instantly. There was a bubble or two, the stink of marsh gas. I threw the Lee Enfield after him and turned.
Simone was standing watching me, still clutching the shotgun, a kind of numbed horror on her face. Thunder rattled like distant drums again, overhead this time, and the rain which had threatened all day came with a rush, hissing into the reeds.
It was somehow symbolic, I suppose, for with a sudden fierce gesture Simone tossed the shotgun over my head, out into the reeds. She started to cry bitterly, shoulders shaking and I put my arms about her.
‘It’s all right,’ I said soothingly. ‘Everything’s fine. I’ll take you home now.’
I turned and led her along the dike toward the Landrover.
I half-filled a tall glass with crushed ice, added a double measure of Irish gin and topped up with tonic water. Then I switched on the radio and turned the dial to Madrid. A little flamenco music would have been appropriate, but all I got was an old Glen Miller recording of Night and Day.
I pushed open one of the glass doors and moved out onto the terrace. Rain dripped from the fringes of the sun awning and I could smell the mimosa, heavy and clinging on the damp air.
The villa was built to a traditional Moorish pattern and stood in splendid isolation, which was the main reason I’d bought it, on a point of rock a hundred feet above a horseshoe cove thirty or forty miles south-east of Almeria toward Cape de Gata.
I’d been here almost a year now and never tired of the view, even on an evening like this with rain falling. There were lights outside the cove, not too far away, where local fishermen were stringing their nets and a liner drifted through the darkness five or six miles out and beyond it, Africa.
It all filled me with a vague, irrational excitement or perhaps it was just the events of the afternoon catching up. Heavy beads of rain rolled down the door and Simone became part of the room’s reflection in the dark glass.
The black hair hung to her shoulders, she wore a plain linen caftan so long that it brushed her bare feet. It was an original, soaked in vegetable dyes in a back room in some Delhi bazaar until it had reached that exact and unique shade of scarlet so that it seemed to catch fire there in the half-shadows of the room.
I turned and toasted her. ‘You can cook, too. The meal was enormous.’
She said gravely, ‘I’ll get you another drink,’ and went behind the bar in the corner.
‘That sounds like a good idea.’ I sat on one of the high cane stools and pushed my glass across.
She took down the gin bottle. ‘I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Irish gin until I met you.’
‘As I remember, that was quite an evening.’
‘The understatement of this or any other year,’ she said lightly as she spooned ice into my glass.
Fair comment. I’d met her at a party in Almeria thrown by some Italian producer who was making a Western or unreasonable facsimile, up in the Sierra Madre. I was strictly uninvited, pulled in by a scriptwriter I’d met in a waterfront bar, someone I knew barely well enough to exchange drinks with.
The party was a creepy sort of affair. Most of the men were middle-aged and for some reason found it necessary to wear sunglasses even at that time of night. The girls were mainly dolly birds, eager to comply with any and every demand that might lead along the golden path to stardom.
My scriptwriter friend left me alone and belligerent. I didn’t like the atmosphere or the company and I was already half-cut, a dangerous combina-tion. I pushed my way across to the bar which was being serviced by a young man with shoulder-length blond hair and a suit of purest white. His face looked vaguely familiar. The kind of cross between male and female that seems so popular these days. Anything from a manly aftershave advertisement to a second-rate movie and instantly forgettable.
‘Gin and tonic,’ I said. ‘Irish.’
‘You’ve got to be joking, old stick,’ he said loudly in a phony English public school voice, and appealed to the half-dozen or so girls who were hanging on his every word at the end of the bar. ‘I mean, who ever heard of Irish gin?’
‘It may not be in your vocabulary, sweetness,’ I told him, ‘but it certainly figures in mine.’
There was what might be termed a rather frigid silence and he stopped smiling. A finger prodded me painfully in the shoulder and a hoarse American voice said, ‘Listen, friend, if Mr Langley says there’s no such thing as Irish gin, then there’s no such thing.’
I glanced over my shoulder. God knows where they’d found him. A latter-day Primo Camera with a face that went with around fifty or so professional fights, too many of which had probably ended on the canvas.
‘I bet you went over big, back there in Madison Square Gardens,’ I said. ‘Selling programs.’
There was a second of shocked surprise, just long enough for the fact that I didn’t give a damn to sink in, and then his fist came up.
A rather pleasant French voice said, ‘Oh, there you are, cheri. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
A hand on my sleeve pulled me round. I was aware of the dark wide eyes above the cheekbones, the generous mouth. She smiled brightly and said to Langley, ‘I’m sorry, Justin. Can’t let him out of my sight for a moment.’
‘That’s okay, honey,’ Langley told her, but he wasn’t smiling and neither was his large friend as she pushed me away through the crowd.
We fetched up in a quiet corner by the terrace. She reached for a glass from a tray carried by a passing waiter and put it into my hand.
‘What were you trying to do, commit suicide? That was Mike Gatano you were arguing with back there. He was once heavyweight boxing champion of Italy.’
‘Christ, but they must have been having a bad year.’ I tried the drink she’d handed me. It burned all the way down. ‘What in the hell is this? Spanish whiskey? And who’s the fruit, anyway?’
‘Justin Langley. He’s a film actor.’
‘Or something.’
She leaned against the wall, arms folded, a slight frown on her face, a pleasing enough picture in a black silk dress, dark stockings and gold high-heeled shoes.
‘You’re just looking for it tonight, aren’t you?’
‘Gatano?’ I shrugged. ‘All he is is big. What are you trying to do anyway, save my immortal soul?’
Her face went a little bleak, she started to turn away and I grabbed her arm. ‘All right, so I’m a pig. What’s your name?’
‘Simone Delmas.’
‘Oliver Grant.’ I reached for another glass as a waiter went past. ‘You want to know something, Simone Delmas? You’re like a flower on the proverbial dung heap.’ I gestured around the room. ‘Don’t tell me you’re in the movies.’
‘Sometimes I do a little design work, just for the money. When I do what I prefer, I paint water-colours.’
