by KJ Griffin
***
London: October 15, p.m.
The night spent captive and neglected in Al-Ajnabi’s bed had left Sophie in a dark mood that wouldn’t shift the following morning. Jumbled flashbacks of the night before haunted her thoughts. True to form, Al-Ajnabi’s behaviour had been eccentric in the extreme: she could not remember him coming to bed; there had not been any sign of him in the morning, nor had the sheets on his side of the bed borne any physical imprint. Again, it was as if her very presence in his bed had repulsed him. But Sophie drew little comfort from his lack of sexual interest; curiously, that somehow made her even more wary and raised even more questions about why he insisted on this mutually repellent ritual. If he wasn’t after sex, did he have something altogether more ghastly in mind?
By lunchtime Sophie had worked herself into a frenzy of doubt. She had as good as decided to leave Al-Ajnabi’s house that afternoon, even if that meant having to leave Oxford too when her money ran out. In her confusion, she missed a lecture, wrote a bad essay, bumped into Marcus on Broad Street, and unjustly vented some of her pent-up anger against him. Thank God she was meeting Darren for lunch! She would get thoroughly pissed with him in one of those trendy restaurants on Little Clarendon Street.
‘What the hell have you got yourself into, girl?’ Darren Chapman asked over lunch, chin dropping down towards his pasta when Sophie told him some of the details of her new housing arrangement. But even with Darren, Sophie felt the need to round the exact size of her ‘allowance’ to manageable proportions, conceal the ‘bed duty’ and normalize some of Al-Ajnabi’s quirkier conversations.
‘Irish chap—what did you say the name was?’ Chapman queried, taking a tablet from his pocket and scrunching up the glasses on his nose in the effort of concentration. Sophie repeated Hennessy’s name and described some of the other guests she had met at Al-Ajnabi’s party the night before, while Darren was busy with the stylus.
Chapman couldn’t believe his luck. To his amazement, he was unearthing some fantastic and totally unsolicited stuff on the Ramli prince who had made the home news big-time that morning with more announcements of his great British spending spree. But instinct told the journalist that there was more still that Sophie wasn’t telling him yet. And more important than the sniff of a scoop, his darling Sophie was starting to eat right out of his hand. Good-bye, Marcus Easterby, handsome blond fop! Take your sports car and drive it straight down the first hole of Daddy’s Surrey golf course! To press home his advantage, Chapman ordered another bottle of tongue-loosener.
Over dessert and a second bottle of Australian Chardonnay, at Chapman’s gentle persuasion, Sophie began to talk about her host’s strange political outbursts, his explanations for Hennessy’s presence in his house, and his aura of implacable hostility towards certain undisclosed enemies. Over coffee and more Chardonnay, Chapman had Sophie talking about Al-Ajnabi’s enigmatic past; by Gaelic coffee and Chardonnay that was beginning to taste like an unfortunate blend of all the residual flavours in his mouth, Sophie was hinting that her host had disclosed a sexual interest in her (naturally, she’d been quick to thwart it!).
Chapman could see his own Ali Babas’s cavern in all this. Concerned though he was about the sexual implications, he couldn’t bear to pull Sophie out of the gold mine just yet. Even while she leant her head on his shoulder walking back up Little Clarendon Street, as he stared into those hazel eyes, salivated over that sensuous mouth, and felt the rich texture of her lustrous, dark-brown hair nestling underneath his chin, he knew he had to get her to hang on a couple of days more, while together they teased out the big splash that he sensed was locked somewhere inside the Ramli’s mansion.
They made for the taxi rank on St Giles, Sophie lurching unsteadily against the journalist’s arm. He tried for a kiss, but by now, she was talking too much, even flirting with Carl when the security guard opened the door and escorted them to Sophie’s apartment. Both Mr Hasan and Mr Al-Ajnabi were upstairs, Carl told Sophie. No, regrettably, he could not disturb them.
Inside the apartment, Chapman switched on the stereo and made coffee. Sophie was sprawled on the sofa, gushing more anecdotes about her host’s behaviour. But the journalist could see that she was past making analytical sense. Instead, he brought coffee to her on the sofa and tried to slide a casual arm around her waist, which she slipped surprisingly nimbly.
The alcohol had made Sophie restless.
‘Come on, Darren. Let me show you around the house. Perhaps you can put a stake through the vampire’s heart for me!’
He protested, she insisted. The house was empty; even Carl had disappeared.
‘Not even any sign of those computer nerds,’ Sophie laughed, her words echoing loudly down the empty hallway. She stopped outside each door bordering the downstairs corridors, hammering on them with drunken fury. Nothing.
Embarrassed enough for two, Chapman tried to catch hold of Sophie, but she slipped his arm again and skipped up the staircase instead. She was already listening outside upstairs doors by the time he drew level. They were standing at the end of the corridor that overlooked the front of the house. Sophie crouched outside the last door, then pounded it with all her drink-fuelled frustration.
There was a long silence. Chapman looked on as Sophie stood arms akimbo in the hallway, panting hard. He had read her wrong. She wasn’t playful, as he had first thought. No, something really was troubling her. There were more questions to ask and to do so he needed her alone and downstairs. He made a lunge towards her and tried to grab her elbow.
But just as he did so the door in front of him swung back sharply. ‘Miss Sophie, what a pleasant surprise!’ Al-Ajnabi smiled coldly. ‘And?’
Darren Chapman introduced himself, his embarrassment swiftly overcome by curiosity.
‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’ Al-Ajnabi asked defensively, still blocking the doorway. Sophie felt triumphant. It was the first time she had seen him wrong-footed.
‘I’ve come to tell you that I’ll be leaving your house,’ she announced, cheeks puffed out haughtily.
Al-Ajnabi assessed Sophie coolly for a second, then pulled back the door.
‘I see. Then I think you’d better come in. Both of you. We were just finishing our meeting.’
Chapman was first inside, Sophie prancing more warily behind. She spotted Hasan helping a Japanese man to shuffle some papers into a notebook computer carrying case.
‘This is Mr. Yamaguchi of Sakura Bank,’ Al-Ajnabi explained. ‘He has been helping me to finalize the details of our new Ramli investment bank.’
Yokochi turned round from his packing to give them the briefest of unsmiling nods.
‘Unfortunately, Mr. Yamaguchi has a plane to catch,’ Al-Ajnabi explained. ‘Perhaps you will see him another time.’
Hasan led the Japanese banker from the room. Sophie flopped down on a sofa, her anger matured to quiet dejection. Suddenly confronted with Omar face to face, she started to regret her rash entrée, and now they were sitting there just the three of them, she wasn’t even at all sure why she had been so angry with him in the first place. The mood-change left her sullen and taciturn.
But Chapman was quick to take advantage of the lull in the conversation.
‘There was a lot about your activities in our morning edition, Prince Omar,’ he began, intrigued by the strangely un-Eastern look of the Gulf sheikh. ‘Those are some very large contracts your country has placed—a big boost for British business, I’m sure.’
Al-Ajnabi nodded laconically. He was looking intently at Sophie, almost sadly, she thought.
Chapman picked over the details of some of the contracts and companies. Al-Ajnabi’s replies were mostly monosyllabic.
‘I hope you won’t mind my asking you one more question,’ Chapman continued in the tone of voice that suggested he was damn well going to ask it anyway. ‘It’s about some problems we ran into while writing up the story of your British business dealings.’
‘Oh yes?’
&n
bsp; ‘Yes. You see, we couldn’t get much information from your embassy in Mayfair. They would only give us the names of the companies with whom you were placing contracts, then referred us to an Oxford number, presumably here, for more information. Trouble is, we can never get a reply.’
‘My assistants are so busy,’ Al-Ajnabi smiled challengingly. ‘I’m afraid we do not have time to answer press enquiries just yet. But I assure you that this situation will change later on.’ He smiled at this remark, as if he had said something privately amusing.
‘Also, Prince Omar,’ Chapman carried on regardless, ‘no one could get hold of a photograph of you, let alone arrange for an interview. We contacted every other daily and news magazine, tried your Embassy here, searched on the Internet, but we couldn’t come up with anything. It seems that there just isn’t a single photo of you on file anywhere—no film footage, nothing. That’s very strange for a man of your rank, wouldn’t you say?’
‘Not at all,’ Al-Ajnabi shrugged. ‘Photography, especially media photography, is frowned on by certain sections of the Islamic community. There is a holy injunction against the depiction of the human form, you see. In my home country it is officially banned, though of course, we have to make certain allowances. That is why you will not find any photos of me, Mr Chapman, nor would I want any to be taken. Such anonymity is a rare blessing for a man like me. I’m sure you will understand.’
‘Although at dinner the other night you sounded hostile to all religions, including your own.’
Sophie’s interruption was met only with a nod and an ironic smile.
Chapman decided to concede the point. There was a lot more he wanted to ask but instinct restrained him. His nose smelt a bigger story in all these threads and he sensed that both Sophie and Prince Al-Ajnabi were withholding too much from him at present. First, he needed to check the leads he had already gained back at his Docklands office. Something would emerge later on to point him in the right direction.
A miserable silence had descended upon the room, broken finally by Al-Ajnabi.
‘So when do you wish to leave, Miss Sophie?’ he asked.
‘Er… this evening—maybe tomorrow morning, if that’s all right?’
Indecision had reduced her voice to a mumble.
‘As you wish. But I urge you not to make any hasty decisions. You look tired. Why don’t you sleep on it? We can talk about this later.’
His voice was gentler than Sophie could remember, almost hypnotic. She got up, craving the sleep he had suggested, and agreed to talk the situation over in the morning. Chapman followed Sophie to the door.
‘Oh, before I forget,’ said Al-Ajnabi when her hand touched the door handle, ‘Your invitations, Sophie.’
He handed her two cards, the outside covers ornamented with Arabic calligraphy.
‘It’s a formal dinner I am hosting on the twenty-second,’ he explained. ‘There will be a couple of MPs, some businessmen and diplomats—people who will have some connection with my business projects.’
Noticing Chapman’s curiosity, Al-Ajnabi walked across the room to a bureau and returned to offer the journalist a similar invitation, which he presented with his compliments.
Sophie looked down blankly at the invitations. She had assumed that the second invitation was for Darren. But when she read the name on the inside, she stopped abruptly.
‘Wait a minute. I think you’d better explain how you know about Marcus?’ she demanded indignantly. ‘I’ve never mentioned his name to you before.’
‘Mr Easterby, you mean?’
‘That’s right—my boyfriend, Marcus Easterby. Who gave you his name?’
‘Maybe Hasan told me,’ Al-Ajnabi answered absent-mindedly, then paused for a moment, giving her that cold smile. ‘Or maybe you talk in your sleep, Miss Sophie.’
He passed off this latest outrage just as he had casually slipped in mention of the ‘arrangement’ back at the interview. Sophie stared at him, momentarily speechless, before impulse sent her walking huffily towards him. She took hold of his hand and thrust the invitations into his palm, scrunching them up without a word. Apparently unconcerned, Al-Ajnabi watched Sophie’s back as she stormed out of the room in silent fury.
‘What was all that about, Soph?’ asked Darren downstairs in her apartment. She had thrown herself face down on the sofa. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me about, isn’t there?’
But Sophie wouldn’t answer any of his questions and Chapman had to get back to London. Conflicting ambitions battled in his mind. When he hoped that Sophie would be safe in the Ramli’s mansion without him, it wasn’t so much her physical safety he considered to be at risk. No, those temper tantrums were signs of something else. Surely she couldn’t be…? …with that man? Chapman had never seen Sophie so un-cool before, and, wait a minute, what the hell had Prince Al-Ajnabi meant about Sophie talking in her sleep? The implication was too absurd to be literal. Or was it? Christ! Surely Sophie couldn’t have...?
Judging from her breathing, Sophie was already asleep. Chapman took a blanket from the bedroom and put it around her, kissing the top of her hair in silent devotion. It was neither the time to go nor the place to stay. But the decision wasn’t his to make, anyway. He had to get back to the newsroom, and once he got there, he swore he’d have a good look at the Ramli special envoy’s background. He would also phone Joanna and ask her to check on Sophie.