Coming through the uncurtained window, helping herself from his well stuffed wallet.
Fennel was off the bed and had hit her before he was fully awake. His fist smashed into her face, snapping her head back and she went down, his money falling from her small hand, her eyes rolling back.
Fennel snarled at her, then began to collect the money. It was only when he had thrown on his clothes and had stuffed his wallet into his hip pocket that he realized something was wrong. He bent over the still body and a chill crawled up his spine. He lifted her head by her thick hair and grimaced as the head rolled horribly on the shoulders. His savage, violent blow had broken her neck.
He looked at his watch. He had two hours before he took off for London. He left the room, shutting the door and walked down the stairs to where an old Chinaman was seated at the desk to check clients in and out. He knew he would have to pay for his freedom.
“I’m leaving by junk in twenty minutes,” he lied. “The whore’s dead. What’s it going to cost?”
The yellow wrinkled face showed nothing: a parchment map of old age.
“One thousand dollars,” the old man said. “I have to call the police in an hour,”
Fennel showed his teeth in a savage snarl.
“Old man, I could wring your neck… that’s too much.”
The Chinaman lifted his shoulders.
“Then five hundred dollars and I call the police in half an hour.”
Fennel gave him the thousand dollars. He had been in Hong Kong long enough to know a bargain was a bargain. He had to have at least an hour to get clear and he had got clear.
Lying in his bed, watching the reflected light making patterns on the opposite wall, he remembered the girl. If she had been more responsive, he wouldn’t have hit her so hard. Well, he told himself without conviction, she had deserved what she had got.
The male prostitute he had been unlucky enough to run into in a dirty, evil smelling alley in Istanbul, also got what he deserved. Fennel had come off a ship to spend a few hours in the city before going on to Marseilles. He had brought three kilos of gold from India for a man who was paying welclass="underline" a fat, elderly Turk who wanted the gold as a bribe. Fennel had done the deal, collected the money and then found a girl to spend the night with. Thinking about her now, Fennel realized she had been smart. She had got him drunk and when the time came for them to share the hotel bed, he had been too drunk to bother with her. He had slept three hours, waking to find her gone, but at least she hadn’t been a thief. Livid with frustrated rage, and nearly sober, Fennel had started back to his ship. Here, in this sleazy alley, he had met a perfumed boy: handsome with liquid black eyes and a sly, insinuating smile, who had importuned him. Fennel had vented his rage on him, smashing his head against the wall, leaving a big red stain where the wall had been dirty white.
A woman, peering out of her window, had seen the act of brutal violence and had begun to scream. Fennel got back to his ship, but it was only when the ship sailed that he considered himself safe.
Fennel often lived with his ghosts. He kept telling himself that the dead had no part in his life, but they persisted in his mind. In moments like this, when he was sexually frustrated, and alone, his past violence kept on intruding.
This third murder haunted him more than the other two. He had been hired by a wealthy Egyptian to open a safe belonging to a merchant to whom the Egyptian had given bonds as security for a big loan. Fennel understood these bonds were forgeries and they could be discovered at any moment: the job was urgent.
He had got into the palatial house easily enough and had settled down in front of the safe to open it. The time was 02.45 hrs. and the household was asleep.
The safe was old-fashioned and Fennel had trouble in opening it. As he finally got the safe door open, his tools scattered around him, the door leading into the room where he was pushed open.
Fennel snapped off his torch, grabbed up a short steel bar with which he had been working and spun around.
A shadowy figure stood in the doorway, then the light went on.
A girl stood in front of Fennel in a nightdress and dressing- gown. She was small, dark with large black eyes and an olive complexion. She could not have been older than ten years of age — in fact she was nine. She stared at Fennel in terror and her mouth began to open to scream. He reached her in two swift strides and slammed the steel bar down on her head.
In that moment of panic, he had had no hesitation about killing her. The blow, as he well knew, was lethal. She had seen him, and if he had merely stunned her, she could have given the police a description of him.
He had snatched the bonds from the safe, bundled his tools together and had left. It was only when he got into his car that he saw blood on one of his hands and became fully aware of what he had done.
Those big, terrified dark eyes often appeared in his dreams. From the newspapers the following day, he learned the child was a deaf-mute. He had tried to convince himself that she was better dead, but when he was alone and in bed, the picture of the child in her nightdress and the look of terror on her face as she tried to scream pricked at what remained of his conscience.
He lay watching the red and blue light from the sign across the way, reflected on the ceiling until finally, he drifted off into an uneasy sleep.
Chapter Five
Max Kahlenberg always woke at 05.00 hrs. It was as if he had an alarm clock inside his head. During the seven hours in which he slept, he might have died. He had no dreams nor did he stir until he opened his eyes to watch the sun rise over the magnificent range of mountains that lay beyond the huge picture window opposite his bed.
The bed was enormous, set on a dais with a shell-shaped headboard done over in lemon-coloured silk. Within his reach was a set of push-buttons set in fumed oak. Each button controlled his method of rising. The red button opened and closed the lemon- coloured window drapes. The yellow button lowered the bed to the floor level so he could swing himself into his electrically propelled wheel chair. The blue button opened a hatch by his bedside through which his coffee tray came. The black button filled his bath automatically and at exactly the right temperature.
The green button operated the TV monitor at the end of his bed, putting him in direct contact with one of his secretaries.
Max Kahlenberg came awake and touched the red button. The window drapes swung open and he viewed the sky, seeing the scurrying clouds and he decided rain couldn’t be far off. He switched on the defused light concealed behind the headboard and thumbed the red button. He shifted himself higher in the bed as the hatch at his side slid up and a tray containing a silver coffee pot, a jug of milk, a container of sugar and a cup and saucer slid within his reach and the hatch closed.
Lying in the enormous bed, Max Kahlenberg looked like a handsome movie star. His head was completely shaved. He had wide set, blue-grey eyes, a well-shaped nose and a big, humourless mouth with a thin upper lip. He always slept naked, and as he hoisted himself up, he revealed a deeply tanned, magnificently developed torso.
He drank his coffee, lit a cigarette and then pressed the green button that connected him with one of his secretaries. The TV screen lit up and he saw Miah, an Indian girl, who did the early morning shift, reach for a pencil and pad. He regarded her with pleasure. He liked beautiful women, and made a point only of employing women who pleased his eyes. The girl, her thin dark face classically beautiful, her big eyes looking directly at him although she couldn’t see him, said, “Good morning, sir.”
Kahlenberg studied her, then said, “Good morning, Miah. Has the mail arrived?”