Solo - Jack Higgins [72]
'To be back in Hydra for noon. I've got someone coming in from Paris. My French lawyer, Jean Paul Deville. You've heard me speak of him.'
'Will he be staying?'
'Probably only tonight. Business, that's all. Some important papers I have to sign.' His arm tightened and he kissed her cheek. 'But never mind that. Let's get you into that bath.'
*
In a way, it worked. She lay there, the hot water soaking away every ache, every pain and he brought her ice-cold champagne and brandy in a crystal goblet.
'It's beautiful,' she said. 'I've never seen it before.'
'Seventeenth-century Venetian. That great-great-great-grandfather of mine, the one who was Admiral of the Hydriot Fleet, took it off a Turkish ship at the battle of Navarino.' He grinned. 'Lie back - enjoy it while I make lunch.'
'You?' she said.
He turned in the doorway and smiled, spreading his arms wide in that inimitable gesture. 'And why not? Nothing is impossible to the great Mikali.'
The brandy and the champagne went straight to her head, yet in a way that was new to her. Instead of confusion, a dulling of the senses, there was a sharpening. She saw quite clearly now that this could not go on. This thing that was eating at her must be brought into the open.
She got out of the bath, pulled on a towelling robe, went into the bedroom and sat down in front of the dressing-table, combing her hair quickly. There was the softest of footfalls and he appeared in the mirror, standing in the doorway, anonymous in the dark glasses.
'Okay, angel, what is it?'
She sat there, staring at him in the mirror. Strange how easily the words came out.
'Remember my Welsh Colonel, Morgan; the one who came to see Lieselott Hoffmann?'
'Sure I do. The guy whose daughter was knocked down by the Cretan after the Cohen shooting.'
'How do you know that?'
'You told me.'
She remembered then and nodded slowly. 'Yes, I shouldn't have done. That was supposed to be confidential.'
He lit a cigarette and moved to the window beside her. 'Confidences? Between us?'
'He thinks you're the Cretan,' she said.
Mikali stared at her, bewildered. 'He what?'
'He says you were giving a concert at the Albert Hall the night the Cretan shot Cohen. That's on the other side of Kensington Gardens from where he dumped the car.'
'This is crazy.'
'He says you were at the Cannes Film Festival when Forlani was murdered.'
'So was half of Hollywood.'
'And at Frankfurt University when that East German minister, Klein, was shot.'
He turned her on the seat, his hands on her shoulders. 'I told you that myself. Don't you remember? The first time we met when I gave the Cambridge concert. We were discussing the Hoffmann girl and the circumstances of the killing and I told you I was in Frankfurt at the time.'
It all came flooding back then and she moaned in a kind of release. 'Oh, God, so you did. I remember now.'
His arms were around her. 'He must be out of his mind. Is he going round shooting his mouth off like this to everybody?'
'No,' she said. 'I asked him if he'd spoken to Baker, the Special Branch man, but he said no. He said it was his affair - nobody else's.'
'When did he tell you this?'
'Yesterday morning early - on the telephone.'
'And you haven't met him since?'
'No - he said he was going to do some more checking. That he'd keep me posted.' The tears came then. 'He's obsessed, don't you see? I'm so afraid.'
'Nothing to be afraid about, angel. Not a single thing.'
He led her across to the bed and pulled back the coverlet. 'What you need is sleep.'
She obeyed him like a child and lay there, her eyes closed, trembling. After a while, the coverlet was pulled back and he slipped in beside her.
She turned her head blindly into his shoulder as one arm went around her and the other hand unfastened her robe. And then his mouth was on hers and her arms were around him in a passion fiercer than she had ever known before.
Deville leaned on the balustrade of the terrace and looked out across the sea to where Dokos drifted in the afternoon heat haze.
Mikali came out through the