‘No; I haven’t been in there.’
‘Part of it fell down. Just like that. While I was hoovering. Meld says he’ll fix it. Save you a big builder’s bill.’
‘Did he say which year he would do it?’
She laughed. ‘That kind of mood, is it? Well, we all feel down in the mouth after a holiday.’
She hadn’t got it right by a long chalk. I wasn’t down in the mouth. I was right down in my boots.
I was in the office by half past nine the next morning. In the outer office Mrs Burtenshaw put down the Daily Telegraph and greeted me without enthusiasm. Business was at a standstill, she said, and she had had a nice postcard from Wilkins two days ago. I didn’t comment that she might never have another if I didn’t play my cards right.
In my own office I had to use both hands to get the basset hound off my chair. He hit the ground with a thump and promptly went to sleep on the carpet under the desk so that I had no room to stretch my legs out.
I reached for the phone, feeling as gloomy as a Great Dane, and called Mrs Stankowski.
The glorious Gloriana answered it and seemed delighted to hear my voice. It did nothing to cheer me up. All I wanted was contact with Saraband Two and to be on my way. I told her about La Piroletta, that she had the python bracelet and was willing to sell it back. I gave her the name and address of Letta’s Paris agents so that she could get in touch with her. Gloriana said she would consider what to do about the bracelet, and then asked me to come and have dinner with her that evening in her flat. I said I would, forcing some enthusiasm into my voice out of politeness.
I put the receiver down and sat there wondering if they had tapped my phone, and, if they had, how long it would be before somebody was around to see me.
It took an hour, actually. Mrs Burtenshaw rang through and said there was a Mr Vickers to see me. I told her to send him in. I knew Mr Edwin Vickers and where he came from—and I knew now that they were running a tap on my phone.
He came in fish-faced, drifting like a dried leaf in an idle breeze, eyes mournful, mouth turned down, and his suit needing a good brush and pressing, a troglodyte from the submerged two-thirds of Whitehall.
He took the chair across the desk and competed with me and the basset hound for leg room under the desk.
‘The last time I saw you,’ I said, ‘you were going to retire and help your brother-in-law run a hotel in Scotland.’
‘Brother. He decided he didn’t want me. We never got on, anyway. And anyway, they held over my retirement date. Shortage of trained operators.’
He was flattering himself. He could have fallen down a drain opposite the Cenotaph and nobody would ever have missed him. ‘What’s the big message this morning?’
‘I’m requested—by you-know-who—to check your itinerary back from Tripoli. Seems to have taken you a day or so longer than it should.’
‘I stopped off in Rome for a night. Eden Hotel. Had a customer I thought I might sell the Coliseum to.
‘Keep the hotel bill?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? You were on expenses, weren’t you?’
‘No, I wasn’t. My services were terminated in Tripoli by my client. Anyway, what’s the big interest?’
‘I wouldn’t know. Check your movements, they said.’
‘Well, you’ve checked them. Anything else?’
He nodded. ‘They want you to sit tight in London. If you try to leave the country you’ll be stopped.’
‘I could write to my M.P. about that.’
He stood up and helped himself to a cigarette from my desk box. ‘Do that—if you know who he is. That your dog?’
The basset had come out from under and was rolling leisurely on his back in a patch of sunlight by the window.
‘No. He just appears every morning in early spring—and then suddenly he’s gone for another year. Away mating, I suppose.’
He bent down and rubbed the back of his hand along the length of the basset’s tummy. It was a long rub.
‘I’m fond of animals,’ he said.
‘How do they feel about you?’
He straightened up, gave me a sad look, shook his head and backed to the door as though he feared either the dog or myself would go for his lean throat. At the door he said, ‘They said to keep your nose clean for once if you know what is good for you.’
‘In those words?’
‘No. I colloquialized them.’
Colloquially, I told him to get out. He did, looking a little shocked. He was too meek, that was the trouble. His kind might eventually inherit the earth but before they did people would always be trampling on them.
After he’d gone I sat there for a long time worrying about Wilkins. Yes, worrying. It was no good not admitting it. I was worrying about her. I’d got her involved in this and although I’d been told she would be safe as long as I played ball there were certain aspects of the situation that nagged at me. This had gone from a simple kidnapping-for-cash case right up to the high levels of security double-dealing and ice-cold bargaining where ordinary mortals begin to gasp for oxygen.
Half an hour before midday Olaf burst in—straight from the airport. He hadn’t shaved and his eyes had a murderous glare in them. His pilot’s pea-jacket swung open over his barrel chest and he thumped it with one big fist as he came up to the desk.
‘I want Hilda,’ he said. There was a faint odour of rum on his breath.
‘So do I,’ I said, ‘but shouting won’t get her back.’
‘She not come back and I break your neck and all the necks I can find.’
‘Sit down and stop behaving like a walking volcano.’
‘Something is to be done right away. The police in Tripoli are useless. Polite but useless. Everyone is
