“I can be as flexible as I like, working with the magazine.”
“I was not thinking particularly about the magazine,” corrected Janet. “What about girlfriends, wives, and children?”
He looked across the car again, grinning. “There are no girlfriends, wives, or children, in that or any other order.”
She smiled back, grateful he was making a joke of the question. “As I said, it’s a very generous offer. Thank you.”
“So will you?” he pressed.
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
Outside the hotel he made a groping, haphazard search through the pockets of his jacket and then the glove compartment and withdrew triumphantly from there with a crumpled and bent piece of pasteboard in his hand. “Knew I had one somewhere!” he said, offering her the visiting card with his number printed upon it. “And this!” he added, snatching into the carton and proffering the wrapped pastille. “It’s strawberry flavored, the best. I always save it until last.”
She laughed openly, unoffended by the flirtation. She was enjoying herself and it hadn’t happened for a long time: not since before John had been snatched. “All I seem to do is thank you.”
“Will you?”
“Will I what?”
“Come out to dinner with me some other time?”
Janet felt herself coloring and hoped he wouldn’t notice in the fading light. She said: “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“When?”
“I said maybe!” said Janet, as unoffended by his persistence as she had been by the earlier flirtation.
“Can I call?”
“Of course you can.”
“And you’ll get in touch with me, if there are any more approaches?”
“I promised I would. So I will.”
Baxeter did not call the following day. Janet sat around the pool in the morning and went into the city in the afternoon and checked her messages when she got back, acknowledging the disappointment and becoming unhappy at feeling it. That night, eating a solitary dinner, she kept remonstrating with herself and was convinced by the time she went to bed that her attitude was in no way unfaithful to John. After so much hostility and rejection and drama, what could be more normal than responding—properly responding—to a gesture of friendship? And that was all it amounted to, Janet was equally convinced: a gesture of friendship, nothing more. Certainly nothing more on her part.
The next day Zarpas gave her the date of the first hearing against the Fettal family, cautioning her it was only a remand appearance but warning her that the magistrates would expect her to attend. And within an hour Partington telephoned to say the borrowed clothes had been returned to Beirut and ask if she had changed her mind about his offer to help, which she hadn’t. She caught a reflection of herself leaving the by-now-familiar pool, abruptly aware just how deeply tanned she had become. And at this rate, she guessed, she would become more so.
Janet tried to suppress the sound of any pleasure in her voice when Baxeter called on the Friday and was sure she had succeeded, but a brief and unsettling feeling, a kind of numbness, briefly swept her body.
When he invited her to dinner, she managed, too, to seem unsure in advance of accepting it and felt after replacing the receiver that the conversation had been maintained on precisely the necessary level of friendship. He assured her the Orangery at the Hilton was good for nouvelle cuisine, and it was, and afterwards they went to a bar on the Famagusta Road where there was good bouzouki music. He said the article and photographs had worked out very well and that his Vancouver office was pleased. She told him about the initial court appearance of the Fettals, and he at once offered to accompany her if she would like him to. Janet, surprised, accepted. Baxeter asked what she was doing on the weekend, and Janet blurted “nothing” before thinking what she was saying, so he invited her to Paphos, and she accepted. Baxeter made no attempt to kiss her—no attempt at any physical contact at all—when he took her back to the hotel and neither did he the following day, which she enjoyed as much as she had their first trip to the Troodos Mountains.
There were three outings in the succeeding week, one lunch and two dinners, and that weekend he suggested going through the Turkish-held area in one of the United Nations-escorted convoys to Kyrenia, which he assured her was possible.
Janet made the journey curiously, saddened by the occasional protest sign and the indications of squalor, compared to the Greek-held sections which were all she had previously encountered.
Janet thought Kyrenia was one of the most attractive cities she had visited on the island and Baxeter, as usual, was an enthusiastic guide. He made her climb all over the ochre and yellow castle and in one comparatively small room pointed to a small circle in the middle of the floor.
“This was the officers’ mess hall,” he explained. “In medieval times prisoners were sentenced to be pushed down that hole: it opens into something like the shape of an upside down light bulb. There’s one in the ordinary soldiers’ mess, as well. They’re called oubliette holes because once put in there the prisoners never got out: they were forgotten. All they had to eat, apart from themselves, were the scraps that the officers and men used to throw them, for amusement …” Baxeter’s voice trailed off, at the look on Janet’s face. “Oh Christ!” he said. “Oh Christ, I’m sorry …! What the … oh shit!”
“It’s all right,” she said, stiffly.
“It’s not,” he contradicted. “I don’t know what to say! Jesus Christ!”
“Just don’t say anything.”
23
Mustafa Fettal died without recovering consciousness early on the day of the remand hearing, three hours before the court convened, and it was not until she arrived at the magistrates’ building that Janet learned of the death.
Chief Inspector Zarpas was waiting anxiously on the court steps when she arrived with Baxeter, looking with passing curiosity at the journalist when Janet got from the car. The steps were jammed with reporters and cameramen and there was an abrupt flare of lights: there were a lot of shouted questions, too, which at the time Janet did not understand. Zarpas said: “Don’t say anything: there’s something you’ve got to know,” and started to hurry her away. Janet looked around for Baxeter but couldn’t see him. Zarpas took her into a side office, off the main courtroom corridor, and told her there.
“Dead?” she said, disbelieving.
“I warned you it might happen.”
“Somehow I just never imagined it would.”
“Well, it has,” the policeman said harshly. He had probably the most important court hearing of his career about to begin, and he wanted to break the mood into which he believed she was retreating.
“What must I do now?” asked Janet, numbly. I’ve killed a man, she thought: taken a life.
“Do …?” frowned Zarpas and then understood the question. “I’ve already told you that I don’t intend to recommend any proceedings, because of the circumstances of the stabbing. But you’ve made a confession, so I must officially inform the Lebanese authorities, because of their jurisdiction. But as you already told them and they released you once, I don’t imagine they’ll want to proceed either.”
That wasn’t right, thought Janet: it wasn’t right to be able to kill somebody and escape any penalty whatsoever, irrespective of how extenuating the circumstances might be. She said: “How will it affect today’s hearing?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Zarpas. “The other two have been in conference with their lawyers for over an hour now, ever since I told them.”
“I didn’t mean him to die, I just wanted …”
“Stop it!” Zarpas said, harsher still. “Stop it right now! It happened and we know how it happened and no action is going to be taken. What you did was justified. Don’t collapse into a lot of unnecessary recrimination. Let’s try to make sure the other two don’t walk away.”
Janet nodded but didn’t speak.
“Sure you’re a
ll right?” demanded the man.
“I think so,” Janet managed, although it wasn’t true. She didn’t think she was all right: at that moment she didn’t know what she was.
“You won’t be required to give evidence today,” Zarpas assured her formally. “I just wanted you here for any eventuality.”
“When?” asked Janet.
“That depends on whatever the defense say today. And then what the court decides.”
“I want to get it over with!” said Janet, too loudly.
The concern filled Zarpas’s face at Janet’s unsteady reactions and he thought how fortunate it was that she was not being called today. She’d be all right when the shock wore off: that was all it was, understandable shock. He said: “Let’s get on inside.”
The courtroom was comparatively small and it was already crowded, expectant. Zarpas led her to a reserved area deep in the well of the court and sat her down. At once Janet looked around for Baxeter, worried when at first she couldn’t see him. And then she did, inconspicuous at the side away from the main press bench. He smiled, faintly, and gave a head movement she could not fully understand but which she inferred to mean that he had heard about the death. Quite near to Baxeter she located Partington. When he realized she’d seen him the diplomat nodded too, without any facial expression. Janet looked away, not responding.
The clerk demanded that the court stand, for the entry of the magistrates, and Janet dully took her lead from what people did around her. There was a shuffle of interest when the Fettal brothers were called into the dock. Janet forced herself to look, aware that the attention of almost everyone in the court was upon her as she did so, and she made a determined effort to show no emotion.
The one who had acted as captain wore the same suit and tie as he had in the Dkehelia road cafe but his hair had been slicked back in an attempt at neatness. The other wore no jacket and hobbled with difficulty into the dock. Neither man looked at her.
The charge, that they had jointly attempted fraudulently to covert a money draft in the sum of £10,000 by purporting that they had the right to such monies, was formally delivered and at once the prosecuting solicitor asked for a remand in custody to enable the prosecution to prepare its case.
Then the defense was formally invited to respond.
The Fettals’ solicitor was a fat, confident man who appeared to enjoy the theatrics of a court of law. He smiled indulgently around the room and made much of arranging before him his already perfectly arranged papers.
“Your worships,” he began, still bent over his files. “My clients utterly refute this accusation and I intend to prove absolutely their innocence, although unfortunately someone associated with them who would have been called to prove that innocence has, regrettably, died this very day …” The man paused, as if a moment’s respectful silence were necessary, and then continued: “My clients have no knowledge whatsoever of the original acquisition of the bearer letter of credit in the name of Mrs. Janet Stone …” The man turned and looked fully at Janet. There was no self-satisfied smile now. “They have never met Mrs. Stone nor traveled with Mrs. Stone on any vessel plying out of this island, to the coast of Lebanon …”
There was a bustle of surprised reaction around the room. Zarpas was sitting just two rows away and in front of her and Janet saw him lean towards the prosecuting solicitor and then pull back, nodding in apparent anticipation.
“… My clients shared with a cousin of theirs, Mustafa Fettal, the use of a sailing boat, a general-purpose craft in which they pursued various activities, sometimes fishing, sometimes coastal trading,” resumed the lawyer. He was now looking intently at the magistrates, wanting them fully to take the point he was about to make. “But the three of them did not constitute a permanent crew. Sometimes all three of them sailed it, sometimes only two …” A further pause identified the moment. “And sometimes, your worships, it sailed with one man! I repeat, with just one man! The day before that stipulated in the charge before you, Mustafa Fettal informed his relations, the two accused now in the dock, that upon that evening he wished to use the boat alone. One of my clients could not have sailed that night anyway: he had suffered a grievous wound to the foot, an injury involving a broken bottle, and was quite incapacitated. Neither saw anything unusual in their cousin’s request; it was an arrangement each had known and used many times in the past. They of course agreed. It was then that Mustafa Fettal produced the document which is the subject of the charge before you today. He asked these two to go to a bank to negotiate the order for him and arranged that they should meet the following day for him to receive the money …”
Janet was conscious of more attention upon herself and knew her face was blazing with indignation at what was being said. The court couldn’t accept it! she thought. They just couldn’t!
“… It is surely an indication of their innocence … their unawareness of what they were being asked to do … that they quite openly entered a branch of a local bank in Larnaca and offered the document not realizing it had to be endorsed by the person in whose name it was issued before any monies could be handed over!” said the man. “Surely, sirs, this is the innocent action of ordinary men, not the conniving behavior of villains intent to defraud!”
Ahead of Janet there was another muffled consultation going on between Zarpas and the prosecutor and more head nodding.
The lawyer concluded: “This, sirs, is the basis of the defense I shall be calling—a defense I am confident will result in their immediate acquittal without any reference to a higher court—and in the circumstances I confidently apply to you today for them to be permitted bail, to enable them to continue about their lawful duties.”
The prosecutor was on his feet before the other lawyer was fully seated. The bail objection was very forcefully put. It was pointed out that the two had access to a boat, and Zarpas was formally sworn to give evidence that the police had serious doubts of either appearing at another hearing if they were allowed out of custody. The magistrates did not need to retire to reject the bail application.
When the Fettals were taken down from the dock and the magistrates retired, Janet remained where she had been seated, unsure what to do. In the brief moments of hesitation Zarpas reached her and said: “Let’s go back to that office and talk again.”
The policeman shielded her against the crush of question-shouting reporters in the outside corridor. Once inside the office Janet wheeled upon the man and said: “That was preposterous! Absolutely preposterous!”
“Of course it was preposterous,” Zarpas agreed, mildly. “With the man dead they’re able to change their story: say they knew nothing about your being taken to the Lebanon as a whore.”
“It makes nonsense of everything that really took place!” said Janet, still outraged.
“That’s what the defense tries to do in the majority of cases,” Zarpas said. Deciding she was sufficiently recovered, he said: “But it tells us one thing. You’re going to be in for some pretty tough cross-examination. You’ll have to be ready for it.”
“But there’s proof!” insisted Janet, trying for some reality against the exasperation that burned through her. “The Arab engineer, Haseeb, at Larnaca marina! And the cafe owners on the Dhekelia road.” She groped for the recollection and said, excitedly: “We were served by a young boy: obviously the son of the owner.”
Zarpas moved his head sadly from side to side. “You told us all that in your statement. We haven’t been able to find anyone named Haseeb working around Larnaca marina … or anyone who knows him by that name. No one at the Dhekelia road cafe remembers anything.”
“I don’t believe it!” said Janet, aghast.
“There’s no one reason,” shrugged Zarpas, resigned. “There’s family loyalties … race loyalties. There’s people with things themselves to hide who don’t want to get involved … just not wanting to get involved is enough, more often than not.”
“I really am going to be made to look the complete fool, aren’t
I?” Janet said, crushed by the recollection of why she had been entrapped into the situation in the first place.
“No,” Zarpas said. “You did silly things … unthinking, ill-considered silly things. But everyone can understand and feel sympathy with why you did them: what you hoped to achieve. Complete fools behave without any logic or reason. So you’re not a complete fool. Just a determined lady who made mistakes.”
Janet smiled at the policeman against whom she had felt antagonistic but didn’t any more. She said: “I appreciate that, very much. That makes it seem right …” She stopped and at once blurted: “No! I didn’t mean that! Not that killing. That could never be right, not completely, whatever the circumstance. But everything else.”
“The legal process has begun now,” Zarpas said.
“I know,” Janet said, curious at the reminder.
“There’s a mob of pressmen outside,” warned Zarpas. “You mustn’t give interviews or say anything that is likely to affect the outcome of any hearing. I don’t want to give the Fettals any more loopholes through which to crawl back into the sewer.”
“I won’t,” Janet promised.
“Would you like me to lay on a car?”
“I came with someone. I’ll be all right.”
There was a mob. Two uniformed constables had to run interference to get her to the exit. Throughout Janet shook her head against the cacophony of demands and repeated: “Nothing to say,” and guessed that the photographs and the television footage would be as awful as they had been in Beirut, except that here she’d look as if she were trying to get away from the attention instead of cooperating with it. Every step of the way she searched against the glare for Baxeter’s face in the crowd but couldn’t see it. By the time she reached the steps the panic was beginning to well up, the fear that for some inexplicable reason he wasn’t there to help her and that eventually she would be abandoned to be tugged and gnawed at by the pack around her.
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