‘Yes. Will you give me a cigarette, please?’
Surprised, I took out my pack of Camels and offered her one. She took the cigarette, put it between her lips and accepted the light from my lighter. She pulled hard on the cigarette, then let the smoke come rolling out of her mouth. All the time she stared fixedly at the oily, concrete floor of the garage.
I watched her. It was like seeing a child after several years: a child that had grown suddenly into a woman.
She looked up and saw I was watching her. She smiled: it wasn’t any easy smile, but it made her look very desirable and lovely.
‘So we’re in this mess now together aren’t we, Ches?’
‘Not necessarily. It could have been a sneak thief.’
‘Do you think so? It could have been a blackmailer.’
I stared at her.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘It’s something I feel,’ she said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘We are in an ideal position to be blackmailed, aren’t we? I for killing this policeman, and you for trying to seduce me.’
For several seconds I said nothing. That angle hadn’t struck me, but now she had put it into words, I could see she could be right.
‘It doesn’t necessarily follow…’
‘No. We must wait and see what happens.’ She moved past me to the garage door. ‘I suppose I had better get back.’
‘Yes.’
We moved out into the hot sunshine. She waited while I closed the garage doors.
I’ll have to come back and fix this lock,’ I said after I had tried to wedge the two doors together and had failed.
‘Yes.’
She walked down the path, the sun making the lights in her glossy hair glitter. From behind, she made a trim little figure in her slacks and yellow shirt: trim and excitingly feminine.
She got into the Pontiac and sat upright, her slim hands resting on her knees.
I got in beside her, started the engine, U-turned and drove back fast to my bungalow.
During the short run back to the bungalow neither of us said anything.
I pulled up outside the gate.
‘I’ll get your cycle.’
‘I’ll come in, Ches. I want to talk to you.’
‘Well, all right.’
I followed her up the path and into the bungalow. She went on ahead of me into the lounge while I paused to lock the front door.
As I came into the lounge, she sat down in an easy chair and stared out of the big window at the beach and the sea.
I looked at the clock on the overmantel. The time was a quarter to eleven. It seemed a lifetime since she had come out of the shadows last night and had fainted in my arms. I moved over to another chair and sat down. I looked at her. She was no longer the lovely kid I had been infatuated with when I had seen her for the first time, admiring herself in the mirror. Since then, she had grown a skin: a veneer of hardness. She was still lovely, still desirable, but the innocence and the youth were now missing.
She turned her head slowly and looked at me. Our eyes met.
‘I seem to have made a complete mess of this,’ she said. ‘Thanks to you, I could have ducked out, but leaving that: swim-suit puts me back into the picture again, doesn’t it?’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ I said, speaking slowly and carefully. ‘It depends who took it. A sneak thief might have broken in in the hope of finding something valuable. There was nothing else in the car except the swim-suit. He might have taken that in the hope of raising a few dimes on it.’
She shook her head.
‘I don’t think so. You see, the suit had my name on it.’
I looked at her, my heart suddenly beginning to thump.
‘Nearly everyone in this city knows how rich Roger is,’ she went on.
I felt my hands turn damp. I had really believed that a sneak thief had broken into the garage, but this matter-of-fact utterance of hers lit up a ltd light in my mind.
‘After all;’ she went on, not looking at me, and speaking very quietly, ‘why should a sneak thief take a swim-suit? Who would want it? I think we are going to be blackmailed, Ches.’
‘You’re jumping to conclusions…’
She made an impatient little movement with her hands.
‘That remains to be seen.’ She turned her head slowly and looked directly at me. ‘Would you pay blackmail, Ches?’
‘That gets you nowhere,’ I said trying to match her quiet tone, but aware that my voice was harsh. ‘Once you start to pay I blackmail, you have a monkey on your back.’
‘I just wanted to know.’ She stared down at her hands, turned them and looked at her blood-red finger nails. ‘I think I must talk to Roger.’
‘He can’t do anything,’ I said sharply.
She continued to study her hands.
‘You don’t know him as well as I do. He is very particular about his position and what people think of him. If I told him exactly what had happened and that you were willing to take all the blame, then I think he would pay blackmail.’
I sat staring at her in frozen silence.
‘He has a lot of money,’ she went on after an interminable pause. ‘He can drive a very hard bargain. I don’t think it would cost him much. I think he would pay.’
‘But he would divorce you,’ I said.
‘I’d rather be divorced than go to prison.’
I took out my pack of Camels, lit one and noted my hand was steadier than I expected it to be.
‘But we don’t know yet that we are going to be blackmailed.’
She lifted her hair off her shoulders in a nervous gesture I had come to recognize.
‘You think this man took my swim-suit as a souvenir?’ she asked with exaggerated politeness.
‘You don’t have to be sarcastic about it,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to be helpful.’
‘At least you might be realistic.’
‘At the moment there is no question of blackmail,’ I said, my voice sounding unnaturally loud. ‘I said I would keep you out of this, and I mean it.’
She regarded me, her eyes thoughtful.
‘Does that mean you will pay this man to keep quiet?’
‘What man?’
‘The man who took my swim-suit.’
‘But he is only a figment of your imagination,’ I said. ‘We don’t even know he exists.’
‘Do you think my swim-suit disappeared of its own accord?’
‘I think it’s possible you left it on the beach.’
‘I did not!’ Her eyes flashed as she shouted the words at me. ‘I left it in the car, and someone has taken it!’
‘All right, there is no need to get worked up about it. It could have been a sneak thief.’
She stared fixedly at me.
‘Ches, will you swear you didn’t take it?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake! Don’t start that again!’
‘Will you swear you didn’t take it?’
‘Of course I didn’t take it!’
I met her searching eyes angrily.
