‘What?’ he said to Frazier.
‘I said, what d’you do? What’s your line of country?’
‘I’m a writer.’
Frazier blinked. ‘Writer, eh? What sort of writer?’
‘Oh, novels chiefly.’ He laughed.
‘Don’t think I know the name. Matthew Morris? But then I wouldn’t, would I, eh? Not much of a reader myself. Just a newspaper man myself. Or a Playboy mag.’ The thin man coughed through the cigarette smoke.
‘I write under Matthew Sorensen. But I don’t suppose that means anything to you either.’
Frazier brooded. Eventually he turned the issue to what he found more interesting. ‘ Why change the name?’
‘Habit of writers.’
‘Trying to dodge the brickbats, I suppose. Or does it help taxwise?’
‘I was born Sorensen,’ Matthew said. ‘My parents were divorced when I was two, and my stepfather thought it more convenient that I should take his name.’ (Had insisted, in fact.)
Frazier eased the suitcase between his knees and lit another cigarette from the butt of the old. ‘ The fuzz always reckon it’s suspicious if you have two names, don’t they. Up to no good, they reckon. Well, there you are, one name’s always been good enough for me.’
‘Doing what?’
Frazier blinked. ‘Me? Oh, I’m a sort of writer too. An underwriter, as you might say.’
‘Insurance agent?’
‘You could say that … You on holiday, looking for material, I suppose?’
‘Not really. Not unless it comes my way.’ As it might well – now, Matthew thought. Have an affair with this girl. Two passionate weeks. Wonder what colour her intimate hair is. Very dark probably. Two weeks of lubricious adventure, then go to Paris for a bit. Write a steamy novel. There hadn’t been enough sex in his two previous novels – too much humour. You had to be shocking to sell.
‘Plenty of odd things in this country to give you inspiration. Odd bods and odd jobs. Last time I was over here, about four years ago, I was in Beni Mellal. Know where that is? Between Fez and Marrakech. In the desert. Real town to give you the heebie-jeebies. I got talking to a man in a bar. He’d a British passport but could hardly speak a word of English. Can you beat that?’
Matthew didn’t try.
‘This feller was born in Malta of Italian parents, see. Lived in Morocco now. Commercial traveller. Drove around Morocco on business. Know what he travelled in?’
‘No.’
‘I’ll give you three guesses.’
‘Couldn’t.’
‘Brassières.’ Frazier laughed and coughed. ‘D’ye know, I hardly bothered to wonder before what women here wear under their kaftans. But you only need to look in the souks: there they are, rail after rail of ’em, all sizes, shapes, colours, styles, lace, cotton, silk, fancy, you name it. French women don’t wear ’em so much, do they.’
‘No,’ said Matthew. ‘They think it’s healthier without.’
‘Well, they certainly wear ’em here. Reckon this man in the bar was on to a good thing!’
The girl in the green linen suit was returning to her seat, but she had her back to him. Just the right sized hips.
The plane lurched a bit, and Matthew’s ears crackled. They were coming down.
The two younger women were twisting their necks and leaning over talking to Laura Legrand. They both had big mouths. But if he were writing of them he wouldn’t have used the word ‘generous’ to describe them. ‘Mercenary’ maybe. But, then, you could so easily be wrong. For all you knew, these three women might be charity workers travelling to succour the victims of infantile paralysis.
Other people were stirring, and the seat-belt light came on. The two women slumped back into their seats. A stewardess passed by and asked Jack Frazier to put his cigarette out. Papers were being folded. A couple of people pinching their noses and blowing.
Susie at the travel office had suggested Morocco to Matthew because it was probably the warmest place at this time of year if one didn’t want the expense of going as far as Kenya or the Caribbean. Though it was not his nature to be depressed, he had asked himself as they boarded at Casablanca just what he intended to do with his days. With tomorrow, for instance. Sit on the beach all morning, or by the pool, and read and swim? Or walk around the town. He had only brought two books and a notepad. The thought of actual work was enough to bring on an allergy.
Through the porthole the lights of Agadir showed as the plane banked for its approach landing.
II
The heat struck you as you came out of the plane and trooped with the others towards the airport building. In Casablanca it had been warm air with a light breeze: hardly enough to make you shed a coat. Warm for February in a latitude still north of the Canary Isles. But Agadir was different.
Nadine Deschamps had been in Agadir in February three years ago making a film and was astonished. Last time there had been a cool wind every day from about noon, and chilly when the sun went down. She remembered after the shooting sitting in the Saada with the director and a few of the other actors, and the women had all worn capes or stoles or coats over their shoulders.
Not so tonight. The air clung hotly, soggily round you. It could have been the tropics.
An impulse decision to come now. Get away from Paris and a failure of a sort. Not a failure in a part but a failure to get a part. That and René Brandin. But the first was the main reason. René had become impractical in his demands, but that of itself had not driven her away.
She had had her sights on the lead in an English film. Through a friend, who was a publisher, she had met the author of the novel, a rather ingenuous but charming young man; and they had struck up what was literally a friendship. He had said he wanted her to play the lead in the film which was shortly to be made of his novel, and that he would do his best to get the part for her. She’d liked the novel, which was set in the days of occupied France, and thought not merely that her appearance as lead in a Rank production, with probable release in America to follow, would advance her stature enormously, but that she could do the author proud by acting the part of a girl whose husband had been shot by the Nazis and thereafter worked for the Resistance herself and helped to infiltrate the German occupying forces. It was a lovely part and she dearly wanted to play it – and had expected to.
There had been objections in some parts of the Rank Organization to making a film in France and about France, it being argued that with the British film industry staggering to survive in the first and worst post-war slump, it was more to be desired that the films made should mirror England and the English way of life – like the Ealing films – rather than try to put on a partly French subject with mainly French actors. (The leading man was to be an Englishman caught up in the tensions of the French Resistance.)
However the ‘ayes’ had it, and the film was to be a prestigious one, no expense spared. Nadine spoke fluent English, so the tide ran in her favour.
But the director, Mortimer Morton, a plump, elegant man of forty, then at his peak because of the runaway success of his last film, had come over with the producer and the author and had held court at the Scribe. He had a list of eight French actresses he wanted to interview, and he exercised, as most directors do – once they are appointed – dictatorial powers. Out of courtesy the producer and the author were consulted, but Mort, as he was called, must have his way.
And his ‘way’, it was soon perceived, was influenced by certain criteria of his own. He perhaps rightly assumed that all the actresses had been put forward by their agents with suitable CVs and the strongest possible recommendations. Therefore any one of them, in a sense, would do. So he wanted the one who would interest him most. He wanted the one who would be most likely to please him when he got her into bed.
Such was the prize that probably most of the applicant actresses would have given favourable consideration to the general idea. But the other seven were not given the opportunity. Though watched over by a duenna o
f a mother, a girl called Maria Antoine took his fancy, and from the glances they exchanged, even under the lowering gaze of Mama, it did not seem that his fancy would be unrewarded.
At her own interview at which only the three men were present Nadine of course knew nothing of this. Queries were made; she was asked to read a little of the script, photographs were proffered and accepted, compliments exchanged; it was all over in fifteen minutes. Only the next day, her publisher friend was informed of the outcome by the author and passed on the message to her.
It had been a bitter pill for Nadine. The prize of a lead in an important Rank film was gone, and all the latent possibilities of Hollywood to follow. Depressed and angry, she had turned down a secondary role in a good French movie and had decided to sit back and take a holiday from films, from metropolitan France, and, in particular, from René. They had been appearing together in a farce at the Théâtre Gramont and, when it folded, so had their association. She could well afford the break.
Passports had been stamped at Casablanca but there was the inevitable wait for luggage at Agadir, and eventually she followed the porter out to the waiting bus. The sky was sulphurous with cloud, which was lit at one edge as if by a setting crescent of moon. No stars showed. She heard a woman greeting another and saying that this exceptional heat had begun only yesterday.
The bus filled up, and presently a tall good-looking young man sat down beside her. She had seen him on the plane a couple of rows behind her. Dark enough for a Frenchman, but his colouring was English, and so were his clothes. Then she heard him talking to an older man on the opposite seat.
Handsome, she thought, and his voice had a better accent than the man he was talking to, who had a nasal oscillating voice that she found difficult to follow. They were not friends, it seemed, had only met on the plane. Both spoke fluent if accented French.
She was aware that the younger man was secretly observing her; probably his choice of seat had not been accidental, but she ignored him, preferring to stare out at the approaching lights of Agadir.
He had excellent hair, Castilian brown, curling like a mane, cut expertly to brush his collar, fine hands with a single gold signet ring, big bright sensitive eyes, a mouth that naturally wanted to curve into a smile.
This bus, rather than depositing its freight at a central terminal, stopped at the main hotels of the town, and she discovered that both of the Englishmen were getting off at the same stop as herself, in front of the great illuminated glittering sign of the Hotel Saada.
This was beyond the main town and was built along the new esplanade bordering the beach. A white lip of surf could be seen beyond the lights.
Seven passengers for the Saada, among them three sloppily dressed women she had seen on the plane, who talked in voices which varied between the blatant and the subdued. Friendships, it seemed, had already been struck up on the way, for the older Englishman was talking and joking with them while they waited for Nadine to hand over her passport and sign the register. She thought, I don’t want to be caught up in that group.
As she moved away in the wake of the bellboy who was to show her to her room, the younger man came across.
‘Mad’moiselle, pardon me, did you drop this?’
This was a lace handkerchief he held out. She looked at it and thought: how original.
‘No, m’sieur. It is not mine.’
‘I beg your pardon.’ His dark eyes sought hers. He had beguiling dimples in his cheeks as he half smiled. She did not smile back at him because of the company he was in. But she inclined her head gently, since there was no point in being discourteous, as long as he was prepared to keep his distance.
She passed on.
Chapter Two
I
The house had belonged to a well-known violinist and his artist wife. Mr Artemis bought it from their son when they died. Near the top of Hampstead village, Georgian, square-built but elegant, well-proportioned rooms, a tidy but otherwise uncultivated garden, all surrounded by a high brick wall which keeps out the sound of traffic.
Mr Artemis is entertaining. He is a substantial, soft-spoken man, going grey, heavy eyelids, a blood blister on his bottom lip.
Four men in the room with him: Big Smith, Jonnny Carpenter, Joe Rooney and Greg Garrett. They have not been here before and are not entirely comfortable in these discreetly elegant surroundings. All tall men – except for Greg – and all casually dressed as for a pub – except for Greg, who likes to be thought of as dapper and affects tight trousers and fancy waistcoats.
‘Should be here by now,’ says Mr Artemis, glancing at the clock. ‘You said eight, didn’t you.’
‘Yeah,’ from Big Smith. ‘He’ll be ’ere. Last thing he says to me: “I’ll be there, spot on.” ’ Taking a gulp of Scotch that his host has provided. Big Smith is about fifty, big-stomached, badger-hair slicked back and thinning, cockney accent, looks a bruiser, and was once.
Others are all younger. Johnny Carpenter is middle thirties, lean, narrow-faced, known often for some reason as Jacques or Frère Jacques. Bright-eyed, devious, always with a crumb of cigarette stuck to his lower lip. (They quickly get to that stage and then stay there a long time.) Joe Rooney is the heavy, a bit slow of movement and brain, but you can always rely on him in a crisis. Sweats in a thick jumper even on a warm day.
This is not a warm day, being Wednesday the 24th of February, 1960.
On cue the discreet manservant comes in with the fifth guest, Fred Prosser.
Prosser is a weasel of a man, greying, lined, spotty, blinking too much, as if surprised by the light. It seems only Big Smith has met him before.
Smith does the honours. ‘This is Mr Artemis. Meet the rest of the boys, Fred. Get him a wet, Nosey. D’you mind?’ to Artemis. ‘What d’you like, Scotch, brandy, gin, vodka? … This is best single malt. That suit?’
After a minute Fred Prosser is sitting on the edge of a cane-bottomed chair, clutching a glass and having a cigarette lit for him.
Big Smith says heartily: ‘I’ve told the boys most of what you told me, Fred. How I went round this morning to Benson & Benson, seven o’clock this morning, dressed respectable; you let me in, showed me round afore anyone else was there, so I could see it all for meself: safes, offices, alarm switches, the lot, so I got a good picture of how everything works. Right?’
‘Right.’
‘And I’ve told them how you’ll do the same for any of ’em, so in case we like to move, we know just what we’re moving into. Mr Artemis can go too if need be.’
‘That should not be necessary,’ says Artemis.
‘Anyway the others can go, smell out the lie of the land, if they so wish. Right, Fred?’
‘Right.’ Fred sips experimentally at his drink and has to take a short breath.
‘Any questions?’
The others are eyeing Fred, who eyes them back. He looks not so much like a member of the underworld as one of the underclass, the underprivileged. You can see him in a dole queue. He does not look a strong character, one you would necessarily rely on.
‘Are you employed by the bank?’ Artemis asks.
‘No, sir. It’s this cleaning company. Zenith Cleaning Co. I been with them three years. But only on this job two months. The bank’s got this contract, so I go there every morning, see. I go at six thirty every weekday. Bachelor, the caretaker, lets me in. He lives on the top floor, and as he comes down he switches off the office alarms and then lets me in.’
Johnny Carpenter coughs through the smoke of his cigarette. ‘Sounds bit too easy to me. Why can’t anyone ring the bell, knock the caretaker off, walk in? Where’s the catch?’
‘First off the caretaker has to recognize me through the grille, see? Then when he lets me in there’s damn all to take. All the cash and securities are in safes and vaults. And there’s all the other alarms.’
‘What other alarms?’ asks Artemis, settling on a pair of lightly tinted spectacles.
‘Good stuff. All modern stuff.’
r /> ‘Such as?’
‘Well.’ Fred Prosser shifts. ‘ The AFA Central Alarm System, with air-pressure differential detectors. You wouldn’t have a chance, not without them being switched off. Not a chance. The bulls’d be round pronto.’
‘What time do the staff come?’
‘About nine. Some a few minutes before that. From seven to eight thirty I have the place more or less to meself.’
‘How many staff?’ Johnny Carpenter asks.
‘Fifteen and a doorman. As soon as they’ve checked in they go to their offices. It’s a merchant bank, see. Not men sitting behind grilles.’
‘But cash?’
‘If you know where to look for it.’
‘And you do?’
Prosser looks at Big Smith. ‘And he does,’ says Big Smith.
Prosser blinks rapidly. ‘There’s two safes and three vaults. Safes are on the ground floor; vaults are in the basement.’
‘How do you deal with these alarms?’ Mr Artemis asks.
‘Switch ’em off.’
‘So I would have supposed. But are there not keys?’
‘Yes, Mr Railton, the manager, and Mr Leeds carry ’em between ’em.’
‘When do they come?’
‘About a quarter after nine. Mr Leeds is always first.’
Big Smith, receiving a nod from Artemis, passes the whisky bottle round. There is the clink of glasses.
Johnny Carpenter coughs again. ‘Don’t know as I all that fancy a merchant bank. Too much doing deals on paper. Cash is what you want.’
‘Cash is what we all want,’ says Big Smith.
Greg Garrett has pale blue eyes that seldom seem to blink. Though the one small man among them and the quietest of them all, he is the most dangerous. He’s the sharp-tempered one who might pull a trigger at the wrong moment. Now he squints down at his yellow-patterned silk waistcoat and flicks away some ash that has floated across from Johnny. ‘Personally I’m a bit agin it too … Course you never can tell. These fancy jobs. You play the black and the white goes in off. Who’d have thought that Twickenham job would have come up roses?’