…”
“For Christ’s sake, Al, shut up!” Knox erupted. “What the fuck do you think you’re proving!”
They had spoken Arabic, Janet remembered. Like she remembered some of the things that they’d said. Break you in, that’s what I’m going to do. Really break you in. And then the protest. She’s no good split apart. And the reply. Going to have her first. Janet spoke with conscious evenness, almost casually, determined not to give Hart the satisfaction of knowing how much he’d sickened her. She said: “So what about the man I stabbed? What happened to him?”
“Zarpas didn’t say anything about a stabbing,” Hart said, at last, visibly disappointed at her lack of reaction.
“How many are in custody?” Janet persisted.
“Two. The one who ran the boat and an old guy.”
So where was the one she’d known as Costas? Had Haseeb, the Arab engineer from Larnaca marina, known she was going to be sold as a whore? Other less-formed questions tugged at Janet’s mind. The American had spoken easily of the Cypriot policeman, as if he knew him. But then there was every reason why he should. And Zarpas would be handling the currency case, wouldn’t he, because it was he who had continually warned her? They’d both warned her, in fact, practically within minutes of each other, that first day. Janet looked up at the lounging crew-cut man, her head to one side, and said curiously: “It was you, wasn’t it?”
“You’re not getting through to me, lady.”
“That first day, in Nicosia,” Janet said. “When you came to my hotel room and warned me off. It was you who mentioned Larnaca marina and Zenon Square and Kitieus Street.”
“I’m hearing the words but I’m missing the meaning.”
“I thought you’d made a slip at the time,” Janet continued, in growing conviction. “But do you know what I think now? I don’t think you made a slip at all. I think you knew I’d go there and you knew I’d get ripped off and then you thought I’d have to get out, like Langley told you to make me get out.”
“Bullshit,” Hart said, but there was just the slightest flush.
“Did you do that, Al?” demanded the other American. “Did you set her up, like she thinks you did?”
“Of course I damned well didn’t!” protested Hart. “What sort of question’s that?”
“The sort of question that needs an answer,” Knox said.
“I told you no!”
“I know what you told me,” Knox said. “What’s the truth?”
“I didn’t set her up.” Hart was redder now. “It would have been hard, getting in ahead of everyone else.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Janet asked.
Hart stared directly down at her, a nerve in his left cheek twitching in his obvious anger. “Think about it, lady. Think about how Zarpas knew where you were and how much money you’d deposited, within hours of getting to Nicosia! And how I knew where you were, to come in heavy with a warning, right after him!”
“The bank was required to make a report,” Janet said unsteadily. “You said you had a watch out at the airport.”
“A bank report would have taken weeks to get through the system, even if such a requirement existed,” dismissed Hart. “And I haven’t the resources to run any sort of check on airport arrivals, not that quickly anyway.”
“So how?” Janet asked.
“Partington,” the American said. “He warned Zarpas that you were there and what you intended to do: all Zarpas had to do in turn was demand the banks call him immediately after you’d made the deposit.”
“But you…?” Janet asked, emptily.
“Partington again.”
“Why?” Janet said. “I don’t understand why…” She stumbled to a halt. “There was no reason, no purpose. And he didn’t know where I’d put the money anyway.”
Hart leaned slightly forward, to make his point. “Ms. Stone, I want you to understand something. I don’t really give a damn whether you get taken for every penny you’ve got or whether you really do end up in an Arab outhouse, along with the rest of the animals. But I do care if anything you do causes one of my colleagues to get killed. That’s why I want to see your ass out of here. But others are concerned about you, personally…”
“Partington didn’t know about the money!” Janet insisted.
“Lady,” Hart said. “Partington knew all about the money because your father called him from England before you even landed, told him what you were likely to do and asked him to pull every string he could think of to get you on the next available plane out of the island and back somewhere sensible.”
“My father!” Janet said, disbelieving.
“Your father,” Hart said. “He worries about you.”
From behind the desk Knox said: “You know, Al, I always knew you were a shit. I just never knew until now exactly how much of a shit you are. It’s something: it’s really something!”
19
I t was a military helicopter, attached to the base at Akrotiri, so the comforts were minimal. Conversation was impossible and Janet was grateful. She did not want any talk-any contact at all-with Al Hart. After takeoff from the American compound in Beirut Janet pulled as far away from him as possible on the continuous, port-to-starboard seat, and after they landed she tried to distance herself similarly in the back of the waiting police car. Hart seemed unaware of what she was doing: if he did notice it, he didn’t appear to care, not wanting to talk any more to her, either.
There was still some heat in the day, and the vehicle had no air conditioning. Almost at once the interior became eye-droopingly hot: very shortly after picking up the motorway for the drive into the capital Janet felt her lids closing and let it happen.
Janet started, frightened, into bewildered wakefulness, her body aching, not immediately able to remember where she was or what she was doing, babbling “… What…? No…!” before becoming properly aware of her surroundings. Someone was shaking her shoulder.
It was the notetaking Sergeant Kashianis who was leaning into the car to shake her: Zarpas stood behind him. Janet heard a slam, another noise that made her jump, and saw that Hart had left the car and closed his door.
“This way, please,” said Kashianis.
Janet got unsteadily from the vehicle, needing the door edge for support until she became properly awake. She ached very badly, seemingly at every joint, and her eyes were sticky and still heavy: it would have been very easy for her to go back to sleep.
“This way, please,” urged the sergeant, again.
Janet made an uncertain path into the police headquarters, aware of Zarpas and Hart ahead of her, their heads lowered and close together in intent conversation.
The air was heavy inside, but there was at least a desultory fan in Zarpas’s office. It was a disordered, cluttered box of a place, files and dossiers haphazard on top of cabinets which supposedly should have contained them, others overflowing on to the floor. The police officer’s desk was mountained with more paperwork, in peaks and foothills: in a glass vase were yellow, long-used water and a sad flower, head lolled to one side, already atrophying, and Janet wondered why he bothered.
Zarpas shifted dossiers from a chair for Janet to sit in. Kashianis took another chair alongside the desk and arranged his pad and pencils there. Zarpas sat behind the desk. Yet again Hart had nowhere to sit. There was no space in the disorder for him to perch on the desk, as he had in Beirut. Janet was childishly glad.