‘You’re getting morbid, dear,’ says Bill. ‘Darling, it’s all a matter of chemistry. You’ve been eating toxic foods and neglecting the fact that there are two forces in the world, centrifugal which is Yin and centripetal which is Yang. Orgasms are Yang.’
‘It makes me sad,’ she says. ‘I want to go home, I think. I want to go back home and feel all that lonely grief again. I miss it so much already.’
He jerks her away and she calls out, ‘Stop it! Don’t do that!’ A man and two women who are passing a few yards away turn to look, but the young group pays no attention.
Bill gives a deep sigh. ‘It’s getting late,’ he says, pinching her elbow.
‘Let me go, I want to look round the back. I’ve got to see how things are round here, it’s important.’
‘You’d think it was a bank,’ Bill says, ‘that you were going to do a stick-up in tomorrow. Who do you think you are? Who do you think I am?’ He follows her as she starts off round the side of the building, examining the track. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
She traverses the side of the building and turns round to the back where five large dust-bins stand waiting for tomorrow’s garbagemen, who will also find Lise, not far off, stabbed to death. At this moment, a disturbed cat leaves off its foraging at one of the half-closed dust-bins and flows into an adjacent blackness.
Lise surveys the ground earnestly.
‘Look,’ says Bill, ‘Lise, darling, over by the hedge. We’re all right.’
He pulls her towards a hedge separating the back yard of the Pavilion from a foot-path which can be seen through a partly-open iron gate. A band of very tall fair young men all speaking together in a Scandinavian-sounding language passes by and stops to watch and comment buoyantly on the tussle that ensues between Bill and Lise, she proclaiming that she doesn’t like sex and he explaining that if he misses his daily orgasm he has to fit in two the next day. ‘And it gives me indigestion,’ he says, getting her down on the gravel behind the hedge and out of sight, ‘two in one day. And it’s got to be a girl.’
Lise now shrieks for help in four languages, English, French, Italian and Danish. She throws her hand-bag into the hedge; then, ‘He’s taken my purse!’ she cries in four languages. ‘He’s gone off with my hand-bag!’ One of the onlookers tries to creak open the stiff iron gate, but meantime another has started to climb it, and gets over.
‘What’s going on?’ he says to Lise in his own language. ‘We’re Swedes. What’s wrong?’
Bill who has been kneeling to hold her down gets up and says, ‘Go away. Clear off. What do you think’s going on?’
But Lise has jumped to her feet and shouts in English that she never saw him before in her life, and that he is trying to rob her, and rape her. ‘I just got out of my car to look at the Pavilion, and he jumped on me and dragged me here,’ she screams, over and over again in four languages. ‘Get the police!’
The other men have come into the yard. Two of them take hold of Bill who grins, trying hard to convince them that this turmoil is Lise’s joke. One of them says he is going to find a policeman. Lise says, ‘Where’s my bag? He’s got rid of it somewhere. What has he done with it?’ Then, in a burst of spontaneous composure she says, quietly, ‘I’m going to find a policeman, too,’ and walks off to the car. Most of the other parked cars have gone, as have also the young loiterers. One of the Swedes runs after her, advising her to wait till his friend brings a policeman.
‘No, I’m going to the police-station right away,’ she says in a calm voice as she gets in and shuts the door. She has already made off, already thrown the bag of wild rice out of the window, when the police arrive on the scene. They hear the Swedes’ account, they listen to Bill’s protests, they search for Lise’s bag, and find it. Then they ask Bill what the girl’s name was since she was, as he claims, a friend of his. ‘Lise,’ he says. ‘I don’t know her other name. We met on the plane.’
They take Bill into custody anyway, mercifully for him as it turns out, since in the hours logically possible for the murder of Lise on that spot Bill is safely in a police cell, equally beyond suspicion and the exercise of his diet.
SEVEN
It is long past midnight when she arrives at the Hotel Tomson which stands like the only living thing in the shuttered street. Lise parks the little black car in a spot near the entrance, takes her book and her zipper-bag and enters the hall.
At the desk the night-porter is on duty, the top three buttons of his uniform unfastened to reveal his throat and the top of his under-vest, a sign that the deep night has fallen and the tourists have gone to bed. The porter is talking on the desk telephone which links with the bedrooms. Meanwhile the only other person in the hall, a youngish man in a dark suit, stands before the desk with a brief-case and a tartan hold-all by his side.
‘Please don’t wake her. It isn’t at all necessary at this late hour. Just show me my room —’She’s on her way down. She says to tell you to wait, she’s on her way.
‘I could have seen her in the morning. It wasn’t necessary. It’s so late.’ The man’s tone is authoritative and vexed.
‘She’s wide awake, sir,’ says the porter. ‘She was very definite that we were to let her know as soon as you arrived.’
‘Excuse me,’ Lise says to the porter, brushing against the dark-suited man as she comes up to the desk beside him. ‘Would you like a book to read?’ She holds out her paperback. ‘I don’t need it any more.
‘Oh, thanks, Miss,’ says the porter, good-naturedly taking the book and holding it at arm’s length before his eyes the better to see what the book is all about. Meanwhile the new arrival, having been jostled by Lise, turns to look at her. He starts, and bends to pick up his bags.
Lise touches him on the arm. ‘You’re coming with me,’ she says.
‘No,’ he says, trembling. His round face is pink and white, his eyes are wide open with fear. He looks neat in his business suit and white shirt, as he did this morning when Lise first followed and then sat next to him on the plane.
‘Leave everything,’ says Lise. ‘Come on, it’s getting late. ‘She starts propelling him to the door.
‘Sir!’ calls the porter. ‘Your aunt’s on her way —’
Lise, still holding her man, turns at the door and calls back, ‘You can keep his luggage. You can have the book as well; it’s a whydunnit in q-sharp major and it has a message: never talk to the sort of girls that you wouldn’t leave lying about in your drawing-room for the servants to pick up.’ She leads her man towards the door.
There, he puts up some resistance: ‘No, I don’t want to come. I want to stay. I came here this morning, and when I saw you here I got away. I want to get away.’ He pulls back from her.
‘I’ve got a car outside,’ says Lise, and pushes open the narrow swing-door. He goes with her as if he is under arrest. She takes him to the car, lets go of his arm, gets into the driver’s seat and waits while he walks round the front of the car and gets in beside her. Then she drives off with him at her side.
He says, ‘I don’t know who you are. I never saw you before in my life.’
‘That’s not the point,’ she says. ‘I’ve been looking for you all day. You’ve wasted my time. What a day! And I was right first time. As soon as I saw you this morning I knew that you were the one. You’re my type.’
He is trembling. She says, ‘You were in a clinic. You’re Richard. I know your name because your aunt told me.’
He says, ‘I’ve had six years’ treatment. I want to start afresh. My family’s waiting to see me.