Die Rich Die Happy

told you about that. I know I should. I keep having these nightmares.'

'Tell us about them,' Sir Matthew said.

'I keep dreaming I'm in a room—like a big gym or something. You're there in your fancy dress costume, and so is Pia Busoni. And there are other people too. Harry, and an Arab girl who looks like a queen or something. And there's another man there, a big man. You had to fight him. He was a friend of Harry's, but Harry didn't like me to see him. He kept me out of the way. Except this one time.'

'And what happened? In the dream I mean.'

'I don't know. I couldn't look,' said Flip.

'I know,' Craig said. 'I won. I'm here, aren't I?'

'Hey,' said Flip. 'Hey that's right. Oh, I feel awful.' Tears brimmed at the corners of her eyes.

'Here now,' Craig said. 'You had a dream, remember?'

'It was a dream, wasn't it?' said Flip. 'Harry wouldn't—'

'I know the big man you mean,' said Craig. 'Can you see me beating him outside a dream?'

'You are still prevaricating,' said Sir Matthew.

'I told Harry you gave me some heroin,' she said.

'Why did you do that?'

'I wanted you to go away. No. I mean you had to go away. You were getting to be dangerous.' 'To Harry?'

'To both of us. It was better to get rid of you,

John.'

'Why be sorry about it? You did what you had to do. No hard feelings,' said Craig. Behind her he could see Sir Matthew's hand move very slightly toward the door. He finished his drink.

'I'll have to go now,' he said. 'I'd like to come and see you again soon, if you'll let me.'

Flip said: 'Casting directors, bit players, agents, any jerk who can say, 'Kid . . . with a shape like yours I'll get you a part tomorrow.' That's the kind I draw. Them and Harry. Not you, John.'

'That's enough amusement,' said Sir Matthew. 'You're beginning to enjoy yourself again. But Mr. Craig has to go and we have work to do.'

'Yes, of course,' Philippa said. 'One never has a minute, does one?' She offered her cheek for him to kiss, and he left.

In the corridor outside, Naxos was waiting. Craig nodded to him, and kept on walking.

'Hey,' Naxos said. 'I want to talk to you.' Craig turned. 'What did she say to you?'

'She said hello,' reported Craig. 'Then she said some other things. Then she said good-bye.'

'Look, Craig,' Naxos said. 'Don't make jokes with

me.'

'I don't think you're funny,' Craig said. 'Cheap, cowardly, treacherous, nasty, lying—yes, but not funny, Harry. You never made me laugh. Not even in Dyton-Blease's gym.'

'It was for Flip,' Naxos said. 'I had to protect Flip.' 'The record's old,' said Craig. 'It's starting to scratch.'

'Believe me,' said Naxos. 'I had to. She's all I got. And when I thought you were giving her that stuff, I wanted to shoot you myself. Only that was too easy. So I gave you to Dyton-Blease. I couldn't help myself. It was my wife you were doing this to. My wife.'

'Didn't they offer you more money?'

'All right,' he said. 'All right. But I wasn't going to take it—not until they faked that stuff about heroin.'

Craig looked at him. Naxos's eyes were just for seeing. They told him nothing.

'What happens now?' he asked.

'1 got it all straightened out. I'll sign with your government.'

'And Selina's father?'

'Him too,' said Naxos. 'If he goes independent I'll finance him—and trade with Britain anyway. I'm all straightened out now. So what did Flip say about me?'

'She had a nightmare about a big man who tried to kill me, only I got away. I told her not to worry. Everybody has nightmares.'

'I'm grateful to you, John, believe that,' Naxos said.

'Don't be,' said Craig. 'For you I did nothing.'

He turned and walked away. When he got back to the flat in Regent's Park, he found a note from Pia. Grierson had taken her to a first night.

# * »

Lady Swyven had gone there too. She was very fond of the theater, which she regarded as a convenient center for the display of her jewelry and furs. The plays themselves she usually despised, but enjoyed. It was always hugely amusing to see poor people being jealous of rich people in a messy, unconstructive sort of way, and that was what the current school of dramatists seemed to insist on writing about. Lord Swyven, who was deaf but good-natured, accompanied her on these forays into social realism, and made his deafness the excuse for staying in the bar. Lady Swyven didn't mind; he was available for arrival and departure and perhaps for supper later. To have him out of the way was a positive gain really. Lord Swyven was a fidget on the heroic scale.

That night the piece she had chosen was set in a flat in Notting Hill. Lady Swyven looked expectant, and opened her box of chocolates in high hopes. In front of her a dramatically handsome man was talking in Italian to a really gorgeous, but rather too full-blown young woman, who wore quite the most shattering chinchilla coat Lady Swyven had ever seen, as well as a diamond necklace and earrings that positively shrieked Cartier. Lady Swyven wished she had worn something more exciting than her pearls and that ridiculously demode sable. Then the curtain rose on a quite delicious squalor, and Lady Swyven forgot all about them.

During each act interval she followed the two gorgeous ones to the bar, and drank gin and tonic with her husband, and half heard their lazy flow of chatter about Rico and Sofia and Booboo and Nono, and wondered if a wealthy Italian had ever actually done anything—though the man looked more English than anything. Then her husband began to look as if the Italian words were reaching him (why do all foreigners have such loud voices?) and if he did it wouldn't be long before he began to think of their son Mark. Lady Swyven, who had been married for thirty-seven years and loved her husband deeply, couldn't bear it when he talked about Mark. She touched his arm, and he looked at once at her mouth. Shaping her words very carefully, she said: 'Jack, dear, couldn't we move back from the crowd a little?'

As she spoke, the full-blown beauty bumped into her, muttered 'Scusi' without looking round, and went on talking. Jack at once cleared a path for his wife, but once again she was bumped into by a chubby, twinkling sort of man, who pushed into her really rather rudely, knocked her bag from her arm, then bent at once to pick it up, hand it back, say 'Awfully sorry,' and disappear into the crowd.

'Bloody rugger scrum,' Jack said. 'Can't understand what you see in it.'

But it really was rather fun, particularly at the end, when everybody clapped very loud, as if to apologize for not enjoying it, and all the rapists and tarts and perverts lined up, smiling their fresh and wholesome smiles, and one could try to remember which of them one had seen on the television commercials. And then, alas, it was time to go, and one waited one's turn of course, not like the awful Italians who charged out pushing and shoving (could Mark really be happy in Venice?). One followed at one's leisure, because dear Jack, always reliable, would be certain to have the car ready, and one was aware of the Italians kicking up a most tremendous fuss. And then it happened. A simply impossible thing. Quite impossible. But it happened.

She reached the end of the seats, and was about to turn left towards the bar, when a man somehow appeared beside her, and in some way she could never explain, eased her out of the crowd, and into an alcove.

'I should like a word with you, madam,' he said.

Lady Swyven had been a beauty in her day, and was used to elderly gallants who remembered her from the past, and bored her in the present, but she knew at once that this man wasn't one of them. He was thirty years too young, and his words were all wrong.

'My name is Linton, Detective Chief Inspector Linton,' the man said. 'Here is my warrant card.' He showed her a card covered in Perspex, but her heart was jumping so the words refused to focus. 'I think we'd better just step into the manager's office,' said Linton, and again she found herself somehow persuaded away, this time into a room that was mostly a safe and photographs, and a desk and chair, and the two Italians gabbling more rapidly than