Sandro had prepared for interruption. He had fixed a place to hide and a route to it. The drawer of the filing- cabinet was closed and he was under a typewriter-table before the people were fully inside the office.
Sandro heard de Vain’s voice, and the voice of the accountant, and then a woman’s voice. They had after all brought the papers up from downstairs to discuss them.
Was the woman a typist? Would she type? If she sat on the swivel chair whose seat was seven inches from Sandro’s nose her knees and feet would nudge him. The prospect of a girl sitting and typing so late at night had not occurred to Sandro. It would not be usual. But SIPHEN was not a usual organisation.
Sandro moved a little, with great caution. He lowered his head so that he could see below the seat of the swivel chair. The three people were standing by de Vain’s desk. Papers were spread all over the desk. The woman was the blonde girl. Sandro thought she looked tired. She was almost certainly capable of typing.
The drawer of the filing-cabinet was closed but not locked. Would they use those files? Would de Vain remember that the cabinet had been locked? Inevitably Sandro had made some tiny scratches when he jemmied open the drawer. Was de Vain competent to see and interpret them?
It seemed to Sandro that he was going to get cramp in his right thigh.
De Vain and the accountant sat down on the same side of de Vain’s desk so that they could look at the papers together. The blonde girl left. She did not say good night. Presumably she was not leaving the building.
The two men began to discuss the accounts of SIPHEN, which were shortly to be published. The conversation was in French. Sandro listened attentively. But there was nothing of interest in what they said. Indeed it became paralysingly boring. The accountant was methodical and conscientious, but painfully bad at explaining things. De Vain was infinitely meticulous. He queried everything. He went on and on, grindingly, interminably, about the bills for stationery and the telephone, heat and light, paint and postage.
The minutes crawled by. Thirty, forty-five, sixty.
The accountant produced long schedules of travel expenses. There were vouchers for air-fares, hotels, car-hire, so many litres of gasoline, medical kit, insect repellant. De Vain checked every voucher. He checked all the totals on a small calculating machine on his desk.
Sandro thought such meticulousness was absurd in a man whose real cares were so large and urgent, and who employed cashiers and accountants. The accountant evidently thought so too. But de Vain went on, like a terrier, item by item, questioning and checking and grudgingly passing.
‘Ce n’est pas notre argent.’
There were long silences while de Vain calculated. The accountant, bored and exhausted, stared at the ceiling. Sandro could make only very small and very stealthy movements. His head and shoulders were hunched so that he could fit under the typewriter-table. His knees were drawn up. There was a faint smell of ink, fixative, and machine-oil.
Cramp hit Sandro’s right leg.
His muscles seemed to twist into tight knots. His nerves screamed. He needed desperately to straighten his leg. But then his foot and calf would thrust out into the room, out into the full light and over the pale floor. Hunched and in agony Sandro massaged his thigh. He knew what to do but it made very little difference.
To distract his mind from the pain of the cramp he tried to think hard about his discovery. Not ALA, but A.l’A. A man. The archivist. This was proof. What had seemed probable was certain.
Antoine l’Abbaye. French, Swiss, Belgian, a Luxembourger. Perhaps Canadian. Or, with that name, a man from any part of French or Belgian Africa, from the Congo of Dahomey, Senegal or Chad or any of the rash of little black republics, created by de Gaulle, with Paris-educated dictators. He could be a white Creole from Martinique, or the descendant of slaves from Grenada or Trinidad, or a Seychellois.
ALA. He was punning with his initials, A.l’A. What a risk the man took.
He must be in Kenya, in Kilifi, under a pseudonym. Only a madman signs a murder threat with the initials he is using at the time. And if Monsieur l ’Abbaye was a lunatic, he was also a skilful and experienced murderer.
De Vain, Hikohoki, and others were protecting him. They must be. ALA. A.l’A. There could be no doubt in their minds. That pernickity crusader at the desk, droning on now about the cost of the Telex, was protecting a murderer. Which was almost incredible.
Sandro thought furiously about people in Kenya, and asked himself if any of them could be Antoine l’Abbaye under another name. This exercise did not successfully distract his mind from the searing agony of the cramp in his thigh.
He began to wonder if it was physically possible to endure such cramp without moving.
If de Vain found him here, and found the drawer unlocked, then he would at once warn Antoine l’Abbaye. Who would at once become more devious and secret, and commit more murders. Sandro’s would be high on the list, and harder to prevent. Jenny and Colly, perhaps others, would probably be killed too. A bomb in an aircraft, a booby-trapped car – it was not possible to take precautions against everything. Innocent people would be killed, as they had been already. Antoine l’Abbaye was not worried about this. And afterwards he would be free to cut throats and stampede elephants . . .
Sandro must stay where he was, unmoving, until he could move. His face was now pouring with sweat and his mouth was stretched in a rigid, mirthless grimace. He knew also that his leg would be useless at first when he tried to use it. His mind became misted with the pain of his leg and with the effort it took not to straighten it and relieve the pain.
Time went by.
At long and blessed last they gathered up the papers into piles and the accountant rose to go. He sounded very tired. He and de Vain said good night with formal courtesy. The accountant left and the door closed demurely behind him.
De Vain, alone, made a few quiet movements at or near his desk. Then there was silence. A long silence.
Sandro hunched himself lower and peered under the swivel chair. He did not at first see de Vain. He was not sitting at his desk. Then Sandro saw him. He was on his knees on the floor. His hands were clasped on his breast. His head was bent. His eyes were closed. His lips moved. His face was drawn and exhausted and showed intense emotion. There were tears on his thin cheeks.
He was praying, and his prayer was anguished and heartfelt.
Sandro felt acute embarrassment. It was not seemly to spy on a man in private prayer, with moving lips and tear-wet cheeks.
At the same time Sandro’s cramp was no less painful, and he hoped that Hannibal de Vain would commune with his God for only a short time tonight.
There was a shout some way away, and running feet in the passage outside.
De Vain opened his eyes. He blinked. He scrambled to his feet. With a curiously childlike gesture he rubbed the back of his arm across his eyes. He was suddenly again cool, meticulous, and a leader.
The door burst open. The accountant ran in.
‘Un voleur! La caisse!’
An alarm-bell began to ring. Other people appeared. There seemed to be running footsteps all over the SIPHEN building, and shouts. Somebody telephoned the police and others ran to and fro on each floor, searching.
A cry announced that someone had found the burgled window.
Sandro was at no moment alone. There was no moment he could move.
The police arrived quickly. There must be a poste nearby.
It was obvious that the thief had already left, by the way he had come.
The accountant knew to a centime how much money there had been in the cash-box. The police were surprised. ‘Ça ne vaut pas la peine.’
Everyone tramped along the passage to look at the neat double-hole in the window. The office was silent.
Sandro peeped out. No one. He straightened his leg. The relief was so enormous that he almost laughed aloud.
He crawled out from under the typewriter-table. With its aid he heaved himself to his feet. He listened hard. There was no one near, no approaching footsteps.
The problem now was to walk.
For a moment Sandro thought this was impossible. It was a bad moment. His leg would take no weight, obey no instruction. His face tautened with effort and he was breathing loudly. Slowly, painfully, he started moving. He supported himself on the filing cabinets and then the wall. Each step improved his leg. When he reached the door he was still slow and in pain and limping, but he could walk.
He opened the door and peered left. Nothing. He leaned round the door and looked right. The sober, well-lit passage was empty for twenty yards. Then there were the fringes of groups of people, half in and half out of the accountant’s office and the office with the burgled window. Sandro could see de Vain and the blonde girl.
The elevator was to the right, beyond those people.
They blocked his way to the fire-escape. He thought there were stairs to the left.
Sandro hit his thigh muscles with the heel of his hand. He flexed his knee. Soon he would be able to hurry.
Moving quietly and fairly quickly, but limping, Sandro went along the passage to the left. He turned a corner. Swing-doors gave on to narrow concrete stairs. The stairs still smelled new, and had an unused look. They were emergency stairs, and this was the first emergency in the building. Down Sandro went. His rubbery soles made no sound on the concrete. The stairs were brightly lit. He went as quickly as he could. His leg was not bad. His mind raced. This was not a pleasant situation but there was nothing else he could have done. De Vain and his colleagues deserved better than the discourtesy of this burglary and peeping and damage to their property. They had made it necessary. Meanwhile it was important not to be caught.
On the third-floor landing he paused and listened intently. There was a sense of distant movement and clamour. There was no nearby sound. The big open-plan office on this floor was visible through a glass panel in the door on the landing. The lights must have been turned on when the office was searched. They had been turned off again, economically; there was a little indirect light from an invisible source, and areas of deep shadow. For a moment Sandro contemplated hiding in the big dark office until the police had gone and the building was quiet and he could leave comfortably. Then he thought of Natalie Frey’s apartment and her bed and herself and he decided to get back there as soon as he could. He hoped that in spite of her threat she would let him in.
He went on down the stairs. He was at street level. He looked through the glass panels of the swing-doors. The entrance-hall blazed with light. The main doors were open. A policeman stood by them. A police-car was parked directly outside. Sandro started down towards the basement.
A door swung and clicked below him. The noise echoed up the narrow well of the stairway. Then heavy footsteps, ascending leisurely.
Sandro glanced into the entrance-hall. The policeman would see him the moment he went in. He went back up the stairs.
The door above had no windows and it was locked. The one above had windows. It gave on to another big office. It was locked.
Sandro paused and listened. The heavy footsteps stopped. There was no sound of an opening door. A match scraped. The feet began slowly climbing again.
Sandro went on up. If he could not get into any of these offices the roof was the best place to be.
A door swung open above him, and hissed shut. Footsteps descended. Clip-clop, brisk feminine footsteps, coming down from the top floor. Coming how far down?
Sandro swore. He tried the door of the third-floor office. It opened. He slipped into the big open-plan office. He froze near the door. The brisk feminine footsteps clopped on the stairs. The bright light shining through the glass panel in the door was eclipsed by the body of the woman on the stairs. She stopped. The door was still fractionally swinging. Sandro moved, silent on the hard floor, into the shadow of a duplicating-machine. The office was dark and crowded. It was difficult to move fast without bumping into things. He crouched by the duplicating-machine and waited for the woman to move on. The machine was shrouded in a rubbery cover and it smelled of ink and oil.
There were voices from another direction. A light came on beyond the frosted glass of a party-wall.
A door squeaked open. A switch clicked. Fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed and part of the office was flooded with flat white light. Two men came in. One wore cuff-protectors, one a white overall. They walked over to a desk a dozen yards from the duplicating-machine. They were discussing in French the ventilation of the basement. Sandro peeped at them round the machine. One sat on a chair, one on the edge of the desk. They looked at papers.
Did these people sleep all day?
Sandro knew that he should have made his raid not at ten-thirty but at four in the morning. But perhaps these zealots would still be all over their offices then. Perhaps de Vain had abolished sleep in SIPHEN.
Sandro was frightened of his cramp coming back. It would not do to be immobilised again. It was necessary to move. He peeped at the half-lit office between the machine and the swing-door on to the stairs. He thought there was plenty of cover from the men at the desk, until the last three yards. He would worry about the last three yards when he got there. He began to move, crouching, taking his time. He got to the corner of the last desk, the one nearest the door. He glanced back, peeping between a typewriter and a telephone. The two men were quite a long way away. They were in full light. This end of the office was lit but not brightly. Sandro kept low and moved slowly. He got to the door. He glanced back. They were not looking towards him. He looked through the glass panel of the door, stooping to its level.
At the same moment a girl looked through from the outside.
It was the blonde, his friend of the entrance-hall. She was smoking a cigarette. There was suddenly an expression of horror on her face.
Sandro guessed, instantaneously, that she was smoking on the stairs because smoking was not allowed in the building. She was breaking a rule and she had been caught. He thought she could not have recognised him since she was in brilliant light and his head was silhouetted against another light, and since he was stooping below his real height.
Would she scream, run away, ring alarm-bells, get help? If she made any move the men at the other end of the office would look up infallibly and see him. They were breaking no rules. They would shout and follow him and he would be seen and probably caught.
Sandro chose the least evil. He pushed quickly through the door and faced the wholesome, creamy blonde girl. The horror on her face gave way to stupefaction. With a quick gesture she threw her cigarette away down the well of the stairs. She opened her mouth. Sandro thought she was going to scream.
He gathered her in his arms and kissed her passionately. She struggled but he held her tight and locked her mouth under his own. It was a more agreeable method of stopping her screaming than half-throttling her with a hand over her mouth.
More agreeable to her too. She stopped struggling. She returned his kiss with experienced vigour.
Sandro withdrew his face a few inches and straightened. He was no longer afraid of her screaming. He looked down at her. Her eyes were half closed and she had a brooding, preoccupied expression. Sandro knew the expression. This had gone far enough.
He said softly: ‘Merci, mademoiselle. Je suis très content de vous revoir.’
‘Vous ne partez pas?’
‘II me faut partir. J’en suis triste. Soyez tranquille.’
She nodded dumbly. She looked very tired. It would have been better and safer to make love to her, if there was anywhere this could be done in the austere offices of SIPHEN. Better for him, safer, and delightful: but no good for the girl.
He kissed her quickly on the forehead and went silently down the stairs. She watched him go through half-closed eyes. Then her face became angry and she hurried up the stairs.
‘Il y a ici quelquechose de bizarre,’ said one policeman to another.
De Vain heard and nodded. A thought struck him. He went to the filing cabinets in his office. He tried the drawer that should have been locked. It was not locked. He looked closely and saw small scratches on the paint by the lock.
The files inside were in the correct order but they were not as perfectly tidy as he always left them.
‘Qu’est-ce que vous avez trouvé, M. le baron?’
‘Rien.’
The blonde girl came in. She whispered to de Vain. He nodded.
Sandro went on, down into the basement. It was dark. The only light came from the stairs.
There was the heavy door which gave to the ramp. There was the trapdoor which gave to the street.
It was important to get the improvised burglar-tools and the money off the premises, to keep alive the theory of the sneak-thief who had come and gone. If de Vain had grounds for guessing that a man of a different kind had broken in, and for different reasons, then he might do sums in his head. He might do them right, and warn Antoine l’Abbaye that his name was known.
The ramp gave to the back of the building, the fire- escape to the side. Both were quiet streets, intermittently dark. Sandro thought it best to go out by the ramp, collecting on the way the partial disguise of his overcoat.
The basement was full of cars. They were neatly parked in rows, and all clean. Echoing annexes suggested storerooms.
Sandro oriented himself. The stairs were at the back of the building so the doors must be nearby. They were. They were in complete darkness. Sandro used his pencil flash to see that they slid. They were secured by a slotted bar which was padlocked.
Sandro put the flash in his mouth and opened the padlock without difficulty. He hinged back the bar and swung it clear. He tried the left-hand door. It slid easy and quietly into its recess in the concrete wall.
He opened it an inch and looked out on to the concrete ramp. It seemed empty. He opened the door eighteen inches. The ramp was not empty. There was a muffled exclamation half-way up it. Light blazed from a big flash.
It shone on to Sandro’s greatcoat. A man picked up the greatcoat. The light showed that there were two men. They were not policemen.
A voice said: ‘Est pas sorti. Encore là.’
The beam of the flash swung towards the door of the garage. Sandro slid the door shut as quickly and quietly as he could. He was too slow. Just before the halves met a band of light sliced between them. There was a shout from the ramp. Feet thudded down the ramp. Sandro replaced the bar and the padlock.
There was the faint noise of a car starting and accelerating. Perhaps two cars.
A voice just outside the door said: ‘Bon. Les flics sont partis. Nous avons la nuit entière.’
They knew he was trapped in the basement garage. They knew the police had left. This could only mean one thing. What had seemed a position of embarrassment was a position of extreme danger. He had thought he faced, at worst, a confidential and difficult interview with a senior police- officer. But he faced a furtive death among silent Citroens.
Antoine l’Abbaye had followed him from Kenya. Or had telephoned or cabled to his fifth-column within SIPHEN.
The police believed the burglar had left, with an unimportant haul of petty cash. SIPHEN, the rest of SIPHEN, believed this too. Natalie Frey and all his friends and the servants at Montebianco and Zia Ortensia would assume – what? A hit and run driver, a loss of memory, a footpad in a dark street. Jenny and Colly would guess the truth but they would never know for certain and they would never know either that the man who killed people who killed animals was called Antoine l’Abbaye. The precious knowledge Sandro had won would be lost as his life would presently be lost unless he was very lucky. Antoine l’Abbaye or his friends would dump his weighted body in the lake before daylight, unless he was very lucky and very clever.
The stairs would now be guarded. The fire-escape would be guarded. The ramp was guarded. Sandro had a few ordinary tools against whatever weapons the friends of Antoine l’Abbaye were using. Their weapons were apt to be formidable. Machine-guns, razors, kali elephants.
The most immediate danger was light. In the darkness he had a chance, in light none. This garage would have brilliant lighting. There were probably switches inside the doors to the ramp, and certainly switches at the foot of the stairs. Probably the wires were tubed inside the concrete of the wall, but it might be possible to disable the switches quietly. It might be possible to stand guard over the switches and prevent their being turned on.
Sandro started towards the foot of the stairs.
A very faint rectangle marked this objective, where a very small amount of light filtered down from the dim-lit entrance-hall. Sandro neared it.
The wall projected beside the lowest stairs. Sandro’s right hand held the tyre-lever he had brought as a jemmy. His left caressed the projecting wall and immediately found the switches. There were four. They were in a metal panel flush with the concrete. The wires were inside the concrete. But the panel would unscrew from the wall and given a few minutes Sandro could take out the screws and disable the switches.
Antoine l’Abbaye’s friends had no need to hurry, but there was no reason they should give Sandro many minutes. He listened intently.
He was not given any minutes. Someone was coming down the stairs. One man?
Perhaps an innocent man, a porter or chauffeur. The movements were very quiet and slow. They were not the movements of an innocent man. Perhaps there were two men.
Sandro flattened himself against the projecting wall on the side away from the stairs. The movements on the stairs had ceased. Sandro’s eye was level with the end of the wall so that in the very faint light he could see the man before the man got to the switches.
Something moved at the foot of the stairs at the level of his knee. A knee, shin, and foot, thrust an inch beyond the end of the wall. At the same moment, at the level of Sandro’s chest, the plump elongated cylinder of a silencer probed out beyond the wall.
There was a movement on the far side of the stairs. The man was not alone.
Now at the level of Sandro’s eye a hand crept round the corner of the wall. It brushed with a tiny noise against the concrete, groping for the switches.
Sandro bent. He swung the tyre-lever hard on to the inch of knee which thrust out beyond the wall. The man gave a scream like a small animal. His body jack-knifed with the sudden pain and his head shot out beyond the wall. Sandro brought the tyre-lever down on his head. The man fell heavily but before he fell the silenced gun skittered away into the darkness.
Sandro thought: the other man knows I am guarding the light-switches. He can get other lights: floodlights on a cable. Other men. They can make a rush to some cars and switch on headlights. We can play a game of hide-and-seek for a time but not for ever. I can neutralise some but not all. Time is on their side. If I stay here to guard the lights this can only have one end so I must go.
He thought for a moment of opening the doors on to the ramp and driving a car very fast up the ramp. He decided that if a car started at once, and was already pointing in the right direction with nothing in front of it, and there were two men with him to open the doors and then jump on to the moving car, then with perhaps only one death this might be done.
The fire-escape?
It was so easy to guard from outside that there was probably only one man guarding it. On the streets of Geneva this man would not shoot him as he came out, but would club or knife him. He would therefore stay very close to the fire-escape. If he was close there was a chance that Sandro could hit him first. It was not a large chance but it seemed the best that Sandro had.
Sandro started towards the fire-escape. It was not a difficult journey or very far, but it was difficult to move as fast as he wanted to without making any noise.
Steps led up to the fire-escape. Naturally it was easy to reach and must be easy to open. His groping fingers told him that it had bolts at each end, so it did not hinge but lifted out bodily. From the top of its steps it was not high. He had to bend to get under it.
The bolts were well-oiled and moved easily and in silence. Sandro blessed the efficiency of the Swiss. The trapdoor would be made of a light alloy so that a girl or an old man could lift it easily and escape from a fire. Sandro gently tried the weight. It was very heavy. He thought that there must be other bolts. He explored with his fingertips all round the edge of the trapdoor and there were no other bolts. It was impossible that it could be bolted from outside. It ought to have lifted easily and quickly out of its frame, but it was immovable.
Sandro realised why it was heavy. He almost laughed out loud.
A man was guarding the trapdoor by standing on it. Suddenly Sandro allowed himself to hope. He hunched his shoulders under the metal of the trapdoor and bent his knees. He put his hands palm upwards on the metal each side of his shoulders. He took a deep breath, tensed himself, and then with every ounce of his strength heaved upwards.
He made two movements: the heave upwards with all the muscles of his legs and chest and back, and then the thrust outwards with his hands so that the trapdoor and the man were thrown clear. There was an astonished throaty whoop from above him and then the thud of a body on to the street beside the fire-escape. The metal trapdoor clanged on to the body.
Sandro bent his knees again to jump out of the trapdoor. Something hit him with immense force at the knees. He was totally unprepared for this attack and he stumbled and nearly fell. His legs were pinioned by a strong man whom he could not see, who had followed him across the dark basement.
Sandro wanted to finish this fight quickly and quietly. He reached down for his attacker’s throat.
Something else hit him at the level of his chest. Arms went round him, pinning his own arms to his sides. This man was strong too. They were both strong and they were courageous. Antoine l’Abbaye was well served. They fought with strength and ferocity and Sandro fought back.
For a time it was a struggle of wordless grunts. Sandro could not move his legs nor his arms. It was absolutely black except where a faint glow from the street made a pale rectangle above his head.
Sandro bent at the waist, to force the upper of the two men off balance on the steps. Then he heaved upwards with all his great strength. The man’s grip momentarily slackened. Sandro tore his right arm free and punched. His punch had only six inches to travel. It was very hard. His fist hit a knob of metal, a button or a pocketed tool. He hurt his knuckles. He punched again. He heaved his left arm free and punched low. Open-handed with his right he hit what he hoped was the side of the jaw of the man below. He chopped with the heel of his hand. He struggled madly to free his legs and freed one leg and thrust. There was a clatter and a grunt as the lower man collapsed down the steps.
Sandro straightened. He could no longer worry about small noises. He was half-way out of the trapdoor and in an awkward position when he felt his ankles grabbed. He heaved but his fingers slipped on the icy edge of the trapdoor. He came down with a crash on the two men in the dark below him. They fought furiously. All three rolled together down the steps. The others were big powerful men and they knew how to fight. Sandro thought it was not going to be easy to neutralise both of them long enough to get away. There was also the man above, who might not be stunned for long.
Science was impossible. Sandro scratched and bit. One of the men concentrated on his legs, one on his arms and head.
Even as he fought Sandro’s mind worked.
Why no gun? They could have shot him as he started to climb out of the trapdoor. Perhaps they only had one gun and it was lost in the darkness under a car.
Why no light? Perhaps the police had come back, or the rest of SIPHEN was awake and alert, and this assassination had to be done coyly.
It was annoying to fight an enemy who knew his face but whose face Sandro did not know. Whose name Sandro did know, and must at once tell his friends, and must stay alive for this purpose.
Urgency and anger gave him a furious second wind. He became a wildcat. He flailed with his arms and legs and butted and kicked and bit. He hurled the man who clutched his arms against the side of a car. Glass shattered. He thrashed and kicked downwards with his legs and smashed the other man on to the concrete. His breath came in huge, racking convulsive sobs and he was damaged all over his body. He tottered to the fire-escape and wondered stupidly if he could climb out. He poked his head out. A body still lay under the trapdoor. The street was empty. Sandro climbed out painfully.
The cold air was wonderful. He was panting and pouring with sweat in spite of the cold. His cramped leg seemed well.
He walked towards the apartment of Natalie Frey. He had been away a long time. Three hours. She would be angry. Perhaps she would let him in.
Her voice buzzed sleepily out of the little loudspeaker by the door: ‘No. Go away, pig. You expect too much.’
‘Oh, Natalie. If you love me.’
A rude noise erupted from the speaker. But Sandro heard the click of the lock and the door opened.
Natalie looked at him and moaned. Behind her head he saw his face in a looking-glass by the door. He saw why she was upset. His face was a mask of blood and oil and grease and sweat. His clothes were torn and oily and there was blood on them.
Natalie’s hair was loose round her shoulders. There was sleep, anger, and horror in her eyes. Her peignoir clung to her body. She shut the door. She turned off the lights and went slowly back to her bedroom. Sandro followed.
In her creamy bedroom she said: ‘You do not look pretty.’
She got cotton-wool and spirit and disinfectant and warm water, and gently washed his face and other parts of him that were hurt and dirty. One of his eyes was closed and his lip was cut. He was sore in many places and the spirit stung.
She said: ‘What am I nursing? A murderer? A rapist?’
‘A burglar,’ said Sandro. ‘Perhaps a murderer, but I think not.’
‘A burglar. Delightful. Do you see any silver that you like? Perhaps my earrings?’
‘I will tell you a part of the story if you insist,’ said Sandro, ‘because you have earned the right to hear it by your generosity. But I would rather ask you to believe that the strange things I do, I do for a reason, and not altogether for myself.’
Natalie sighed. ‘I ought to insist on a full explanation. I ought to have pride. But I would rather have you.’
Her body was very white, so that, when they embraced, they looked like Othello and Desdemona.
A crowded hour later Sandro drifted towards sleep. He thought, before the warm mists drifted over him: ALA. A.l’A. Antoine l’Abbaye. Who? Where? Planning what?
‘All set?’ said Tony Monkhouse. ‘Okay, off we go.’
He gunned the motor of the little outboard. A boy on the jetty threw the painter to Jenny in the bows of the boat. Colly was amidships. The boat puttered across the smooth water of Kilifi Creek towards the fishing-boats moored, head to tail, in midstream.
Tony Monkhouse throttled back the outboard. They slid alongside the fishing-boat, which was like most of the others moored in the creek – stubby and beamy, a good sea-boat, with two big Johnson outboard motors on the broad stern.
Jenny grabbed the side of the fishing-boat and scrambled aboard from the fender. She made the painter fast to the gunwale. She was wearing a pink and white checked cotton shirt over a blue bikini. Colly handed up baskets of food and of bottles, and a broad-necked thermos of ice. He followed her aboard. He was wearing trunks and a light towelling jacket.
Tony Monkhouse climbed aboard. He was a New Zealander, apparently a beachcomber, whom Colly had met in the bar of the Mnarani Club. He had been everywhere and done nothing. He had money – not wealth on Colly’s scale, but enough to lead a pleasant and useless nomadic life. Oddly, he was not frivolous, but serious. His benign manner readily became pedantic, didactic, censorious. He took the Airmail Times, and read scientific and sociological magazines. A strange mixture. Colly thought he was slightly a nut, but interesting.
He might be forty-three, very brown, balding, with a curling, full-lipped mouth. He was plump in build and awkward in movement. He seemed strong. Jenny had discovered that he was a man of great education but no culture at all. He was blind to painting, deaf to music, and illiterate to books. He was an excellent linguist, speaking several African languages as well as the main European ones. When he spoke English his New Zealand accent was quite strong.
Yes, a strange mixture. Jenny thought he was more than slightly a nut, and not very interesting. But it was nice of him to take them fishing.
He had hired the boat for a month, from Malindi. The fishing-tackle came with the boat. It was orthodox and adequate – half a dozen rods, the huge deep-sea reels carrying lines of various breaking-strains, gaffs, traces, spoons and plugs and feathered jiggers for shark.
Colly tied the tender to the mooring-cable and cast off the fishing-boat. Tony Monkhouse lowered the twin outboards into the water and started them. He steered gently out into the Indian Ocean.
The sun blazed over the ocean, directly ahead of them, rising out of the sea.
A wind had been blowing. It was rough. The short, beamy fishing-boat rolled and pitched like a bronco. Waves dolloped on to the foredeck and Jenny, sitting there, scrambled aft into the cockpit. Tony Monkhouse stood at the wheel, legs wide apart, bracing himself as the deck swung and gyrated. Colly fitted four rods into their sockets, clipped lures to traces, and ran the lines of the outer rods through the pegs on the spreaders. They trolled as they went.
They were soon well out to sea, motoring fast through the heaving water.
Tony Monkhouse turned and said: ‘You two want to kill fish?’
‘That’s the idea,’ said Colly, surprised.
Tony Monkhouse twisted further round from the wheel, so that he faced Jenny. ‘You too?’
‘Of course,’ said Jenny. ‘Absolutely. Monsters.’
‘Okay,’ said Tony Monkhouse. ‘Then we know exactly where we are.’