Silencer (25 page)

She entered the bathroom. Toilet items were lined up just so inside the cabinet. Aftershave, hair lotion, a mouthwash she'd never heard of and a toothbrush designed to reach the deepest recesses of the gums and God knows where else. A nail-file with a genuine ivory handle, a heavy-duty nail-clipper, a container of floss, a tortoiseshell hairbrush in whose bristles a matching comb had been inserted, and a wooden spatula-like device whose purpose she couldn't begin to guess. On the sink was a bottle of Italian mineral water and a razor and shaving cream in a tube.

And a salt-shaker. Did he gargle with brine?

This is what Dansk came down to. Expensive toiletries and empty pockets and a locked case and the fact that he used escort services.

Who the hell are you, Dansk?

She went back inside the bedroom. A printed card on top of the TV provided the information that guests could access a computer that would provide them with a detailed account of their bill. She aimed the remote at the screen, turned the TV on, selected Channel 22 as the card instructed. The name popped up: ANTHONY DANSK

Then:

She studied the room rate figure a moment, calculating. He'd been here five nights. He hadn't just come to Phoenix to meet her some twenty-four hours ago.
I flew all the way down here to set your mind at rest
, he'd told her. But you were already here, Anthony, already in place. Why the lie? Why go through that rigmarole?

You lie when you have something to gain.

Or something to hide.

She stared at the menu along the bottom of the screen and pressed sixty-seven on the remote, which gave her access to an itemized account of telephone calls.

PLEASE WAIT. TRY OUR YUCCA ROOM ON THE MEZZANINE FOR FINE WESTERN CUISINE!

Then:

DANSK, ANTHONY 7320

What followed was a list of calls he'd made. He'd placed four, all local, three to the same number. She wrote the numbers down on a scratch pad that lay on top of the dressing-table, then she folded the sheet and stuck it in her pocket. She switched off the TV.

It was time to get out of here, and yet she had the feeling she was overlooking something, she hadn't explored deeply enough. But what was left to explore? Hotel rooms like this one didn't have a surplus of hiding-places. There was an air-conditioning duct, but she didn't have either the time or the tool to unscrew the grille. There was also the chance of something concealed under the carpet, but the task of searching would take too long. Down on her knees, hauling at the rug, popping tacks.

The mini-bar was the last place left. It was stuffed with miniatures, a half bottle of Californian Chardonnay, a jar of macadamia nuts and a tube of Toblerone. She rummaged, found nothing unusual and shut the door. Leave, she told herself. Leave now. You've already pressed your luck to its limits and then some.

She took a last quick look round the room and then stepped towards the door, and halfway there the mercurial bird of good fortune abandoned her, and she heard
click
as the coded key card was inserted into the lock and the door opened.

‘Interesting,' Dansk said.

47

She raised one hand to her hair in a flustered manner, her nerve-ends jumping. The atmosphere around her had a tense zing to it, like the vibration left by a tuning-fork. She moved, standing with her back to the window, crossing her arms in a defensive way. She was aware of the peripheral blackness of night behind her, and she imagined Dansk strolling towards her and casually pushing her through glass, and then she was falling, storey after storey, to the sidewalk.

She walked away from the window and thought, Nobody knows I'm here.

Dansk said, ‘I guess there's a good explanation for this.' The letter from the señorita. That's what brings her here. She's shovelling and she doesn't know what lies underneath the soil. And if she knew, she wouldn't be here. ‘You looking for anything in particular? Or was it just a general sniff around, see what you could find?'

She could still hear the air vibrate as if a huge menacing bird had just passed close to her face. When she spoke her voice sounded cracked. ‘You've been following me.'

‘I didn't hear that. Louder.'

She cleared her throat and said it again.

Dansk looked annoyed. ‘Following you? Is this because I bump into you by chance on the street and you construct a whole weird scenario around that encounter? Why would I follow you, Amanda?'

He undid his necktie and it dangled from his hand.

‘You know why,' she said. She noticed how the silver tie caught the light and resembled a loose metal chain.

‘You're speaking a foreign language. Translate for me.'

‘You're running surveillance on me because you know I'm not buying into your deal.'

‘Where is all this coming from, Amanda?'

‘Rhees is in hospital with broken bones.'

‘Rhees?' he asked. ‘I don't know any Rhees. You can't just toss out a name at me, Amanda.'

She saw from the window the lights of radio masts perched on mountains in those black distances where the city faded. The anger and adrenalin that had driven her appeared to be slipping, and an edge of dread had replaced it. She felt very alone all at once. She looked at Dansk's reflection in the pane. He seemed to exist simultaneously in different dimensions, behind her in solid form, floating in front of her in a fuzzy spectral framework.

Why hadn't she told Willie she was coming here? Anything could happen to her and nobody would know. She turned, bringing Dansk back into focus. ‘Rhees wasn't any part of this –'

‘I'm hearing foreign still.'

‘You didn't do it personally. You paid for it to be done.'

‘Paid who to do what?'

‘It was meant to look like robbery with serious violence thrown in. But it was badly stage-managed. Thieves
steal
things, Anthony. You should teach your thugs that.'

‘I don't even know Rhees, so let me hear one good reason why I'd want him harmed.'

‘As a warning to me.'

A warning, he thought. If she wanted to think it was something that crude, let her. People often misconstrued his intentions. Even the smart ones, like Amanda. They didn't set themselves demanding standards.

‘You're off in the twilight zone, Amanda. I'm hearing that dooda-dooda tune. You just break in here and lay this shit on my doorstep and you don't have one solid thing to back it up. This is unlawyerly.'

‘I'm not a lawyer these days,' she said. She stared at him. He gazed back, nonchalant, running the necktie through his fingers.

‘You break in here and make a wild accusation. Is that normal behaviour?'

‘You're familiar with normal, I suppose.'

He didn't like this remark. It rubbed him in all the wrong ways. He walked towards her and looked at her bright lipstick and polished nails. She wasn't cut out for these gaudy adornments, they cheapened her. ‘What the hell is your
problem
? You break into my room, presumably you rummage through my belongings. What did you expect to find here? Spell it out for me. Tell me what's really on your mind.'

‘Your Program. The way it leaks.'

‘And that's all.'

‘That's all.'

‘I think it's more. You're unhinged on account of Isabel Sanchez and whatever it was happened to this guy Rhees,' he said. ‘And now you're imagining funny things.'

There was an alteration in his mood. He leaned forward, placed his palms against the wall on either side of her face. She was imprisoned between his outstretched arms. She felt she was seeing him through a microscope. The fuzz on his cheeks, the ginger eyebrows, his pores, the birthmark, everything was blown-up in unnerving detail. She anticipated violence. She imagined Dansk striking her. She felt an inward flinch.

‘Talk to me,' he said.

‘I don't have anything else to say.'

He looked into her eyes and it occurred to him that he could strangle her with his necktie. The idea strobed through him in black and white flashes: the lethal laying on of hands, the deadly intimacy of it all, her eyes darkening as she died. Killing somebody, the way McTell did, or Pasquale. How it would feel. He imagined numbness, the heart anaesthetized, a plunge into a bewildering madness. He didn't want McTell or Pasquale involved when it came to this woman, he didn't want them getting within a mile of her. He wanted her for himself. But not here in this room, because even if she died without a sound there was still the daunting prospect of dragging a corpse into an elevator and out through reception, past clerks and porters and guests and security people. Unrealistic.

And then there was Rhees. Any final solution had to involve him too, because he and Amanda had probably discussed the letter together. They were lovers, and lovers should die together.

He noticed the room-service food on the table. The hamburger smelled cold and the fries were limp.

‘You haven't eaten your food,' he said. ‘Lost your appetite?'

‘I'm not that hungry.'

He gazed down at her feet. ‘Lost your shoes as well?'

‘I like not wearing shoes,' she said.

She looked at the sweat on his forehead and wondered where he'd been for the last twenty seconds or so, because he'd misted over like a window under a layer of condensation, and his jaw had set in a purposeful way and the muscles in his cheeks had been working as if he were chewing gum. He'd vanished in front of her eyes.

‘Eat. You ordered the stuff.' He caught her wrist and tugged her towards the table. ‘Sit down.'

‘I don't want to sit,' she said.

He pulled back a chair and forced her into it. ‘
Now eat.
'

‘I don't –'

‘Eat,' he said.

He whipped the top off the bun and she found herself looking at a dollop of ketchup on the browned meat.

‘Try the burger,' he said. His voice was chilly and brittle and angry.

She lifted the burger reluctantly. It fell apart between her fingers and she watched it drop on the plate, a soggy bun disintegrating and a crumbling disc of meat smeared with sauce. Dansk was hovering just behind her.

‘Clumsy, clumsy. You need some help.'

He scooped up a handful of meat in his palm and held it to her mouth and she turned her head to one side and said, ‘I'm not fucking hungry.'

‘Kids are starving all over the world,' he said. ‘And I hate waste, I hate the way people don't think about others less fortunate.' He pushed the meat forcefully into her mouth, and she shoved his hand aside.

‘I don't
want
the goddam food,' she said.

‘You
ordered
it,' he said.

Dansk could smell her perfume. He could smell fear on her too, and he had a sense of power flowing through him. He was wired to this woman in some fashion and he was draining energy out of her battery and it made him giddy. He reached down to the table and picked up a fork, speared an onion and raised it close to her face and let it dangle just in front of her.

She gazed at the hanging strand of onion and tried to shove her chair away from the table but Dansk obstructed her. He let the fork fall, placed his hands back on her shoulders and felt her shiver.

‘I scare you,' he said.

‘I'm not easily scared.'

He wanted to keep his hands on her. Suddenly he didn't want to release her, he wanted to open the buttons of her blouse and lay his head between her breasts. He kept the pressure on her shoulders. He thought, This is a step too far. So fucking what? He couldn't stop himself. He wanted to taste her breasts – a crazy idea, she meant nothing, she didn't even attract him that way, and in his head she was already a corpse. He reached over from behind and lowered his hands and fumbled with the buttons of her blouse and she didn't move, and he thought, She wants this. He slid a palm inside her blouse and felt the silky material of her brassière and slipped his fingers under it. Then he was touching her warm breast and it was a good feeling, the softness of her skin, her acquiescence, the power he had over her.

She moved abruptly. She swept the food and the plate from the table with a speedy motion of her hand and she picked up a knife, which she jabbed hard into his knuckles, and he stepped back. She rose, colliding with the table and toppling it over, then she spun round and held the knife towards Dansk, who held out his hands in a gesture that might have been one of appeasement, but it wasn't, because there was a vicious light in his green eyes. She was aware of the knife shaking in her fist and how breathless she'd become.

She could still feel the pressure of his fingers on her shoulders and the way he'd slipped his hand inside her blouse and how the ice-cold palm had covered her breast, the whole ugly violation of the moment.

Dansk casually examined the back of his hand where she'd jabbed it. ‘What we have here is a slight misunderstanding,' he said. ‘I guess I imagined … some carnal agenda.'

‘
Carnal
agenda?'

‘You turn up in my room. What am I supposed to think?'

‘You don't think …' She wanted to laugh at his supposition, but she knew laughter would provoke him. Still holding the knife in front of herself, she moved towards the door and hurried out of the room. She ran along the corridor to the elevators, half expecting Dansk to follow her, but he didn't. She entered the elevator and pressed the button for her floor and realized how tightly she was holding the knife in her tensed hand. Dansk had dragged her down to the place where he lived, his world of brutality. She entered her room, shut the door, slid the bolt in place and stood with her back against the wood, trying to catch her breath and steady her nerves.