‘Sit down.’
Surprisingly, he did. I got up and went to the special clients’ cupboard and came back with a bottle of Bacardi and a glass.
‘Carry on the treatment and listen.’
He poured himself a liberal glass and drained it before I had even got under way. I didn’t worry about his drinking (though Wilkins would have given him hell had she been there) because he was clearly the type who could drink rum as though it were milk—and did, when he had to keep up his strength.
Before I could get going he helped himself to another glass and said, ‘In five years we are to be married. By then I have saved ten thousand pounds. This holiday it was all arranged. We looked forward to great happiness to come—and now, what?’
‘Just listen,’ I said patiently, ‘and when you’ve listened don’t ever repeat a word of what I’ve said to anyone under any conditions. Okay?’
‘I should trust you, is that it?’
‘It may be hard, but try. In fact, you’ve got to if we’re going to get Wilkins back.’
‘Why you call her Wilkins always? Her name is Hilda. It is not right to make a woman sound like a man.’
I sighed. Love and anxiety were mixing up his thought processes. ‘You call her Hilda,’ I said, ‘because you love her and she loves you. But to me she is Wilkins, because I have a great respect and affection for her and she is my business partner. Carver and Wilkins. And, for God’s sake, let’s stop quibbling over points of chivalry. Now just throttle back on the rum intake and listen.’
He did both. I gave it to him straight. The full and complete story. I didn’t keep a thing back from him and that was paying him a compliment which I handed out to very few in my life. Always I had found it paid to keep a little back as a form of insurance, but with Olaf glaring at me from his red-rimmed blue eyes I dished out the full truth, and I finished, ‘The first thing you have to do is to try and trace that ship. Red funnel, blue band. I’ve a friend at Lloyds and I’ll make an appointment for you. He’ll fix it so that you can see the shipping movement lists for the last two weeks. From your own sources you can find out what shipping lines operating in the Med carry those funnel markings. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, possibly. Yes, certainly.’
‘Even if it’s an Iron Curtain vessel?’
‘They are all registered.’
‘Good. Let me know where you are staying and don’t ever telephone me—and don’t telephone anyone else unless you do it from a call box.’ I flicked my hand to the desk phone. ‘That’s tapped.’
‘It’s not possible! In a democratic country?’
I didn’t answer because both statements were wrong and there’s something touching about the naivety of nice people who think they live in the best of all possible worlds.
I got rid of him at the cost of half a bottle of rum and told him to come and see me the next day if he had anything to tell me. When he had gone I went out, exhausted, bound for Miggs’s place and a quiet glass of Guinness. In the outer office Mrs Burtenshaw said, ‘That was Olaf, wasn’t it?’
‘You know him?’
‘Hilda has shown me photographs. What is he doing here, and where is Hilda?’
I didn’t feel up to another involvement, so I said, ‘He had to make a flying visit to London on business. Something extremely important. Hilda’s waiting for him in Cairo.’
‘That sounds very odd.’
I knew it did. It was the first time I’d ever called Wilkins Hilda in front of her sister or anyone else.
‘He’s going back, probably tomorrow. I think it’s something to do with him trying to get a job in this country with the Port of London Authority—he couldn’t ignore it. If he gets it and can live here . . . well, that would be fine, wouldn’t it?’
She looked at me doubtfully, and then said, ‘Hilda never told me he was a drinking man. I’m rather surprised.’
He’s not usually. It’s just that he’s come from the heat of Africa and needs a little rum to keep out the cold in England.’
It was the best I could do. I went out before she could develop any further lines of enquiry.
I fell into the battered cane chair in Miggs’s office over the garage and gymnasium and, limp as a rag, said, ’I’ve changed my mind. Fix me a stiff whisky and soda, and don’t ask a lot of awkward questions. Just let’s have a little normal chit-chat about the market price of hot cars and the current rate for heroin.’
Miggs grinned and began to set out the drinks.
‘You look flaked,’ he said as he put a drink in my hand.
‘I am.’
‘I’ll give you an hour’s work-out after lunch.’
‘You won’t.’
He sat down opposite me, his big red face like a fat autumnal sun, and fished in one of his waistcoat pockets.
‘Got a message for you. Someone phoned here, yesterday. Didn’t know you were interested in cage birds.’
‘I’m not. Though I did once look after Mrs Meld’s canary for two weeks while they went to Southend.’
‘Ankers, his name is. Keeps a pet shop up near St Giles’s Circus. The address is there.’ He handed me the slip of paper.
It just had the name and the address on it.
‘He must have got me mixed up with someone else.’
‘No. He said he had a new consignment of African finches and other stuff in and thought you’d like first look at them.’
‘He’s mad. I don’t know any Ankers, and I don’t want any birds, caged or otherwise.’
‘Come off it—you don’t have to let me in on your secrets. You must know him. He said he’d got a copy of that
