The Whip Hand

by Victor Canning

  He shook his head. “No. Against some things, no. That is why, Mr Carver, I would like you to keep an eye on her. Already you have made her acquaintance. If, say, once a week or a fortnight, maybe, you could see her and let me have a report of what she does, where she goes, or if she moves away. On a business footing, of course.”

  “If you wish.”

  “Yes, I do. Very much I do. I shall be here, maybe, another month. At the end of that time we could review the situation.”

  I stood up, strolled to the little table that held the telephone and stubbed out my cigarette in a tray.

  “I’ll keep in touch with you,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he said and, as I went to the door, he added, “and if you can persuade her to throw that stupid gun into the sea, please do so.”

  I went round the corner and found a call box and fished out a mess of change to make a call. As I had stubbed out my cigarette by the telephone I had seen a Brighton number scribbled on Stebelson’s pad.

  I rang it and a woman’s voice at the other end said with so much refinement that it was like a grove of bamboos whining in the wind, “La Boutique Barbara. Can I help you?”

  I put the receiver down and stared at a crude drawing of a horse that someone had pencilled on the wall. I decided to make the fee for my extra duties high.

  I had a glass of beer and a sandwich in a pub on the road, and I was back in Brighton by four. La Boutique Barbara shut at five o’clock. I stood on the other side of the road and watched the assistants coming out. There were two young girls, and a tall, bonyshouldered older woman. Katerina was not amongst them.

  And she was not outside the Ship at half-past six. I waited an hour, and then I went round to 20 Cadman Avenue. The door was opened by a tall young man with wavy fair hair. He was in his shirt-sleeves and held a paperback in one hand.

  When I asked him for Katerina, he shook his head.

  “She’s gone.”

  “Where?”

  “Dunno. Ma says she came home lunch-time, packed her bag, and went.”

  A woman’s voice shouted from the interior of the house.

  He went on, “Ma says she paid up. Extra week for not giving notice.”

  “Did she leave a forwarding address?”

  Before he could reply, his mother’s face appeared over his shoulder, a worn, plump, pleasant face. Looking me up and down, she said, “No, she didn’t, just went off in a big car, chauffeur-driven.”

  “She didn’t leave any message for me, did she? Carver’s the name.”

  She shook her head. “No message for anyone. Just paid up and went. I shall miss her. She was good company around the house—”

  “When she was in, that is,” said the son.

  His mother winked at me. “Harold didn’t take to her – because she didn’t take to him.”

  I walked back along the road to where I had parked cay car. Dino was standing alongside his motor-cycle which was cocked against the kerb at the back of the car.

  I stuck one of my cards out to him and he took it and read it.

  I said, “Where’s the nearest pub?”

  “Around the corner.”

  We went into the saloon bar and sat at a corner table with two large whiskies. My card had done something to him. Probably decided him to hold off from having another go at me.

  I said, “My interest is purely professional.”

  He said, “It looked like it.”

  “Nevertheless it is. Tell me about her.”

  He was silent for a minute, taking a sip at his whisky and deciding something. Then he said, “She had all the others licked, see? Met her at the rink a month ago. Used to come on the back of the old bike. No funny business, though. Just speed. She went crazy about it.”

  He finished his whisky and I bought him another.

  “What about her other friends?” I asked.

  “She didn’t have any.”

  “Did you know she was going?”

  “Sort of. She said she was waiting to hear about a job.”

  “What job?”

  “She never said. Just a job. But she didn’t say she was going today.”

  “You saw her today?”

  “This morning. I gave her a lift to work. Did most mornings – except when I’m on early turn.” He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “Ever dance with her?”

  He had his nose in his whisky glass, not looking at me, and there was something rather sad and beaten down about him. It was easy to see what had happened to him. He was hopelessly in love with her.

  “No.”

  “She was a dish. She could do anything. Dance, swim, skate.... And the old bike. Didn’t have a licence, but I used to let her have a go sometimes. Mister ... she made my hair stand on end. Like she’d got to have it, see. The big kick. She had a gun, too. Used to go up to the Dyke weekends and knock off milk bottles. Used to scare me just to watch.”

  “Brighton’s going to miss her.”

  “It has – it’s already dead. All the others are just cardboard cut-outs.”

  “And that’s all you know about her?”

  “Do you know any more?”

  “No. She ever give you a hint about this job?”

  “No. Except that I think it must have been something to do with the woman.”

  “What woman?”

  “About a week ago. Some woman staying at the Metropole. She went there to tea. I went to meet her afterwards, but I was there early and I saw them. They took a little stroll along the front. And there was this woman, an oldish kind of doll, and she had red hair. But Katy wouldn’t tell me anything about her. But it was after that she mentioned the job. She was a foreign bird.”

  “You mean the red-haired woman?”

  “Yes. I know one of the waiters there. He checked for me....” He fiddled inside his leather jacket and brought out a piece of paper. But he kept it away from me, and just gave me a look. He might have been heart-broken, but he wasn’t giving anything away.

  I put a couple of pound notes on the table. He took them and handed me the paper. Written on it in grubby pencil was – Mrs R. Vadarci. Swiss passport. Comes from London. Dorch. Hotel.

  I stood up and said, “If you remember anything else, just ring me. I’ll buy.”

  He nodded into his glass and, without looking up, said, “Sorry about the other night. It gets into you.”

  “Forget it.”

  I left him, broken-hearted, but two pounds better off, and no future except to hitch up with one of the cardboard cut-outs that were left to him. To some extent I could almost share his feeling about Katerina. She was under my skin, too. Not as deep as she was with him, but then he’d been exposed to the fall-out longer than I had.

  I gave up my room at the Albion and went back to London. I rang the Dorchester and there was no Mrs Vadarci staying there. There had been, but not now. I put off ringing Hans Stebelson, and I had a chat about the whole thing with Wilkins the next morning.

  She said, “Why should this man pay you so much money for such a simple commission? You’ve done nothing he couldn’t easily have done himself.”

  “He’s a busy man.”

  “Is he? He spent yesterday morning shopping, then the National Gallery. Lunch at Boulestin’s by himself. In the afternoon he took a river trip down to Greenwich.”

  I pulled a face. “Good work.” I had one or two outside men who did such small jobs for me. I didn’t bother to ask her which one she had used.

  She said, “He’s not the kind who deliberately wastes money.”

  “But now the trail has gone cold. I’ve lost this girl.”

  “Do you want to bet on that?”

  I looked at her, standing in front of me, a file clasped to her bosom as though it were an ailing child, a frosty look in her eyes, and I knew I would lose my money.

  “No.”

  “You want some good advice?”

  “I’ll listen.”

  “Telephone him. Say you’ve lost
her and that the pressure of other work makes it impossible for you to continue with this.”

  “That’s good advice?”

  “So good that I know you aren’t going to take it.”

  I said, “I don’t know.”

  Wilkins said nothing. She went to the door and then paused with her fingers on the handle. I prepared to duck.

  She said, “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Somebody broke in here last night. They must have used a piece of perspex on the outer Yale lock.”

  “After the petty cash? Wasted effort.”

  “No – they went through the files. The cabinet lock was forced. No attempt to hide what had happened.”

  “Anything missing?”

  “No. But they were interested in the Stebelson file.”

  “How do you know?”

  “They put it back the wrong way round. Maybe they were cross because there was nothing in it except his address and a copy of our bill to him for expenses.”

  She went out.

  Half an hour later the desk phone rang.

  Wilkins said, “There’s a woman on the phone for you. Won’t give her name.”

  I said, “Put her through.”

  There was a click, and a voice said, “Rex?”

  I said, “Yes?”

  She said, “This is Katerina.”

  I heard the click of Wilkins’s phone being replaced. She only eavesdropped when she had instructions.

  I said, “What do you want?”

  She said, “To see you, of course....” And then she laughed. I waited until she had finished, wondering whether I was going to take Wilkins’s advice and stay out of this. As her laughter died, I said, “Where and when?”

  She came round to my flat the following evening.

  I decanted a bottle of Château Latour and smacked out a steak wafer-thin for the Diane. There were a dozen roses in a brass bowl on the table and my best wine glasses. While I worked away like a little beaver, squaring the cushions and clearing the junk into a cupboard, a tug going up-river hooted at me for being such a fool, and a motor-cycle roaring underneath my window reminded me of Dino. (Some weeks later Wilkins, who always has an eye for such miscellanea, handed me a cutting from the Evening Standard which had given four lines to the death, in a motor-cycle pile-up, of one Eduardino Mantinelli on the A23 at Patcham just outside Brighton. I guessed that he had been trying out how fast you have to go to forget.)

  I had it all planned: a few drinks, a few easy records, and summer evening talk while I did the steak Diane, and then, after we’d eaten, some honest talking. I was as happy as a sandboy at the prospect of seeing her again. Wilkins should have seen me. I liked cooking, too – when I could keep it simple and well out of the Robert Carrier class.

  The taxi drew up outside and I had the door open for her to come up the stairs and into my arms like a homing pigeon. I kissed her, swung her inside, and went on kissing her while I slammed the door with my foot. When I let her go she collapsed into the armchair, legs thrust out, arms hanging limply over the sides, handbag swinging from one hand, and smiling up at me.

  “It’s hot,” she said. She was wearing a nice dress, white silk, with a deep square neck that showed her brown throat and just the promise of her breasts, and she was wearing her hair loose and – maybe it was the shaded light in the room – her eyes had taken on that deep violet mist. It was then that my heart made a record for bumping, and I knew that I didn’t care a damn if I were being hooked. I was prepared for a while to swim on the end of the line.

  “You look as cool as a Nereid,” I said.

  “Is that something nice?”

  “Kind of mermaid, I think.”

  She nodded, approving, looked at the bottles on my sideboard, and said, “I want plenty of gin in a big glass, half a slice of lemon. Then fill up with soda and ice.”

  Fixing it for her, and a whisky on the rocks for myself, I said, “How did you know my address in London?”

  She fished in her handbag and flicked one of my business cards on to the table.

  “You told me a lie about what you did, Rex.” She scolded me with her lips.

  “And you pinched that from my jacket while I dealt with Dino?”

  “Yes.”

  I handed her the drink and she raised it, said, “Prosit,” and really began to punish it.

  I said, “Cheers,” and just sipped mine. The record player made pleasant, subdued noises in the corner and I watched one of her feet moving with the rhythm.

  She had three drinks before dinner and, as far as I could see, they did not begin to touch her. With the second one she got up and wandered about the place, looking at my bits and pieces, and then going into my bedroom, calling things to me in the kitchen. Who looked after me? Mrs Meld from next door. Why did I have such a big double bed? Because it was here when I came. Why did I put sixpenny pieces in a whisky bottle? Saving up for my holiday. Who was Elizabeth Trant? Put the telephone pad down and don’t be nosey.

  She came and leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched me taking the skins off some tomatoes.

  She said, “How you have this kind of business, Rex? I don’t imagine it for you.” I loved the way she said it.

  “It must have been the cheap kind of literature I went in for as a boy. Sexton Blake, Nelson Lee.”

  “I never heard of such books.”

  “Never mind. Then one day I had fifty pounds to spare and I was feeling rash so I plunked it all on a horse.”

  “And it won?”

  “Yes. Then I put all I’d won on another, and so on. I did it several times.”

  “And each time it wins?”

  “Yes.”

  After dinner and coffee, she sat in the big armchair and I squatted on the carpet at her feet. We had both done ourselves pretty well. I like a girl who doesn’t play with her food or drink – especially when I’ve prepared it. She had her hand on the back of my neck, her fingers making little pulling movements at my hair, and I was running my hand along her leg from the knee down to her toes. She had kicked off her shoes.

  After a while, I said, “We’d be more comfortable in the big bed.”

  She leaned forward, pulled my face around to her, and kissed me. When she had finished she slid her lips from my mouth and ran them over my face, just touching the tip of my nose and my eyebrows, and finally came to rest with them warm and soft against my right ear. She whispered something and then let her lips slide back on to mine again. It was consolation and it went on for a long time, her lips and my lips, and her hands and my hands, touching, caressing, until in the end I got up and went to the window for fresh air. There was a moon coming up over the river. I telepathed a message for it to stick to regulating the tides in future and, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man leaning against the far street corner, reading an evening newspaper under a street light.

  I came back, made her a long soft drink and then squatted on a footstool and faced her.

  I said, “What do you know about Hans Stebelson?”

  She was rubbing the cool glass against her chin and she went on rubbing it, saying nothing.

  “He hired me to trace you. Paid a lot of money. Too much. But I’m pretty sure he knew where you were all the time.” I watched her all the time I spoke, but there was nothing for me to read.

  “He’s from Cologne,” she said. “He is mad with love for me and, because he is rich, does not understand why I do not want to marry him. When I marry, it will be someone like you with the right kind of body.”

  “I might apply. But for the moment let’s stick to Stebelson.”

  “His family is from Cologne. Like mine. I know his sister well. She is much younger than Hans. Her, I like. I come to England because Hans never leaves me alone. He’s in England now?”

  “You know he is.”

  “No, that is not so.” She said it without emphasis and I wouldn’t have liked to testify either way about it being a lie.

  “Then why did he telephone you at the
Boutique Barbara the morning of the day you left Brighton? How did he know you were there?”

  “Nobody telephoned me at the shop that morning. At least, not up until eleven o’clock. That is when I left. So, it is Hans who employs you? He is rich, you know. Very rich. You should charge him much.”

  “How could he know about the Boutique Barbara?”

  “I think I know. When I do it, I said to myself after it was a mistake. But I write sometimes to Greta, his sister in Cologne. But I never give her my address – this because Hans pesters her too for news of me so he can come after me. But I let her know two weeks ago that I was in Brighton and work at a dress shop. And I sent her a little cardigan. English wool. Afterwards I remember that the shop name tab is in it. You know what trouble it is to send a cardigan to Germany? All the customs forms!”

  “And you think he got the shop address from her?”

  “For sure. If he thought she had it, he would twist her arm until she talks.”

  I lit a cigarette. It held water if you didn’t have far to carry it. Stebelson was on the list with Dino and myself. And Stebelson was rich. He would pay well just to know where she was. Straightforward. And no suggestion in Katerina’s manner that it was any other than that. I could have believed it all – except that there was a man on the corner right now watching my flat, and that my raincoated friend had been sitting in the same armchair that she was in now only a few days ago. I couldn’t sweep that under the edge of the carpet.

  I put out a finger and ran it gently down the front of her tibia. She wrinkled her nose at me.

  “Next question, please,” she said.

  “Mrs Vadarci,” I said. “What about her?”

  “She is my new job. She is Swiss. Some time ago she was staying in Brighton at the Metropole. She came into the shop to buy things, but her English is not very good. I talk to her in German and she takes a fancy to me. So – she offers me a job as her secretary-companion and now I am in London.”

  “With her?”

  “Yes, of course. We stay at Claridge’s.”

  “Claridge’s!”

  “Why not? She is very wealthy. She is going to pay me well. We shall travel. She only speaks German. But I speak French, Swedish and Italian.” She stood up and looked at the clock on my mantelshelf. “I must go back to her now. I said I was going to the cinema.”