The Memory Trap

Zimin frowned, but didn't unwind.

'Richardson won't come now.' He shook his head again. 'God only knows what he'll be thinking!' That certainly was true.

'But he'll know he's been betrayed, anyway.' That was also true. So why not more truth? 'He's not stupid.' But now the important half-truth. 'So I'm afraid we've both lost him. And he won't be so easy to find next time — ' He could hear the sound of footsteps on the stone steps at the back ' — if we ever find him now, that is, Colonel.' He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise. But he gave the Russian his ugliest scowl, and nodded towards the railing beside which they'd met, in full view of the whole of Capri. 'And what dummy1

rather pisses me off, Colonel Zimin, is that ... if, by any chance, he saw us exchanging pleasantries just now, before your idiots dealt with that Arab so incompetently . . . then he may very well think we're in this together. And that sort of glasnost won't be to his taste, seeing as how the Mafia and the Italian police also want to nail his hide to the nearest tree as it is.'

Zimin shook his head suddenly. But he was no longer looking at Audley.

Audley turned, just in time to observe Chunky straightening his ill-fitting suit-jacket.

'Goodbye, Dr Audley.'

The words and Zimin himself passed him together.

'Goodbye, Colonel —'

When they had gone he was ashamed to discover that his hands were shaking. So he grasped the railings and admired the Bay of Naples far below him. It would have been a very long drop. But the first outcrop of cliff below him would have silenced whatever sound he might have made.

Then he started thinking about Peter Richardson again.

Between the Russians and the Mafia, Peter had been betrayed somehow. But maybe that wasn't so very surprising.

And it was what Peter would do next that mattered now, anyway.

He began to think about the old days: it was in his memory of dummy1

them that his only hope now lay.

PART TWO

Just like the Old Days

1

I am not . . .' he had carefully told Elizabeth '. . . as young as I once was.' So, as they approached the centre of London, she wasn't surprised when he appeared to doze off. He had been through a lot, after all. And that made it easy, when a red light caught them in the Bayswater Road, to be out of the car before either Elizabeth or the driver knew what was happening: it was just like the old days!

'David! What on earth are you doing?' She threw herself across the seats, her consternation emphasized by the mixture of fatigue and the unnatural light of the street lamps which dawn hadn't quite cancelled, which together gave her a three-day corpse look. 'Where are you going — ?'

'Sir!' The driver added his pennyworth of desperation to hers, all too aware that he was trapped by the lights in the outer lane. 'We're to go directly —'

dummy1

'It's all right.' He closed the door on them both as the lights changed, flattening himself against the side of the car to let a delivery van pass on the inside lane. 'Don't worry.'

A muffled sound from within turned into words as she tried to open the door again, only to have it shut again on her as an early-morning taxi hooted angrily behind. But other vehicles were following the van — damn!

'David!' She had the window down. But there was a gap coming up —

'It's all right.' He judged the approaching gap carefully. It would never do to push his luck again so soon after Capri. Tell Sir Jack that I won't be long — don't worry, my dear.'

Just like the old days! And no shortness of breath — only relief at being able to stretch his legs again. (Don't run!

Never run, unless you have to!)

Just like the old days, of course: not many pedestrians around, as yet; but the good morning smell of London —

London with its streets not yet fully charged with carbon monoxide: he could breathe it in gratefully, with his country-boy's memory of it going all the way back to exciting recollections of even older days — even to childhood forays, from steam-trains into Waterloo and on to Hamley's and a museum before lunch.

dummy1

But now he was safe enough, anyway — safer after that last turning, after having re-crossed the road, and done all the necessary things which would have been no damn good at all in less advantageous circumstances: poor Miss Loftus and her driver had been not so much out-smarted as out-ranked, and Jack wasn't the man to penalize them for that, anyway.

So he didn't have to worry about them . . . only about his own chickens properly coming home to roost.

Now he actually knew where he was, too: he'd jinked to reach Cato Street, which he'd imprinted in his memory long ago because of its famous conspirators ... so a quick right down and across the Edgware Road, and then left into Kendal Street . . . and then he'd be close to Matthew — ?