The Loo Sanction

that.'

'You sure know how to hurt a guy. Okeydoke, I'll meet you at the Vicarage. Don't take any wooden—'

Jonathan hung up.

He had bathed and changed and was resting in the dark of his room when MacTaint banged on the door.

'You wouldn't have a drop of whiskey about the place?' were his first words. 'Oh, by the way... here.' He handed Jonathan a cylindrical package bound up in black plastic fabric. 'You know what you can do with your friggin' films?'

'Trouble?' He passed the bottle.

'I'd say that. Yes. Never mind the glass.' He took a long pull. 'Tell me, lad. Do you have any idea how much noise is made by busting open a bronze statue in an empty gallery hall?'

'I assume it didn't go unnoticed.'

'You'd have thought the buzz bombs were back. Sure you don't want any of this?' He took another long pull, then he tugged the bottle down suddenly, laughing and spilling a little over his lapels. 'You should have seen me scarpering my aged arse down the scaffolding, the canvas under my arm, and balancing your damned bundle. All elbows and knees. No grace at all. Bells ringing and people shouting. Oh, it was an event, Jon.'

'Let's see it.'

MacTaint took the Chardin from where it rested facing the wall and set it up on a chair in good light, then he dropped down onto the sofa beside Jonathan, his motion puffing out eddies of stink from within his clothes. 'Ain't it lovely, though.'

Jonathan looked at it for several minutes. 'You have a buyer yet?'

'No, but...'

'I have five thousand.'

MacTaint turned and examined Jonathan, his eyes squinted under the antennal brows. 'Welcome back, lad.'

'You're an evil old bastard, MacTaint.' Jonathan rose and gave him the five thousand pounds he had set aside for the films, then he found the other five Strange had given him for expenses and handed that over as well.

'Ta,' Mac said, stuffing the wad of bills into the pocket of his tattered overcoat. 'Not a bad night, taken all in all. But I'd best be off. Lilla gets nervy if I'm out too late.'

The Vicarage

Patches of mist on the low-lying sections of the road into Wessex were silvered by the full moon that skimmed through a black tracery of treetops, keeping pace with the Lotus as it twisted through back lanes, deserted at this early hour. Jonathan's shoulder was still stiff, and driving one-handed was tiring, so he maintained a moderate speed. It had been a difficult week. His reflex time had been eroded, and to keep himself awake he reviewed the events that had brought him to here and this—driving out to meet Maggie, the black plastic cylinder of amateur sex movies jiggling on the seat beside him.

Because he was deeply tired, people and events, words and coincidences of the past five days rolled through his mind, the connections obeying subtler laws than simple chronology. One event passed through his mind, then as he came around the bend of another occasion... there it was. Obviously! The odd bits of tessera that hadn't fit in anywhere suddenly fell into place.

Maggie...

He pressed down on the accelerator and switched off his driving lights so the plunges into wispy ground mist did not blind him.

He pumped his brakes and broadsided into the rough lane that led from the road to the Vicarage. As the car rocked to a stop, the door of the Vicarage burst open, and Yank rushed toward the car. The broad form of the Vicar filled the yellow frame behind Yank, something bulky in his hand.

Just as Jonathan ducked down, his windscreen shattered into a milky crystal web. A second bullet blew out the wing window and slapped into the back of the bucket seat. He grappled the .45 out of the map compartment, clutched open the door, and rolled out onto the damp grass. On the other side of the steaming undercarriage, Yank's foot skidded to a stop. Jonathan shot it, and it became a knee. He shot that, and it became an unmoving head and shoulder, the face pressed into the gravel.

The roar of the gun reverberating beneath the car covered the stumbling run of the Vicar, who now stood over Yank's inert body, a log of firewood poised ready to strike.

'Are you all right, Dr. Hemlock?' he called, wheezing for breath.

Jonathan got to his knees and leaned his head against the car. 'Yes. I'm all right.' The cool of the metal dispersed his dizziness. 'Is he dead?'

'No. But he's bleeding badly. Seems to be missing a leg.'

Jonathan could hear a crisp, pulsing sound, as though someone were finishing up pissing into gravel. 'We'd better get a tourniquet on him. I've got to ask him some questions.'

'You do have the films with you, I hope.'

'Jesus H. Christ, padre!'

They carried Yank into the cozy den with its smell of furniture polish and wood smoke, and the Vicar set about attending to Yank with an efficient display of first-aid knowledge. He applied a tourniquet just above the missing knee, and before long the spurting blood flow was reduced to a soppy ooze.

'Oh dear, oh dear,' the Vicar mumbled each time he noticed the damage the blood was doing to the Axminster rug.

Jonathan helped himself to the Vicar's brandy as he stood beside the fireplace, watching the older man work with quick, trained hands. 'He's not coming around, is he?'

'I'm afraid not. Not much chance of regaining consciousness after a shock like that.' The Vicar looked up and winked, and for the first time Jonathan noticed a purple contusion across his forehead.

'Yank hit you?'

The Vicar rose with effort and touched the spot gingerly. 'Yes, I suppose so. I'd forgotten about it. We had a bit of a tussle. When he got here, he was the worse for drink. He said something offensive—I don't recall just what—and when I turned around, he was pointing a gun at me. He began babbling things about Max Strange, and needing the money to buy a ranch in Nebraska, and... oh, all sorts of things. He wasn't quite right in the head, you know. The violence and danger of his double game had been too much for him. He was never the right kind of personality for this business.' He winked. 'Then your car drove in suddenly and took his attention. I grappled with him. He struck me down with his gun, and out he went. I took up a stick of firewood, but by the time I could come to your aid, it was not necessary. I could do with a drop of that brandy myself.'

'Did he say anything about Maggie Coyne? Give you any idea of where she is?'

'I'm afraid not. You feel she's in danger?'

'She's in danger... if she's alive at all. Yank must have told Strange about her. And Strange had a simple formula for dealing with spies and informers.'

'You sound as though you knew Yank was in the pay of Strange.'

'Only for the last fifteen minutes. The pileup of coincidences finally broke through my stupidity. Strange knew about your Parnell-Greene. He knew about me. He knew I had talked to Vanessa Dyke. Always a couple of steps ahead. He had too much information; there was too much coincidence. It had to come from inside. And Yank was at Van's house after she was murdered—no police, just Yank. He was pretending to be drunker than he was. Later, he wanted to pick me and the films up at my flat. It all fits in. But the coagulating agent was just a phrase—something one of Strange's men said after they had shot me full of dope. He told me I had struck out.'

'Meaning what?'

'That's the point. The expression comes from American baseball. Only Yank would have used it.'

'I see.' The Vicar winked meditatively. 'What shall we do about Miss Coyne?'

Jonathan pressed a finger into his temple and massaged it. 'She could be anywhere. Her apartment, maybe.'

'Oh, I doubt that. I've called several times in the past two days. Never an answer. I was seeking information about you, because Yank had stopped reporting in—and now we know why. Finally, he did call this afternoon to tell me that events had altered your plans. He told me you had gotten the films, but the situation was such that you