Silhouette in Scarlet - Elizabeth Peters [9]
He laughed. It wasn’t one of your hearty Norse guffaws, but a prolonged chuckle, as rich and mellow as his speaking voice was light. The moustache added a fascinating dimension to his smile. The ends actually appeared to curl up parallel to his lips. His teeth were big and white, just the dentures to rip into a haunch of raw meat.
‘You are unkind to us,’ he protested. ‘Why do you have a prejudice against this country?’
‘I’m not – I mean, I don’t. I’m half Swedish myself. The other half is a mixture – Norwegian, Swiss-German, American Indian, you name it. Like all Americans, I’m a mongrel, and proud of it.’
He frowned a little, as if puzzled. Abandoning the problem with a shrug, he announced, ‘My name is Leif Andersen. And yours?’
I hadn’t quite decided whether to give him an alias. The abruptness of the question, and the surprise at hearing a name so close to the one I had imagined for him, took me off my guard.
‘Vicky Bliss,’ I said, mumbling. We shook hands over the schnapps glasses. I felt my bones crunch.
He ordered another round, and asked me what I was doing in Stockholm. I said I was on holiday. I asked him what he was doing in Stockholm. He said he was on holiday. I have had livelier discussions with retired schoolteachers. Unperturbed, I sipped my schnapps and bided my time. Swedish men once had a reputation for reticence and reserve. Presumably customs had changed since the sexual revolution, although most of the enthusiastic comments I had heard about modern mores concerned Swedish women and were, I might add, based more on wishful thinking than on actual experience. It was all irrelevant. If Leif wanted to move in on me with the ponderous deliberation of a brontosaurus plodding toward its mate, I could wait. So long as he moved in. He was the tallest man I had ever met.
Then he said, ‘You are here alone?’
A slimy little tendril of caution poked out from under the erotic fantasies that had buried my suspicions. He didn’t look like a Swedish Jack the Ripper – but then, who does? And he had been at the airport . . . I lowered my lashes bashfully and remained silent.
‘I ask,’ he explained, ‘because when I saw you at the airport you were greeting a friend.’
‘He’s no friend of mine.’ I spoke without hesitation, as I would have denied being intimately acquainted with Hitler. ‘I thought I recognized someone I knew slightly . . . once . . . a long time ago.’
Leif leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. I caught one of the schnapps glasses as it slid towards the edge.
‘I think I can trust you,’ he muttered.
Oh, damn, damn, damn, I thought. Here we go.
The waiter trotted up just then to ask if we wanted anything else. Leif ordered another schnapps. I ordered coffee. I had the feeling I had better keep my wits about me, and I was grateful for the delay, as the waiter hovered, nudging Leif’s elbows off the table and lighting the candle enclosed in a stubby ruby glass holder. It wasn’t dark outside yet, and wouldn’t be for hours, but evidently evening had officially begun. The cafe was getting lively. In the background a small combo broke out in a disco beat.
As soon as the waiter had left, Leif leaned at me again. Little red flames reflected by his pupils shone diabolically.
Before he could speak, we were interrupted a second time. A man sidled up to us, cleared his throat deprecatingly, and in a soft, barely audible voice made a suggestion. It wasn’t a vulgar suggestion, though his manner would have suited a drug peddler or seller of dirty postcards. What he actually said was, ‘May I make a silhouette of the lady?’
The light was so dim I couldn’t make out his features clearly. The most noticeable thing about him was his hair, which was thick and coarse and lifeless, the same dull grey shade as his shabby pullover. Tinted glasses shielded his eyes. Crimson light glinting off the thick lenses gave him the look of a buggy-eyed monster from Arcturus or Aldebaran.
Taking my surprised silence for consent, he pulled out a chair and sat down. From his briefcase he removed a handful of papers and