Witch Hunt by Ian Rankin Page A

is great, really great.’ Shari or Sherri slumped her head against Khan’s shoulder. She was dressed well. He’d been relieved when they’d stopped the car outside her block and she’d opened the door and started down the steps, smiling, waving, carrying two large holdalls ... and above all dressed well. Discreetly sensual. Not too much make-up, not too much perfume. A clinging red dress which just met her knees. Her tanned legs did not need covering. Her shoes were red too. She knew how well her blonde hair and high cheekbones suited red.
    ‘You’re very special,’ he told her now, rubbing one smooth knee. It was true: they were all very special.
    ‘Touching down in ten minutes,’ called the pilot. One bottle of champagne was still unopened, the sandwiches barely touched.
    ‘You’re special too, Khan,’ said Shari or Sherri.
    ‘Thank you, my dear.’ He patted the back of her hand, which lay on his right thigh. ‘I’m sure we’re going to have a wonderful time.’
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Me too.’
    Across the aisle from them, Henrik drained first one beaker and then the other. His chin dropped against his neck as he stifled a belch.
     
    A wonderful time. Well, yes, at first it was. But it struck Khan that there was something not quite right. The time was wonderful but not perfect. It wasn’t that he was worrying about bank business. The bank was always in and on his mind, even on these trips north. Scotland was not a refuge. There were computers and modems and faxes and telephones in his house. A call might come on his portable phone during lunch or dinner, or to his bedside telephone in the middle of the night. New York might call to warn of an incoming fax, for his eyes only. Seoul might need information. Karachi, Lahore, Patna, Bombay, Bangkok, George Town, Shanghai ... not everyone appreciated what the local hour was when they called. If it was the middle or the beginning or the end of their banking day, then it was Khan’s banking day too.
    But no, it was nothing to do with business. Business was not a problem. Was the problem Shari or Sherri? Ah, yes, maybe. Maybe that was it. She did love what he did to her in bed ... and elsewhere in and out of the house. Her American accent grated, but only a little. She was not over-talkative, which was a relief to him. And she looked good all the time. She made herself presentable. What then?
    Well ... There came a time when, sated, he liked his women to open themselves up a little to him, to tell him about their lives. Normally, he was uninterested in pasts, but there was something about the aftermath of the sexual act. He liked to listen to their stories then, and file them away. So that he could assure himself he had been fucking someone’s history, a real flesh and blood human, and not just a beautiful dummy.
    And it was here that Shari or Sherri had disappointed him. She had disappointed him by being at first vague, and then by making obvious mistakes. For instance, she told him about a childhood incident when a boy neighbour had lifted up her skirt and slipped his hot little hand inside her pants. She told the story twice, and the first time the boy’s hand had gone down the front of her pants, the second time the back. Khan hadn’t commented, but it had made him wonder. He made her work harder, recalling more and more of her past for him. He got her to go over the same story twice, once at breakfast and once over dinner, checking for mistakes in the retelling. There were one or two, not significant in themselves.
    He remembered how he met her. In a club. She’d been with a friend, a male friend, an admirer perhaps. She’d caught Khan’s eye several times, and he’d held her glances, until eye contact between them became more prolonged and meaningful. He was a sucker for this kind of conquest, the kind where he almost literally tore a woman from another man’s arms. By the end of the evening she was at his table, and the other suitor had