ADAM HALL - The Mandarin Cypher

Then I walked back round the corner and through the ornate doors.

'The gentleman forgot something?'

'What? No, I was double parked, that's all.'

I went to the bar and took a stool at the end near the heavy curtains: in this area there was no backwash of light from the floor-show and I could watch the Tewson woman and the Chinese couldn't watch me because the ceiling-high papier-mache dragon was in the way.

'Indian tonic.'

'Gin and tonic? Yes, sir — '

'No. Listen. In-di-an tonic.'

'Excuse me.'

I 'You're perfectly welcome.'

From here I could see the magnum of Veuve Clicquot and the dozen gardenias on her table but couldn't at this distance tell whether she was pleased with them or not. The flying tray trick hadn't gone down too well.

'Christ,' she'd said, 'did you have to do that?'

'I'm terribly sorry — '

'That's not the point-look at this!' Indicating her model lame sheath, patches of scotch all over it, the waitress on all fours between us looking for the glass, Nora Tewson with her hands on the edge of the table as if she were going to make a speech because the banquette was behind her knees and she couldn't stand up straight without support, did I know how much this dress cost, couldn't I see where I was going, so forth, really am very sorry, such an exquisite dress, be delighted to pay damages, so on, till she went off to 'clean up', the waitress on her feet again, excited because it had broken the monotony and this called for a suitable tip, yes, fifty Hong Kong dollars and this hundred is for a magnum of champagne, look, let's go to the bar, I want it done before she comes back to her table.

The magnum hadn't been opened and she wasn't smelling the gardenias but I suppose she could have thrown the whole lot at the band.

'I s-say, d'you know those-those gairls have got holes in those — those net stockin's of theirs? Wha'?'

I looked at him.

'How can you tell?'

He gazed back at me, perched dead straight on his stool, knees gripping the sides, perfectly aware that in his present circumstances the C of G was critical. Expression of glazed outrage at my stupidity, white cavalry moustache bridling.

'Wha' — what erzackly does that mean — how can you tell ?'

He turned his back on me and raised his pearl-finish opera-glasses again after wiping the steam off the lenses. Half an hour later a Chinese chauffeur in white uniform came through the curtains and got him off the stool without a struggle and carried him out so cleverly that it looked as if he was walking.

An hour after that I saw her signing the bill and five minutes later as she came past the bar I was going across to the phone in the corner, my back to her.

'I must say you know how to apologize.'

I swung round.

'Apolo — ? Oh. The least I could do.'

'It was handsome.'

Tone much less sharp after four doubles: I'd been counting them. Now the brittleness had gone she looked defenceless but would obviously bite off the first hand that moved too quickly.

'I thought it best not to present it personally.' Tone rueful, rueful smile: doormat, please wipe.

Her face went still and her eyes became fixed on me, the pupils big in the near-dark here by the curtains. She couldn't have looked like this at me, or any man, sober.

'Pity you didn't,' she said.

Fair enough.

'May I see you home?'

Eyes thinking hard, still fixed on me, and I knew now why she'd bite if anyone got too near: for the same reason that any animal bites — because it's frightened.

'Yes.'

'Thank you. I'm Clive Wing.'

Her dark eyes stayed on me for another few seconds and then she turned her head away with a little jerk and I supposed that whatever the problem had been she'd made up her mind about it. It could have been the simple, the obvious: Tewson had died over two months ago and there'd had to come a time when she was ready to speak to men again and maybe it had come tonight.

Outside in the warmth of the night air she tried to light a cigarette and I said let me have that and took the magnum.

'I'm Nora Tewson,' she said and flicked the lighter shut as if making a point of it. We'd only moved a few paces from the doors and the Chinese came out too fast and saw us and tried to go back and realized he couldn't and went on past us, turning his head away to look up at the light across the acacia leaves, walking briskly towards the corner.

'The name rings a bell,' I said.

'Does it? My car's down that way.' We began walking. 'How did you come here?'

'In a cab.'

Because she wouldn't want to leave a brand-new Jensen lying around and I didn't want her to see the Capri. The only thing was that if I'd been driving I could have got rid of the tag, not overtly, just playing the lights and the traffic. But it might not be worth risking: of the half-dozen theories in my mind the one I liked best was that Tewson had been an agent in one of the London departments and had been knocked off by the opposition and his wife had been talked into a decoy operation, in which case the thin man might not be a tag but a bodyguard. That would explain her nerves.

'Beautiful job,' I said.

'It was expensive,' she said and swung out past the sand-bin, clearing it by a couple of inches. Her anxiety state was prompting a steady release of adrenalin, combating the alcohol: the psyche was relaxed enough to let her forget her widowhood for the first time but her physical reactions were still good enough to drive this thing through the eye of a needle.

'Tewson,' I said. 'That's Tee-ee-double-yew, ess-oh-en?'

'How long have you been in Hong Kong?'

'I flew in this evening.'

'Then you won't have heard the name.'

'I was here a couple of months ago.'

She gave a slight resigned shrug. 'Then you've heard it.'

The Honda swung into the chrome frame of the nearside wing mirror and stayed there until she turned off Gloucester Road and headed south. I counted five and the configuration moved into position again.

She drove as she'd driven before, her movements rhythmic and calculating, her eyes always straight ahead as if she had to stare something down, something in the future that would rush her into the present if she looked away and dropped her guard.

When there'd been enough time for me to think back and call it to mind I said: 'There was some kind of fishing accident, wasn't there?'

Pause.

'Yes.'

'And you don't want to talk about it.'

Pause.

'No.'

The magnum was half empty.

'Why aren't you drinking any, Clive?'

'Too acid.'

We were sitting on the thick Hangchow carpet and she looked at me over her clasped knees.

'Are you trying to get me pissed?'

'You've been helping yourself.'

She looked steadily at the magnum. 'That's perfectly true. God, this stuff goes right through you, doesn't it,' she said, and went out for the third time. 'Fix yourself some scotch or whatever you want.'

I looked around again. The overall picture was inconsistent: Ming to the tune of ten or fifteen thousand pounds and then a lacquer table you could pick up in Cat Street for a song, and in between them a brand new cocktail cabinet with chrome bamboo style legs imported from Birmingham. A nouveau riche with condescending friends who'd told her where to buy the Ming and hadn't been looking when she'd done some shopping on her own. But the total contents of this apartment would still pull in close on fifty thousand even at an auction and the Tewson dossier said they'd come here for the last two years on a package tour.

No books, no pictures. No picture of George Henry Tewson, even in the bedroom when she'd shown me proudly round. The whole apartment was just an expensive waiting-room.