Dolly And The Cookie Bird - Dorothy Dunnett - Johnson Johnson 03 by Unknown

mesh gates. There were a lot of bikes parked inside and some pollarded trees. The club was quite small; gray and white with big yellow shutters and Venetian blinds, with a concrete patio on the other side looking straight onto the sea. I turned right, down the patio steps, and walked along to the end of the quay, the wire mesh wall of the boatyard running high on my right. On my left was the water, hazy blue, dimpled and glassy, and the shining sterns of big, blissful yachts tied to a row of pale concrete bollards. Behind me, they stretched in long rows on the other side of the clubhouse, and more remotely, side by side along the built-up, thin jetties running this way and that in the sea.
    It was the innermost heart of the harbor, far from the big ships which lay on the waterfront under Ibiza itself which faced me now, over the water, mirrored pink in the turning pink waves. Air from the sea stirred against my hot face. I took off my dark glasses, turned, and walked to the long varnished gangplank that led up to
Dolly
. On deck a small middle-aged man in a peaked cap was sitting splicing a rope. He jumped up. “Miss Cassells? Come this way. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Clem are just sitting for’ard up there.”
    We walked round a sort of rooftop, which must be over one of the cabins, and then sidled past a huge cockpit with a natty fringed awning and past a second mast to the front of the boat, which was littered with cushions and air beds and books and binoculars and Clem Sainsbury’s red, half-naked torso spread out under the rail where he seemed to be chucking food down to the fish. He squirmed back at my footsteps and said, “Hi, Cassells,” and got to his feet without glancing at a square inch of my skin under neck level. “I’ll get Johnson. This is Spry, by the way. He’s the only man who can sail this tub, so be nice to him.” The man in the peaked cap grinned and went aft, and I sat down on one of the air beds. I nearly lay down, and then thought better of it. One thing at a time.
    In a minute, two bright reflected beams crawled over the air beds followed by Johnson’s bifocals. His legs were all right, but he wouldn’t stop a bus in mid-Mayfair: he had on a short-sleeved shirt over beach pants, and everything that would button was buttoned. There was nothing to see on his face but a polite smile, eyebrows, and glasses.
    The prospect seemed a bit bourgeois after Gil and Coco and fast Maseratis, but I was prepared to be sweet. Something must have been wrong with my smile, for before I said a word, Johnson came to a halt, his hands full of martinis, and shook his head slowly. “This is the bonzai sex department. Perfect, but teeny. How is Coco?”
    I turned my head, the way a Forsey should turn her head. “Telepathy?”
    “Binoculars,” said Johnson. “Have a martini. There isn’t a thing in it except sodium amytal. What was he so mad about, apart from your driving?”
    “He was inviting me to a party,” I said, sipping the martini. My hair kept getting into it.
    “When?” Clem came and sat on the hatch lid, a large beer in his hand.
    “Tomorrow night,” I said. Janey can toss her hair back, but mine doesn’t bounce quite the same. “What’s so funny?”
    Johnson stopped chortling first. “I fear the skids are under Coco,” he said. “Tomorrow night, Mrs. van Costa is entertaining the three members of the Russian trade mission and their attaché to dinner. You haven’t met Mrs. van Costa?”
    “No,” I said. “Tell me about her.”
    “Well, we can tell you one thing about her,” said Clem Sainsbury. “She doesn’t know about tomorrow night’s party. She’ll do a vertical takeoff in four different stages.”
    “What brought you out here, Miss Cassells?” said Johnson, circling the ice in his tumbler. He took a drink and rested his back on the rail. “A pilgrimage because you cared, or a picnic because you didn’t care, or something else altogether?”
    “Something else altogether,”