by Ken Follett
She wriggled pleasurably, then moved slightly away and sat down beside him on the couch where, during the last few months, she had fulfilled some of his weirdest sexual fantasies.
He had intended Mrs. Hamilton to be a minor character in his grand scenario, but she had turned out to be a very enjoyable bonus.
He had met her at a garden party. The hosts were friends of the Hamiltons', not of his; but he got an invitation by pretending a financial fancy for the host's company, a light-engineering group. It was a hot day in July. The women wore summer dresses and the men, linen jackets; Laski had a white suit. With his tall, distinguished figure and faintly foreign looks, he cut quite a dash, and he knew it.
There was croquet for the older guests, tennis for the young people, and a pool for the children. The hosts provided endless champagne and strawberries with cream. Laski had done his homework on the host--even his pretenses were thorough--and he knew they could hardly afford it. Yet he had been invited reluctantly, and only because he had more or less asked. Why should a couple who were short of money give a pointless party for people they did not need? English society baffled him. Oh, he knew its rules, and understood their logic; but he would never know why people played the game.
The psychology of middle-aged women was something he understood much more profoundly. He took Ellen Hamilton's hand with just a hint of a bow, and saw a twinkle in her eye. That, and the fact that her husband was gross while she remained beautiful, was enough to tell him that she would respond to flirtation. A woman like her was sure to spend a great deal of time wondering whether she could still excite a man's lust. She might also be wondering whether she would ever know sexual pleasure again.
Laski proceeded to play the European charmer like an outrageous old ham. He fetched chairs for her, summoned waiters to top up her glass, and touched her discreetly but frequently: her hand, her arm, her shoulders, her hip. There was no point in subtlety, he felt: if she wanted to be seduced, he might as well give the message of his availability as clearly as possible; and if she did not want to be seduced, nothing he could do would change her mind.
When she had finished her strawberries--he ate none: to refuse mouthwatering food was a mark of class--he began to guide her away from the house. They moved from group to group, lingering where the conversation interested them, passing on quickly from social gossip. She introduced him to several people, and he was able to introduce her to two stockbrokers he knew slightly. They watched the children splashing around, and Laski said in her ear: "Did you bring your bikini?" She giggled. They sat in the shade of a mature oak and looked at the tennis players, who were boringly professional. They walked along a gravel path which wound through a small landscaped wood; and when they were out of sight, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. She opened her mouth to him, and ran her hands up inside his jacket, and dug her fingers into his chest with a force that surprised him; then she pulled away and looked furtively up and down the path.
Quickly he said: "Have dinner with me? Soon?"
"Soon," she said.
Then they walked back to the party and split up. She left without saying good-bye to him. The next day he took a suite at a hotel in Park Lane, and there he gave her dinner and champagne; then he took her to bed. It was in the bedroom that he discovered how wrong he had been about her. He expected her to be hungry, but easily satisfied. Instead, he found that her sexual tastes were at least as bizarre as his own. Over the next few weeks they did everything that two people can do to one another, and when they ran out of ideas Laski made a phone call and another woman arrived to open up a whole new series of permutations. Ellen did everything with the delighted thoroughness of a child in a fairground where all the rides are suddenly free.
He looked at her, sitting beside him on the couch in his office, as he remembered; and he felt suffused with a sentiment which he thought people would probably call love.
He said to her: "What do you like about me?"
"What an egocentric question!"
"I told you what I like about you. Come on, satisfy my ego. What is it?"
She looked down at his lap. "I give you three guesses."
He laughed. "Would you like coffee?"
"No, thank you. I'm going shopping. I just came in for a quick feel."
"You're a shameless old baggage."
"What a funny thing to say."
"How is Derek?"
"Another funny thing to say. He's depressed. Why do you ask?"
Laski shrugged. "The man interests me. How could he possess a prize like Ellen Hamilton, then let her slip through his fingers?"
She looked away. "Talk about something else."
"All right. Are you happy?"
She smiled again. "Yes. I only hope it will last."
"Why shouldn't it?" he said lightly.
"I don't know. I meet you, and I fuck like . . . like . . ."
"Like a bunny."
"What?"
"Fuck like a bunny. This is the correct English expression."
She opened her mouth and laughed. "You old fool. I love you when you're being all Prussian and correct. I know you only do it to amuse me."
"So: we meet, and we fuck like bunnies, and you don't think it can last."
"You can't deny the whole thing has an air of impermanence."
"Would you have it otherwise?" he asked carefully.
"I don't know."
It was the only answer she could give, he realized.
She added: "Would you?"
He chose his words. "This is the first time I have had occasion to reflect upon the permanence or otherwise of our relationship."
"Stop talking like the Chairman's Annual Report."
"If you will stop talking like the heroine of a romantic novelette. Speaking of Chairmen's Reports, I suppose that is what Derek is depressed about."
"Yes. He thinks it's his ulcer that makes him feel bad, but I know better."
"Would he sell the company, do you think?"
"I wish he would." She looked at Laski sharply. "Would you buy it?"
"I might."
She stared at him for a long moment. He knew that she was evaluating what he had said, weighing possibilities, considering his motives. She was a clever woman.
She decided to let it pass. "I must go," she said. "I want to be home for lunch,"
They stood up. He kissed her mouth, and ran his hands all over her body with sensual familiarity. She put a finger into his mouth, and he sucked it.
"Good-bye," she said.
"I'll call you," Laski told her.
Then she was gone. Laski went to the bookcase and stared unseeingly at the spine of The Directory of Directors. She had said, I only hope it can last, and he needed to think about that. She had a way of saying things that made him think. She was a subtle woman. What did she want, then--marriage? She had said she did not know what she wanted, and although she could hardly have said anything else, he had a feeling she was sincere. So, what do I want? he thought. Do I want to marry her?
He sat down behind his desk. He had a lot to do. He pressed the intercom and spoke to Carol. "Ring the Department of Energy for me, and find out exactly when--I mean what time--they plan to announce the name of the company that won the license for the Shield oil field."
"Certainly," she said.
"Then ring Fett and Co. for me. I want Nathaniel Fett, the boss."
"Right."
He flipped the switch up. He thought again: do I want to marry Ellen Hamilton?
Suddenly he knew the answer, and it astonished him.
TEN A.M.
13
The editor of the Evening Post was under the illusion that he belonged to the ruling class. The son of a railway clerk, he had climbed the social ladder very fast in the twenty years since he left school. When he needed reassurance, he would remind himself that he was a director of Evening Post Ltd., and an opinion former, and that his income placed him in the top nine percent of heads of households. I
t did not occur to him that he would never have become an opinion former were it not that his opinions coincided exactly with those of the newspaper's proprietor; nor that his directorship was in the proprietor's gift; nor that the ruling class is defined by wealth, rather than income. And he had no idea that his ready-to-wear suit by Cardin, his shaky plum-in-the-mouth accent, and his four-bedroom executive home in Chislehurst marked him plainly, in the jaundiced eyes of cynics like Arthur Cole, as a poor boy made good: more plainly than if he had worn a cloth cap and cycle clips.
Cole arrived in the editor's office on the dot of ten o'clock, with his tie straightened, his thoughts marshaled, and his list typed out. He realized instantly that that was an error. He should have burst in two minutes late in his shirtsleeves, to give the impression he had reluctantly torn himself away from the hot seat in the newsroom powerhouse for the purpose of giving less essential personnel a quick rundown on what was going on in really important departments. But then, he always thought of these things too late: he was no good at office politics. It would be interesting to watch how other executives made their entrance into the morning conference.
The editor's office was trendy. The desk was white and the easy chairs came from Habitat. Vertical venetian blinds shaded the blue carpet from sunlight, and the aluminum-and-melamine bookcases had smoked-glass doors. On a side table were copies of all the morning papers, and a pile of yesterday's editions of the Evening Post.
He sat behind the white desk, smoking a thin cigar and reading the Mirror. The sight made Cole yearn for a cigarette. He popped a peppermint into his mouth as a substitute.
The others came in in a bunch: the picture editor, in a tight-fitting shirt, with shoulder-length hair many women would envy; the sports editor, in a tweed jacket and lilac shirt; the features editor, with a pipe and a permanent slight grin; and the circulation manager, a young man in an immaculate gray suit who had started out selling encyclopedias and risen to this lofty height in only five years. The dramatic last-minute entrance was made by the chief subeditor, the paper's designer: a short man with close-cropped hair, wearing suspenders. There was a pencil behind his ear.
When they were all seated, the editor tossed the Mirror onto the side table and pulled his chair closer to his desk. He said: "No first edition yet?"
"No." The chief sub looked at his watch. "We lost eight minutes because of a web break."
The editor switched his gaze to the circulation manager. "How does that affect you?"
He, too, was looking at his watch. "If it's only eight minutes, and if you can catch up by the next edition, we can wear it."
The editor said: "We seem to have a web break every bloody day."
"It's this bog-paper we're printing on," the chief sub said.
"Well, we have to live with it until we start to make a profit again." The editor picked up the list of news stories Cole had put on his desk. "There's nothing here to start a circulation boom, Arthur."
"Its a quiet morning. With luck we'll have a Cabinet crisis by midday."
"And they're two-a-penny, with this bloody government." The editor continued to read the list. "I like this Stradivarius story."
Cole ran down the list, speaking briefly about each item. When he had finished, the editor said: "And not a splash among 'em. I don't like to lead all day on politics. We're supposed to cover 'every facet of the Londoner's day,' to quote our own advertising. I don't suppose we can make this Strad a million-pound violin?"
"It's a nice idea," Cole said. "But I don't suppose it's worth that much. Still, we'll try it on."
The chief sub said: "If it won't work in Sterling, try the million-dollar violin. Better still, the million-dollar fiddle."
"Good thinking," the editor said. "Let's have a library picture of a similar fiddle, and interviews with three top violinists about how they would feel if they lost their favorite instrument." He paused. "I want to go big on the oil field license, too. People are interested in this North Sea oil--it's supposed to be our economic salvation."
Cole said: "The announcement is due at twelve thirty. We're getting a holding piece meanwhile."
"Careful what you say. Our own parent company is one of the contenders, in case you didn't know. Remember that an oil well isn't instant riches--it means several years of heavy investment first."
"Sure." Cole nodded.
The circulation manager turned to the chief sub. "Let's have street placards on the violin story, and this fire in the East End--"
The door opened noisily, and the circulation manager stopped speaking. They all looked up to see Kevin Hart standing in the doorway, looking flushed and excited. Cole groaned inwardly.
Hart said: "I'm sorry to interrupt, but I think this is the big one."
"What is it?" the editor said mildly.
"I just took a phone call from Timothy Fitzpeterson, a Junior Minister in the--"
"I know who he is," the editor said. "What did he say?"
"He claims he's being blackmailed by two people called Laski and Cox. He sounded pretty far gone. He--"
The editor interrupted again. "Do you know his voice?"
The young reporter looked flustered. He had obviously been expecting instant panic, not a cross-examination. "I've never spoken to Fitzpeterson before," he said.
Cole put in: "I had a fairly nasty anonymous tip about him this morning. I checked it out--he denied it."
The editor grimaced. "It stinks," he said. The chief sub nodded agreement. Hart looked crestfallen.
Cole said: "All right, Kevin, we'll discuss it when I come out."
Hart went out and closed the door.
"Excitable fellow," the editor commented.
Cole said: "He's not stupid, but he's got a lot to learn."
"So teach him," the editor said. "Now, what's lined up on the picture desk?"
14
Ron Biggins was thinking about his daughter. In this, he was at fault: he should have been thinking about the van he was driving, and its cargo of several hundred thousand pounds' worth of paper money--soiled, torn, folded, scribbled-on, and fit only for the Bank of England's destruction plant in Loughton, Essex. But perhaps his distraction was forgivable: for a man's daughter is more important than paper money; and when she is his only daughter, she is a queen; and when she is his only child, well, she just about fills his life.
After all, Ron thought, a man spends his life bringing her up, in the hope that when she comes of age he can hand her over to a steady, reliable type who will look after her the way her father did. Not some drunken, dirty, longhaired, pot-smoking, unemployed fucking layabout--
"What?" said Max Fitch.
Ron snapped back into the present. "Did I speak?"
"You were muttering," Max told him. "You got something on your mind?"
"I just might have, son," Ron said. I just might have murder on my mind, he thought, but he knew he did not mean it. He accelerated slightly to keep the regulation distance between the van and the motorcyclists. He had nearly taken the young swine by the throat, though, when he had said, "Me and Judy thought we might live together, like, for a while--see how it goes, see?" It had been as casual as if he were proposing to take her to a matinee. The man was twenty-two years of age, five years older than Judy--thank God she was still a minor, obliged to obey her father. The boyfriend--his name was Lou--had sat in the parlor, looking nervous, in a nondescript shirt, grubby jeans held up with an elaborate leather belt like some medieval instrument of torture, and open sandals which showed his filthy dirty feet. When Ron asked what he did for a living, he said he was an unemployed poet, and Ron suspected the lad was taking the mickey.
After the remark about living together, Ron threw him out. The rows had been going on ever since. First, he had explained to Judy that she must not live with Lou because she ought to save herself for her husband; whereupon she laughed in his face and said she had already slept with him at least a dozen times, when she was supposed to be spending the night with a girlfrien
d in Finchley. He said he supposed she was going to say she was in the pudding club; and she said he should not be so stupid--she had been on the pill since her sixteenth birthday, when her mother had taken her up to the family planning clinic. That was when Ron came near to hitting his wife for the first time in twenty years of marriage.
Ron got a pal in the police force to check out Louis Thurley, aged twenty-two, unemployed, of Barracks Road, Harringey. The Criminal Records Office had turned up two convictions: one for possession of cannabis resin at the Reading pop festival, and one for stealing food from Tesco's in Muswell Hill. That information should have finished it. It did convince Ron's wife, but Judy just said that she knew all about both incidents. Pot shouldn't be an offense, she declared, and as far as the theft was concerned, Ron and his friends had simply sat on the supermarket floor eating pork pies off the shelf until they got arrested. They had done it because they believed food should be free, and because they were hungry and broke. She seemed to think their attitude was totally reasonable.
Unable to make her see sense, Ron had finally forbidden her to go out in the evening. She had taken it calmly. She would do as he said, and in four months' time, when she was eighteen, she would move into Lou's studio apartment with his three mates and the girl they all shared.
Ron was defeated. He had been obsessed by the problem for eight days, and still he could see no way to rescue his daughter from a life of misery--for that was what it meant, without a shadow of doubt. Ron had seen it happen. A young girl marries a wrong 'un. She goes out to work while he sits at home watching the racing on television. He does a bit of villainy from time to time to keep himself in beer and smokes. She has a few babies, he gets nicked and goes inside for a stretch, and suddenly the poor girl is trying to bring up a family on the Assistance with no husband.
He would give his life for Judy--he had given her eighteen years of it--and all she wanted to do was throw away everything Ron stood for and spit in his eye. He would have wept, if he could remember how.
He could not get it out of his mind, so he was still thinking about it at 10:16 A.M. this day. That was why he did not notice the ambush sooner. But his lack of concentration made little difference to what happened in the next few seconds.
