Yet if I did nothing about it, what then? If someone really had been trying to kill me, there was nothing to stop him trying again. How could I possibly protect myself every minute of every day... especially against unforeseen things like microphones and rocks in gold mines?
If... and I wasn’t altogether convinced... two murder attempts had been made, they had both been arranged to look like accidents. So it was of little use taking future precautions against things like poison and bullets and knives-in-the-back down dark alleys. One would have to beware instead of cars with no brakes, deadly insects in one’s shoes, and disintegrating balconies.
I shied away for a long time from thinking about who, for it had to be someone who had been down in the mine.
A miner who didn’t like my films taking steps to avoid sitting through any others? He wouldn’t have to kill me: could simply vote with his feet.
Someone smouldering from ungovernable professional jealousy? The only person I knew of who regularly swore undying hatred was Drix Goddart, but he was not yet in South Africa, let alone 4,000 feet under Welkom.
None of the people working in the mine had known I was going to be there, and before the incident, none of them had used my name.
That left... Oh hell, I thought. Well... it left Evan... and Conrad... and Danilo... and Roderick. And also van Huren, who owned a lot of souls and could have things done by proxy.
As for why... Evan’s professional resentment was surely not obsessive enough, and Danilo didn’t know my guess of what he was up to with the horses; and in any case, even if he did, he wouldn’t try to cover up such a minor crime with murder. More likely to confess and laugh, I would have thought, and meet a warning-off with a what-the-hell shrug.
Motives for Conrad, Roderick and van Huren took even less cogitation. I couldn’t rake up a decent one between them.
They had all (except Conrad who had been in the surgery) looked relieved when I stepped safely out of the mine... Could they possibly have looked relieved just because I said I couldn’t remember how I got knocked out?
It all seemed so improbable. I couldn’t imagine any of them plotting away in murky labyrinths of villainy. It didn’t make sense. I must, I concluded, be imagining things. I had been involved in too much fiction, and I had begun to project it on to reality.
I sighed. Realised that my head had stopped aching and that the unsettled feeling of concussion was subsiding, and presently, imperceptibly, went to sleep.
In the morning the night thoughts seemed even more preposterous. It was Conrad who had suggested a connection between the mike and the mine; and Conrad had got it wrong.
Roderick telephoned at breakfast time. Would I care to have dinner at his flat, with Katya, just the three of us and no fuss: and when I hesitated for a few seconds over replying, he added quickly that it would all be strictly off the record, anything I said would not be taken down and used against me.
‘O.K.,’ I agreed, with a smile in my voice and reservations in my mind. ‘Where do I find you?’
He told me the address, and said, ‘That chauffeur of yours will know where to find it.’
‘Oh. Yes,’ I agreed.
I put the receiver down slowly: but there was no reason why he shouldn’t know about the hired car-and-driver, and there was of course his source at the Iguana. Roderick had all along known where I was going, what I was doing, and how often I brushed my teeth.
Almost before I had taken my hand off it, the telephone rang again.
Clifford Wenkins. Could he, er, that was to say, would it be convenient for him to come to the club that morning to discuss, er, details, for the, er, premiere?
Er yes, I said.
After that, Conrad rang. Was I going to travel down to the Kruger Park with him and Evan?
‘How long are you staying there?’ I asked.
‘About ten days, I should think.’
‘No, then. I’ll have to come back by next Tuesday, at the latest. I’ll drive down separately. It will be better anyway to have two cars, with you and Evan concentrating on locations.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, sounding relieved: hadn’t wanted to spend a week at close quarters keeping Evan and me off each other’s throats, I imagined.
They would come around for a drink before lunch, he said. Evan, it appeared, was bursting with inspirations for his new film. (When was he not?)
After that, Arknold.
‘Look, Mister Lincoln. About Mrs Cavesey’s horses... Look...’ He petered heavily out.
After waiting in vain for him to start up again I said, ‘I’ll be here all morning, if you’d care to come over.’
Three heavy breaths. Then he said, ‘Perhaps. Might be as well. Yes. All right. About eleven, then, after I’ve watched the horses work.’
‘See you,’ I said.
Hot sunshine, blue sky.
I went downstairs and drank my coffee out on the terrace, and read the newspaper. Close columns filled with local issues, all assuming a background of common knowledge which I didn’t have. Reading them was like going into a film halfway through.
A man had been murdered in Johannesburg: found two days ago, with a wire twisted round his neck.
With a shiver I put down the paper. No one was trying to murder me. I had decided it was nonsense. Another man’s death had no business to be raising hairs on my skin. The trouble was, no one had told my subconscious that we were all through with red alerts.
‘Morning.’ said a fresh young voice in my ear. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Watching the flowers grow.’
She sat down opposite me, grinning all over her fifteen-year-old face.
‘I’ve come to play tennis.’
She wore a short white dress, white socks, white shoes, and carried two racquets in zipped waterproof covers. Her dark shoulder length hair was held back by a green head-band, and the van Huren wealth spoke as eloquently as ever in her natural confidence and poise.
‘Coffee?’ I suggested.
‘Rather have orange juice.’
I ordered it.
‘Didn’t you just love the gold mine?’ she demanded.
‘I just did,’ I agreed, imitating Danilo’s accent, as she had done his turn of phrase.
She wrinkled her nose, amused. ‘You never miss a damn thing, do you? Dad says you have an intuitive mind, whatever the hell that is.’
‘It means I jump to conclusions,’ I said.
She shook her head dubiously. ‘Uhuh. He seemed to think it was good.’
The orange juice came and she drank some, clinking the ice. She had long dark eyelashes and more cream than peaches. I stifled as always the inner lurch of regret that young girls like Sally gave me: my own daughter might grow up as pretty, but the zest and the flash would be missing.
She put down the glass and her eyes searched the hotel buildings behind me.
‘Have you seen Danilo anywhere?’ she said. ‘The swine said he’d be here at ten, and it’s a quarter after already.’
‘He was busy doing sums all yesterday,’ I said gravely. ‘I expect they wore him out.’
‘What sums?’ she said suspiciously.
I told her.
She laughed. ‘He can’t help doing sums, then, I shouldn’t think. All Saturday at the races, he was doing it. A living computer, I called him.’ She took another orange sip. ‘I say, did you know he’s a terrific gambler? He had ten rand on one of those horses. Ten rand!’
I thought van Huren had made a sensible job of her, if a ten-rand bet still seemed excessive.
‘Mind you,’ she added. ‘The horse won. I went with him to collect the winnings. Twenty-five rand, would you believe it? He says he often wins. He was all sort of gay and laughing about it.’