They pushed open the gate and walked round the car, pausing at the steps up to the verandah. ‘George!’ Ryderbeit shouted. There was no answer. He bounded up the steps and unlatched the verandah door. ‘George?’ he called again, quietly this time; then crossed to the main door and turned the handle. It opened. He and Murray stepped together into a wide dark room. ‘Does he always leave his place open like this?’ Murray whispered.
‘He did tonight,’ Ryderbeit said, snapping his lighter to a paraffin lamp on a side-table. He seemed to know his way around.
The room looked comfortable and expensive: open-plan chinoiserie, in teak and bamboo, with glass-topped coffee tables, rough silk sofas, handwoven wall-screens. Ryderbeit moved quickly across the rush-matting and threw open an inside door. There was a passage beyond with doors leading off on both sides. One was half-open. Murray had a glimpse of a bathroom as Ryderbeit put his head round the door and came out again, holding the lamp above his head. He nodded at a second door which was closed. ‘Try that.’
The knob was of solid cut-glass and would not turn. Murray leaned against it and it slipped open on a ball-catch. The room was much smaller and hotter than the last. For several moments the two of them stood under the lamplight in silence. Then Murray murmured, ‘Good grief,’ and took a step forward.
A green filing cabinet, reaching almost to the ceiling, had been emptied, drawer by drawer, its locks wrenched open, the steel split and buckled, the floor heaped several inches deep with papers, folders, bound documents, great coils of telex tape like unrolled toilet paper. A desk lamp had been dashed to the floor, typewriter turned upside down, the desk itself cleared of everything, its drawers smashed open and spilled, the telephone ripped from the wall and lying tumbled among a stack of reference books. The one object that seemed to have escaped all damage was the telex machine in the far corner.
Murray stepped over the mounds of paper and peered down at the keyboard. The machine was dead, with the current cut off; but the last incoming message had arrived complete, timed 1750 HRS. In the wavering light from Ryderbeit’s lamp Murray read: FINLAYSON *** LAOFARC *** INSTRUCT * CONFIRMATION * MORNING * FULL * INVENTORY * RE * LAZYDOG *** ENDS * BANG-FARC. He frowned, checking back along the spool for the last outgoing message. It was timed nearly three hours earlier — a routine bulletin on the dollar-kip par when the Banque du Laos closed that afternoon.
Ryderbeit, who had been reading it beside him, suddenly turned and reached the passage in a couple of leaping strides, stopping at the door opposite, next to the bathroom. It was shut. He kicked it open and went in at a run with the lamp swinging wild shadows round the big silent room. It was very calm and ordered after the shambles across the passage. A lightweight grey suit was folded over the back of a chair, along with a freshly laundered white shirt. Underneath was a pair of big black shoes with a flower-pattern punched into the toecaps.
The bed was set against the far wall — an enormous double bed under a high tent of mosquito-netting. The windows were closed, and with the air-conditioning cut off the room had a hot clammy smell. But there was something else too — something Murray was conscious of at once, but unable to identify. Something about that smell: something rancid, human.
Ryderbeit had stepped up to the bed, drawn back the muslin drapes, and stood looking down. Finlayson lay on his stomach, his face pressed into a blue-striped pillow. He was dressed in white pyjamas and his arms were drawn up at his sides, the fingers sunk deep into the matching blue-stripped sheets which were soaked brown under his head and throat. Ryderbeit leant down and tugged at one of the shoulders. It stirred only slightly, as though very heavy. He tugged again, harder this time, and still the body scarcely moved. He stepped back, frowning, and felt one of the big grey feet sticking out from under the kimono. It was cold, but not yet stiff.
Murray had come closer, noticing now a very small dark hole in the centre of Finlayson’s neck, just below the hairline. His first thought was that it was a bullet hole — small calibre, possibly a .22, fired point-blank while Finlayson lay asleep. That would account for the bleeding under the throat. Then he noticed that there was no trace of scorching and the hairs at the back of his neck were quite unsinged. A heavier calibre, he wondered, fired from a few feet and throwing Finlayson face down on the bed?
Ryderbeit had grabbed the shoulder again and wrenched it back, and this time the body rolled over with a nasty tearing sound that made Murray shudder. Ryderbeit appeared unmoved. The eyes on the bed were glazed slits, the face turned mauve with the texture of greaseproof paper. He had bled heavily through the nose and mouth, and his moustache had sopped the blood up like a sponge, still tacky and glistening. In the centre of his throat was a sharp point about an inch long which had torn a slit in the sheet when Ryderbeit pulled it free. The body now lolled on its side, its teeth showing through the clotted gap between the lips. Ryderbeit held the body only a moment, then let it roll back on to its belly. ‘Holy Moses,’ he murmured: ‘Six-inch nail, straight through the neck into the mattress. Severed the spinal cord and probably touched the windpipe. Nice oriental touch, eh?’
Murray shook his head. ‘Biblical. Jael and Sisera — your Old Testament, Sammy. You ought to know that.’
Ryderbeit straightened up and stood with his head tilted to one side. ‘I
