The Melting Man rc-4 Page 10

  I wasn't thinking. I was just aware of the twin muzzles of the gun a few feet from my face, and of a maddening pressure of rage inside me, mounting to a point which in a few moments would take me off the ground and at him regardless of what happened to me.

  He said, 'I asked you what you think? I did it with other women before, of course — until I had enough to set myself up in business. After that I promised myself I would help the cold, frustrated ones like Zelia just for the pleasure of it. But with a millionaire's daughter, perhaps it would be silly not to make a charge—'

  At this point I jerked the poodle at him. It had come dancing up on its toes to me as he talked, licked one of my ears and then had begun to worry playfully at my left hand. I grabbed it by its skinny loins and threw it, rolling sideways and jumping to my feet as he staggered back a few yards and fetched up against the table. But I wasn't quick enough to get at him. The gun barrel was out, levelled towards my face.

  'Good, monsieur,' he said. 'Now I kill you. But first I tell you I have made my decision. I shall blackmail Miss Zelia. Yes, I shall make her pay, and each time she does it will be necessary for her to bring the money here in person. You understand? Part payment in money and part in—'

  I began to move for him. There was no time to get at his gun in my pocket, no time or thought for anything except blind action. But as I felt my muscles contract, the hollow of my guts squeeze tight with die moment of taking off to get at him, there was a zip past my shoulder like the clumsy whirr of a June bug. Max's head jerked as though he had been struck violently under the chin and upwards. He stared at me stupidly, his mouth rolled open and then he fell backwards to the ground with a neat little hole drilled an inch above his nose, dead centre between his dark eyebrows.

  A voice I knew said from behind me, 'Damn necessary, and no great regrets. In fact, Mr Carver, sir, no regrets at all.'

  I dropped back into an armchair, shaking all over like a man with Parkinson's disease. After a moment or two a glass was put into my right hand.

  'Here, lover-boy, down this and get the roses back in your cheeks.'

  Panda's long fingers patted my shoulder. The glass was full to the brim.

  I had to steady my wrist with my left hand to get the glass to my mouth. It was cognac and went down like lava and the shaking in my body stopped.

  Mr Najib Alakwe, Esquire, stepped back from me and said, 'It is a nice little dog, but I think not right for it to lick dead master's face.'

  Panda picked up the poodle and moved out of the room with it. She was wearing sky-blue ski-trousers and a short red jacket and her legs seemed to have grown in length since I had last seen them.

  Najib sat on the edge of the table, one leg swinging and showing a flash of purple sock above his ginger-suede shoe.

  I put the glass down, almost empty, and said, 'Thank you very much, Najib.' If any man deserved to be promoted into the first-name category he did.

  He beamed at me. 'Yes. I saved your life. It is a good feeling for me since I do not often do good deeds. But also I am sad.' He looked down at Max. 'What good is damned dead body? You get much information from him?'

  I said, 'How did you know about him?'

  Panda, coming back into the room, said, 'That is my department, lover-boy. There is a steward on the Ferox who likes Mamma. I say to like Mamma and have Mamma like him then Mamma likes names and addresses of all people Miss Zelia sends letters to. So everything ends up very likeable. One day soon I'll show you.' She sat on the arm of my chair and twined a long arm around my neck.

  Najib said, 'But there never are any letters until you visit Miss Zelia. Then there is the letter to this gentleman and you are gone from your hotel, so we come up here. We have damned fine car, American Thunderbird, hired, you understand, because I cannot personally afford to own such a luxury. You wish more cognac?'

  'No thanks.'

  Panda patted my cheek. 'Good. Complete recovery.' She looked at Najib. 'I shall take him up to the bedroom for some liking and then he will tell me all Mr Max tell him?'

  I said, 'It's not such a complete recovery as that.'

  'Nevertheless,' said Najib, 'in return for life-saving you will tell what he said about the red Mercedes. Personal details of Miss Zelia, of which I hear a little before I shoot, do not interest my good self. I read between the lines why she said nothing about whereabouts of car. But it is damned reasonable now to tell me what you know. Yes, sir?'

  He was dead right, of course. It would have been only damned reasonable to repay him with the information he wanted. I wanted to do it. But, like most people who have been hauled out of trouble, once the shock of crisis has passed, I knew that life had to go on in its same old sordid, double-crossing way. Gratitude must never get in the way of bringing home the bacon. The best place for sentiment was on Christmas, birthday and get-well cards. Najib was on the other side. I wanted to help him. But I had a job to do, fees and a bonus to collect, so there was never a moment's doubt in my mind.

  I said, 'I didn't get much out of him — and I don't know that what I did was the truth. I think I'd have needed a few hours to work him up into a state of frankness. You know how it is.'

  Panda stood up, stepped over Max, and helped herself to a cigarette from the box on the sideboard. She turned and winked at me. 'Try, honey, try hard to remember all the lies he gave you. We'll sort 'em out. You want that Mamma takes you up to the bedroom and works you up to a state of frankness. Whoof! Whoof!' She did a couple of high kicks.

  I said, 'The car was stolen from here by a friend of his called Otto Libsch. He's a pretty undesirable character, I gathered. If you have a way into police records, you'll probably find him there. Because of what happened here with Miss Zelia, he was pretty safe in taking the car. But he didn't have any idea — nor did Max here, I imagine — that there was anything special about the car.'

  'This man, Otto — you have an address for him?' asked Najib, and I noticed that when he was getting down to facts his pidgin English slipped.

  'No.' I decided to play hard to get, because if he had to drag it from me he wouldn't suspect, perhaps, that it was a false address.

  Najib fingered his tie, took off his panama and laid it on the table by the bowl of flowers.

  'Splendid dahlias,' he said. 'I am very fond of flowers.'

  'Runs in the family.'

  'Maybe,' said Panda, 'I should break the bowl over his head? Eh, honey?' She came back and sat on the arm of my chair.

  Najib shook his head and smiled at me, his dark eyes full of understanding. 'You are, of course, Mr Carver, stuck on the horns of a dilemma, no? In thanks for your delivery, your heart wants to be generous. But your brain is a professional man's brain. Tell nothing, it says.'

  'In my place, what would you do?'

  'The same.'

  'Stalemate, then.'

  'But you have an address for Otto Libsch?'

  'Well… I've an address but I wouldn't know whether Max had just made it up.'

  'That we can check. The address, please, Mr Carver.'

  He produced his gun from his pocket and nodded at Panda. She slipped a long arm round me and took Max's Browning out of my pocket, kissing my left ear as she did it.

  'Damned big bulge these make,' she said. 'You should have used it on the late gentleman.'

  'I didn't get a chance.'

  Najib said, 'You get no chances now. Personal feelings are disqualified. I want the address.'

  'And if I won't give it?'

  I just caught the flicker of his eye towards Panda and then it happened. She grabbed me by the wrist, hauled me up, dropping her shoulders as she did, and I went cartwheeling over her and hit the floor on my face. Her weight dropped on my back and a pair of long legs took a scissors grip round my neck, almost choking me.

  'For proper likings, honey,' she said, 'we begin with gentle love play.' She twisted my right arm hard and I shouted.

  'Let him up,' said Najib. There was nothing phoney about him now. He was crisp
, cold and determined and there wasn't a thing wrong with his Queen's English.

  Panda let me get up. Najib faced me, pulling at his pudgy nose. Panda straightened my tie for me.

  'You ought to meet a friend of mine called Miggs,' I said. 'You've got a lot in common.' Then, out of sheer pique, I kicked her feet from under her and she sat on the floor with a bang. For a moment she stared, disbelieving, at me, and then she began to laugh. 'Oh, Rexy-boy,' she chuckled, 'I got you wrong. You got promise.'

  Najib made an impatient movement of his gun-hand.

  'Give me the address. If not I shall shoot you so that you cannot take advantage of it. The situation will then be that I still do not know the address, but you will be dead, and I shall be able to find it some other way without trouble from you.'

  'That'll leave two bodies here. Could be embarrassing.'

  'If you have a coloured skin like mine, Mr Carver, and live in a white man's world, then you know all about embarrassments, most of them more damned awkward than a couple of cadavers. Give me the address or it is D for drastic'

  He waggled the gun. Panda got up off the floor.

  'Be reasonable, lover-boy,' she said. 'You gonna miss all them lovely things otherwise. That extra drink you shouldn't take. Lovin' arms around you in the night and the first cigarette with your hangover in the morning. Why, I just couldn't bear to see so much good manpower go down the drain.'

  She was right of course. And anyway, I felt I had stalled long enough. I flapped my hands and let my shoulders collapse.

  'Okay. I'd hate to arrive at the pearly gates next in the queue to Max Ansermoz.'

  'Splendid.' Najib beamed. We were all friends again.

  'Otto Libsch,' I said. The Bernina Hotel, Geneva. That's in the Place Cornavin.'

  Najib beamed. 'Thank you, Mr Carver. This Max may have lied, of course. That I accept. But if I find that you have lied then you go right down the drain. Now, please, turn round.'

  'Why?'

  'Do like Najib says,' said Panda. I turned.

  Najib hit me on the back of the head with his gun and I went down and out.

  * * *

  When I came to, I was lying on the floor with my head on a cushion. My face was wet and my shirt-front was soaked with water. Sitting on a chair close to me was Julia Yunge-Brown, holding a glass jug of water in her hand. She flicked half of it into my face as my eyes blinked at the light.

  I said, 'If you really want to help you might find something stronger than water.' This was my morning for girls and cognac. As she moved away I sat up and looked around.

  'Where's the body?' I said.

  Over her shoulder, she said, 'What body?'

  I didn't answer. What a nice chap Najib was. He had carted off the body to save me embarrassment. I really felt bad about lying to him. But I knew that the next time we met he was going to be anything but nice, and would want to take all the lovely things away from me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  'We ride, and I see her bosom heave.'

  (Robert Browning)

  It was a pleasant enough family scene. Ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, the sound of church bells coming through the open kitchen window, the smell of coffee from the percolator on a small electric ring, and over everything the warm, steamy smell of baby clothes half dry, strung out on a line across the top part of the window.

  The man was lounging in a broken-down cane chair, nursing the baby in his arms. I couldn't tell its sex and never asked, but it had a red face, screwed up like a toothless old man's, and a fluff of soft black hair on its head that looked like the combings from a dog's coat. It was sucking away at the business end of an old fashioned feeding bottle, slipping its mouth sideways from the teat now and then to give a milky belch.

  The man manoeuvred a cigarette one-handed from his shirt pocket, struck a match, one-handed, on the sole of his sandal and said. 'After the business with Otto, Mimi lost her milk. Big shock — but she's over it now. In good hands.'

  Mimi Probst — I was sure about her because she had answered the door and identified herself — was ironing on the kitchen table. She wore a loose apron affair and had bare legs and bare feet. Her red hair was untidy, and her blue eyes were quiet and mild. She had a thinnish face with high cheekbones and a narrow chin. She looked about eighteen but was probably more. She gave the man an adoring look when he said 'in good hands', smiled and made a silent kissing movement with her mouth. Happy, contented couple, baby giving no trouble for once, all Sunday, the day of rest, before them, and on her wrist she was wearing a small diamond-set watch that was right out of her class and an identical number to the one which Julia wore. When I got back to Julia I wasn't even going to ask if Zelia had a watch like hers. Cavan O'Dowda had probably unloaded a couple on the girls at some time to mark some coup he'd pulled off.

  I said, 'You know who I am. And I know who Mimi is — but who are you? Otto is the man I want, and you know why.'

  My card was lying on the edge of the chair he sat in. I'd just said that I was looking for Otto to try and recover a Mercedes that belonged to a client of mine. No more, no less, not even how I had come to trace Otto. Right from the start I'd been troubled by their manner. There hadn't been the slightest edge of resentment at an intrusion on their Sunday morning. Every time I'd mentioned Otto so far, they had looked at one another and giggled.

  Mimi tested the flat of the iron by spitting on it,' was dissatisfied with the heat and dumped it on another ring alongside the coffee. She turned back, put her hands on her hips and looked at me. Dolled up, she would never have passed unnoticed in a crowd. She winked at the man. 'What do you think?' His English accent would have passed, but hers was surprisingly thick. She could have had a mouth full of sticky toffee.

  The man nodded, and eyed me affably as he slipped the teat from the baby's mouth, hunked the infant gently over one shoulder and began massaging its back through the shawl to ease up wind.

  'He's doing a job,' he said to no one in particular. 'Been frank. Right to the point. Broad-minded, too, I should say. Would have to be in his job.' Then to me particularly he went on, 'I'm Tony Collard. You're wrong about Mimi. It ain't Probst. We were married last week. I can see you're wondering about my English. No need. My father was a Canadian, volunteered at the beginning of the war into the British Royal Artillery, came over here, changed his mind about war, deserted, settled down, married and eventually had me. He died two years back. I run the garage and repair shop that never made him a fortune.'

  I said, 'You jump about a lot. And you're giving me a lot of information that I don't want. Otto is my bird. Where's he roosting now?'

  At that they both gave out high squeaks of laughter. When the paroxysm was over Tony said, 'Like some coffee?'

  'No thanks.'

  He massaged a final burp from the baby and then stuck it back on the bottle. He had nice, easy, comfortable hands, gentle, but I had a feeling that there was far more to him than a smiling frankness of manner and an occasional mad laugh. He was about twenty, plump and big built, and with a face like a young Pickwick, made more so by the steel-rimmed glasses he wore. He had thin, blond-white hair, and would be bald before he was thirty.

  'What's the score on the car?' he asked.

  'My client wants it back. He's a millionaire. They get touchy about property. You and I worry over the pence. His kind worry all the way up through the cash register. That's why they're millionaires. I understood, from a gent I met recently, that Otto regarded Mimi as his girl.'

  Going back to the pile of baby-clothes and diapers, iron in hand, Mimi said, 'I was. That's his baby. I had a bad time with it.'

  'Caesarian,' said Tony, proudly almost, and I thought at any moment he would ask her to show me the scar. He gave her a loving look and she angled it back with that silent kissing motion of the lips. I began to feel out of place in so much domestic bliss.

  'Being Otto's makes no difference to Tony,' said Mimi.

  'Not a scrap,' said Tony. 'I loved Mimi long be
fore Otto came along. Old faithful.' He chuckled. 'But then every girl's due for one stupid infatuation. Come to that, so's a man. More than one, perhaps. Eh?' He winked at Mimi and she brandished the iron, mock angry at him. I began to get the idea that they were either playing with me, or just glad to have a diversion on a warm, happy Sunday morning before they put the kid in its bassinet and wandered down the road to some trattoria for lunchtime spaghetti Milanese and a couple of glasses of Chianti.

  I put some lira notes on top of the refrigerator and said, 'Don't be offended. Good information — particularly about bad characters — is worth paying for. And it isn't my money, anyway. Just tell me about Otto. Description, habits, and, maybe, present whereabouts.'

  They both went into their side-splitting-giggle act, and then recovered themselves and looked a bit self-conscious.

  'We don't need the money,' said Tony, 'but we'll take it on principle. Money is always something you take even if you don't need it. Money, as my old man used to say, is like music. No matter where or in what form it comes we should be glad of it. It cuts across international and cultural barriers and it is a sad person who gets no joy out of it. The other thing he used—'

  'Don't start about your father,' said Mimi, shaking her head at him, smiling indulgently, and finishing again with that silent kiss.

  He said something to her in rapid Italian beyond me. She blushed in a swift curtain fall from the roots of her red hair down to the point of her pert chin and said something back in Italian, and Tony squirmed in the chair and rolled his eyes behind the spectacles. It was a horrible sight. The baby burped, slipped the teat and was sick all down the front of its shawl. Tony took out his handkerchief and mopped up the mess with the loving unconcern of a devoted stepfather. In my book, there was something wrong about Tony and Mimi. I had the feeling that not only outwardly, but quietly, inwardly and even sadistically, they were laughing their heads off about me. There was, I felt, some monstrous, side-splitting joke going on so that when I left they would collapse on to the floor, rolling over and over as the pent-up mirth oozed out of them.