I nodded, thinking back over the interview; the hoarse whisper disguising the man’s voice, the grotesque glimpses of the balding skull under the turban, the sunken mouth from which presumably he had removed his lower teeth, the alert black eyes. Halide’s nervousness and John Lethman’s watchful, edgy look had been for none of the reasons I had imagined.
‘I get it now,’ I said. ‘All that chat of John Lethman’s at supper – he was finding out all he could about the family so as to fill you in on things Aunt H didn’t tell you. You knew I hadn’t seen her since I was a kid, so you thought you’d probably fool me easily enough, but Charles had seen her recently, so naturally “Great-Aunt Harriet” wouldn’t receive him. Oh, yes, clever enough, Dr Grafton.’ I blew a long cloud of smoke into the air between us. ‘And as a matter of fact you rather enjoyed it, didn’t you? John Lethman tried to hurry me out, and heaven knows I’d have gone, but you wouldn’t let me, you were enjoying yourself too much making a fool of me.’
He was grinning. Grotesquely, it was Great-Aunt Harriet’s face as I had thought of her, vaguely seen through the smoke and the dusty shaft of sunlight, remote as something glimpsed down the wrong end of a telescope.
I said: ‘Yes, all right, so it worked. You fooled me, and you fobbed Charles off quite successfully, and surely after I’d left the place you were in the clear, so why drag me back? I’d gone hadn’t I, quite satisfied? Why drag me back here like this?’
‘Because we hadn’t fobbed your cousin off, and you know it. Oh, don’t give me that great big innocent look, it doesn’t suit you. Shall I tell you what happened? The first time you left here it wasn’t your driver who met you, it was your cousin, and between you you hatched the plan to let him in on Monday night. He came, and you explored the place together. Yes, my dear, that stare’s a bit more genuine.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Your precious cousin told me all about it himself.’
I don’t think I spoke. I just stared. I couldn’t quite take in what he was saying. The room seemed to be swirling round me, smoke and dusty sunlight dazzling like fog.
‘After you’d gone back to your room that evening, he was to have left by the back gate – the mountain gate, wasn’t he?’ Grafton’s voice was smooth as cream. ‘Well, he didn’t. John and I came across him in the passageway below here, trying to force one of the padlocked doors. It wasn’t much use denying who he was – you’re very like one another, aren’t you? So we – er, we took him in. He’s been safely locked away in the palace prison ever since. It won’t surprise you to know the palace has its own gaol? Unhappily there was only one cell serviceable, so when we caught you as well, we had to use the storeroom for you.’
‘Here? Charles here? I don’t believe you. He can’t be!’ My brain seemed to be groping, like someone feeling through a roomful of smoke, not sure of the direction of the door or the distance to the window. I think I had a hand to my forehead, ‘You’re lying. You know you’re lying. He wrote me a letter, and left it for me in Beirut. He went to Damascus to see Ben’s father … no, to Aleppo. And we saw him – yes we saw him on the way …’
‘He certainly wrote you a letter. He suggested doing that himself. If he hadn’t done it to ensure you kept away from Dar Ibrahim and didn’t start hunting for him when he failed to turn up at the Phoenicia, we couldn’t have let you go in the morning.’
‘Why did you?’
‘Your driver,’ he said shortly, ‘and your hotel. Your cousin pointed out that it was easier to let you go than to risk someone starting to ask questions. Besides, as he told us, you thought you’d seen your great-aunt alive and well, and could spread the belief that all was normal.’
‘So he wrote the letter – all those elaborate lies – he even pretended he’d seen her himself and recognised her … I’ve been wondering about that, I thought he must have seen you and made the same mistake as I did … You mean – that letter – it was all quite deliberate? Just to keep me out?’
‘Exactly that.’
I said nothing. The conversation no longer seemed to have much to do with me. He was still smiling, and as I stared at him, bemused, I saw the grin widen. The top teeth were his own; the incisors were yellowish and long. He was talking again, fragments of information drifting like torn paper to lie in a crazy pattern: John Lethman – no doubt the ‘Englishman’ seen in the distance by the faun – had driven the Porsche down to Beirut in the early morning, hidden it in someone’s backyard, woken the someone whose name seemed to be Yusuf and given him the letter, then been driven back by Yusuf, who later got the letter delivered to the hotel and went himself to ride herd on me …
‘But you, my dear, didn’t stay out of the line of fire. You made it fairly obvious that you were going to ask some damned awkward questions and make some damned awkward contacts. You even telephoned England. And from what our man heard of your telephone conversation with Damascus, we decided to remove you.’
‘The Arab in the red tarboosh. He was in the next booth.’ I said it to myself, not to him.
‘Certainly. Well, since you’d made your plans public, and that damned driver was already there with you, and we didn’t want any eyes turning to Dar Ibrahim, we decided to get you the wrong side of the frontier and then let you disappear. All very simple, no great harm done – your car stopped, yourselves robbed, your papers taken and the car wrecked … somewhere beyond the Antilebanon, we thought, or even off towards Qatana. Yusef was confident he could immobilise you for long enough. So he got the Porsche out and drove it through to wait. It was the bait, of course. You’d have followed it—’
‘Hamid! If you’ve harmed Hamid—!’
‘Not if he’s sensible. Most Arabs are, if you make it worth their while.’ He laughed. ‘I thought at first your being stopped at the frontier was going to bitch all our plans, but it worked out like a dream. You didn’t see me, but I was there, and I saw what happened. My driver followed yours into the frontier buildings and heard the whole thing, so I sent him through to tell Yusuf to go south and get rid of your cousin’s car, but as luck would have it you’d seen it yourself from above the road, and came running down to tell your driver to go through after it. My own car came straight back, and reported he’d crossed yours at the frontier. Since neither your driver nor the Porsche came back, one gathers Yusuf made him listen to reason, or else simply carried out the original plan and left him somewhere to cool off till tomorrow. We can’t afford to let him near a telephone, you must see that.’ A little grunt of amused satisfaction. ‘After that it was so easy it was hardly true. You told everyone within hearing that you were going to the Adonis Hotel to get a car for Beirut, so I simply went there first and waited for you to come. The manager’s new, so there was no fear of his recognising me, but I’m damned sure that by the time you turned up he was sure he’d known me all his life. You’d never have accepted a lift from someone picking you up on the road, but someone you met in the hotel, someone you were introduced to by name …’ That smile again. ‘I hope you appreciated the touch about the Great Mosque? You remember telling your “great-aunt” all about it?’
‘Very clever. You’re so very clever. Quite a little empire you’ve got, haven’t you, with all your spies and drivers and cars. Something’s paying pretty well. Don’t grin at me like that, you snag-toothed little dago. What have you done with Charles?’
‘I told you. He’s in the lock-up.’ The grin had vanished.
‘Have you hurt him?’
‘There was a bit of a rough-up last night.’
‘You tried to rough Charles up? No wonder John looks the worse for wear. I thought his face was hurting him yesterday, and now I come to think of it, he kept that side turned away. It’s come up lovely now, hasn’t it? Good old Charles! And oh, my poor auntie! Did he hurt you much?’
The smile had certainly vanished. He had flushed darkly, and I saw the vein in his temple begin to beat. ‘He didn’t touch me. I had a gun. I admit John isn’t much use, but
then he drugs.’
‘Drugs?’ I don’t think I managed to speak the question, I only looked it. He had gone far away from me again. The room was all shadows now. I found myself straining forward, peering to see where he had gone. Dimly, I knew I should be frantic with worry about Charles, with fear for myself. But I couldn’t tie my brain down. It wouldn’t work for me. It spun high and light. It floated, lifting me with it out of the chair, up towards the high dim corners of the room.
He was suddenly close, gigantic. He was out of his chair and standing over me. His voice was vicious. ‘Yes, drugs, you silly spoiled little bitch. Drugs. I said “medical supplies”, didn’t I? There’s a fortune in Indian hemp lying there in the cellars waiting for collection tonight, and another fortune growing in the fields above Laklouk if your great-aunt hadn’t died, and I’d been able to hang on till harvest.’ He drew in his breath. ‘And not only hemp. They grow opium in Turkey and Iran, didn’t you know? That’s the real stuff. Opium, morphine, heroin – and I’ve a pipeline across Syria that’s been working like a dream, and all it needs for the processing is a bit of time and the kind of privacy we get here at Dar Ibrahim …’
I’d been meaning to stub my cigarette out in the saucer, but the saucer was too far away, and the effort was too much. The stub fell through my fingers to the floor. It seemed to fall in slow motion, and I made no attempt to retrieve it, but just sat there, looking down at my own hand, which seemed a long way away and not attached to my body at all.
‘… And that’s just what we had, till you came. The room next to the storeroom where we put you, that’s our lab. We’ve been working like slaves putting the stuff through since the last lot came down. Oh, we’d have had to pack it in this year, no doubt of that, and move our base – those bastards at the Narcotics Division of the UN have been putting the screws on, and the National Assembly’s promising to make it hotter than ever in this country next year … and of course since the old lady went Dar Ibrahim was due to shut down anyway. Phased withdrawal, don’t they call it? The caravan comes through tonight …’ His voice trailed off, and I heard him laugh again. He stooped and picked up the stub, and dropped it in the saucer. His face swam near mine. ‘Feeling a bit far away, are you? Not exactly fit to cope? That was a reefer you had in the car, and you’ve just smoked two more, my pretty, and now you’re going back to your nice little room to sleep them off … Till tonight’s over.’
I wished I could care. I ought to care. Fragments of pictures were there in smoky darkness, like dreams edged with light. John Lethman’s slack body and defeated young face with the sunken grey eyes. The Arab girl watching him fiercely. The patch of hemp with the label of the racing dog. The crates in the cellar. But they dislimned and the light beat in a steady echoing rhythm that was somehow my own heart beating, and someone’s voice was coming and going in the throbbing air like the pulse of a drum, and I was out of it all, safe and high and floating as scatheless and beautiful and powerful as an angel among the cobwebs on the ceiling, while down there below in the dimming room sat a girl in a red lacquer chair, her body slack and drowsy in its plain expensive frock, her face pale, the cheekbones highlighted with a film of damp, her mouth vaguely smiling. Her hair was dark and smooth and fashionably cut. Her arms were sunburned, the hands long and slender, one wrist weighted down with a gold bracelet that had cost all of eighty pounds … A spoiled silly bitch, he had called her. She was blinking at him now. She had very big eyes, dark-fringed, made bigger by the make-up she affected, and now by the drug … Poor silly bitch, she was in danger, and I couldn’t do a thing for her, not that I cared. And she didn’t even look afraid …
Not even when John Lethman came quietly in, floating like another shadow in slow motion across the dim floor, to stand over her and ask of Henry Grafton, as if it hardly mattered.
‘She’s out, is she?’
‘Two cigarettes. Well taken care of. And the boy?’
‘Blocked. Cell blue with smoke and himself out cold. No trouble there.’
Henry Grafton laughed. ‘No trouble anywhere. Safe under our hands till it’s over. And you, young John, will stick to your ration and stay with it. You’ve just had your fix, by the look of you? Well, that’s the last you’ll get. Oh, you can smoke if you want to, but don’t come asking me for more of the hard stuff because you won’t get it till that cargo’s safely through Beirut. D’you hear me? Right. Take her back.’
The younger man stooped over the chair. The girl moved her head dreamily and smiled at him, eyes misty. She seemed to be trying to speak, but couldn’t manage it. Her head lolled back.
‘I must say,’ said John Lethman, ‘I like her better this way.’
‘Meaning she’s too pretty to have a tongue like a wasp’s backside? I agree. My God, what a family! She reminds me of the old lady on her bad days. Well, she’s asked for all she’s getting. Take her away. I’m afraid you’ll have to carry her.’
Lethman leaned over the lacquer chair. At his touch, some of the fumes of the drug must have lifted for a second. I came down from where I had been floating, into the body of the chair, as he pulled me forward to slide an arm round me and lift me. I managed to say slowly and with what I thought was immense dignity: ‘Can manage qui’ well, thank you.’
He said with impatience: ‘Of course you can’t. Come along, I won’t hurt you. Don’t be afraid.’
‘Of you?’ I said. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
He bit his lip, yanked me out of the chair, and heaved me over his shoulder in the he-man lift. I’m ashamed to say I spoiled the heroic scene by laughing like an idiot upside down all the way back to my dungeon.
16
‘Truly we have been at cost, yet we are forbidden harvest.’
The Koran: Sura LVI
An empire I had called it, and I hadn’t been far wrong. Heaven knows the clues had been there if I had only had the knowledge to work from; and heaven knows I had all the pieces now.
It was hours later. My watch said eleven, within a minute or two. The time had gone like a dream, literally like a dream, passed like smoke from the cigarettes that had sent me floating. I felt firmly enough based now – too firmly. I was back on the bed in my prison, sitting on top of the tumbled blankets holding an aching head, no longer the slack-boned, don’t-careish girl hopped up with bhang, but a young woman with a crashing hangover, still in reasonably full possession of her five wits, and every one of them scared, with all the evidence literally under her eyes.
They had left me a light this time. Up in its niche the three-branched lamp held up its buds of flame. Beside the bed was a jug of water and a glass. I drank, and my mouth felt a little less as if someone had been cleaning it out with an abrasive cleaner. I tried putting my legs down, and my feet to the floor. I could feel the floor, which was probably something. I didn’t try anything violent, like standing up, but sat there, holding my head on to my body, and gently, as gently as possible, allowing my eyes to look here and there in the swimming light …
The room was far bigger than I had thought, stretching away back into the shadow. Behind the clutter of broken-down furniture and the piled rugs and harness that would be all one could see from the corridor, I now saw that the place was stacked, literally stacked with wooden boxes and cardboard cartons and small tins. Some of them, I thought, would probably be ‘blinds’ – genuine consignments of whatever article (like the cooking oil) was used to disguise the drugs – but if even a fraction of these held hashish or the opium derivatives, the room would have bought up Aladdin’s cave four times over. I thought of Hamid’s sheeps’ droppings, but somehow it wasn’t funny any more.
On the cartons nearest me the device of the running dog stood out clear and damning, with the grotesque warning carefully stencilled below: ‘Best quality, beware immitations.’ It shook the last piece into place, and Henry Grafton’s sketchy story, with all its gaps and evasions, became, with this gloss added, very clear indeed. The hashish, grown copiously in the high hills; John Let
hman crop-watching, or bargaining with the growers, or arranging for the piecemeal ferrying of the stuff down by the peasants – perhaps one of them the very man whom Charles and I had seen approaching the back gate of the palace. Dar Ibrahim must have been used as the centre of the filthy trade for some time, might even have been so used long before the old lady moved in. It was the perfect clearing house, and also the perfect retreat for anyone in Henry Grafton’s situation – the lonely hilltop fortress kept by the strong-minded old woman who refused to receive visitors, and who had (like her prototype Lady Hester) once or twice defied the law and would presumably defy it again on a friend’s behalf. I couldn’t believe that my great-aunt would have concealed Henry Grafton had she known what trade he was engaged in, but no doubt his story had been plausible enough, and equally plausible the account of whatever ‘experiments’ he and John Lethman were conducting in the underground storeroom. And John Lethman’s own role in the business became pathetically clear. He had probably started innocently enough, being persuaded by the unscrupulous Grafton that the occasional ‘smoke’ would do him no harm; then quietly, inevitably, hooked on the hard drugs that would ensure his dependence and continued help. It was not my Great-Aunt Harriet who was the victim of this affair – for every reason I was now convinced that Grafton would never have wished her out of the way – but John Lethman.
And I was very much afraid that there were going to be two more victims. Henry Grafton might keep insisting that he meant me and my cousin no real harm, but people have been murdered for a lot less than a fortune in drugs and a possible death sentence (since Grafton was a Turkish national) if they went astray. He could hardly imagine that Charles or I would fail to report all we knew the moment we were able to, yet I – and probably my cousin as well – had been handed both information and evidence with a carelessness that terrified me. Whether he had got round to realising it yet or not, he would have to kill us both if he wanted to save his skin.