An Expensive Place to Die. Len Deighton
‘Bite on a piece of bare knuckle.’
I saw the cunning little Jules out of the corner of my eye. He was smiling. He was coming too, smooth and cool inch by inch, hands flat and trembling for the killer cut.
I made a slight movement to keep them going. If they once relaxed, stood up straight and began to think, they could eat me up.
Heavyweight Albert’s hands were moving, foot forward for balance, right hand low and ready for a body punch while Jules chopped at my neck. That was the theory. Surprise for Albert: my metal heelpiece going into his instep. You were expecting a punch in the buffet or a kick in the groin, Albert, so you were surprised when a terrifying pain hit your instep. Difficult for the balancing too. Albert leaned forward to console his poor hurt foot. Second surprise for Albert: under-swung flat hand on the nose; nasty. Jules is coming, cursing Albert for forcing his hand. Jules is forced to meet me head down. I felt the edge of the table against my hip. Jules thinks I’m going to lean into him. Surprise for Jules: I lean back just as he’s getting ready to give me a hand edge on the corner of the neck. Second surprise for Jules: I do lean in after all and give him a fine glass paperweight on the earhole at a range of about eighteen inches. The paperweight seems none the worse for it. Now’s the chance to make a big mistake. Don’t pick up the paperweight. Don’t pick up the paperweight. Don’t pick up the paperweight. I didn’t pick it up. Go for Datt, he’s standing he’s mobile and he’s the one who is mentally the driving force in the room.
Down Datt. He’s an old man but don’t underrate him. He’s large and weighty and he’s been around. What’s more he’ll use anything available; the old maidservant is careful, discriminating, basically not aggressive. Go for Datt. Albert is rolling over and may come up to one side of my range of vision. Jules is motionless. Datt is moving around the desk; so it will have to be a missile. An inkstand, too heavy. A pen-set will fly apart. A vase: unwieldy. An ashtray. I picked it up, Datt was still moving, very slowly now, watching me carefully, his mouth open and white hair disarrayed as though he had been in the scuffle. The ashtray is heavy and perfect. Careful, you don’t want to kill him. ‘Wait,’ Datt says hoarsely. I waited. I waited about ten seconds, just long enough for the woman to come behind me with a candlestick. She was basically not aggressive, the maidservant. I was only unconscious thirty minutes, they told me.
8
I was saying ‘You are not basically aggressive’ as I regained consciousness.
‘No,’ said the woman as though it was a grave shortcoming. ‘It is true.’ I couldn’t see either of them from where I was full length on my back. She switched the tape recorder on. There was the sudden intimate sound of a girl sobbing. ‘I want it recording,’ she said, but the sound of the girl became hysterical and she began to scream as though someone was torturing her. ‘Switch that damn thing off,’ Datt called. It was strange to see him disturbed, he was usually so calm. She turned the volume control the wrong way and the sound of the screams went right through my head and made the floor vibrate.
‘The other way,’ screamed Datt. The sound abated, but the tape was still revolving and the sound could just be heard; the girl was sobbing again. The desperate sound was made even more helpless by its diminished volume, like someone abandoned or locked out.
‘What is it?’ asked the maidservant. She shuddered but seemed reluctant to switch off; finally she did so and the reels clicked to a standstill.
‘What’s it sound like?’ said Datt. ‘It’s a girl sobbing and screaming.’
‘My God,’ said the maidservant.
‘Calm down,’ said Datt. ‘It’s for amateur theatricals. It’s just for amateur theatricals,’ he said to me.
‘I didn’t ask you,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m telling you.’ The servant woman turned the reel over and rethreaded it. I felt fully conscious now and I sat up so that I could see across the room. The girl Maria was standing by the door, she had her shoes in her hand and a man’s raincoat over her shoulders. She was staring blankly at the wall and looking miserable. There was a boy sitting near the gas fire. He was smoking a small cheroot, biting at the end which had become frayed like a rope end, so that each time he pulled it out of his mouth he twisted his face up to find the segments of leaf and discharge them on the tongue-tip. Datt and the old maidservant had dressed up in those old-fashioned-looking French medical gowns with high buttoned collars. Datt was very close to me and did a patent-medicine commercial while sorting through a trayful of instruments.
‘Has he had the LSD?’ asked Datt.
‘Yes,’ said the maid. ‘It should start working soon.’
‘You will answer any questions we ask,’ said Datt to me.
I knew he was right: a well-used barbiturate could nullify all my years of training and experience and make me as co-operatively garrulous as a tiny child. What the LSD would do was anyone’s guess.
What a way to be defeated and laid bare. I shuddered, Datt patted my arm.
The old woman was assisting him. ‘The Amytal,’ said Datt, ‘the ampoule, and the syringe.’
She broke the ampoule and filled the syringe. ‘We must work fast,’ said Datt. ‘It will be useless in thirty minutes; it has a short life. Bring him forward, Jules, so that she can block the vein. Dab of alcohol, Jules, no need to be inhuman.’
I felt hot breath on the back of my neck as Jules laughed dutifully at Datt’s little joke.
‘Block the vein now,’ said Datt. She used the arm muscle to compress the vein of the forearm and waited a moment while the veins rose. I watched the process with interest, the colours of the skin and the metal were shiny and unnaturally bright. Datt took the syringe and the old woman said, ‘The small vein on the back of the hand. If it clots we’ve still got plenty of patent ones left.’
‘A good thought,’ said Datt. He did a triple jab under the skin and searched for the vein, dragging at the plunger until the blood spurted back a rich gusher of red into the glass hypodermic. ‘Off,’ said Datt. ‘Off or he’ll bruise. It’s important to avoid that.’
She released the arm vein and Datt stared at his watch, putting the drug into the vein at a steady one cc per minute.
‘He’ll feel a great release in a moment, an orgastic response. Have the Megimide ready. I want him responding for at least fifteen minutes.’
M. Datt looked up at me. ‘Who are you?’ he asked in French. ‘Where are you, what day is it?’
I laughed. His damned needle was going into someone else’s arm, that was the only funny thing about it. I laughed again. I wanted to be absolutely sure about the arm. I watched the thing carefully. There was the needle in that patch of white skin but the arm didn’t fit on to my shoulder. Fancy him jabbing someone else. I was laughing more now so that Jules steadied me. I must have been jostling whoever was getting the injection because Datt had trouble holding the needle in.
‘Have the Megimide and the cylinder ready,’ said M. Datt, who had hairs – white hairs – in his nostrils. ‘Can’t be too careful. Maria, quickly, come closer, we’ll need you now, bring the boy closer; he’ll be the witness if we need one.’ M. Datt dropped something into the white enamel tray with a tremendous noise. I couldn’t see Maria now, but I smelled the perfume – I’d bet it was Ma Griffe, heavy and exotic, oh boy! It’s orange-coloured that smell. Orange-coloured with a sort of silky touch to it. ‘That’s good,’ said M. Datt, and I heard Maria say orange-coloured too. Everyone knows, I thought, everyone knows the colour of Ma Griffe perfume.
The huge glass orange fractured into a million prisms, each one a brilliant, like the Sainte Chapelle at high noon, and I slid through the coruscating light as a punt slides along a sleepy bywater, the white cloud low and the colours gleaming and rippling musically under me.
I looked at M. Datt’s face and I was frightened.