Devil May Care

attendant and went round to open the passenger door.
    From it stepped the man in M’s photograph, the same man he’d seen in Marseille. He wore a long-sleeved white flannel shirt and grey slacks with a single white glove on his outsized left hand. Bond turned to study the noticeboard as the men went past him towards the office. Scarlett had vanished.
    Bond looked up to a bank of television screens on the wall, which showed the games in progress on the outside courts with a running scoreline updated from a courtside link by the players when they changed ends. Such technology was rare, Bond knew, outside a television studio and it must have cost the club – or, at any rate, the members – a hefty amount.
    In addition to these games, there were indoor facilities in a basement complex immediately below the outside courts. Progress of these matches could be monitored from the indoor gallery that encircled them.
    A minute later, Bond heard footsteps approach him. It was the man in the kepi.
    ‘Excuse me,’ he said in English. ‘Mr Bond? My name is Chagrin.’
    Bond turned to face him. He had yellowish skin, narrow eyes with the epicanthic lids of the Orient, and flat, inert features. There was something half dead, or at least not fully alive, about him, Bond thought. He had seen that lifeless flesh once before, in a stroke victim. It sat oddly with the man’s otherwise active demeanour.
    ‘I think you play Dr Gorner.’ Chagrin’s accent sounded Chinese or Thai.
    ‘If he’s looking for a game,’ said Bond, casually.
    ‘Oh, yes. He looking. I introduce you.’
    Chagrin led the way past the spiral staircase that wound up to the extensive viewing area, bars and restaurant.
    Gorner was staring through the plate-glass window at the nearer courts.
    He turned and looked Bond in the eye. He held out his right, ungloved hand.
    ‘What an enormous pleasure to meet you, Mr Bond. Now, shall we play?’

5. Not Cricket
    The changing room was on the lower ground floor, and included a large steam room, four saunas and enough colognes and aftershaves to have stocked Trumper’s of Mayfair for a year. Bond, who was used to the club in Barbados (single shower stall, wooden bar with cold beer) or the shabby back rooms of Queen’s Club in London, noticed that no amount of expensive scents had quite concealed a rancid under-smell of socks.
    Gorner changed in a secluded cubicle, and emerged in new white Lacoste shorts that showed off muscular, tanned legs. He had retained the long-sleeved flannel shirt and the white glove on his large left hand. Over his right shoulder, he carried a bag with half a dozen new Wilson racquets.
    Without speaking, as though he merely expected Bond to follow, Gorner led the way upstairs and out into the playing area, which consisted of a dozen immaculate grass courts and the same number again of beaten earth with a powdery red dirt dressing. The club was proud of the surface, said to give a fast but exceptionally regular bounce and to be kind to the joints of knee and ankle. At each court there was a raised umpire’s chair, four smaller wooden seats for the players, a supply of fresh white towels and a fridge, which contained cold drinks and new boxes of white Slazenger tennis balls. Marshals in the club’s striped green and chocolate colours moved busily between the courts to make sure the members were happy with their arrangements.
    ‘Court Four is free, Dr Gorner,’ said one of them, as he ran to meet them. He spoke in English. ‘Or Number Sixteen if you would prefer grass this morning.’
    ‘No, I shall take Court Two.’
    ‘Your usual court?’ The man appeared anxious. ‘It’s occupied at the moment, Monsieur.’
    Gorner looked at the marshal as a vet might inspect a spavined old horse to whom he is about to administer a lethal injection. He repeated, very slowly, ‘I shall take Court Two.’
    The bass-baritone voice retained a slight Baltic thickening of the vowels in the otherwise cultured English pronunciation.
    ‘Er … Yes, yes. But of course. I shall ask the gentlemen to move to Court Four straight away.’
    ‘You will find Court Two a better surface,’ said Gorner to Bond. ‘And one isn’t troubled by the sun.’
    ‘As you wish,’ said Bond. It was a beautiful morning and the sun was already high.
    Gorner took a fresh box of tennis balls from the fridge, threw three to Bond and took three for himself. Without consultation, he selected the far end, though there was no