'Take a seat over there,' he said. He pointed through the crowd to a divan that stood just in front of the Cairo merchant or whatever who had gypped O'Dowda in a diamond deal.
I went over and sat down carefully, crossing my legs so that the inside of my left shoe was hard up against the front of the divan and out of sight.
I looked around at the wax figures and said, 'Same old crowd you've got, I see. Time you made some new enemies.'
O'Dowda was sitting at the far end of the room, just in front of the candelabra-flanked, oversized effigy of himself. He was wearing a loose oriental dressing gown for comfort, black patent leather shoes with elastic sides, and a white turtle-necked shirt. The dressing gown was black with silver peacocks on it. He was lounging comfortably in an armchair with a table at his side on which stood glasses and a champagne bottle, and a hand microphone with a flex that trailed away into a far wall recess.
He stared at me with his small blue eyes out of a very red face, and said, 'Don't worry — you'll join 'em soon, you bastard.'
I said, 'If you want to do a deal with me, you overstuffed bullfrog, just keep things polite, will you?'
I was in, and I was enjoying myself, and I was full of comforting hatred for him, a warm, intoxicating desire to see all the kick and egotism knocked out of him. I'd taken a chance so far and it had worked. It had to be my day. I had that feeling that all men know… that feeling that the moment you strike the twenty-foot putt you know it's going to drop, that the moment you flick the line out with a Blue Upright on the end and it settles like a fairy on the water under the alders that a three-pounder is going to bulge up to it, that the moment you swing the gun up as they come fast and oblique down wind you're going to get one with each barrel… I was feeling good, optimistic, ready for anything.
O'Dowda reached for his champagne glass on the table, lowered his head and sipped, watching me over the rim. Two yards from him was another armchair and a table stacked with bottles and glasses. That's how they liked it. To sit there, drinking, steadily getting tighter and shouting comments and abuse at their guests. Fun… once in a while.
O'Dowda said, 'You're a fool. You think I believe that stuff about the parcel? You're bluffing. If you had the real thing you'd never poke your nose in here.'
I gave him a friendly smile. 'If you really thought I was bluffing you'd never have opened the door. You couldn't have cared less about me. I'd come in the Julia category. By the way, I've decided that I don't want anything to do with that either. Oh, I've got a weakness for pretty women, but it never goes over the five-hundred-pound mark. My price, exclusive of my fee, is five thousand pounds.'
Kermode said, 'If the parcel isn't genuine, boss, all we have to do is persuade him, like before.'
'Do that,' I said. 'But it won't get you anywhere. The parcel's with a friend in Geneva. If I don't call her within the hour, she'll just phone Interpol and tell them I'm out here. They won't waste any time getting here.'
O'Dowda said, 'Her? What woman?'
I said, impatiently, 'For God's sake what woman do you imagine? How do you think I got out here, away from Najib? Miss Panda, of course. We sort of got together, financially and otherwise, to do ourselves a bit of good.' I reached for a cigarette in my pocket, saw Kermode tighten up, reassured him with a shake of my head, lit up, and said, 'Come on — check the parcel and let's get this over.'
I was doing well. I had them. I just told myself to go easy and not get too confident. The difficult part was still to come. I wanted the parcel brought back into this room for checking.
The champagne helped me. O'Dowda was comfortable in his chair, he was used to having servants do things for him.
He said to Kermode, 'Go and get it. But give me that gun first.'
Kermode handed him the gun. Then he went out of the room.
O'Dowda held the gun on me with one hand and drew a new bottle of champagne across the table towards him with the other. He began to fiddle with the wire around the cork, one-handed, to open it, found it awkward and gave up. Kermode could do it when he returned. Behind him the lit candles surrounding his effigy flickered and smoked a little in the draught from the open doors.
He said, 'You could have got a price from Najib.'
I said, 'Yes.'
'Or from Interpol.'
'Yes.'
'Why come to me then?'
I shrugged my shoulders. 'You're slow, boyo. Bejabbers, you're slow, slower than an old bog donkey with a load of peat.'
He didn't like it, and I was happy. I went on, 'I want to take you. I want to show you that there's somebody around who can make you look like a shagged-out carnival giant. That's what you like doing to people, isn't it? Rubbing their noses in it. Well, that goes for me, too.'
Slowly, he said, 'I'm promising myself the pleasure of killing you inch by inch one day.'
'And there's another thing,' I said, ignoring him. 'I want you to have it. The moment you have, I'm getting on to my stockbroker to buy me a fat slice of snares in United Africa Enterprises. I should make a healthy profit from that when you begin to operate the monopoly you will get when Gonwalla goes.'
For a moment he screwed up his face, as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. He said, 'You're just like all the rest. You hate my guts because I'm a millionaire, but all the same you'd like to be one. But remember this, Carver, whatever happens — I'll get you. You'll wish that you'd never been born.'
'We'll see,' I said. 'If I make enough money I might even have my own waxworks. I can think of a lot of people I'd like to have in it.'
I looked slowly around at the assembled company. Yes, I could think of a lot of people for my own collection. I finished up with my eyes on the steel doors. Kermode had left them open. When he came back he would be sure to shut them, so that if I were bluffing I couldn't make a quick departure. I wanted to see how the doors were operated. I wondered just how fast and how accurate I could be with the compressed-air pistol. As far as I could remember from sessions with Miggs, this type of pistol usually grouped at under three-quarters of an inch at twenty-five feet. It ought to do the job I had in mind.
From outside, far down the gallery, I heard the sound of footsteps on the" marble. Kermode was returning.
I glanced at O'Dowda, and said, 'Remember, no bargaining. Five thousand plus my fees and expenses, and I'll need it in cash at the handover.'
He said nothing. His big head was lowered, bull-like, and he was watching me and the door behind me. I screwed round a little to keep the door in view. Just behind me a dowager-type with a little coronet perched on straw-coloured hair stared blankly towards the big wax figure of King O'Dowda on the raised dais.
Kermode came into view in the gallery, hugging my parcel to his chest. He came through the door, went to the right of it, raised his hand and pushed one of the two white knobs that were let into the wall — one for opening and one for shutting the door. He had pressed the one nearest the door. I would have to press the one farthest from the door to open it.
The doors slid across, and Kermode came up the room, past me and heading for O'Dowda. I knew the exact moment I wanted. It would be when Kermode handed the parcel over to O'Dowda for him to open and O'Dowda handed him the gun to keep me covered. I would have to shoot fast and move fast. I dropped my right hand low, just touching the inside of my left leg, feeling gently for the wide trouser turn-up so that I could get at the pistol.