He had a good platform voice when he wanted, full of the deepest insincerity, but it got me out of the room and the door closed behind me.
I stopped in the hall and took out the memo leaf. It didn’t need any scientific treatment to decipher it. It read:
Manston arrives Idris 19.45 hrs. Arrange car.
At that moment there could have been a harem of naked houris arranging flowers in the hall and I wouldn’t have noticed them. No wonder my secretary upstairs had itchy pants and a distant manner, no wonder Captain Asab had had me picked up on the road in from the King Idris Airport, and no wonder there was a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach and the adrenalin pump going full bore somewhere in my throat—because Bill Dawson just had to be what I had begun to suspect he must be. Once they had names like Pelham, Grenville, Perceval and Rockingham, but this is the age of the common man and in have come the Browns, the Smiths and the Dawsons to fill the high places.
I shoved the paper back into my pocket and went half-tranced out of the place. As the sea air and sunshine hit me I was telling myself that a couple of half-baked dreamy incompetents like Pelegrina and Freeman could never have dared to try and pull off something like this. Dream about it, yes. Why not, there’s no law against dreams. But to try it on—and, by God, it had to be that they had . . . ! Well, they weren’t even in the fourth division league for that kind of thing. In my time I’d met a few who could have tried it, even got away with it—but not those two, not unless they had all this time been hiding their real talent and brilliance.
I lit a cigarette at the bottom of the Embassy steps. For ten seconds I wondered what to do, during the next thirty I slowly came to the decision to pack up and go home, and then in the next ten I changed my mind. I couldn’t go home. And leave all this? Not bloody likely. This was what the doctor had ordered for my flagging body and mind. And, anyway, leaving out health reasons, there might be other things in it . . . like money, like women, like kudos, like being one jump ahead of everyone else, like an M.B.E. at the end of it . . . and like, quite possibly, a sticky end. Rex Carver, R.I.P. But what the hell, I told myself—duck a challenge and the dust settles thick on your shoulders like dandruff.
At my side, a real voice with a touch of Italian accent said, ‘You really like, Mr Carver, that we give you a lift to the Uaddan?’
It was my young apprentice tail, grinning.
‘Why not,’ I said. ‘My legs feel a bit weak at the moment.’
Obligingly they brought the Simca up to the kerb for me.
*
They rang from the reception desk and she told them to send me up. It was a little suite on the second floor overlooking the sea. She came through from the bedroom wearing a cream silk dress that showed a lot of bare brown arm. She just stood and looked me over and I did the same for her.
She said, ‘Is this business or pleasure?’
‘Business first.’
She said, ‘The drinks are over there. Mine is lime juice and soda water and four lumps of ice.’
I went over to a side-table and began mixing. She dropped into a little chair by the window, crossed her legs neatly and looked a picture with the sun taking the whole of one side of her body.
I said, ‘What do I call you? Not La Piroletta or Miss Pelegrina.’
‘So long as it is business just avoid it.’
I handed her her drink and sat down opposite her holding a gin and tonic.
I said, ‘I want your help.’
‘If I can. Is it this bracelet business?’
She held up her left arm; the gold python bands slid over the warm brown skin.
‘Only indirectly. I want to know your real feeling for your father.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I think he’s heading for big trouble. May already be in it.’
‘That describes his life.’
‘You like to see him in trouble?’
‘No. As a matter of fact I am reasonably fond of him. But that doesn’t stop me also being fed up with him. In the past I often helped him with money. But now—no more.’
‘Has he tried to touch you recently?’
‘Touch? Oh, you mean borrow money?’
‘Yes.’
She shook her head. ‘He knows better.’
‘What is his financial position?’
‘Rocky. He’s been up and he’s been down in his life. At the moment he’s down. Mostly he’s been in shipping or property development. There was a time when he was doing quite well. But it passed. What is he trying to do now that he shouldn’t?’
‘I’m not sure. He still owns a steam yacht, doesn’t he?’
‘La Sunata. Yes. But he’s probably carrying some loan on it.’
‘What about property?’
‘He’s not involved in any development scheme that I know about.’
I stood up and wandered round the room. A little wander often helps the thoughts. My back to her, I said, ‘If he wanted to drop out of the public eye for a while where do you think he would go?’
‘You mean if he wanted to hide?’
‘Something like that. For instance, would he take off in La Sunata for a cruise?’
Her laugh brought me round to face her.
‘That’s the last thing he would do. He hates the sea. He’s always sick.’
‘Then where would he go? Does he own a house, villa or cottage anywhere? Particularly on this side of the Mediterranean.’
She frowned. ‘Why
