When he was happy that it was saturated, he discarded both halves of the lemon in his pocket to avoid leaving any fibres from his gloves, went over to the oven, switched on the fan to 170 degrees and put the page inside.
Every few minutes he opened the oven door and peered in. Finally, he smiled and removed the page, putting it on the top of the hob.
He switched the oven off and stared down at the clear brown writing that had appeared, as if by magic. It was a conjuring trick he had learned as a child.
Instantly he googled the name ‘Organza’ on his phone.
Organza fabric...
Organza gift bags...
Organza cruise ship. Our flagship addition to our fleet!
Orient and Occident Cruise Lines.
Was that where the grieving widow had gone? Spending a chunk of her two hundred thousand stolen counterfeit dollars? To help her through her grief?
How sweet.
How long was she going to be away? Certainly long enough for him to take this house apart. He didn’t know how long you could leave a collection of reptiles for, even with timers fitted. A few days, probably. A week? But not much more. Either she had someone who would come in to look after them, who could almost certainly provide him with useful information, or she was planning to be back in a week — or perhaps two at the most.
He’d look up the Organza’s schedule on his computer back in his hotel room and check out the ports of call. Tomorrow, he decided, he’d come and have a chat with the builders. See what he could find out from them. He looked forward to her return. To see what choice cuts he could take from her back home to Yossarian. He liked to reward his associate for his patience in waiting for him with body parts from his victims. And thanks to her well-equipped kitchen, he might be able to take something really tasty. Freeze dried.
50
Monday 2 March
Tooth arrived back in his hotel room shortly after 1 a.m., tired now and getting increasingly angry. Angry with the rain, angry with the goddam cold, angry that he had totally failed to find what he was looking for. And angry he had got a splinter in his finger putting the window boarding back.
He ordered steak and fries, coffee and a bottle of Maker’s Mark bourbon from room service and stood by the window, looking down at the lights of Brighton seafront and the black water of the English Channel beyond.
While he waited for his meal and drink to arrive, he was planning to return to Jodie Bentley’s house and make a search of every inch of the property. The memory stick could be anywhere. The bitch might have it with her, of course, that was a possibility. He’d searched plenty of residences and offices in his time. He knew all the places where people hid stuff, thinking they were being clever, like fake books, bathroom cabinets, sock drawers, on top of kitchen cupboards, in empty containers, under floorboards. Mostly when people hid stuff, there were indications.
You’d see the tiny indent in a floorboard where a screwdriver had been inserted. The books not entirely flush. Clothes stacked a little bit too neatly at the back of the drawer.
But tonight, nothing. Nada. Goose eggs.
After the room-service guy had delivered his tray and departed, Tooth hung the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door then, standing on a table, taped over the smoke detector.
He sat down at the table and poured himself a large whisky, then using the coffee cup saucer as an ashtray, lit a Lucky Strike, flipped open the lid of his laptop and googled ‘Organza’, adding, ‘cruise ship’.
Moments later an image appeared of a sleek white liner with a single, rectangular funnel.
He typed the words ‘Itinerary, March’.
The ship had sailed from Dubai yesterday, bound for Mumbai, India, due to arrive in three days’ time. The itinerary carried on for months, the ship steadily making its way to Cape Town, then up the west coast of Africa, then across to Ascension Island and on to Rio de Janeiro. It was a round-the-world cruise.
But there was no way Jodie Bentley would be staying on it for all that time.
He looked at the different legs and journey times. If she disembarked in Mumbai, she could be home in four days. If it was Goa, that would be six days at least before she’d be back. It looked like he had a minimum of four days to occupy himself in this freezing, wet hellhole. Four days to search her place again, if there was any point.
He stared at his meal, the room filled with the smell of it, and wished he was back home in the sunshine, on his boat with Yossarian, the trawl lines stretched out behind him, catching healthy food for them both.
He drained his glass, refilled it and lit another Lucky Strike. A printed sign warned him there was a £250 fine for smoking in this room.
As he dragged on his cigarette, he began to form a plan.
He turned back to his laptop.
51
Monday 2 March
At lunchtime that day, at a private ceremony in the intimate Polaris bar, Rollo and Jodie were married by the Organza’s captain. The service was attended by an elderly American couple as witnesses, with whom they had shared a dinner table last night — Irv and Mitzi Kravitz.
Rollo slipped a wedding band in platinum, purchased from the ship’s jewellery shop, onto Jodie’s finger, and she had placed a ring onto his, too. Throughout the entire ceremony he had looked utterly gooey-eyed.
Sweet.
For the next few days of what he called their honeymoon, and she viewed more as an endurance test of feigning adoration and horniness, they would be to the outside world the besotted newlyweds. Most of their fellow passengers were either elderly couples or elderly widows, and she had noticed, since embarking on the cruise, the frequent glances thrown in her direction — some of disapproval, some of envy, at the considerable age gap between herself and her new husband.
Irv had quietly asked Rollo if he was concerned about the age gap, and in reply, Rollo had quoted Joan Collins. ‘If she dies, she dies,’ he’d said.
But it didn’t bother her. She was focused, and full of excitement, about their first port of call, Mumbai, India.
And especially about one choice of shore excursion listed in the ship’s daily newspaper.
The Mumbai Crocodile Farm
Walk through Mumbai bush to a crocodile swamp.
See these prehistoric reptiles in their natural environment.
And don’t worry, we feed them daily on chickens — not tourists!
It was one of four shore excursions on offer. Rollo was keen to take the one that offered a visit to a gallery displaying the work of local artists, followed by a crafts market. But he deferred to his new bride and her fascination with reptiles, and they signed up at the Purser’s office to the crocodile farm tour.
She gave him a big kiss. Followed by another. She told him he was the most wonderful man in the world.
He replied that he still could not believe his luck. That such a gorgeous, smart, caring woman, so much younger, could have fallen in love with an old git like himself.
She’d replied that she’d always loved the wisdom of older men, right from her late teens. That older men made her feel safe, and that she found them — and Rollo in particular — extremely sexy.
Not as sexy, she excluded from the conversation, as what she had learned about his personal wealth from her assiduous trawls through the internet. He had sold his gallery in Cork Street plus goodwill, according to one website, for a figure in excess of ten million pounds. He had a personal art collection, housed partly in his Knightsbridge townhouse and partly in his Brighton seafront mansion, estimated to be worth over eighty million pounds.