Authors: Roberta Latow
Now why did he have to try to be a smart-ass with Ahmad? It had backfired on him. It only proved his point, that Ahmad dwelt on the dark side of others. What did the bastard expect him to say – ‘Keep the painting, how about delivering me the real thing? A little bestiality is a turn-on’? Jim finessed his way out of the tight spot he was in by raising an eyebrow and saying nothing. He merely held up his glass as in a toast, and took another swallow of his drink.
Ahmad picked up a silver casket from his desk and raised the lid. Standing up, he bent across the desk and offered Jim a cigar from the humidor, then a silver cigar-clipper. Ahmad watched Jim light the cigar. He took a Gauloise and placed it in an amber cigarette holder, wet his lips with the point of his tongue and then ran the bit of the holder sensually over his lower lip, before clamping it between his teeth. A long-time habit, natural to him, but to women provocative and very sexy. It irritated Jim.
Ahmad took a gold Cartier lighter from his pocket, flicked the
switch. As the flame touched the tip of the cigarette he looked over it and thought, If Jim O’Connor comes through for me with the sort of news I am looking for, I will send him a bonus. Two Nubian girls. Very talented – they could make him sexually crazy. If Ahmad knew anything about men and their sexual appetites, and clearly he did, Jim O’Connor would devour Ahmad’s two black goddesses. All that good Irish Catholic sexual guilt would be out the window for ever – or the man would shoot himself. Ahmad banked on ‘out the window’. He smiled at Jim. ‘I have a delicate job for you, Jim.’
‘More delicate than usual?’ asked Jim half facetiously. Jim saw a hardness come into Ahmad’s face. He had seen that look several times before. It told him that this business was serious stuff and meant a great deal to Ahmad Salah Ali.
‘Yes.’
‘How so?’
‘The last time I asked you to do an investigation for me, it was out in the open and I didn’t care how public you were when going about your business. This time round, I very much do mind if your investigation is discovered. I don’t care how you do it or what it costs, but no one is to know your firm is on this case. Or even that there is a case to investigate.’
‘That’s what you want, that’s what you’ll get.’
‘Fine, I knew I could count on you.’ Ahmad took a key from one drawer to open another. He placed two brown envelopes on his desk, and locked the drawer again, replacing the key where he had found it. Then he handed one envelope to Jim. ‘There is a hundred thousand dollars in this envelope, a deposit. If you need more before the case is closed and we do a final accounting, just call me. You still have the numbers where you can reach me?’
‘Yes, I do. But hold on, Ahmad. There’s no need for money.’ Jim was thinking to make this his pay-off to Ahmad for all the business Ahmad had sent his way. But he realised Ahmad wasn’t just picking up on favours when Ahmad told him:
‘I think there is. I want no records in your office of our transaction. Strictly cash, and no book-keeping. Agreed?’
Jim was having strong feelings about this job, chiefly a rich curiosity as to what it was and just how dirty Ahmad was willing
to play to get the answers he wanted. ‘Agreed,’ Jim told him after a moment’s hesitation.
Ahmad picked up the second envelope and rose from his chair. ‘A little fresh air, I think.’
He pushed a pair of the French windows open and the two men stepped into the afternoon sunshine. It was warm and felt good. Jim leaned against the balustrade. The house was nearly at the water’s edge. Below, Jim could see a large felucca being loaded with supplies. Paranoia was something he had not figured on in Ahmad. But Jim and Ahmad were there on the balcony: Ahmad was afraid of being overheard. Did he think the library was bugged? Who, he wondered, would be bugging it? And why?
Ahmad liked Jim O’Connor. For a man in the business he was in, he had a certain amount of class, a subtlety Ahmad appreciated. He knew when to push it, when to retreat, when to wait. He must have been a terrific commander, thought Ahmad. And then stopped thinking about the man he was dealing with and presented him with the second envelope. ‘Here’s your brief. Read it. If you have any questions or decide not to take the job, now is the time to speak up.’
Jim opened the envelope. There were only two pages. One was a letter of instruction, the second, the copy of an official document. Jim slipped the papers back into the envelope. ‘That document is a tissue of lies. How did you manage it?’
‘I managed it. May I have the envelope back?’
Jim handed it to Ahmad. ‘It’s contrary to what our investigation revealed.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Why did you bother to hire us?’ Jim felt peeved.
‘I wanted to know the facts. Which does not, however, mean that I wanted the world to know what I do. You have my word that you have no need to worry. Neither you nor your company is compromised.’
Reluctantly Jim began to believe that Ahmad was telling the truth. Angry though he was, he decided that he would say no more about the fraudulent document. ‘Got a light?’
Ahmad handed his lighter over to Jim and watched while the man relit his cigar. ‘Time is a factor, Jim.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I want you to produce concrete evidence as soon as possible.’
‘This job is complex. Could run a long time. And there’s no guarantee that I can come up with the goods. You’ve waited too long. The trail – if there ever was one – is cold.’
‘I won’t be satisfied until you bring me something absolute. Move on it, Jim.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t think that’s really your business.’
‘What if I told you I’m making it my business?’
‘I would say we have a problem.’
Ahmad placed his hand over his chin, and rubbed it pensively. He looked away from Jim. The two men remained silent. Then Ahmad went through his ritual of lighting a cigarette. He turned back to look at Jim. ‘Why must you know, Jim?’
‘Because it’s a weird brief. Because I can’t figure out what’s behind this. Look, Ahmad, this is the third time we’ve taken on a job for you. You’re a good customer. Anyway, the customer is always right – all that shit. Normally, I may feel curiosity, but don’t really care about the whys and wherefores of my clients. But then none of them, after taking our findings on board as acceptable, has ordered a second investigation years later. I suspect my company is being used to discover secrets: drugs, arms deals, money-laundering. Some kinda murky stuff. I came up with info that was suspect the last time. OK, it wasn’t linked to you, but …’
‘Well, I am glad you recognised that.’
‘Look, Ahmad, you can’t blame me for thinking you’re not levelling with me. That document shows you used us once and twisted our findings to what you wanted the world to know. I don’t much like that. My clients don’t have to be clean as Little Red Riding Hood. But they gotta be up front with us, so I know what we’re in for.’
Ahmad was struggling with a smile. That irritated Jim. What the fuck am I doing here, anyway? he asked himself. The pompous prick, laughing at me. Why don’t I walk out of here?
‘A pretty good analogy, as it happens, Jim. Only I’m the wolf. Tamed. Will it satisfy you to know, this is personal, strictly personal?’
It was evident that Jim had not worked it out, or if he had he was not convinced. ‘It has to do with ego and the id.’ The jargon cleared up nothing for Jim. Ahmad tried again. ‘I’m not going to go into it any more than this. It’s an affair of the heart. It has to do with obsessive love, passion, sex and jealousy. My own. That’s my final word on the matter, and more than you really have to know.’
Ahmad liked the embarrassed look on Jim O’Connor’s face. The man deserved to be embarrassed. Ahmad preferred having him at a disadvantage. He also liked the idea that Jim could not put the brief Ahmad had requested he take alongside Ahmad’s motives and then make sense out of them. He tapped him on the shoulder and told him, ‘Don’t look so confused. Love, sex, they’re serious business. Very powerful motives. All sorts of acts are carried out in their name. Kings have lost thrones for them. Men have killed for them. Princes and paupers alike can be victim of them. The wisest of men and women have been enslaved. People who thought they could control their desires. But could they, hell! I know that passion – the desire of unfathomableness.’ Ahmad hesitated for a few seconds, then asked, ‘Will you take the case or not?’
The two men gazed at each other. Jim O’Connor thrust out his hand to shake Ahmad’s.
‘What has been said here will remain strictly between us?’ questioned Ahmad.
‘How else?’
‘Good. Then we have no need of this.’ And he tore the manila envelope into quarters and then eighths. The two men re-entered the library and Ahmad closed the doors. Glasses were refilled. Jim, watching Ahmad, had no doubt that what Ahmad had told him was true. But
all
the truth? It seemed no longer to matter to Jim. He had indicated to Ahmad that he did not want to be used to promote any sort of underhand dealings. One thing was for sure, he felt sorry for Ahmad’s Little Red Riding Hood. She had every chance of being devoured by him. He would manage it, and she would never know what had gobbled her up. He would be that smooth about it. Had it already happened? he wondered.
‘I’ll walk you to the car.’ That was it. Dismissed. It was abrupt. But that was how Ahmad always worked. Once he had
what he wanted,
finito
. Jim O’Connor could identify with that. It was his way too.
The two men joined Jim O’Connor’s two detectives. Introductions made, the four men walked to the waiting Rolls-Royce. Ahmad closed the car door. ‘I have a bonus in mind for you.’
‘And it doesn’t fit in a bank book?’
The two men smiled knowingly at one another. ‘I’m glad we understand each other, Jim.’
‘Yeah.’
Ahmad signalled to the chauffeur to drive off.
It seemed an odd thing to do: rent a car and load it with Ida’s shopping, which did indeed include a goose – thank goodness, the smallest goose Arianne had ever seen. But then again everything Arianne found herself doing since she had had Christmas thrust upon her, first by Ida and then by Artemis, seemed strange to her.
Several days before Christmas, Mayfair seemed to be emptying out. The foreign visitors were vanishing from the streets. The residents were loading cars for the airport or the country. All that was left were frantic last-minute shoppers and a kind of Christmas panic to get it all together before the event. Arianne got swept up by the buzz of an exodus. It made her not want to be alone in London with nothing but the past for company. That had been all right for the last two Christmases. She had wanted to be alone with the ghost of love. Not now.
Now there was something else. Although Jason was these days somewhere back in the recesses of her mind, she did occasionally feel his spirit reaching out to her. It was different from how it had ever been since his death. Now it was as if he was watching her and cheering her on. Go out into the world and have a good time. As if he were sanctioning her every move. Arianne was not insensitive to such apparent approval from him, but it meant little. She was gathering strength from herself now. This approval certainly did not govern what she was doing, as it had done all of their married life. She felt a pang of sadness about that. Like the prisoner who is set free after a near lifetime in chains, locked to a fellow inmate – prisoners of love, broken free from each other for ever. That image as it passed fleetingly through her mind was to give her strength to push forward. She pedalled her bike faster down King Street towards Christie’s.
No one was more surprised than she when she went to work
as usual, and an hour later announced to her boss that she was taking a few days off to get away for Christmas. Minutes later, with his approval, she walked out.
And now here she was, thanks to Artemis’s generosity, in a stream of traffic going over the Hammersmith flyover on her way to Chessington Park where she would stay until Christmas morning. Then she would drive back down the motorway to Heathrow airport, turn the car in to Avis and board a plane for Cairo. She would arrive just in time.
Ahmad kept open house on Christmas day. People drifted in and out from early morning until the last guest was gone – usually sometime the following day. Guests from various parts of the world arrived in Cairo for the much sought-after invitation. Christmas day at the Salah Ali house on the Nile was a spectacle to be part of: an impressive collection of people assembled to dine on an exquisite buffet that ran all day and into the night and to drink his vintage Margaux, and Roederer Crystal champagne.
Then there was the annual Ahmad Salah Ali boat race. Hundreds of people congregated on the dock on the opposite side of the Nile from the house. A small cannon was fired to send the entrants up the Nile to Luxor and the Winter Palace Hotel. In Cairo that day the banks of the Nile would be lined with thousands of people waving and cheering on the many dozens of feluccas, the largest number ever sailing together up the Nile. The crowds would peter out to a trickle as the population dwindled and the days went by, but they would be there nevertheless, all the way to Upper Egypt and the finish-line. The race was something unique that the average man in the street and the poor peasant could be part of. It was an excitement for them that they could afford – unless they chose to gamble money on it. But as well as being risk-free, there was something else for all who watched: it was probably the most beautiful boat race in the world.
The felucca – a wooden boat with a sail, triangular on a long yard at an angle of 45 degrees rigged to the mast of the boat – was almost unaltered since the time of the Pharaohs of Egypt, three thousand years before. To see them in full sail under a clear blue sky or a hot pink sun or a spectacular sunset of pinks and mauves,
oranges and deep purples, with the tall, voluptuous palm trees, the spires of the mosques as black silhouettes, and the sound of the muezzin’s call to prayer for background, as they laboriously sailed their way up the Nile in the heat, was a sight never to be forgotten.
The men in their turbans and galabiyahs scampered over the feluccas to get the best of a current, to exploit the least breeze. It was a race out of time. The backdrop was the palms and flowering trees, the verdant banks of the river, period houseboats, and a transition from a capital city teeming with people to a narrow band of green dissolving into desert and crumbling remnants of civilisations thousands of years old the further up the Nile one went. Beautiful seemed a hardly adequate description for such splendour; such romantic history, of time frozen and waiting like a sleeping princess to be awakened from the deep, mysterious sleep of the past. Was it any wonder that the whole country seemed to take pride in Ahmad’s favourite event?
It was a race for the working man on the river as well as for the upper-class Egyptians who sponsored those men who could not afford to enter the race, and those other men who could, but had no skill to sail the Nile, and therefore manned the boats as recruits alongside simple hard-working boatmen, those masters of the Nile. The prize was a fortune to most of the men in the race. And every year Ahmad sailed as master with his crew on one of the several feluccas he owned. If he won – as rarely happened – he divided his prize money among the losers.
Arianne had sailed with Ahmad and Jason in the race several times. All three had taken it seriously, but for Arianne there had always been another dimension to the race. Romance. The romance of time and place and the two men she loved and craved sexual intimacy with. During those sailing days, going south into Africa with the other boats on the river, time had stood still for them, the outside world had vanished, their hearts had beat as one and they had sailed together as one body and one soul.
The traffic on the M4 was steady and heavy but it did roll along after Heathrow airport. It had been maybe somewhat less painful getting out of London for Arianne than some of the other travellers. She had been lost in her memories of the race with
Ahmad. She had sent a fax announcing her arrival. Now that it was done, the ticket for the plane in her purse, the fax issued, the memory of the excitement of being in such a race and with Ahmad stirred new sensations in Arianne. New and different. Different because she was stepping into Ahmad’s world, a single woman, free, looking, seeing, experiencing everything with an altered perception.
She left the motorway and passed through several villages. Then the high, dry-stone walls surrounding Chessington Park came into view. She found herself thinking about Ben Johnson. Would he be staying with his uncle at Chessington House for Christmas? Would she see him? To think so gave her a warm feeling. She conjured up a picture of Ben when she had said goodbye to him in Three Kings Yard. She liked his smile, his handsomeness, that something special that seemed to be in his eyes – the way he looked at her as if he understood her instinctively and accepted fully who and what she was.
She turned the car into the drive, through the gates and along the avenue of trees. How strange was the feeling of being there alone without Artemis. The house loomed into view. Under the late morning sun of winter it looked incredibly stately and beautiful. As she rounded the fountain and pulled the rented red BMW up to the front door she did feel suddenly a stranger, an intruder even. Inhospitable as Artemis could be at times, she had, at least, never made Arianne feel like that on her visits to Chessington House. Arianne shrugged off the sensation. About to leave the car to ring the housekeeper’s bell for entry to Artemis’s flat, she was surprised by a knock at the window next to her. She jumped. Her hand went to her heart. She had been caught off-guard.
Whose was that face under the woolly bubble-hat with knitted flaps over the ears? The matching woollen gloves continued to knock at the car window. Arianne sighed with some relief. Just Beryl Quilty in a pink puffy, eiderdown-like jacket. For a moment she was mesmerised by the face and its pinched disapproval. The continued rapping sound, muffled by the woolly glove, was rapidly becoming an irritant to Arianne. It only stopped when Arianne had wound the glass down away from Beryl’s fist.
‘Mrs Quilty.’
‘You can’t park here, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘No one is allowed to park in front of the entrance. Not the residents or their guests.’
‘I know. This is not parking. It is lingering for a minute to call Clive on the intercom and to unload my things.’
‘Oh. Then you are here for Christmas?’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know that. No one told me.’
‘No one told anyone, Mrs Quilty.’
‘But the flat is closed. Staff gone. Artemis away. If you were to be allowed in the flat the house should have been told. We have to think of security.’
‘Mrs Quilty, if you don’t mind.’ Arianne attempted to push the door open against Beryl Quilty. The woman stepped aside. ‘Are you asking whether I have permission to enter my mother’s flat?’
Mrs Quilty managed an approximation to sheepishness in the face of this question. Her lips slimmed out in silence. Arianne could barely detach her gaze from them. Could it be her tongue Beryl was biting? ‘Put your mind at rest, Mrs Quilty. I do have permission. What is more, the custodian of the house knows it.’
‘Well, he should have told me.’
Arianne suddenly felt much like Artemis did about Beryl Quilty. In a matter of seconds she had put a damper on Arianne’s joy at doing just what she wanted for her Christmas. But Arianne was having none of that. She quickly quelled that feeling, got out of the car, and moved away from Beryl Quilty to ring the housekeeper’s bell.
‘You needn’t do that. Don’t disturb him. I can let you in.’
‘You can, but you won’t.’ Arianne rang the bell.
‘That was not necessary.’ Now Beryl Quilty was very annoyed. It showed, along with an anxiety not to lose control of herself and the drama she was conjuring from nothing. As if to prove her point, Beryl placed a key in the front door lock and opened it.
‘You see,’ she said, rather smugly.
‘Perhaps you have the key to my mother’s flat? Maybe you can turn off the alarm-system? May I expect you to let me in whenever
I come to Chessington House? And to give me a key?’
The irritation now showed not only on Beryl Quilty’s lips but in her eyes as well. Arianne was relieved to hear Clive’s voice.
‘You’ve not been sent an invitation for mulled wine and minced pies on Christmas Eve,’ Beryl Quilty continued regardless. ‘It’s for the residents and their guests. Everyone in the house will be there. I hope you will too. We like everyone to be a part of the evening. It makes for a good community spirit. If you had told me you were coming you might have had a proper invitation. Never mind. Mulled wine between six and seven-thirty.’
The slim lips curled up into a smile: a façade of sweetness. The good samaritan face was now displayed to Arianne, supposedly an incentive for her to obey the call to mulled wine and Beryl’s directive that the house should band together in the spirit of Christmas and goodwill to all men. No wonder Artemis had done a runner from home for Christmas.
In London, spending a few days in the country at Chessington House had seemed a good idea. Now the whole great production of getting into Artemis’s flat and the prospect of being regimented into Beryl Quilty’s Christmas Eve plans were making Arianne wonder. There were worse fates than being stranded in a near-deserted Mayfair. Clive, though helpful and kind enough, was behaving like an old woman. He fussed far too much about her arrival, with too many instructions on what to do and not do in the flat. At last she was given a key and he was gone.
She made a journey across the hall to her car to unload her things and overheard bickering: two women, obviously residents in the building, were working with some dreary plastic Christmas decorations in an attempt to render down the arrogant splendour of the ancient hall to the cosy comfort of a bourgeois Christmas. The arrival of Beryl Quilty was to add weight to the tug of war on taste. Beryl shot a smile across the cavernous hall to Arianne. ‘I hope we have moved our car by now. Rules. House rules, you know.’ We hadn’t.
Once the car had been moved, Arianne was at last able to enter Artemis’s flat alone and to close the door behind her. She leaned against it, and sighed with relief. She could at last get on with her own Christmas.
She strode into the sun-filled drawing room and felt the
pleasure she always did at being in that room. There was something uplifting about it. She
was
happy she had made the effort to be there. She picked up the shopping and brought it into the kitchen, a room she was a stranger to: it was Artemis’s cook’s domain. She located a kettle and was filling it when there came a tapping at the window. A spurt of anger kept her from looking up. Clive or Beryl Quilty: she could hardly bear it. Again, the rap at the window. She turned off the water and put the lid on the kettle. Feeling a bit like Artemis about the people in the building, she whirled around to confront the intruder, thinking, Why is Artemis always right?
She began to laugh. Happiness. The sheer pleasure of seeing not Beryl but Ben Johnson peering in at her. She placed the kettle on the counter-top and went directly to the window, unfastened it and lifted the bottom half up.
‘Am I that funny-looking?’ Her laughter was infectious and it brought a broad smile to his face.
‘No. That was laughter that came from joy.’
‘Oh.’ The smile broadened even more in surprise to her admission. ‘At seeing me?’
‘More, at not seeing Mrs Quilty.’ Then she quickly added, ‘And at seeing you.’
‘You’re being polite?’
‘No, it’s not just good manners, I am pleased to see you. But what are you doing in the shrubbery?’
‘I thought I saw you walking up from the garages, but the truth of the matter is that I chose the window to avoid a brush with those women in the hall.’