disguised vans, the lot. There really
“Promise not to tell, Lovejoy?” Ah, good old question time. “Ouch!”
Smiling had hurt her face. Served her right.
Pascal was filled with mistrust. I’ve been mistrusted by supercynics, and can tell. It says a lot for the Gallic character, I whispered to Lysette. She said to shhh, it was impolite to whisper in company. So why was she whispering?
He wanted to make a speech. I’d already said it wasn’t necessary. We were crowded into a caravan trailer. Air conditioning whirred. Too many of us. Pascal had three goons along. There was me, Lysette, the Sweets, and some uniformed bobbies.
“It’ll tip them off if you go in force,” I’d said when Pascal wanted to call his regiments out. “They’ll not come. You must wait until they’re all inside, then bottle them. See?”
They settled for road blocks. On permanent stand-by, to be put in place when I’d given the signal.
“Lovejoy,” Pascal ordered, umpteenth time. God, but I wished the bloke couldn’t speak English. They were all bloody linguists, except me. I mean, some Oxford goon’s worked out that there’s 403 septillion ways of combining letters in English—yet everybody else knows my language better. How come? I was especially narked that Lysette got on really well with Didier Pascal. What sort of a name was Didier, anyway? Sounded like a rocking horse, the bum. He’d already got Lysette to sit next to him, the eyes of a rapist. “You will signal only when all—repeat
“I’ve said yes three times. How many more?”
The seven uniformed officers sat stolidly listening, though I think they’d already got organized. One asked, “Where?”
“I’ll show you,” I promised. “Lend me a motor?”
“No,” Pascal said, exchanging glances with Lilian Sweet. I just caught her minimally shaking her head. “We go together.”
Which was how I finished up sitting in a twitcher’s hide watching the mansion house in the gladey garden below. It wasn’t going round this time. Its garden was absolutely still.
Two days later, they came.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
« ^ »
Living in close proximity with somebody you don’t know is painful. I’m not one for chat; neither was Pascal.
The bird-watcher’s hide was made of logging. No lights, no door for the opening in the wall, no glass for the long slit window. That was it. I’d got a blanket-thick overcoat, and Lysette gave me gloves. Gloves, the old Elizabethan lovers’ gift. Binoculars with dulled lenses, and that really was it.
We had a loo outside in a rectangle of sacking, blowing in the wind. Basically sawdust in a large tin. Grub was already prepared for us, cold. Tea in a vacuum flask for me, coffee for Pascal. We had to make do. No talking was allowed, pleasing me.
The mansion house below seemed reduced, now the real deed had been done elsewhere. The garden I noticed was smaller than the Repository’s, but the two prominences topping the hillside to our right were about the correct elevation relative to the building, and were wooded to about the same degree. Nicely chosen. I’d explained to Lilian Sweet and Pascal before I’d got stuck in this hole that the scammers’ meeting was to be within the week. It only took me an hour to start wishing I’d kept my mouth shut and simply eeled away.
There from ten o’clock onwards, night. Midnight came and went. Twice I’d whispered had Pascal anything to read, got looked at. Faint starlight was all we had to see by. I tried looking down at the mansion house, the gardens, the little stream, through binoculars, but couldn’t see a damned thing. Never could. I always used to pretend anyway, when it mattered.
If we wanted to say anything desperate, we were to write it down on a small notepad, pencil provided. No talking.
Within three hours I was starting to wonder what if they didn’t come at all. I’d be found in this log hut in God- forsaken countryside starved to death years later, waiting for the syndicate to come. I imagined the scene, with great bitterness thinking of the grub there’d be, the lovely luscious women delirious with joy, flushed with excitement at the vast fortunes they thought they’d made from the scam, Monique queening it over everybody, having justified her barmy political beliefs.
“Sssss!”
“Sorry, sorry,” in the lowest whisper. I must have groaned. I’d not had a pasty for as long as I could remember. I was famished as soon as we got inside this place.
They’d be readying for the ultimate celebration down there. Servants, I supposed in my entranced mind, by the score. Maybe Katta, with her luscious delectable mouth surmounting that gross pendulous shape. Lovely. And Almira, with hubby Jervis. And those Madagascar folk, so wealthy with their digits sheathed in gold. And the smoothies, Philippe Troude, Monique Delebarre and all. There’d be frolicking and wassailing in nooks and crannies everywhere, even before the announcement.
That would be the peak. They’d get called in to a separate room, maybe some baronial panelled hall with a log fire. Brandy, being in France, would be served, with canapes or whatever those little noshes were, on silver trays. Then they’d announce the sum they were going to claim from Lloyd’s insurance. But only after they’d made the celebratory call to the Repository… I smiled, got admonished by a nudge. No chuckling.
