THE PERFECT KILL (11 page)

“You don’t have a first name…yes you do, I saw it on your file.”

Creasy’s smile widened.

“My father must have had a sense of humour. Creasy will do just fine. Now what has Bennett been able to give you?”

“Seems like it’s narrowing down to two Palestinian groups, Abu Nidal’s bunch or the PFLP-GC, headed by a guy called Ahmed Jibril. It might be some months before they prove which one.”

“I have the same info.”

He was looking over the Senator’s shoulder. Very quietly he said, “Jim, don’t look round now. There’s a woman sitting alone at the table behind you. Either she’s interested in me physically or she’s working for somebody. In a couple of minutes, go to the John and get a look at her.”

When the Senator returned from the toilet, he nodded pleasantly at the woman as he passed the table. She smiled back.

He sat down and said, “Nothing sinister. I know her. She works as a researcher for the House Committee on Justice…very bright. I’ve seen her in here quite a few times.”

“House researchers can afford this kind of place?” Creasy asked.

The Senator shook his head.

“No, not on their salaries. She comes from a wealthy family out in Maryland.”

Creasy looked at the woman. She was in her mid-thirties, tall with short black hair and a very graceful neck. The intelligence showed in her face. She was just on the right side of being not too pretty. She glanced up at him yet again and their eyes met. She looked away.

The food arrived and with it the sommelier. He picked up Creasy’s wine glass and poured an inch of wine into it. Creasy took a sip and his eyes narrowed as he savoured it. The sommelier nodded with great dignity and poured the wine into the Senator’s glass and then into Creasy’s.

“Fetch another glass,” Creasy said to him. The sommelier did so. Creasy took the decanter, half filled the glass and passed it to the sommelier. They all drank. The sommelier sighed in satisfaction and said, “Thank you, sir, enjoy your meal.” Then still holding his glass he walked away to the kitchen.

Creasy guessed that he would be giving the chef a taste.

The Senator left first. It was still only ten o’clock. He apologised saying that he had a breakfast meeting at the House, and needed an early night.

“I’ll stay on a while,” Creasy said, “and have another coffee, maybe a Cognac”

The Senator winked.

“I wish you luck, Creasy, she’s a fine looking woman.” Creasy shook his head.

“It’s not that, Jim…it’s just that I’m interested in researching justice.”

He decided to have his Cognac in the bar. The Senator had told him the woman’s name. As he passed her table, he stopped, leaned down and said, “Miss Parkes, if you feel like an after dinner drink, I’ll be in the bar.”

Without giving her a chance to reply, he walked away.

The bar was all mahogany, dim lights with maroon tasselled lampshades and deep banquettes. Creasy went to a banquette in the corner and ordered a Cognac. When the waiter brought the drink, Creasy reached into his jacket pocket for money. The waiter shook his head.

“With the compliments of Mr. Henry, sir…the sommelier.”

“Please send my thanks to Mr. Henry.”

The woman timed it to perfection. Ten minutes passed.

Creasy glanced at his watch and decided that if she didn’t turn up in the next two minutes, she wasn’t going to. She walked into the bar, two and a half minutes later.

She was taller than he expected, about five feet ten, and as she walked, the knitted woollen dress swirled around her calves. Black suede Bally shoes with stiletto heels matched her black suede purse. She moved to the banquette with a long-legged graceful walk and sat down. Not next to him, but across from him about five feet away. They looked at each other as the waiter approached.

She ordered a Drambuie and then said to Creasy, “You must be important.”

“How so?”

“Senator Grainger counts his time carefully…he doesn’t waste it.”

Creasy smiled.

The waiter brought her Drambuie and again waved away Creasy’s offer of money. The woman took a sip of her drink and said, “Did the Senator tell you my first name?”

“Yes…Tracey.”

She had a low voice, almost throaty. She lifted her hand and pulled her hair away from her eyes, stroked her hand down it, moved slightly on the banquette. Body language.

“And yours?” she asked.

“Creasy.”

“Is that the first or second?”

“It’s the only name I answer to.”

She smiled again.

“Are you in politics?”

“No, and I never was. I’m retired.”

“What were you in?”

“I was a mercenary.”

She looked at him steadily and then asked the inevitable question.

“You’ve killed people?”

“I don’t remember.”

He told her that he was staying at the Hyatt Hotel. She told him that she had an apartment around the block. They went to her apartment.

In the bedroom she took off her dress. He took off his suit with the faint pinstripe. She looked at the scars on his body and then at the scars on his face and into his eyes.

“You should know now,” he said, “and know it for sure. I’m not a sadist, not even slightly.”

She smiled; her eyes almost closed.

“I’m not a masochist,” she said. “But I like it hard…Not rough but hard.”

She was high-breasted, and long-flanked. When he entered her, hard, it was eleven o’clock.

With the time difference, it was four o’clock in the morning in Gozo and Michael was making love to a woman for the second time in his life. This time he was in control. The first time, which was three hours before, she had been in control. She had explained things to him in a soft whisper.

She had taught him how to kiss and been astonished when he told her that he had never kissed a girl before; never touched a girl’s breast. She had laughed; not at him but with him. She had made him laugh. She had kissed him all over. She had taken him in her mouth but only briefly.

Then she had slid up his body and slid him inside her. It had been brief but beautiful. He had clung to her, pulled her so tight as to cause the breath to pump out of her.

Eventually, as they lay side by side, he asked into the darkness, “Is it always like that…so quick?”

She had laughed. “For some men, yes, but not for you, Michael. The next time will be longer.”

He had kissed her breasts and fallen into a deep sleep and she had let him sleep for three hours before waking him with a kiss.

In the apartment in Washington, on the huge antique four-poster bed, Creasy watched the woman’s face and increased his rhythm. The room was bright. She had wanted it that way. He squeezed her breasts and with his thumbs pushed her nipples deep into them. She arched her back and murmured, way down in her throat. He watched her eyes close tight, watched her mouth open. He kissed the open mouth pushing his tongue into it. He felt the shudders start, the spasms. Felt her long, elegant fingers digging into his back.

He knew when to stop. Knew when the pleasure would turn to discomfort. He left himself inside her, still hard, but eased his weight from her, still looking down at her face. She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. Her elegant fingers were now stroking his back like butterflies. She moved one of them and ran it down the scar on his cheek. Her body moved very slightly, savouring the aftermath. Savouring the feel of him.

“It didn’t happen for you,” she murmured.

“It will…just keep moving like that…no more than that.”

He felt the muscles inside her contract, grip him. He did not move at all. For the next few minutes they looked at each other, their faces inches apart.

She saw the pupils of his eyes dilate, felt his chest expand against her breasts and then felt the liquid going up into her body. Apart from his chest and his eyes, nothing else had moved.

In the apartment in Marsalforn, the woman looked up at Michael and said, “Think of something you don’t like…something you hate.”

His face showed surprise. He was moving smoothly, in and out of her. She was pushing up at him, breathing rapidly.

“Why?”

He was also breathing rapidly. His penis felt like a ticking bomb.

“Something you hate,” she murmured again, “quickly.”

She had one arm wrapped around him like a vice, her other hand gripped his buttocks, pulling him into her. He thought of spinach. He hated spinach with a passion. At the orphanage he had been forced to eat it more times than he could remember. Otherwise he got no dessert. Thinking of the spinach only gave him three more minutes but it was enough. He felt it happening to her, felt the ripples of her belly, felt her long legs come around him and squeeze, felt her hands tighten on him. Then it was happening to him. “That’s the way it should be,” she said later.

In the four-poster bed in Washington the woman was watching Creasy get dressed.

“We should do this again,” she said.

He was buttoning his shirt. He looked at his watch.

“I leave Washington in five hours,” he said, “and the country three hours later.”

“But you’ll be back?”

“Maybe. But maybe not for a long time.”

“You’ll call me if you do.”

It was a statement, not a question.

He was knotting his tie.

“Count on it.”

She smiled, but then her face turned serious. She rolled across the bed to be closer to him. She looked up and said, “Creasy, physically it was great. It was a sensation. Somehow you got to every single nerve ending in my body…but I didn’t get much feeling of emotion.”

He had finished tying his tie. He looked down at her. Hooded eyes in a scarred face. Very quietly he said, “We both used each other tonight and it was good. It will happen again and it will be good. But Tracey, don’t look for emotion. In my life, I loved one woman. She died some months ago. My emotions died with her. If you want your nerve endings stimulated, I’m your man. If you want emotion, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

She reached out and put her hands behind his knee, squeezing it. She was looking at him pensively. “Where do mercenaries live?”

He smiled at her. It was a warm smile. He liked her.

“Mercenaries live in holes, Tracey. They’re like rodents or reptiles.”

“I’ll give you my number,” she said.

He was putting on his jacket.

“I don’t need it…if I return, I’ll find you.”

The woman drove Michael back to the farmhouse. She had a yellow rented Suzuki jeep and they bounced around.

“Will you come back next summer?” he asked.

She was a fast driver and a good one, spinning the jeep through the narrow streets of Rabat.

“No,” she answered, “next year I’m going to Hong Kong.”

“Won’t you ever come back?”

She turned her head to smile at him.

“Maybe one day. I never plan more than a year ahead.”

She followed his directions through Kercem and then through the country lanes winding up to the ridge. They parked behind and above the farmhouse, looking out over it. It was dawn; the sun was rising, the whole island bathed in red.

“What a view,” she said in awe. “What a beautiful house.”

Then she leaned across and kissed him lightly on the lips and put a hand on his cheek.

“Goodbye, Michael,” she murmured. “Good luck.”

She had driven twenty yards down the track when she heard him call her name urgently. She stopped the open-topped jeep and looked back. He was smiling.

“Thank you,” he shouted.

She grinned and shouted back, “You’re welcome.”

In her bed, Leonie had woken at the sound of the jeep. She heard the exchange through the open window. She looked at the alarm clock. It was just after six. The clock was set to go off at seven, when normally she would get up and make Michael breakfast.

She thought about whether she should let him lie in on this morning and then decided against it. Creasy would have got him up and made him do his hundred lengths, no matter what. She turned over, pounded her pillow and drifted back to sleep. The alarm went off at seven. Thirty seconds later, she heard a tap on the door and Michael’s voice.

“Leonie, are you awake?”

“Yes,” she called.

“Can I come in?”

“Yes.”

The door opened and he came in carrying a tray. He put the tray down on the bedside table. On it was a mug of tea and a plate with two buttered slices of toast and a jar of marmalade. It was all she ever ate for breakfast.

“What’s all this?” she asked in astonishment.

“Isn’t that what you eat in the morning?” he asked.

“Yes, but…”

He smiled down at her and said, “Leonie. In future, I make breakfast.”

Creasy had taken an overnight flight from New York to Brussels and after checking through Immigration and Customs he carried his single canvas bag to a row of pay phones and dialled the number of a bar. Although it was only seven a.m. he knew the bar would be open. It was almost unique in that it stayed open twenty-four hours a day. The floors got cleaned around the customers” legs.

A voice answered. Creasy recognised the voice but disguised his own.

“A message for the Corkscrew. Tell him that C called. Tell him ten o’clock tonight.”

He hung up, walked out of the terminal and climbed into the back of a taxi.

“The Pappagal,” he said to the taxi driver. “You know where it is?”

“Sure,” the driver answered, “but you won’t get any action there this time of day. Unless you catch one coming out.”

“I can wait.”

It took forty-five minutes to reach the discreet brothel in a side-street near the EC headquarters. The heavy wooden door was opened by an old cleaning woman.

“We’re closed,” she said. “Come back tonight after eight”

“Tell Blondie that Creasy is here.”

She looked up into his eyes and stood aside.

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” he said.

He walked down the corridor on a thick pile carpet. Halfway down he glanced through an open door into a room. It was very plush. Deep settees, thick, heavy curtains, chandeliers and a small bar. It was full of furniture but empty of people. He continued down the corridor to a door on his left.