Soon their patience wore out and, before Isobel could do anything to stop him, the leader had jabbed a needle into her thigh. She quickly lost consciousness. Yet even this played into her hands. When she woke up, she was groggy and worried about the child. Almost immediately, she felt Rambo kick, but continued to act as though the baby had been dangerously sedated, that she needed sugar and water and proper medical care. At one point, two out of the three goons watching her – ‘goons’ was a favourite word of Lockie’s – were rushing around the kitchen like waiters in a bad farce variously searching for non-existent glucose tablets, biscuits, bags of decaffeinated green tea.
‘What did you put into me?’ she demanded of them. ‘My leg aches. I can hardly move. What kind of man puts a needle into a pregnant woman? You could have killed both of us!’
They spoke to one another in Farsi, telling her nothing about why they had seized her husband or where he was being held. Isobel knew that it was connected to Lockie’s work. ‘I’ve made enemies,’ he had once told her. ‘I’ve made mistakes. I’ve enjoyed successes. One day people might try to come after me. The rules have changed. In the old days, people like us were off limits. Not any more.’ When he didn’t respond to their emails and messages, they would wonder what had happened to him and send someone to the cottage to investigate. Isobel had to believe that. The alternative was too awful to contemplate.
Eventually the effort of keeping up the act began to wear her out. Even Rambo grew tired. Isobel could tell that the baby had gone to sleep. One of the guards had gone upstairs to rest. Karim was beside her, flicking through the sports pages of The Times. That was when the car pulled up outside, bright lights against the closed curtains.
‘Stay where you are,’ Karim told her. ‘A friend has come to help us.’
38
Luc stayed behind at the villa and Rosamund drove Kite, Xavier, Martha and Jacqui into town. While she bought English newspapers at a shop on the outskirts of Mougins, Xavier stocked up on vodka and absinthe at the local supermarket. Jacqui pointed out that he and Kite had already bought bottles of duty-free Smirnoff and Jim Beam at the airport; why did they need even more alcohol when there was plenty in the house? Xavier told his sister that she was ‘boring’ and should mind her own business. They had a brief, bickering argument beside a chicken rotisserie while Kite and Martha looked on. Kite realised that Xavier was still thinking like a schoolboy, hoarding alcohol in secret rather than realising that he could go out and buy it whenever and wherever he pleased. He watched him put the bottles into Jacqui’s tote bag, pleading with her to keep it quiet. Jacqui complained that they were too heavy, so Martha hid the absinthe in her bag. Her friendship with Jacqui was a mystery to Kite. Xavier’s sister was conservative and short-tempered, an academic goody two shoes with straight A’s from birth. Martha, on the other hand, seemed to possess the loose, easy nonchalance of the free spirit. Xavier had told him that the two had met at Roedean when they were eleven. Martha had been expelled a few years later for reasons which remained shrouded in mystery. Kite concluded that it was probably one of the lasting effects of boarding school; lifelong friendships were forged regardless of temperament or circumstances.
They walked into the village. Kite and Martha had their first proper conversation, discussing Dangerous Liaisons, which she had seen at a cinema in St John’s Wood. He had the sense that she was assessing him, biding her time and working out if Lachlan Kite was worthy of her attention or just another drooling old Alfordian who couldn’t keep his eyes off her. At a café in the main square, Xavier bought a round of drinks and began to flirt with her, making jokes which Martha found funny and mentioning the various clubs and parties he had been to in London where they might have crossed paths. Kite remained mostly silent. Xavier finished his first vodka and tonic within five minutes and ordered a second while the others nursed glasses of beer and wine in the fading sun. Kite was half-expecting to catch sight of Rita or Strawson in the village, but there was no sign of them. He assumed that they were settling into the safe house, finding out if Eskandarian had landed safely in Paris, checking the sound feed from the lamp. He was worried about the stereo. He had to find a way of moving it up to the house so that it would relay conversations from the terrace, but it seemed likely that Xavier and the girls would insist on keeping it down by the pool so that there was music to listen to during the days. Kite could hardly move it back to the terrace every night after dark. That would look suspicious.
By the time Rosamund found them at the café and said it was time to go home, Xavier had knocked back three vodka and tonics and taken a surreptitious swig of the absinthe from Martha’s bag. Kite looked at his watch. It was almost eight o’clock. If Eskandarian’s flights were on time, he would be landing in Cannes at any moment. Climbing into the front seat of the Mercedes and exchanging pleasantries with Rosamund, he felt as though he was going back to work at the hotel: there was the same sense of impending pressure and responsibility. Yet he was surprised to discover that he relished this feeling. He was looking forward to meeting Eskandarian, just as he was keen to see Peele and Strawson in the morning and to receive
