Before she could pin it down she was distracted by a movement at the very edge of her peripheral vision. Even while he gazed at her face, Carver seemed to be doing something with the drink on the table beside him, though she could not tell what it was.

Then suddenly the spell was broken.

'I like her,' said Carver, relaxing back into the seat and talking to Tiger Dey again. 'She'll do… my little Lara,' he continued, giving her bare thigh a friendly squeeze.

She gave him a nervous smile, hardly daring to believe that he had chosen her, still uncertain that the deal was done.

'What do you think that ape is going to want for her?' Carver asked.

Tiger Dey smiled. 'He will want whatever I tell him to want. You will give me thirty thousand, and I will give him half of that. He will not dare to complain.'

'Excellent,' said Carver and Lara, watching him, was struck again by the sense that something about him wasn't quite right. She realized that Carver was acting, just as she so often did. He was giving a performance. But why, and what would it mean for her?

She knew at once that such questions were futile. Her only hope was to make him like her. So Lara put a happy look on her face and giggled sweetly when Carver asked her if she wanted a drink to celebrate. She laughed again when Carver told the waiter to put a cherry in it.

'Don't worry, darling, it's not for you,' he said. 'It's for Tiger. He can't resist those cherries, can you, mate?'

'Indeed, they are my fatal weakness,' the Indian agreed.

'Hang on, what have we here?' said Carver, reaching into his own, empty glass and pulling a waxy red fruit out by its stalk. 'There you go, have a cherry on me!'