Mambo

by Campbell Armstrong

  “Nectar,” Pagan said, blinking at the very thin yellow light that had begun to stretch across Golden Square like a skin graft that hadn’t quite taken. He had some vague recollection of Magdalena in one of his bizarre dreams, but the form was lost to him.

  Foxworth produced some gauze and scissors. “Today we have the changing of bandages,” he said.

  “Let me get this down first.” Pagan drained his cup, then he reached for his painkillers on the window ledge. He drew his hand back. “I’ll see if I can get by without them for a while. I wouldn’t want to end up in some treatment centre for dopers. I lean toward compulsive behaviour as it is.”

  Foxworth agreed with that assessment. “Let’s get the old bandage off.”

  “Foxworth Nightingale,” Pagan remarked.

  “I was a Boy Scout. I had a drawerful of first aid badges. Now turn to the side, Frank.”

  Pagan obliged. Foxworth removed the old bandage and dressing and discarded them. With impressive neatness, he snipped a length of new bandage and placed it around Pagan’s chest, then fastened it.

  “The exit wound looks raw,” Foxie said. “The entrance isn’t so bad, though. Put this on.”

  “A clean shirt?”

  “I took the liberty of going to your flat. I didn’t think you’d mind. I brought you a clean suit and some underwear. Also shoes and socks. I hope everything matches.”

  The suit was brown linen, the shoes black, the socks grey, the shirt pale-blue herringbone. Pagan didn’t have the heart to criticise the colour scheme. Besides, he was looking for Gunther Ruhr, not dining at Le Caprice. Foxworth, for his part, had had a terrible time going through Pagan’s wardrobe, the shirts that suggested bad dreams, parrots and Hawaiian plants and swirls of vivid colour, the array of shoes that covered the spectrum from bright canvas espadrilles to shiny black leather, the dozen suits of all kinds, linen and tweed and silk, summer and winter, formal and otherwise, single- and double-breasted.

  “You’d make a fine gentleman’s gentleman, Foxie.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Is there more coffee?”

  Foxworth opened a thermos flask and refilled Pagan’s cup. “A couple of overnight items, Frank. I’ll run through them for you. First, the usual sightings of Gunther. Sheffield, Morecambe, Newcastle.”

  “Now he’s travelling north,” Pagan said drily. “Soon we’ll hear he’s in bloody Reykjavik trying to take out Icelandic citizenship.”

  “He was also seen in Sloane Square and Pimlico and stepping aboard a train at Victoria Station. Also in Brighton, Canterbury and – here’s a nice one – Stonehenge, where he was spotted by a couple of druids.”

  Pagan shook his head. Druids, he thought. Stonehenge drew all kinds of oddballs, like a giant bug light in the middle of Salisbury Plain.

  “What other news, Foxie?”

  “We’ve had reports from our men in East Anglia. They say security at military installations is tight. As for the Chief Constable in Cambridge, he’s got every available policeman in the county beating the fields with sticks, in a manner of speaking.”

  Pagan stood up now, walked to the window, saw a few early morning drones cross the square in the direction of their offices. He had a sudden sense of dread. All the order he saw beneath him – the streets, the parked cars, this somnolent London square – had a transient quality. A man like Ruhr, if he went unchecked, could demolish a city block with very little trouble.

  “Is there any progress from the manhunt?” Pagan asked.

  “Drudgery,” Foxie said. “Door-to-door drudgery. Our men keep knocking and they keep asking, but no Gunther.”

  “The bastard’s somewhere,” Pagan said.

  Foxie picked up a thick manila folder, opened it, took out a sheet of paper. He said, “By the way, there were two murders last night in Chelsea. It’s outside our bailiwick, but I mention it because of the MO. Two grenades tossed through a window. Boom boom and cheerio. The report mentions the fact that the weapons were extremely powerful but homemade.”

  “Homemade? Irish?”

  Foxworth shrugged. “It’s very remote. The victims were a French businessman called Chapotin and his bit of fluff, a girl by the name of Melody Logue, who happened to be the niece of Lord somebody or other. I don’t see any reason the Irish would want to dispose of the pair. I also considered the idea that it could be the work of Ruhr, but homemade isn’t his style. Unless he’s changed.”

  Pagan made a gesture of impatience. “I’ll read the written stuff when I’ve got time.”

  “There’s one interesting little snippet about Chapotin.”

  “Which is?”

  “From 1957 until 1959, Jean-Paul Chapotin was the Deputy French Ambassador to Cuba.”

  “Cuba.” Pagan considered this item a moment, but it didn’t have a place in the framework of his preoccupation with Gunther.

  “Cuba brings me to the last item, of course,” Foxworth said. “It took some hours and a lot of looking through the Foreign Office’s mug shots, but finally I was able to identify Magdalena Torrente’s friend.”

  “And?” There was impatience in Pagan’s voice. He wanted to pretend that Magdalena’s room-mate meant nothing to him. It was the kind of inquiry one made on the side. A personal tangent, the geometry of an old love, that was all.

  Foxie rummaged back inside his folder and brought out a small stack of flimsy sheets; across each were the words “For Internal File Only”. Foxie smiled in a way that suggested larceny. “It took some persuasion and a bit of the old school tie to get these, Frank. Domestic surveillance division of intelligence. Ever since a Cuban diplomat tried to shoot one of our intelligence chaps on a London street in 1988, surveillance of Cubans on diplomatic or any other kind of business here has increased considerably. The watchers don’t want to let Cubans out of their sight. Besides, all this surveillance irritates Castro, and everybody loves getting old Fidel’s goat –”

  “The point, Foxie.”

  “The point, Frank, is a man called Rafael Rosabal.”

  Norfolk

  Stephanie Brough pressed her tongue against the strip of rayon that had been used to gag her. Her arms were tied behind her back with short lengths of rope that cut into her skin, and her ankles were bound so tightly bone was forced against bone. The loose ends of her restraints had been knotted to the frame of the narrow bed on which she lay. There was a window above her. It was dawn and heavy clouds rushed across the sky.

  She hadn’t slept at all. How could she? Even with her eyes shut she’d been conscious of Ruhr sitting in the corner of the room in an old armchair. He’d been there most of the night, sometimes just gazing at her. You couldn’t tell anything from his expression. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking or planning. He just looked so chilling.

  Oh Steffie, she thought. Perhaps today they’ll release you. She wondered about her poor mare, which she’d left in the rain. The horse would trot home eventually, she was sure of that. And then Steffie’s Dad would go to the police – it was really that simple, wasn’t it? He would have gone to the police already, wouldn’t he?

  She shut her eyes. She heard voices from the kitchen. The skinny man, the American whose name she didn’t know, was talking to Ruhr. They were arguing, and she knew it had something to do with her, but she didn’t want to listen.

  What she remembered was how her father had talked about Ruhr, and the killing of those poor policemen, and how Ruhr was a monster who deserved to hang. She hadn’t paid close attention because her father was always saying that so-and-so should be hanged, or that hanging was too good for some people. Her father was a bloody dinosaur, but really quite nice.

  She’d seen Ruhr’s picture in newspapers and on TV. And yesterday, when she’d recognised him, her heart had withered and something had dropped like a boulder into her stomach. When he’d dragged her back to the house she couldn’t help thinking of all the terrible things he was said to have done.

  Is he going to kill you,
Steffie? Are you just another victim?

  She turned her face to the wall. If somebody was going to shoot her, she didn’t want to have to see the killer come in the room. Think other things! Think music or books or The Lord’s Prayer! The argument in the kitchen was still going on. The harsh voices were almost audible as they rose and fell, Ruhr’s especially, high-pitched and nasal. She tried to tune it out. A few drops of rain knocked on the window above, and the branch of a dead tree flapped.

  What would it be like to be shot through the skull? Probably nothing. No sensation. The end. Panicked, she struggled for a few seconds against her bonds, but it was hopeless. The harder she laboured, the more painfully the ropes cut. Her eyes watered in sheer frustration.

  Ruhr came into the bedroom. He carried a rifle; tucked into his waistband was a handgun. His bad hand was concealed inside a pocket. He approached the bed and smiled, but she couldn’t stand to see that smile, which was unreal, like something razored out of his face, a damp slit. He sat down, slid the gag from her lips. She was thankful to him for that at least, but her gratitude lasted only a second.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  She shook her head. She wouldn’t speak. She’d be perfectly quiet, like one of those nuns who had taken vows of silence. It was a small rebellion, but she couldn’t think of any other kind of resistance.

  “You don’t want to speak?” Ruhr asked. He set his rifle down, propping it against the mattress.

  Steffie said nothing. Actually, silence was pleasant, like a great estuary of motionless water; she could float and go on floating across its surface. Floating lilies and serene swans and reflections of the sky. She stared at Ruhr, remembering how he’d smacked her yesterday, and suddenly the surface of her silence seemed fragile. He could strike her again and make her talk, if he wanted.

  “Little girl,” Ruhr said. He put his good hand on her stomach, the palm flat. She had a firm belly, none of the softness that comes with the collapse of time. “Pretty little girl. Your friends tell you, no? They tell you how pretty you are. I imagine you have many boyfriends.”

  Silence; rain on the window; the branch drumming. She thought, These are a few of my favourite things.

  Ruhr moved his good hand. He slid it under her blouse – her white blouse, caked with hardened mud, disgusting – and then unhooked her brassière from the front. She had the thought that if she let him do whatever he wanted then surely he’d set her free. Ruhr tugged the brassière from her body and turned it over in his hand, smiling as he studied it. Then he lowered his face into the garment and didn’t move for a while.

  “The smell of a young girl,” he said. “There is nothing quite so fresh and lovely.”

  Steffie felt her stomach rise up into her throat. How could she bear it if he touched her again? He was ugly and white and the very idea of being kissed by him – he wouldn’t stop at kissing! he’d screw her! – filled her with terror. The nearest she’d come to sex was with Jason Turnberry in the summer just past; not the whole way – he’d fondled her breasts and she’d let him touch her between the legs for a second, but Jason wasn’t Gunther Ruhr, Jason was a lovely timid boy, and he stopped when you told him to.

  “You are so afraid,” he said. “There is really no need, Stephanie. Sometimes when you are afraid it becomes contagious, and the people around you begin to be afraid also, and then they do irrational things out of fear. Be calm, little girl.”

  Steffie licked her dry lips. What bloody good was silence anyway? It was too meek, too feeble. If she was going to get anywhere, she’d have to speak. Her voice was hoarse when she whispered, “If you let me leave, I swear I’ll never say a thing to anybody. I’ll make a solemn vow.”

  Ruhr said, “In my experience, people who make solemn vows are usually the first to make betrayals also.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I promise.”

  Ruhr looked at her for a while. He slowly transferred the small brassière from his good hand to the bad one. “I am sure you believe what you say right at this moment. But my answer is the same. You see,” – and he patted her knuckles; his skin was like damp slate – “I have business to conduct and I can’t afford to let you go home to your parents. Do you understand that? It would be imprudent of me to release you.”

  “When will you let me go? When your business is finished?”

  Ruhr stood up. He looked down at her. “In about twenty minutes from now, we are going to take a short trip.”

  “Where?”

  Ruhr placed a fingertip to his mouth, a gesture of secrecy.

  “But,” was all she managed to say before Ruhr replaced the gag.

  Outside the house, Trevaskis and Rick loaded the Range Rover with M-16s, tear gas canisters, rocket launchers, grenades, gas masks. The guns, which had been cleaned yet again last night by the Argentinians, were all in excellent condition. Ruhr’s inspection of the weapons had been thorough.

  Trevaskis, half-listening to the car radio, said, “You ask me, it’s fucked, the whole situation.”

  Rick, as taciturn as he was massive, grunted as he loaded a box of ammunition.

  “Some things you don’t mess with,” Trevaskis said. “This kid, now. What’s the point? I wouldn’t have brought her inside the house in the first goddam place. No way. A quick bullet in the skull, kid’s dead, you got no extra baggage.”

  “Right,” Rick agreed.

  “And if you don’t want her blood on your hands, then all you gotta do is tie her up real tight and leave her in the house. Sooner or later somebody’s gonna find her.” Trevaskis, who didn’t much like the idea of violence being done to a child, was quiet for a moment. “He’s one sick sonofabitch, lemme tell you. Look into his eyes, man. I seen saner guys in county asylums.”

  Slicks of rain ran down Trevaskis’ face to his neck and slithered over his St Christopher. “So long as he don’t screw up the whole deal, I don’t care. I’ll tell you one thing for free: I can’t stand that bastard. If he crosses me …” Trevaskis let his sentence hang unfinished. Then he added, “There’s only one goddam reason to bring the chick along.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Think about it, Rick.”

  Ruhr came out of the house just then. The Americans fell silent at once. Ruhr walked round the Range Rover and stood with his arms folded. He stared up at the dawn sky. The clouds and the rainy haze weren’t going to be unfavourable factors. He looked at his wristwatch: six fifty-eight.

  “I still say we don’t take her with us.” Trevaskis stared at Ruhr, a hard look that didn’t impress the German, who simply made an impatient gesture. “Either we shoot her, or we leave her behind and secure.”

  “She goes in the back of the vehicle. We’ve discussed all this. The matter is closed, Trevaskis.”

  “And then what? What happens to her afterwards?”

  Ruhr said nothing. Trevaskis wearied him. The American stuck his thumbs in his belt loops and said, “I just heard on the car radio your man Pagan’s back on the job, Ruhr. He’s outta the hospital and coming after you. How’s that grab you, Mr Claw?”

  Ruhr walked some yards from the vehicle. He wasn’t even going to dignify Trevaskis’ information, thrown at him like some feeble gauntlet, with any kind of comment. Pagan was a policeman and one cop was much like another: they all had dead imaginations. The best one could hope for from a man such as Pagan was that his injury might have made him a more dangerous adversary, that he was looking less to recapture Ruhr than he was to avenge the death of his comrades. A cop on a personal mission was always more interesting than one plodding through dull routine.

  But he’d deal with the question of Pagan later, because something else had begun to bother him slightly.

  There were times when he stood in a landscape or stepped inside a room and he had an instinct, almost a certainty, an animal sense, that something adverse was about to happen. Often this premonitory ability gave him time to take evasive action. But right now whatever troubled him was so vague it was
like a faint scent blown on a haphazard breeze.

  He looked up the slope of land that rose from the farmhouse, up through mud and wet trees and clumps of nettles. Whatever made him uneasy lay on the rise, he was sure of that much. He covered the butt of his pistol with the palm of his hand and studied the landscape. The trees dripped, the foliage stirred, the mud was covered with puddles that reflected the sky like so many tiny cracked mirrors.

  Ruhr thought about the girl. Her parents would have begun last night by calling their daughter’s friends. There would have been no panic at first, a mere uneasiness, perhaps a certain irritation after a time. Then they might have gone out on foot to search for her. Rain and mud and the absence of light would halt them, at least until dawn. They would also have called the local police.

  But how many men were available in a country constabulary? And the terrain, covered with muddy fields and ditches and a tortuous network of lanes, could not be combed quickly. Even though it was mainly a flat landscape, it was a secretive one, with hollows, and tall grasses, and dense stands of trees. There were hundreds of isolated farmhouses, weekend cottages for Londoners, windmills, abandoned ruins.

  Ruhr took a couple of steps toward the slope. He might have done what Trevaskis had recommended. He might have shot the child. He’d already considered the idea. In time, no doubt, he would jettison her. But he remembered the feel of her skin, and the small white brassière flecked with mud, and he thought about the high cheekbones and the thin oval face and the way her short skirt hardly covered her thighs. He was flooded with a longing both familiar and dangerous. The youthfulness of the child, her silken vulnerability: these were the two elements of an equation whose sum was terror. And what was terror but a means of total control? Besides, when he thought of the girl in Cambridge he had a sense of unfinished business, which he didn’t like.