narrowed a little and a crease appeared in the middle of its forehead, as if it had suddenly remembered something.
“You know, my dear sir, it’s very strange. You remind me very much of somebody I once knew well.”
“I do?”
Duca nodded “I can’t quite put my finger on it. It’s in your expression. You don’t have any Romanian blood in you, do you?”
“Me? My parents were Irish.”
“Irish? It’s still very strange. I have a long memory for faces, and your face. it’s so much like this person I knew.”
“Can’t help you, I’m afraid,” I told him. But he kept on staring at me and I was convinced that he could see my mother looking out of my eyes.
Night Fever
At around six that evening, the sky clouded over from the west and it grew so dark that Terence had to drive with his headlights on. Rain began to fall on the windshield, big fat drops as warm as blood.
We drove to Jill’s house in Purley and Terence parked in the driveway. We had decided that there was no point in my going all the way back to central London, so Jill had invited me to stay over. Terence would find me a local bed-and-breakfast in the morning, and have my cases brought down.
Charles Frith had arranged with Inspector Ruddock for a watch to be kept on the Laurels throughout the night. The police would alert us immediately if Duca left the house, and follow it, although they were under strict instructions not to attempt to stop it. If they did, they wouldn’t stand a chance.
“What’s next, then?” asked Terence, tugging on the parking brake.
“We need to get into the Laurels sometime during the day when Duca’s out. What I’m looking for is his wheel, the talisman that he wears around his neck.”
“Why do you want that?”
“Two reasons. When a live Screecher becomes a dead Screecher, its physiology changes. It can slide through the narrowest of gaps, and it can run so fast that you can barely see it, but it has very poor night vision. The wheel has properties which realign the rods and the cones in its eyes, so that it can see in the dark.”
“But if Duca wears it around its neck — ” said Jill.
“It doesn’t — not during the day. If it did, its eyes would be much too sensitized, and it would practically be blinded, especially if the sun came out. If we can find Duca’s wheel, and take it, Duca is absolutely certain to come looking for it.”
“And I suppose we’ll be waiting for it, when it does?”
“You’ve got it. We’ll catch it in a sealed and darkened room, so that it won’t be able to see us and it won’t be able to escape.”
“Then what?”
“We’ll tie it up, nail it down, decapitate it, and dispose of the body, just like the other Screechers. The only difference between exterminating a live Screecher and a dead Screecher is that the dead ones’ bodies have to be cut into four pieces and each piece has to be buried well away from the others.”
Terence looked queasy. Jill said, “I don’t have to be there when you kill it, do I?”
“Not unless you want to. It’s dangerous, and its pretty damned disgusting, and the dead ones usually scream blue murder.”
“In that case, I think I’ll pass.”
As we went into the house, lightning flickered over the trees at the end of the garden, followed by an indigestive rumble of thunder. Jill’s mother was in the dining room, wearing an emerald green sari, and setting the table for dinner. Her father was in the living room, standing in front of the fireplace.
“Captain Falcon! Good evening! Perhaps I can offer you a snifter?”
“I’ll have a Scotch, if that’s OK.”
He went over to a large drinks cabinet and opened it. “I’ve just been given some very palatable single malt, as a matter of fact.”
“That sounds. very palatable.”
He handed me a heavy cut-crystal glass brimming with whiskey. I didn’t usually drink this much alcohol in a week.
“Jill’s mother has been having a bit of a word with her,” said Jill’s father, leaning forward confidentially and lowering his voice to make sure that Jill and her mother couldn’t hear him.
“Oh, yes?”
“It turns out that Jill’s rather taken with you.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize. But what she has to understand is — ”
“I suppose it’s partly the danger that she finds attractive. Women do, don’t they? They get starry-eyed about racing drivers and test pilots and mountaineers and suchlike.”
“I’m afraid I’m not doing anything nearly as glamorous as that.”
“Well, whatever it is, it’s certainly had an effect on our Jill, or so her mother tells me. She was very upset about what you were doing, no question about it. But she was even more upset that she might not have the gumption to go on working with you.”
“Oh. I see. I’m sorry. But I think she needs to know that — ”
Jill’s father lifted his hand. “All I’m saying to you, old boy, is that I’d appreciate it if you didn’t take advantage of her. No offense meant. But I’m her father, and obviously I have to have her best interests at heart.”
“Of course. I totally understand.”
“Good man. Just thought that it would be better to get things straight.”
I sipped my whiskey. Jill’s father was right. It was very palatable, and I began to feel much more relaxed. But I couldn’t help asking myself why I hadn’t quite managed to admit that I was married.
Dinner was strange but very good. I had never eaten any kind of curry before, and this was a Burmese curry, with fishy-tasting rice and chicken simmered in coconut and a bewildering selection of pickled vegetables and fried chillies and chopped cilantro leaves.
We ate out of small decorative bowls, and drank very cold light ale, making a toast every time we took a drink. “Here’s to international friendship!” “Here’s to Bullet!” “Here’s to Harold Macmillan!”
Jill’s parents asked me about my family and my life in Connecticut, but they assiduously avoided the subject of what I was doing here in England, and why I needed Jill and Bullet to help me.
“Jill’s always had such a passion for dogs,” said her mother. “I’ll show you some of her Kennel Club trophies, after supper.”
“I’d like that,” I said. “You can take it from me that what she and Bullet are doing for me — it’s invaluable. I only wish I could tell you what it is.”
“Well, it was the same during the war,” said Jill’s father. “ ‘Careless talk costs lives’ and all that kind of thing. Have some more of those noodles, they’re absolutely top-hole.”
Jill’s mother showed me to a large bedroom on the third floor, with sloping ceilings and a window that overlooked the tennis court. It was decorated with red-and-gold Regency-striped wallpaper and all the furniture was antique. I took a bath and then I lay on the bed in a blue toweling robe that they had lent me, reading one of the books that were stacked on top of the bureau — a crime novel called
I suddenly felt very tired and very alone. I had tried to book a telephone call to Louise after dinner, but after forty-five minutes the international operator had come back to say that there was no chance of my being able to talk to the United States until the early hours of the morning. I had thought about trying to call my father, too. It was his sixty-first birthday in a week’s time. But I wasn’t sure how I was going to talk to him, now that I knew that he hadn’t told me the truth about my mother’s death. I very much doubted that the counterintelligence people in Washington had given him the full details of how she had died, but he must have known that she was on some kind of secret mission.
