The window shutters were closed. In the dark front room Giorgio was sitting waiting for us. Singleton was tidying the boat and gear. He’d be back any moment.
Joe said, ‘We decided to wait for you, sir.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, like I was taking the helm of the Queen Elizabeth.
Over the newspaper-covered table the 60-watt bulb shone on to the green steel canister. The edges and corners were rounded and sealing compound joined two equal-shaped sides.
I told Joe to get the Polaroid Land camera. He brought it complete with flash and a green filter to give us a maximum detail in the green paintwork. He took six shots. The prints were satisfactory.
Joe took a small pair of pliers and applied himself to the canister until it creaked open on its ancient hinges. None of us, I think, was expecting much, but we did expect something a little more rewarding. There were a couple of handfuls of chalky cotton wool, not very good quality, a tattered piece of canvas about as large as a man’s handkerchief, some torn pieces of white paper, and a twenty-dollar bill, crumpled and dirty. Charly reached across for the twenty-dollar bill, but as she picked it up the racket of a two-stroke motor cycle became louder, until it cut immediately under the shuttered window.
Charly mouthed the word ‘Fernie’, and sewed a frown in hasty tacks across her forehead.
It didn’t matter, of course, we merely hid the canister before letting Fernie in, then took him to the kitchen for coffee. He accepted a cup in his polite laconic manner, smiled pleasantly and said he was bearing ‘a message of a confidential nature from the first citizen of the region’.
I asked him who the first citizen of the region was. Fernie answered, ‘Senhor Manuel Gambeta do Rosario da Cunha, a very great gentleman if you will allow me to tell you, sir.’
I heard Singleton’s voice from the balcony calling, ‘So what was in it?’
‘I have a principle, Senhor Fernandes Tomas, of allowing anyone to tell me anything at any time.’
‘Me too, sir,’ he said. He gave no sign of having heard Singleton, then he gave me an address to which I was invited at 5 p.m. to ‘learn something to advantage’.
‘I shall meet you there.’ He picked up his black trilby from the marble hallstand and kicked up his bike. He sped past the narrow whitewashed walls of the cobbled street. He didn’t look back.
Inside the house I found everyone sitting around looking at two twenty-dollar bills. The serial numbers were twenty-three digits apart.
‘Two,’ I said. ‘I thought there was only one in the container.’
‘There was,’ Joe said. ‘Charly brought in its twin brother out of the dirty-linen cupboard.’
I looked at Charly.
‘It was in the pocket of one of Harry Kondit’s dirty shirts,’ she said lamely. ‘I’d offered to wash them for him.’
I said nothing.
‘Not all his shirts, just the synthetic fibres,’ she said.
‘O.K.,’ I told her, ‘but don’t get so friendly that you’ll miss him if he suddenly disappears.’