All the same, she was beginning to feel very naked. Eight o'clock arrived, announced by an amazing variety of secular and religious chimes. Helga had said five past. The man had stopped speaking, but she heard the chink of coin in his pockets as he fumbled for more; then she heard a tapping as he tried to attract her attention. She turned round and saw him holding a fifty-pence piece at her and looking appealing.
"Can't you let me go first?" she said. "I'm in a hurry."
But English was not his language.
To hell with it, she thought; Helga will just have to keep dialling. It's exactly what I warned her of. Slipping the shoulder strap of her handbag, she unpopped it and delved in the sump for tens and fives till she made up fifty. Christ, look at the sweat on my fingers. She stuck her closed fist towards him, damp fingers downward, ready to drop the stuff into his grateful Latin palm, and saw that he was pointing a small pistol at her from within the folds of his flying-jacket, straight at the point where her stomach met her rib cage, as neat a piece of conjuring as she was likely to find. Not a big gun, though guns do look a lot bigger when they're pointed at you, she noticed. About the size of Michel's. But as Michel himself had told her, every handgun is a compromise between concealment, portability, and efficiency. He was still holding the telephone in his other hand and she supposed that someone was still listening at the other end, because although he was addressing Charlie now, he kept his face close to the mouthpiece.
"What you do, you walk beside me to the car, Charlie," he explained, in good English. "You keep to my right side, you walk on my right side a little ahead of me, hands behind your back where I can see them. Joined behind your back, you follow me? If you try to get away or make a signal to someone, if you call out, then I shall shoot you through the left side--here--and kill you. If the police show up, if anyone shoots, if I'm suspicious, it's the same. I shoot you."
He indicated to her the same point on his own body, so that she understood. He added something Italian into the telephone and rang off. Then he stepped out onto the pavement and cracked a big confiding smile at her just at the moment when his face was closest to hers. It was a real Italian face, not a single lazy line to it. A real Italian voice too, rich and musical. She could imagine it echoing round ancient marketplaces and chatting up the women at their balconies.
"Let's go," he said. One hand had stayed in the pocket of his flying-jacket. "Not too fast, okay? Nice and easy."
A moment earlier she had desperately needed a pee, but with walking the urge left her and she developed instead a cramp in the nape of the neck and a wailing in her right ear like a mosquito in the dark.
"As you get into the passenger seat, transfer your hands to the dashboard in front of you," he advised as he walked behind her. "The girl in the back has a gun too and she is very quick to shoot people. Much quicker than me."
Charlie opened the passenger door, sat down, and placed her fingertips on the dashboard like a good girl at table.
"Relax, Charlie," said Helga cheerfully from behind her. "Lower your shoulders, my dear, you are looking like an old woman already!" Charlie kept her shoulders where they were. "Now smile. Hoorah. Keep smiling. Everybody's happy today. Whoever is not happy must be shot."
"Start with me," said Charlie.
The Italian got into the driving seat and switched the radio to the God slot.
"Turn it off," Helga ordered. She was wedged against the rear doors with her knees up, and holding her gun with both hands, and she didn't look like somebody who would miss an oil can at fifteen paces. With a shrug, the Italian turned off the radio and, in the restored quiet, once more addressed her.
"Okay, so put on your seat belt, then link your hands together and put them on your lap," he said. "Hang on, I do it for you." Picking up her handbag, he tossed it to Helga,then grabbed the seat belt and buckled it, carelessly brushing her breasts. Thirtyish. Handsome as a movie star. A spoilt Garibaldi in a red neckscarf going for the hero kick. Very calmly, with all the time in the world to kill, he fished a pair of large sunglasses from his pocket and fitted them over her eyes. At first she thought she had gone blind with funk, because she could see nothing through them at all. Then she thought, they're the self-adjusting kind; I'm supposed to sit tight and wait for them to clear. Then she realised that seeing nothing was what was intended.
"If you take them off, she'll shoot you through the back of the head for sure," the Italian boy warned her as he started the car.
"Oh, she will," said jolly old Helga.
They set off, first bumping over a bit of cobble, then settling into calmer water. She listened for the sound of another car but heard only their own engine ticking and rattling through the streets. She tried to work out which way they were heading but she was already lost. Without warning, they stopped. She had no sensation of slowing down, nor of the driver shaping up to park. She had counted three hundred of her own pulse beats, and two previous stops, which she assumed were traffic lights. She had memorised such trivia as the new rubber mat under her feet and the red devil with a trident in his hand dangling from the car keyring. The Italian was helping her out of the car; a stick was put into her hand, she supposed a white one. With plenty of help from her friends, she was negotiating the six paces and four rising steps to somebody's front door. The lift mechanism had a warble in it that was an exact reproduction of the water-whistle she had blown in her prep-school orchestra to make the bird noises in the Toy Symphony. They are good performers, Joseph had warned her. There is no apprenticeship. You will go from drama school straight to the West End. She was sitting on some kind of leather saddle with no back. They had made her link her hands and keep them on her lap again. They had kept her handbag and she heard them tip its contents onto a glass table, which chimed when her keys and small change landed. And thudded to the weight of Michel's letters, which she had collected that morning on Helga 's orders. There was a smell of body lotion in the air, sweeter than Michel's, and sleepier. The carpet at her feet was of thick nylon and russet-coloured, like Michel's orchids; she guessed the curtains must be heavy and drawn tight, because the light at the edges of her spectacles was electric yellow, not a hint of day. They had been in the room some minutes with no word spoken.
"I need Comrade Mesterbein," Charlie pronounced suddenly. "I need the full protection of the law."
Helga laughed rapturously. "Oh, Charlie! This is too completely crazy. She is wonderful. Don't you think so?" This to the Italian, presumably, for she was aware of no one else in the room. Yet the question received no answer, and Helga seemed to expect none. Charlie sent out another probe.
"A gun suits you, Helg, I'll give you that. From now on, I'll never think of you dressed in anything else."