Pol lowered himself into the bath with a great splash. ‘And you think she might co-operate?’
‘I think so.’ He tried to recall those last private moments with her, chasing after her down the main street of Luang Prabang with the lame broken words of a lovers’ quarrel, or the petty pay-off to a one-night stand.
Pol seemed to have regained his good humour, grinning again as he sank under the bubbles. ‘You seem to have been well amused during your stay in Laos! And what about the other job?’
‘The other job was fine. I found just the place. As perfect for security as anything in the whole of South-East Asia.’ He began to describe the dam, the reservoir, the heavy digging machines — his enthusiasm gaining on him, then draining away with a sour twinge like the memory of a great passion run dry. It had been so perfect, so unbelievably beautiful — until Finlayson.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he said sadly. ‘There aren’t even any proper guards up there — just two men, a Lao and a disgruntled American. The Lao goes off at night, and the American could no doubt be persuaded to take a little promenade through the jungle — if we made it worth his while.’ He realised he was still speaking in the present tense, without even the uncertain use of the French subjunctive. ‘A perfect set-up,’ he added. ‘Except that it won’t work. They’ve killed Finlayson, and now they’re on to you. They’ll either kill us all first, or they’ll catch us. And I’m an invincible coward, Charles. I want to go on living.’
Pol was climbing out of the bath, the soap-suds clinging round him like an incandescent gown of candyfloss. ‘Ah mon cher, il y a toujours des problèmes, bien sûr!’ He came trundling back to Murray’s bench, and there was now a bright cunning in his eye — a dry little porcine eye that showed through the wasted fat and gravy-bile a glimpse of the real Pol — hard and dangerous. He stood naked above him, balancing on a pair of small, surprisingly well-shaped feet. ‘You must not despair over a small contretemps, mon cher! You do not know that the person who killed our friend Finlayson is necessarily the same person who sent me my present this morning.’ The girl wrapped a towel round him and handed him some sandals. ‘My friends today showed a certain sophistication. They hardly behaved like common criminals — bandits attacking me in my sleep with a ten-centimetre nail through my head!’
Murray nodded, closing his eyes and feeling the masseuse’s cool manipulating fingers working down his chest and over his belly, and tried to distract his fear and disappointment by thoughts of the girl’s little shadowy breasts under her crisp white coat — half opening his eyes to see that Pol had gone, and that she was smiling down at him, pearl-teethed as he lay wishing he were not so bored by these oriental girls — by their slavish charms and twittering, docile attentions. He lay erect and unembarrassed, wondering idly about the amatory arrangements of the Rama Hotel. Nothing too coarse for the grey-skinned tourists: yet nothing too pure for the high and mighty Dollar.
At the same time he was vaguely, uncomfortably aware of something being wrong. Some random word, some remark mislaid in a half-empty chamber of his mind — worrying him suddenly like grit in a shoe. He remembered Pol’s earlier offer, on the telephone that morning, to have lunch with him in his suite. It would no doubt be a good lunch; and in any case Murray had nothing else to do.
The girl had run his bath, and he was just stepping in, when it came to him — sharp and sudden as physical pain, with a shock that almost had him leaping out of the water like a hooked salmon.
On the phone to Pol that morning he had said nothing about how Finlayson had died; and there had been no mention in any of the local newspapers, English or French, of the peculiar murder weapon. Yet Pol had talked of a ten-centimetre nail — of ‘bandits attacking me in my sleep’.
Murray contained his urge to dress in a hurry and run. He gave his girl an ample tip; then, calculating that Pol would be already upstairs, he made his way along to the lifts.
CHAPTER 2
The light from outside was very strong, even through the half-drawn Venetian blinds. It fell in yellow stripes across the carpet and the muted plain decor. It fell on Pol, standing in front of the balcony windows in his bulging blue silk suit, striped green and ultraviolet like some psychedelic jungle creature. Pig-Buddha or sly fat cat? Murray wondered: for all associations with Pol had now become animal in his mind — even feline and soft-footed, as he stood balancing on a pair of tiny ballet slippers, smiling over his pointed beard.
‘Murray, I have ordered champagne.’
Murray smiled back: ‘In a carton?’
Pol shook his head: ‘I don’t think they’d try the same trick twice — do you?’
‘No. I don’t think they even tried it once.’
‘No?’ The smile hardened; but neither of them moved. Murray said: ‘Let’s see it, Charles. You didn’t call in the police, so it must still be here. Where is it?’
At that moment there came a tap on the door. Pol moved with surprising speed. ‘Who is there?’ he called in English, and suddenly there was a gun in his hand — a small blunt weapon which he held cradled behind his back.
A voice from the other side said something that Murray did not catch, and Pol said ‘Come in’ — slipping the gun back into his trouser pocket as the Thai waiter appeared with a tray of champagne in an ice-bucket and two tulip glasses. Pol nodded him towards the balcony, handing him a ten-baht note as he went out again.
The door closed and Pol came across grinning. Murray stood in the centre of the room, watching him, undecided. There was always the chance of a mistake: a special report in one of the Cambodian papers, secret information that Pol might have come by in his mysterious capacity as adviser to the Sihanouk regime. He said again: ‘The bottle of Hine, Charles. I’d like to see it.’
Pol sighed, his pudgy little hands swaying at his side. ‘Some champagne first?’
‘The brandy first. The plastique.’
‘You really want to see it?’
‘That’s what I said.’
Pol gave him a quick, almost sorrowful glance; then, with a shrug, turned and padded over to a writing desk under the windows. Murray followed him. Pol was bending down with a creak of silk as Murray moved up behind him, making no sound on the carpet. Pol saw him and began to turn, one hand reaching into his trouser pocket, and Murray jumped him.
He threw one arm in a lock round his neck, jamming it up into the rolls of fat under his throat until the Frenchman began to choke, while his free hand dived down to the pocket with the gun. Pol lurched for a moment, then suddenly, with a great lunge, dragged Murray forward across his back, grabbing at one ankle while Murray’s hand scrabbled down across the man’s tight-stretched thighs, trying to reach the gun. Pol grunted and hissed, his neck bulging slimy with sweat, silk splitting under his armpits — until, with a final mighty heave, Murray’s feet left the floor.
Together they now began a grotesque piggy-back round the floor — almost in silence except for Pol’s snorting and spluttering, staggering with Murray lying almost flat across his shoulders, his trousers riding up his legs, his face pulled down against the short damp hairs at the back of Pol’s neck, stifled by the sudden sweet stench of sweat and Eau de Vétiver.
He tightened his grip on Pol’s throat, but it seemed to have little effect. The man’s strength was astonishing; and Murray was beginning to grow desperate — thinking of abandoning what was left of the Queensberry Rules and going for the eyes — when Pol gave a short squeal and sat down with a thump on the carpet. He had let go of Murray, and now lay with one hand clutching his thigh, the other holding his throat. His eyes were closed and his face grey with pain. ‘Ah merde!’ he gasped: ‘It’s the muscle in my leg.’
The pocket with the gun now gaped open, and Murray reached quickly down and lifted out a .22 Beretta, loaded with six rounds. A handy little gun at short-range. He wondered why it hadn’t been used on Finlayson.
Pol stirred and opened one weeping eye. ‘Get me some water, Murray.’ His voice was a whisper.
Murray had put the gun in his own pocket and went through to a pink-tiled bathroom, noticing the rows of toilet waters, perfumes, powders, pills and medicine bottles — smiling at the thought of Pol being vain. He broke open one of the hygiene-sealed tooth-glasses and filled it from the ice-water tap. When he got back, Pol had crawled on to one knee, his kiss curl splayed out on his brow like a wet spider. Murray put a hand under his arm and hauled him painfully to his feet, most of his weight resting on one leg. ‘Ah Murray — are you mad? What did you do it for?’
‘The gun,’ said Murray; but Pol shook his head with a sad grin. ‘I was going to show you the bomb — not the gun.’ He put his hand into his trouser pocket and handed Murray a small key. ‘The bottom right-hand drawer of the desk,’ he said.
Murray took it and went to the desk. Inside the drawer lay a long cardboard carton with the stamp of Hine Cognac VSOP, one side of which had been slit open and folded back. Very carefully he lifted the cardboard flap and peered inside. There was no bottle — just a slab of rough greyish substance, not unlike a long slice of pâté. There were two small holes in the side of it, and two metal plugs, each attached to an insulated wire, hanging loose from where they had been pulled out of the explosive. The electrical detonating device was concealed at the top, its weight counterbalanced by a battery fixed to the floor of the carton.
While he was examining it, Pol had dragged himself out on to the balcony where he now sat slumped in a cane chair, gently massaging his thigh. He nodded at the ice-bucket. ‘I could do with a glass of champagne. Can you open it?’
‘I owe you an apology,’ Murray said, peeling the foil off the cork. ‘I was being over-suspicious.’
Pol waved a hand. ‘We all make mistakes, my dear Murray. But what a beautiful spectacle we must have made!’
Murray eased the cork out and shot it over the edge, turning to hose champagne into the two glasses. The air stirred with a warm breeze. They were very high, with the city spread out below in a dirty yellow glare under the monsoon sky. Pol struggled out of his chair and took his glass. ‘I’m out of training for these gymnastics — getting too old perhaps. And you’re getting too nervous.’
Murray sat down in the chair opposite and looked steadily across at him. ‘Perhaps I’ve got reason to be nervous?’
Pol was staring out at the far-off storm clouds rising across the wide grey-green, canal-webbed horizon. ‘You saw the bomb?’ he asked suddenly. ‘A fantastic job, hein? And what a bang it would have made! It would have been heard all over Bangkok.’
‘It wasn’t just the bomb,’ said Murray. ‘There’s also Finlayson. You know he was killed in his sleep with a ten-centimetre nail?’
‘Et alors?’ Pol’s face was rosy with innocence.
‘You told me downstairs in the baths, although there was no mention of it in any of the papers. And yet you knew?’
Pol was suddenly shaking with laughter. ‘Oh my dear Murray, is that why you attacked me? Ah mon Dieu, quelle blague!’ He groped for his handkerchief, dabbing at his eyes and forehead, while Murray stared at him, beginning to feel uncomfortable. ‘You don’t think the newspapers are the only means of finding out how a colleague is murdered, do you?’
Murray took a sip of champagne and said nothing. ‘It was a most regrettable incident,’ Pol went on. ‘But like the bomb this morning, it was a professional job — though in rather a different class.’
‘And you still have no idea who did it?’
‘Oh, I have several ideas. Not everyone loves me in this part of the world, I assure you. Politics are one of the easiest ways of making enemies.’
‘Politics?’
The Frenchman gave an impish grin. ‘Yes, my dear Murray. You see by nature I am a political animal — something of an idealist, even a romantic, if you like. I have a great sympathy for popular movements — especially when they involve the underdog. It is an arrogant illusion, perhaps, but I like to think that I am helping my fellow men — helping the weak against the strong. And for this reason sometimes the strong do not at all like me.’ He paused, cocking his head suddenly to one side. ‘You heard something?’
They sat listening, and it came again: another light tap on the outside door. Pol began to climb out of his chair. ‘It’s probably our lunch — but just to be sure’ — and he held his hand out, with a little deprecating smile: ‘I’d like my gun back.’
Murray hesitated. For some reason he was still not entirely happy about Pol: this vain, gluttonous sybarite, professing idealism as he swilled champagne in his penthouse suite — the boastful defender of the weak against the strong. Yet someone — and probably more than one — had taken the trouble to send a well-prepared bomb up to that suite; and next time they might, in desperation, try something cruder, more personal. Nor did they sound the kind of people who would think of sparing an eye-witness.
Reluctantly Murray handed the Beretta back to Pol, following him as he limped out across to the door, repeating the same operation as before — calling ‘Come in,’ and turning with the gun behind his back, watching as the waiter wheeled in a trolley laid with plates of hors d’oeuvres and cold meats, telling him to leave it inside, to keep it away from the flies — watching until the man had left, closing the door behind him. Then he turned, wrinkling his nose at the food. ‘The usual American picnic!’ he scowled. ‘They have brought to this city the eating habits of barbarians. You know what they gave me for breakfast this morning? — a hamburger with sauce béarnaise!’ He had put the gun back in his trouser pocket and was picking at some slices of dry fish.
‘You’re not worried that it’s poisoned?’ Murray asked, not quite without irony.
Pol grinned: ‘If they’re the people I think they are, the methods of Lucrecia Borgia are not their style.’
‘So you do think you know who they are?’
Pol shrugged, carrying a plate of tinned artichoke hearts out on to the balcony and sinking into his chair with a loud crack of cane. ‘I can tell you one thing, my dear Murray — they were certainly not the same people who killed George Finlayson.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘Because for a start, as I just said, their styles are so different. Secondly, there was not the same motive.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I had information.’
‘Secret information — through your work in Cambodia? Or am I being indiscreet?’
‘Oh, there are no indiscreet questions, my dear Murray — only indiscreet answers. But for a man in my position there must be certain matters —’
Murray cut him short: ‘All right, I’ll take your word for it. But for a moment you had me worried. I thought it was you who’d killed Finlayson.’
Pol sat back with his champagne and chuckled playfully. ‘Oh but it was, my dear Murray. Or rather, I had him killed. It was the only way.’
CHAPTER 3
Murray blinked at him, conscious of an angry pain in one eye — the glare of refracted light, the champagne burning high and sour in his throat. ‘You bastard,’ he muttered, in English. ‘You fat murdering bastard!’
Pol shrugged lazily, putting his plate on the floor so that his hand would be free for the gun. ‘It was necessary, I promise you. A necessary killing in the line of duty.’
Murray closed his eyes. It was not easy to lose one’s temper with a man while you drank his champagne. Especially when he also had a gun. ‘But why?’ he said at last. ‘What had he done?’
‘He was planning to betray us,’ Pol said evenly. ‘To ruin our beautiful little plan, even before we had begun putting it in operation. A painless process of tipping off the British and American Intelligence Services and getting you and the others expelled from Laos and Vietnam before you could make trouble.’ He sat back munching an artichoke. ‘You guessed, perhaps, that George Finlayson was working for British Intelligence — what you call D.I.5?’
‘I didn’t know. How did you find out?’
‘Oh I’ve known for som
e time — almost since I first met him.’
‘And you still trusted him?’
‘Not at all. In fact, I was never very happy about Monsieur Finlayson from the start. He was too comfortable — too bourgeois in his outlook. After all, twenty thousand dollars a year with no tax, and living on expenses, is a very agreeable life — especially if you’re a man without much imagination or ambition.’
‘But you still told him the plan?’
‘I still hoped he might be seduced — for the promise of perhaps a hundred million pounds Sterling. Even for a bored banker, that’s a lot of money. And besides, at the time he was the only person I knew who was capable of finding out the necessary information.’
Murray clenched his teeth, trying hard not to lose his temper. Was this what Pol meant by ‘romantic idealism’? Poor dull Finlayson, he’d never trusted Pol either. Never trust a man with a beard, he’d said — cloven hoof and hairy heel. But white men had to stick together. Couldn’t go round slitting each other’s throats, or nailing one another down to beds. Not a white man’s trick at all. ‘And who did you get to do it?’ he said, his voice stiff with repressed rage.
Pol wagged his head. ‘Secrets of the trade, my dear Murray.’
‘And how can you be sure he hadn’t already tipped off the British and the Americans?’
‘I’m sure — that’s all you have to know.’
‘Through someone else in British Intelligence? An old man called Hamish Napper, for instance?’
‘Ah Murray! Now that’s what I do call an indiscreet question.’
Murray nodded, lifting his champagne. Naughty little Napper, he thought: Whitehall had left him out in the East just a little too long after all. Hamish Napper and Charles Pol — two oddball expatriates with eccentric habits and a shared dislike of the Americans, but a common love of the dollar. He looked out across the city, at the storm clouds coming closer, piling up high and dark along the edge of the sky. ‘So if Finlayson was the only person who could find out the information, but is now dead — where does that leave us?’
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 16