While the aircraft was still some distance away, I got to work with the knife, slipping it between the gap in the sash window and jiggling it until the tip pressed against the latch. I then waited until the plane was almost overhead before I exerted any pressure.
I pushed, gradually increasing the weight behind the hilt, until the spring-loaded mechanism gave.
I hoped that the click had been muffled by the sound of the airliner's four turbofans as they powered it up towards cruise altitude.
When the sound of the plane built to a crescendo, I raised the lower window. As soon as I'd got eighteen inches of clearance I slid part-way across the sill so that my upper body was balanced on the tiled work surface the other side.
Half in, half out, I moved quickly to clear a space. Just to my right were a sink and a draining board with some pots and pans on it. There was some kind of tea urn on my left, which I eased out of the way. Then, with the sound of the plane's engines still crackling in the distance, I swung my legs across the sill and dropped onto the floor of Mansour's kitchen.
89
I stayed perfectly still, letting the aircraft vanish over the Med, until all I could hear was the ticking of the battery-powered wall-clock and the soft hum of the fridge.
The white walls and ceiling picked up the little available light from outside. As my eyes adjusted, I was able to make out the more obvious details of the room. It was large, about six metres by ten, and entirely functional. Apart from the fridge, there was a cooker, a small table and some wall-mounted cupboards. The air was tinged with the smell of drains, grease and stale cooking. A handful of cockroaches scurried across the floor.
I edged towards the door, grasped the handle and twisted. Through the gap, I saw a passage leading into a large, open hall. Beyond it was the front door, flanked on either side by a tall strip of window. There was no carpet. Good; no pressure-pad. I knelt and touched the floor. It was tiled. Good; it wouldn't creak.
I stepped through. I made out tables with large objects sitting on them, and a series of less distinct shapes low down where the floor met the wall. I bent and touched one of them. It was a stone pillar around a metre high.
To my left, door open, was the sitting room. The dining room was on my right.
I was soon facing a wide, sweeping staircase. As my eyes adjusted to the ambient light I could see it split at mezzanine level – one half going right, the other left. I knelt and let my hand brush the bottom step. Tiled again.
I moved to the sitting-room door. No LEDs blinked on the walls or in the corners.
I moved inside. A large flatscreen TV was mounted on the opposite wall. And between the two windows was another stone pillar, several feet taller than the ones I'd just seen in the hallway. On top of it I could make out a life-sized bust. It was eerie in the half-light – like somebody was watching my every move.
As I turned back towards the hall I caught a glint from a table next to one of the large armchairs. I moved closer. A bottle. And next to it a tall glass. I gave it a sniff. Scotch. More good news: the target would be sleeping a little heavier tonight.
I crept up to the front entrance and ran my fingers down the crack between the jamb and the edge of the door. There was a chain, which I removed, and two bolts, top and bottom, which I undid. If everything went to rat shit, I now had a choice of exits.
90
I climbed the stairs slowly, following the right-hand sweep. A couple of steps below the top, I stopped.
I had heard a mumble. I stopped breathing, moving.
The background noise was still there – but what I had heard had come from inside the house.
Light streamed in through a window at the top of the stairs – starlight topped up by the thin sickle of the new moon: enough to reveal another window at the end of the long corridor and the two doors leading off the top of the stairs, left and right.
I moved into the shadows by the wall and listened, the fingers of my right hand wrapped hard around the knife.
I heard it again: the rasp of a whispered order. It had been close, but wasn't getting closer. I had to go forward and find out, or we'd be standing off all night.
When I reached the top of the stairs I allowed myself to start breathing again. Through a crack in the door to my left – the door that opened onto Mansour's bedroom – I could see the flicker of a TV.
I knelt and let my hand brush the floor. It wasn't stone or marble, but at least it was parquet; better than floorboards.
I straightened and took stock. Mansour's bedroom door was to my left, a couple of metres from the top of the stairs.
The sound of his laboured breathing punctuated the waffle on the TV. Whatever he'd been watching, it was in English, because I could make out the odd word.
I stepped out onto the parquet and put my ear to the crack between the door and the frame. Mansour's breathing hadn't altered. I eased the door open. It swung soundlessly on its hinges.
Mansour's bed was against the wall to my left. Directly ahead of it, to my right, was a built-in wardrobe. One door was open to expose the screen of the TV. Mansour had been watching some eighties American cop
