‘We’ll know when Bou-Bou gets back from Bizerta this evening. The airmail edition will be in by then. Of course, if you don’t want to spring eight bob for Rodels, you can go for the Amieux, Larzul and Cassegrain types. They come out at somewhere under four bob a tin. I could eat some on toast now. Go well with beer.’
I stepped through the door, gun in hand.
‘How do you like them on toast?’ I asked. ‘Just cold, straight from the tin—or grilled hot?’
Pelegrina jerked forward and knocked over his beer. Freeman didn’t stir a muscle, except to turn his head slightly and eye me. He was a pleasant enough looking type, fair brown hair, a rather long evenly tanned face, and friendly brown eyes overhung with bushy eyebrows that went up slightly at the outer corners.
‘And who the hell,’ he asked, ‘are you?’
‘Carver, Rex.’
‘Oh.’
There was a silence while the penny went on dropping. I moved up to the table and sat down on an upright chair, holding the MAB brevete comfortably poised on one knee. There were some bottles of beer on the table and a bottle opener.
I said to Pelegrina, ‘You’ve spilled your beer. Better have another. You can open a bottle for me too. I’ve had a long walk. Don’t bother about a glass for me. I’ll drink from the bottle.’
Pelegrina just stared at me as though I were a snake and he a mesmerized bird.
Freeman said, ‘Allow me.’
He reached out for the bottle opener and began to dispense beer for Pelegrina and myself. He was cool and capable in a crisis clearly. It was a pity he hadn’t the same qualities when it came to planning.
To Pelegrina I said, ‘This gun belonged to your man who visited me in Florence. Don’t think I won’t use it. Not to kill—but just to make a nasty mess of an arm or a leg. Your knife man from Tripoli sends his regrets at having botched up his assignment.’
With my free hand I took the bottle which Freeman had opened and helped myself to a good pull. It was delicious, ice-cold.
Very slowly Pelegrina spoke. He said, ‘Porca miseria!’
I said, ‘Well, that disposes of the preliminaries. Now let’s get down to the real business.’
‘Which is?’ Freeman cocked one of his bushy eyebrows at me. ‘All our cards on the table. I’ll put mine down first.’
‘How,’ said Pelegrina, beginning to function late, ‘did you get in here?’
‘Under your nice new wire. Happy? All right—let’s get on. You two have cooked up one of the clumsiest kidnapping jobs imaginable. You’ve left a trail behind you three feet wide and painted red. Coming along that trail is a certain Mr Manston and a few of his friends from the dark depths of British Security, M.I.6, the Special Branch and God knows what other organizations. Don’t expect any mercy from that bunch. Their orders are—no headlines, get Mr William Dawson, son of the Right Honourable Henry Dawson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, back, and liquidate the kidnappers in such a way that they disappear without trace. That won’t give them any trouble. Particularly for you, Freeman, since you’re already dead and, even though the stomach scar on your body has slipped from right to left during immersion, they’re not going to fuss with a little detail like that. Am I going too fast?’ Freeman smiled, but it didn’t have a lot of heart in it. ‘Not for me,’ he said.
‘Your trouble,’ I said, ‘is that you go too fast, without enough thought. Bill Dawson was your friend, working with an oil company in Libya as a geologist. Did you think when he disappeared that you’d get away with that phoney death trick of yours? And heaven help you if any harm has been done to him.’
‘He’s in first-class shape,’ said Freeman.
‘That’s more than you’re going to be—unless you listen to me.’
‘What do you want?’ asked Pelegrina. I could see that with him I was dealing with a slow-paced thinker and not a subtle one.
‘To help you. But I want a few questions answered first.’ Freeman wriggled his bottom against the cane seat and began to light a cigarette. ‘Ask away—if you think it’s necessary.’
‘I do. Because when I get in touch with Manston—and heaven knows why he hasn’t got here ahead of me, except that even the brightest of us have dull patches and this must be his first in ten years—then he’s going to ask me a lot of questions when I hand Bill Dawson over and suggest a grateful government make me an O.B.E.’
‘You go for that kind of crap?’ Freeman asked.
‘That noun reminds me of your sister. It’s one of her favourites. So—first—you steal from her to set up this kidnapping, yes?’
‘It has cost us much money,’ said Pelegrina. ‘Expense all along the line.’
‘It could cost you your necks unless you take my advice. Where did you get that phoney body?’
‘From a medical friend of mine in Athens,’ said Pelegrina.
‘So that Bill Dawson should think Freeman here had been kidnapped with him and then killed, so that Freeman here would then—ransom money collected—be free to go off to a happy new life with Jane Judd?’
Freeman sat up at this.
I went on, ‘It’s obvious that you, Pelegrina, have never shown your face to Dawson so that, when free, he can’t throw anything back at you. That means that the only person he’s ever seen is some hireling who services him first on La Sunata—whose name he’s never known—and then here in some handy cellar in a villa he’s never seen and will never see. Let’s face it, except for the wrong belly scar and a few other blemishes, it’s all almost reasonably neat and tidy—but how the bloody hell did you ever think you were going to collect the ransom money?’
‘It’s given us a lot of trouble, that,’ said Freeman.
‘Believe me, it’s the only trouble about kidnapping. That’s why there isn’t much
