“Do you believe them?”
The shoulders came up and down, expansively. “Who believes?” he said.
“Who indeed?” Janet agreed.
“Are you frightened to come with me?” the man asked.
“Should I be?” Janet asked, avoiding question with question.
“No.”
“Why did you ask then?”
“You’re a woman,” he said, openly.
“That has no importance.”
“If you are sure.”
It was becoming pointlessly coquettish, on his part, decided Janet. Wanting to shift direction, she said: “How are you called?”
He hesitated and she waited, curiously. At last he said: “Haseeb.”
“Haseeb what?”
“Just Haseeb.”
First Nicos, now Haseeb: no family names, thought Janet. She said: “What are we waiting for, Haseeb?”
“I will get my money?”
“If I get what I want.”
He rose, decisively, and Janet followed him up from the bench. “Which direction?” he asked.
Janet led away from the square and along Kitieus Street to the cinema car park. It had filled up by now with patrons’ vehicles, many sloppily parked, so it was difficult for her to maneuver out.
Knowing the direction from her previous reconnaissance Janet turned left: even before she reached the square where they’d met she was conscious of his body odor permeating the car. Janet waited until they were running parallel with the sea, on Makarios Avenue, before slightly lowering the window on her side.
“Hot night?” he said, seeing what she had done.
“Very.”
“It is not for,” Haseeb said, as they got on to the Dhekelia Road. He shifted as he spoke, using the back of her seat as a hand-hold to turn in his own seat to look into the back of the vehicle.
Janet pulled away from any supposed accidental touch and said: “What are you looking for?”
“Nothing,” he said, turning back.
It had been her handbag, she guessed. In those brief moments alone in the car in the cinema park she’d put it beneath her seat. They passed the Palm Hotel and the Sanacosta restaurant and nightclub and all the other hotels necklacing the seafront road. The concentration of light began gradually to diminish, very quickly becoming just the occasional pinprick of a local house or the rickety, uncertain illumination of a shanty non-tourist bar.
“Not long now,” Haseeb said.
It was so dark now it was difficult for Janet to distinguish him across the other side of the car. “Good,” she said.
Although dark inside the car, it was a clear night outside, the moon so bright it marked a glittered reflection against the rolling sea to her right: through her open window Janet could just hear the hissed growl of its arrival against the shore.
“Engine’s rough,” he said, expertly.
Dear God, don’t let the car break down, thought Janet. She said: “It goes.”
“Tappets,” Haseeb said.
Janet had no idea what he was talking about. She said: “How much further?”
Haseeb gestured vaguely ahead. “Just around the bend.”
He’d said five kilometers, Janet remembered: they’d traveled much more than five kilometers. She’d been stupid not to register the mileage when they’d set out. “What time are they expecting us?”
“When we arrive,” Haseeb said.
“I thought we’d be there by now.”
“There!” the man said.
Janet could not at once make out the place to which he was pointing and then, on the seaward side of the road, she became aware of a cluster of dull lights around a roadside stop. Closer, she saw it was not directly against the road but down a short dirt track that dropped frighteningly downwards as soon as she left the road: dust billowed up around them and rocks and ruts jarred through the vehicle from beneath. There were no other cars in the clearing made for parking, just two motor scooters and some bicycles.
“This is it!” Haseeb announced, practically with the pride of ownership.
It was a low single-story building of maybe three rooms. There was a long rectangle which she could see, through uncurtained windows, forming the public, cafe part, with a kitchen adjoining. Alongside, in darkness, was what she presumed to be where the owner lived. Or maybe he lived somewhere else and it was a storage area. There was a door cut into the side of the cafe, leading out on to an open verandah. Beams extended from the main building and trellis had been linked to them, to make the foundation for a grape vine. The vines were already intertwined but they were thin and sparse and Janet couldn’t imagined they provided much shade during the heat of the day. Cables had also been looped through and from them, at intervals, unshaded bulbs hung down. They were mostly ordinary white household bulbs but just occasionally an effort had been made with colors. There were several red and a few blue. The verandah was set with tables, half of which were covered with red checked table cloths to designate that they were for people who intended to eat. The rest were uncovered. All were set with metal-framed, canvas-backed and seated chairs.
As Janet got from the car she caught an overwhelming smell of long-used cooking oil, from the kitchen. As she followed Haseeb up slatted wooden steps to the verandah she saw a family of cats: several kittens were chasing and snatching at insects she could not see. From all around came the crackle and chirp of cicadas in the undergrowth beyond the cafe.
There were only locals, and less than a dozen of them, on the eating section of the verandah and Janet walked its length conscious of their absolute attention: two men actually stopped eating, with their forks suspended before them, to watch her pass.
Haseeb led the way to one of the unclothed tables at the very rear in a corner, so that walls blocked it on two sides. Three men sat at the table. Two wore shirts and trousers but Janet was intrigued that the third man wore a suit, dark although in the poor light she could not be positive of the true color, with a tie neatly knotted into a white shirt which appeared fresh and clean.
The three observed her approach and remained seated when she got to the table, as Haseeb had remained seated in the Larnaca square. With the sort of pride with which he’d identified the cafe, Haseeb announced to the three: “This is the woman.”
The suited man nodded to a chair which would put her facing him. Unhelped, Janet withdrew it from the table and sat down. Haseeb hesitated and then, uninvited, sat down at another edge of the table.
Directly, unwilling to begin any more word games, Janet said: “I’m told you have contacts in Beirut.”
“Perhaps,” the suited man said.
He wore a drooped moustache, like Chief Inspector Zarpas. She wondered if the policeman had by now monitored the?200 withdrawaclass="underline" she’d already decided it could be easily explained as living expenses, if he demanded an account. She said: “I’m looking for someone to make inquiries for me.”
The man jerked his head towards Haseeb. “He explained.”
“Can you do it?”
“Perhaps,” he said again.
“Depending on what?”
“Being able to find the right people. And the money.”
“How much money?”
“How much have you got?”
“I can pay,” assured Janet. Quickly she added: “I can pay if the information is good.”
“Ten thousand,” said the moustached man.
Janet lowered her head, caught by the sensation of deja vu -the same amount demanded by the cheating Nicos Kholi. Looking up, she said with odd formality: “If you can provide positive information about the man for whom I am looking I will pay you?10,000.”
There was a stir from among the men around the table. Janet detected another odor, competing with the smell of cooking oil, and realized it was the stink of fish. Then she remembered that they were fishermen.
A young boy carrying an empty tray emerged from inside the restaurant, looking at them expectantly. Haseeb immediately ordered brandy and the three other men indicated their glasses for more: it was ouzo, Janet saw. She shook her head.