The Ambassador (37 page)
On the visit after the murders his step had had no bounce. Marty had spotted his sombre mood immediately, had swiftly summoned up drinks and canapés, and drawn the curtains against the raucous show in the main hall. He sat down heavily on the
chaise-longue
, fully clothed, a glass in his hand while she hovered, her exquisite face full of concern. She seemed unusually edgy.
After a few gentle preliminaries he embarked on the task he had set himself, to question Marty closely about his staffers and their toys. To begin with she demurred, glancing about as if fearful that, despite her assurances, the box might be bugged. He reminded her that she had issued a veiled warning.
‘You said the boys shouldn’t meet them outside,’ he repeated. ‘Is that company
policy, or was there more to it?’
Marty shook her glorious platinum head. She was dressed in the white silk robe trimmed with fur, his favourite. ‘Rumour has it somebody’s been playing about with the material,’ she said quietly. She tilted her eyes towards the ceiling, once, as if to alert him. He did not look up. ‘New clones. But without the quality control. Too young, inbred.’
‘You’re all inbred, with respect, Marty. I don’t mean that as a criticism.’ This time the champagne was untouched, its fizz ignored. He found he was hungry and absentmindedly nibbled a square of toast smothered in caviar.
She did not respond to his comment. Once more she glanced at the chandelier, then came and knelt beside him so that her cheek rested on his knee. That way he had to bend to hear her.
‘Bill, they’re weird. Lovely to look at, but warped. They have a taste for the – corporeal.’ Her voice was very low.
‘You’ve lost me. What do you mean?’
A soft sigh came from her. ‘They like it hot and nasty. Like to draw blood.’
Strether’s eyes opened wide. ‘I didn’t think my boys were into that.’
‘You’ve no idea what they were into. A couple of spiked drinks and they’d be hollering for more. That suits the other customers fine.’
‘What other customers? What on earth are you talking about?’ Strether peered round in alarm.
‘No. Not here. That’s the whole point. It can’t take place here, only outside. And only if some dumb clucks like those handsome boys of yours set up private assignations.’
‘My staffers did that?’ Strether remembered the rising total on his credit cards following visits to the Toy Shop. Like the Japanese geisha house on which it was based, it was not for the impecunious. The boys may have found it cheaper outside. ‘You may be right. I don’t rule it out. What then?’
‘They could find themselves in a room in a specially selected hotel, with a big mirror.’
Strether frowned. Marty was beginning to behave as if she were frightened. One hand clutched her gown about her, the other kept wandering to her mouth as if to hide her words. ‘You mentioned other customers. Where do they come in?’
She let the words sink in. ‘It’s a two-way mirror, Bill.’
‘The other customers – they’re
watching
?’
She shrugged unhappily. ‘They pay big money for it. Has to be good-looking guys, so yours were ideal. The girls are gorgeous too – at least, outwardly. Real toys won’t do it. It degrades our profession. We’re class. Partying is one thing, as many as you like, we have well-appointed large rooms here. But drooling over some half-doped fellah beaten red raw? No. That’s out.’
‘So who watches?’
‘You’d be surprised.’ He was, but as much at the brusqueness of her tone. She could not be persuaded to offer any names but rubbed one forearm repeatedly, agitatedly over the other as if feeling bonds on her wrists.
Then Strether put to her the query that had been in his mind since his trip to the morgue. ‘It can go too far? It can go wrong?’
There was a silence, the more dreadful for its length. Then Marty’s eyes rounded and she put her thumb in her mouth, in what must have been a childhood gesture. It made her appear, despite the bleached hair, the beauty spot, the silk gown, about six years old. Her voice was faraway, high and weak.
‘Of course. All sex games can. Especially when one partner keeps pushing for more.’
‘Might they have died – there and then?’
‘Maybe.’
‘While somebody watched? The other paying customers?’
Marty suddenly looked up, her face set hard. ‘Stop that, Bill. You don’t want to know. You are treading on dangerous ground. Use your brains – there will be no arrests. Except of you, if you go delving around too much.’
She rose in some agitation and left him. After she had gone, he sat quietly in the perfumed booth until his heart had stopped pounding. The caviar tasted sour in his mouth. For courage he drained the glass of flat champagne. Then he pressed the intercom button and begged her to return.
When she stood hesitantly at the entrance, he grabbed her hand, pulled her inside and shut the door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he hissed in a hoarse whisper. ‘I shouldn’t have forced my troubles on you like that. But it can’t be allowed to continue.’
Her face was sad; although the glossy lipstick was freshly applied, he suspected she had been crying. ‘Nothing you can do, Bill,’ she murmured, in a wooden voice so unlike the breathy gurgle he adored. ‘You’d need a full investigation and, believe me, that’s not going to happen.’
‘Is the Prime Minister involved?’
‘Christ almighty.
Don’t ask
.’
The fact that she had not reacted in horrified indignation gave him more clues than he had bargained for.
‘The toys die sometimes, Bill,’ she continued, in that same sad, low voice. ‘Some of the punters prefer to see a woman hurt. Perhaps I shouldn’t be bothered by it: they’re not proper toys. And they’re so crazy, one or two of them, that a bit of genetic therapy is overdue. But then they couldn’t perform.’
‘Ah!’ Strether banged his fist furiously against the wall and left an indentation in the red velvet. ‘What kinda world is this, Marty? Live snuff shows attended by the biggest names in the land? Who don’t mind if a victim dies in front of their eyes?’
‘They are paying for it,’ Marty answered dully. ‘It is a world they created. It is a world
you
created. With respect.’
He stopped then, overcome by her distress. He took her hand and drew her towards him. She came limply, without resistance, without guile or coquetry. And she rested her shimmering head on his shoulder for a long time.
Marius and Lisa strolled arm in arm back to her London apartment, breathing in the cool evening air. Starlings whistled and jostled for position under the eaves. Window-boxes with night-scented stock and nicotiana filled their passage with perfume. The hibiscus trees sighed in the last stirrings of the breeze as their day-old flowers gently faded, ready to fall during the night. Above hummed the last ’copters; far overhead hung the white vapour trail of a fastjet
heading for its home airport. Even the cameras attached to the street lamps seemed half asleep, mainly ignoring their passage.
‘I love this hour,’ Lisa said. ‘Everyone, everything, curling up to rest. That was a marvellous dinner, Marius. Am I to grow accustomed to meals of that standard, or do you want me to learn how to cook?’
It was astonishing how easily they had slipped into good-natured teasing. Not yet entirely comfortable with each other, conscious of how much each had yet to learn of the other, it gave both Lisa and Marius immense fun to make suggestions in a half jesting fashion, to test the ground, and to sway and give way. This is how new lovers learn to accommodate each other. It was as if their union had been in their stars, years before they had met, even as the Prince had played the field and joked that he would never settle down. Even while Lisa was sleeping with his friend the Ambassador.
‘Whichever you prefer.’ Marius smiled down at her. The street lights had begun to dim; it was past midnight. Her face upturned to his was mystical and bluish, the moonlight giving her skin an ethereal sheen. ‘Perhaps I should express shock, though whether at the implication that you can’t cook, or the inference that you, a professional upper-caste NT woman, might be willing to learn, I can’t judge.’
‘It might be useful,’ Lisa offered gravely, ‘if things went wrong and we had to go into hiding.’
His pace slowed. ‘You have a point. Our lives may change more than we realise.’
They walked on quietly, talking of the events of the last few days. ‘I will have to go and see the Prime Minister, I suppose,’ Marius told her. ‘I don’t relish the prospect. What am I to say? That I’m part of the gang which is causing so much disruption? That’d do me – and the cause – the world of good. I don’t think.’
‘You don’t need to mention that,’ Lisa replied. ‘As a member of the House of Lords you can raise any issues with him which bother you. Like PKU for prisoners. Like the very existence of political prisoners, and the denials. The invention of forensic evidence against dissidents – Spartacus can probably provide chapter and verse. Human rights issues – that’d do for starters.’
It occurred to neither to query the degree of news control, for they had never known anything else. But Marius saw at once that a face-to-face meeting might warn off the Prime Minister from considering any trumped-up charges against himself. Whether the Prince became known in public as a member of Solidarity or not, his position was bound to be precarious. He tried another tack. ‘Should I lead on the missing files at Porton Down, and our fears that material is getting into the wrong hands? Mutated, deliberately? It’s not too fanciful that somebody is trying to create a new breed, is it?’
‘Or, at any rate, that they’re taking advantage of mistakes further up the line,’ Lisa corrected him. ‘That seems more probable to me. My brain can’t take in that anyone might set about subverting the human race under the pretence of improving it.’
‘Come on. That’s been your whole life.’ The moment he had said the words Marius could have bitten out his tongue. His hand flew to his mouth. He stood stock-still and faced her. ‘Heavens. I didn’t mean that. Oh, Lisa, forgive me.’
But she squeezed his hand and walked on. ‘Don’t apologise. You’re right. And I’m now convinced: I cannot work there any longer. My resignation is written and will be handed
in tomorrow.’ She laughed softly. ‘I fool quite composed about it. Given our multifarious activities, Marius, if I don’t resign I shall get the sack. Or find that my clearance has vanished completely and I can’t get into my own office.’
‘So what will you do? You’re not the type to stay at home all day, or spend your afternoons drinking tea with my mother.’
‘I should be able to get a lecturing post quite easily. And there are other possibilities.’
‘Such as?’
She swung his hand up and down, clasping it tight.
The idea had been in her mind since before Marius, before Bill. But this was the moment to say it. ‘I dunno. Having babies, maybe?’
He put his arms around her waist and whirled her round and round, her feet off the ground and kicking helplessly, until the two of them were breathless and laughing. A passing cyclist nearly cannoned into them and shouted a rebuke. As he wobbled away, the Prince held her hands and spoke anxiously.
‘You sure? Remember, I’m not an NT. I told you what my mother said – or as much as she would say. I’m a mongrel, sweetheart. A jumbled mixture.’
‘We are all rather more random than any Porton Down scientist would willingly admit. Nobody can avoid some spontaneous regeneration. And mongrels tend to be healthy.’ She was teasing him and he relaxed, a little.
‘But we can buy sperm, if you prefer – we can buy whatever you want.’
‘Don’t be
silly
. It’s you I love, and your babies I want, if you’ll allow me. We don’t have to mess about applying for a permit. We can pay the school and college fees ourselves – or the children can win scholarships. We must surely be smart enough, genetically speaking, for that to be an option.’
That might be thinking much too far ahead, the Prince countered. But in this joyous mood, excited and exultant, then sober and meditative, they rounded the corner, which brought them to the front of the apartment block. Here they had to pick their way between bags of rubbish: the strike had been quite effective in the neighbourhood. A brown rat scuttled away at their approach. Lisa wrinkled her nose at the smell.
Her mind had returned to her laboratory. ‘I will copy as many of my files as I can tomorrow before I go to see Dr Churchill. And I have to discuss it with Winston – I’m afraid my quitting will put more pressure on him to stay. We do need a records clerk, somebody on the inside, to keep tabs on the data, and to track any further misapplications.’
Marius nodded. They had arrived at the door of the building: more garbage littered the steps. He shoved one bag out of the way with his foot and it split, its sludgy contents spilling decomposing vegetation on to the masonry. ‘Yuk. I suppose this is one way to make a point. Actually I don’t think these strikers are ours – this is a bit of private enterprise. The refuse men’ll charge the municipality through the nose to clear it while protesting their innocence.’
Gingerly he lifted a couple of intact bags to clear a path and wiped his hands on a handkerchief. Then he squatted down.
‘This blue one’s labelled. That’s your number, Lisa. Were you expecting anything?’
‘No. Not like that, anyway. Should we take it inside?’ She looked doubtful.
‘Best not. It could be something stinking, though why on earth would it be addressed
to you here? Well, we won’t find out unless we open it. Here, I have a pocket knife. I was a Union Pioneer as a teenager.’
He was still chattering inconsequentially as his blade cut the string. The bag fell open. He reached for the bottom edge of the plastic, tipped it and shook it. Out rolled a hard, round black object, which gleamed stickily in the moon’s pale light. The two of them eyed it in bewilderment. Marius touched it gingerly with his toe and it rolled over.
Then Lisa began to scream.
The object had been alive, and not so long before. What lay before them, its eyes bulging, its mouth wide open, the fleshy lips lolling out, was the severed head of Winston Kerry, who was a records clerk no more.
