A fat fly lobbed about on the ceiling, then whined away under the blinds. Twice the air shuddered with the shockwaves of plastic bombs set off in Arab shops in the European quarter.
He was low in spirits. He did not have the bloody-minded resilience of a Tom Mallory who in similar circumstances would have got steadily drunk and profited from the intrigue and danger. In Greece, Neil had fancied himself as an adventurer, a man of action; but now that it was happening to him, he found he was not enjoying it. He had drunk a number of Pernods downstairs, but they had only depressed him more, and made him randy into the bargain. He thought longingly of Caroline, wanting to talk to her, touch her, fold her between clean sheets: smooth flat belly and breasts like lemons, pinching her soft buttocks to make her squeak.
At noon he had booked a call to her London office, person to person. If the lines to Paris were not too busy he might get through before one of the executives took her out to lunch, to Prunier’s or Simpson’s in the Strand.
To avoid thinking about her he began planning a colour piece for Sunday morning’s paper. The deadline was tomorrow evening. He knew he could not safely describe his meeting with Le Hir without risking a deportation order, even the closing of the paper’s Paris Bureau; and to write about Pol (‘France’s answer to James Bond’) would invite sure recriminations from the Secret Army. He would have to content himself, and about half-a-million of the better educated of Britain’s Sunday newspaper readers, with a bill of fare consisting of pretty girls, bombs, bright cafés and men kicked to death in broad daylight. Like Nice in a nightmare.
The telephone was ringing by the bed. It was not Caroline, but Anne-Marie: ‘Monsieur Ingleby! Ça va bien?’ There was a lot of shouting and laughter in the background. She sounded excited and rather tight: ‘Have you had lunch yet? We’re eating at a restaurant called Le Berry — corner of the Rue de la Liberté. It’s only a few minutes from your hotel. Come and join us! I’ve got some friends who want to meet you.’
The militant determination of this morning had gone: now she was just another good-time girl like Caroline, enjoying herself in a restaurant. Neil said, ‘I’m waiting for a call to London.’
She sounded disappointed: ‘Can’t you take it later?’
He looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock, time for Caroline’s lunch hour. He said, ‘I’ll be with you in about a quarter of an hour. Can I bring my Dutch friend?’
‘Certainly! And you call the fat man at two o’clock from the restaurant. Then we go down to the Casino de la Plage. It’s very chic, you’ll like it!’ The voices and laughter swelled suddenly and she shouted, ‘À bientôt!’ and the line clicked.
Down in the bar the Press Corps were still buying one another rounds of drinks on their expense accounts and telling anecdotes about the Congo. In the corner Tom Mallory slept in an armchair, snoring with a noise like a bath running out. Van Loon was sitting alone over a chilled Alsace beer, looking bored.
Neil said, ‘Pieter, we’ve been asked to lunch by Anne-Marie and her friend.’ He tried to sound flippant: ‘So no horseplay! There’s a lot of Corsican blood round here.’
Van Loon nodded wisely: ‘I don’t fool around, old fellow. These girls here are pretty hot, I think? I know what to do.’
Neil ordered another Pernod, waiting a few more minutes for his call to London. He wondered if lunch would be on the Secret Army. St. Leger came over and said gravely, ‘I suppose you’ve heard that the airport’s staying closed? Have you registered at the British Consulate? I should do that as soon as possible.’
‘And what sort of protection will they provide?’ said Neil wryly. ‘Are they armed?’
St. Leger looked offended: ‘I don’t know. But they’ll have the support of the British Government, if anything happens to you.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Neil. It was a quarter past one and his call to London had still not come through. He decided to cancel it. Van Loon and he were just leaving when they heard the shots. They seemed to come from just outside the hotel. The bar emptied as the whole Press Corps stampeded into the foyer.
An old Moslem who sold cigarettes at the hotel entrance was dead. He lay sprawled under the palms with his tray of French and American brands scattered round him near the base of the fountain. Neil had bought a packet of Chesterfields from him only that morning. Blood was oozing out of his head into the flinty gravel, and his hands were flung out beside him, thin as chicken claws. He had a wooden leg.
The journalists stepped gingerly round him. The receptionist with the yellow moustache pointed up the street. ‘They shot him from a car,’ he said casually, ‘just two shots, straight in the head.’ St. Leger looked away from the body, pulling a face of disgust: ‘Poor devil! It was bound to happen — I told him several times to keep away from here and stay in the Casbah.’
Mallory had stumbled up, roused from his sleep more by instinct than the actual sound of the shooting: ‘What’s happened? Killed a man with a wooden leg, have they? Sods! I could have killed him with a tennis racket.’
Van Loon tugged at Neil’s arm. ‘Come on, nothing to do here. We go for lunch with Anne-Marie.’
‘I don’t think I want to have lunch with
