Free Hot Ice by Madge Swindells Page B

if she has missed anything. Her very last job is to cable FI’s Bombay office, asking them to get hold of a review of Mohsen Sheik’s company’s past weeks’ cash transactions. ‘We’re looking for large and regular cash payments, probably amounting to a million dollars a month…or more. Or any sign of a large cash withdrawal.’ Surely they would know that his holding company is called Jewelrex, but then she adds the name to be on the safe side.
    She works late into the night and goes to bed with a sore neck and burning eyes.
    * * *
    The following morning, Jennings calls back before nine a.m. ‘OK, Chris, here’s his routine. Got a pen handy?’
    ‘Sure. Go ahead.’
    ‘Yesterday, Prince Husam Ibn al-Faisal, manager of the Provident Trust Building Society, drank a sundowner at the Cedar, a club close to his office. The barman said he goes there most evenings and that sometimes he goes on to Shumi’s. Yesterday he left the Cedar at seven p.m. to dine at Tramps, another habitual watering hole. At half past nine he called Elle, an exclusive dating escort agency…one of the better ones…to send him an escort. He’s a regular client, but he only asks for good dancers. He took the girl dancing at China White, after which he sent her home in a company taxi and walked six blocks home to his apartment in St James.’
    ‘Is he gay?’
    ‘Just choosy, I think. I chatted up the girl at the escort agency. He had a French girlfriend for a few months, but they split in April…there’s been no one since then, as far as anyone knows. I took a few discreet pictures which I’m sending over by messenger, together with my report. If I had more time I could get you more information.’
    ‘Thanks. This is all I need right now.’
    * * *
    After lunch, Chris searches New Bond Street’s shops for a dress to wear…not just any dress, but something clinging and low-cut, yet demure. Not an easy project, but she finds exactly what she’s looking for. Marcasite clips for her hair and glittering black sandals seem absolutely right. Leaving at four p.m., she goes home, bathes, changes and douses herself with costly perfume.
    As she creeps downstairs, Chris can hear her mother and Bertram talking in the living room. She reaches for her black coat hanging on the hall stand, hoping she won’t be seen, but her shadow falls across the doorway.
    Mum is appalled. ‘You look like a tart.’ She seems deeply hurt.
    ‘That’s good. I have to pick up an Arabian prince,’ Chris teases.
    ‘Well, don’t come crying to me when you get into trouble. Is this the best you can do after all those years of studying…a pseudo spy!’
    ‘Mum, this dress is very expensive. It was featured in a top fashion magazine.’
    ‘It looks like a black satin petticoat…the sort I used to wear in the Seventies.’
    ‘There’s a certain resemblance,’ Chris murmurs, gazing in the mirror. ‘But it sets off my pale skin and my hair. Don’t you think so?’
    ‘I don’t recognise you, Chris. You’ve changed.’
    ‘Change is the only fact of life that’s truly inevitable.’
    Mother sighs. ‘You’re a fool. I never thought I’d live to see the day…’ Mum is about to burst into tears, so Chris grabs her coat and leaves.
     
    The Cedar’s ‘mod-Mayfair’ decor, as Chris has nicknamed it, is designed to attract rich clients, preferably foreign, and make them feel at home. From every nook, wall panel, floor and ceiling, exotic richness hits the eye with a wallop. Chris shudders as she hurries towards the bar, pausing to open her bag and gaze intently at Jennings’ pictures of Prince Husam. And there he is in person, leaning back in a tapestry armchair reading a newspaper with what looks like a glass of neat scotch on the table. Surely that’s taboo for him. He is alone, which is fortunate. A surge of adrenaline runs though Chris at the enormity of what she is trying to do.
    She chooses an empty table near the prince, but not too near, and orders a