Cocaine Nights - Ballard James Graham - Страница 24

'That sounds like Bobby Crawford.' Paula joined me at the rail. 'What's he up to now?'

'He's exhausting me. All this physical keenness and that thudding tennis machine. It's a metronome, setting our tempo-faster, faster, serve, volley, smash. There's something to be said for the retirement pueblos… Paula, can we take off this collar? I can't think with the damned thing on.'

'Well… if you have to. Try it for an hour and see how you feel.' She unclipped the collar, grimacing at the livid bruises. 'Cabrera could almost lift a set of fingerprints – who on earth would want to attack you?'

'As it happens, quite a few people. There's another side to Estrella de Mar. The Harold Pinter seasons, the choral societies and sculpture classes are an elaborate play-group. Meanwhile everyone else is getting on with the real business.'

'And that is?'

'Money, sex, drugs. What else is there these days? Outside Estrella de Mar no one gives a damn about the arts. The only real philosophers left are the police.'

Paula's hands rested on my shoulders. 'Cabrera may be right. If you're in danger you ought to leave.'

She had revived after the visit to the Hollinger house and watched me as I paced restlessly around the balcony. I had assumed, misguidedly, that her interest in me was partly sexual, perhaps because I prompted memories of happier days with Frank. I now realized that she needed my help in some scheme of her own, and was still deciding whether I was astute and determined enough for her.

She turned up the collar of my shirt, hiding the bruises. 'Charles, try to rest. I know you were shocked by that dreadful fire, but it doesn't change anything.'

'I'm not so sure. In fact, I think it changes everything. Think about it, Paula. This morning we were looking at a snapshot, taken a few minutes after seven o'clock on the Queen's birthday. It's an interesting picture. Where are the Hollingers? Saying goodbye to their guests, watching the satellite relay from the Mall? No, they've lost interest in their guests and are waiting for them to go home. Hollinger's in his jacuzzi, "relaxing" with Andersson's Swedish girlfriend. She is pregnant with someone's child. Hollinger's? Who knows, he may have been fertile. Mrs Hollinger is sharing a bed with the male secretary, playing some very weird games with a pair of her shoes. Their niece is shooting up in her bathroom. It's quite a menage. Putting it bluntly, the Hollinger household wasn't exactly a domain of spotless propriety.'

'Nor is Estrella de Mar, or anywhere else. I'd hate people to start rooting around in my laundry basket.'

'Paula, I wasn't making a moral judgement. All the same, it isn't too difficult to think of any number of people with a strong motive for starting the fire. Suppose Andersson discovered that his nineteen-year-old girlfriend was having an affair with Hollinger?'

'She wasn't. He was seventy-five and getting over a prostate job.'

'Perhaps he was getting over it in his own special way. Again, suppose Andersson wasn't the child's father?'

'It certainly wasn't Hollinger. It might have been anyone. This is Estrella de Mar. People here are having sex too, though half the time they don't realize it.'

'What if the father was the shady psychiatrist, Dr Sanger? He might have decided to teach Hollinger a lesson, and not realized that Bibi was lying in the jacuzzi with him.'

'Unbelievable.' Paula roamed around the sitting room, feet tapping to the sounds of the tennis machine. 'Besides, Sanger isn't shady. He was an influence for good over Bibi. She stayed with him in the dark days before her collapse. I sometimes meet him at the Clinic. He's a shy, rather sad man.'

'With a taste for playing the guru to young women. Then there are Mrs Hollinger and Roger Sansom, and their shared shoe-fetish. Perhaps Sansom had a hot-tempered Spanish girlfriend with a fiery taste in revenge, who resented his infatuation with this glamorous film star.'

'That was forty years ago. She was a glorified starlet with a posh voice. The Alice Hollinger who lived in Estrella de Mar was rather motherly.'

'Finally, there's the niece, watching her last TV programme as she shoots up in the bathroom. Where there are drugs there are dealers. As a group they get paranoid over even a penny owed to them. You can see them outside the disco every night-I'm amazed at Frank putting up with them.'

Paula turned to frown at me, surprised by this first overt criticism of my brother.

'Frank was running a successful club. Besides, he was tremendously tolerant about everything.'

'So am I. Paula, I'm pointing out that there are any number of possible motives for the arson attack. When I first went to the Hollinger house there seemed no reason why anyone should set fire to it. Suddenly there are too many reasons.'

'Then why hasn't Cabrera acted?'

'He has Frank's confession. As far as the police are concerned the case is closed. Besides, he may assume that Frank had strong motives of his own – probably financial. Wasn't Hollinger a major shareholder in the Club Nautico?'

'Along with Elizabeth Shand. You stood next to her at the funeral. They say she's an old flame of Hollinger's.'

'That puts her in the frame. She may have resented his affair with Bibi. People do the strangest things for the most trivial reasons. Perhaps-'

'Too many perhapses.' Paula tried to calm me, sitting me in the leather armchair and putting a cushion behind my head. 'Be careful, Charles. The next attack on you could be far more serious.'

'I've thought about that. Why should anyone want to frighten me? It's conceivable that the attacker had just arrived in Estrella de Mar, and thought I was Frank. He may have been given a contract to kill Frank or severely injure him. He realized who I was and broke off…'

'Charles, please Confused by all this speculation, Paula stepped on to the balcony. I stood up and followed her to the rail. Bobby Crawford was still urging on his butterfly swimmers, who waited at the deep end, eager to hurl themselves once again into the exhausted water.

'Crawford's a popular man,' I commented. 'All that enthusiasm is almost endearing.'

'That's why he's dangerous.'

'Is he dangerous?'

'Like all naive people. No one can resist him.'

One of the swimmers had lost her bearings in the pool, its waters so churned by flailing arms that it resembled a rutted field. Giving up, she swayed in the shoulder-high waves, losing her balance as she tried to wipe the foam from her eyes. Seeing her in difficulty, Crawford kicked off his espadrilles and leapt into the water beside her. He comforted the swimmer, held her by the waist and let her rest against his chest. When she had recovered he placed her in the arms-forward position, and calmed the waves so that she could regain her stroke. As she set off he swam beside her, smiling when her rounded hips began to porpoise confidently.

'Impressive,' I commented. 'Who is he exactly?'

'Not even Bobby Crawford knows that. He's three different people before breakfast. Every morning he takes his personalities out of the wardrobe and decides which one he'll wear for the day.'

She spoke tartly, refusing to be taken in by Crawford's gallantries, but seemed unaware of the affectionate smile on her lips, like a lover remembering a past affair. She clearly resented Crawford's charm and confidence, and I wondered if she had once been taken in by them. Crawford would have found this moody and sharp-tongued doctor even more difficult to play than his tennis machine.

'Paula, aren't you a little hard on him? He seems rather engaging.'

'Of course he is. Actually, I like him. He's a big puppy with a lot of strange ideas he doesn't quite know how to chew. The tennis bum who's taken an Open University course in Cultural Studies and thinks paperback sociology is the answer to everything. He's a lot of fun.'