Just twelve months ago, Sir Douglas Gobetween, another former Cabinet Minister, had broken his neck after falling out of an apple tree. When questioned about his behaviour, his grieving wife could only say that he’d woken up that morning determined to ‘go scrumping’. Then there’d been Baroness Watchbell, the elderly pharmacist who, not long after Gobetween’s demise, had strapped herself to the wing of a Cessna Bobcat and collided with a mountain. Then there was Père Meddler, the French cleric, whose work on the immune system had brought him the Nobel Prize. Happily celibate for years, he had suddenly, at the age of eighty, taken himself off to Marrakech and died in a fit of sexual excess involving thirty-eight boys and a Barbary macaque. The question was, had these silly old buffers just got it into their heads to have one last hurrah before the graveyard–or their deaths connected? And was Christopher so-called suicide part of the same, bizarre pattern?
And then there were Hooplah’s dying words. ‘Le papillon noir’. The Black Butterfly.
I knew this was the French term for depression. Had Hooplah gone off his rocker because he’d been clinically depressed? At any rate, a curious picture was forming, made all the more strange by the presence, both at Hooplah’s table and the scene of the accident, of the coloured youth. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was all I had.
The next day dawned hot and sunny. The great black engine, steam smothering its face like foam on the bridle of a mad horse, dragged us on. Station signs flashed past, unknown and dreadful in their loneliness.
I struggled back into the previous day’s linen (such a horrid feeling, don’t you think?–unless the reason for it is a saucy one) and then breakfasted in the dining car. A bored-looking waiter ministered to my needs, and then left me alone in the compartment. I turned an eye towards the dusty window, peering out at the excitingly impenetrable shadows of the dark forest blurring past. Sagging terracotta-tiled houses and crumbling churches flickered by like snapshots between the lush green of the pines, their faded oranges and cornflower-blues gay-seeming next to the brooding dark of the trees. I was reaching for my second coffee, when suddenly I became aware of another presence in the otherwise empty carriage.
He was standing by the door, willowy tall in a cut-throat-creased suit, black roll-neck sweater and sunglasses. The dead straight hair hung over his sunglasses.
‘This seat taken?’ he fluted. The accent was curious, faintly American.
I shook my head.
Without a word, my quarry slipped into the empty place and I felt his warm leg brush my knee. He didn’t remove his sunglasses. In the blazing orange of the late-morning light, they glowed like moth’s eyes. Then he smiled, showing perfect white teeth.
‘Hi.’
‘Hello,’ I said quietly.
‘Cigarette?’ he asked.
‘Thank you, no,’ I said, patting my side. ‘I have my own.’
He shook his head, ever so slightly, and the dead straight hair shifted over his smooth forehead. ‘No, baby. I meant do you have a cigarette. For me?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Of course.’ Reaching into my jacket, I produced my battered old silver case. He took out a Turkish mixture and held it gently between his long, slim fingers.
‘Light?’
I felt in my pocket for a gas-lighter and managed to get a spark out of it. The flame leaped up and the youth closed both hands around mine as he leaned close to light his fag. He glanced up at me and there was a curious look in his hooded eyes. Pleasure? Mockery?
He blinked slowly again. ‘Thanks.’ As he withdrew his hands, his sleeve caught the polished coffee-pot, spilling it over the white cloth.
‘Oh, man, I’m so sorry!’ he said. ‘Here, let me—’
‘It’s nothing. Don’t bother.’
He shook his head, righted the pot and refilled my little cup. Then he sat back, smiling.
I lit a cigarette for myself and fixed the youth with a hard stare. ‘Well, this is a pleasant surprise, Mr…?’
He chuckled and the sound was curiously pretty, like the song of a bird. ‘Names are very powerful things, baby. If you knew who I was, you might go telling tales out of school.’
‘Now why ever would I want to do a thing like that?’
The boy shrugged, rumpling the shiny fabric of his beautifully cut suit. ‘You might have taken exception to me.’
‘The very idea. However, I have no qualms about introducing myself. My name’s—’
‘Oh, I know who you are,’ he murmured.
‘You do?’
‘Uh-huh.’
He propped his elbows onto the table before us and rested his head on his hand. The long shadows threw his cheeks and jaw into relief, smooth as chocolate ice cream. Smoke from his cigarette drifted like a veil over his face. ‘See, people have no respect these days,’ he mused. ‘Young people ’specially. They always wanna knock down everything that’s gone before. I-con-o-clasm, they call it.’
‘I am aware of the term,’ I said.
The youth took a long drag. ‘Even the good things, they wanna smash ’em up. I ain’t like that. I appreciate history. Or heritage, you might say.’
‘Rare in one so young,’ I commented, tipping ash onto the saucer of my coffee cup.
He slid the sunglasses down the bridge of his nose, eyes glittering like Whitby jet beneath the sculpted hoods of their lids. ‘Like I said, I know all about you, Mr Lucifer Box. You were good.’
‘Was I?’
‘You might even have been the very best. But there comes a time when you should retire from the field with some grace, baby. It just wouldn’t be right for you to end it all…out here. Time’s up. Tick-tock, baby. Tick-tock.’
He let his words hang in the air and turned back to the window, eyes flickering as he watched the landscape stream past.
I folded my arms. ‘How kind of you to be concerned for my welfare. And for elucidating matters.’
‘Huh?’
‘Well, I wasn’t sure whether I was on a wild-goose chase. Now I know I’m not.’
He threw back his head and giggled, slapping a long brown hand against his chest. ‘Good point. Oops.’
I felt a sudden warmth on my leg and realised with an electric thrill that he had slipped off his shoe and lain his bare foot against the flesh of my ankle. ‘But listen, baby,’ he cooed. ‘Seriously–why don’t you get off the train at the next station? Beautiful country around here. You could see the sights. Take it easy…’
His foot was moving slowly, lazily, up my calf, over my knee. ‘Easy,’ he breathed. ‘Nice and easy…’
I felt his foot slide into my lap. Its heaviness and warmth were strangely wonderful. The boy gazed at me. ‘But then you take the Orient Express or somesuch back home where you belong.’ The pretty face suddenly hardened. ‘This isn’t work for old men.’
In an instant, my hand dived under the table and grabbed his ankle. With the other hand, I took hold of his big toe and bent it back savagely. He gasped in shock and pain and dropped his cigarette.
‘And what exactly is this work of yours?’ I cried.
‘That’d be telling…wouldn’t it?’ he hissed between clenched teeth. ‘Let go of me, you bastard!’
‘Who are you?’ I demanded.
He twisted in his seat and I jerked his toe back still further. He yelled, then scowled in fury. ‘It’ll take more than that to—’
‘Name?’ I insisted, jabbing my thumbnail into the soft flesh of the toe. ‘NAME?’
‘Kingdom!’ he gasped at last. ‘Kingdom Kum!’
I let his foot go at once and he pulled it back, like a whip.
‘Damn you!’ he cried. At once, he assumed a cross-legged position on the dusty seat and began rubbing at his naked foot. ‘No call for that!’
I picked up my coffee and swirled it around the cup. It was thick as molasses. ‘So, Kingdom–I may call you Kingdom, mayn’t I?–it seems you know all about me but I know next to nothing about you. That strikes me as a very unfair arrangement.’
> ‘Life’s unfair, baby,’ he snarled, massaging his bruised toe.
I fixed him with a level stare, blue eyes to brown. ‘Really? How’s yours been?’
He giggled, as though the whole incident was forgotten, and cocked his head to one side. ‘Up and down.’
‘And how does Sir Vyvyan Hooplah fit into it? You two were having a very animated chat last night in the Blood Orange.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Might I enquire what it was about?’
Kingdom Kum picked up his cigarette. It had burned a big brown hole in the tablecloth. ‘Let me tell you a little story instead,’ he whispered. ‘Story about my daddy’s boss. Mr Hyogo.’
I stubbed out my cigarette and made to get up. ‘I don’t have time for reminiscing—’
In a flash, there was a long, thin, deadly blade at my throat, bright against the white of his palm.
‘On the other hand,’ I gulped, ‘you sound like a fascinating young fellow. Do go on.’
Kingdom Kum let the knife move slowly over my skin. ‘Well, baby, Mr Hyogo, he used to slip into my sister’s room some nights. My parents couldn’t do anything about it for fear Daddy’d lose his job. But I did something about it. Eventually.’
‘Oh yes?’ I could feel the blade skimming my ill-shaved cheek.
‘One night Mr Hyogo got between my sister’s sheets but she wasn’t there. I was. With this.’ He inclined his wrist just a fraction and I could feel the pressure of the steel against the bone of my tensed jaw. ‘Mr Hyogo didn’t come again. In any sense of the word,’ the youth told me. ‘If you get my drift.’
I nodded.
‘I could slit you open like a blowfish,’ Kingdom Kum went on with deadly gravity. ‘No one touches me,’ he said. ‘Not without my say-so.’
I swallowed and grinned foolishly. ‘I have terrible manners. I always forget to ask nicely when I’m torturing people.’
The boy’s face suddenly relaxed and he giggled again. The knife vanished up the expensively-cut sleeve as suddenly as it had appeared. ‘Well, let’s call this a warning, then,’ he said lightly. ‘A nice, friendly warning, Mr Lucifer Box.’
He rose like a wisp of smoke, and gave a graceful bow as he headed for the door. ‘It’s been an honour, sir. I mean that. But I do hope we shan’t meet again. Next time, I might not be so friendly.’ He waggled his hand and the light caught the watch on his slender wrist. ‘Tick-tock, baby. Tick-tock.’
He pulled open the door, the noise of the rattling carriage increased for a second–and then he was gone.
There was a single, neat droplet of blood on the tablecloth. I touched a finger to my face and winced. Then I drank the last of my coffee with a suddenly less than firm hand.
.8.
THE MAN FROM ’STAMBOUL
I woke with a start and realised the train had stopped moving. Evening light washed into the cabin, staining the walls peach. Above the jug and basin on the lopsided washstand hung a cracked photograph of Attaturk–the face tinted with colour, slightly sinister in his severe black hat. The dying sun was slicing a dusty beam through a gap in the pale blue curtains.
I was fully dressed and hadn’t even taken off my shoes. My mouth tasted as though something had crawled into it to die and there was a thudding pain behind my eyes. I knew the symptoms only too well. I’d been drugged!
Damn that boy. How had he done it? Could only have been the coffee. That textbook stunt, knocking over the pot. I cursed myself. I was getting too old for this. I’d learned precious little from him, other than his name–and that he was already acquainted with mine! At least my instincts had been right in one respect. Kingdom Kum had been involved in the bizarre death of Vyvyan Hooplah. However, I certainly had no intention of being scared off by his crude threats.
Istanbul announced itself with the achingly mournful call to prayer. I eased myself up off my bunk, scowled at the throbbing pain in my head and my sore cheek, and quickly left the train.
Of course, Kingdom Kum was long gone.
He could have been anywhere by now. Perhaps Istanbul was merely a staging-post for him. I could only hope that, if my contact in the city were half as good as his reputation promised, I could soon be back on Mr Kum’s trail.
There was a reply waiting for me at the telegraph office, as I’d hoped, welcoming me to the city and giving the address of an hotel into which my contact had booked me.
I walked down from the station, the lemon-and-honey smoke that rose above the ancient city creating a bluish miasma. I lit a cigarette and took a moment or two to gaze out over the wonderful Bosphorus, alive with shipping on a fantastic scale. Trawlers, tankers, pleasure cruisers and yachts spangled the expanse of shimmering blue, rather like a Tudor map showing the arrangement of the Armada.
After a while, I found the hotel. It was one of those cosy places constructed in the old colonial style: a three-storey clapboard structure, painted an attractive green, the window frames outlined in white. Downstairs, all was cool and shadowy. A beaming concierge in a comical fez showed me to my room where I bathed, luxuriously, and surrendered my suit to be laundered. I put through a call to London and spent most of the afternoon shouting coded messages down the blower to Delilah. Of course, the old girl was officially retired, but she still had plenty of contacts amongst the ‘Domestics’–the Academy’s loyal staff of functionaries. Could they find a connection between those deaths: Gobetween, Watchbell, Meddler, Hooplah–and possibly Miracle? The crackly connection kept breaking, necessitating tedious journeys to the front desk. When I was done, I stretched out to sleep on the neat bed.
The night was very warm. Little blocks of charcoal burned brightly in swinging lamps outside shut-up shops, in which bejewelled scarves and mottled mirrors glinted. Here and there, a bundle of rags would suddenly stir into life and a swarthy face turn upwards, eyes glistening in the starlight. Clothes freshly laundered, I made my way up a stone stair and found myself on a raised concrete platform on which sprouted half a dozen cafés. Outside the first, a dervish was–well, whirling–for the benefit of giggling tourists, sprawled out on striped cushions. As they sucked on tall hookahs, a sickly-sweet aroma of apples and tobacco assailed me. I walked on until I came to the third café, parted a thin muslin curtain and went inside.
Formed from the intersection of a series of low arches, the room seemed to be the remains of some exquisite aqueduct, the brickwork still solid and dry, rough edges softened by cushions and fluttering drapes. The ceiling was so low, I had to stoop as I groped my way towards a hexagonal table.
A great rolling fug of tobacco smoke billowed overhead. The light sources were so discreet as to be almost negligible, just the odd red or blue lantern, throwing laughing faces into sharp silhouette, blurring the lines of lovers as they sank back into the downy embrace of the cushions.
A boy of about ten came wandering over as I sat. He was dressed in a plain white smock with an encrustation of paste jewels around the collar. I ordered a glass of coffee and the honey and nut sweetmeat kadayif. Both were utterly delicious, the coffee glutinous. Lighting a cigarette, I leaned back against the brickwork and let the scene wash over me. Lord, I’d missed Istanbul. I hadn’t been there since the early days of the Franco-British Occupation, when a young man with a shy smile and tackle like a gorilla had kept me royally entertained. I had been tracking down the spy known only as Rosehip–the best belly-dancer in old ’Stamboul, who dusted her nipples with icing sugar in imitation of the snow-covered domes of the Topkapi. Happy days, happy days.
Glancing at my wristwatch, I turned as the muslin curtain parted and a huge man pushed his way inside. Interested heads turned his way as he barrelled forward, shoulders as broad as though he’d left the hanger inside his crumpled white suit. He plonked himself down at the table next to mine and barked at the boy to fetch him a pipe. The mosaic of light and deep shadow played over the contours of his huge head. He was like a bear in white linen, the swarthy face bisected by a drooping black moustache. Two gold rings
sparkled in one ear. I noticed that the tip of the ear was ragged as though it had been bitten off. He glanced towards me and I saw that, though one eye gleamed darkly, the other was missing, replaced by a gold sovereign that had been screwed into the socket. It blazed briefly in the light, leaving the after-image of dear, dead George V on my startled retina.
The pipe seemed to soothe the huge fellow and, as the water bubbled in the steaming glass bowl, a look of easy contentment replaced the scowl he had worn on arrival. His good eye darted from side to side, missing nothing.
At length, he withdrew the mouthpiece of the water pipe and swivelled in my direction. A thick Newcastle accent came rather unexpectedly from his brutish Balkan form. ‘I like your shoes, pet.’
‘Thanks. I prefer brogues,’ I replied.
‘But only from Churches.’
The silly code-words exchanged, he moved sideways over the cushions and gripped my hand with his massive paw. ‘All right, hinnie!’ he grinned. ‘You must be Lucifer Box. I’ve heard a lot about you.’
‘Whitley Bey?’ I ventured.
‘None other,’ he cackled. ‘Didn’t bring any tabs, did ya?’
‘What?’
‘Tabs, man! Ciggies. From England.’
‘Oh–yes.’ Reaching into my pocket, I retrieved my case. ‘I have them made up especially. A Turkish mixture, actually—’
Whitley Bey shook his head and harrumphed. ‘Nah, man. I meant Woodbines.’ He caught my eye and laughed, his piratical face creasing into leathery lines. ‘Aye, I know what you’re thinking. All that bloody lovely tobacco out here and what’s the fool want? Coffin nails! It’s a long story.’ He took one of my cigarettes and lit it. ‘I’ll have one, mind. D’you fancy a drink?’
Bey was an old contact of Delilah’s and, though we’d never actually met, his reputation preceded him. Whilst maintaining a respectable public façade as a University professor, he was the secret leader of a cadre of psychoanalysts-cum-mercenaries known as the Jung Turks. Their speciality lay in imagining themselves into the minds of the enemy and then working out, through analysis, what their next move would be. If this failed, they fell back on good old-fashioned Balkan brutality. It was a potent combination and the Jung Turks were feared and respected as a result. Despite sterling work, however, keeping an eye on Soviet activities in the great melting pot of the former Constantinople, even they were soon to be absorbed into the great faceless monolith of MI6. Whitley Bey wasn’t best pleased.