Acts of Love (25 page)

Soft yellow light from the lamps within the house shone through the many windows. Warmth seemed to be seeping out from it into the grey cold afternoon. Arianne began to laugh with delight. Ben found the joy in her laughter charismatic. It held his attention until he finally broke its spell to say, ‘That’s some reaction.’

‘Ben, I love it. It’s fantastic. A fairy-tale castle. I feel like Cinderella going to the ball.’

His turn to laugh. He grabbed her hand and pulled her across the seat past the steering wheel and out through the car door. Together they ran away out of the cold and up the steps through the dark walnut carved front doors into the house. They could hear a clatter of running feet somewhere in the distance as they crossed the black and white marble floor to stand and warm themselves in front of a roaring fire in the massive stone fireplace.

The housekeeper, a maid, a cleaner, Ben’s personal assistant, a secretary and the head gardener arrived in the hall from all directions. They were set upon with congratulations, good wishes, kisses, the French way; first one cheek, then the other, and once again. Hugs, the shaking of hands, genuine affection, pleasure for Ben’s happiness and delight in his chosen partner.

Arianne, overwhelmed by their generosity of spirit, was relieved to see there was nothing formal or grand about the way Ben ran his household. The staff appeared to be happy in their work and informal, though respectful and willing to please. She had only to look round the great hall to see that, casual as Ben’s staff appeared, they were hard workers. It was impeccably clean and kept up to a high aesthetic standard: the fresh flowers arranged in eighteenth-century Chinese porcelain vases, logs in the basket, a fire laid and blazing – these were signs of a staff that served their master well.

Coats were removed and whisked away. From a marble console against a wall, a Baroque silver tray laden with crystal
champagne flutes was picked up by the only Englishman in the household staff, Ben’s butler-cum-valet-cum-major domo. Timmins passed the glasses among them while others followed, charging them with vintage champagne. Up from the kitchen in the lower level of the château came the cook’s assistant and two under-gardeners carrying silver trays of beautifully arranged hot, bite-sized nibbles to go with the wine: chicken croquettes, foie gras topped with black truffle and wrapped in filo pastry, wild mushrooms stuffed with crab meat. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, the local gossip, questions: where, when, what kind of wedding would it be.

Someone pushed open the pair of doors to the drawing room and they all drifted in there, where there were two roaring fires at opposite ends of the handsome room. They were impressive for their size and the quality of the carving in their
fleur de pêche
marble surrounds. For all its elegance, grandeur, even, the room had a certain warmth and charm. It was a homely room, one to be lived in and enjoyed.

A room of elegant furniture, high-backed chairs covered in Aubusson tapestries, others in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century needlework, hunting scenes: unicorns and boars, stags, hunters on charging horses out for the kill, lords and ladies on fiery steeds galloping across landscapes of rolling hills, a wood, rushing streams, towards castles in the distance.

Precious Persian carpets worn with age covered the walnut-planked waxed floors and were impressively beautiful. On the walls: Old Master drawings in gilded and carved frames. An enormous David that dominated one end of the room, a battle scene with magnificently painted horses, handsome brave generals in the saddle commanding the troops. One could almost smell the cannon smoke. And there were women in the room, and what women! Odalisques, nude and magnificent Eastern female slaves and concubines painted by Ingres.

Vases of white lilacs, bowls of tulips, Han bronze pots of bright yellow daffodils, branches of spiral eucalyptus shared a Lalique crystal vase with white tulips, and large cymbidium orchid plants were in full bloom in the room. The four arch-topped windows whose doors led on to the terrace were draped in yellow silk damask – worn from more than a century of use,
they were frayed but still bright in colour. Books were stacked on tables and a cat, Persian, a smoky grey with dramatic green eyes, was curled up in a wing chair in front of one of the fires. Three period bird cages sat on a table at the far end of the room, and their residents, orange singing canaries, were in full song. The cat and the canaries miraculously shared this room, such was the tranquillity between them.

Arianne took it all in, and once she was over her initial surprise at the beauty and elegance of the life Ben lived, she relaxed and felt quite at home, comfortable, as if she belonged there with Ben and his things.

Several glasses of champagne later, quite discreetly, staff and the champagne flutes, the empty silver trays vanished from the room and Arianne and Ben were left alone. They sat silent in front of the fire for some time. Just being together seemed to say it all for them. Finally Arianne kissed Ben on the cheek and said, ‘I think I’m ready to see more.’

It was a tour of the house, but not all forty rooms of the château. The kitchen, the hub of the house, was splendid and with a massive round country dining table in front of an open fire where Arianne learned Ben liked to dine with his friends most of the time, leaving the dining room for the most grand occasions. A smaller circular dining room overlooking the garden was used for intimate yet formal meals. ‘And here is where you and I will dine when we want to be alone, away from cook and staff.’ They viewed half-dozen or more rooms until Ben became bored with giving the tour and told her, ‘There’s plenty of time to see the rest.’ He pulled her into the master suite of rooms he used. ‘My bedroom,’ he told her. ‘Now our bedroom.’

‘It’s marvellous. I don’t know what I expected, but whatever it was, the château, this room, it’s all much more.’

‘You can change anything you want to in the house. Is there anything you don’t like? All you have to do is tell me.’

‘I don’t want to change a thing. I only want to become part of it, share it with you.’

Ben took Arianne in his arms and hugged her to him. He felt tremendously emotional at her response. So uncomplicated, so easy, and genuine, but then he should have expected that. That was Arianne. He needed a moment to compose himself. He
released her and walked to the window to watch the river flowing swiftly past the château.

Arianne, sensitive to every nuance of Ben’s feelings, went to him and took his hand in hers. They remained there very much together, the room silent except for the crackling sound of the open fire. Several minutes passed by, and he was in control of himself again. He turned away from the window to kiss her on the cheek, to smile at her. ‘This is a wonderful room,’ she told him, as he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the four-poster, canopied bed, elaborately draped in white silk and lined in grey and white silk-taffeta stripes, that had once belonged to a king.

Ben laid Arianne gently on the bed against the cream and white and beige silk damask pillows. He removed her suede boots and placed them neatly to one side on the floor. Then he raised her dark brown suede skirt up around her waist. He was deliberately slow, savouring every moment as he eased the black silk and lace half-slip she was wearing down off her hips, her legs, to drop it on the floor. After removing her silk panties, he placed two of the silk damask pillows under her bottom. To be undressed by Ben was sexy, to be thus exposed to the man she loved and yearned for was very sexy; the sensuous feel of the silk damask against her naked bottom was to render her hungry for sexual delights.

Ben removed his jacket and placed it on a chair, then returned to Arianne to sit on the bed. He caressed her mound, her thighs, to the top of her black silk stockings. He stood up and spread her legs wide apart and then climbed on the bed to sit in between them. He lowered his head and sighed, ‘Ah, the glorious mound of Venus.’ He ran his fingers through the pubic hair covering it, then placed a kiss upon it. Arianne watched him, and to watch him making love to her was yet another erotic excitement for her.

With deft fingers he opened her cunt lips and began to lick her. To suck tenderly on her labia, to place his pointed tongue at the opening of her vagina, to lick it, circle it again and again. He searched out her clitoris and teased it. How he loved her, adored her for loving him, for wanting him, for the delight she took in giving herself up to him in all things sexual, beyond body, beyond soul.

His kisses told Arianne everything. Revelling in them, she whispered, in a voice husky with passion, ‘I love you so much, Ben. I’ve loved before, but what I feel for you is something so special, what we are together so right, all other loves pale before it.’

Here were words that rang true for Ben as well. Words he had waited to hear all his adult life.

She came, and he tasted her on his tongue. He filled his mouth with her and then he quite gently placed her legs together and slid himself up the bed to lie next to her. Taking her in his arms, he kissed her deeply and they fell asleep spent by love for each other.

When they rose from their dreamless sleep neither of them could remember that moment when kissing had stopped and deep dark sleep had taken them over.

PARIS,
GLOUCESTERSHIRE,
LONDON

Chapter 17

‘The thing about being in the detective business is that it can be incredibly boring. You know – long, tedious surveillance stuff, dull people living dull lives, trying to escape a dull existence. It gets to be hectic when you have to travel – airport hassle, visas, foreign cops. But the work itself is still routine. The same dull guys sinning in the same dull ways. Only the scenery alters. Till you get into the high-flying stuff: intrigue, dirty dealings, power politics. You know – “Murder Incorporated” sorta stuff. Missing persons, we get a lot of those, and missing bodies, not so many of those. But always, whatever the case, big or small, it’s always dealing with the human element. That’s what keeps a detective hooked. That and a good mystery to solve, the ultimate.’ At this point Jim O’Connor attracted the attention of the waiter and glasses were instantly refilled. In acceptable French he ordered another bottle of 1978 Montrachet, and told the waiter, ‘I think another plate of frogs’ legs.’

They were in a bistro in one of the back streets of Montparnasse, famous for its wine cellar and two dishes, the only ones this bistro served: deep-fried frogs’ legs in an especially delicious light batter, and
escargots
served straight from the oven, in garlic butter, the snails sizzling in their shells.

It was Jim who had called the meeting, Jim who had selected the bistro. Ahmad sensed he was going to hear more about the detective business. Not interested, he cut Jim off before he could resume his dissertation. ‘You’ve got a lot of style, Jim. This is a great place. The food, the wine, can’t be bettered. Small, intimate, yet rough-and-tumble. Quite an atmosphere.’

‘You might add, off the beaten track. Nice sorta place for a quiet meeting.’

‘We could have had that in my rooms at the Plaza Athénée.’

‘Not really. I promised to keep your name out of this
investigation you wanted me to take on.’

‘Ah!’ Ahmad was beginning to understand: Jim was relishing some sort of success.

Jim chose to ignore the exclamation. He wasn’t ready to give anything away. Instead he said, ‘Glad you like my discovery, Ahmad. Been coming here for years.’

‘You’re an unusual man. Many-sided, I’d say, Jim. It’s one of the things I like about you.’

‘Next you’ll be telling me I’ve got some taste. Well, Ahmad, one frog’s leg doesn’t make a gourmet. Nor does a preference for great white burgundy that’s strong and perfumed and suits my palate make me a wine-buff.’

Ahmad transferred the last frog’s leg from the platter to his plate, took a swallow of his wine and then, while raising the succulent piece of meat to his mouth, gazed across the table directly into Jim’s eyes. ‘I think you’re playing with me, Jim.’

‘Not exactly playing.’

‘What then?’

‘I don’t rightly know.’

That was honest, thought Ahmad. ‘You have some news for me?’

‘Yes.’

Ahmad’s heart was racing. This was the news he had been patiently awaiting for months. He wished Jim would get on with it, and was about to order him to do so when the waiter arrived with the platter of frogs’ legs. ‘You’re keeping me in suspense, Jim.’

Just then the door opened. The small bell on a spring at the top of it vibrated and rang out, as it had rung every time anyone used the door. Jim O’Connor recognised the man entering the restaurant and said, ‘Ah, here comes Mike. Ahmad, he doesn’t know who you are, or even that you are the client. Thinks you’re just a guy I’m having lunch with. Keep it that way.’

Jim, rose from his chair, stuck his arm out and shook the hand of the tall, slender American while giving him a pat on the back. There was a look of disapproval on Ahmad’s face. But Jim was having none of it. This was his show and he would conduct it as he chose.

‘How you doing, Mike?’

‘OK. Yeah, OK.’

Jim knew the young man was slightly overwhelmed at giving his report directly to the big boss. That rarely happened. The field operatives usually went to their direct superiors who handled the cases.

‘Glass of wine, Mike?’

‘Great.’

A glass was summoned and brought to the table and filled for Mike. As soon as the waiter had made his retreat, Jim said, ‘Mike, this is a friend of mine.’ The two men barely had a chance to acknowledge the introduction with a nod before Jim fired an instruction, ‘OK. Let’s hear it. I know you have a plane to catch. You can talk in front of my friend.’

Mike hesitated. Jim didn’t shout, but he did crack out an order: ‘Tell it the way it is, boy. Just the way it is. Give me the bottom line first.’

Mike Chambers all but snapped to attention. The twenty-eight year old ran his fingers through his hair and told the two men at the table. ‘He’s alive. Just about. At least he was three weeks ago when I left him.’

‘Are you sure it’s Jason Honey?’

‘Yes.’

Jim looked across the table to Ahmad, expecting some sort of reaction. Nothing. So he concluded that what he had suspected in Cairo was true: Ahmad had not been altogether straight with him. Not ever – even at the time of his first investigation of the accident. He turned his attention away from Ahmad and back to Mike. ‘How are you sure?’

‘My instructions were to find the guy without letting on we were searching for him, get proof of identity, and report back.’ From the inside pocket of his jacket, Mike produced a small white card with a fingerprint photocopied on to it encased in a clear plastic coating. ‘This is the right-hand index-fingerprint of Jason Honey. I gave him a shot of whisky from my own stainless steel cup, and Larry and I lifted the print from it once we were back in Islamabad. I faxed it to our New York office for confirmation. There’s no doubt about it: that man is Jason Honey. I also managed to get these.’ Mike handed Jim an
envelope containing photographs. Jim slipped them in his jacket pocket.

‘Why was he flying over the Himalayas?’

‘A million-dollar wager-a fucking bet-with his best friend.’

‘There has to be more to it than that.’

‘A gold run?’

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘Hell, no. He didn’t even tell me he was Jason Honey.’

‘How do you know, then? OK, forget that, it’s all in your report.’

‘You’ve read my report?’

‘Yeah, you’ve done a terrific job.’

‘I’d like to be one of the guys going back to bring him out, Mr O’Connor.’

Jim O’Connor ignored the request and instead asked, ‘One more question, Mike. What kind of physical condition is he in?’

‘He’s paralysed down one side, and dying a slow death from his injuries; a broken back, internal problems, malnutrition. And he’s an addict. Heroin.’

Jim looked at his watch. ‘You’ll just make your plane.’ The three men stood up and shook hands, and Mike Chambers left.

Ahmad and Jim gazed across the table at one another before they sat down. There was plenty to read in Ahmad’s face now. He was visibly shaken. Jim reached for his glass; the wine felt good in his mouth. Ahmad stood up, ‘I need something stronger.’ He walked to the bar and ordered a double Calvados, drank half while standing at the bar and then had it topped up and another poured for Jim.

Returning to the table, he placed the glass in front of Jim. The two men remained seated and silent for several minutes, contemplative. Finally Jim spoke. ‘Look, Ahmad, you don’t owe me an explanation.’

‘That’s right, I don’t.’

‘But I’d like you to tell me why you did it, anyway.’

‘Why must you know?’

‘Because you have to go and get the poor bastard out of there and to some medics. Because you can’t leave him to suffer in a remote village on the side of a Himalayan mountain now we know the facts. I’m the only one who can organise it for you on
the quiet, and I’m not going to do that unless you level with me, something you should have done right from the start.’

‘Maybe so.’

For the first time since Jim had had dealings with Ahmad, he sensed a note of regret in the man’s voice. ‘There’s no maybes about it.’

‘Jim, don’t push this. I can pay you off right now, and walk away from this.’

‘You can, but you won’t.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘You may be a decadent hedonist, but you’re no murderer. A selfish, greedy prick who always gets what he wants, somebody who plays with the dark side of people’s natures, but you haven’t got the killer-instinct. Not like me. You’re too much of a gent. Murder is never beautiful, and you like beautiful. With men like you, sexual violence to the edge is as close to death as you ever go. But the final plunge you never take.’

‘You always talk to your clients this way?’

‘No, but I would to any of them who had led me up the garden path the way you have, Ahmad. You used my firm – and that’s me – to investigate the crash and then lied about our findings. You claimed we found the remains of Jason Honey scattered all around the impact point. You buried a corpse that never was, and closed the investigation after a three-week search. For whose sake? His wife’s? Yours? Jason Honey’s? I didn’t think anything of it until nearly three years later, when you called me to Cairo and I saw the false death-certificate. And you reopened the case. I’ve been curious about your motives ever since.’

Jim downed his Calvados in one gulp. Then he removed the photographs of Jason Honey that Mike had taken secretly with a mini-camera from their envelope and slid them across the table. Ahmad did not touch them. He merely studied them as they lay fanned out in front of him. ‘How soon can you get him out, Jim?’

‘Ah, not so fast, Ahmad. It’s going to take more than money to bail this guy out. But before we get into that, I want some answers, or you get a new boy for this one.’

Ahmad left the table without a reply, to return to the bar with the empty glasses. Jim watched him standing there, doing his cigarette ritual with the amber holder. Jim had to admire a man
who was handling himself so well under the circumstances. He returned to the table with the bottle of Calvados this time. After filling the two glasses he sat down opposite Jim. Ahmad picked up the photographs and looked at each of them briefly, then placed them in the ashtray and set them alight. ‘Jason is a very vain man. He would never want anyone who knew and loved him to see him in that condition. He’d rather be dead.’

A waiter arrived and unloaded from a tray a pot of hot, black coffee and two demi-tasse cups, a glass bowl of cherries with their stones and stems preserved in cognac, and two small ladles carved from olive wood. He picked up the ashtray that now held a miniature inferno, and carried it away from the table without a word. His grimace was eloquent.

‘He’s still handsome. Extraordinary, after all he’s been through. His face, a bit haggard, yes. A slight twist to one side – I imagine that’s his paralysed side. His hair’s gone very grey. A jagged scar on his forehead. But there are signs still of that outrageous handsomeness of his. Oh, yes, you get him out, and I’ll see that he gets the best medical care on offer.’

Ahmad raised his glass and touched the rim of Jim’s on the table in front of him. Jim raised it to return the silent toast that sealed yet another business transaction between the two men. And then they downed the amber liquid. What choice did he have? Jim had read Mike’s report. But then Ahmad began to speak.

‘About Jason. To meet him was to fall for him. Everyone found him irresistible. He was a winning combination – all the best and worst that make a man. A good intellect, relentless charm. A compulsion to manipulate situations and control outcomes. He could be as hard as nails, or as soft and vulnerable as a child. That was the way he was. That’s the way he lived. He was a great pilot, an adventurer, a bad businessman, a lover of luxury, a fighter for lost causes. An anything-goes man in sex, drugs and drink when he indulged. He had a rage to live. He had a dark side to his nature, like all of us, and that’s the side that gave him his greatest personal pleasure. I knew that side of him as no other person did. We have been great friends for more than fifteen years.

‘We got along so well because we were a lot alike. We could
have been brothers. We were both terrific womanisers. Sexual hedonists on a grand scale. The decadent, the depraved, has always been something we shared. We were romantics, who loved women, but used them more than loved them. The thrill was in the chase, the conquest, the corruption of them. Always the adoring lover – till we became bored. Heartless, amoral, existential in our thinking would be not a bad description of either of us. And then he fell in love and married Arianne.

‘I never thought it possible that he would find love, but he did. Loving Arianne became the most important thing in his life, but it never really changed him. Love and marriage merely added to his life. I have never seen a happier marriage, but then you have to know Arianne. I knew Jason too well. He would only stay in that marriage for as long as he was sexually interested and he saw to it that she learned well how to keep him on heat. Two months after they were married, he gave her to me. Literally rolled her naked into my arms. The three of us became lovers. The years that followed until that crash were the happiest years of our lives. You’d never see three more successful pleasure-seekers. We were in love, all three of us, with each other. We had our separate lives – they as a couple, me as the hedonist bachelor – and we had our sexual
ménage à trois
. That was what fuelled our lives. In time we all understood that, without it, Jason would destroy Arianne and abandon love, marriage, a happiness that was the foundation of his life.

‘During those years he put together a successful aviation corporation, but periodically I was bailing him out with funds. I never minded. I’m a very wealthy man. I know how to keep my wealth and make it work for me. If I couldn’t bail out a man who had become so much a part of my life, who would I do it for?

‘The thing about a
ménage à trois
, sexual or otherwise, is that you are inextricably involved with each other. The love is shared equally. Sure, Jason loved me as much as his wife. Differently maybe, but to the same degree. It was the same for me. Arianne – she loved us both equally when we were together. Then as the years rolled by, I came to realise that two problems were looming: the darker side of Jason was showing itself in strange ways. He was undergoing some kind of personality change. Only I could see it, though. And Arianne? When the three of us were
together, she loved me as she did Jason. Unconditionally. Ready to lay down her life for me. We’d only to ask, either Jason or myself. No questions. It was total submission to our will. Her sexual passion for me was boundless, but her love was not. Although she did very well hiding it, there was a fraction of love she held back. That was reserved for Jason. Just for him. The rest is quite simple. I wanted that fraction.’