Reaction of the tiger, p.2
REACTION OF THE TIGEr, page 2
part #4 of André Warner, Manhunter Series
The process of getting to this idyll of debauchery was a matter of routine, though as ever when international borders were to be crossed, not without some risk. The only forms of transport that allowed me to go forth without leaving an electronic trail were trains and cars. I could use cash throughout the journey, which meant no paper trail of bank card transactions. Flashing my passport was to be avoided, which meant going by air was a no-no if an alternative means of travel was available. Flying required proof of identity and payment in advance by credit or debit card. Bank card transactions left traces. Passports were checked against a central computer and their use logged.
Sea travel was a shade less hazardous. Passports still had to be presented when boarding ferries, though the examination was usually cursory and details seldom logged. My blond hair and stereotypical Anglo-Saxon looks were a plus in this respect. Often as not I was waved though as soon as I proffered the red UK/EU passport – never the blue Canadian one when travelling within Europe. Being less familiar to border guards, it tended to prompt further inspection, making me stand out from the EU herd. To be British and of unremarkable appearance was the next best thing to invisibility.
Transit through Andorra, like most EU countries, was not passport controlled at the border except for vehicles bearing non-EU licence plates. No fuss then, when I left the tiny country I called home, and entered France in my Spanish-plated Range Rover Evoque SUV, uninspected and unrecorded. I meandered down through the foothills of the Pyrenees to sea level, joining the autoroute north of Perpignan for an uneventful run along the coast, by-passing Montpellier and Marseilles. I used only cash to pay the outrageous toll levies, and to replenish the tank and my stomach.
It was dusk when I exited the A50 to enter the city of Toulon, with its naval port and ferry service to Sardinia. I muscled into the clogged traffic on the Avenue de la République, where the streetlights alternate with tired-looking fan palms, escaping at the first opportunity via a sharp right exit into the Port Maritime. Two ferries were parked there, their yellow hulls the only bright spot in the fading light. Along their sides the inscriptions Corsica Ferries – Sardinia Ferries.
France had re-imposed border controls in the wake of the Paris bombings and the immigration crisis, so I could expect a more thorough than usual scrutiny of my passport at the point of embarkation, and possibly at the other, Italian, end. When on a contract I travelled under a false identity, created for the duration only, and carried a full set of supporting documents which were destroyed after the job was done. When on legal or quasi-legal business, as now, I travelled as the alternative me, Jack Henley, upstanding British subject. This was an identity I had set up two years before to exist in parallel to my real self, for use on those occasions when André Warner needed to preserve his incognito.
At the Toulon ferry point, a flash of my UK passport sufficed to clear me through. The yawning official didn’t even take it from my hand. So much for the tougher security measures in the wake of the growing terrorist threat. I proceeded to the ferry check-in. Here my passport was needed to confirm I was the person who had made the on-line booking. No avoiding it, but no matter. A check-in clerk was not a policeman, and therefore not a threat.
‘Allez-y, monsieur,’ he said, as he handed back my passport and boarding card. Go ahead.
It was dark when I entered my cabin, on the port side of the vessel. The overhead light came on as I opened the door with my card. I dumped my overnight bag on the left hand of the two beds. First, I would eat, then I would sleep. As the ferry docked at about 6.00am, I would be rising early.
First phase accomplished. Tomorrow I would be in Sardinia, throwing myself at the mercy of a group of men who would kill me without compunction if I refused to do their bidding. All I had to do was persuade them to cut me some slack, bend a little. Not a lot to ask. You would think.
* * * * *
The love of my past life was my wife, Marion. She was murdered fourteen years ago as fallout from my then-job with the British Secret Intelligence Service. She was, in the true and literal sense of the word, irreplaceable. Her memory lived on, unsullied, unmarked by advancing years. Forever twenty-six years old, and never a day passed without my silent observance of her memory.
Then, a year ago to the month, a woman named Maura Beck crossed my path in bizarre circumstances. She and her eight-year old daughter Belinda became the twin loves of my present life. Together the three of us made a stab at creating a regular nuclear family.
It hadn’t worked out. Maura knew too much about me. In particular she knew all about the line of work I was in, and she made it a condition for the continuation of our relationship that I get out of it. If only. Getting out of it would have had unpleasant consequences, for me certainly, for Maura and Belinda potentially. For their sakes above all, I had to keep riding the treadmill. Maura couldn’t live with that. She left, taking my hopes and dreams with her. Life reverted to loveless and soulless and generally going nowhere.
Memories can hurt. Memories of the mornings when I awoke with Maura beside me, when we kissed and exchanged nonsenses; when Lindy came hurtling into the room insisting that we were ‘dirty stop-in-beds’ and we should be up and doing things. Ah, the memories of what had been and what might have been. Nowadays, lying in bed alone, in the pre-dawn darkness, entombed in silence, was when those memories were at their most virulent, when I found it hard to shut them down and just get on with my life as was, not as I wished it could be.
Because I couldn’t set my mind free of her, yet was still subject to normal heterosexual impulses, I began seeking out women of a similar facial type. Once I got over mourning Maura’s absence and set the self-pity aside, I had found I could still be smitten by women with her porcelain prettiness, Cupid’s bow lips, dazzling eyes … After a few false starts, Jacqui Lyndon walked into my life. She was the closest lookalike to Maura yet. I had made a play for her, the way I used to make a play for any attractive female who came within hit-on range, and she had been responsive.
It happened in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux. I was appraising Henri Matisse’s portrait of black bearded Carlo Pignatelli aka Bevilacqua, when I became aware that I was not the only one. My sidelong glance was transformed into a double take on account of the surface resemblance to Maura, and it caught her attention. She didn’t speak, just fashioned an eyebrow into an interrogation mark. Some people can do that.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, with an apologetic half-smile. ‘You resemble someone I know.’
She looked English, or of English descent, so I had addressed her in that language. I was not wrong.
‘It seems to me I’ve heard that chat line before,’ she retorted, but there was no heat in her words. She wasn’t taking offence.
‘It’s true though. You really do.’ I aimed a finger at the painting. ‘You go for Matisse?’
‘Not usually. A shade too sombre for my taste. I’m an impressionist fan, but portraits don’t do much for me. Like this one.’
I tended to share her view. We studied the portrait together companionably for a minute or so, then she asked me if I was on vacation.
‘Yes. Bordeaux is one of my favourite cities.’
She seemed surprised.
‘Really? Why is that?’
I laughed. ‘You obviously don’t share my enthusiasm. Tell you what, I’ll stand you a coffee in the museum canteen, and we can air our opposite perceptions. Deal?’
She didn’t play coy, just smiled and nodded and said, ‘That would be pleasant. I’ve pretty much done the tour here anyway.’ She stuck out a slender hand with unpainted nails. ‘I’m Jacqui Lyndon.’ She spelled the Jacqui for me.
‘A pleasure to meet you,’ I said. ‘André Warner at your service.’
That was it. We took coffees together, made animated conversation and a date for later. A few dates after that we were sharing a bed.
She was a widow by marital status, a gynaecologist from the Royal London Hospital by profession, taking a two-year sabbatical with six months left to run, to get over the trauma of her husband’s unexpected death. He had been a self-made man who left her his construction company when he expired from a stroke before his fiftieth birthday. Disposal of the business didn’t make her rich, just independent.
Her looks were most of what she had in common with Maura. In temperament, she was less outgoing. Not an introvert, just a more subdued personality generally, though she was good at setting her inhibitions aside in bed. Her figure was easy on the eye, with subtle curves in the usual places and no surplus flesh, thanks to an exercise regime and selective eating. She was thirty-eight, and lived alone. During the two years since her husband’s demise there had been no men seriously in her life. Now, tentatively, there was me.
Six weeks into the relationship we were beginning to feel at ease in each other’s company. For me though, she could never be more than a stop-gap. A passing fancy until I could win Maura back, fading hope though that was. The connection was strictly physical. I enjoyed her company, I took advantage of her body, and that was enough for now.
* * * * *
Jacqui’s home was on the north coast of Cornwall, England. A romantic fisherman’s cottage, converted and extended, overlooking the sea and the little tourist town of Tintagel with its ruined castle, that legend has it was King Arthur’s Camelot. She had been willed the cottage by an obscure aunt whose existence she had forgotten until she was notified of her demise. Lucky for her that the aunt hadn’t been similarly forgetful. I had weekended there twice; now, in a ratcheting up of our courtship, I was playing house guest for a whole week.
She had a dog, a cocker spaniel called Sam. Brown and white coat. Dopey, needy, and always hauling a mouthful of a disgusting, slather-filmed ball he wouldn’t be parted from. Except when someone was willing to throw it.
When I was introduced to him he had jumped up and tried to slurp my face. I had resisted.
‘It’s because he likes you,’ Jacqui said in reproof.
‘Yeah, the way a kid likes lollipops,’ I said. ‘Dogs like everybody, you know that.’
Sam and I had eventually come to an accommodation. I patted his head whenever he came within range and he laid off trying to lick me to death.
By the sixth day of this, my third visit, I hadn’t been licked once, except by Jacqui. The weather had been the usual English cocktail of sun and showers. If I had been there in the company of Maura instead of Jacqui it would have been next best thing to paradise. When it was fine we played tennis or rented a little dinghy and sailed along the coast; when it rained we played badminton or chess or took in a movie. Or whatever the weather we would walk Sam along the path that wound over the cliff tops, above the rocks, the coves and the thundering surf. Stuff like that. Jacqui was easy-going and easy to be around. But she wasn’t Maura.
Drinking al fresco at the Camelot Castle Hotel, a short downhill drive from the cottage, had become a regular event for us, always subject to the cooperation of the Cornish weather. Like today, the wind no more than a frisson of air, the temperature around twenty Celsius at six o’clock in the evening. We had secured a prime spot on the terrace bar with its wooden tables and integral bench seats. Sam, blowing through his nostrils in resignation, had settled down under my seat, munching his ball, poised to pounce on scraps from the table. The outlook was rugged coastline and water. A few curling crests, a couple of sailing boats, the odd container ship edging across the horizon. The sea didn’t reflect the mainly blue sky with its scraps of cloud. The Atlantic never does. The little town down the hill was emptying of its daily intake of Arthurian memorabilia seekers and pretty soon the tourist tat shops would shut down for the night. For a few hours Tintagel would revert to a normal, rather staid Cornish town.
Across the table, Jacqui was sitting in moody silence, her gaze transfixed on water, her blue-grey eyes with their curving lashes glistening as if she were about to cry, though I had yet to see the colour of her tears. On the contrary, she was half smiling to herself, nursing her near-empty glass of white wine against her chest. The breeze ruffled the skirt of her red and white, low cut dress, which she kept smoothing down, an automatic action, her mind clearly on a different plane. When she caught me watching her, her smile filled out, reaching her eyes, but reflecting something besides joy. Disappointment perhaps. Or regret.
‘Penny for them,’ I said, knowing she was upset and the reason. She had asked me to tell her more about what I did for a living. I who seemed to be on perpetual vacation, with no commitments or obligations or visible means of support for my rich man’s lifestyle. It was a legitimate question and naturally I couldn’t give her a truthful answer. The divide that had opened between us arose because she disbelieved my invented story.
‘That’s how you keep the wolf from the door – playing the stock market?’ she had said, incredulity in her arched eyebrows. Her accent was Home Counties, her education private followed by a three-year stint at Oxford. First class honours degree in medicine. She had class, and to spare.
‘You disapprove?’
‘No, it’s not that. I have no opinion on buying and selling shares for a living. It’s just that … somehow, it doesn’t ring true. I haven’t seen you plugged into the stock market while you’ve been here, and I can’t say you strike me as the stockbroker type.’
‘Oh?’ I said, with a jeering little laugh. ‘How do I strike you then, Jacqui?’
She gnawed her lip a little before answering.
‘As a philander, certainly; as a soldier of fortune, possibly. As a man of deeds rather than of numbers.’
‘Sounds glamorous. Should I be flattered?’
She narrowed her eyes at that. ‘I couldn’t say, André. I don’t feel I know you well enough. And, suddenly … I feel I know you even less well.’
It was at that point she had withdrawn into herself and fallen quiet. Her hand, which had been beneath mine on the table top, retreated like a scuttling crab and slid off the table altogether into her lap. Under my seat Sam grizzled and yawned. He had a very audible yawn that made his jaw click.
Around us other people, mostly tourists if their shorts and colourful T-shirts and sandals and general air of what-the-hell were any indicator. Drinking and chattering, on this, the terrace of Tintagel’s finest hotel-restaurant, with its ochre brickwork and crenellated roof. And its view from the terrace “to die for”.
I lifted my pint of cider that had come straight from the barrel – a slightly cloudy golden hue with thin layer of froth on top. It was strong stuff this West Country “scrumpy”, to be consumed with discretion and not at all if you were planning to get behind the wheel of a car. Fortunately, Jacqui was driving.
‘Would you like a refill?’ I asked her.
She quit nursing the glass and placed it on the table.
‘No, thank you. In fact …’ She looked at me head on. ‘I think I’d like to go.’
‘Home? Okay.’
As we were shacked up together until the day after tomorrow, presumably she wasn’t simply desperate to get away from me.
I had already paid for the drinks, so we hooked Sam up to his leash and left, much to his delight, which he demonstrated by trying to chase after a dachshund and almost upending me in his enthusiasm. We retrieved Jacqui’s Lexus from the pub car park, and she piloted us through the narrow, twisting roads of north Cornwall, back to her cottage.
My means of support weren’t mentioned again that day, or the next day, or the next when she drove me to Exeter airport for my flight to Toulouse.
At any rate, not until we were saying our goodbyes as I prepared to go through to the final departure lounge, and even then the allusion was oblique.
‘Honesty for me is the most important element in a man-woman relationship,’ she said, as we stood there, my hands holding her arms above the elbow, and hers mine. I knew what was coming.
‘Not if it hurts,’ I countered. ‘Not everyone can take the truth.’
She conceded that. ‘Even so, for me it’s a necessity.’ Her eyes met mine; lovely as they were, they were not Maura’s eyes, or even close. ‘Even if it does hurt. A relationship based on deception is not worth having.’
‘That’s a little too black and white for me,’ I said, wondering where this was going. Maybe nowhere. ‘Are you saying, in a roundabout way, you don’t want to see me again?’
‘Hah! That’s just it. I do want to see you again. Very much, perhaps too much for my own good.’
It sounded as if she was not fooled by the wholesome image I strove to present to the world.
‘So, where do we go from here?’
‘From here, my darling? I really couldn’t say, except I’m not ready to call it a day. Are you?’
I shook my head. Although I could take her or leave her, I didn’t fancy searching for another Maura lookalike just yet. They were a rare species.
We parted, still friends, still lovers. The commitment was sealed with a kiss that fired me up more than was good for me, given our very public location. An arrangement was made for her to visit me in Andorra a couple of weeks hence.
And with her still no wiser about what I really did for a living.
Two
It was still dark when the ferry docked in Porto Torres, on the north coast of Sardinia. Disembarkation and the passport and customs procedures took another half hour or so. When I motored out of town to join the SS131 highway to the south, the sky was just beginning to shade to pink above the Monte Limbara mountain range. Traffic was confined mostly to tourists, just off the ferry like me. I had about two hundred and forty km ahead of me, say three hours of driving plus stops on this, the final lap to the lair of Luigi Sansotino, head honcho of Il Sindicato. A man allegedly more ruthless, more unforgiving than Hitler. Or Mussolini, at any rate.
