The Mysteries Page 9

  He shook his head. “No. I want what they're drinking.” He waved his arm. “It's wine, isn't it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “But you don't have a license. At least, that's what the waiter told me. Is this a private club?”

  “It's my place.” The man did not look happy.

  Gleefully, Hugh pressed on. “So you can make me a member, or you can give me a drink, as a friend. You're the boss here, right? Go on, pour me a drink. Even if anybody was to find out, you wouldn't get done for it—you're not charging me.”

  Mider didn't seem to be following Hugh's argument. “Ask me for something else. There are things you want. I can give you money enough to buy a car, to buy your own house, to leave your little job. Just ask.”

  “I want that drink.”

  They stared at each other. Hugh felt triumphant; without understanding it, he'd found his host's weakness. He would make him do what he didn't want to do. He really had won. Finally, Mider stood and walked away.

  “Oh, Hugh,” Peri whispered. “Was that smart?”

  Hugh shrugged. “I don't know. I don't know what's going on here, at all. Do you?”

  Slowly she shook her head. They held hands.

  Mider came back carrying a goblet. As he stood beside the table he said, “Think: a glass of wine is soon gone. Will you not ask me instead for something of real, lasting value in your own world?”

  “Are you going to let me taste that wine?”

  Without another word, Mider set the goblet down. Hugh let go Peri's hand to raise the glass.

  The scent hit him first, and his nostrils flared with pleasure. When he drank, the wine was rich and heavy on his tongue, smooth and delicious in his mouth. It tasted the way he had once imagined grown-up drinks might taste, but he had certainly never tasted anything like it. It must have been a very rare and expensive vintage. It was so much nicer than any wine he'd ever had before that he immediately took another mouthful to make sure.

  “Wow.” He felt a wide and foolish grin stretch his lips. “That is really good stuff. No wonder you wanted to keep it to yourself. Tell me the name so I can buy lots of it.”

  Mider's face was set like stone. Hugh's spirits soared; he felt invincible. He didn't understand why, if the man really could hand over a car or a wad of cash, he should begrudge this single glass of wine, however valuable it might be. It must be that Hugh had confounded him, spoiled whatever scam he was attempting to run.

  “Confusion to our enemies,” Hugh pronounced, raising the glass before taking another drink. He set it down and slid it across to Peri. “Here, try it.”

  She glanced at Mider. This annoyed Hugh—why did she think she needed a stranger's permission? Anyway, he didn't respond, and after a brief hesitation, Peri picked up the glass in both hands and took the tiniest of sips. Then, looking surprised, she gulped more. “I thought I didn't like wine. I could get addicted to this!”

  He laughed and took the glass away from her. “Easy! This is my prize, remember?” He drained the rest of it and smiled at Mider. “I guess you'll want a rematch now, huh? Even though you'll never get this back.”

  The wine had gone straight to his head. It was powerful stuff. Yet he didn't feel fuzzy; there was no alcoholic haze wrapping his senses. Instead, all his senses felt sharper than before. It seemed he could hear whispering from the people at the other tables, and there were colors and movement at the corners of his eyes . . . he couldn't quite make it out, but it was all tremendously suggestive and fascinating. Everything reminded him in brief, charged flashes, of something else. He remembered what Peri had said about déjà vu and Mider reminding her of a childhood dream. He turned to her, meaning to ask her again, but she shook her head, frowning, and he realized that Mider had already set up the board for a new game.

  He looked down at the board, then at his pile of white stones. He thought of the patterns he could make with them, and what they might symbolize . . . Everything he looked at seemed more than itself, suggested so many other things, all of them intensely interesting. It was very distracting. He felt the urge to let go and follow his impulse, let the images well up in his head unrestricted, fall into a dream. And then it occurred to him that the wine had been drugged.

  What was it, a psychedelic? LSD? Mescaline? Hugh wasn't averse to a little chemical experimentation now and then. Only not right then, surrounded by strangers, with Peri depending on him to steer her safely home . . . Maybe he hadn't been so terribly clever after all. And maybe all of Mider's emotion had been an act, pushing him into a more vulnerable position.

  Anxiety worked on him like a cold shower. He resisted the pull of the drug with all his might, shutting it out. It was absolutely vital that he concentrate.

  Hugh played his best, and in the blink of an eye it was all over, and he'd won again. Mider asked him to name his forfeit and this time, although his heart pounded, he didn't hesitate.

  “Five hundred thousand pounds.”

  Peri's hand gripped his thigh, her fingernails digging in. He didn't look at her. All his attention was fixed on Mider's face. The singer, club owner, whatever he was, didn't look surprised or discomfited. He snapped his fingers, and a waiter came over with a checkbook and a gold pen.

  Hugh watched the other man write out the check. As he read the figure—£500,000—he had to struggle not to laugh. How could it be so easy? He should have asked for a million. This had to be a fake, anyway.

  Coolly he nodded, folded the check, and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.

  “One last game,” said Mider.

  “Act Three: In which mine host wins it all back.” Hugh wasn't sure that he'd spoken aloud. His mouth was dry with a thirst the Perrier could not quench. He longed for another glass of Mider's wine.

  The game seemed to go on for a very long time—for hours, although, in retrospect he realized that was impossible. Mider was quick and decisive as he placed his pieces on the board; Hugh agonized over his strategy. But in the end it didn't matter what he did or how long he thought about it: there was no beating his host. It was almost a relief when he had to concede at last.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the check. “Here you go.”

  “I don't want that. You won it fairly; it's yours to keep. I'll name the forfeit.”

  Hugh crossed his arms. Now they were getting to the point of this whole charade. “Go on,” he said grimly.

  Mider canted his head toward Peri. “I want her.”

  Hugh looked at Peri. Her reaction shocked him even more than Mider's outrageous demand. She should have been laughing that wild, infectious laugh of hers. She should have made fun of the anachronistic old hippie who had the nerve to talk about her as if she were property. Or she might have been furious: Mider's implication being that she was for sale, and Hugh was her pimp. But Peri looked neither angry nor amused. She sat with her eyes cast down and a blush on her cheek like some innocent maid from the reprehensible, sexist past.

  He was appalled. If she wouldn't defuse the situation and refused to stand up for herself, it was up to him. He had no choice; he had to protect her. But he hated fighting. It had been years since he'd been in a physical brawl, and Mider had about him the air of a man who was well used to taking care of himself and might even enjoy hurting others.

  “She's not mine to give away,” Hugh said shortly.

  “Isn't she your wife?”

  “She's not my wife, and even if she were, that wouldn't make her property. Ask me for something else.”

  Mider was silent. Then he said, “Grant me a kiss from her lips and the right to put my arms around her in an embrace.”

  Hugh trembled. He clenched his fists beneath the table. Peri wasn't holding his hand or touching his leg, by then. She wasn't looking at either of them. She'd withdrawn into herself, as unreachable on the other side of the table as if she'd still been on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. He was aware of how little he knew her and how much longer they'd been apart than they had ever b
een together.

  He took a deep breath. “I told you, I'm not her owner. If Peri wants to kiss somebody, that's her decision. You can't ask me to make her do anything.”

  “Then do I have your word that you won't try to stop me?”

  “Like hell I won't.” Hugh's self-possession deserted him, and he jumped up, rocking the little table. “You stay away from her! I love her, and she loves me—tell him, Peri!”

  Finally, Peri looked up, a drowning expression on her face. That sleepy, helpless look irritated him even as it tugged at his heart. “Tell him,” he repeated sharply.

  “I love Hugh,” she said to Mider. Her voice was very faint.

  “There,” said Hugh, throwing the check down like a challenge. “Here's your money back.”

  “It's yours. You won it.”

  “And now you've won it back. So we're quits.” He grasped hold of Peri, pulling her up out of her chair. “Come on, love, I'm taking you home.”

  She didn't resist, but she was not exactly traveling under her own steam. She was like a big doll he had to walk across the floor. He was very aware of their audience, all the people in the big, dim, underground room, silent, watching, and he knew it would only take a word from Mider to set them all against him.

  A waiter stood at the door with their coats. He was blank-faced, unsmiling; but he opened the door, and no one tried to stop them from leaving, and no one followed.

  He marched her up the metal stairs and steered her along the dark, empty street, back toward the lights and the throngs of people. He'd expected the streets would be nearly deserted by now, but there was the usual crush at all the entrances to the Leicester Square underground station, so the trains must still be running. As they paused on the corner, Hugh checked his watch. He stared in disbelief as the digital display changed from 23:03 to 23:04. Still an hour till midnight, when he felt they had been in that basement club for hours, for a whole, long night.

  He thought of the wine, and his suspicion that it had been drugged, and suddenly Peri's silence and her stumbling walk took on a more sinister aspect.

  “Are you all right, love?”

  She gazed up at him, yet seemed unable to focus. Her blue eyes were cloudy and far away. “Hmm? I was dreaming . . .” She smiled a private smile.

  He held her tight, kissing the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her clean hair. “I'm going to take you home now.”

  “Mmmm, that's nice.” She leaned against him, in a world of her own, utterly relaxed.

  She hadn't had as much to drink as he had, but she was smaller, lighter. Anything in the wine would affect her more strongly. He'd been tense and suspicious, which might have helped him fight off the effects, whereas Peri, relaxed, would have been more vulnerable to any drug.

  He felt furious at himself, and thought they'd been lucky to get away. But they had gotten away, and he got her home, delivering her safely to her mother's door at twenty minutes to twelve.

  “She went inside, and that was the last time I saw her.” He looked drained and sad after this partial reliving of the longest night of his life, but I had no sympathy for him. My subconscious had finally responded with the information I'd wanted. I'd recognized the story, and remembered that Mider was a character from ancient Celtic myth. The story in Peri's notebook was from the same source.

  Imaginative, Laura Lensky had called Hugh. Artistic. He fantasizes.

  Oh, yes, all of that. But how she could square this fairy tale with the idea that he was honest and trustworthy was beyond me.

  “So that's the end? You let him take her?”

  That surprised him. A frown wrinkled his brow. “What do you think I should have done?”

  “Oh, I don't know.” I made a pretense of thinking. “Maybe . . . if you'd gone and dug up his sidh, the king of the underworld might have been forced to come out and deal with you.”

  “Shee?” he repeated blankly.

  “Spelled s-i-d-h, or s-i-t-h. The Gaelic word for fairies, and for the ancient burial mounds and artificial hills which were presumed to be their homes. Don't try and tell me you've never read about the Sidhe.”

  “I didn't know that was how it was pronounced.”

  “Right. But you do know the story of Mider and Etain.”

  “Ai-deen?” He copied my pronunciation carefully. “Huh. I thought Eee-tain, to rhyme with Elaine. Sure, I read ‘The Wooing of Etain' when I was researching The Flower-Faced Girl. My film,” he explained, taking my dropped jaw for curiosity. “The short subject I made after Peri—disappeared.”

  “After,” I said sourly. “You're sure about that?”

  He ate some more noodles, handling the chopsticks as deftly as if he'd been born to them. “You're very well-read for a detective. Or well-informed in some unusual areas.”

  “I suppose you've met loads of detectives.”

  “The police certainly hadn't heard of Mider.”

  “You told them that story?” I was staggered. “I thought you only entertained me and Peri's mother with that fairy tale.”

  He gave me a hard look. “It's what happened. If I was going to make something up, it would be a lot more believable, believe me. Maybe this Mider guy expected me to recognize what was going on and play along a little better. Or maybe it was all for Peri's sake.”

  “You mean, the story she wrote.”

  He looked blank. “What story?”

  “In a notebook. Her mother gave it to me. You never read it?”

  He shook his head. I found myself inclined to believe him. It was one thing for him to mess me around and waste my time, but if he'd told the police that fairy tale, maybe something like it really had happened to him. Or he'd been made to believe it had.

  “So, what did the police say?”

  “You can probably guess.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  He sighed and pushed his bowl to one side. “There was no club downstairs at Number 23 Golden Square, and there never had been. On Monday morning, it was all offices, upstairs and down, just as it had been at close of business on Friday. There was a separate entrance to the basement, but nobody ever used it. The gate at the top was bolted and chained shut, and the door at the bottom was alarmed. Even if somebody did have access, they'd have had to clear out all the desks and computers and stuff and redecorate the whole place like an elegant nightclub in about two hours, without anyone noticing. Sounds like a job for the Mission: Impossible force, yeah? And even saying there was somebody with the money and the manpower to do it, you'd have to ask how it could possibly be worth it, all that just to confuse me and kidnap Peri.”

  “So you think she was kidnapped.”

  “I don't know. Abducted, seduced . . .” He let his shoulders fall, defeated. “Maybe she was willing. I still think there was something in her drink. Maybe the wine I had, or maybe something separate in her soft drink. She acted so weird, afterward; I'd never seen her act like that. Maybe it was that date-rape drug, so she wouldn't struggle when he came for her later.”

  “From her mother's place.”

  He nodded.

  “You left her with her mother?”

  “Yeah. I didn't go in with her—she didn't want me to—but I waited, and saw her go in and the street door shut behind her. Their flat was upstairs, and what she always did if I didn't go in, was go to the front window and wave down at me. That night, Laura came and stood next to her. They had their arms wrapped around each other's waists, like sisters, and they looked so cozy and happy there in the warm, lighted room, waving down at me. Then they drew the curtains. I stood there for a little while longer. I don't know why, but I didn't want to go, even though I was expecting to see her in the morning. Plus, it was bloody cold. Anyway, that was the last I saw of her, standing there with her mother, the two of them smiling down at me. And I told myself I was a lucky bastard, then I went home.” He dropped his face into his hands.

  “Finished?”

  I looked at the waitress, who was looking quizzically at
the great mass of noodles still in my bowl.

  “Take it,” I said. “But I would like another beer.”

  Hugh raised his head. “Just the bill, please.”

  “So you think he came back and took her while she was too drugged to struggle.”

  He sighed. “I just don't know. Maybe there was no drug. Maybe there didn't have to be. Maybe he kind of hypnotized her into submission . . . I think of how I saw them together at the table, and that weird thing she said about her dream. And there's another thing. What she said to him in the club. I kept thinking about it afterward, and I just couldn't be sure. You know, I thought she said ‘I love Hugh.' But her voice was so faint, maybe what she really said was ‘I love you.' And maybe I just heard what I wanted to hear.” He rubbed his head, looking miserable.

  I waited, trying to compel the truth from him with my eyes.

  He stared back challengingly. “And even if he took her by force, she could have fallen in love with him after. What do they call it? Where victims identify with their kidnappers? The Stockholm Syndrome. And, after all, if he got her pregnant—”

  “If he did? Are you sterile or something?”

  He scowled. “OK, we didn't use protection that night, it's true. But once I started thinking how weird that scene was, how out of character for her, I had to wonder why it happened. Maybe she was already pregnant and wanted me to think it could be mine. Maybe she'd already got together with Mider in America, and everything that evening was a show put on for my sake. No, I know that's paranoid, and I know it's unlikely, but what the hell am I supposed to think?”

  The waitress returned with a fresh cold bottle of beer and the bill on a saucer.

  Hugh snatched the slip of paper as if he expected me to fight him for it. Then he stood up, took his wallet from his back pocket, and laid a couple of notes on the saucer. “Enjoy your beer.”

  “Hey, you're not leaving!”

  “I am. If you've got any more questions—”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Good luck.”

  It pained me to abandon a drink that had been paid for, but I followed him out into the street. I talked to his back. “For a man in love, you give up awfully easy.”