mouth with his. The girl's back was arched, and she rolled her head violently from side to side trying to avoid his mouth. He was laughing, his mouth wide open, flicking his tongue out at her, trying to force it into her mouth.
With his right hand he had hoisted the tiny skirt up to her waist, and his hairy fingers, stained with motor-cycle grease, were hooked into the waistband of her lace panties. The girl was striking and clawing at him with her free hand, but he hunched his shoulders so that she could not reach his face with her nails, and her blows fell on studded black leather and on thick shoulders padded with muscle and fat. The 11 Angel's laughter was thick and guttural, and the lace of her panties tore with a sharp crackling sound as he forced them over her hips and down the smooth tanned thighs.
The watcher stepped forward and touched the Angel's shoulder, and the man froze and twisted his head round. His eyes were glazed, but they cleared instantly and he flung the girl sideways so viciously that she sprawled on the torn muddy grass between the trucks. The Angel reached for the club in his belt.
The watcher reached out and touched him again, under the ear, just below the rim of his steel helmet. He pressed with two fingers, and the Angel froze and stiffened; all his limbs went rigid, and he made a glottal cawing sound deep in his throat, his entire body convulsed and he collapsed in a heap and, like an epileptic, lay twitching and jerking spasmodically. The girl was on her knees, pulling up her torn underclothes, and watching in fascinated horror. The watcher stepped over the sprawling Angel and lifted the girl to her feet without apparent effort.
'Come,' he said softly. 'Before his friends arrive.' Swiftly he led her away by the hand, and she followed as trustingly as a child.
Beyond the parked trucks was a maze of narrow pathways through the rhododendron bushes. As they ran down one of these paths, she asked breathlessly: 'Did you kill him?' 'No.' He did not even glance round. 'He'll be on his feet again in less than five minutes.' ' 'You flattened him. How did you do that? You hardly touched him.' He did not answer, but round the next bend in the path he stopped and turned back to face her.
'Are you all right?' he asked, and she nodded jerkily without speaking.
He studied her, still holding her hand. He knew she was twenty-four years old, a young woman who had just experienced a violent attempted rape, but the gaze of her dark blue eyes was level and appraising. There were no tears, no hysterics, not even a tremor of those pink lips, and the hand in his was slim and firm and warm.
The psychiatrist's report on her which he had studied had been correct in at least this much: she was resilient and self- assured; already she was almost fully recovered from the attack. Then he saw the colour mount softly in her cheeks and at the base of her long elegant throat, and her breath quickened perceptibly. She was experiencing another strong emotion.
'What's your name?' she asked, her eyes fastened on his with an intensity which he recognized. Women, on first encounter, usually looked at him like that.
'Ramsey,' he replied.
'Ramsey,' she repeated softly, relishing the sound of it. God, he was beautiful. 'Ramsey who?' 'You won't believe it if I tell you.' His English was perfect, too perfect.
He must be foreign, but the voice matched his face, beautiful, deep and grave.
'Try me,' she invited, and heard the catch in her own voice.
'Ramsey de Santiago y Machado.' He made it sound like music; it was impossibly romantic. It was the most beautiful name she had ever heard, perfect for that face and voice.
'We must go,' he said, while she still stared at him.
'I can't run,' she said. 'Don't make me run.' 'If you don't, you might end up as a mascot on the handlebars of a motor-cycle.' She laughed, and then bit her lower lip to stop herself.
'Don't do that,' she protested. 'Don't make me laugh. I need a loo. My condition is critical.' 'Ah, so that's where you were headed when Prince Charming fell in love with you.' 'I warned you, don't do that.' With an effort she smothered her giggle, and he took pity on her.
'There is a public loo at the gate to the park. Can you make it that far?' 'I don't know.' 'The alternative is the rhododendrons.'
'No, thanks. No more public performances today.' 'Let's go, then.' He took her arm.
They skirted the Serpentine, and Ramsey glanced back. 'Your boyfriend's ardour must have cooled,' he said. 'No sign of him. What a fickle fellow.' 'Pity. I'd love to watch you do that trick of yours again. How much further is it?' 'Here it is.' They had reached the gate, and she dropped his arm and started for the small red-brick building that nestled discreetly in the shrubbery beside the path; but at the door she hesitated.
'My name is Isabella, Isabella Courtney, but my friends call me Bella,' she said over her shoulder, and darted through the doorway.
'Yes,' he murmured softly, 'I know.' Even while she was in the cubicle she could hear the music, barely muted by the distance and the brick walls, and then the clatter of a helicopter passing low over the roof, but it was unimportant. She was thinking about Ramsey.
At the washbasins she studied herself in the mirror. Her hair was a mess; she tidied it quickly. Ramsey's hair was thick and dark and wavy. He wore it long, but not too long. She wiped off her pale pink lipstick on a Kleenex and then repainted her mouth. Ramsey's mouth was full but masculine, soft but strong; she wondered how it would taste.
She dropped the lipstick back into her bag and leant close to the mirror to appraise her own eyes. They didn't need drops. The whites were so clear they had a bluish sheen, like those of a healthy baby. She knew her eyes were her best feature, that Courtney blue, something between cornflower and sapphire. Ramsey's eyes were green. They were the first thing that had struck her about him. That clear startling green, beautiful but - she searched for the adjective - beautiful but deadly. That was it exactly. She didn't need the demonstration that had felled the Hell's Angel. One look at those eyes and she had known he was a dangerous man. She felt the back of her neck prickle with a delicious thrill of fear and of anticipation. Perhaps this was the one, at last. Beside his image all the others seemed to pale and fade.
Perhaps this was the one she had searched for so long.
'Ramsey de Santiago y Machado.' She said it in a throaty purr, savouring the taste of it in her mouth, watching her own lips form the words. Then she straightened up and turned to the doorway. She prevented herself from hurrying. Slowly, languidly, on the tall stiletto heels that made her hips roll as she walked and her bottom swing like a metronome, lace flashing under the abbreviated skirt, she went to the door.
She pouted slightly and let her long thick eyelashes droop over the blue as she stepped out into the slanting golden sunlight and she stopped dead.
He was gone. She caught her breath and felt the cold quick slide of her stomach as though she had swallowed a stone. She looked around her in disbelief 'Ramsey,' she said uncertainly, and ran into the pathway. There were hundreds of others coming down the tarmac path towards her, the first escapees from the concert trying to avoid the human avalanche that would soon follow, but none of them was the elegant figure she sought.
'Ramsey,' she said, and hurried to the park gates. The traffic boomed down the Bayswater Road, and she looked frantically right and left. She was overcome with a sense of disbelief. He had gone and left her. It was beyond her experience. She had shown him that she wanted him - she couldn't possibly have made it plainer - and he had walked away.
Her next emotion was outrage. Nobody did that to Isabella Courtney, not ever. She felt slighted and insulted and very angry.
'Damn him,' she said. 'Damn the man.' Her anger lasted only seconds, and then it slumped. She felt lost and bereft. It was an alien sensation for her.
'He can't just leave like that,' she said aloud, and recognized in her own voice the self-pitying whine of a spoilt child, so she said it again differently, trying to recapture her anger, but it was unconvincing.
Behind her, she heard a shout of raucous laughter and she glanced back. A bunch of Hell's Angels was swaggering down the pathway, still a hundred yards away but coming directly towards her. She couldn't remain here.
The concert was over, the crowds were breaking up. The helicopter she had heard must have come in to pick up Jagger and his Rolling Stones. There was little chance of her rejoining her friends now; they would be lost in the multitude. She looked around her just once more, swiftly but despairingly.
Still no sign of that dark wavy head of hair. She tossed her own head and lifted her chin.
'Who needs him anyway, damned dago? she muttered furiously, and struck out down the pavement.
Behind her there was a chorus of whistles and catcalls, and someone, one of the Angels, began calling the step for her. 'Left, right, left - shake, rattle and roll.' She knew that, her high heels were making her bottom waggle furiously. She hopped on one foot and then the other as she pulled off her shoes and then fled barefoot down the pavement. She had left her car at the embassy car park in the Strand, so she had to take the Tube from Lancaster Gate station to reach it.
Her car was a brand-new Mini-Cooper, the very latest 1969 model. Daddy had given it to her for her birthday, and had had it customized for her by the same body shop that had done Antony Armstrong-Jones's Mini. They had souped up its engine, upholstered it in white Connolly
