The Assassin (17 page)

Whatever the man she loved might be, he wasn't what King said. And with that lie, her uncle's part became more suspect. How much was he actually involved, and why was King so afraid of Huntley knowing—not just because he feared Huntley's vindictive reaction, but because the story would be different from the one that he had told her? This suddenly made sense; whatever he pretended, Elizabeth realised that Eddi King was not afraid of anyone, not even her uncle. The more she tried to disentangle it, the more sinister the affair became.

She didn't talk very much during dinner; she was frightened and tense, unable to eat. She played with the food and listened to King entertaining Huntley with stories about West Germany. He seemed in excellent spirits, feeding her uncle scandals about some of the better-known European politicians, making him roar with laughter. This in itself was an achievement; Huntley was dour, and difficult to amuse. She had never really appreciated King's skill before; now she could see how he had insinuated himself with Huntley and others like him; rich, tyrannical, suspicious. King amused them. He set out to charm and entertain; he sang for his supper with superb professionalism. He was witty, he was cultured, he was always in a good mood. Elizabeth realised how much she too had liked these qualities. Only a few weeks back she had gone off to Beirut with him and found him knowledgeable and excellent company. She had been taken in, just like her uncle. She would have described him as a friend, with the one reservation. That odd sense of repulsion when he sent her flowers, the claustrophobic fear in the orchid house.

The more she tried to connect Eddi King being amusing at the dinner table with the man Leary suspected of treachery, the more confusing the image became. They were two separate entities; the one clever, familiar, the other cold and sinister. And the glib intellectual couldn't be the real one. The performance was too polished, the portrait too exact. An accomplished actor in a long running part, that's what King was. Without Leary, Elizabeth would never have seen through him. But now she couldn't believe in any aspect of his reality. And that left the other King of whom she knew nothing but the single fact of that furtive meeting in Paris. That was the real man. And that must be the one of whom she was instinctively afraid.

‘You're not eating!' Huntley said suddenly. ‘What's the matter—you're not on some damned fool diet, are you?'

‘No, of course not.' Elizabeth said. ‘I'm not very hungry.'

‘I wish I didn't have to weight-watch,' Dallas came in with a rush. ‘But then Hunt hates fat women, don't you, honey?'

He was in a good mood; he liked having Eddi King around and he was glad to see Elizabeth. He smiled at Dallas. ‘You've got a good figure; you don't have to worry. I like what you've got and that's all you have to do, my dear. Keep it as I like it.'

‘I will,' she said. She had an attractive smile, and she turned it on Huntley like a searchlight beam. ‘I sure will, just for you.'

After dinner they went down to the private cinema where Huntley saw the latest films. He hadn't been to a movie theatre for twenty-five years. The latest epics, comedies and the pick of the foreign films were shown at Freemont. He had a long-standing favourite which was run at least once every few months,
Gone with the Wind
. Huntley never tired of it; he pronounced the actress Vivien Leigh as the most beautiful woman in the business. He had shown the entire movie without a break when her death was announced, and Elizabeth heard that throughout the performance he was in tears. The film they watched was a French thriller, another old classic which he enjoyed. Elizabeth found herself next to King. He lit her cigarettes and made a few comments to her and to Dallas. It was certainly the tenth time he had been forced to sit through
Rififi
. Huntley Cameron was not the sort of man to think of other people's boredom. If he was enjoying it, that was the sole criterion. Luckily it was short; they were all glad, for different reasons. Huntley because it was just the stimulus he needed after dinner, and he wanted to go to bed with Dallas; Dallas because he had indicated this by putting his hand on her leg at one time in the dark; King because he was insufferably bored and wanted to get away from them all, and Elizabeth because she had made up her mind to do something and to do it that night.

She went upstairs first. She had made an excuse to her uncle that she had a headache, kissed him, said good night to King, and hurried into her room. The bed was turned down; her nightdress, dressing gown and slippers were laid out for her. She went to the dressing table and looked at herself. She looked white, and there were dark circles of strain under her eyes. King had lied to her; another proof of that lie was his fear of her going to Huntley. Not just the fear of Huntley's anger, even his vindictiveness. But fear that his story wouldn't be borne out. That was his real reason. Huntley and he were involved in something together. But one thing was certain: whatever it was they had in common, whatever had brought Keller into the States under their auspices, their motives were not the same. There was only one way to find out what was behind it all, and that was be doing exactly what she had promised not to do. She was going to her uncle, just as soon as she was sure that Eddi King had gone to bed.

In her bedroom down the corridor Dallas was stripping off her clothes; she tore at the fastenings, laddered her stockings as she pulled them off, and ran into the bathroom. There wouldn't be time to take a bath; when Huntley felt like sex he didn't expect to be kept waiting. She switched on the shower taps and stepped under the cascading water. He was a meticulous man; he demanded bodily perfection in a woman as he demanded the same standards in his businesses and his home. Dallas was massaged twice a week, manicured, pedicured, oiled and preserved like a Sultan's favourite. The only difference was that Huntley hadn't laid a hand on her for three months. She dried herself quickly, and then standing before the full-length glass in her bedroom, she dropped the towel, stretching her arms above her head to tighten her breasts. She looked good; judicious tanning had turned her body a beautiful golden brown. A white streak ran across her hips, where the narrow bikini had protected her from the Florida sun; she had browned her breasts with a lamp. She went to the table where her cosmetics were set out; the bottles and pots and sprays were arranged in militant little rows; the lights round the mirror were theatrical bulbs, casting a pitiless glare on the face. She found the scent he liked best, a strong evocative flower scent, tipped some into her right palm and began massaging it into her skin. She dusted her face with powder, bit her lips to give them colour because he disliked lipstick stains, and stepped into a vivid pucci silk house gown which zipped invisibly up the front. Huntley didn't like elaborate nightdresses or anything with hooks and buttons. He liked to undress her in one dramatic gesture, and everything she termed her sex wear was made accordingly. She brushed her hair, glancing at herself in the glass from different angles. She was as nervous as a girl on her first call; the idea made Dallas smile. Before Huntley found her she used to feel like this for a man, but for different reasons; reasons that had nothing to do with anxiety and fear of not pleasing. There was one guy who could make her jump through hoops when he wanted to; he must have been paid off because he just disappeared. Now she went through the motions and sometimes, when he took trouble with her, she enjoyed it, but it didn't motivate her any more. Nothing motivated Dallas but the single obsession of getting Huntley Cameron to marry her. It wasn't just greed; he was generous. She had enough in her bank account to keep her for life. Being married to Huntley was her justification for being born. Look, world, look where little Dallas ended up—it was such a beautiful dream that she closed her eyes for a moment and indulged in it. She had got to the newspaper pictures, including her favourite, a large front-page photograph of herself with the caption, ‘Singer weds Huntley Cameron', when the buzzer sounded.

She wasn't consciously humiliated by it any more; she accepted the idea that she would be rung for service, like a maid. She opened the door and started towards Huntley's private suite on the other side of the connecting staircase.

Seven thousand miles away in the dingy little room overlooking the Zone Franche, Souha turned uneasily in her sleep. It was almost dawn and she had spent most of the night lying awake, thinking about Keller, the thoughts accompanied by fits of crying. He had been gone for more than two weeks and there was no word from him. There was nothing left of him but the shabby suit of clothes folded away in the one chest of drawers, and a packet half-full of cigarettes which she had hidden like a treasure. Every week the money arrived; she spent only enough to buy food, keeping the rest to give back to him. Nothing would persuade her that he wasn't coming back; even the waking nightmares stopped before the end, because the pain was too much for her to bear.

After he left she kept herself occupied, cleaning the room, buying a long length of cloth to make him a dressing gown. That was her only extravagance; she chose a brightly patterned pure silk, and while she was making it the time passed. It would please him; she had seen such things in the expensive shops which sold men's clothes and realised that he had never owned one. She wasn't sure when such a splendid thing was worn, but she stood outside the window studying the way the robe was made and then went home to try to copy it.

Now it was finished; it hung on the back of the chair, waiting for him to come back and put it on, and she liked to look at it before she put the light out. It was like a talisman; if love could cross oceans and wing through space, then the longing of Souha must surely reach him wherever he was and draw him back. She was uneasy in her sleep, but the hours before dawn are when the body slips furthest into unconsciousness. She didn't hear the handle of the door being turned. The man outside had come up the stairs with the delicacy of a cat stalking a bird; he moved without noise, a dark shadow swallowed up in the prevailing darkness of the house. He had been given fifty Lebanese pounds on account and promised another fifty. In his right hand, coiled round the palm, he carried the thin knotted cord which was the tool of his trade. No noise, no clues, no struggle. Those were his instructions; he could steal what he liked, so that the murder would appear connected with the robbery. Outside the door he paused, listening. He had spent two days watching the house, so that he knew the girl, and knew that there was no man with her. Even so, there might be someone from the house who went to her at night. He bent his head to the door and listened for the sound of breathing. He heard nothing. If she was alone he would strangle her and be out in the street within five minutes. If there was anyone else in the room he would have to come the next night and the next till he found her alone. He pressed down on the handle and pushed. The handle gave but the door didn't move. Keller had told her to keep it locked at night; Souha had never slept behind a locked door in her life, but because he had told her to do it, she obeyed. The man on the other side of it tried once more; he pushed, hoping that it was stuck, but the door held. It was locked. He wound the strangler's cord into a neat loop and put it in his pocket. He cursed his victim in Arabic and slipped away down the stairs as quietly as he had come up. He would have to change his tactics; it was a pity and it made his job more dangerous. The sky was turning light, the horizon showing the first streaks of red and gold before the sun came up over the edge of the sea. The man loped off towards the coast road, drawing his jellaba close against the cutting breeze. He was hungry, and the squalid refugee encampment where he lived with his family was an hour's walk. He felt sour and bitter with disappointment; a dozen people depended upon him for food and the maintenance of their miserable shack against the onslaught of other refugees without even the protection of a roof. By now the woman should have been dead. He decided to wait for that day and come back early the next morning. If necessary he could go in and hide in her room while she was out.

When the knock came on Huntley's door Dallas was on his knee. He was in a very good mood; his lack of hurry indicated that. He let her kiss him and call him pet names, cuddling her on his knees with a huge glass of whisky in one hand. Then the knock came. Dallas couldn't believe it; Huntley couldn't either. It was midnight; nobody would have dared come and disturb him at that hour without first using the internal telephone system. He gave her a little push. ‘Get off and see who it is.'

If it's one of those goddamned servants, Dallas swore to herself, if it's that putty-faced butler—I'll get the old man to fire the lot of them—I'll teach them not to come busting in here when everything was going right …

‘I'm sorry to disturb you, Dallas. I must see my uncle.'

She was so surprised to see Elizabeth standing outside that she didn't try to close the door. ‘He's tired,' she whispered. ‘He doesn't want anyone but me tonight. Go away, honey. Please go away.'

‘What the hell are you doing at that door?' Huntley called out. ‘Who is it?'

Dallas didn't dare to lie. ‘It's Elizabeth, sweetheart. She wants to see you.'

This was the end of her chance that night; as soon as she had let the niece in she knew what he would do, and he did it. The tears welled up in her eyes.

‘Beat it,' Huntley said. That was all. It was the way men had talked to her all her life. Come here, baby, lie down, baby, open them up, baby. Okay, beat it. She didn't look at Huntley. She looked at Elizabeth, who had ruined her opportunity, maybe for months, to get near him. Then she went out and closed the door.

‘I'm sorry to do this,' Elizabeth said. ‘I'm sorry about poor Dallas, she looked so upset.'

‘To hell with her. Come in and shut that damned door. I'm too old for draughts.'