special.’

She kept me hanging on a string for at least thirty seconds. I started Humphrey Lyttleton in my head, doing ‘Bad Penny Blues’. Then she said, ‘OK, Charlie. I’d like that. We gonna grab a couple of hours first?’

I rolled on my back and slid an arm under her neck. It seemed to me that in a very few seconds she was snoring softly. I was probably smiling. I wondered where Tobin was – in a room somewhere near me, or in his flat. I hoped that he was smiling too.

I don’t know why it occurred to me then, but I realized that not only did I not owe him any money, but that he had a sizeable amount of mine from three years past. So at least I had some spending money, and didn’t have to rely on Watson. That probably made me smile even more. I slept.

When Pat picked me up I was sitting on the steps in the courtyard of Tony’s place smoking a pipe. A lot of my best memories are tagged by pipe smoke – you may have noticed that. After I’ve had a good time I sit down with a pipe, and seal it into my memory. He must have asked me what time I was due on duty, or checked independently, because I only had a half-shift commencing at 1300, and he delivered me on the nose.

As I checked into the office the female policeman who’d been on my flight was leaving. She was munching a Spam sandwich, and gave me a quick guilty look.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve been eating Spam for ten years too, and still can’t get enough. It’s crazy.’ She paused, as if undecided whether to reply, then gave me a cheeky little smile.

‘It’s the salt in it, I think . . . your body just demands it all the time.’ Then she was past me and gone. She had a nice low-pitched voice; I wondered who she’d dropped in to see.

De Whitt looked up and grimaced as I flapped my security pass at the goon on the door, and walked into our cool blue world.

‘We were looking for you earlier, Charlie. The Orthodoxies got into someone difficult and we thought you could help.’

‘Sorry, morning off.’

‘Granted, but if you know you’re going to be off base it would help if you could let us know. We panic these days when we can’t find someone.’ What I thought was going to be a bollocking had turned into a hint and a gentle reproof. He had been genuinely worried.

‘I was with Pat Tobin,’ I told him. ‘He was showing me the ropes.’

‘Try not to worry us too often. Leave a note on your desk, OK?’

‘OK, boss. Sorry.’ That time I meant it. I had been away from the action too long, and had forgotten some of the rules. If Watson found out I’d never hear the end of it. A small light started to flash above my booth – it meant that a scheduled listening watch had started: it wouldn’t be long before the Ibn Saud express was back on the rails. I smiled at de Whitt, and nodded to the light; it would go off as I switched my sets on. I told him, ‘They’re playing my tune.’

He nodded. Maybe both of us had learned something.

It was as I tuned the 108s that I remembered Stephanie. I probably grinned again. Then I remembered that Alison bunked at the same hotel between flights. There was no doubt about it: I was going to have some explaining to do. To somebody.

A few days later I sat at a table in David Yassine’s shaded garden with Alison. Playing mothers and fathers didn’t really suit us. We had his fine coffee in a tall brass pot. Alison played Ma, and poured it into exquisite porcelain cups – as fine as glass. Another stewardess in mufti sat on the raised edge of an ornamental fountain, trailing her fingers in the water. This water baby wore a silky thing like a sari, and the fabric flowed over the contours of her body. Her skin was as pale as milk, and her short hair as black as a shoe brush. A couple of bulbul birds piped musically in the small trees, although at the time I didn’t know what they were.

‘That’s Laika,’ Alison told me. ‘The men go mad for her. A man at every airport – literally. Blood will be spilt over her one day.’

‘Laika? What’s it mean?’

‘Her mother was Russian, so is her name. Ronnie – he’s the second pilot – says it would be a good name for a dog as long as it was a female. Only he doesn’t use that word.’

‘That’s rather unkind.’

‘Plain people can be rather unkind about beautiful ones – haven’t you noticed?’ At least she smiled. But there had been a tremor in her voice: something was up.

She looked away, stirred a heaped spoonful of coarse white sugar into her coffee, and had a sip. Then she gave a little secret smile, but I think that was for the coffee, not me. Out of the blue she said, ‘I was just turned sixteen when I first saw you, and from that moment I wanted to make love with you. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw your pinched, underfed little face.’

‘And I was twenty-three, and not long back from Europe.’ Then I lied. ‘If it helps, that was what came into my mind too. I wanted your clothes off.’

‘You told me there were rules about that sort of thing.’

‘There were, when you were sixteen. Now you’re old enough to make up your own rules.’

She shook her head and smiled ruefully.

I looked around the garden, taking my time. Anything other than look at the beautiful woman across the table from me. I had a very empty feeling in the

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