The best item of decor was the man. He was beautifully made and perfectly clothed. Five foot ten, bronzed good-featured face. The top of his head was quite bald but this did not detract from the man’s handsomeness. His athletic body was poured into the finest fit of £300 of Savile Row suiting, patent black shoes, subdued club tie, two plain rings on his fingers, and about £2000 of Piaget on his left wrist.
Regan gave a little bow, rather than offer his bandaged hands.
‘Pleased to meet you, Inspector. My name is Hijaz,’ the man said, the voice soft, the English faultless. ‘May I offer you a drink?’
‘Thank you. I’d like a scotch.’
‘There is a wide choice. A Highland malt perhaps?’
‘Laphroig?’ Regan suggested.
Hijaz turned to flick his manicured fingers at the steward who had opened the door. ‘Laphroig whisky. The bottle on a tray, ice and water.’ He turned back to Regan. ‘Please would you sit down.’
Regan sat into the deep chrome leather. His host followed suit, took up a drink, sipped it, studied Regan – a decision for a moment of silence until Regan had a drink in his hand.
The bottle arrived on a salver, with a silver jug of water and a small ice bucket. Regan gestured the steward that he wanted the scotch undiluted, without ice. The steward poured it. Regan raised the glass to his mouth and sipped. Laphroig was a woody malt. A rare drink for him, but sitting in this flying gin palace seemed to be a possible occasion.
‘I heard of an attempt to kill you with a car. Are these bandages the result?’
‘How d’you know that I was involved in an incident with a car this afternoon?’
‘The airplane has radio communication. Obviously I have talked to your associates at Scotland Yard before arrival.’
‘What associates?’ Regan tried to keep the edge out of his question.
‘Come, Inspector, there’s more important information for you to acquire.’
‘Explain yourself, Mr. Hijaz.’
‘I will. I will do it slowly, carefully. The story itself is simple, the additions and erratums very confusing.’
‘Go on.’
Hijaz sipped the drink and then looked into it, as if by studying the liquid he would focus his concentration. ‘Eleven months ago King Feisal of Saudi Arabia was murdered. You remember that?’
‘Yes, by his nephew.’
‘The world was told he was murdered by his nephew, but that was because the Saudis did not want the truth out. Besides, they wanted to get rid of the nephew, a dangerous lunatic.’
‘Who murdered him?’
‘The man who murdered our National, Mr. Haffasa, yesterday.’
‘What man?’ Regan asked.
‘A greedy man. He wants a lot of money.’
Regan sighed. He knew Hijaz was going to turn out to be the kind that information would have to be dragged from, word by word. ‘Could you explain that?’
‘We have a parallel society in the Middle East, Kings speak to each other, sheikhs speak to each other across national boundaries.’ Hijaz shrugged. ‘Okay. This is what happened. In 1974 an unidentified man got in to Feisal’s palace in Riyadh, probably the most heavily secured building in the world, and not only took a pot-shot at him with a .38 revolver, but escaped, leaving no clues. Feisal and his entourage hushed the thing up.’
Regan nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘A week afterwards Feisal received a letter containing a bullet, identical ballistics, demanding a ransom of fifty million dollars approximately. Feisal’s advisers told him to ignore the threat, tightened security, and nothing happened. At least, nothing happened for a year, then in March 1975, Feisal was shot dead at a family meeting by someone who was seen for a second time and disappeared. The bullet that killed him had the identical ballistics of the original pot-shot. So far you are following?’
Regan nodded.
‘A month after Feisal’s death an intruder got through the inner ring of security at the Shah of Persia’s palace at Teheran, and took a shot at the Shah, wounding him in the leg – the wound reappeared a few days later in Switzerland in the guise of a skiing accident. The assailant got clear of the palace. One week later a letter arrived from the assailant, enclosing a bullet of identical ballistics to the one prised from the Shah’s foot. The letter demanded a hundred million dollars for the Shah’s continued good health, and noted the foolishness of the late King Feisal for not taking such demands seriously.’ Here Hijaz broke off. He looked over Regan with a slight smile. ‘We all know the Shah is not a very bright chappie. He pays a lot of money to his police operation. When they came back a few weeks later and told him they had collared the assailant, he believed them. A mistake. Now this guy plays a waiting game – he waited a year to kill Feisal. Meanwhile we know that he sent demand notes to two other rich persons.’
‘Haffasa?’
‘Yes, I’m afraid. Sheikh Haffasa received a threat in Bahrain a month ago. He was due to go to England on a medical matter. He thought he would be safe in England and could deal with the situation on his return. The assailant decided to move fast this time. Haffasa died. Maybe that was intended to be a lesson of “encourager les autres”.’
‘Two notes?’ Regan queried.
‘He sent out two demand notes. The second arrived a week ago.’
‘Who?’
‘The richest man in our country. Sheikh Mahomet al-Almadi. Head of an important oil family. On top of that he has a finger in every industrial and commercial pie. The assassin’s note demands fifty million dollars. Almadi wants to pay.’
‘I see,’ Regan said.
‘The demand note tells him to go to a hotel in the South of France – Antibes – and wait there for instructions.’
Regan was nodding slowly.
‘It’s possible you’ve seen this man, in the elevator at the Wellington Clinic.’
‘I saw a killer. Does he write the demand notes or is he an agent for the man or organization which writes them? I wouldn’t know. What are your ideas?’
‘To invite you to holiday in the South of France. I have already gained permission from your superiors. We hope that you will recognize the face in a crowd when a man comes to collect a lot of money from Almadi.’
Regan shrugged, reached forward, took the bottle of Laphroig and replenished his glass. Then he studied Hijaz for a moment in silence. ‘Eats on this plane?’
‘We have a kitchen. Anything you want.’
‘A little food. Enough to sustain us for two or three hours. That’s how long it may take you to sell me the bill of goods. You see, from my understanding of this case, I don’t see any reason to believe anything you’ve said.’
Hijaz said nothing, then started to nod, like he had decided Regan’s statement was very wise indeed. ‘Alright, where do we start?’
Regan had an answer. ‘Let’s start right here. Something I expect to get a straight answer about. Who are you? Just who the Hell are you, Mr. Hijaz?’
He said his family came originally from Lebanon. He had five years schooling in the American School in Beirut. His father was an Iranian, his mother half French. His father had started as a carpet salesman and ended up an oil engineer. He was shot dead in a bar room fight in Basra. His mother had taken him into the household of a wealthy man in Bahrain. He had failed every school examination he’d ever sat. Therefore it occurred to him, he said with a slight smile, to become a policeman. Strings were pulled and he entered the State of Bahrain cid. He quickly gained promotion to captain. However he soon lost interest in family feuds and camel rustling – five years ago he had moved into the semi-State, semi-private employment of arranging security for the top twenty men in the country. Regan had asked him to explain that. Hijaz said the State gave him a policeman’s salary and status. The twenty men added the gratuities that made life bearable. He said that it was a full time job keeping those twenty alive.
‘Where do you think the country of origin of the contract artist might be, the man who actually
killed Haffasa?’
‘You saw the man. What was his skin colour like? His complexion? His hair?
Regan speculated. ‘The man who went down in the elevator with me could have been a European.’
Hijaz nodded. ‘Yes, we think he could have been European. More than that, and the reason why I’m here ... I happen to believe that the whole blackmail threatening operation is staffed and run from London.’
They were in a Rolls Royce Phantom V heading into the after-pub race of traffic round Hyde Park Corner. It was an official Bahrain Embassy car, chauffeur-driven by a fifty-year-old Egyptian. This man had got Hijaz through customs at Heathrow with a couple of smiles and a few words, even though the Bahrain policeman was not travelling with diplomatic status. Regan wondered how.
Their destination, Hijaz had told him, was the Hilton. ‘I love the London Hilton because all my friends detest it. I can sit there in peace. You will come to my suite. We will talk about this case. We are in a similar position, Mr. Regan. For the moment my focus is London. I am unfamiliar with the workings of the city. You are unfamiliar with motives for Haffasa’s end...’
‘You say he died because he didn’t pay protection...’
But Hijaz now shrugged. ‘I like everything in black and white. But let us not run out of grey. I have been a policeman too long to rule out the grey areas in everything.’
Regan didn’t realize the floors contained that number of rooms, didn’t know that a suite could go round three sides of the hotel. To get to the dining room, he had to follow Hijaz, the chauffeur and butler and maid through rooms and corridors that were all part of a single suite.
A quarter of an hour later they were seated in the private dining room, starting on the meal which had already been in preparation as they headed into London. As Regan and Hijaz had just eaten some salmon and beef sandwiches on the plane, they modestly ordered a couple of plain omelettes.
‘When do you retire each day?’ Hijaz asked him.
‘When do I go to sleep? Around two a.m.’
‘Fine,’ said Hijaz. ‘D’you like girls?’
‘I like girls.’
‘Good,’ Hijaz decided. ‘We will telephone some girls. I know charming English roses. But tomorrow we must be up early.’
‘What line d’you want to pursue, tomorrow?’
‘The two gentlemen in the white Mercedes. Who are they? When you followed them they went back to this Wellington Clinic – why? That’s where to start. If we identify them, we identify another target, the man in the Jaguar who took exception to you...’
‘Captain Hijaz, d’you know if your embassy called in the English Special Branch for Haffasa’s visit to London...?’
‘I understand our Ambassador has said “no” – he didn’t call in the SB to protect Haffasa. But in view of what happened I think he may just be giving a diplomatic answer.’
‘I’ll start with the Wellington Clinic. I want you to try and find out about the Special Branch. You see, in normal circumstances, whether they were called in or not, the SB would have checked on Haffasa’s security. So if the guy dies, there’s something wrong there – d’you understand what I’m saying, Captain Hijaz?’
Hijaz nodded, took his time, swallowed down some food. ‘I am following exactly what you say, Inspector Regan. And I find that idea particularly interesting.’
He remembered some beautiful girls, four, or maybe five. He remembered he and Hijaz had gone to the Playboy Club and queued up with all the other sheikhs to piss good money away and that he, Regan, watching the horrors of capitalism gone mad around him, for repressed left wing political reasons only, drank himself into a stupor and incredibly made good progress with the best looking bunny in the bar. But the four or five girls didn’t come from the Playboy, nor the Saddle Room, but somewhere else – a Frith Street club, which had cost the Duke of Edinburgh’s wages to get into, and was called Prive Numero Un, and was furnished by soft lights and terrific broads. They all appeared to be debutantes. Regan in his cups found the fair logic to that. Debutantes were really whores, squired by rich daddies and richer mummies through the salons of dying Belgravia, paraded like cattle, screwed, approved and married to the impecunious with the decent names. Or the exact opposite, the debutante daughters of impoverished aristocrats were offered around Belgravia to make a match with a millionaire scrap merchant in order to improve his family’s ‘breeding’. How natural it appeared to Regan’s besottedness, that these long-legged, horse-voiced lassies, raised on silver spoons of muesli at Roedean, were now balling their way to the top on, or under, sheikhs, freaks, and the businessmen in Frith Street. Hijaz was well known at Prive Numero Un. He told Regan he hadn’t been to this blue-stocking bordello for over a year. He was known all right. He paid for everything immediately from a six-pack roll of brand new bank notes. He was known and loved. He danced on the newspaper-sized dance floor with three of the loveliest hanging on to him.
Regan enjoyed every second of it. It was true the point of no return had passed by two a.m., and now the brain fluids were so diluted by alcohol that all great thoughts and resolutions had been thinned out. He was floating, but it was a happy, heightened sensation, time had lapsed, he was anaesthetized. The music was fast and fresh, the girls so desirable, wanting to be loved, but it was all down to the art of the possible, and he felt it was not anymore. He could hardly stand. He knew there was fresh air out there in Frith Street and when he hit it, the dreaded Father Mathew, scourge of alcoholics, founder of the Pioneer Movement, would crap down on him from the great height of a Heavenly Throne. His eyes started to see double around three a.m., but he did make it to the street, to the Rolls Royce Phantom V, to the door of his apartment in Hammersmith – and he kissed many girls on his way and felt parts of them, and was happy. And Hijaz promised him there would be a replay.
Hijaz got that wrong. The following morning Regan’s phone blew out both his eardrums at nine. He was in the bedroom of the Hammersmith flat, on the bed, not sleeping, still comatose. He picked it up very slowly. ‘Yes?’
‘Good morning. Harry Hijaz.’
Regan vaguely remembered last night and meeting this man, all his memories fighting for recognition above the pounding pain of his hangover.
‘I will come to your apartment in half an hour. Please be packed – we go to the South of France...’
Regan let the news percolate and bubble around his hangover brain. ‘I thought you said the South of France in a few days from now...’
‘Almadi is arriving in Antibes a few days ahead of schedule.’
‘We have investigations to do here. Essential groundwork. The Wellington Clinic, the SB angle.’
‘The Sheikh is arriving in Antibes. The living come before the dead. You are the only man who can positively identify the killer.’
‘What is your sheikh doing, coming earlier to Antibes?’
‘He has a meeting to attend.’
‘Get him to cancel the meeting.’
‘It’s an important meeting. With the French Foreign Minister.’
Regan caught sight of his booze-battered face in the mirror. ‘It’ll take me longer to get it organized. Maybe a couple of hours. I have to ring F3, get tickets and expenses. And call Central Office and get them to warn Interpol I’m coming.’
‘That’s all been done, old man,’ Hijaz said cheerfully. He had drunk only two whiskies the whole of the night. ‘Say forty minutes.’ He didn’t wait to hear Regan’s response. He replaced the phone.
Regan got out of the car and stood still, surprised at the heat of this sun on an April day. The sky, facing out to sea, clear. The sun stripped of haze, hanging like a medallion awarded to the Mediterranean by the French Tourist Board. Behind Antibes the inshore breeze touched the mountains with wisps of cotton and hard shadows. The visibility was at least thirty miles.
He remained by the car, reluctant to move. He wanted to feel the warmth for a moment, its benediction on his arrival. He wanted to soak in the silence of the vast gar
dens – a silence as tangible as its surroundings – the wide plateau of lawn, the thousand trees, and the sea edging the peninsula, protecting stillness like a wall.
Hijaz and the chauffeur had got out of the car. They exchanged quiet monosyllables as if they had no wish to bother him.
Regan looked out to sea. A mile out, a small boat white-knifed the water. Then he turned and looked back to the fastness of the hotel, green shutters framing a hundred blank windows. His glance went over the other cars around him. One Maser, two Ferraris, and a half dozen Mercs. Hotel du Cap, Eden Roc, this place was called. Hijaz said this hotel on its own hundred acres of private promontory, with the famous Eden Roc Club, was expensive. Regan was prepared to believe that, as distinct from everything else these lunatic Arabs had so far told him.
The Sweeney 03 Page 5
