Quintin Jardine - Alarm Call

‘I’ll try, but don’t die waiting. Now get on your way.’

I left him there and walked back the way we’d come, across the river and down to the Cowgirl. Jesus was there, waiting for me; when I arrived I thought he looked relieved that I wasn’t carrying a briefcase I hadn’t had before. ‘Back to the airport,’ I ordered. ‘I have to leave town in a hurry.’ I suppressed a smile as I saw the ‘hit man’ scenario reappear on his face.

Leaving Santa Fe seemed to be easier than arriving; soon we were on cruise, heading down Highway 85, towards the airport. I leaned back against the leather upholstery and thought about the family skeletons I’d stirred up for John Wallinger the Second. When we’d parted I’d decided that he was glad of my intervention; now he’d be able to give them a decent burial. I thought about him, his mother and the attitudes that had torn their family apart. I thought about Martha, about our time in Minneapolis and about the things that had happened there.

And as I did, slowly but surely the realisation came to me that in all of my going-on-for-forty years on the Planet Earth, I’d never been so unbelievably fucking stupid.

The jet was fuelled and ready when we arrived back at the airport, but I held it on the ground for a few minutes while I made a few phone calls.

When we did take off, the return flight was as smooth as the outward journey had been. At first we were headed east; Troy flew a little further than was strictly necessary before banking and turning towards Nevada, so that I could enjoy the pampered tourist view of the mountains that make Santa Fe a ski resort in winter.

I was grinning to myself for much of the way, barely looking at my script. Rafaela must have wondered what a man can get in Santa Fe that isn’t on offer in Las Vegas, but the only thing she asked me was whether I wanted my white wine topped up. I knew that I’d been drinking too much over the previous week, but that would change soon enough. Lots of things would change.

The Strip was just starting to cool down, and heat up, when the courtesy car brought me back to the Bellagio. I wondered whether Prim would be waiting for me in the suite, but she was, curled up on one of the big couches in the living area, wearing a sarong that I hadn’t seen before. It looked as if it had come from one of the shops downstairs. There was an ice-bucket on the coffee table, with a bottle of Chablis Premier Cru and two glasses. As I came in she smiled at me, got up, and poured me a glass.

‘How did your day go?’ I asked her, as she handed it to me. ‘Any contact?’

She nodded solemnly. ‘He called. He wants to do it tomorrow.’

‘Who called?’

She looked at me as if I was an idiot; which, of course, I was. ‘Paul.’

‘Can’t have been Paul,’ I told her. ‘I’ve just seen Paul, or what’s left of the poor bastard. His brother found him, in a sanctuary for the nearly dead in Santa Fe.’

Prim’s mouth dropped open and her knees sagged; for a moment I thought she was going to faint, but she sat back down on the couch. ‘You’re mad,’ she gasped. ‘What story did he feed you?’

I loosened my shirt, kicked off my loafers. . no socks in Vegas. . and slid down beside her. ‘The only thing he fed me was a catfish po’ boy,’ I told her. ‘The guy who’s been dogging our footsteps for a week is not, never was and never will be Paul Wallinger. I have seen the real Paul, not an imitation.’ I was thirsty; I insulted the Chablis by draining half the glass in a swallow, but made up for it by reaching out to top it up again.

‘Are you certain?’

‘Absolutely. Your Paul couldn’t have been Paul. You want to know why? Two reasons. One, when your guy was making love to you in Gleneagles Hotel, Paul was having a stroke on stage in Albuquerque. Two, the real Paul wouldn’t have fancied you at all, for he’s gay.’

I found that I was laughing. I shouldn’t have, for she looked so bewildered. ‘So if he isn’t Paul, who is he?’

‘Ah, fuck it. Let’s just call him Jack. That’s the name he used in Minneapolis; Jack Nicholson.’ I looked at her, in a way I hadn’t for a while. ‘I just can’t believe that you were taken that badly, love. Hook, line and fucking sinker.’

My eyes locked on hers. I went to sip the Chablis, but stone me, it had evaporated again. This time she poured my refill. I chuckled as I sipped it; at least, I thought I was sipping it; the stuff really was very drinkable. ‘What’s the deal, then?’ I asked her.

‘What do you mean, the deal?’

‘You know. The deal, trade, kiddie barter.’ Suddenly I felt hot, very hot; I unbuttoned my shirt all the way down, and tugged it from my waistband. Or at least I thought at the time that I had done it; maybe it was Prim.

‘Well, here’s the deal,’ she whispered. She leaned into me and kissed me. And then it all got confused. I gave the sarong a tug; it just seemed to come away in my hand. I tried to focus on her; I couldn’t, but it didn’t matter. I knew her body well enough; the extra bits were just a bonus. All at once I felt euphoric, exultant, calm and enormously, extravagantly horny. As she undid my belt and slid off my pants, I wasn’t thinking of anything but her and how funny, outrageous and amazingly stupid the whole thing had turned out to be.

As we rolled off the couch and she went down on me on the carpet, all I could do was giggle like a clown. As she straddled me all I could think of was that she was a fucking lunatic, but right at that moment I didn’t care because I was loving what I was getting. It was so good that a little light kept flashing before my eyes, every few seconds or so.

‘It was the duck, you know,’ I chuckled into her ear. ‘Now, it’s so fucking obvious that you put that duck in Martha’s bathroom, then made sure I went for a slash.’ I laughed louder. ‘You even drank all that fucking root beer so I wouldn’t think anything of it. I fell for it too. I bought it all,’ I giggled, ‘right up till this afternoon.’

She arched her back, with me deep inside her, rolled her eyes, and then laughed back at me. ‘None of us are quite as clever as we think we are, Oz, especially you. Now shut your eyes, shut your mouth and enjoy, because this is the most expensive shag you will ever have in your life. Indecent Proposal was cheap stuff compared to this.’

Even that obvious clue would not have begun to untangle the slithering mass of snakes that had engulfed my brain. I hadn’t a bloody clue what she was talking about. As I looked up at her I felt that I didn’t even care what she was talking about. Okay, it had been a set-up all along, an ingenious outrageous set-up, with me as the set-ee. . I laughed even more manically at that. . but so fucking what? This was great, Prim and me the way it used to be, the way it might have been, the way it could be again, and all I wanted to do was sleep off this one then have another, whatever the price-tag. All of it, the real meaning of it, would have passed me by, but for one thing.

It was just then, with the last small piece of my brain that was still functioning, that I realised that we were not alone. There was someone else in the room, a faint hazy figure, and either he was a waiter come in to clear away the ice-bucket. . no way, Jose, that’s good stuff and it’s not finished … or he was someone else, doing something else. As I peered at him over Prim’s shoulder, another of those funny lights went off in a flash. This was no waiter.

Under any condition, if there’s one thing I hate it’s a fucking sneaking peeping Tom … an ironic label in the circumstances.

There is a dangerous moment in intoxication: it comes when a happy drunk becomes an unhappy drunk, and if one is in the wrong place at the wrong time, it can have serious consequences.