I KILL

by Lex Lander

  I made commiserating noises.

  ‘It’s okay. It happened two years ago. I guess I’m over it.’

  ‘No other children?’ I asked, more to get onto another topic than out of curiosity about the extent of her brood.

  ‘No. Only Elizabeth.’

  Coffee and a tall Pepsi with two bendy straws were set down on our table. I gave the waiter my room number and slipped him a twenty-dirham note that almost fell apart as he took it. Most of the local currency was in an advanced state of decay.

  ‘You’re a long way from home, Mrs Power.’ Keeping the conversation in motion was becoming a struggle.

  ‘Clair,’ she corrected distantly as she stirred her unsweetened coffee, worrying at her lower lip. As the silence lengthened and I was mentally seeking a suitable platitude with which to break it, she blurted, ‘Look, I’m sorry if I seem uncommunicative. I just wasn’t sure if I should say anything. Anyhow … here goes. That man you saw us with upstairs has been bothering me ever since we got here.’

  ‘Really?’ I didn’t ask her to elaborate, just left an opening in case she wanted to.

  ‘Yes. He … oh, you know … keeps asking me out. He even got my cell number from somewhere, and keeps calling me. He even suggested we move out of the hotel and be his house guests.’ She snorted nervously. ‘You can imagine what for, I suppose.’

  A red-blooded male behaving like a red-blooded male, was my silent opinion. The opinion I diplomatically expressed was, ‘A visit sounds harmless enough. Especially if he’s invited both of you. He can hardly, er … misbehave while your daughter’s around.’

  She sawed some more at her bottom lip. ‘But why won’t he take no for an answer? Why so persistent? Every day, without fail, he pounces on me from … from nowhere. It’s like being ambushed.’ She shuddered. ‘I’ve nothing against him as a person. I barely know him, only that his name’s Henrik de Bruin, though he calls himself Rik. Oh, and he lives in Holland, and he’s not short of money. I’m not off men altogether. It’s just him. I have a bad feeling about him.’ She shot me a hard look, as if wondering why she was exposing her soul to a stranger.

  ‘Don’t tell me if you’d rather not,’ I said mildly. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

  ‘Oh, but I want to.’ Her hand brushed my forearm. Her touch was cool and dry. I imagined it stroking my fevered brow. ‘We Anglo-Saxons must stick together, don’t you think?’

  ‘The special relationship, eh?’ I meant it facetiously but she took it at face value.

  ‘Sure, we have so much in common.’ She proceeded to sermonise on the purity of the WASP brigade. I sipped my coffee and pretended to agree, though it’s an ideology that bores me. Not to mention the implied insult to lesser species, including me, with my mixed parentage and religious persuasion.

  ‘Something’s puzzling me: your accent’s American but it has traces of something else.’

  This seemed to amuse her. ‘Australian. My husband was General Manager for the Australian subsidiary of Astra Minerals & Chemicals, and we lived there for most of our marriage. I still carry a US passport though.’

  I grunted neutrally and switched topics.

  ‘How’s your holiday going, apart from your too-friendly neighbourhood Dutchman? Have you been out into the desert yet?’

  She tasted her coffee before answering. ‘It’s on our agenda but we may not bother. It’s just sand, after all, isn’t it? More than enough of that in Oz.’ She glanced down at her watch. ‘Where is that girl? She’s always wandering off. When she was little her father used to call her Wanderliz.’ She rummaged in her bag and produced a smart phone. ‘I’d better track … ah, here she is.’

  And here, indeed, she was: almost as tall as her mother, mane of tawny hair, stonewashed denim shorts, clinging dark-blue singlet. Partly because of her height it was hard to be precise about her age. I put her in the upper teens region. Shoulders broad for a girl, build otherwise slender with well-defined plump breasts. Limbs uniformly bronzed by the sun. More than merely pretty. A whole lot more.

  She came to us, smiling, her walk a faithful imitation of her mother’s. She was a delight to behold and mindful of it.

  Not only that. She was the living double of my forever companion, a dead Italian girl, who still stalked my daydreams and my night dreams as vividly as if it were only yesterday when I murdered her.

  Four

  Clair Power made introductions as her daughter unplugged the iPod cord and spirited it away in her shoulder bag.

  ‘G’day,’ she said matter-of-factly, authentic Australian.

  I unfroze my features and manufactured a stiff smile.

  ‘Hello … Elizabeth.’

  ‘Call me Lizzy. Everybody calls me Lizzy, except Mummy when she’s pi … cross with me.’ Then, spotting the Pepsi: ‘Is that for me?’ She crashed down into a chair very unladylike. ‘Couldn’t I have a Foster’s?’

  ‘Not while I’m around.’ Clair gestured towards me. ‘This gentleman sent the hotel people to get rid of that Rik person.’

  Lizzy broke off vacuuming Pepsi into her mouth.

  ‘No kidding?’ she said, speaking around the straws. She didn’t seem particularly impressed.

  ‘And, anyhow, where did you disappear to just now? I was chattering away to you, or so I thought, then I turned round and you’d gone. I felt such a fool.’

  Lizzy withdrew the straws from the glass, sucked them dry.

  ‘Talking to Yusuf.’

  The irritation on her mother’s features was replaced by displeasure.

  ‘Gee, honey, I wish you wouldn’t.’ Aside, to me, ‘Yusuf is the … what do you call them … bell-hop? Bell-boy?’

  ‘I know him.’

  ‘He’s so good-looking,’ Lizzy sighed.

  ‘He’s a … he’s not European,’ Clair countered uncertainly in a lowered voice. ‘In any case, we’re only here for another week.’

  ‘All the more reason not to keep him dangling on a string. And don’t be racist.’

  ‘Now listen to me, young lady …’

  While this trial of personalities was in progress I was moved to study the girl and to marvel anew that nature could have created two people as physically alike as she and Pavan’s daughter, from such diverse origins. Yet although she was a facsimile of the Italian girl this did not diminish her beauty in its own right. Her cheeks and the deep bridge of her nose were darkly pocked with freckles, and though her face still retained some of the roundness of youth it was already firm of jaw and mouth; she would be a wilful one. But what really struck me was her eyes. Smoky-grey, languid eyelids – eyes that were a lot older than her years. It was in her eyes and her smile above all that she evoked Pavan’s daughter, brought her back to life, to sit with me at this table in the play of the sunlight, to the splash and gurgle of the waterfall and the coo of the doves in the cool green trees.

  Clair’s voice punctured the painful balloon of nostalgia. ‘Alan … Alan …’

  ‘Sorry … miles away.’

  ‘You don’t mind my calling you Alan, I hope?’

  ‘I insist … Clair. You were saying?’

  ‘I was asking whether you would let a daughter of yours go to a disco alone in a town like Tangier.’

  Not in any town if I had a daughter as fetching as Lizzy, was my private sentiment.

  ‘It might not be wise,’ I said primly.

  ‘Thank you. I was sure you’d agree.’

  ‘Stop discussing me as if I weren’t here!’ Lizzy seethed. ‘I’m too old to be kept on a leash, Mummy, and it’s time you adjusted to that fact.’

  ‘On the other hand,’ I said, deftly modifying my stance, ‘Yusuf seems a respectable enough lad.’

  Lizzy’s upright jerk told me I was correct in assuming Yusuf was part of the plan.

  ‘There’s the Ranch Discotheque, around the corner and up the hill, a matter of a few hundred yards. It’s made up like a Wild West saloon. You could organise a taxi there and back.’ Lizzy was bouncing in her seat i
n an attitude of mock prayer. ‘To stop you pacing the floor while she’s gone, you could join me for dinner.’

  My closing proposition, almost an afterthought, hauled Clair back from vetoing her daughter’s night out.

  Lizzy was not slow to pounce. ‘You’ll have a great evening with Mr Melville and I’ll be back by ten – promise. Pleeeease, Mummy.’

  Clair made a resigned puffing sound through her nostrils. Lizzy, scenting capitulation, flung her arms around her neck.

  ‘Oh, Mummy, you’re beaut!’

  Over Clair’s shoulder, Lizzy and I swapped conspiratorial winks.

  ‘Must fly.’ Lizzy rose so fast the plastic seat stuck to her thighs and rose with her. ‘I’ve got another windsurfing lesson at eleven.’ She waggled her fingers at me in farewell. ‘Ciao, Mr Melville. See you again.’

  Off she loped, neat little derriere and legs without end, swerving to avoid the man in the Bermuda shorts, who was also leaving.

  ‘Er … how old is your daughter?’ I asked, casually, conversationally.

  ‘It’s taking some getting used to,’ Clair said, and her voice was gruff with affection, ‘but she’ll be sixteen next month.’

  Sixteen. Only three years younger than Simone. Old enough to smoke, old enough to work, old enough for … other things.

  * * * * *

  Instead of calling a taxi I conveyed Lizzy and Yusuf to the disco in the Fiat, and arranged to pick them up at 10.30. Lizzy full of bounce, her sort-of-blonde hair tied back with a bright green ribbon that matched her full-skirted dress and her strappy platform shoes. Her make-up was on the overdone side, but so what? I guessed her mother kept her well-reined in, a hallmark of the over-protective single parent, so lipstick and eye-liner were harmless enough forms of free expression.

  Yusuf was ill-at-ease in his western style sports jacket and chinos, with hair fashionably spiked. Even Clair was impressed by the transformation, admitting as much as she and I strolled up the alley to Le Detroit Restaurant, the flush of the evening sun dyeing the line of rocks beyond the port blood-red and transmuting the sea to molten metal.

  ‘She’ll have forgotten him five minutes after your plane leaves the runway,’ I assured her, then stopped and caught her arm to point out a collection of small fishing boats heading harbour-wards, low in the water under the weight of their catches. The sunset’s glow tinted them sepia, like a scene from a silent movie.

  Clair took a deep breath, held it momentarily in her lungs, then released it in a measured exhalation as if it were some rare and finite commodity.

  ‘Africa,’ she said with a trace of reverence. ‘It really is kind of special, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sure.’ We had reached the unimposing entrance to the restaurant, so I guided her through and up a cranked flight of stairs. At the top we were welcomed in French by a robed factotum. The place was about half full, with Europeans in the majority. No sign here of tourists being frightened off by the sons of Allah.

  ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic about Africa,’ Clair remarked, once we were settled at our reserved table by the window that ran full length of the wall. The head waiter put a match to an overweight candle, distributed menus, took an order for aperitifs, and withdrew. In the window our reflections floated in a fading canvas of sky and water, and the candle was a beacon far out across the strait.

  ‘For my money this isn’t the real Africa,’ I said. ‘That starts below the equator. Up here is just an extension of the Middle East with a French sub-stratum. It’s too Westernised. Or used to be before the jihadists declared war on the non-Muslim world.’

  She rested an elbow on the table. ‘I take it you have first-hand knowledge of the real Africa, as you call it. Tell me about it.’

  Like daughter, like mother, she was at her vivacious best this evening. A simple, low-cut blue dress that hinted at cleavage, set off by a feather boa stole. The webs of fine lines had been smoothed away by creams and cosmetics and her looks were almost girlish. Her hair was neat, curling at the nape of the neck, copper-coloured in the dim lighting. Hair that came alive when she laughed, or nodded, or simply toyed with it, instead of being held fast in a chemical helmet. My designs on Mrs Clair Power were beginning to take shape.

  Over the aperitifs, the cross-talk of the thirty or so other diners no more than a background murmur, I told her about the real Africa, specifically about the fever swamps of Angola, where some years ago I had hunted down a Portuguese slave trader. For her ears though, I edited the reasons for that mission and its fatal outcome.

  ‘Did you kill any dangerous game?’ she asked.

  They didn’t come any more dangerous than Carvalho, I reflected. To Clair, I said, ‘Only a hippo. When I say “only”, I mean that was the only occasion. I don’t subscribe to slaughter for its own sake.’

  From the à la carte menu we both plumped for fruits de mer, combining starter and fish dishes. For the main course Clair chose poulet au citron to my brochette of lamb. Simple fare. For this evening, I confined my penchant for the finer things in life to the comprehensive wine list: a peerless Chablis Premier Cru ‘Vaillons’ 1983 to go with the fruits de mer, and a 1975 Margaux Grand Cru Classé, that king among wines, to follow. Not that I had pretensions as a connoisseur, I just knew what I liked, and what I liked tended to be expensive.

  ‘The bill will be horrific,’ Clair said with a giggle.

  ‘We can always offer to wash the dishes.’

  ‘There speaks a man who never washed a dish in his life.’

  Which wasn’t true, but I let it pass.

  ‘What’s your profession, Alan? No – let me guess. Money no object, so … lawyer? No, too good-looking …’

  ‘Thanks. Now you’re embarrassing me. If I might say so, you’re not so bad yourself.’

  The approach of the wine waiter armed with our Chablis, stilled the conversation. I checked the temperature of the bottle and watched him pull the cork with the ease that came from constant practice. I tasted the wine, nodded approval.

  ‘Marvellous stuff,’ Clair commented moments later as she tasted hers. ‘Silky smooth. I could drink it by the gallon.’

  ‘Don’t get carried away,’ I said with a grin. Then again, it could work to my advantage if she did.

  Our starters came. We ate for a while, then it was her turn to talk about her life in Australia: her husband’s employers had sent him there just after their marriage, to help set up a local office. The relocation was expected to be short term, but it didn’t work out that way. Lizzy was born about a year later. When Robert died in a road accident involving a drunk, Clair had intended to stay on. They were well provided for: a house of their own, life insurance, a company pension. But all their friends were couples, and as an attractive widow Clair was soon estranged from them. Loneliness and disillusion compounded to make her cast ever-longing eyes homeward, to America.

  ‘Presumably you still have family in the US?’

  ‘Unfortunately, we don’t,’ she said, prodding aimlessly with her fork at an olive. ‘My parents have been dead for some years. My father was an only child. My mother had a sister, but she disappeared back in the seventies to join some cockeyed religious order in South America, never to be heard of again. So I’ve no brothers or sisters, nor aunts nor uncles.’ Her smile was melancholy. ‘There’s just us – Elizabeth and me.’

  As a lone wolf myself I could empathise with her.

  ‘Don’t you keep in touch with Robert’s parents?’

  ‘They’re dead too. Tragic – whoops!’ The much-stabbed olive shot off her plate and across the table. I apprehended it, popped it into my mouth. ‘Thanks. I’m partial to olives.’

  ‘And that was my last!’ She deftly hooked a prawn the size of a sausage from the scattered remains of my meal.

  ‘There – an eye for an eye, a prawn for an olive.’

  She chewed with relish, while I watched, conscious of a growing attraction towards this mercurial woman, one minute so solemn, the next so full of fun.
/>
  ‘What was I saying?’

  ‘About your husband’s parents.’

  The solemnity returned.

  ‘He was terminally ill and went to Switzerland to be euthanized, or whatever it’s called. After that Robert’s mother just seemed to waste away. She died only a few months later.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Poor darlings.’

  ‘And Robert – was he an only child?’

  ‘No, there’s a younger brother called Alistair. He lives in Barcelona. I don’t know much about him. He was best man at our wedding, but we’ve have nothing to do with him since.’ She sniffed, hunted in her purse for a handkerchief. ‘Gee, this is depressing. Let’s not talk about my troubles any more. Tell me yours. What do you really do for a living, for instance?’

  This was the signal for me to trot out my well-oiled fabrication about killings on the stock market leading to semi-retirement.

  ‘Not a care in the world,’ she said with a dreamy air, when I had finished. ‘I envy you.’

  We were on our main course by then. Outside, darkness had fallen, relieved only by the lights in the harbour and the reflected interior of the restaurant. In this reflection our eyes met and held for several seconds. It was I who turned away, from the image to the flesh.

  ‘You know you’re really are quite a looker,’ I said.

  She placed her knife and fork precisely on the edge of her plate, and rested her chin on interlocked fingers. Her gaze was steady.

  ‘I’m thirty-eight,’ she said softly.

  ‘I’m thirty-nine, but I’m not counting. You’re still quite a looker.’

  ‘While the compliments are whizzing back and forth, your eyes are amazing. I’ve never seen eyes so blue; they’re like … like blue ice.’ She shivered. ‘See what you’ve done to me? I’ve gone all goose-pimply.’

  She had too: the fine hairs on her forearms were standing erect, like grass at the bottom of the sea.

  ‘I’d rather heat you up than cool you down.’

  Had I gone too far? Her mouth formed an O but her follow-up look was tinged with invitation. Then she spoiled it by enquiring about my parents.