undeclared need to stay close to him. She decidedly didn’t want to be left alone up here, ogled by the crowd.
Even the waiter came in for a searching look from Alice and she fell silent, watching his every move until he left with his tip. George poured out two glasses, offering her one of them.
‘Let’s drink to absent friends,’ he said, still probing.
She smiled. ‘So many of them! But I’m thinking of one in particular. Of Joe. Joe Sandilands. My handsome Nemesis. Do you remember? Do you know what became of him?’
‘Indeed. A dear friend. Joe’s doing well. I follow his career with interest. We’ve arranged to see each other in London when I move on there. I understand he’s gone on dodging bullets and breaking hearts – you know the sort of thing.’
Alice gurgled with laughter. ‘I rather think he broke my bullet and dodged my heart,’ she said. ‘But I’m glad to hear he’s being a success.’
George noticed that she sipped delicately at her whisky, controlling her features to hide her dislike. He decided to torment her. ‘Not too fond of the hooch, I see? I’d have expected you to down it in one with a resounding belch – seasoned gun-slinger that you are.’
He settled back into his seat, pleased to have evoked – and, he was sure, accurately interpreted – an instinctive reaction. The slightest twitch of her right hand towards her right side told him all he wanted to know.
‘Don’t worry – it doesn’t show,’ he confided. ‘The bulge, I mean. That cape covers a multitude of sins.’
In India, for many good reasons, she’d always gone about armed. He’d met her just after the war when she’d first come out from England. The unexpected inheritor of an old-fashioned family trading company of international importance, young Alice had set about reorganizing the business with dash and inspiration. Her hands on the reins had been firm and capable and she found many to applaud her performance. For her admirers – and George counted himself one of the foremost of these – Alice was beautiful, talented and enchanting. But the ruthlessness she had inevitably needed to exercise had made her enemies. Enemies who would not shrink from removing her permanently from her post at the head of the company. Her own husband, George remembered, had led this faction.
And, it seemed that for Alice Conyers, though thousands of miles separated her from the scenes of her alleged crimes, there were still people she needed to defend herself against, even here in civilized Paris. She smiled and raised an eyebrow in affected incomprehension at his remark and launched into a bright inconsequential chatter which she maintained with some skill throughout the interval. A surprisingly easy conversation. She gave every sign of enjoying the gossip he had to lay out and added a few insights and reflections of her own which took him by surprise. ‘But I had no idea, Alice!’ he heard himself exclaiming. ‘I say – can you be certain of that? Well, I never! Deceitful old baggage! And her daughter was . . .? You don’t say!’
Any third party joining them would have heard a friendly couple talking with enthusiasm and good humour of mutual acquaintances, of experiences they had shared. They were professionals in their own separate ways, the pair of them, George reflected. They could play this game till the cows came home. And often had. But they both greeted the removal of the tray announcing the start of the second half with relief.
At least he would now be able with some confidence to hand her over to the authorities with a warning: ‘Disarm her and don’t listen to a word she says.’ Something on those lines. He doubted that the flics would know what he was on about if he talked of Circe and her spells, the ensnaring silver sounds of the Sirens. No, better just to say the woman’s got a pistol under her cloak and she’s wanted on two continents.
A considerable feat of engineering, he judged, was what
Kit Tunstall, R.E. Saxton