The Follower (15 page)

He lifted her from the bed. Once again her arms moved up around his neck trustingly. As he carried her across the room, she stirred and moaned.

‘No,’ she said suddenly. She moaned again. ‘No, no, oh no.’ Her voice trailed off and then, just as unexpectedly, she cried: ‘Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Oh, goddam it, don’t let them come in here again.’ She giggled then, that awful giggle.

He was trembling all over. He put her in the second bed and drew the sheets and the chartreuse coverlet over her. She moved her head voluptuously against the pillow and then lay quite still.

Her clothes were lying sprawled on the floor. Instinctively he picked them up and went to the closet. He hung the jacket on a hanger. He tried to hang the skirt, but didn’t know how to do it neatly. He threw it on to a hook.

Behind him, in a clear, perfectly normal voice, Ellie said: ‘What time is it?’

He spun around. She was half-sitting up against the pillow. Her arm was flung over her face as if the light hurt her eyes. He ran back to the bed and dropped down at her side.

‘Ellie,’ he cried. ‘Ellie, baby.’

He touched her. She shied away from him and sat bolt upright, the arm still covering her eyes.

‘Ellie, it’s Mark.’

The arm dropped from her face. She looked straight at him. Uncertainly she put her hand out towards him and then drew it away again.

He said: ‘It’s all right, honey. It’s me. It’s Mark.’

‘Mark.’ She said his name very softly. ‘Mark.’

He longed to take her in his arms, but he was afraid of scaring her. Things didn’t really make sense to her yet. She was only half-way over the threshold of reality. She raised a hand to her hair and patted at it. Slowly she moved her gaze around the room, looking at a chair, a drape, the other bed, trying to place herself in some setting. It seemed too difficult for her.

‘I was in Finland,’ she said. ‘There were great enormous white polar bears. They sang. They sang “Wash me in the Blood of the Lamb” in repulsive syrupy voices and blew trumpets and banged tambourines. They were Salvation Army polar bears.’ She whimpered and threw herself forward, pressing her face against his shoulder. ‘Don’t let them come back. Whoever you are, don’t let them come back.’

‘Mark,’ he said.

‘Mark,’ she said obediently. ‘Mark.’

He put his arms around her and held her close. Once again he told himself that she was here — his wife was here. But it was like holding a ghost.

‘They wanted me to sing with them,’ she said dreamily. ‘I wouldn’t. I said I wasn’t going to go around singing with any old polar bears that happened to pass by. I….’ She started to laugh. ‘Goddam evangelical polar bears.’

‘Forget the polar bears, baby. They’ve gone now.’

‘Yes, they’ve gone.’

Maybe he shouldn’t force her back too soon. But the suspense had gone on too long to be supportable.

‘Effie, can you understand me?’

‘Of course I can understand you.’

‘It was George, wasn’t it? George took you to that house and doped you.’

She stirred in his arms, looking up at him. Her mouth was against his cheek. Her eyes were obviously making a great effort to catch on to the present.

He repeated, ‘It was George, wasn’t it?’

A little secret smile twisted her lips. ‘My husband is in Venezuela,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t talk that way if my husband wasn’t in Venezuela.’

Stubbornly, he went on: ‘Victor, Ellie. Is George tied up with Victor?’

‘Victor,’ she echoed.

‘Yes, Victor.’

‘Victor’s never been to Finland. He hated seals.’ She patted at her hair again. All the intelligence was back in her face, but she was as far away from him as she ever had been. She smiled the sudden, studiedly charming smile of a woman at a cocktail party.

‘Would it be too much trouble if I asked you for a glass of water? It’s terribly stuffy in here. My throat feels dry as a bone.’

He hesitated.

She said: ‘Oh, please, just one glass. That wouldn’t be too great an imposition, would it?’

This new, bright mood was even more harrowing than the stupor. To keep from looking at her, he got up and went into the pink-tiled bathroom. There was a pink plastic tooth glass. He filled it with water and carried it back. In his absence, Ellie had picked up the handbag. All of its contents were strewn haphazardly over the chartreuse spread. She was sitting upright with her large square silver compact in her hand, patting at her face with the puff.

When she saw the glass, she reached for it. The compact fell out of her hand on to the floor.

‘Oh, thank you. This
is
kind.’

He sat down again beside her. As she started to drink the water, her eyes closed. The glass tilted in her hands. He took it from her. She fell back against the pillows and gave a contented grunt.

‘So sleepy,’ she murmured. ‘Shocking, isn’t it, to be so sleepy? It’s really a divine party. The most divine party.’

Her hand, with the sapphire ring sparkling in the light from the bedside lamp, moved to his knee. Very slowly she started to caress it.

‘Mark,’ she whispered. ‘Mark, my love, my only love.’

She hadn’t said that to him. He was almost sure she hadn’t the faintest idea he was there. It was just a thought that had strayed through her mind like the polar bears.

Her hand dropped from his knee. She twisted over on to her side with her back to him. In a moment she seemed to be fast asleep.

He sat with the empty glass in his hand, watching the steady rise and fall of her breathing. He had learned nothing from her, and his frustration took the form of a restless claustrophobia. As the minutes dragged by, the prospect of having to stay here all night, waiting, doing nothing, became unendurable. The unfulfilled need for action still nagged at him and he began to invent reasons why he should not be sitting here idle.

Although he had rescued Ellie, Frankie was still impersonating her. She and George had some scheme under way which involved Ellie’s name. Until he knew what the scheme was he had won only half the battle, and time might be an all-important element. By sitting here, he was leaving the field to them. Shouldn’t he go and hunt them down now?

It would be easy to find them. Since Oscar had let them keep Ellie prisoner in his house, he would certainly be in touch with them. Oscar would still be on duty at the Hotel Granada, and Oscar was probably the most easily corruptible of all the inhabitants of Mexico. Ellie was safe here. They had not been followed from Oscar’s house. There was no way in which Frankie and George could possibly trace her.

Yes, at least he could go and see Oscar. After he’d done that he could judge what the next move should be.

He didn’t realize he had talked himself into this
—
largely because staying here with Ellie was too great a strain on his nerves. He got up from the bed. As he did so, he saw Ellie’s compact on the floor. The mirror in the lid had come loose and a photograph which had been behind it had slipped out on to the carpet.

He picked it up and remembered it immediately. It had been taken on the only night that they had gone together to the Lorton Club after their marriage. Ellie, in a low-cut black dress, was smiling radiantly, a balloon glass of brandy raised to the camera. He was grinning too
—
broadly, almost foolishly happy. The memory wrenched him.

Then he stiffened. Behind the bar, between their two photographed images, was a barman wearing the typical unobtrusive smirk of an employee caught in a picture with customers. Mark must have noticed in the past that a barman figured in the photograph, but he had never paid him any attention.

Now the barman became the only important thing in the snapshot because he was, quite unmistakably, George.

So one question, at least, had answered itself. George and Frankie were not something new. They were Victor’s hirelings. The whole picture fitted together, with Victor as the key figure. Victor had been ahead of him all the time, and, surely, with these complications of kidnapping and impersonation, there must be more at stake than Ellie’s gambling debt. It may have started that way. But now Victor must have some really important project afoot in which Ellie’s identity, if not Ellie herself, was of vital significance.

Now the unresolved danger for Ellie seemed infinitely greater and the need to challenge it correspondingly more urgent.

He was still wearing the topcoat with George’s gun in its pocket. In the bed Ellie was lying sound asleep, her hand with the wedding ring and the sapphire curled under her chin. It was almost certain that she wouldn’t wake up for hours. But, just in case she should, he scribbled a note on Hotel Mirador stationery, telling her to stay in the room, whatever happened, and wait for his return.

He propped it against the mirror of the vanity and, bending over the bed, kissed his wife gently, unemotionally, the way one kisses a sleeping child.

Then he hurried out of the room.

IDLERS were still promenading the main street in the mild mountain darkness. Movie houses announced their wares in glaring neon. Across the way, on the fringes of the park, couples still made leisurely love. It was a night in which time had completely lost its orthodox form for Mark. It seemed impossible that these ordinary city activities could still be going on, that it was little more than two hours ago that he had left this spot in search of Ellie.

He walked into the lobby of the Hotel Granada. A scattering of American tourists, looking bored and discontented, sat around in the stuffy, red-leather seats, wondering what to do with Mexico now they had it. A bellhop was emptying ashtrays; he had been doing exactly that when Mark had come here the first time. Oscar, standing behind his trinket counter, was studying his fingernails with elegant approval. The moment he saw Mark his young face broke into a smile of unadulterated delight.

‘Ah, Mr Liddon, you come again to visit me.’

‘Yes.’

‘This time you find your wife?’

‘I found her.’

‘I am much contented.’ Oscar was obviously proud. ‘It is fortunate that I remember her dispatching address, is it not?’

He knew Mark must have discovered that the ‘dispatching address’ was his own house; he also knew that Mark would have found Ellie there kidnapped and doped. And yet he
blithely continued his pretense of innocence. This utter disregard for reality might have been disarming under other circumstances. It wasn’t disarming now.

Mark said: ‘Why was my wife held prisoner in your house?’

‘Prisoner?’ Oscar seemed pained. That is a most curious way to express it, Mr Liddon. My mother and my sisters are most kind to her. Especially my sister Carmelita.’ His face brightened. ‘Did you notice my sister Carmelita? Everyone says she is good almost as a saint. And pretty, pretty. She is only sixteen.’

An American man and woman, rather drunk, came to the desk for their key. Smiling apologetically at Mark, Oscar said: ‘Excuse me. I attend to this lady and gentleman.’ He handed them their key and bowed with grandiose deference. Then he came back to Mark and cupped his chin in his hand.

‘Yes, Mr Liddon?’

‘My wife had been doped. Did you know that?’

Oscar blinked. ‘Why, naturally, I know.’

‘What do you mean — naturally?’

‘She is a lady who is pleased by drugs. There are many ladies and gentlemen too who are pleased by drugs. Some prefer marijuana. Some prefer…’ He shrugged. ‘At the moment I forget the names of the various drugs. But it is most common.’

These appallingly sophisticated sentiments were spoken in a voice of boyish candor. ‘The whole story is simple, Mr Liddon. I am instructed not to tell. But’ — he glanced down at his new sweater — ‘since you are now my such good friend, I tell you? Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘It is this blond American man. This one I speak of, who is like you but more small?’

‘George.’

Yes, George. He explains that Mrs Liddon is pleased by taking drugs and does not find it convenient in the hotel. There are too many distractions, maids coming in to tidy, no doubt, things of that nature. He explains she wishes to find a quiet lodging.’

‘So you rented him a room in your house?’

Oscar smiled dazzlingly. ‘He was most pleased with it and has paid a most generous sum. I am happy to have made him and Mrs Liddon so contented.’

This was a preposterous story. At least, it would have been if it had involved anyone except Oscar and Victor’s George. With those two as central characters, it made complete sense. George wouldn’t think twice about representing Ellie as a dope-addict, and for the chance of picking up a few pesos Oscar would willingly have closed his eyes to a bare-faced kidnap plot.

‘Okay’, said Mark. ‘Now tell me where I can find George.’

‘Ah!’ Oscar’s brow furrowed. ‘This is more difficult. I do not think it would please George for you to know.’

Mark moved closer to the trinket counter. ‘I’m in a hurry and I’ve got a gun.’

‘A gun?’ Oscar gazed at him serenely. ‘But you cannot use a gun in the Hotel Granada, Mr Liddon. Observe.’ He gestured with a graceful arm towards a plump woman sitting in a nearby chair. ‘There is that American lady who is reading your Time magazine. And there’ — he indicated a man — ‘is that American gentleman. He is waiting for a telephone call from a lady whom he meets at the Osiris Club. He has been waiting for more than an hour. She will not call, I do not think. He does not look wealthy enough to interest the ladies of the Osiris. He should have gone to the Esmeralda. But you can understand that they would not like it — not if you used a gun.’

In spite of himself, Mark was succumbing to Oscar’s unparalleled combination of charm and gall. ‘I’ll take a chance on making them mad. Where’s George?’

The ecstasy which always appeared when the time came for a deal bathed Oscar’s face in a kind of acolyte’s radiance. ‘If I do tell you, Mr Liddon, George must not know that I tell from friendship. You must say you came ferociously like a bull and forced me to my knees with your gun.’

‘Okay.’

The boy threw him a glance of ravishing sweetness. ‘Tomorrow I buy my topcoat. It would please me to buy also a glove, a wool scarf and one of those English hats black and stiff — like this.’ He circled his head with a finger and took up the dignified stance of an English milord wearing a derby. ‘I tell you where George is for one hundred and fifty pesos.’