Dolly and the Bird of Paradise - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 01 (8 page)

JOIN THE ARMY.

SEE EXCITING FOREIGN LANDS.

MEET EXCITING FOREIGN PEOPLE

AND KILL THEM.

The voice over the tannoy made an announcement in Portuguese and then in English. ‘The TAP flight for Lisbon is now boarding. Will passenger Mr van Diemen please come to the gate?’

We were outside the VIP lounge. I stopped.

Ferdy said, ‘What?’

I said, ‘Listen!’

The parties who had come off Kim-Jim’s plane were plodding out from the Customs Hall into the daylight, pushing or carting their luggage, and getting into taxis or cars.

A big Daimler with a guy wearing a peaked cap beside it hogged the entrance. Behind it was Natalie’s estate car with Aurelio in it, waiting for Kim-Jim.

The tannoy, in Portuguese and English, asked for Mr van Diemen again.

Ferdy said, ‘O.K. He got scared I’d come to spoil him. He’ll wait till the last moment and make a run for it. He promised Natalie.’

I fumed, and he looked hurt. He said, ‘If I hadn’t shoved Kim-Jim in here, they’d’ve crashed into each other. Have a heart, woman.’

Overhead, Mr van Diemen was given a last chance, and lost it.

Ferdy, whitening a little, opened the door of the VIP lounge quickly and got us both in, shutting the door smartly after us.

‘He’ll get the next plane,’ he said. ‘Once he sees us all leave…’

He broke off. Men are idiots.

‘When he sees us all leave,’ I said, ‘he’ll know Kim-Jim is here. You got him sneaked into this lounge. Now you’ve bloody well got to get him sneaked out. Under Mr van Damned’s powdered nostrils.’

It was then that Kim-Jim’s voice said, ‘Rita?’ behind me, and I turned round.

I’d forgotten why I was in the VIP lounge in the first place. I was so busy saving Kim-Jim that I’d forgotten Kim-Jim would be here.

I was terrified for him. I was so glad to see him.

Kim-Jim Curtis was no Adler; just pleasant-looking. He was tall, the way all my friends seem to be beanstalks, and had what was once roaring red hair, and light eyelashes, and blue, crinkly eyes with granny glasses in front of them.

He was fifty-two. And I don’t know what he saw in a dwarf with punk hair and hockey legs.

Or I’m lying: I do. We shared a trade. We understood one another. And though we’d kept in touch, in close touch since the film we made, we’d never met again until now.

And it was the same, which was great.

I turned round and this guy was smiling down at me, smelling of cigarette smoke and airport biscuits and looking like an American out on vacation, as he always did, in his sharp doeskin blazer, and the fingernail specs, and this Japanese camera round his neck.

Kim-Jim always carried a camera. And usually, a miniature tape. Everything Kim-Jim did was recorded and registered, ready for use when next wanted. He was the best secretary Natalie Sheridan had ever had.

He lifted the brim of my hat, looked at my cheek, kissed it, and settled my hat back again. ‘No stripes,’ he said. He left his hand on my shoulder. We grinned at one another.

Ferdy said, ‘I told you. She’s in mourning. Listen. We’ve got the hell of a problem…’

I thought we were the only VIPs in the airport’s VIP room.

We weren’t. Before Ferdy could get a chance to mention that the Demon Banana was still on the premises, this voice dropped in from behind him.

It said, ‘Miss Geddes will solve it. Give her a dozen eggs, two bottles of vodka and a piano, and Miss Geddes will solve all your problems, and throw in a gland cocktail now and then for your endocrines. Good afternoon, Miss Geddes.’

I knew before I turned, and before I saw the bifocal glasses.

I remembered the wheelchair at the Lisbon plane.

I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know why. But it was, of course, the Owner.

Ferdy’s pal Johnson Johnson stood by the hospitality table sportingly provided by the Madeira airport authorities.

He had a glass in one hand, and appeared to be freestanding, although there was a walking stick propped in the neighbourhood.

He was not, as last seen, wearing pyjamas, but got much the same effect with a pair of check trousers and an oatmeal sweater in a struggling cablestitch.

I had seen the pattern, done right, in the
Personality Knitting Quarterly
. I could swear to it.

The black floppy hair was the same, and the tight black eyebrows over a pair of bifocals girdered together like church toilet windows.

The bashed nose and lipless mouth were so ordinary that there would be nothing to see if you took his glasses off. Except, of course, for a lot of bad temper.

He had made a few strides, considering. His base colour had moved from Sallow nearly up to Pale Caucasian Man. The shark conversation hadn’t altered.

Kim-Jim took his hand off my shoulder and said, ‘You know Mr Johnson? He was on my flight from Lisbon. I was going to introduce you.’

‘From
Lisbon
?’ I said.

Ferdy’s pal Johnson Johnson had put down his glass and was fingering bottles and watching me. ‘We found ourselves sitting together. Vodka?’ he said. ‘Still? Or chloride?’

‘Well, I’ll be damned!’ Ferdy said. ‘If she doesn’t want a vodka, I do. You didn’t tell me you were coming over. What were you doing in Portugal? Wearing that pullover? I bet they’ve bloody deported you.’

‘
Dolly’s
been here for weeks,’ Johnson said. ‘Had her papers to fix on the way. Sorry, Miss Geddes. Didn’t have time to tell Mr Curtis I knew you. Didn’t realise you were his Rita until the end of the flight. You like Madeira?’

‘
Dolly
?’ I said. Somewhere, I’d heard that name before.

The glasses flashed. ‘Boats, unavoidably, are feminine,’ Johnson said. ‘You don’t like Madeira?’

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘A bit crowded.’

Ferdy stood on my foot.

‘No need to worry,’ said Johnson. ‘Mr Curtis didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t found out before. Can I give a lift to anybody?’

‘My God,’ said Ferdy. ‘Is that your yacht in the harbour? Flying a British flag?’

‘So Lenny tells me,’ said Johnson.

I looked outside. The car with the uniformed driver was still waiting. I said, ‘Is that your Daimler outside?’

‘I hope so,’ said Johnson.

The twenty-four hours I spent in apartment 17
b
came flooding back to me. Names came back.

‘
Where’s
Dolly?’

‘
Still refitting.
’

‘
Why don’t we send Lenny down to sail her out? He could take her to Tenerife and wait till you were ready…
’

And earlier than that:

‘
Mr Johnson
!
It’s Natalie Sheridan. An old friend of Roger van Diemen
.’

I walked up to Ferdy’s pal Johnson, who was pouring vodka one-handed into four glasses, aided by Ferdy.

I said, ‘Did Natalie Sheridan send for you?’

The spectacles turned round, with tonic fizzing all over them. ‘Send for me?’ Johnson said.

Ferdy held out a glass. ‘Don’t be an ass, darling,’ he said. ‘Natalie sent for Kim-Jim. But sending for Johnson is something even she can’t manage quite yet, poor dear. We hadn’t a clue he was coming. Though we ought to have known, if we were yacht-watchers. As to a lift…’

I saw what he meant, because I’d thought of it too. The Daimler had smoked-glass windows. You could hide Kim-Jim behind them. You could equally murder him.

I said to Johnson, ‘How well do you know Roger the Gunman?’

‘Roger van Diemen,’ said Ferdy patiently, as if it wasn’t obvious. ‘He’s been running about threatening to knock off both Kim-Jim and Rita. Believes they’re after Natalie’s money, or some such nonsense. Natalie persuaded him to get out of Madeira, but he won’t go if he finds out Kim-Jim has arrived. And he’s in the airport building somewhere now.’

Johnson opened his mouth. Before he actually said anything, I had thought of something else.

‘He saw you!’ I said to Johnson. ‘That’s why he didn’t get on the bloody plane! Not because of Ferdy on top of me. But because…’

‘… of me on top of Ferdy on top of you?’ offered Johnson, frowning.

Ferdy’s face cleared. He said, ‘Oh my God, that pullover’s awful,’ which he’d said already. Johnson, drinking, lifted his glass a little first, as though Ferdy had paid him a compliment.

Then Johnson said, ‘I haven’t met van Diemen in years, and of course Mr Curtis is welcome to a lift. How will he get from here to the car? Air hostess’s skirt and blouse?’

Men really are idiots. I said, ‘He’s far too tall. Put him in a trolley with a rug over him, and take him round the far side of the car.’

The only one to object to that was Kim-Jim, who was embarrassed at all the fuss, and anyway didn’t really believe, I think, that he was in any danger, which meant that the paint on my face was still holding out.

Then a porter had to be sent out for the uniformed Lenny, who brought us a rug and a trolley, and told Aurelio what was happening.

Next, just as we were loading Kim-Jim into the blind side of the Daimler, someone had to go back to fetch my straw hat, which had fallen off in the VIP lounge.

‘Anyway,’ Ferdy said, ‘what’s so damned important about that lousy hat?’

I explained.

Ferdy said, ‘Well, come on. Aurelio’ll drive you to the sledge station and I’ll come and protect you from Eduardo. Unless I’m spoiling something?’

Johnson’s man Lenny, getting on with it, packed the Owner into the passenger seat of the Daimler and skipped round the front to take the wheel. In the back, Kim-Jim was folded under the rug, sneezing at intervals.

The Owner’s window slid down with a drone, and Johnson’s voice said, ‘Why don’t we all go? Mrs Sheridan’s butler can drive straight home now, and I can drop you both with Mr Curtis.’

Ferdy likes Daimlers. He has at least one of his own, but this was a newer model. He said, ‘Don’t you want to get in and rest?’

‘It’s quite restful, sitting here,’ Johnson said. ‘I’m not sure I’m fully up to explaining Mr Curtis and the rug, though. Why not get in?’

So Ferdy and I sent Aurelio home, and both got into Johnson’s car, putting our feet on Kim-Jim as on Bessie.

The Daimler started off in frightening silence, like a stationary train when it’s the next one that’s moving.

I said, ‘What about Bessie?’

‘With the Great Old English Shepherd in the Sky,’ Johnson remarked to the windscreen.

I thought he liked Bessie. I began to say so. Ferdy kicked me, but got Kim-Jim instead on the ear, which at least must have stopped him worrying over who Bessie was. I still found it hard to forgive Pal Johnson travelling all the way from Lisbon with Kim-Jim Curtis and not letting on that he knew me.

It depended, of course, on what Johnson’s interest in tall, nice-looking Americans actually was. I wished I could rely on Kim-Jim to tell me. I could do with a really big edge on Pal Johnson.

Then Ferdy said, ‘Stop!’ and I thought he had read my thoughts and was going to kick me again.

Johnson’s driver, better prepared, glanced in the mirror and then slewed the Daimler into the side and halted. Ferdy and I both stamped on Kim-Jim, who protested mildly between sneezes and got one lens out between Ferdy’s ankles.

Ferdy said, ‘Didn’t you say you followed van Diemen in his own car? Where is it, then?’

Good thinking, as my maths teacher would say. Banana director with offices all over the world doesn’t take a taxi to airports. He takes his own car, and pays someone to drive it back for him. We were just beside the airport carpark.

‘Miss Geddes,’ said the Owner. ‘Describe Mr van Diemen’s car.’

I did. When I finished, he apparently pressed a button, for Lenny the Uniform vanished.

Ferdy and I took our feet off Kim-Jim, who was having difficulty blowing his nose, and a moment later, Lenny was back, reporting to Johnson.

‘The gentleman can sit up now, sir. Mr van Diemen has left the airport precincts. He returned to his car before the mechanic could drive it away. Said he had changed his mind about flying and would drive himself back to Funchal.’

Johnson said, ‘Where does he stay in Funchal?’

Kim-Jim, struggling up, knew. ‘There’s a small apartment in the office block in the Avenida Arriaga… Look, now it’s safe, I don’t need to trouble you. Why don’t we just get a taxi and let you go on your…’

‘No trouble,’ said Johnson. ‘Anyway, there’s the hat to return. We don’t want to upset Miss Geddes’s sledge-handlers. Or even Miss Geddes.’

Kim-Jim grinned. He had his arm round my shoulder. ‘I see you do know Rita,’ he said.

‘Technically, no,’ Johnson said. ‘I have merely served my time, as it were, in the outer office of Missile Command. It appears the sledges are packing up for the night.’

The Daimler drew to a halt and Lenny got out and opened a door, through which I was sorry to see that the smoke-grey windows had been hiding a smoke-grey landscape which was getting steadily darker.

And right enough, that the wicker sledges were vanishing back to their stables, or perhaps, like Bessie, to the Great Old English Tit Wallow in the Sky.

There was no sign of Eduardo among the few guys still hanging about in boaters and boots, but I got out anyway, and so did everyone but Johnson. There was a short scene with Kim-Jim, who refused to get back into the car, being already worn and torn, so he claimed, below the minimum legal tread, and weeping mohair.

In fact, he had a point. No Demon car, we were quite sure, had followed us. And if Johnson had scared van Diemen off once, van Diemen wasn’t going to appear where Johnson was, even if he wanted a sledge ride.

One of the boatered brigade said he’d give my hat to Eduardo, and would we like a free ride, which Eduardo had set up before he had to go down to his house, because his mother-in-law was having a baby.

I kid you not. And I believed it. Even the inside of his hat pulsed with Portuguese sex.

I wasn’t sure whether I wanted a free ride, but Ferdy was all for it, and Kim-Jim didn’t seem to mind. It would take about twenty minutes, he said.

Really, the sledges were just wicker boxes, with a bench across and a well in front to put your feet in. I had seen one set off as we arrived, down a walled path that was too bloody narrow, to my way of thinking.

A couple of guys in boaters ran behind. Their job was to steer, shoving the sledge by its high wicker sides and its back, and hauling the slowing-rope, and sometimes hopping on to a runner, one foot paddling or dragging.

The road surface was paved with oval pebbles, set cross-ways to the path, and to begin with, ran along the high wall of the Belmonte Hotel, with no doorways or crossroads to bother about. Later, it got busier.

So we got into this sliding basket. A couple of guys trundled it into position, and Ferdy and I sat down, with Kim-Jim between us. Then Ferdy said, ‘Hang on. Always be nice to the Management,’ and getting out, went back to the Daimler.

The two sledge-hammers stood like Twaddle-Jim and Twiddle-John, looking offended. They had cardies over their white togs, and I didn’t blame them. Once the sun went down, it wasn’t hot any more: more like Rothesay.

Ferdy came back, with the lamplight on his bald head and sideburns and smiling like Jaws. He said, ‘Want to bet?’

I’ve lost money to Ferdy before. I looked at him.

Kim-Jim knew Ferdy as well. Every make-up man knows Ferdy. Kim-Jim said, ‘I’m your man. If you want to bet, name it.’

‘Us against Johnson and Milligan. A race to the bottom, five hundred dollars each side. Winning team takes all. Rita? You’re rolling.’

I might be rolling, but I wanted to know a bit more before I let Ferdy split the risk three ways. I twisted round.

Johnson, who was risking all his money solo, unless Lenny was rolling, was already toeing the line, Lenny with him. Except that he wasn’t using a sledge, but his folding wheelchair.

It gleamed in the half-dark, with his man Lenny’s hands on the back, and Johnson’s clasped on his lap like Mary Poppins. Fairy lights flashed on his glasses.

I weighed the odds, as Ferdy settled beside me.

Ours was the heavier vehicle, with three people in it, and two running behind it to help us.

Johnson’s had his own weight and Lenny’s, but had rubber wheels against runners, and would steer, of course, like a pram.

Our two guides knew the track, and their vehicle.

Johnson had just arrived. Johnson might act the Owner, but who was he? Just a scratchy rich crock and his nanny.

I said, ‘Count me in,’ and saw 17
b
’s bifocals flash, as if he was going to hand me a pencil.

Then there was a lot of shouting, and someone stood on a bench, produced a big, dirty hankie, and dropped it.

Kim-Jim, Ferdy and I linked arms and braced our feet in the trough of the basket. Behind us, our handlers flung themselves into a long, racing sprint, and hurled our basket off down the slope like a slalom start.

They were supposed to come with us.

Instead, with a bursting crack, the rope which linked the two runners frayed and parted. And the handlers, staggering back, cannoned into each other and sat, as the basket containing the three of us gathered speed and launched off downhill like a rocket.

A rocket on runners, with no means of braking or steering. And embarked on a long, swooping descent to sea level.

The sledge hopped and we yelled out, in triplicate. Fading behind us, the remaining sledge-hammers yelled too, in Portuguese. Birds twittered above us in the gloaming. Lights bobbed about us: garden lights, window lights, and a thickening layer of lamps far below us, as suburb ran into suburb and then into the middle of town and then into the sea.

The slithering clack of the runners below us picked up speed. Became higher, and louder, and vibrated itself into a roar over the steep, polished cobbles. The wall beside me dropped away, and the wall beside Ferdy began, very fast, to become taller and blacker as we shot towards it.