‘God knows. I suppose, in a way, because I’d like to help him if it isn’t too late.’
‘Is this something to do with Freeman too?’
‘I think so. I think the two of them dreamed up something which is right outside their class. Miles outside. If I can get to your father I might be able to straighten things out for him.’
‘Why on earth should you? You don’t care a damn for him.’
‘True. But I’ve often straightened things out for people I don’t like.’
‘On the chance that it will show a profit?’ She was looking at me shrewdly. Whichever way she looked, it was good.
‘Yes. Why not? Good deeds are always chalked up on the credit side either in a bank book down here or in the golden one above.’
‘Perhaps you’d better tell me exactly what it is that is worrying you about my father.’
‘I can’t because I don’t know anything definite. But you tell me where I can get in touch with him—and I promise to do all I can to help him.’
She stood up and shook her head.
‘Why not?’
‘Because I have to think about it.’
‘That means you do know where he might be?’
‘Could be.’
‘Then I’d advise you not to be too long making up your mind to tell me.’
‘That’s what I was thinking. But one has to be sure—no?’
‘Oh, yes, one has to be sure—particularly in dealing with people like me.’
She stood close to me and smiled. I really was concerned about her father, even though I guessed he was a dreamy, half-baked crook. In my book he was just pathetic. I couldn’t help warm generous feelings for that type because they were all victims, reaching for the moon, eyes heavenward, and bound to walk straight over the edge of a cliff sooner or later. I put my hand on her brown arm. It felt good. Man is an ambivalent creature. I worried about her father with a small part of my mind, and at the same time wanted her with a larger part, and with the part left over hoped that if any credit was to come my way it would be in cash and not a citation in any golden book.
She raised her face a little and put her lips on mine. Gently, no fuss, nothing passionate beyond my arms going comfortably round her. Then she stepped back and said, ‘My friends, real friends, call me Letta. And let’s face it, there are bloody few of them because I have high standards.’
‘What rating do you think I’ll get?’
‘Come and see me after the last show tonight and I’ll have it sorted out. You—and my father. All right?’
I nodded, and she went to the door and opened it for me. I gave her a big smile and went. But only twelve paces down the carpeted corridor. Then I turned round and went back to her door. I squatted down and put my eye to the keyhole. Accurate character reading is a must in my business. Letta was no girl for letting grass grow under her feet. If she wasn’t sure of somebody—me, for instance—she took her time, determined to make no mistake. But if she was sure of a thing she got on with it. She was getting on with it now. She was standing by the window table, leafing through a small notebook. She put it down and picked up the telephone. She was about to speak into it when she paused and looked straight towards the room door. She began to lower the receiver to its rest.
I moved fast, down the corridor and around the corner, to get out of the way of the little bit of her character that I had overlooked, that she had read mine more accurately than I had read hers. I kept going fast—knowing she would open the door and reassure herself that I wasn’t eavesdropping—until I reached the hotel hallway. To one side of the reception desk there was a girl at the switchboard. Just beyond was a glass case full of Arab leather goods, silver brooches and bangles and fifth-rate water colours. I stood and examined the exhibits and almost immediately the exchange buzzer went. The girl plugged in a lead. I listened to her speaking. It was brief and in Italian and I didn’t get much of it, certainly not the number of the call that Signorina Pelegrina was booking. But I got the exchange. It was Bizerta. Well, that was enough. All I had to do now was to get a look at her address book. There couldn’t be many Bizerta numbers in it. In fact, when I did come to examine it there was only one.
Outside, I declined a lift from the apprentice tail and walked back to my hotel for lunch. The first course was some fish with cotton-wool flesh full of needle-sharp bones and then a dish of mutton and rice to apply as an inner poultice to a lacerated stomach. Afterwards I lay on my bed for a couple of hours to recover and at the same time went over the tangle of Pelegrina-Freeman loose ends to see if I could sort the mess out. I didn’t have a great deal of success. That Bill Dawson had to be what I suspected him to be was reasonably certain. That Pelegrina was trying to pull off a deal far too big for him was also reasonably certain. In doing this with Freeman it could be that Freeman had either become a casualty or the body I had been shown was not Freeman’s but a gruesome red herring to make everyone think that Freeman was out of the picture for good. Jane Judd would establish this for me. After all, a wife ought to know whether her husband had an abdominal scar or not, and Jane had been warned not to believe anything she heard about Freeman. Yes, Freeman could be trying to set
