The pocket with the gun now gaped open, and Murray reached quickly down and lifted out a .22 Beretta, loaded with six rounds. A handy little gun at short-range. He wondered why it hadn’t been used on Finlayson.
Pol stirred and opened one weeping eye. ‘Get me some water, Murray.’ His voice was a whisper.
Murray had put the gun in his own pocket and went through to a pink-tiled bathroom, noticing the rows of toilet waters, perfumes, powders, pills and medicine bottles — smiling at the thought of Pol being vain. He broke open one of the hygiene-sealed tooth-glasses and filled it from the ice-water tap. When he got back, Pol had crawled on to one knee, his kiss curl splayed out on his brow like a wet spider. Murray put a hand under his arm and hauled him painfully to his feet, most of his weight resting on one leg. ‘Ah Murray — are you mad? What did you do it for?’
‘The gun,’ said Murray; but Pol shook his head with a sad grin. ‘I was going to show you the bomb — not the gun.’ He put his hand into his trouser pocket and handed Murray a small key. ‘The bottom right-hand drawer of the desk,’ he said.
Murray took it and went to the desk. Inside the drawer lay a long cardboard carton with the stamp of Hine Cognac VSOP, one side of which had been slit open and folded back. Very carefully he lifted the cardboard flap and peered inside. There was no bottle — just a slab of rough greyish substance, not unlike a long slice of pâté. There were two small holes in the side of it, and two metal plugs, each attached to an insulated wire, hanging loose from where they had been pulled out of the explosive. The electrical detonating device was concealed at the top, its weight counterbalanced by a battery fixed to the floor of the carton.
While he was examining it, Pol had dragged himself out on to the balcony where he now sat slumped in a cane chair, gently massaging his thigh. He nodded at the ice-bucket. ‘I could do with a glass of champagne. Can you open it?’
‘I owe you an apology,’ Murray said, peeling the foil off the cork. ‘I was being over-suspicious.’
Pol waved a hand. ‘We all make mistakes, my dear Murray. But what a beautiful spectacle we must have made!’
Murray eased the cork out and shot it over the edge, turning to hose champagne into the two glasses. The air stirred with a warm breeze. They were very high, with the city spread out below in a dirty yellow glare under the monsoon sky. Pol struggled out of his chair and took his glass. ‘I’m out of training for these gymnastics — getting too old perhaps. And you’re getting too nervous.’
Murray sat down in the chair opposite and looked steadily across at him. ‘Perhaps I’ve got reason to be nervous?’
Pol was staring out at the far-off storm clouds rising across the wide grey-green, canal-webbed horizon. ‘You saw the bomb?’ he asked suddenly. ‘A fantastic job, hein? And what a bang it would have made! It would have been heard all over Bangkok.’
‘It wasn’t just the bomb,’ said Murray. ‘There’s also Finlayson. You know he was killed in his sleep with a ten-centimetre nail?’
‘Et alors?’ Pol’s face was rosy with innocence.
‘You told me downstairs in the baths, although there was no mention of it in any of the papers. And yet you knew?’
Pol was suddenly shaking with laughter. ‘Oh my dear Murray, is that why you attacked me? Ah mon Dieu, quelle blague!’ He groped for his handkerchief, dabbing at his eyes and forehead, while Murray stared at him, beginning to feel uncomfortable. ‘You don’t think the newspapers are the only means of finding out how a colleague is murdered, do you?’
Murray took a sip of champagne and said nothing. ‘It was a most regrettable incident,’ Pol went on. ‘But like the bomb this morning, it was a professional job — though in rather a different class.’
‘And you still have no idea who did it?’
‘Oh, I have several ideas. Not everyone loves me in this part of the world, I assure you. Politics are one of the easiest ways of making enemies.’
‘Politics?’
The Frenchman gave an impish grin. ‘Yes, my dear Murray. You see by nature I am a political animal — something of an idealist, even a romantic, if you like. I have a great sympathy for popular movements — especially when they involve the underdog. It is an arrogant illusion, perhaps, but I like to think that I am helping my fellow men — helping the weak against the strong. And for this reason sometimes the strong do not at all like me.’ He paused, cocking his head suddenly to one side. ‘You heard something?’
They sat listening, and it came again: another light tap on the outside door. Pol began to climb out of his chair. ‘It’s probably our lunch — but just to be sure’ — and he held his hand out, with a little deprecating smile: ‘I’d like my gun back.’
Murray hesitated. For some reason he was still not entirely happy about Pol: this vain, gluttonous sybarite, professing idealism as he swilled champagne in his penthouse suite — the boastful defender of the weak against the strong. Yet someone — and probably more than one — had taken the trouble to send a well-prepared bomb up to that suite; and next time they might, in desperation, try something cruder, more personal. Nor did they sound the kind of people who
