Assassin

3

The Englishman called Carver looked Lara up and down. His face betrayed no indication of what he thought of her.

'I very good at sex,' she blurted, not knowing what else to say. 'You take me please, we have good time.'

Now Carver laughed. He looked past her, towards Tiger Dey, and said, 'I'll give the girl one thing, she's enthusiastic.'

As the Indian smiled in agreement, Carver looked at Lara again, leaned towards her and, almost to himself, murmured, 'But you're not enthusiastic really, are you, Lara? I can tell.'

Lara felt confused, unable to decide if she was doing well or badly. She could not read this man's eyes. At first she had thought they were blue, but close up she wondered if they might be green. In the dim light of the club it was hard to tell. Either way, there was something not quite right, almost unnatural about them.

Before she could pin it down she was distracted by a movement at the very edge of her peripheral vision. Even while he gazed at her face, Carver seemed to be doing something with the drink on the table beside him, though she could not tell what it was.

Then suddenly the spell was broken.

'I like her,' said Carver, relaxing back into the seat and talking to Tiger Dey again. 'She'll do… my little Lara,' he continued, giving her bare thigh a friendly squeeze.

She gave him a nervous smile, hardly daring to believe that he had chosen her, still uncertain that the deal was done.

'What do you think that ape is going to want for her?' Carver asked.

Tiger Dey smiled. 'He will want whatever I tell him to want. You will give me thirty thousand, and I will give him half of that. He will not dare to complain.'

'Excellent,' said Carver and Lara, watching him, was struck again by the sense that something about him wasn't quite right. She realized that Carver was acting, just as she so often did. He was giving a performance. But why, and what would it mean for her?

She knew at once that such questions were futile. Her only hope was to make him like her. So Lara put a happy look on her face and giggled sweetly when Carver asked her if she wanted a drink to celebrate. She laughed again when Carver told the waiter to put a cherry in it.

'Don't worry, darling, it's not for you,' he said. 'It's for Tiger. He can't resist those cherries, can you, mate?'

'Indeed, they are my fatal weakness,' the Indian agreed.

'Hang on, what have we here?' said Carver, reaching into his own, empty glass and pulling a waxy red fruit out by its stalk. 'There you go, have a cherry on me!'

He lobbed it over the table. Tiger Dey caught it one-handed and popped it in his mouth, to a cheer from Carver and an excited squeal and burst of applause from Lara.

As the merriment subsided, Carver reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, took out a tightly stuffed envelope and slipped it across the table. 'Thirty grand in five-hundred-euro notes,' he said as Tiger Dey picked it up. 'I won't even try to beat you down.'

'You would only end up paying even more. In any case, this one is worth the money.'

Within minutes, Khat had been led across to them and given his share. Lara could see him biting back the urge to complain.

So he is scared too, she thought, relishing his fear. Then she heard Tiger Dey telling Carver, 'She is yours, my friend. Do with her as you will.'

'In that case, I'm going to find out exactly what I've just bought.' Carver looked at Lara and, mimicking the patronizing tone of a husband to his wife, said, 'Finish up your drink, darling, I think it's time we left.'

He took her by the hand as he helped her up from the table and then slipped his arm around her waist as they left the club, crossed the lobby and took the lift up to his top-floor suite.

It struck Lara as Carver held the door open and ushered her in that she would never be going back to Khat's apartment, the locked room and the beatings. She did not have to make fifteen hundred dirhams tonight. She just had to persuade this strange, disturbing, handsome man that he had been right to buy her, and that he wanted to keep her. Perhaps, if she were very good, he might want to make her his proper girlfriend, or even his wife. Her eyes welled up, though she did not know if it was from relief, from hope or just because she was a young girl, far from home and weary to her bones.

Carver ran a finger under her eyes, wiping away the tears. 'Don't cry,' he said. Then he took her in her arms.

It began as a hug of consolation, but soon he pushed a little harder against her, and Lara found herself pushing back, although she could not say why. In all the times she had been with men, she had only ever given them what they wanted – no matter how much it disgusted her, no matter how badly it hurt – because the consequences of not doing so were even worse.

So was it fear that made her long to please the man who was taking her now? When he picked her up and carried her across the room, she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled her mouth to his, so that he had to jerk away, laughing, just to see where he was going. And then, very gently, he lowered her down to the bed.