Swiftly he went through the other drawers and found only stationery and mail, and a drawer filled with pipes and empty tobacco tins. Then he spotted the door behind the desk and tried the handle. It opened into a large walk-in cupboard. Empty wooden shelves ran along the far wall, above head height. A small, battered suitcase lay in the near corner. Three battleship grey filing cabinets were pushed against the door wall to the left of the door. They too were empty. Kale pulled the door shut behind him and felt the darkness and the closeness of the walls around him. He shivered for the first time in the cold, and with his pencil torch picked his way round the filing cabinets and squatted in the corner, back pressed against the wall, thin legs pulled in close to his chest. He leaned his left arm on the battered suitcase, though strangely it never occurred to him to check inside. It should have.
First he took out Gryffe’s gun and laid it on the floor beside him, then he took out another gun from an inside pocket and screwed in the silencer. He laid it on the floor beside the other and let his head rest back against the wall, his eyes closing, blood pulsing softly at his temples.
This was the worst time now. The waiting. Twelve hours, perhaps more. But it was all so familiar. The waiting, the loneliness, the dark room. It had been that way all his life. Even now he could hear his mother in the next room, half-drunk, laughing, entertaining another customer. They came night after night. Sometimes he would recognise a voice. Any one of them might have been his father, though later he doubted it. He had lain on the cot bed in the corner below faded grey curtains, watching the line of light under the door. He had been five, maybe six years old. He never saw the faces that came and went. But he heard them laughing, grunting, cursing. And always his mother’s voice, her pretended enjoyment, the smell of the gin that fuelled her pretence. Then afterwards, she would sometimes come through, to stand over his bed, thinking him asleep, and bend to kiss his cheek with wet, loose lips, the hot, thick smell of gin on her breath. How he loathed it. Her smell, her touch, the stink of men and sex. And how he despised her for her sobbing. Great long sobs of self pity that he could hear through the wall when she had returned to her own room. What right had she to cry?
Finally there had been the night, long silent hours after the raised voices and the scream, when he had gone through and found her naked body. It had been almost a relief. The twist of pain on the fleshy red lips, the wide, staring eyes, the whiteness of her flesh and the sagging of her breasts. They meant an end to it all. No more strange men, no more wet kisses, no more sobbing through dark, lonely nights. But he had not known then, could not have known, that there were greater horrors in life.
II
The house stood discreetly behind a long sweep of lawn, screened from the Avenue de la Grande by a row of poplars. A broad, paved driveway opened off the road and ran up the edge of the lawn, past the side of the house, to a wide double garage. Floodlights were cleverly concealed among the evergreen bushes that bordered the drive and the far side of the lawn, picking out the house against the black of the sky behind. It was a long, single-storey white house with green shutters and a red tiled roof. A place you might buy if you had money and wanted people to know it. Large gleaming limousines lined the avenue for about thirty metres along either side, and Slater pulled his car into the left side beyond the house. He stepped out into the light smirr that was drifting gently across the lawns of the houses on the north side, and opened the passenger door.
Bannerman watched Marie-Ange climb out and wave aside Slater’s offer of help. She was a tall, cool, elegant lady, her long tawny golden hair falling carelessly across the mink stole on her shoulders. She wore a full-length white silk dress that flared out from a band at the waist below a daring neckline. When they had met earlier, at Slater’s flat, Bannerman had known immediately what Sally had meant when she had said Marie-Ange was slumming. She had that air of confidence and aloofness that so often comes from a background of money and good education. There was a brittleness about her, a standing on ceremony that remained a constant presence, even in her relationship with Slater. Bannerman had taken an immediate dislike to her. The condescending smile, the limp hand offered to be shaken that Bannerman had squeezed a little too tightly. But if it had hurt a little, she had not shown it. She was a woman who would not be easily ruffled.
He had to admit, though, that she was a beautiful woman to look at. Large cobalt blue eyes, a fine long aristocratic nose and wide, full lips. A smooth, lightly tanned skin, a distant enigmatic smile. A long slender body. A sexual creature, and aware of it. Bannerman recalled Sally’s words — a strange couple. Her very presence begged the question, why Slater? The man seemed ill at ease in her company, or was it the presence of Bannerman?
Bannerman carried these thoughts with him across the avenue and up the driveway to the door of the white house. Slater and Marie-Ange walked ahead as though they were not with him. The door was opened by a white-jacketed butler and they were shown into a large lit hall. At the far end a staircase rode up to a halfway landing where more stairs branched off to left and right. To their left double doors stood open, leading down two steps into a huge, crowded room, already thick with smoke and the sound of voices and the smell of drink and perfume. The walls in the hall and the room they could see into were oak panelled in a mock nineteenth century English style. They were hung with dark oil portraits of men and women with severe faces and large shiny noses. The butler took their coats and tiptoed away across the thick pile of the rich, dark carpet.
‘How ostentatious,’ Marie-Ange said, looking around with her accustomed disapproval. ‘I hope this will not all be too boring, Timothy.’ Her voice was clear and confident and almost without accent.
Slater smiled patiently, slightly nervous Bannerman thought. ‘Shall we?’ he said and steered her gently towards the doors. He hesitated a moment then turned back to Bannerman who had remained in the centre of the hall lighting a cigar. ‘Bannerman. Would you look after Marie-Ange for a while? About fifteen minutes. I have some business with a contact. I’d like to get it out of the way first.’
Bannerman finished lighting his cigar and glanced at Marie-Ange. She seemed bored, but resigned to her fate. He nodded. ‘Okay.’
Slater squeezed her hand. ‘Soon be over,’ he said and slipped away into the dinner jackets. Bannerman sauntered over to stand beside her and they stood in the doorway looking in on the assembly as they might have watched fish in an aquarium.
‘You might at least try and put a face on it,’ he said, fishing.
‘Oh, might I?’ she replied without looking at him. ‘A face on what?’
‘On you and Slater.’
‘Ah,’ she said, and she worked up a little smile and turned it on him. ‘And what business is that of yours?’
‘None, but I’m a nosy bastard.’
‘So I’m beginning to notice.’
‘Just thought I’d beat you to it.’
‘Indeed.’ Her smile broadened and then she looked away again. ‘You have a very strong handshake, Mr. Bannerman,’
‘I work at it.’
‘And are you as good in bed?’
‘Better.’
She turned her face back towards his, tall in her high heels, their eyes almost on a level. ‘You’re very quick.’