The Angel (22 page)

Chapter Forty-Six

K
halil ended their tour back on the Rue du Mont Blanc. There was a string of exclusive jewellers on the street, and he made her stop and look into the window of one of them. The display was spare and almost empty, the few pieces on show obviously priced at extortionate amounts.

He put his arm around her shoulders again and pointed at
one piece
.

‘You like it?’

It was a Rolex Lady-Datejust in stainless steel and pink gold, decorated with rubies and sapphires.

‘Sure,’ Isabella said, unable to completely hide her distaste.

He took it for reticence. ‘Want it?’

‘Don’t be crazy. It’s bound to be stupidly expensive.’

Isabella had no time for extravagant trinkets. Even when she had refurbished her riad, she had been very careful to make sure that she wasn’t exploited. She had paid for quality, but none of her decisions were made frivolously. There was plenty of money left, but she had husbanded that carefully. She knew that it would not last forever, and she needed to stretch it out for long enough until she had decided what she wanted to do with her life. The thought of squandering money on an ostentatious piece of jewellery was beyond her.

He fluttered his hand at that and went to the counter. Isabella was watching him take out his wallet when her attention drifted out of the window. She gazed over the racks of gold and silver and saw Kelleher on the other side of the street. There was a café there, with tables arranged in a square outside the front, and Pope was sitting there with a cup of coffee. He was wearing a pair of dark glasses and was looking right at her. She felt a burst of relief. She had thought she had been doing well, but she had been riding the adrenaline to help her forget the icy nugget of fear and trepidation that seemed permanently lodged in her gut. Pope had said that they would be watching her. She knew that he could have stayed invisible if he had chosen, and realised that he had revealed himself so that she could be reassured.

And it was reassuring.

She felt a hand on her arm. ‘Hey,’ Khalil said. He had the watch in his left hand.

‘Don’t be crazy,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘It’s ten thousand, Khalil.’

‘Just money. You know how much my father is worth?’

She made as if she was bashful. The watch was hideous, and the fact that it cost so much was obscene. She did not wear jewellery, and even if she had, she would never have chosen something as baroque as this. She glanced up and over his shoulder at Pope. He was staring at her, and as she watched, he gave a tiny inclination of his head.

Khalil started to rub his right hand up and down her arm. ‘Take it,’ he insisted.

She held out her left arm and pulled back her sleeve so that her slender wrist was bare. He opened the clasp, draped the watch around her wrist, and then fastened it again.

‘Beautiful,’ he said. He was leering at her. She knew what had just happened; she understood his interpretation of the transaction. He thought he had bought her. She felt the hand on her arm, his fingers tracing patterns through the fabric of her sleeve. It was
possessive
, and she felt a little ripple of revulsion.

She looked through the window again. Pope was gone.

Isabella let him lead her onto the street. He was searching for a cab to take them back to Le Rosey when a big car slowed down, pulled out of the sluggish traffic and drew up alongside them. It was a Bentley Continental. The paintwork gleamed, and the sun sparked off the chrome grille and the hubs of the wheels. It looked obscenely expensive, even among all the opulence on the street.

‘Shit,’ Khalil breathed out.

‘What is it?’

‘My father.’

The driver’s door opened, and a uniformed chauffeur stepped out. He went around to the rear and opened the kerbside passenger door. A man got out. He was shorter than average and of slender build. He had a head of white hair and a spatter of tiny dark lesions across his otherwise smooth brown skin. He was dressed well in a three-piece suit that fit him so well that it must surely have been bespoke. Isabella recognised him. It was Salim Hasan Mafuz Muslim al-Khawari, and his face was marked with a furious scowl.

‘Get in the car,’ he said.

‘Father—’

‘You make me repeat myself?’

‘Father, I—’

‘Get in the car, boy.’

Khalil paused for a moment. He looked at Isabella, all the confidence that he thought he could buy with his father’s money gone in an instant. She looked back at him, unsure what – if anything – she should do or say. She chose to do nothing.

Salim took a step to Khalil, raised his hand and cuffed him hard around the side of the head.

‘Now, Khalil!’

His face flashed with pain, and with his eyes cast to the ground, he hurried across the pavement to the car and got inside.

Salim turned to Isabella. She caught the scent of his perfume and recognised it as attar, a perfume extracted from rose petals that was popular among the well-heeled Arabs in the Marrakech souks.

He smiled at her. ‘I am sorry, miss,’ he said. ‘My son knows he should not be here with you.’

‘Why?’

‘You are not Muslim.’

‘What difference does that make?’

He smiled again. She saw that he had thin lips and hard eyes that glittered like diamonds. ‘I am not saying that you and Khalil may not be friends. He has many friends who are not Muslim. All
I am
saying is that I prefer it if he is not alone with a pretty girl who is not a Muslim.’

She found him patronising, and she was tempted to argue the point with him, but she remembered what she was here to do and that she would do herself no favours if she annoyed him and found her invitation to Khalil’s party rescinded.

And so she ducked her head respectfully and told him that she understood.

‘What is your name?’

‘Daisy.’

He gave a little bow. ‘Then it was nice to meet you, Daisy.
Perhaps
I will see you again.’

He stepped back and got into the car. Isabella watched, saw Khalil staring glumly back at her, and next to him, an extravagantly coiffed woman. She only caught her profile, but recognised her as Khalil’s mother. The chauffeur closed the door, walked around to the other side of the car, got in and drove away.

None of them seemed concerned about how she would return to the school.

Chapter Forty-Seven

T
he weekend passed without difficulties. Isabella kept herself to herself, going out for early morning and late
evening
runs and then spending the rest of the time reading in her room. She realised that she was apprehensive about the party on Monday and what she had been asked to do.

It was the thought of being in Salim al-Khawari’s house. Khalil had said that he wouldn’t be there, that he would be in Paris, but the thought was still daunting. She knew little about the
older man
, just the pieces of information that Pope had given her. She had augmented the intelligence with her own research, just as
she had
done for Khalil, but all she could find were vague
generalities
that went no further than the broadest strokes.

He was, the websites and newspaper articles agreed, an aggressive businessman with a sharp temper. He was vain and extravagant, and prone to fly off the handle at the most insignificant perceived slight. One profile, unusual for daring to go deeper than the manicured public image, suggested his chippiness might be because of his humble beginnings. The journalist who had written the profile had been hauled through the courts for her temerity in
deviating
from the prepared script. It was obvious that al-Khawari did not like it when matters proceeded out of his control.

On Sunday evening, at the end of a long day during which she had wound the tension until it was tight enough to snap, she gave in and took out her cell phone.

She found the number for Uncle Rupert and sent a text.

All going well. I can talk now if you’re free?

She hurried outside to take the call, and only had to wait a minute before the phone rang. She picked it up and looked at the screen. The number had been withheld.

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me.’ She recognised Pope’s voice. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine. I’m outside. There’s no one here. I can talk.’

‘Well done. It’s going well?’

‘It is.’

‘I was watching in Geneva.’

‘I know.’

‘Has he invited you to the party?’

‘Yes. It’s tomorrow night.’

‘And you feel ready?’

‘Yes.’

She did, but she was nervous.

‘What about Salim?’

‘Not going to be there.’

‘Do you need anything?’

‘No . . .’ She paused. ‘Where are you?’

‘Very close. And we will be tomorrow night, too. If you need help, you know what to do.’

‘I won’t.’

‘No. I don’t think you will. You’re doing well, Isabella.
Very well.’

She heard a crunch on the gravel behind her and, turning, saw two boys emerging from the squash court.

‘I better go,’ she said.

‘Good luck.’

She ended the call.

Chapter Forty-Eight

I
sabella was distracted all the next day. She paid little attention in the morning’s classes, just enough to at least give the impression that she was concentrating, even if her thoughts were a million miles away. She went over how she thought the evening might unfold. It was difficult to be precise when she had no idea of the layout of the house, nor how difficult it would be to find a networked computer and fit the device that Pope had given her. Would there be many people there? How long would she need? Would anyone notice her if she was gone for very long? What if she was found in an area of the house that she was not supposed to be in? What would she do then? She ran these thoughts around and around, coming up with answers and testing them out.

And then she thought of her mother. Beatrix had told her enough about her own work for Isabella to know that what she had agreed to do for Pope was not too distant from the things that her mother would have done. Of course, she reminded herself, Beatrix’s activities were more complex than this. She had killed people for the government, and she had been very good at it. Had she felt this way before she went out on an assignment? Kelleher and Snow were in the same unit as Beatrix had been. Isabella assumed that they did the same kind of work. Did they feel this way, too? She wondered whether she should have asked them, whether there was some way to deal with the nerves.

She skipped the afternoon’s lessons so that she could go for a run. She didn’t really care if that would get her into trouble. It wasn’t very likely that she would be in the school beyond today. The charade would be over, one way or another. She ran out to the spot where she normally turned back, but kept going for the same distance again. She passed through the grounds of the school and out into the countryside beyond, running on the slope of a hill that meandered down to the waterfront below. She saw boats on the lake and a pair of jet skis cutting lines of froth across the glassy surface. It was a cold and fresh afternoon, and the air made her lungs burn. She ran on until she had been out for an hour, and then turned back. By the time she returned to the school, she guessed that she had covered fifteen miles.

She showered, standing under the hot water for fifteen
minutes
until the mud and sweat had been scoured away and her skin was tingling. She wrapped a towel around her torso, ran a hand
across the
mirror to swipe away the condensation and looked at her reflection. She wasn’t accustomed to considering her appearance. She wasn’t vain or self-obsessed in the slightest, and had nothing in common with Claudette and the other girls. She had never had the occasion to take advantage of her looks before she met Khalil. It felt duplicitous. She preferred to be honest and open, like her mother had been with her. She realised she was being naïve. Of course her mother would have used her looks if that meant that she could secure an advantage for herself. You worked with the tools that you had at your disposal. Honesty would get her into trouble. She would save that for when it mattered.

She went into the bedroom. She got out the other dress that she had bought with Kelleher and took it from its cellophane wrap. It was a pink mini, zipped up at the back. Kelleher had suggested a pair of metallic skyscraper heels and clashing red lip gloss. It was the kind of dress that Isabella would never normally have worn. She was most comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt, and this was showy, flirtatious and desperate for attention in ways that she found instinctively uncomfortable. She put it on, applied the lip gloss and mascara, and stood before the mirror and conceded, a little reluctantly, that it was what she needed. She looked older, for a start. That was good. She thought that she looked attractive.

She took the watch that he had bought for her and slipped it on her wrist. She had a small clutch bag, and she put her cell phone and two €50 notes inside. She wished that she had a gun –
something
small and easy to hide, like the Springfield XDS 9mm she had in her dresser at the riad – but she knew she would never have been able to explain what she was doing with it if it was found. No. She would have to trust that Pope and the others would be able to get to her quickly if she found herself in trouble.

She dragged her suitcase out of the wardrobe and took out her spare pair of running shoes. She pushed her fingers inside and pulled out the insole. The device that Pope had given her was
hidden
inside, and as she turned the shoe upside down it dropped into her hand. It was wrapped in cellophane and was small. Not much bigger than her thumbnail. She took her clutch, took out her lip gloss and pulled off the lid. There was enough space between the hollow lid and the lip gloss to fit the device and still have room to click it closed.

She checked the time: 6.50.

Khalil had hired a coach that would make runs to and from the house every thirty minutes. The first coach was leaving at seven. She would let the first two go without her and get the third one at eight-thirty. She wanted the party to have started by the time she got there. The more people there, and the more drunken they were, the better her chances of slipping away from the others without being noticed.

The coach was able to accommodate fifty passengers, and it was full. Isabella recognised several of the partygoers from the refectory. There were six boys at the back swigging from a plastic bottle of Coke – laced with vodka – that they passed between them. There were four other quieter boys of Middle Eastern appearance who looked a little discomfited by the rowdy, drunken atmosphere onboard the coach. The rest were girls. Claudette wasn’t there –
Isabella
had seen her through the window of her room as she had gone to catch the previous bus – but there were girls whom she
had see
n at her dinner table. Isabella was sitting next to one of them; the girl turned around on the seat so that she could join in the lascivious conversation behind her. They were as haughty and supercilious as Claudette, barely sparing her a glance and certainly not interested in including her in their conversation. That was fine. Isabella had no interest in talking to them either. She didn’t need the distraction or the investment of energy it would have taken to try to be someone she was not.

She gazed out of the window as the Swiss countryside rolled by. She thought about Pope. He had said that he would be able to track her phone, but it would have been good to know where he was. They might have been following in a car, she thought. Or perhaps
they had
split up, with someone waiting outside the house. She realised she had no idea how something like this would be
organised
. It made her feel vulnerable again. She would have liked to know.

She caught sight of her face in the glass. She looked pensive. She clenched her teeth and told herself to get it together. She had to look as if she was supposed to be at the party. Khalil had to think she was happy to be there, that she had no other agenda. No secrets. That she was just there to get drunk and have a good time.

She thought of the little component that she had hidden in
her ba
g.

The bus slowed down, waited for a large pair of automatic iron gates to open and then passed into the grounds of Salim al-
Khawari’s
mansion. The big building was lit up, the illumination from within spreading out of the expansive windows. The driveway was picked out by lights that glowed from little sconces on either side of the gravel, and external lights lit a path down to the boathouse and to the garage block. Isabella looked at the house and felt small and insignificant. It was huge and must have cost
millions
to purchase. With something as impressive as this, surely there must be sophisticated security inside? Alarms? Motion
sensors
? She quailed at the prospect of what she had agreed to do. How was
she goi
ng to manage? They would see right through her. She wouldn’t last
five minutes
.

The bus slowed right down and drew to a halt. She reached into her bag and took out her phone. She opened a message to Rupert and typed out two words.

I’M HERE.

She pressed ‘Send.’

The door of the bus opened on wheezing hydraulics, and
Isabella
waited her turn to step down. It was cold, and the dress did little to keep her warm. Claudette’s friends were right behind her, and she heard them make a joke at her expense. She ignored them. The house was at the end of a short path. It loomed up out of the ground, all shimmering glass and cold steel, its light thrown out in rippling shafts across the gentle waves on the lake. She collected herself, ignoring the cold knot of apprehensiveness in her stomach and the dryness in her throat, and followed the others to the big front door.

The party was in full swing. A large reception room had been cleared for the night. Furniture had been pushed to the walls to open up a wide space for dancing. A table was making do as a makeshift bar, the guests helping themselves to drinks.

The atmosphere was drunken. Isabella remembered reading that drinking was un-Islamic; Khalil and his guests were not paying much attention to that. She saw a woman in a maid’s uniform standing in an open doorway, her arms folded across her chest and an expression of discomfort on her face. What Khalil had said must have been true: Salim al-Khawari couldn’t possibly know what was happening here tonight. She remembered the coldness in his eyes when she had met him in Geneva. The thought that he was somewhere else was reassuring. How long would he be away for? The maid, and presumably the other staff, must have reported to him what was happening. What would he do? Get them to close it down?

A DJ had been provided with a table to set out his laptops and equipment. He was mixing hard, aggressive house music that
Isabella
had not heard before. She couldn’t say that it was to her taste, but it was thunderously loud, and it added to the host of
distractions
that she knew would prove useful.

She tried to work out where she was in relation to the rest of the house. This big room was on the lower level. There was an elevator in the middle of the room with a spiral staircase wrapped around the shaft. She believed that there were another three floors above her. A door to the outside was open so that smokers could have access to the area around an ornamental pool, where they could enjoy their cigarettes. Some ignored that and smoked inside. Others smoked joints. There was another set of doors opposite her, across the dance floor. They stood open a little and looked promising.

Isabella took it all in.

The atmosphere was rowdy and confused. It felt on the edge
of cont
rol.

That was good.

She wanted it to be like that.

It would be easier to slip away unnoticed.

She looked for Khalil. He was sitting in the middle of a wide sofa with two girls, one on either side of him. He had his arms around both of them, squeezing them close to him as someone took a picture with a phone. He was a quarter turn away from her, and distracted, and she was able to move around the room so that the elevator and stairs were between them without him noticing that she had arrived. There was a mirror on the wall in front of him, and she was able to observe for a moment. He was the centre of
attention
. She wondered whether he would even remember that she was coming.

There didn’t seem to be any reason why she should wait.

The next bus departed in thirty minutes. If she was lucky, she could fit the device and be back in her room at school within the hour. She could say that she felt ill. It wouldn’t matter what she said.

She walked across the room, her eyes on Khalil, until she was two metres away from the doors. She checked again, one more time, turned back to the doors and saw that they had been left ajar, pushed them and stepped through.