‘What are we going to do, then?’
‘We’re going to kill the Ruler.’
‘We?’ Her mouth, usually so mobile, had gone slack.
‘I want you to listen to me very carefully, Sarah.’ And he explained to her how she was to ride up to the Gotschnagrat restaurant tomorrow afternoon, and be there at four o’clock when the Ruler arrived; and how she was to send a simple message over the R/T radio. ‘That’s all you have to do — just wait for him to leave the restaurant, and say a couple of words.’
‘Very nice —’ her voice had become quiet and sulky — ‘for you and Sammy and Charles Pol. You’ve all been paid a lot of money.’
He went over and took her gently by the shoulders. Her body felt strangely frail. ‘Sarah, love, if you do what I’m asking, I’ll buy you that latest Porsche convertible, silver-grey with a black hood.’
She looked up at him with a funny crooked smile. ‘You’re bloody sure of yourself, aren’t you, Owen?’ Her voice gave him the uncomfortable feeling that she was holding something back. He decided now was the moment to produce his ace.
He went over to his hold-all and took out the Grima case, concealing it from her view as he walked back to the bed; then, with a little bow, he laid it on her lap. She opened it, lifted the tissue wrappings, and looked at the necklace as though it were some household utensil. She made no move to try it on. ‘When did you get this?’ she said at last.
‘Does it matter?’
‘The only branches Grima have outside London are in New York, Paris and Geneva. I suppose you sneaked off to Geneva while you were pretending to be skiing?’ She replaced the tissue paper and snapped the box shut. ‘And no message? No billet doux? You don’t believe in treating a girl with much delicacy, do you, Mister Packer?’ There was a chill in her voice now. ‘Do you?’ she repeated.
He stood in front of her, not moving, not speaking.
‘You shit!’ she yelled. ‘You mean little shit!’ She looked up at him with ferocious triumph. ‘You never went to Geneva. But I did! I went the day before yesterday, with Charles Pol. We went into France and had lunch at Père Bise. And on the way back, through Geneva, he stopped at the Grima shop, and he made me wait in the taxi.’ She threw her head back and laughed. ‘And how are you going to worm your way out of this one? You should have stuck to the Porsche.’
Packer nodded and sat down on the corner of the bed, not looking at her. ‘What were you doing with Charles Pol?’
She gave him a bright taunting smile. ‘Enjoying myself. He brings out the little girl in me. And he’s wonderful company.’
‘And you spent the whole day with him just enjoying his wonderful company?’
She shrugged irritably. ‘I was bored and glad of something to do.’
‘And what did you do — talk? And what did you talk about, Sarah?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just what I said. You didn’t just spend the whole day looking into each other’s eyes and singing duets.’
She gave him a look of flagrant dislike. ‘We talked about lots of things. I can’t remember.’
‘Try and remember.’
Suddenly she shook her head so that her hair dropped across her face, half hiding her eyes. ‘Oh, this is bloody silly! I go out for the day with a mutual friend and I have to remember every damned thing we talked about.’
‘One of the things you talked about,’ Packer said slowly, ‘was the little matter of the radio message from the Gotschnagrat restaurant tomorrow afternoon.’
There was a long pause, broken by a rumble and cough from the plumbing. A truck changed gear outside in the street. Sarah sat with her shoulders hunched forward, again sucking the tip of her thumb.
‘All right!’ she cried at last. ‘If you know, why do you bloody well ask?’
‘What was the message he told you to send?’
She hesitated. ‘Something in French. We thought it would sound better. Something like: “It’s getting cold. I’m going home”.’ Her tone was again sulky and evasive.
‘And how much is he paying you?’
‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’ She had pulled her shoulders back and addressed him as though he were some insolent servant.
‘Everything to do with this operation is my business,’ he told her patiently. ‘For a start, I want to make sure that Pol’s not under-paying you.’
‘Like buying me a Porsche, I suppose? Well, Owen Packer, I can tell you that Charles Pol is a lot more generous than that.’
‘And has he paid you yet?’
‘He’s made the arrangements, thank you. And don’t worry, they’re quite satisfactory.’
Packer did not try to argue. As a banker’s daughter she probably knew more about such affairs than he did; and whether she could trust Pol or not was her business, not his.
She yawned and started to take off her bracelets. ‘I’m going to bed. We’ve got a lot to do tomorrow.’
‘You’re sure you still want to go through with it?’
‘Why not? Don’t you?’
‘The situation’s changed since the day before yesterday, Sarah. Pol’s buggered off, for a start.’
‘Well, there was nothing for him to do hanging around Klosters. I thought he was leaving all the planning to you?’
For a moment Packer wondered whether, deliberately or otherwise, she had misunderstood everything he had told her. The alternative was that Pol had already begun to draw her into his own secret plans for the future: what he called the ‘other, subtler element’. But at this stage Packer decided
