Ted —I sent Ted over, David.'
Babes and innocents! And now she was blaming herself —
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and quite rightly. Except that Henry Jaggard and Jack Butler had even more to answer for between them. 'Uh- huh?' That was all he could say.
'It happened very quickly.'
When it happened, it always happened very quickly.
'Ted reached his table. It was three tables away from where we were sitting. Kulik looked up at him.' She stared through him. It wasn't happening quickly now: it was happening frame-by-frame on slow advance, and she couldn't stop looking at it. 'I think Ted said something.'
'And the Arab?'
'He was by the steps.' She continued to stare. 'He'd got up. At least ... he must have got up ... when Ted Sinclair got up.'
She hadn't been watching the Arab: it had been a routine pick-up, and Arabs hadn't featured in it. But now he was in the frame at last. And by then it had been too late.
'I saw the gun then.' She focused on him suddenly. 'He'd had it behind his newspaper as he walked — he was holding the paper across his chest when I first saw him by the steps.' She frowned at him. 'Then ... he simply pointed it.'
'What sort of gun?'
'What sort of gun?' She blinked at him.
'7.65 Browning — North Korean copy. Short silencer.'
Mitchell murmured the information. 'A pro's gun, David.'
'Yes?' Mitchell knew about guns. But to know so much about dummy1
this one he must have been in contact with the Berlin security police on his own account. Or perhaps, in giving him his minder's job, Butler had obliged him helpfully. 'Go on, Miss Loftus . . . You saw the gun — ?'
'Yes.' She drew another deep breath. 'As I saw it ... he dropped the paper and held the gun two-handed. And he shot Ted Sinclair with it first, David.'
So that was why they were all so worried for him. 'And then he shot Kulik?'
'Yes—'
'No!' Mitchell had moved out of reach. 'You're not telling it how it was now, Lizzie, damn it!'
'Mitchell —' Audley began angrily ' — for God's sake!'
'No! He's right, David.' Elizabeth shook her head, blinking again. 'I saw the gun . . . and I don't know ... I knew it was already too late, then . . . But there was this bottle on the table, the waiter had just brought — ' After the hesitations the words suddenly tumbled out ' — so I picked it up and threw it at him, David. At the Arab, I mean.'
'That's more like it.' Mitchell nodded. 'And she bloody hit him too, by God, what's more: that's the way it was! She's not an ex-games mistress for nothing, by golly —cricket as well as hockey was it, Lizzie?'
Audley held up his hand quickly before Elizabeth exploded.
'All right! You threw the bottle, Elizabeth —'
Elizabeth breathed out. 'Yes.'
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'And it hit him.' He kept his hand in Mitchell's view.
'Not really.' Her anger didn't subside, but she controlled it. 'I don't know — I'm not really sure. Because . . . everything was happening at once. And there were tables in between, with people, David. They started to scatter and scream when I threw the bottle, before they knew what was happening.'
'And Kulik — ?'
'He was trying to duck under the table, I think.' Her lips tightened. The Arab shot him in the back — I saw him recover, and then aim again, slightly downwards . . . He — it was as though he shrugged the bottle off, and steadied himself again before he fired.' She gave Audley a single decisive nod. 'But I couldn't see Kulik by then, not properly.
And that was when the German police marksman on the roof also fired — I heard the thump of the Arab's first shot, but not the second one: I only heard the rifle-shot. And it knocked the Arab down the steps —I wasn't even sure that he had fired, that second time —not right then.'
'No, of course.' It wasn't simply the bitter cocktail of professional misjudgement and personal guilt that was bugging her now: it was the imprecision of her own eyewitness recollections, which her training and her honesty were both requiring her to admit as he forced her to drain the cup — and in front of Paul Mitchell, too, of all people.
And Mitchell was just about to open his big mouth again, too
—
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'So what happened then?' The very last thing she wanted would be sympathy and understanding from Mitchell.
'I went to Kulik.'
Good girl! If there had been two compressed seconds of consternation after she had hurled a full bottle of wine across a peaceful Berlin restaurant, it would have been nothing compared with the chaos after that rifle-shot. There would have been just one milli-second of silence, in which the meaning of the sound registered. And then it would
