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“I’m Sonny.”
    “Oh yes?” Morgan said, still fuming. He opened the door of the bedroom. Hazel’s cheap clothes lay scattered everywhere. He heard the sounds of splashing from the small bathroom. “It’s me!” he bellowed and shut the door.
    Sonny had risen to his feet. He was very tall and slim and he stared moodily down at the street below, smoke curling from his cigarette. He was wearing, Morgan noticed, very pointed brown shoes.
    “Pleased to meet you,” Sonny drawled, the mid-Atlantic tones grating on Morgan’s ear. “Nice place you got for Hazel.” Morgan made no comment; Hazel had some explaining to do. Sonny glanced at his watch face on the inside of his wrist. “Ah-ah,” he said, dropping his pose, “six o’clock done come. I must go.” He loped to the door. “Thanks for the beer,” he said, “so long”; and he slipped out.
    Morgan noticed two empty bottles of Star beer on the table. He strode to the kitchen and slammed open the fridge door. One bottle left. He calmed down slightly. If that bitch had given Sonny-boy all the beer, he told himself, he’d have strangled her. Then his face darkened. He asked himself what the bloody hellthat lanky spiv had been doing in his flat anyway? Drinking his beer while Hazel washed. Muttering threateningly he poured himself a glass from the remaining bottle and went back to the bedroom door. “Hurry up,” he shouted. He sat down on the plastic settee and stretched his legs out in front of him. He took a long draught of the beer and its chill briefly made his temples ache. He gazed possessively round the room. It had cost him a lot, but it was worth it to get Hazel out of the rancid hotels she had lived in previously. He wanted her away from the bars and the clubs, somewhere he knew she’d be, somewhere discreet where he could get hold of her when he wanted. Selim, the Lebanese boutique owner from whom he rented the flat, could be trusted to keep what little he knew, or guessed, to himself.
    The flat was small and crudely finished to the normal standards of Kinjanjan masonry and housefitting. Bare concrete walls with loose, fizzing light switches and waist-high electric points, angled door and window frames with sophisticated jamming potential, tapered skirting boards and so on, but at least it was a home of sorts. Hazel had placed a purple rush mat on the terrazzo flooring but that was her sole contribution to the decor. Apart from the settee upon which he was now sitting, the only other furniture Selim had supplied was a formica table with spavined aluminium legs and two steel-tube and canvas chairs of the sort that are normally seen stacked against the walls of assembly halls. The cramped kitchenette at one end of the main room contained a sink, a calor gas stove and a fridge. The only item Morgan had contributed to his love-nest was a large standard fan which normally stood in the bedroom, gently rotating to and fro, blasting a steady stream of cool air onto the bed. Suddenly the lights went on, the fridge shuddered and started to grumble softly away.
    Hazel walked into the room. She wore a threadbare pink towel wrapped around her body and secured beneath her armpits. She was without her wig and her short woolly cap of hair glistened with water droplets. She was a pretty girl with a light brown face and pointed chin. Her lips were large and her nose small and wide; only her eyes marred the classic negroid aspect of her features. They were thin and almond shaped and gave her a strange uncertain suspicious look. She was small with heavy breasts and hips and thin-calved legs. Her toes were bunchedand buckled from the fashionable shoes she crammed her broad feet into. In the interests of gaudy sophistication she had plucked her eyebrows away to tiny apostrophe marks. In his less charitable moments Morgan accused her of being flighty and unashamedly venal—she had two illegitimate children who lived with her family back in her native village and of whom