More Than You Can Say (3 page)

After a while I swung my legs off the bed and made a careful effort to get to my feet. It hurt, but not as much as I had feared. I went to the window and looked out at a view that consisted mostly of a large blue Atlantic cedar which someone had planted too close to the side of the house. Beyond it I could make out wide, freshly mown lawns and a fringe of woodland. I had no idea where I was.

Turning around, I noticed another door, half open, that led into a bathroom. Inside fluffy white towels hung on a heated towel rail, and a wicker basket contained everything the forgetful guest might need such as a toothbrush and razor. With some discomfort I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the shower. I experienced the glorious relief of needles of hot water massaging my shoulders and back, relieving some of the pain. Once I’d shaved, cleaned my teeth, dried myself and dressed again, I felt a great deal better, relatively speaking.

It was then that I noticed various things were missing. My shoes were nowhere to be seen. Looking around, I realised that my evening jacket was not in the room. Neither was my wallet, nor the envelope I had taken from the Diplomatic with all the cash and cheques from my evening’s winnings. I couldn’t remember how much money I’d had but it was several thousand pounds, one way or another. My watch, an old Rolex my father had given me, was also gone. It had been an expensive day so far.

I padded across the room to the door that led to the
corridor and tried the handle. I hadn’t been wrong: it was locked. What on earth was going on? I appeared to have been kidnapped for no reason at all. Narrow Face and his anonymous friend couldn’t have known I was carrying all that cash. And if it was cash they were after, they would have just taken it and left me in the ditch. After the last two years, and the way I’d behaved, I didn’t have many friends left – to be accurate, I didn’t have any friends at all. But then again, I didn’t have any enemies. There might be quite a few people who disliked me, or would not take my phone calls, or who even might cross the street to avoid me if they saw me coming, but I couldn’t think of anyone who would bother to go to the trouble these people had gone to. The effort of puzzling through these things was making my head ache, so I decided to do what I did best in difficult circumstances – I gazed at the ceiling and let my mind go blank. I’ve always believed in not worrying until you know what there is to worry about.

Time passed. Then there was a sound at the door and a man in a dark suit came in. He was carrying a silver tray with a glass of champagne on it, and he had newspapers clasped under his arm. He set the tray down on a small table beside the window.

‘Mr Khan sends his apologies for keeping you waiting, sir. He wondered if you might enjoy a glass of champagne, sir, and a chance to read the day’s papers. He will ask you to join him presently for a light lunch in the conservatory. I will come back and show you the way as soon as he is free.’

I watched the man leave the room, my mouth open. I suppose I could have mounted an escape attempt, as the butler or whatever he was did not seem especially robust. But at that particular moment, neither was I. Any form of
physical exertion seemed like a very bad idea. And trying to escape with no shoes did not appeal to me either. The door closed again, and the key turned. I wandered across to the window and sipped the glass of champagne. It was chilled, and delicious. Then I picked up
The Times
. There didn’t seem any point in sulking, so I thought I would make myself comfortable while I could. I sat down in one of the armchairs and began to read the papers. A few minutes later the door opened and the man in the dark suit appeared. In one hand he held my shoes, which, despite being badly scuffed and down at heel, looked quite presentable again, having been buffed and polished to a deep shine. In the other hand he held, on a hanger, my evening jacket, which had been brushed and pressed.

‘I’m afraid we couldn’t get some of the grass stains out, sir,’ he said, ‘but you can hardly see them now. If you would be kind enough to follow me downstairs lunch will be ready in a moment.’

I slipped on my jacket and my shoes, and followed the man – servant or secretary – along the corridor, then down a much wider staircase than the one I had been dragged up, and into an entrance hall with a black and white marble floor and oak-panelled walls. Everywhere you looked, the touch of an interior decorator could be seen. Everything – even the older pieces of furniture – looked new, shining with polish, as if they had just been put there.

The servant padded across the hall, then through a large drawing room. This was full of enormous armchairs and sofas, fitted with loose covers in a gold cloth, with yellow corded piping. On the walls hung oils of eighteenth-century ladies and gentlemen, clutching children or muskets. A door had been opened up in the far wall of the drawing room. This
led into a vast glass conservatory. At first, all I could see was a profusion of tropical plants and orchids. The hiss of a spray could be heard and I saw an automatic mister travelling along a rail above the beds of plants, showering them in a fine rain. There were two people in the conservatory. One I did not know. The other, stepping from behind a palm tree as I approached, was Narrow Face. A marble table laid for two stood at one end of the room and at the other end was a hotplate, on which various covered dishes had been set out.

The tall, dark-skinned man was dressed in a white shirt and black trousers and he was impressive-looking, in some way I could not at first define. His black hair was slicked back from his forehead with a lotion that gave off a sweet odour of almonds. He had a hawk nose and eyes that seemed very white and clear against his dark skin.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Gaunt,’ he greeted me. ‘My name is Mr Khan. Please come and sit down.’

I looked at him carefully. This was a Pashtun. He might be from the Pakistan side of the border or from the other side, Afghanistan. Either way he came from a difficult part of the world. I stepped forward and shook his hand when he offered it. It was rough and calloused. He waved me towards a chair.

‘You must be hungry after your journey,’ he said. ‘We have some curries here, some lamb, some biryanis. It is nothing much, but I hope it will suffice. I must apologise for the way in which you were brought here. Kevin!’

The smell of the food was so delicious and my hunger suddenly so overpowering that I almost felt inclined to overlook the fact I had been run over by a large car and then kidnapped. Until I had eaten something, at least. But then Narrow Face stepped forward and removed his sunglasses.
The result was not an improvement. Small weak eyes blinked at me as he said, ‘Sorry we bumped into you like that, old man. I was trying to park the car and was a bit careless. Do hope you’re feeling better.’

He stretched out his hand. I suppose he expected that I would shake it and say ‘No hard feelings’ or something equally stupid. Instead I stared at him until his hand dropped back to his side and his smile vanished. He was a mean, psychologically damaged-looking man. One day he would be a physically damaged-looking man if I had anything to do with it. Now was not the moment, though, so I just said:

‘Where’s my money, Kevin? And my watch?’

‘What is this?’ demanded Mr Khan. ‘Do you have some of his belongings, Kevin?’

‘Just for safe keeping, Mr Khan, sir,’ said Kevin. ‘You can’t trust the banks these days, can you?’ He reached inside his jacket and took out my wallet and the white envelope containing the cash. As he did so I saw he was wearing a shoulder holster under his jacket. He took my watch out of another pocket. The glass was cracked and the watch had stopped.

‘We were going to see if we could get the watch fixed for you, old man, but there wasn’t time.’ Kevin stepped forward, avoiding my eyes, and set my belongings carefully on the table. Then he stepped back and stood at ease.

‘Kevin, I am so glad you took these things only for safe keeping,’ said Mr Khan. ‘Because you know, in my country, if someone takes things that do not belong to them,
we cut off their hands
.’

The last words were spoken softly, but with an emphasis that made Kevin wince.

‘Leave us alone, now, while I give our guest some lunch,’ said Mr Khan. ‘Do not go far away, I may need you later.’

Kevin disappeared in the direction of the hallway. As far as I could tell we were on our own now, unless there was someone else lurking in the undergrowth behind us in the conservatory. The sun had come out and it was warm under the glass. Rich scents of unknown flowers and plants filled the air, mingled with the spicy smells of the food.

Mr Khan started spooning small amounts of delicious-looking saffron rice, and spicy morsels of lamb, on to a plate, which he handed to me. He poured me a glass of iced water from a copper jug.

‘Is it to your liking?’ he asked, helping himself to a modest amount of rice and a spoonful of curry.

‘Delicious, thank you very much.’

We both ate for a moment. Then Mr Khan said, ‘But I am forgetting my manners. You must be wondering why you were brought here in such a very extraordinary manner. I must apologise, by the way, for Kevin’s carelessness. I hope you are not hurt?’

I drank some water, and said, ‘I’m recovering. You seemed very keen to get me here.’

Mr Khan smiled.

‘Of course I will tell you why we went to such trouble in a moment. But first, do tell me a little bit about yourself, Mr Gaunt.’

‘There’s nothing much to tell,’ I replied modestly.

‘You are an English gentleman? A member of English society? Is that why you were dressed in evening clothes at eight o’clock in the morning?’

This time I was the one who smiled, despite myself. This was the first time I had been called a gentleman and I enjoyed
the irony. I wondered why Mr Khan wanted to know about me, and whether there was any reason I should tell him anything. Besides, what was my profession these days? In the last two years I had been a restaurateur for a while; then an ex-restaurateur. After that I had slipped gracefully down the social and economic scale. I had been a barman; a nightclub greeter; a bouncer and a debt-collector. You could take your pick. Few of my trades had lasted more than eight to twelve weeks and the most successful one since our restaurant had gone bust had been helping collect on unpaid or overdue loans. Even that, which was not exactly a gentleman’s career, had come to an end. I had been too forceful in my methods with one or two of the clients I considered were having a laugh at my employer’s expense.

‘No particular profession at present, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘My CV is broad, rather than deep.’

‘But you were in the army once, were you not?’

‘How did you know that?’ I asked, in surprise.

‘An inspired guess on my part. And now you are a gentleman of means – a man of leisure?’

‘I have plenty of leisure at the moment. I don’t have a job.’

‘And so last night you were at a Dance, perhaps, attended by other Members of Society? Or at a Cocktail Party? I have heard that the English are very fond of Dances and Cocktail Parties.’ As Mr Khan spoke he managed to invest each of these imagined jollities with capital letters. I laughed, and then winced as my ribs flared with pain.

‘No such luck, I’m afraid. I spent the evening at a club.’

Mr Khan looked very respectful.

‘Ah yes, an English club. And this morning you went for a walk to take exercise? The English are fond of taking exercise, I have heard.’

‘Yes, I decided to go for a walk.’

‘All the way from London? That is many miles.’

Mr Khan appeared to be intrigued by my eccentric behaviour but I was becoming restless under his cross-examination. I had waited long enough for an explanation of why I had been kidnapped, and I wouldn’t have minded some compensation either. I decided to start asking a few questions of my own.

‘You have a wonderful house, Mr Khan, and a very good cook, and a very efficient staff. You must have worked hard to acquire such things around you.’

Mr Khan smiled again. He smiled often but the smiles never quite reached his eyes, with their brown irises surrounded by whites so clear they were almost blue. His eyes remained fixed on me all the time we spoke, scarcely blinking.

‘I have been fortunate,’ he said. ‘I am a trader and a private banker, a rich man back at home, and not a poor man even in this wealthy country. I live here for a few weeks every year and I like to keep the house up to a good standard for my friends and guests.’

‘And where is home, Mr Khan?’

‘Where indeed, Mr Gaunt? I travel so much I scarcely know where home is, or once was. A long time ago it was a small village in the mountains of my homeland. Now Dubai is my base, but I also have houses in Palermo, Beirut, and here – I am a fortunate fellow.’

Mr Khan was good at not answering questions. I tried again.

‘You must do very good business, being a banker,’ I said politely.

‘Yes, the families I work for support me and I do my best to reward their good faith.’

There was a silence while we both continued to eat. The exchange of career notes seemed to be over. Mr Khan refilled my glass of water, and offered me more lamb, which I refused. He must have pressed a bell push out of sight under the table because the man in the dark suit appeared with a tray containing coffee cups. He set out the coffee things, cleared away the plates and dishes and retreated with his tray.

‘Are you a married man, may I ask?’ enquired Mr Khan, as we sipped our coffee. The conversation was becoming odder by the minute yet I felt a weird sense of inevitability about it.

‘No, as a matter of fact, I’m not,’ I admitted.

‘Have you ever considered it?’ asked Mr Khan. This was such an odd remark, in the circumstances, that I think my mouth dropped open for a moment. I decided to keep talking. Maybe in the end I would find out what this was all about.

‘Well, I might have done. But I have never really come close to the married state. Not so far.’

This was not quite accurate, but I felt that the present situation did not warrant too much candour.

‘I myself,’ said Mr Khan, taking a case from his pocket and offering me a large cigar, ‘have several wives. I have found marriage to be a rewarding state of affairs and I thoroughly approve of it. You won’t smoke? Do you mind if I do?’