The Sun Chemist (28 page)

His face creased up at this. ‘What the hell was he going round and round the Wix for?’

‘Well, there’s no doubt it
was
him. He was after me.’

‘At the Wix?’

‘He must have thought I’d gone that way. It’s not such a crazy idea. You can get out to the avenue there, people likely to be around. Anyway, that’s what he did.’

‘He went from the Wix,’ Ham said, slowly working this out, ‘and passed our house and went to the Sassoons’?’

‘He must have thought I’d got to your place.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, he knew I was going there. He rang to ask if I’d
arrived
.’

‘Marta must have told him. He didn’t know earlier. He
assumed
you were going with her. He said so when he called in the morning to ask if he could come with us. He’d been chewing my ear about Marta, so I didn’t bother to disillusion him – some nonsense you don’t need to –’

‘I do know. Marie-Louise told me.’

‘Oh. Well,’ he said.

We were walking, and I lit a cigarette. We had the night to ourselves. It was marvelous just to walk and think in it without pressure; except that Ham had become characteristically
occupied
with the logistical problems of the Wix and the Sassoons. Had I been so obtuse about Hopcroft’s danger? Probably.

‘I could have been killed!’ I said.

‘Oh, Igor, come on.’

‘What else could he have wanted?’

‘You said it wasn’t you. You said that.’

‘He’d have preferred me out of the place, it’s true. He phoned to see … But where did he get the key? Help a bit, Ham.’

‘Well, I don’t know where he got the key.’

‘And what was he after if not me?’

‘God knows. Perhaps the letter?’

‘The letter?’ It was so long ago I’d almost forgotten it. ‘There was no letter,’ I said.

‘There wasn’t?’

‘There was no P.S. We made it up. The idea was to trap him.’

‘Well, it looks as if it worked,’ he said.

‘But he was supposed to go to the archives for it.’

‘Maybe that’s why he didn’t.’

‘So why the House?’

‘Well, goddam it, I don’t know. The copy, maybe?’

‘What copy?’

My jitteriness was making him jittery. ‘Any copy. Didn’t Marta think there was a copy?’

I remembered it just as he said it; her questions in the car. Oh, my God, it couldn’t be. ‘You don’t think – I mean Marta and … It’s ridiculous.’

‘Well, of course it is,’ he said.

So it was, and I told myself how ridiculous it was, the idea of Marta and Patel, the one casting suspicion on the other, in order
to distract attention from … Except. Except, I thought sickly, the key. Marta had often been in a position to extract my key, and have it copied, and handed over to … And attention then directed to her so that I wouldn’t invite her on the chosen day … Nonsense, of course. Such nonsense that I changed the subject right away. I heard myself gabbling. ‘He wasn’t in the place two minutes. He must have come in and right away started working up – Damn it, he
was
after me!’

‘Hey, now, Igor!’

‘Ham, I’m not going there!’ I’d suddenly remembered the garden at Hirsch’s. People would be drifting about it with drinks in this season: a shadowy subtropical place. He’d been taken off balance by the ploy with the tire. But he knew I was evading him now. He knew. He wouldn’t let it happen again. ‘We’d better shoot right back to the security people!’ I said.

‘And make a public scandal before hearing what Meyer has to say? After all, no harm was –’

‘He wanted to kill me!’

‘Igor, calm down –’

‘He knew I was there. He just didn’t know where. He went hunting from room to room –’

‘But if he phoned first –’

‘I don’t know that he did. Anybody could have phoned.
Connie
could have phoned.’

‘Okay, she could. Forget the phone. It doesn’t mean he was after you.’

‘There’s nothing else he can have –’

‘The bloody copy!’

‘There was no copy.’

‘But he didn’t know it.’

‘So why didn’t he look for it?’

‘Maybe he did’

‘I tell you he wasn’t in there two minutes. He went in, and I wasn’t there, and he came out after me!’

‘Maybe you’d frightened him. Maybe he’d found you just had been there.’

‘Ham, he knew it.’

‘It doesn’t follow. He could have gone looking for this
goddam 
letter, and discovered you weren’t working with the period, but with 1952, and the desk lamp still warm, and realized – Well, God knows what he realized. Couldn’t it have been like that?’

‘Well, it could. It could,’ I said. But I said it a bit late. With something very like a heart attack, I’d suddenly wondered how he knew all this about 1952 and desk lamps. In the brief pause, and a rapid review of all I’d told him, no desk lamps showed up. No 1952, either. I felt myself beginning to vibrate all over. Even my teeth began to chatter.

‘Of course it could,’ he agreed. But he agreed a bit late, too. There was a tone of somewhat ominous kindliness in his voice, as of a man who has also taken a point, and that it was all rather a pity. It certainly was.

I was grinding out my cigarette at that moment, which seemed to be an exceptionally long one. The next, I was halfway up the wall, having sprung there. I could hardly see for fright, and was by no means clear where I was going. If tonight’s experience showed anything, though, it was that after discoveries of a
certain
kind it was as well to be elsewhere. The early moments tended to be the significant ones in getting there.

Louis IX had put it up and Baybars I had knocked it down and Igor the Quick went up what was left of it like a cat. I’d landed on a low wall, which ran up, via a long buttress, to a flight of crumbling steps. I scrambled up them in blind panic to a little parapet, and cocked a leg over, and saw solid footing and dropped down to it.

I was in a watchtower. I had a single petrified look over the parapet and saw Ham looking up at me, quite a long way below, with his mouth open. He was at the other side of the moat. I’d crossed the moat! I was in the Crusader town. He’d so soon be in it with me that I looked wildly round for another way out.

There was a slitlike hole in one wall of the watchtower, and I went through it, into an evil little chamber with a triangular embrasure and an arrow slit. I scurried through this one, too, into an opposite hole, with steps going down. Little men, medieval ones, even with their helmets on, and I ducked just in time. The place was like mine-workings; coffinlike passages, fetid smell. The cracked uneven steps descended into a corridor, very long and narrow. Bewilderingly, it was set high on the wall of a big stone hall. The hall was vaulted and arched, with stone tracery above and a stone floor below, a good thirty feet below. The corridor was a sentry walk, just about one man wide. I could see all this because bars of light were coming in. There were embrasures the length of the sentry walk, and the floodlight from outside was shining through the arrow slits.

The sentry walk was an open gallery that commanded not only the scene outside but the hall below. Its open side was fenced by a sagging chain, and a notice above warned that the National Parks Authority wouldn’t be responsible if anyone fell over.

I read the notice from the first embrasure, into which I’d immediately stuffed myself. I saw right away what I’d have to
do. He’d come scrambling up behind me, and without allowing him the benefit of the brief survey I had made, I would shove him over the chain. Then I’d go below and see what could be done about him. He wouldn’t be able to do much about me, not after alighting from thirty feet. That’s what I would do, and I held my breath and waited for him to do his part of it.

He didn’t do it, and I couldn’t hear what he was doing. I couldn’t hear him at all. I hadn’t heard him when he’d been outside Chaimchik’s room – just the squeak of his shoes on the marble plaza when he’d come after me, very fast.

What a fool I’d been! Not Patel following me. Ham had been following me. Patel had been following him; had probably come on the strange scene during his night exercise. When I’d
vanished
in the heaps of spoil, he’d probably continued following him, had gone round and round the Wix looking for him, until stopped by the security guard. He’d probably been trying to tell me so all evening. With consummate cunning I’d got rid of him, of everybody, had carefully maneuvered Ham back into the
position
he’d been in shortly before losing me at the atom-smasher.

I heard him suddenly below. A stone snicked and I craned forward and saw him. He was walking in the hall. There wasn’t a gate to the hall; simply an entry arch. He had come over the bridge and passed the box office and just walked in. He’d
evidently
been here before, knew the place. I didn’t.

There was no other sound. He padded through the hall, peering upward to the far end. I suddenly realized, with some horror, that in craning forward I’d placed a large head of myself in the bar of light on the opposite wall, and froze in case he noticed.

He was peering at a flight of steps, now visible against the far wall, and evidently running down from the sentry walk. The walk didn’t end at the wall but continued through a slit in it, probably along the battlements to the next watchtower. He was peering there, up the steps. Presently he began climbing them and went out of sight.

In much panic I immediately began tiptoeing out of the
embrasure
to go back the way I’d come. I tiptoed off on the right foot and nearly went over on my face as the left failed to follow. It was wedged in the arrow slit. I felt my head drench with
sweat. I tugged, twisted, wrenched, without avail; and just as well because within seconds there was a movement below and he was there again, looking up. He looked right at me, without seeing me, a measuring glance, the length of the sentry walk, and then round again to the opposite wall. A curve of indigo showed another open arch there. He went rapidly through it.

I slipped my foot out of the shoe, and then bent and screwed the shoe out as well, and put it back on and wiped the sweat out of my eyes and wondered what to do. To get outside again wasn’t such a magnificent option: big empty car park, long empty road. The road led into a far-flung web of other roads snaking through the sand dunes overlying Herod’s suburbs. We’d got lost there in the dark at Christmas while trying to find Foka Hirsch’s. He could easily appear on one of the roads moments after me, if not before. I remembered his turn of speed.

Still, I couldn’t stay here. His wits were all away at the moment. When he’d got them back, he’d return for a proper check. He’d evidently calculated I hadn’t run along the
battlements
. I made haste in that direction, and at the far end saw the flight of steps going down and the open arch, and saw why he’d guessed I’d gone out that way. It was the quickest way out. Experience had shown him that when pursued I ran. He wasn’t to know that a more basic reaction was to hide myself
somewhere
. His return measuring glance was probably to see how far I could have run in the time. He’d certainly left the hall at the double himself.

I went cautiously through the slit and saw why he’d
concluded
I hadn’t gone this way. It didn’t go anywhere, ruined battlements, just a broken platform, evidently the remains of another watchtower, and a flight of exterior steps running down from it: they were badly deteriorated, more like a rocky track. I stepped carefully down them, and in. a moment or two came out to a scene of considerable eeriness.

A bit of moon was up and a hazy glow, reflected from the floodlighting, hung like a luminous cloud above the town
evacuated
by the Crusaders. The excavators had removed the sand of centuries, and here it was, more or less as left, in a hurry, in
1265, after Baybars had sacked it. The Arabs hadn’t altered it much. They hadn’t done anything with it much. They’d just left it.

All about there was a large confusion of excavated streets, buildings, bases of things, bits of statues. It had been a garrison town, and the paving of the main street was scored and grooved to prevent the cavalry mounts slipping. The grooves glinted now in the electric radiance of another century. Some of the men who’d made it in the last dash down this street to the harbor now lay under slabs in English and European churches, and people took brass rubbings of their sedate effigies. Those little men would have found their way around this place, which was more than I could.

‘Igor,’ Ham said.

He said it from not far away. I couldn’t tell how far or in which direction. I was in deep shadow in the lee of the hall, but I froze.

‘Igor, stop this nonsense,’ Ham said. ‘Let’s talk.’

There was a flatness about his voice. He wasn’t talking in my direction.

‘You aren’t going anywhere, Igor,’ Ham said. ‘I can see you.’

He was a liar, because he couldn’t.

I saw him. He was looking the other way.

He was one of the statues with a head on. He was standing about a couple of hundred yards away, on what seemed to be a street corner. He was standing on a plinth. I edged forward and looked where he was looking. A long way off, a good half-mile off, a cluster of lights twinkled. They were the lights of Foka Hirsch and his neighbors. I suddenly realized what he thought I was up to. You didn’t have to lose yourself among the sand dunes. From here you could simply keep to the coast and turn inland at the lights.

I turned and looked the other way. The other way was good, too. The jetty was the other way. People were still walking up and down it; mosque floodlit, restaurants and galleries apparently open …

I began to move the other way, sideways, watching him. There was a basilisk quality about him as he stood on the plinth.
I suddenly remembered this quality of stillness. He’d always been very economical in his movements; except that when he moved he moved fast. He only had to turn for an instant and he’d see me. A moving cat would have been visible enough in this dead city. He stood so still it was hard to keep an eye on him. I had to blink to see him. Presently I couldn’t see him. The ground level seemed to be changing alarmingly. I was going downhill. This area was evidently only partly excavated; there were shafts about and newly dug holes. I shuffled cautiously about and skirted them. The glow of the floodlighting was no use here. It hadn’t been much use, anyway, in revealing the ground, or more importantly the parts of it that had been
removed
.

I came quite suddenly on a part that had been removed. My foot went in it, and fractionally later my behind, sharply, on a spike of rock – fortunately without sound. I was sitting in a long shelf that had been sliced out, and I remained there, watching and listening. Nothing. I waited a little longer and got moving again. Between me and the jetty I could see a low building. It gave the appearance of a solid huddle that one could hide in or about while investigating the scene further. As I drew nearer I saw excavation work had evidently been going on recently, the ground pitted with holes. There were planks across the deeper ones. I crossed a plank and looked in through the doorway of the building. It was roofless but inside was a maze of rooms;
corridors
, a flight of steps going down, plenty of window spaces to watch from. Not a good idea to be stuck in a building, though. I needed one good look to see that the coast was clear before sprinting for the jetty. It had to be a careful look; so I went out again, and took a bearing on the main street, and decided to get in the lee of the building to view it more thoroughly.

This meant crossing another plank, and then a larger one, a square sheet of wood with a large stone on the edge of it. I began to do this, except that the sheet wasn’t of wood, and I didn’t cross it. The sheet folded and fell with me and the stone, and a shower of smaller stones, down the shaft that it was covering.

I fell and fell, like Alice in Wonderland, and landed at the bottom, right way up, with a bone-jarring thud. The large
stone and the sheet of cardboard had landed ahead of me, but the smaller ones continued cascading down for some seconds
afterward
. The moon was shining brightly down the shaft, and my arms were weirdly raised to it as if in supplication. There was an open space ahead of me. I got my arms down and felt about in it, and then poked a foot out. There didn’t seem to be any ground beyond. I must be on a platform of some kind. I looked up at the moon again, and found that my mouth was open, and closed it, and licked sand off my lips.

My wits were so scattered I remained looking at the moon for some moments, and then into the darkness round me; then slowly lowered myself to a sitting position, poked about further with my feet, and found ground. I didn’t trust it too much after what had happened, so I put weight warily on it, and found more of it, and stood up and looked at the shaft again. In the moonlight the lower bit of it was streaked with soot. So was the platform I’d landed on.

I felt in my pocket for a lighter, flicked it, and looked about in the little flame. I seemed to be in somebody’s kitchen, most probably a Crusader lady’s, hurriedly vacated in 1265. The
fireplace
was set in the wall; it seemed to be the business section of a cooking range, and the stone platform was the rest of it. It extended for a few feet on either side.

In the flame of the lighter I saw that the backs of my hands were bleeding; I’d evidently held them up to slow the fall down the shaft. My hair was full of sand and grit. The cardboard had fallen on the ground, also right way up, and painted on it were the words ‘
DANGER – KEEP OFF
.’ The stone had been there to keep it down; I remembered the sound of it as it fell down the shaft, a bouncing and booming sound, with a double thump at the bottom. Accompanied by the percussion of my own arrival, it must have sounded like a landslide above.

Out of here, fast! I looked about to see how the ladies had managed in 1265. There was a corridor, with heaps of rubble in it, and a few openings off, all blocked by fallen masonry. The stairs weren’t blocked, thank God, the rubble evidently cleared from them.

I looked up and saw a suggestion of chalky moonlight at the
top. Then I looked more closely at the stairs to see that they were all there, put out the lighter, and went up.

I emerged into a small hall with an opening into a corridor and a maze of rooms; and with a little sigh I recognized the old place. It was the one I’d first looked in, that I didn’t want to be caught in, and the flight of stairs I’d just come up had been the ones I’d seen going down. Ah, well, it seemed to have been intended that I should view the kitchen, even if by the shorter route – by no means an out-of-the-way route on this grotesque evening – so I gritted my teeth and gibbered a little and waggled sandy eyebrows, did all this in a northerly direction through the window opening there, while looking to see if anything was doing.

I looked just long enough to establish that something was definitely doing. A black object was bobbing and weaving in my direction. Still gibbering, I looked about and decided against the door and in favour of the opposite window, and exited through it. This brought me to the open shaft, and I spat in it before leaving it briskly behind. With the house solidly in between there was no need for concealment, so I made good speed, till my nerve ran out, and then I crouched and looked for him.

I couldn’t see him. He wouldn’t have reached the house yet. Panting quietly in the darkness, I suddenly realized that there was no reason why he should. Nothing to pinpoint where the sound had come from; only that it had come from near the jetty. It might have given him ideas about the jetty, of course; and this was quite right, because it had.