Moroccan Traffic

by Dorothy Dunnett

  I said, ‘They’ve found something in Colonel Sullivan’s car.’

  ‘What?’ said Johnson. ‘A pound of pork sausages?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said; although I thought I did. ‘We ought to help him.’

  ‘You help him,’ said Johnson. ‘I’m going to Marrakesh.’

  But he didn’t immediately go. We stared at one another. Of course, he was no special friend of Seb Sullivan’s. And if Sullivan was up to something, it wouldn’t do Sir Robert any good if I were involved in it. I said, ‘I don’t like your driving.’

  ‘You’ve got a point,’ Johnson said. ‘Want me to show you how it works? If you drive a car, you can drive this, I promise you.’

  I gave this serious thought. I had never driven a Harley-Davidson but, on reflection, I thought I could do it better than he did. He showed me the accelerator, and the brakes, and how the stereo worked, and we set off for Marrakesh in a series of flashes which might have been lightning but which seemed to me to be particularly directed to the hem of my skirt.

  I didn’t mind. I sat in the vast bucket seat, and he sat with his hands on my shoulders, murmuring occasional directions, and frequent remarks of a vaguely irresponsible nature. Every now and then his hand would slip from its grasp and I thought he was going to sleep, until he began talking again. Then at last, the lights became much more frequent, and the traffic was thick, and I knew we were on the outskirts of Marrakesh and I would be home soon, unless I killed somebody.

  Home? We had stalled at the traffic lights when he said, ‘Not the hotel. Miss Helmann, where can we put you so that no one can trouble you for a day or two?’

  I said, ‘My mother’s at the hotel. I’d have to. . .’

  ‘Of course she’d have to know where you are. But it’s not ten o’clock yet. Where will she be? With Mo Morgan?’

  I didn’t know how he knew that she and Mo Morgan were spending the evening together. I said, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So where does he live?’ Johnson said. ‘Maybe that would be as good a place as any for you. I notice he doesn’t advertise where he stays.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t,’ I said. I knew where he was. He had told me.

  The lights changed, and I restarted the engine and bounded into the centre of town. I was thinking. Johnson didn’t interrupt me. After a while I said, ‘He’s at a small hotel near the square. He asked me to keep it secret.’

  ‘All right. Stop,’ Johnson said. I juddered to the side of the road, and shut off the engine and turned. My clothes were not only soaked, my nose was dripping with sweat. Johnson dropped his hands and sat still behind me. He said, ‘You can get close and then walk, if you don’t want me to know. Or I can go with you and tell Morgan what has happened. Or I can just go with you and see you to the door. Morgan may not be there. And there is some danger.’

  He had put it fairly. I got off the bike, my knees trembling, and let him take my place. I let him drive me to the hotel, and wait while I asked at the door for Mo Morgan. It just happened that Morgan was there, and heard his name, and came jumping down the steps and saw Johnson too. He said, ‘Holy cow, an elopement! Angel, your mother is here, and will be furious. Come in! Come in, both of you.’

  It was not what I had chosen, but it was not all that bad. I wavered into the hall and stood waiting. Morgan walked round the bike and Johnson, declaiming poetry. I heard him say eventually, ‘The worthy porter will stable it. Come in and get drunk. Or no. I see the deed has been well done already.’

  His sharp face full of malice, he helped Johnson dismount. I saw them both come to the doorway. I saw Mo Morgan stop. He said, ‘No further, I think. What’s the reason for this?’ His voice was sarcastic.

  I felt a small pang of conscience for Johnson. Having the upper hand of Johnson rather pleased me. I said, ‘We were kidnapped at Essaouira. Colonel Sullivan freed us. Really, Mr. Johnson had something to celebrate.’

  Mr. Morgan, executive director, was staring at me with narrowed, velvety eyes. ‘And you? You’re all right, Wendy?’

  I nodded. ‘I got away before they could find anything out. Mr. Johnson helped me.’

  ‘Like that?’ Morgan said. He released Johnson’s arm, and the Great Painter reached for a chairback and sat down.

  ‘Been there, seen it, done it, bought the T-shirt. More or less like that,’ Johnson said. ‘I rather need somewhere to sleep.’

  ‘I rather imagine you do,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘You can have my bed for an hour. After that, you can look out for yourself. Who kidnapped you?’

  ‘Ellwood Pymm,’ Johnson said.

  He was totally smashed. Morgan got him up to his room, while I waited below in the manager’s office. I must have fallen asleep. When I woke, my mother was sitting opposite in a fog of glandular scent, smoking oppressively. ‘So!’ she said. ‘You are deflowered by three Arabs? How will you know who is the father?’

  Which was where I came in. ‘Well, you didn’t want Johnson,’ I said. ‘Who mentioned Arabs?’

  ‘Mo Morgan,’ said my mother. ‘He obtained the story from your Mr. Johnson, he says. Mo wishes to talk to you. Not without me, he will not. I also wish something. I wish an insightful interview with your Mr. Johnson.’

  I quailed. Johnson Johnson and my mother had never met. They had seen each other once, in a café, before the regrettable episode of the sugar lumps. In the terrestrial globe, there were no two people who had less in common. I was half-awake, and aching and hungry. I wasn’t up to my mother. I said, ‘I’m going to talk to Sir Robert tomorrow, and that’s enough. Let’s go back to our own hotel and damn everyone.’

  ‘Angel,’ said Mr. Mo Morgan, inserting his bony brown nose through the doorway. ‘I have news for you. Your mother goes back to your hotel. You sign in here as Miss Smith of London, bed and breakfast, no questions asked. And no one, from this moment onwards, knows where to find you in Marrakesh except Sir Robert, your mother and me.’

  ‘And Mr. Johnson,’ I said. ‘Is he in favour or out?’

  ‘A bum self-employed painter with no index-linked company pension?’ said my mother, repeating herself. ‘You said he and Pymm were bad news.’

  ‘I thought he was,’ I said, looking at Morgan, company director, who was shaped like a mangetout with a pigtail, and was a computer genius, none the less, who climbed Toubkal. I added, ‘So did you, back on the doorstep. But he got me away from the aggro, for nothing.’

  ‘Really nothing?’ said Morgan. ‘No hints, no questions, no figures?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He got me out. If he’d done nothing, he would have heard all the figures.’

  ‘So would Pymm,’ said my mother. ‘Pymm, his rival. This is why you were rescued!’ she exclaimed, coughing triumphantly. ‘This criminal Johnson, his fortune depends on MCG! He blows up Kingsley’s, he reads the documents, he does not wish poor Mr. Pymm to learn the up-to-date figures. He wins pinkie points by appearing to rescue my Wendy. And here she is, in his clutches.’

  ‘Brownie points,’ I said automatically. Nastily, it could all be true.

  ‘But why should Johnson Johnson bring her here?’ Morgan said. ‘Why not to the MCG place in the souks? He’s MCG’s backer. He needs those figures before tomorrow’s meeting. He doesn’t need me around.’

  ‘Yes, he does,’ said my mother. ‘He needs to get the figures and kill both you and Wendy. This hotel will blow up. We are leaving at once. Kiss, Mr. Morgan.’

  ‘Kiss?’ said Mo Morgan.

  ‘Kisss,’ said my mother. ‘You never been on an assertiveness course? Keep it short, specific and simple. Use “I” language. Make your offer in an attractive and affordable form. Come with us and I’ll find you a room at the Sahara.’

  ‘Doris,’ Mo Morgan said. ‘You’re talking bullshit again. Come up and see Johnson. Whatever he’s going to do, it isn’t blow up the hotel. Or not tonight.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ my mother said.

  ‘He can blow it up if he wants to, tomorrow,’ said Mo Morgan calmly. We’ll all b
e away at the meeting. There’s the lift.’

  He called her Doris. It made me nervous. They were sparring with one another as if I wasn’t there. We got my mother and himself and me into the lift and Morgan rolled a cigarette for her, as she couldn’t get her arms up in the crush. Then we got her out, coughing, and he unlocked his bedroom door and ushered us in. ‘Welcome,’ he said, ‘to the Drying-out Clinic.’

  I was surprised by the size of his room, which must have been the best in the whole crummy hotel, and actually overlooked the Place Jemaa-el-Fna. Half one wall was occupied by his skiing and climbing gear. Strewn over the rest was a collection of socks and sneakers and T-shirts with obscene writing all over them. On a table by the wall was an assortment of bottles. In a corner, filled with peaceful breathing, was a studio couch occupied by a neat cigar-mould of blankets. Exuding smoke, my mother went over and looked at it. I looked at Morgan.

  ‘Out for the count. Sit down,’ he said. ‘Whisky, or plonk? I’ve got both. And don’t whisper. He ought to come to life soon. He’s probably faking it now. Didn’t you know what his cigarettes were?’

  I stared at him. Reefers? Daughter of my mother, I had never thought about drugs. Now I did think of them, they still seemed unlikely. I said, ‘They smashed his spectacles.’

  ‘He isn’t that blind,’ Morgan said. ‘They set him up. They got him doped. They hid dope on his yacht. They thought the road block would get rid of him finally. But it didn’t.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. My mother was still leaning over the bed, and the cocoon had a brief fit of coughing.

  ‘Because he had a sovereign pass from SM,’ Morgan said. ‘And he got them to ring through to the Palace. Do you think anyone would have Johnson arrested, and the portraits unfinished?’

  No, they wouldn’t. Any more than Sir Robert, if he could help it. I said, ‘But the drugs on the yacht?’

  ‘He expected them,’ Morgan said. ‘He found them after you and the Canadians left. He put them—’

  I saw it all. I was outraged. ‘In Sullivan’s Sunbeam?’ I said. I sat up, rocking the drinks he was pouring. ‘Instead of MCG being blamed, the Moroccan police are accusing Sullivan?’

  ‘You like Sullivan?’ said Morgan. He lifted a whisky and offered it.

  He had one poured for my mother already.

  ‘He’s a Kingsley man!’ I said. ‘It isn’t right!’

  ‘Unless Sullivan planted the drugs,’ remarked Morgan.

  I took the whisky. In the corner, the sleeper had embarked on another whistling cough. My mother straightened and turned. ‘Is this logic?’ she said. ‘This bum painter packs dope in his yacht. He smokes pot when he likes, knowing no one will shop him. He has the Killer Instinct to Win. He is an expert in Just-In-Time murders. He will throw off the bedclothes and kill us.’

  She turned towards Morgan, holding her hand out for the whisky. Behind her, the world’s highest priced portrait painter unrolled from the blankets, made to fling them aside, and then hauled them up again to his shoulders. He said shortly, ‘Interfering foreign bastard.’

  Mo Morgan grinned and laid down the drinks. From a thermos before him he poured a mug of steaming black coffee and walking over, fitted it between Johnson’s hands. He said, ‘You would have crumpled your trousers. Stop whining and drink it.’

  Johnson looked at him without love. His eyes, though less blank, were ringed like a coaster. ‘Christ!’ he said.

  ‘Or I’ll ring her,’ said Mo Morgan. He didn’t say who.

  And Johnson said something unrepeatable and took and drank the coffee while Morgan stood over him. Halfway through, the mug began to tilt and Morgan thumped him. His eyes closed, Johnson finished it. He said, his eyes still closed, ‘You haven’t introduced us, Mr. Morgan.’

  Morgan lifted the mug, pulled a sweater from one of his drawers and tossed it on to the sheets. ‘Nor I have. Mr. Johnson, Mrs. Helmann, Wendy’s mother,’ he said. ‘She thinks you blew up Kingsley’s, copied their documents and plan to get rid of us all.’

  ‘Bang on,’ said Johnson. ‘Goodbye.’

  Morgan leaned over and thumped him again. I noticed the thumps were not hard, and Johnson showed no sign really of minding them. After a moment he felt for the sweater, and dragging it over his head, eased himself upwards until he was sitting more or less upright. Morgan said, ‘Come on. The drugs? Yours or not?’

  ‘Not,’ Johnson said. ‘Planted on Dolly. No idea by whom.’

  Morgan poured his own drink, and then toasted me and my mother, who had slowly seated herself. ‘And the papers?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, copied those,’ Johnson said. ‘For what they were worth. But didn’t actually kill anyone. Or kidnap Pymm. Or, be it noticed, hang about in the carpet shop until Miss Helmann came up with the figures.’

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  Johnson half-opened his eyes. ‘In case Pymm heard them, of course.’

  ‘But you hope,’ said my mother, ‘to force her to tell you them now.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Johnson peacefully. ‘You are my prisoners.’ His skin was steamed up, and his eyes were like Liquorice Allsorts, and red at the edges.

  My mother frowned at him, although I knew her maternal instincts were behaving like Rottweilers. She said, ‘Well? You hear what he has admitted? Call the police!’

  ‘Doris?’ Mo Morgan said. ‘He’s so full of drugs I doubt if he could get out of that bed, even if he wanted to throttle you now, which must be a common compulsion.’ He waved his whisky at me. ‘Didn’t you guess? Never experimented with pot? And it wasn’t just pot. He should have flaked out on the spot. He certainly shouldn’t have been able to bring you back to Marrakesh. They’re on the lookout for you, Wendy.’

  ‘Who?’ I said. I didn’t understand my new role as maiden to Johnson’s flaming St. George. I said, ‘He needn’t have smoked them. I could have come home with Seb Sullivan.’

  ‘You could,’ Mo Morgan said. ‘But Napoleon here wanted to keep your address secret.’

  ‘From Colonel Sullivan?’ I asked him. He knew, as I did, that Sullivan was a Kingsley man.

  ‘From Ellwood Pymm,’ Morgan said. ‘Don’t you think that would be sensible?’ He was looking at Johnson, whose eyes were still open.

  ‘Pymm? He’s Press. I suppose so,’ I said. I remembered something so silly I didn’t want to repeat it. I said, ‘Who did kidnap us? Does anyone know?’

  Morgan didn’t reply. Johnson said, ‘I’m not up to talking.’ He looked, for my money, to be returning quite quickly to the status of professional prig.

  ‘Yes, you are,’ said Mo Morgan. ‘Tell her what you and I decided. Who would want the figures Wendy knows? MCG: but you’re their best friend and you didn’t use the occasion to get them. Who else? Someone from the financial press, someone in public relations, someone representing a raiding company, with an eye to a takeover. Any one of these could have set that up directly, or could have employed some agent to do it for them. Johnson thinks the agent, for whatever boss, was Ellwood Pymm.’

  I had thought Johnson was drunk when he said that. He was only out of his skull with some dope. I said, ‘Why? They were going to knife him. You heard them.’

  ‘But they didn’t,’ Johnson said. He had made a laborious desk of his knees, and was separating it from his head with his fists. He said, ‘I pushed them as far as I could, but they didn’t touch him. We had only their word that he knew the figures. We’d only their word that he’d been caught with the Fax and resisted them.’

  ‘The blood!’ I said. ‘He was covered with blood!’

  Johnson looked up through the slits in his lids. For the first time, there was more coconut showing than liquorice. ‘Did you see any gaping wounds, or even a flea bite? It wasn’t his blood. The truth was that Ellwood Pymm didn’t know the new Kingsley figures: how could he? He had just staked himself out to make you admit them.’

  There was a short interval filled entirely by breath. ‘There’s no proof,’ I said. ‘I mean, the blood is no a
bsolute proof.’ My mother rolled and lit a cigarette, her eyes never leaving the bed. No one spoke. I thought of Ellwood on the floor of the warehouse. I thought of his stupid cropped scalp, and his persistence, and his maniac phrasebook. It was true, it was the phrasebook that had told us where he had been. And from that spot, we had been brought to the warehouse.

  Johnson said, ‘You’re right; the evidence is on the weak side, but there is some. I dropped the carpets towards him, and he woke and dodged them amazingly quickly. And the bully boys didn’t guard him. He was awake, and unbound and their hostage, but they abandoned him to come after us. And he did nothing about it. He just waited for us to be recaptured.’

  Morgan said, ‘He would have to set it up. How would he know Wendy was going to Essaouira?’

  I thought about that. Sullivan knew: he was taking me. But he wouldn’t tell Pymm. Sir Robert knew, and had mentioned it, in an oblique way, to Lady Kingsley. My mother knew. She had ordered a five-course breakfast (extra) the previous night to be delivered (extra) by room service at dawn by the same waiters who served Ellwood Pymm. I said, ‘He’d know from the hotel. He could have had all night to arrange it. And he thought, of course, Mr. Johnson was safely painting.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mo Morgan blandly. ‘Amazing that, how everyone thought Mr. Johnson was safely painting.’ He stared at Johnson, and Johnson failed to stare back.

  I said, ‘But a columnist wouldn’t trouble to set up all that.’

  ‘No,’ said Morgan. ‘Not unless he was being paid a great deal especially to do it.’

  My mother rose. I had never known her stay silent so long. She stalked to Johnson’s bed, pulled up a chair, and sat down, her knees apart, her cigarette exuding smoke at her lip corner. Johnson didn’t cough, but I could see it was an effort. She said, ‘Then who was paying him?’

  She looked like a Mardi Gras grotesque. She was wrapped, as she always was, in clashing bright colours, and her hair stuck out from under her various headscarves, and her eyes were like Old English bottles. From the moment he began to come to, Johnson had treated her with absolute indifference. Now he dropped his hands to his knees and let them dangle. He looked terrible.