I took a deep breath and said, ‘Thanks.’
A.T. just smiled.
I said, ‘Was it anyone you knew?’
He shook his head.
I looked down at my shirt. Not even Mrs Meld was going to be able to do anything for it. It was good, heavy silk, hand-made, one of my recent luxuries. I went back to the hotel and changed the shirt. When I came out the black Simca was parked in the hotel forecourt. A.T. stood by it, talking to the driver. Seeing me, he just held the back door open. I got in and said, ‘The Uaddan.’
A.T. got in by the driver, turned to me and said, ‘You were dreaming?’
I nodded.
He shook his head disapprovingly at me. It was the same kind of shake I had had a little while before from Wilkins.
CHAPTER 7
Of Pythons and Vintage Sardines
First there was Manston. I met him in the gaming room of the hotel. The cabaret in the dining room had just finished when I arrived and Letta sent me a message that she would be with me in half an hour. I wandered into the casino, watched some oil men playing blackjack, hung around the roulette tables for a bit, and then went over and began to feed coins into a fruit machine. The gaming room could have been anywhere in the world. All I knew at that moment was that I felt a little out of it. I was suffering. Mostly from anger with myself at being caught off guard. I was puzzled, too, trying to decide who would want to put me away and why. The only person who had tried it before was Pelegrina. If this were another of his efforts, and the quick improvisation suggested it, then I couldn’t help telling myself that he must have discovered that I was in Tripoli through Letta. It was going to be interesting to hear what she had to say. But first of all I had to hear what Manston had to say.
He came up to me as I stood at the fruit machine. He was wearing a dinner jacket and looked cool, confident and in no mood for nonsense. He gave me a warm smile and a friendly nod, neither of which meant anything. With him, also in evening clothes, was an enormous man whose face was familiar. I remembered then that he had been one of the two men in Duchêne’s Paris flat when I had walked in on their search. Then I had taken him for a bruiser. Now, although he was twice as big, I saw that he was out of the Manston school.
Manston looked at him and said, ‘Perkins. This is Carver.’
‘We’ve met,’ I said. ‘He’s a dab hand with pot plants.’
‘Sorry we had to be a bit rough with you, old boy.’ He had a gravelly, educated voice, full of charm, reassuring. He’d probably got a blue for rugger at Cambridge. I could just see those big shoulders battering away in the scrum.
‘I want you,’ said Manston, ‘to get out of this town.’
‘I’m thinking of doing that.’
‘I want you, too, to forget you ever heard of Messrs Freeman and Dawson. You know why, of course.’
I nodded. ‘You’ve done a good job stopping any publicity.’
‘There’s never going to be any. Also, if you’ll excuse the crudity, there are not going to be any pickings in this for you.’
‘I haven’t been thinking along those lines. I’ve got plenty of money at the moment.’
‘Then live to enjoy it,’ said Perkins. He slipped a coin into the machine, jerked the handle and got a bigger dividend at once than I’d had so far.
‘It’s like that, is it?’ I looked at Manston.
‘It’s just like that. Take a vow of silence right now—and that includes talking in your sleep. Go away and forget.’
‘Do that,’ said Perkins. ‘We haven’t got time to be bothered with any monkey tricks. Just begin one and I’ll break your neck and drop you in the sea. We’ll issue a D-notice so that you don’t even get four lines in the evening papers.’
‘Why,’ I asked Manston, ‘have I never had the pleasure of meeting this number before? I should have thought he was too big and obvious for your service.’
‘Far East, old boy,’ said Perkins. ‘Only just come back to home service.’
‘Just forget Freeman and Dawson,’ said Manston. ‘That way we can go on being friends when we have to.’
‘Charming. Okay—I won’t say a word. But somebody will. You’ll never keep this out of the press.’
‘Our instructions are that we must. So we will. Understood?’
‘Yes. And what happens to them when you catch up with them?’ Perkins winked. ‘We break their necks and drop them in the sea, and then cover that with a D-notice.’
‘I might be able to help.’
‘We don’t want it. Just go home and chase insurance cheats; live a full life and a long one,’ said Manston.
‘If you insist. How’s the big man taking it? And I don’t mean Sutcliffe.’
‘Sincerely and frankly,’ said Perkins, ‘the big man is hopping bloody mad—and, of course, worried, as any decent parent would be.’
‘As a matter of interest,’ I said idly, ‘where was the snatch made? Up the coast a bit at a place called Sabratha?’
Neither of them moved a muscle.
I grinned. ‘You shouldn’t have too much trouble. Not with a guy like Freeman. He couldn’t even fake his own death convincingly. I’ll bet he’s biting his nails now trying to work out some foolproof method for the ransom money to be handed over. A clever man would have had that one settled before he took the first step. Yes, I can see
