
He massaged a final burp from the baby and then stuck it back on the bottle. He had nice, easy, comfortable hands, gentle, but I had a feeling that there was far more to him than a smiling frankness of manner and an occasional mad laugh. He was about twenty, plump and big built, and with a face like a young Pickwick, made more so by the steel-rimmed glasses he wore. He had thin, blond-white hair, and would be bald before he was thirty.
'What's the score on the car?' he asked.
'My client wants it back. He's a millionaire. They get touchy about property. You and I worry over the pence. His kind worry all the way up through the cash register. That's why they're millionaires. I understood, from a gent I met recently, that Otto regarded Mimi as his girl.'
Going back to the pile of baby-clothes and diapers, iron in hand, Mimi said, 'I was. That's his baby. I had a bad time with it.'
'Caesarian,' said Tony, proudly almost, and I thought at any moment he would ask her to show me the scar. He gave her a loving look and she angled it back with that silent kissing motion of the lips. I began to feel out of place in so much domestic bliss.
'Being Otto's makes no difference to Tony,' said Mimi.
'Not a scrap,' said Tony. 'I loved Mimi long before Otto came along. Old faithful.' He chuckled. 'But then every girl's due for one stupid infatuation. Come to that, so's a man. More than one, perhaps. Eh?' He winked at Mimi and she brandished the iron, mock angry at him. I began to get the idea that they were either playing with me, or just glad to have a diversion on a warm, happy Sunday morning before they put the kid in its bassinet and wandered down the road to some trattoria for lunchtime spaghetti Milanese and a couple of glasses of Chianti.