First there was Manston. I met him in the gaming room of the hotel. The cabaret in the dining room had just finished when I arrived and Letta sent me a message that she would be with me in half an hour. I wandered into the casino, watched some oil men playing blackjack, hung around the roulette tables for a bit, and then went over and began to feed coins into a fruit machine. The gaming room could have been anywhere in the world. All I knew at that moment was that I felt a little out of it. I was suffering. Mostly from anger with myself at being caught off guard. I was puzzled, too, trying to decide who would want to put me away and why. The only person who had tried it before was Pelegrina. If this were another of his efforts, and the quick improvisation suggested it, then I couldn’t help telling myself that he must have discovered that I was in Tripoli through Letta. It was going to be interesting to hear what she had to say. But first of all I had to hear what Manston had to say.
He came up to me as I stood at the fruit machine. He was wearing a dinner jacket and looked cool, confident, and in no mood for nonsense. He gave me a warm smile and a friendly nod, neither of which meant anything. With him, also in evening clothes, was an enormous man whose face was familiar. I remembered then that he had been one of the two men in Duchêne’s Paris flat when I had walked in on their search. Then I had taken him for a bruiser. Now, although he was twice as big, I saw that he was out of the Manston school.
Manston looked at him and said, ‘Perkins. This is Carver.’
‘We’ve met,’ I said. ‘He’s a dab hand with pot plants.’
‘Sorry we had to be a bit rough with you, old boy.’ He had a gravelly, educated voice, full of charm, reassuring. He’d probably got a blue for rugger at Cambridge. I could just see those big shoulders battering away in the scrum.
‘I want you,’ said Manston, ‘to get out of this town.’
‘I’m thinking of doing that.’
‘I want you, too, to forget you ever heard of Messrs Freeman and Dawson. You know why, of course.’
I nodded. ‘You’ve done a good job stopping any publicity.’
‘There’s never going to be any. Also, if you’ll excuse the crudity, there are not going to be any pickings in this for you.’
‘I haven’t been thinking along those lines. I’ve got plenty of money at the moment.’
‘Then live to enjoy it,’ said Perkins. He slipped a coin into the machine, jerked the handle and got a bigger dividend at once than I’d had so far.
‘It’s like that, is it?’ I looked at Manston.
‘It’s just like that. Take a vow of silence right now – and that includes talking in your sleep. Go away and forget.’
‘Do that,’ said Perkins. ‘We haven’t got time to be bothered with any monkey tricks. Just begin one and I’ll break your neck and drop you in the sea. We’ll issue a D-notice so that you don’t even get four lines in the evening papers.’
‘Why’, I asked Manston, ‘have I never had the pleasure of meeting this number before? I should have thought he was too big and obvious for your service.’
‘Far East, old boy,’ said Perkins. ‘Only just come back to home service.’
‘Just forget Freeman and Dawson,’ said Manston. ‘That way we can go on being friends when we have to.’
‘Charming. Okay – I won’t say a word. But somebody will. You’ll never keep this out of the press.’
‘Our instructions are that we must. So we will. Understood?’
‘Yes. And what happens to them when you catch up with them?’
Perkins winked. ‘We break their necks and drop them in the sea, and then cover that with a D-notice.’
‘I might be able to help.’
‘We don’t want it. Just go home and chase insurance cheats; live a full life and a long one,’ said Manston.
‘If you insist. How’s the big man taking it? And I don’t mean Sutcliffe.’
‘Sincerely and frankly,’ said Perkins, ‘the big man is hopping bloody mad – and, of course, worried, as any decent parent would be.’
‘As a matter of interest,’ I said idly, ‘where was the snatch made? Up the coast a bit at a place called Sabratha?’
Neither of them moved a muscle.
I grinned. ‘You shouldn’t have too much trouble. Not with a guy like Freeman. He couldn’t even fake his own death convincingly. I’ll bet he’s biting his nails now to work out some fool-proof method for the ransom money to be handed over. A clever man would have had that one settled before he took the first step. Yes, I can see that you don’t need my help in dealing with an incompetent like that.’
‘If we ever do need you,’ said Perkins affably, ‘don’t think we won’t be able to find you.’
‘You will be leaving tomorrow,’ said Manston. It wasn’t a question. It was an order.
I nodded, always polite, and moved away because I had just seen Letta come to the door of the gaming room.
So, secondly, there was Letta. La Piroletta. Leon Pelegrina’s daughter. I wondered whether Manston knew that connection. He would know about Paulet and Duchêne. He might know about the steam yacht La Sunata. But what he didn’t know, clearly – otherwise he would never have been wasting any time here – was where Pelegrina and Freeman were at this moment. I might be a jump ahead of him there. But what could I do about it? I’d offered to help and had been told to go and chase insurance cheats. That hurt my pride. Not that I worried over that. The pain was minimal.
So, as I said, secondly there was Letta in a yellow silk gown, a scrap of mink over her shoulders, dark dusky skin making my fingers tremble to touch it and her dark, deep, brilliant eyes afire with the thought of a big plate of pasta and a flask of Chianti for two.
We got it at an Italian restaurant in the town, a jolly place with check tablecloths and little vases full of plastic flowers. Six men in from the desert, forgetting the sand and the oil rigs as they cut into big steaks and washed the meat down with neat whisky, stopped only for a moment to follow Letta with their eyes as we passed their table.
She ate pasta in a way that was right out of my class and she took more than her share of the Chianti, and she was bright with chatter and laughter and held my hand under the table when she wasn’t holding a fork or glass. Anyone looking on would have thought there wasn’t a cloud in her sky. Personally I wondered what the hell she was so determined to conceal. Much later I did find out – but not from her. I realised then that she was just hopping mad… with her father. Maybe that was why, on the swing back, she was so kind to me. All I needed was a little kindness to encourage me.
We walked back along the sea front, long after midnight. Although I was happy, and had one arm in hers, it was the left one. I wasn’t going to be taken off my guard again. I didn’t have to ask whether I had passed muster, all her actions indicated that I had been accepted as a custom-built job. She clearly was a quick shopper, knew what she wanted and when she found it paid cash down. It took the romance out of life a bit for me. Let’s face it, I’m the kind whose performance is better if both parties subscribe a little to the illusion of love… Well, it’s cosier that way at the time, even if you both know that it isn’t going to last.
We had a nightcap in her room, ran pleasantly through the few, obligatory preliminaries – me, wanting to linger a bit longer over them, she not indecently hasty but anxious to have them out of the way – and then she got up, said something about giving her five minutes and went into the bedroom. I was happy to give her the time. Her handbag was on the small table and I fished out her address book. It was one of those jobs with an alphabetical cut-out down the side. I tried F for father and got nothing, then P for Pelegrina or Papa and got nothing, and then found it under L for Leon. The flat in the Piazza Santo Spirito and its number was listed, and then under that came:
Villa La Sunata, Bizerta. 27.103.
I put the book back. He had a yacht called La Sunata, and also a villa. Obviously the name had a sentimental or pleasing meaning for him. I wondered if it had been the name of Letta’s mother. I made a note to ask her at the first chance.
The thought went right out of my head when I went into the bedroom. She was sitting on the edge of the bed quite naked, her hair tied up at the back with a broad piece of red ribbon. I didn’t rush things. After all, if you’re being presented with something out of the grand cru-class you don’t gulp, you take it easy, missing none of the cumulative pleasures of sight, touch, and taste. Her skin was an even light-biscuit colour. Her breasts had a beauty which made me feel a little heady, and she had one of those narrow little waists that flowered out to broad hips and then on to long, breath-taking legs. She sat there and gave me a little smile of delight for the wonder in my eyes.
I said, ‘Don’t you wear a nightdress?’
‘Normally, yes,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. Have I robbed you of the pleasure of taking it off?’
‘No, I was just making conversation.’
‘Don’t bother. I’m not in the talking mood.’
She put her arms out towards me and the lift of her shoulders did things to her breasts that boosted me right off the launching pad and into orbit. We went into outer space together, and I wasn’t caring if we never came back.
I woke to feel her naked body pressed close up against my back. Through drowsy eyes I could see that the room was full of half-dawn light coming through the partly drawn curtains. Outside a strong wind was making a hissing noise through the palms in the garden. There was the creak and rattle of an anchor chain coming up from one of the cargo boats in the harbour. I closed my eyes and drifted back into paradise. Behind me I felt her move to readjust our combined body contours, and dreamily I thought, Why ever wake properly, why ever bother to move out into the shoddy half-baked world? The thing to do was to turn back, away from the world, and hide oneself in the tight rosebud of drowsy pleasure; to become larvae, just the two of us, hidden forever in the dark, sweet world of the ripening apple… I smiled in half-sleep, knowing that somewhere I was getting mixed in my thoughts and not caring. Behind me she stirred. I felt her arms move slowly, caressingly, over the bare warmth of my neck and then slide across my cheek, the long length of her arm running after it over my naked shoulder. Her hand and arm were cold. She must have been sleeping, I thought, with the top half of the covers off. Full of tenderness, not wanting her to be cold, I began a lazy turn that would bring her into my arms and let me pull the sheet up around her bare shoulder. My eyes opened slightly in the move and I found myself looking into a small, wedge-shaped head, flat and – although much thicker – about the size of an axe-head. From low on the crown a pair of yellow-brown eyes watched me coldly. A little red, delicately forked tongue flicked the tip of my nose and then the head moved with a little curving movement away and over me and I felt the dry, relaxing and then muscular constricting of the long scaly body across my bare chest.
As my hair stood on end and my body stiffened, a detached part of my mind was wondering at the association of ideas that could go on in the brain while the body slept. Paradise, the sweet ripe apple… me and Letta in the garden of Eden and here, to complete it, was the snake. And a damned great thing at that. Just feeling it move across my chest told me that it wasn’t an inch under ten feet. It dropped off the bed with a clumsy thump – I learned later that pythons have that in common with Siamese cats, an arrogance which makes them clumsy, just going their own sweet way across tables or furniture, knocking over anything that gets in their path.
I sat up in bed with a jerk and cursed myself for not retrieving my gun from Wilkins. The python was rippling away across the room with a nice easy flowing movement. It did a figure of eight round the legs of a chair and then, unhurried, spiralled up a tall lamp standard to check that the bulb was a 120-watt.
I said with a terminal hiss that any snake could have been proud of, ‘Holy Moses!’
The sound and the proceeding jerk of my body made Letta roll over.
‘Whassa?’ she asked sleepily.
I looked down at her. She was naked almost to the waist and her position flattened her beautiful breasts a little. The areola around each nipple was a dark, crushed-grape colour. Even with your hair standing on end you notice things like that.
I said, ‘There’s a bloody great snake in the room.’
She opened her eyes and smiled at me. ‘There always is, darling – of one kind or another.’
‘But this’ – I gagged for a moment because my throat was dry – ‘is a damned great python affair. You could make a pair of shoes and a couple of handbags out of it.’
She sat up, running her hands through her disordered hair. She looked across the room where the python was doing a complicated backward slide down the lamp standard.
‘That’s Lilith,’ she said.
‘What’s she doing here?’
‘She lives in that hamper over in the corner. She always comes out in the morning for a little exercise. She worries you?’
‘Not really. It’s just my hair I’m thinking about. I’ll never get it to lie down again.’
She giggled, a rich, warm, early morning, dark-brown sound, and then climbed across me, almost making me forget the snake. She padded across the room, picked up Lilith by a convenient loop, draped her across her shoulders, faced me and sketched a quick bump and grind. As a cabaret act it would have given a Freudian scholar stuff for two or three chapters, and then a hefty footnote on symbolism.
She kissed the beast on the nose and said, ‘You are happier if I put her away?’
‘Definitely. And see the catch is secure.’
She padded to the hamper, folded Lilith away with a bending rump-and-buttock exhibition that made me reach for the water carafe to slake my snake-parched mouth.
She came back, took a flying leap into bed and lay back laughing. Then she grabbed for me and, in the few moments before speech became impossible, said, ‘I will make you unafraid again. One man once, you know, had the same experience and had a bad heart attack. There was a lot of explaining to do.’
Later, lying relaxed, hearing Lilith curl and knot in the hamper, I said, ‘You use her in your act?’
‘Didn’t you see it last night?’
‘I was late getting here. But it doesn’t say anything about it on the showcards in the hotel hall.’
‘It is only a small part of the act. I use it as a surprise. And anyway, Lilith is sometimes in a bad temper and won’t act nicely.’
‘What gets her steamed up? Nostalgia for the past?’
‘Guinea pigs. They are her exclusive diet. Sometimes it is difficult to get them. Then, when she is hungry, she gets temperamental.’
That wasn’t hard to believe. I know a lot of people who get bad tempered if they don’t get their food regularly.
‘I see now,’ I said, ‘why Freeman had no trouble selling you that python bracelet. Is Lilith an Indian python too?’
‘Yes.’
I lit a cigarette. She took it from me, had a couple of draws and then handed it back. Staring up at the ceiling, she said, ‘Something else. I don’t want you to worry about my father anymore.’
‘Why not?’
‘I telephoned him yesterday.’
‘Where?’
‘In the Florence flat. He had returned. He swore to me he was not at the moment engaged in any business enterprise. Nor was he in any kind of trouble.’
‘You believed him?’
‘Absolutely.’
I said nothing. One thing was certain, however; I didn’t believe her. She’d telephoned him all right. But not in Florence. He was somewhere near Bizerta. But I was prepared to believe that he had reassured her about his business enterprises at the moment. He would have to. And I guessed that she must have mentioned my name and whereabouts to him. That’s why – from a piece of quick telephoning on his part – I’d had my shirt front ripped last night.
I said, ‘Why did your father call his boat La Sunata?’
‘Because of my sister. She died when she was sixteen. She was very beautiful. More than me. Also she was his favourite.’
Moving over on to one elbow, looking into her dark eyes, I said, ‘I’m leaving for London today. What am I going to do about that bracelet?’
‘What I said. She can have it for three thousand pounds. Make her pay – and I will give you two hundred pounds commission – perhaps.’
I grinned. ‘Cutting me in, eh? You really do like me, don’t you?’
She put her arms round my neck.
‘I like you more than you know. You must not be upset that I show my love shamelessly. I am a very direct person. When do I see you again?’
‘I don’t know.’
She pouted. ‘It must not be too long.’
‘I’d join the act – as a snake feeder – if I didn’t have to go back to London. Where are you going to be?’
‘I am in Cairo next week. Then I go back to Europe. I will give you a list of my bookings for the next month and the name of my agent in Paris – so you will know how to get in touch with me.’ She smiled. ‘Maybe I will change one of the bookings and get a London date – you’d like that?’
‘Very much.’
‘Then give me a nice kiss and maybe I will arrange it.’
She got her kiss and, before I left, I got the list from her.
Unshaven, and without breakfast, I walked down to the BEA offices and booked on a flight out after lunch. Then I took a taxi up to the Libya Palace Hotel. I borrowed Olaf s electric razor and joined him and Wilkins for breakfast.
‘You will be delighted to hear,’ I told Wilkins, ‘that I am leaving for London after lunch. I have recovered Mrs Stankowski’s bracelet. Her money, I’m afraid, is gone for good. Approve?’
She dug her spoon into a large grapefruit and looked sceptical.
‘We’, said Olaf, beginning on the first of five boiled eggs, ‘leave for Cairo tomorrow.’
‘I thought you were going today?’
‘We have met here a nice man, a countryman of mine – he comes from a town called Kalmar which I know well. He insists on taking us out today to see the Roman remains at Leptis Magna. Already she has seen the Pyramids. Hilda is much interested in such antiquities.’
‘Are you?’
‘Yes,’ said Wilkins.
‘Well, I never knew that.’
‘There are a lot of things about me you don’t know. For instance, I belong to a poetry society and a jigsaw puzzle club. I collect match-box covers and I don’t care for modern art.’ She jabbed the grapefruit as though she were going over a battlefield bayoneting the doubtful dead.
‘You’re in a bad temper too.’
‘Naturally,’ said Olaf. ‘She does not trust you.’
‘Why ever not?’ I asked, wide-eyed, forcing a little resentment to make it good.
Olaf grinned and scalped an egg. ‘Because you are a devious man, Mr Carver. I could not say not a good one. But devious; Hilda worries over you. Too much, I think. If she did not worry so much about you she would have married me long ago. I should be angry. Perhaps one day I will be.’
‘Just give me warning, Olaf – and I’ll put a lot of ground between us.’ Then to Wilkins, I said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to London. By the way, I’d like to have my gun back.’
Wilkins stood up quickly. ‘I knew it.’ She stalked off.
I looked at Olaf, wider-eyed now, and spread my hands, puzzled.
‘It is the maternal instinct,’ said Olaf seriously. ‘I work hard to overcome this. But it is not my forte. By nature I am the passionate, romantic type. All Swedes are, fundamentally.’ He gutted a great spoonful of egg from its shell and sighed before shovelling it away.
I got my gun, and a low-pitched lecture from Wilkins in the hotel hallway as she said goodbye to me.
‘Stop being maternal,’ I told her. ‘I’m grown up now.’
‘I’ll believe that when I get a cable from London saying you’re there. And just for the record, don’t think that Mr Manston hasn’t been to see me and told me to forget all about Mr Freeman and Mr Dawson.’
‘Which you will.’
‘Which I shall. And so should you – unless you’re a bigger damn fool than even I imagine.’
I held out my hand, Continental fashion, to shake hands with her. She ignored it.
‘The gun,’ I said. ‘I thought the handshake would cover the handover.’
‘It’s already in your jacket pocket,’ she said.
I looked at her, pop-eyed. I knew only one person who could have done that without my knowing, and that was Manston.
Coming out of the hotel to take my taxi to the airport, I found my A.T. and his chum waiting by their Simca. I strolled over to them.
‘My compliments to Captain Asab, boys – but you can knock off now. I’m London bound.’
‘It is hoped that you have enjoyed your stay in this country,’ said A.T. He was a good-looking youth with a nice warm smile.
‘Thanks to you, yes.’ I held out a bottle of Black and White whisky which I had bought in the supermarket round the corner from the Uaddan. ‘I hope police regulations won’t make it difficult for you to deal with this.’
A.T.’s hand was round it so fast there was no need for words. I left them, genuinely grateful for their help and care. Boy, how wrong can you be when you fall into the trap of taking people at their face value. Olaf had called me devious. What he didn’t know – and I should have done – was that there were people about who just weren’t happy unless they lived in a labyrinth with a fresh peril around each corner. As some people need drink, others need deceit.
At the airport, as I came out of the ticket office with my boarding card, I found Captain Asab waiting for me. It was a blazing hot morning and he wore a heavy overcoat and a light grey astrakhan cap. His brown face was smooth with years of calm, reflective living.
He shook hands with me and said, ‘I was out here on other business, so I thought I would wish you bon voyage.’
‘Thank you. I’m off to London.’
‘I am not interested in your destination, so long as you are leaving Libya. I like a reasonably quiet life, Mr Carver; just straightforward murders, smuggling, theft, and assault. But you strike me as the kind of man who attracts – could we say encourages? – unusual complications.’
‘It’s a dull world. I do my best. By the way, thank you for the two men you’ve had following me. The young one, I thought at first, was a novice in training. He’s better than that. I recommend him to your notice.’
He smiled. ‘You’ve made a mistake. I have had no one following you.’
‘No?’
‘No. But it could have been your Embassy, of course. After all, they have to look after their nationals.’
‘Maybe.’
I gave him a big smile and moved off. But I didn’t even mean ‘Maybe’. The Embassy didn’t give a damn about me. They went along with the Perkins theory. The sooner I had my neck broken and was dropped in the sea the better.
The aircraft was scheduled to stop at Malta and Rome on the way back. At Malta I got off and bought myself a flight on Swissair to Tunis. I got in at six o’clock that evening and had a taxi drive me up to Bizerta. I found myself a cheap hotel and lay back on a lumpy bed staring at the ceiling for about an hour before I turned out the light and tried to sleep. I didn’t sleep much, but in between staving off dive-bombing mosquito attacks I did a lot of thinking. My chief worry was, who the hell had put the Apprentice Tail on me? I didn’t come up with any answer and, anyway, I still thought that he had rated the bottle of whisky.
The next morning I bought myself a map and made an inquiry at the Poste et Telegraphe office. From the sea at Bizerta there is a narrow cut – La Goulette – that runs back inland and opens out into a wide lake. Most of Bizerta is on the westward side of this lake. You can cross this cut by a ferry and, if you’re lucky, get a taxi on the other side. The Villa La Sunata was about two miles down the coast to the east.
I didn’t bother with a taxi. I walked, with my jacket slung over my arm, the pocket with my gun in it thumping against my thigh bone. It was a tourist brochure day. Blue sky, sun blazing, cicadas sawing away in the umbrella pines, Arab women squatting among the myrtle and shrub watching their goats feed, a great yellow run of beach below the coast road, handfuls of terns dive-fishing in the shallow water off the sands, God in His heaven, and nothing much right with the world. You could have it all in a package tour, thirteen days, air travel included, for under forty pounds.
Personally, I’d decided what I wanted. I didn’t want money, I didn’t want a woman, I didn’t even particularly want excitement – I was in good health now – but I thought it might be fun to have some kudos. Also it would be nice to teach Manston a lesson. I’d offered to help and been turned down. Good – I’d show him the mistake he had made, and maybe I’d collect an Order of the British Empire from a grateful government for services rendered. Possibly, too, I might be able to do something for those two incompetents, Freeman and Pelegrina. I did the last half-mile wondering why I had a soft spot for them. Perhaps it was the sheer audacity of their act which appealed. It is not every day you run into a couple of incompetent dreamers who have kidnapped the son of a British Prime Minister. Not that I go for kidnapping, of course. Who does?
Mind you, if it had been the father and not the son who had been kidnapped, I couldn’t have cared less – such is the strength of political passion. They could have cut off his ears one by one and sent them to show they meant business, and slit his throat finally when they despaired of getting ransom money. Well, why not? I’m from the west of England and have been a Liberal all my life. And, anyway, if I hadn’t been from the West Country I would still have been a Liberal because I just naturally gravitate to lost causes.
The villa stood up on a rising bluff of hillside surrounded by pines, scrub oak, and thickets of oleanders. The driveway was barred with a wooden gate and there was a little wooden chalet lodge with an Arab custodian sitting on the ground outside it, his back to the wall, his eyes closed and a festoon of flies at each corner of his mouth. He didn’t move as I tramped by. I got a glimpse of the villa about two hundred yards back up the drive. It faced the sea. Behind it the land would slope down to the lake, and the lake was big enough to take shipping. Some night recently La Sunata had slipped in there and Bill Dawson had been off-loaded.
Along the roadside of the property was a fence – stout posts and four wire strands. When I was out of sight of the lodge I went up the sandy bank and had a look at it. The top wire strand was about five feet from the ground. The other strands were spaced evenly down from it. The lower two strands were newer and of a different gauge from the top two. I smiled at the naivety of Freeman and Pelegrina.
I didn’t touch either of the two lower wires because I guessed that somewhere up in the villa a bell would ring. In their time they must have had quite a few heart-thumping false alarms from wandering goats and sheep.
I followed the fence along until I came to a spot where it was screened from the road by a clump of hibiscus bushes, covered with brilliant flame-coloured blooms that would have made my sister in Honiton itch with envy.
I squatted down and began to scoop away at the loose sandy soil. A green lizard watched me from the top of a fence post and remained frozen until I had made a depression deep enough to allow me to crawl underneath without touching the wire. As I stood up on the other side, the lizard flirted its tail and was away down the post. I went forward through the pines. A squirrel chattered briefly at me, not inquiring but damning my business there. A yellow-and-blue bee-eater swooped from a tree and took a butterfly on the wing just for a change of diet. I took off my tie and stuffed it in my trouser pocket and put on my jacket to have my hands free. The day, I thought, that Carver won himself a decoration. I could hear the booming voice of the toastmaster at the Savoy at the next annual dinner of the Association of Inquiry Agents and Private Detectives, announcing, ‘Pray silence for Mr Rex Carver, OBE.’ And I could see the seedy company in their rented tails, nudging one another and the whispers, ‘You know why he got it. That business of the Prime Minister’s son. Actually, I’m told he made a complete balls of it.’ Well, there are always the envious few who try to dim your glory. I went forward in a quiet and cautious state of euphoria, which isn’t easy because some kinds of euphoria have the kick of four large whiskies.
The villa was stone-built with a wooden roof. It was all over the place in little turrets and outside balconies, and the main windows on the ground floor were a curious kind of triple-pointed African Gothic with stained glass in their upper sections. From the cover of a reed-thatched gardener’s shed I saw a dust-covered Humber station wagon standing below the front steps. In the cover of the encroaching trees I went in a half-circle round the place. At the back was a modern, flat-roofed addition with a wide run of French windows facing down through the trees to the lake. Green curtains had been drawn across most of the run of the windows to keep out the blazing morning sun. A door in the window entrance was half open.
I stood there watching the door and then, in a momentary lull in the cicada chorus, I caught the sound of a man’s voice. It sounded like Pelegrina’s. I pulled the gun from my pocket. It was the .380 model F, MAB breveté, which I had taken from Pelegrina’s thug in Florence.
I went across the soft, pine needle strewn sand to the window, then moved along it, crouching low so that the sun would not throw my shadow against the green curtains. I reached the door on my hunkers and got a look at part of the room through the small gap the open door made above its lower hinge.
They looked as comfortable as all get-out. Freeman was lying in a cane chair which had a hole in its right arm in which rested a glass of beer. His feet were up on a small stool. I recognised him at once from his photograph. Opposite him, across a small table, was Leon Pelegrina in the same kind of cane chair, a glass of beer in his arm-hole and his feet up on the table. He was gazing at the ceiling through his monocle, his face, red and weather-tanned, screwed up as though he were searching for the answer to some quiz question. They both wore white linen suits, Freeman’s neat and well pressed, Pelegrina’s rumpled and a little too small for him. It was hard to believe that these two between them had done something which, if it were known, would have set the press of the world immediately rearranging its front-page spread, had radio and TV announcers breaking in on ‘Housewives’ Choice’ and the morning schools programme for a special announcement, and made No 10 Downing Street the genuine focus of world attention for the first time since Churchill left it.
There they were, potential news dynamite, men of destiny – though perhaps not the kind they thought – relaxing before the next stage of the operation, cool beer to hand, pine-bowered sanctuary for quiet, meticulous planning – and they were talking about sardines.
At least Freeman was.
‘The real difference between the French and the Portuguese sardine,’ he was saying, ‘is in the preparation before canning. The French always oven-grill theirs in olive oil before canning. The Portuguese just steam-cook theirs and then pack ’em in oil. There’s no doubt about the superiority of the French. They use a lighter type of olive oil too. This old boy I knew in Fleet Street had a vintage sardine cellar. Laid ’em down in cases. Turned the cases over every six months to get an even spread of oil. The great vintage year was 1959. And of ’em all, the French Rodel sardine is the king. Cost you something like eight bob for a tin. Marie Elisabeth, that’s Portuguese, cost less than two bob. Main thing is, there isn’t a sardine fit to eat unless it’s been in the can for at least twelve months.’
‘You think,’ asked Pelegrina, ‘that there will be a reply in The Times today?’
‘We’ll know when Bou-Bou gets back from Bizerta this evening. The airmail edition will be in by then. Of course, if you don’t want to spring eight bob for Rodels, you can go for the Amieux, Larzul, and Cassegrain types. They come out at somewhere under four bob a tin. I could eat some on toast now. Go well with beer.’
I stepped through the door, gun in hand.
‘How do you like them on toast?’ I asked. ‘Just cold, straight from the tin – or grilled hot?’
Pelegrina jerked forward and knocked over his beer. Freeman didn’t stir a muscle, except to turn his head slightly and eye me. He was a pleasant enough looking type, fair brown hair, a rather long evenly tanned face, and friendly brown eyes overhung with bushy eyebrows that went up slightly at the outer corners.
‘And who the hell’, he asked, ‘are you?’
‘Carver, Rex.’
‘Oh.’
There was a silence while the penny went on dropping. I moved up to the table and sat down on an upright chair, holding the MAB breveté comfortably poised on one knee. There were some bottles of beer on the table and a bottle opener.
I said to Pelegrina, ‘You’ve spilled your beer. Better have another. You can open a bottle for me too. I’ve had a long walk. Don’t bother about a glass for me. I’ll drink from the bottle.’
Pelegrina just stared at me as though I were a snake and he a mesmerised bird.
Freeman said, ‘Allow me.’
He reached out for the bottle opener and began to dispense beer for Pelegrina and myself. He was cool and capable in a crisis clearly. It was a pity he hadn’t the same qualities when it came to planning.
To Pelegrina I said, ‘This gun belonged to your man who visited me in Florence. Don’t think I won’t use it. Not to kill – but just to make a nasty mess of an arm or a leg. Your knife man from Tripoli sends his regrets at having botched up his assignment.’
With my free hand I took the bottle which Freeman had opened and helped myself to a good pull. It was delicious, ice-cold.
Very slowly Pelegrina spoke. He said, ‘Porca miseria!’
I said, ‘Well, that disposes of the preliminaries. Now let’s get down to the real business.’
‘Which is?’ Freeman cocked one of his bushy eyebrows at me.
‘All our cards on the table. I’ll put mine down first.’
‘How’, said Pelegrina, beginning to function late, ‘did you get in here?’
‘Under your nice new wire. Happy? All right – let’s get on. You two have cooked up one of the clumsiest kidnapping jobs imaginable. You’ve left a trail behind you three feet wide and painted red. Coming along that trail is a certain Mr Manston and a few of his friends from the dark depths of British Security, MI6, the Special Branch, and God knows what other organisations. Don’t expect any mercy from that bunch. Their orders are – no headlines, get Mr William Dawson, son of the Right Honourable Henry Dawson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, back, and liquidate the kidnappers in such a way that they disappear without trace. That won’t give them any trouble. Particularly for you, Freeman, since you’re already dead and, even though the stomach scar on your body has slipped from right to left during immersion, they’re not going to fuss with a little detail like that. Am I going too fast?’
Freeman smiled, but it didn’t have a lot of heart in it. ‘Not for me,’ he said.
‘Your trouble’, I said, ‘is that you go too fast, without enough thought. Bill Dawson was your friend, working with an oil company in Libya as a geologist. Did you think when he disappeared that you’d get away with that phoney death trick of yours? And heaven help you if any harm has been done to him.’
‘He’s in first-class shape,’ said Freeman.
‘That’s more than you’re going to be – unless you listen to me.’
‘What do you want?’ asked Pelegrina. I could see that with him I was dealing with a slow-paced thinker and not a subtle one.
‘To help you. But I want a few questions answered first.’
Freeman wriggled his bottom against the cane seat and began to light a cigarette. ‘Ask away – if you think it’s necessary.’
‘I do. Because when I get in touch with Manston – and heaven knows why he hasn’t got here ahead of me, except that even the brightest of us have dull patches and this must be his first in ten years – then he’s going to ask me a lot of questions when I hand Bill Dawson over and suggest a grateful government make me an OBE.’
‘You go for that kind of crap?’ Freeman asked.
‘That noun reminds me of your sister. It’s one of her favourites. So – first – you steal from her to set up this kidnapping, yes?’
‘It has cost us much money,’ said Pelegrina. ‘Expense all along the line.’
‘It could cost you your necks unless you take my advice. Where did you get that phoney body?’
‘From a medical friend of mine in Athens,’ said Pelegrina.
‘So that Bill Dawson should think Freeman here had been kidnapped with him and then killed, so that Freeman here would then – ransom money collected – be free to go off to a happy new life with Jane Judd?’ Freeman sat up at this.
I went on, ‘It’s obvious that you, Pelegrina, have never shown your face to Dawson so that, when free, he can’t throw anything back at you. That means that the only person he’s ever seen is some hireling who services him first on La Sunata – whose name he’s never known – and then here in some handy cellar in a villa he’s never seen and will never see. Let’s face it, except for the wrong belly scar and a few other blemishes, it’s almost reasonably neat and tidy – but how the bloody hell did you ever think you were going to collect the ransom money?’
‘It’s given us a lot of trouble, that,’ said Freeman.
‘Believe me, it’s the only trouble about kidnapping. That’s why there isn’t much of it around. What’s all this about an advertisement in The Times? Some cryptic message in the Personal Column to indicate that the authorities are willing to parley with you?’
‘Roughly, yes,’ said Freeman.
‘Roughly is the word. How did you get in touch with the authorities? Send a private letter to the PM at 10 Downing Street?’
‘Just that,’ said Pelegrina.
‘If they agree to our terms,’ said Freeman, ‘they put a reply in The Times saying “Python Project accepted”.’
I went wide-eyed. ‘You called it that – and you’d pinched a python bracelet from your sister to help finance it! I’m surprised Manston isn’t here already!’
‘It had to have some name,’ said Pelegrina.
I shook my head. They both looked at me and I could see that they were chastened. I really felt sorry for them.
‘A man,’ I said to Freeman, ‘was found dead in your Kent cottage. Strangled. You have anything to do with that?’
‘No.’
I grinned. ‘Not that you’re against murder. You tried it on me.’
‘You worried us,’ said Pelegrina.
‘Fair enough. If you have a worry, eliminate it. You’re a right couple. But don’t begin to cry about it. We might make something out of this mess yet – not much, but just something that will leave you with your skins whole so long as you start running fast and don’t stop for a long time. Tell me, where does Monsieur Robert Duchêne figure in all this?’
They just looked at me blankly.
I tipped my head at Freeman. ‘You’re supposed to have stolen antique coins of great value from him.’
‘I never heard of anyone of that name.’
‘All right, we’ll skip it. Here’s the deal. You walk out of this villa and leave me here with Dawson. I’ll give you forty-eight hours to disappear. Then I’ll call up Manston and give him a cover story which he’ll not believe for one moment, but which for policy reasons he’ll accept. But don’t think he won’t be after both of you for quite a while. It’s up to you to keep out of his way – for good. Seem fair?’
Freeman shook his head. ‘Give it all up now! Do you know how long I’ve been planning and dreaming about this thing? Over two years!’
‘Write it off as a bad dream. Cut your losses and run.’
Pelegrina let his monocle drop from his eye and shook his head. ‘But we have invested so much money in this. You have no idea of the expense, the incidentals. Even I have to charter my own yacht under another name. Every time you turn it is money to be paid out. And that body, that was very expensive! Anyway’ – there was a sudden spurt of spirit in him – ‘what are we doing sitting here listening to you? Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘Well, I was beginning to think I was some kind of Sir Galahad. But okay, don’t listen to me. If you like I’ll just get up and back out and you’ll never see me again, and I won’t mention a word of anything to the authorities. That’ll just leave you here or wherever you choose to move to, waiting for the moment when you’ll have to deal with Mr Bloody Manston. Believe me – you’d far better let me handle that for you.’
‘You must have some reason other than a tinpot honour for suggesting this,’ said Freeman.
‘True. I’d just like to be one up on Manston and his crew for a change. And also I’ve a soft spot for La Piroletta, Jane Judd, and Gloriana Stankowski, whom God bless for having dragged me into this quite innocently on her part. Okay? Now, why don’t you pack your bags and go fast?’
‘But we might get the ransom money – we’d even give you a share,’ said Pelegrina.
I shook my head. ‘Tainted money, I’ll be frank, I often take – but only if I know there’s not going to be a kickback. Grow up – you’ll never get any ransom money. You haven’t even got a watertight handover arrangement worked out. You’ve blundered through all the preliminaries, ignoring the big problem – and when it’s the only problem left you sit down to work it out and it’s much too big for you. Your minds reject it and you end up nattering about vintage sardines.’
They looked at me. They looked at the gun in my hand. And they looked at one another. I took another pull at my beer and waited. Neither of them would have admitted it, of course, but they were both in a state of shock. They didn’t have a hope. They’d both stepped into a cloud cuckoo land and they were stuck there for just so long as they could keep out of Manston’s way. Once he laid hands on them life would become real and life would become earnest – and of a brief span only. To help them along, I said, ‘Don’t waste your time on frivolities like wondering if you can jump me, finish me off, and bury me in the backyard sand. I’m not the one you have to worry about. Keep Manston in your mind. I got the address of this place out of Letta’s notebook. He’ll get it too, some way or other. And forget about the money you’ve invested – let’s face it, most of it was probably not honestly come by. All right?’
They looked at me, Pelegrina picking at his fat chin nervously, his head sunk lower between his shoulders than I had ever seen it, and Freeman tugging at one bushy eyebrow, his forehead lined with thought, not hard firm lines, but wavy uncertain ones. I was suddenly impatient with them. Damn it, I was sticking my neck out quite a bit on their behalf.
‘Pack your bags and go,’ I said. ‘You’re never going to make a cent out of Bill Dawson.’
From behind me a familiar, clipped voice said, ‘That, of course, is not true.’
I began to turn quickly in my chair and then slowed up as my eyes found the doorway in the French windows and I saw that any impetuous movement might bring trouble for me.
Dark against the brilliant sunlight outside, I saw the tall form of Monsieur Robert Duchêne, flanked on the left by Paulet and on the right by my Apprentice Tail. Each one had a gun in his hand. Somewhere behind them I caught the head and shoulders of another man. For the first time ever I saw Paulet smiling broadly, a real fat blooming beam of a smile. Even Duchêne’s thin lips had a little curl at the ends. Surprisingly, my A.T. looked a little sad – probably on my account, that I should have had such a touching faith in the goodness of human nature.
I dropped my gun to the floor and kicked it across to them. They let it lie at their feet.
‘Don’t tell me,’ I said. ‘Just let me guess. You’re from a rival firm – and you want to make a take-over bid?’
‘Exactly.’ Duchêne gave me a brief nod.
Behind me I heard Pelegrina groan, and then came Freeman’s voice. ‘For God’s sake – what a bloody morning this is turning out to be!’ Silently I seconded the sentiment.