"So you helped yourself from the safe. Well, he was jolly lucky you didn't top him too. Or unzip his whatnot with your penknife."
"I did overtime for him. Day work. I did the fine-wine inventory on my day off. Nothing. Not even when I took guests sailing on the lake. He charged them a fortune and didn't pay me a cent."
"We left Cairo in a bit of a hurry too, one notices. Nobody quite seems to know why. No hint of foul play, mind. Not a stain on our escutcheon, according to Queen Nefertiti. Or perhaps she just never rumbled us."
Jonathan had that fiction ready. He had worked it out with Burr. "I got mixed up with a girl. She was married."
"She have a name?"
Fight your corner, Burr had said. "Not for you. No."
"Fifi? Lulu? Mrs. Tutankhamen? No? Well, she can always use one of yours, can't she?" Corkoran was leafing lazily through his faxes. "What about the good doctor? Did he have a name?"
"Marti."
"Not that doctor, silly."
"Then who? What doctor? What is this, Corkoran? Am I on trial for saving Daniel? Where's this leading?"
This time Corkoran waited patiently for the storm to pass.
"The doctor who stitched up our hand at Truro Casualty," he explained.
"I don't know what he was called. He was an intern."
"A white intern?"
"Brown. Indian or Pakistani."
"And how did we get ourselves there? To the hospital? With our poor bleeding wrist?"
"I wrapped it in a couple of dishcloths and drove Harlow's jeep."
"Left-handed?"
"Yes."
"The same car we used to remove the body to other premises, no doubt? The law did find traces of our blood in the car. But it seems to have been a bit of a cocktail. There was some of Jumbo's too."
Waiting for an answer, Corkoran was busily writing himself little notes.
"Just get me a lift to Nassau," Jonathan said. "I've done you no harm. I'm not asking for anything. You'd never have known about me if I hadn't been such a fool at Low's. I don't need anything from you, I'm not applying for anything, I don't want money, I don't want thanks, I don't want your approval. Let me go ― "
Corkoran ruminatively worked his cigarette while he turned the pages on his lap. "What say we do Ireland for a change?" he proposed, as if Ireland were a party game for a wet afternoon. "Two old soldiers having a chin-wag about better times. What could be jollier than that?"
When you come to the true parts, don't sit back, Burr had said. Better to flounder, forget a little and correct yourself. make them think that's where they should be looking for the lies.
* * *
"What did you do to that bloke, anyway?" Frisky was asking, with professional curiosity.
It was the middle of the night. He was stretched on a futon across the door, a masked reading light and a heap of pornographic magazines beside his head.
"Which bloke?" said Jonathan.
"The bloke who borrowed little Danny for the evening. Screaming like a stuck pig he was, up there in the cookhouse ― they could have heard him in Miami."
"I must have broken his arm."
"Broken it? I think you must have screwed it off him very slowly against the thread. Are you one of these amateur Japanese martial artists, then, one of your hari-suchi merchants?"
"I just grabbed and pulled," said Jonathan.
"Fell to pieces in your hand," Frisky said understandingly. "Happens to the best of us."
The most dangerous moments are when you need a friend, Burr had said.
* * *
And after Ireland they reconnoitred what Corkoran called "our days as upwardly mobile flunky," which meant Jonathan's time at catering college, then his days as sous-chef, then as chef and then as graduate to the staff side of the hotel business.
After that again, Corkoran needed to hear about his exploits at the Chateau Babette, which Jonathan related with scrupulous regard for Yvonne's anonymity, only to discover that Corkoran knew that story too.
"So how in Gawd's name do we come to stick a pin into Mama Low's, old love?" Corkoran asked, lighting himself another cigarette. "Mama's has been the Chief's favourite watering hole for donkeys' years."
"Just somewhere I thought I'd go to ground for a few weeks."
"Keep our head down, you mean?"
"I'd been doing a job on a yacht up in Maine."
"Chief cook and bottle washer?"
"Major-domo."
Paused while Corkoran rummaged among his faxes.
"And?"
"I caught a bug and had to be put ashore. I lay up in a hotel in Boston, then called Billy Bourne in Newport. Billy gets me the work. He said, Why not devil at Low's for a few months, dinners only, take a rest?"
Corkoran licked a finger, fished out whatever he was looking for and held it to the light.
"For heaven's sake," Jonathan muttered, like a prayer for sleep.
"Now, this boat we went sick on, old love. That would have been the Lolita, nee Persephone, built in Holland, owned by Nikos Asserkalian, the celebrated show business personality, God-thumper and crook, two hundred feet of bloody awful taste. Not Nikos; he's a midget."
"I never met him. We were chartered out."
"Who to, my heart?"
"Four California dentists and their women."
Jonathan volunteered a couple of names, which Corkoran wrote down in his scruffy penny notebook, having first flattened it on his ample thigh.
"Balls of fun, were they? Laugh a minute?"
"They did me no harm."
"And you didn't do them any?" Corkoran suggested kindly. "Bust their safe or someone's neck, or do a knife job on them or anything?"
"Actually, go to hell," said Jonathan.
Corkoran considered this invitation and seemed to decide it was a good idea. He packed together his papers and emptied his ashtray into the wastepaper basket, making a frightful mess. He peered at himself in the mirror, grimaced and tried to pull his hair straight with his fingers, but it wasn't a success.
"It's too bloody good, dearie," he declared.
"What is?"
"Your story. Don't know why. Don't know how. Don't know where. It's you, I think. You make me feel inadequate." He gave his hair another disastrous yank. "But then I am inadequate. I'm a savage little poof in a grownup world. Whereas you ― you're just trying to be inadequate." He wandered into the bathroom and peed. "Tabby's brought some clothes for you, by the by," he called through the open doorway. "Nothing earthshaking, but they'll clothe our nakedness till the Armanis come through." He flushed, and reappeared in the bedroom.
"Left to myself, I'd roast you, actually," he said, zipping himself up. "I'd deprive you, hood you and hang you up by your fucking ankles till the truth fell out of you by gravity. Still, can't have everything in life, can we? Toodle-oo."
* * *
It was the next day. Daniel had decided that Jonathan was in need of entertainment.
"What's a Grecian urn?"
"A pot. A jug. Art form of the ancient Greeks."
"Fifty dollars a week. What goes through a tortoise's brain when it's being hit by a Mercedes?"
"Slow music?"
"Its shell. Corky's talking to Roper in the study. He says he's gone as far as he can go. Either you're squeaky clean or you're the biggest con in Christendom."
"When did they get back?"
"At first light. Roper always flies at first light. They're talking about your question mark."
"With Jed?"
"Jed's riding Sarah. She always rides Sarah as soon as she gets back. Sarah hears her and gets in a rage if she doesn't come. Roper says they're a pair of dykes. What's a dyke?"