Betrayals (20 page)

She did not bother with breakfast and was down in the foyer, waiting for him, half an hour before the agreed meeting. He arrived promptly on time, subdued today in gray trousers and white shirt and once more without any swagger. He carried a briefcase, the sort that locked by coded numerals, adding to the businesslike impression.

They took a taxi to the bank and he waited while she sought out the assistant manager who had taken her deposit and arranged the withdrawal of the £5,000. Janet accepted the money in a thick manila envelope and handed it straight to Nicos, who put it in the briefcase and twirled the numbers.

“How long?” asked Janet, on the pavement outside the bank.

“I don't know,” said Nicos. “You are going to remain at the Churchill?”

“Yes.”

“I'll contact you there, as soon as there is something. Just wait. It might take time.”

“Be as quick as you can,” she urged.

“I'll be as quick as it is safe to be,” he said.

Back at the hotel Janet realized, practically in surprise, that all she could now do was wait. She telephoned England to assure her father she was all right, holding back with difficulty the temptation to tell him about Nicos, saying merely that she thought she had made a useful contact and was hopeful of it leading to some sort of news about John. In the afternoon she sunbathed by the pool, managing to doze after her fitful night, and had just returned to her room when Partington called from the embassy, extending his delayed invitation for dinner the following night. Janet accepted, deciding she could always cancel if there were news from Nicos, and took care the following morning to tell both the reception desk clerk and the switchboard operator that she would be by the pool if anyone tried to get in touch with her. She became bored with sunbathing by lunchtime. She remained by the pool to eat but in the afternoon risked leaving the hotel briefly to walk to Laiki Yitonia to watch the lace makers at their open-air stalls and wander through the silk booths. After an hour she became worried that she might have missed contact from Nicos and hurried back to the Churchill. There were no messages.

Partington's wife was named Anne. She was a constantly moving, flustered woman who reminded Janet of her own mother and the evening became a further reminder of how fervently her mother had welcomed visitors from outside the insular, claustrophobic embassy enclaves in which they had served abroad. The beef was proudly served (“all there is here is lamb, you know”) and Partington poured French wine. Anne Partington said she hoped Janet didn't mind, but William had told her about the kidnap and wasn't it awful but she was sure it would all be all right. When his wife was in the kitchen preparing the coffee the attache asked how much longer she intended staying.

“I'm not sure,” said Janet.

“Have you seen anyone from the American embassy?”

“Yes,” Janet said. There did not seem any purpose in elaborating.

“What news was there?”

“None,” said Janet. “They warned I was interfering: that I should get out.”

“It's good advice.”

Twenty-four hours earlier the repetitive attitude would have depressed her, but it didn't now. Janet said: “I've only just got here.”

Partington looked towards the kitchen door and then back to Janet. He said: “There was a secure radio patch today, with Beirut.”

Janet came forward across the table. “And!”

“I only talked generally: about Waite and the journalist and then I asked about any other nationals …” The man faltered. “I don't know why I began this conversation.”

“What do you mean!” Janet demanded, anxiously.

“Just that: that there wasn't any point. There's no news.”

“There was more than that!” Janet insisted, reacting to instinct.

“Everyone is very depressed there,” Partington said, a grudging concession.

“What did they say!”

“That it was difficult to get the smallest scrap of reliable information.”

“More than that!” Janet said again.

Partington shook his head, refusing to meet her eyes. “I'm sorry,” he said.

“For Christ's sake, what is it!”

The diplomat's eyes came up to hers. “They said it was hopeless: absolutely hopeless. That there's no way to establish any sort of link. The whole place is a shambles. Lost.”

I've
made a contact, thought Janet, triumphantly. She said: “Thank you, for bothering to ask.”

The conversation was at an end when Anne Partington returned with the coffee (“proper stuff, not this Turkish sugar water that rots your teeth”). The souvenir snapshots were produced, one of her parents with the Partingtons on some horseback expedition in Jordan: even then, Janet saw, her father appeared formal, in a very dark riding habit. Anne said they were wonderful people and Janet agreed that they were, and the woman said if she intended staying long she should come to supper again and Janet said that would be nice and that perhaps they could talk on the telephone.

Janet drove as fast as she felt safely able back to the hotel, hurrying anxiously to the concierge desk, trying to isolate her pigeonhole on the keyboard before she reached it. There were no messages.

The following morning, not wanting another day by the pool, Janet walked to Kyprianos Square and went around the Byzantine Museum, trying unsuccessfully to become interested in the icons. She was back at the Churchill by noon: the concierge smiled up at her approach, shaking his head before she reached the desk. After lunch she strolled to the old quarter and toured the sixteenth-century Venetian walls and bought a cheap red clay replica of a spouted oil lamp, deciding it would be something they could keep after John was released to remind themselves of the whole episode, when it was all over. There was nothing waiting for her when she got back to the hotel.

Janet ate dinner early because she became fed up with the four walls of her hotel room, protracted her coffee with an unwanted brandy, and was back in her room by nine.
Dallas
was on television, with Greek subtitles: she watched ten incomprehensible minutes and then turned it off. In bed, with the light out, she stared sightlessly at the ceiling, conscious as the hours passed of the hotel and then the city growing quiet around her. She finally slept, after a fashion, but there was always part of her consciousness alert so that when daylight came she felt as if she had not slept at all.

She was the first by the pool, with her choice of loungers and umbrellas. She lay on her back, then on her front, then on her back, then on her front again. She checked her watch, anxious for lunch to break the tedium, and was unable to believe it was only ten o'clock. When she checked with the pool attendant she found her watch was fast; it was only ten to the hour.

Janet was lying on her back again when the shadow came between herself and the sun, breaking the brightness despite her closed eyes. She lay waiting for it go as the person passed but it didn't and so she opened her eyes, initially unable to see who it was.

“The reception desk told me I would find you here: said you were waiting for a message.”

Janet pulled herself into the shadows of her umbrella, raising the back of her lounger as she did so, better able to sit up. Detective Chief Inspector Zarpas was in civilian clothes today, a fawn summerweight suit already creased and with his shirt collar undone and stretched apart from the knot of his tie. Janet was surprised at the contrast from his smartness of their last encounter. She wondered where Sergeant Kashianis was, with his notebook.

“Hello,” she said.

“Who are you expecting a message from, Mrs. Stone?”

Janet hesitated. “An embassy,” she said, as the thought came to her. “Either the English or the American: I've talked with representatives of both.”

“Who else have you talked with?”

“I don't understand the question.”

Zarpas looked searchingly around him and smiled permission to take an upright chair from a nearby table. He brought it back, sat gratefully down and took a photograph from his pocket, offering it to her. “Not him, perhaps?”

Janet looked at the official, front-faced photograph of the man she knew as Nicos, thinking how similar it was to the official pictures of John Sheridan, as if they were all taken by the same photographer. A hollowness formed, deep in the pit of her stomach. “Why should I have expected to hear from him?”

“That's what I want you to tell me,” said the policeman.

“I said I didn't understand,” said Janet, desperately.

“Didn't he even give you a name?”

“Please!” pleaded Janet.

“Nicos,” supplied Zarpas. “Nicos Kholi.”

Janet closed her eyes, briefly, hoping the policeman would imagine it was a reaction to the sun: the hollow feeling grew worse, a gouging sensation. With difficulty, trying to convince herself she was clinging to a thread of truth, Janet said: “I do not know anyone named Nicos Kholi.”

“How about Mohammed Kholi and his wife, who hang around Larnaca marina a lot?”

Stubbornly Janet shook her head.

Zarpas sighed, pulling at the ends of his drooped moustache with his right hand. He said: “Mrs. Stone, we know all about the £5,000 withdrawal. The assistant manager has made a near-positive identification from that photograph as being that of the man who was with you when you took the money, all in cash, from your account. Because it was such a large withdrawal the numbers of the notes were recorded. After we arrested Kholi in Larnaca this morning we went back to his apartment: we found £3,000, all in £20 notes. The numbers matched against those supplied by your bank.”

“Oh Christ!” said Janet, despairingly.

“To go into Beirut, after your fiancé?”

“Yes,” nodded Janet, tightly.

“After the mother and father told you a story of losing everything in the war? Showed you photographs?”

“Yes,” said Janet again.

“They're very good at it,” said Zarpas. “Done it twice before.”

“Are they Lebanese?”

Zarpas snorted a laugh. “Greek Cypriots,” he said. “They've never been to Beirut in their lives. His name is not Mohammed, either. He's a tour guide around the ruins at Paphos when he isn't conning drinks out of sympathetic tourists with his ruined refugee story.”

“He bought a lot of drinks that night.”

“It was an investment, wasn't it?”

“Why was Nicos arrested?”

Zarpas hesitated and said: “He picked up an Australian girl at a discothéque in Larnaca: slept with her. When she woke up all her money, travelers' checks, and jewelery were gone. So was he. Usually the girls are too embarrassed to complain and explain. She wasn't. Took us back to the discotheque and identified him. We found a necklace, most of her money and her travelers' checks, along with your stuff, at the place he shares with his parents.”

“Lucky girl,” said Janet, unthinkingly.

“Not really,” said Zarpas, solemnly. “He's got syphilis. It'll take some time to see whether she has, too.”

Janet tried to think of something to say and couldn't.

Zarpas said: “We'll need you to make out a formal complaint for a charge to be brought.”

“What about the Australian girl?”

“She thinks she's contracted venereal disease,” reminded the policeman. “She's making every accusation she can think of.”

“So you've got a case?”

Zarpas stared pointedly at her. “Don't be stupid!”

“No,” said Janet, determinedly. The publicity could be dangerous for John: and make her look naive, too. Stupid, like the man was already accusing her of being but for different reasons.

“It's £5000!”

Janet said nothing.

“If you don't make out a formal complaint you can't recover the £3000 we've got back!”

“What about the others who were tricked?”

“They wouldn't formally complain, either.”

“Neither will I,” said Janet, stubbornly.

“We'll try to spare you as much embarrassment as possible,” Zarpas promised, probing for her reluctance.

“I won't do it.”

“Whatever accusations the other woman makes, the maximum Nicos could get is a year. Which he won't: it'll be six months top, more likely three,” set out Zarpas. “With a charge of willful deception in the sum of £5000, which we could bring if you complain, I could get the whole family off the streets for more than a year.”

Janet shook her head, her mouth tight together.

The silence echoed between them. Zarpas broke it. “I felt sorry for you, the first time. Didn't like bullying you, although I had to. You know my feelings now? I despise you, Mrs. Stone. I think you are a spoiled, rich, stupid woman posturing like someone out of a cheap book.”

“I'm not any of that,” Janet tried, in weak defense.

“Get out of Cyprus. We don't want you here; won't have you here. Have you ever heard of an expression called stitching up?”

“No.”

“It's what policemen do when they know someone is guilty but can't prove it: they arrange incontrovertible evidence to get a conviction on something else,” elaborated Zarpas. “That's what I'm prepared to do with you. I'm prepared to fix a reason to get you expelled from this island if you don't leave under your own volition. I actually want to stitch you up.”

“No!” Janet shouted, careless of the looks that came from around the pool. Thirty minutes later, after their hostile parting, Janet lay face down on her bed, weeping uncontrollably for the first time since Sheridan's kidnap, both hands clutching her pillow and pulling it into her face.

“How!” she said. “How!”

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