‘I locked the door,’ I said, ‘and left them for the charlady to find sometime. I found this place, of course, from the telephone number that Mimo gave José. It cost me five thousand pesetas. I hope it’s going to be worth it. And thinking it over, why the hell should I tell you anything? You’re not going to do anything for me and Wilkins in return except put us out of circulation. I call that a no-deal.’ I took a gulp of the whisky. It tasted worse the second time.
‘We would make a deal gladly with you, Mr Carver,’ said Duchêne, ‘if you had anything to offer.’
‘Haven’t I?’
‘What?’ It was Aunt Saraband.
‘You want to know how close on your heels Sutcliffe and his merry men are. For all you know he may be coming up the dirt track now—or he may know nothing.’ I smiled, though it took a little effort with my sore cheek. ‘You really are in a spot. You’re going to have to worry through life until six o’clock tomorrow morning, nearly twelve hours. And don’t try to tell me you could go now, because if you could you wouldn’t be wasting time on me at this moment. You’d be packing. What are you doing—going over the cliffside at dawn to make a rendezvous at sea with some Baltic or Black Sea timber boat? Or perhaps a quick helicopter lift out to sea to meet the Sveti on her way back—detouring, of course—from Algiers? So, you’ve got twelve hours to pass, worrying. Either I’ve passed the word to Manston or I haven’t. What am I offered to tell you the truth?’
I looked around at them. They looked back at me. They didn’t have a thing to offer and they knew it. They weren’t going to let Wilkins go and they weren’t going to let me go.
Aunt Saraband stood up. ‘You’re quite right, Mr Carver. There is no offer. There is no need of one.’
‘I could get the truth out of him,’ said Paulet.
‘It would take some time,’ I said, ‘and you would still have no guarantee that it was the truth.’
‘We don’t need any guarantee, Mr Carver,’ said Aunt Saraband. ‘In a situation like this the obvious line to take is that you have passed all or some of your information back. And—there’s no point in denying it—since we cannot leave here until tomorrow, we must take the obvious precautions.’
‘To stop anyone coming to the house?’
‘Quite. We can hold out here for more than twelve hours if necessary, particularly as most of that time it will be dark. At first light we shall be lifted out by helicopter.’ She spoke calmly, but underneath she had to be worried. The helicopter lift was all laid on and they clearly had no way of communication that would bring it earlier than first light. But her biggest worry was that if things did go wrong the really big boys of her service would be handing out painful demerit marks.
She moved to the door, paused and looked back at me. It was the sad, hurt look of an aunt whose nephew, loved and spoiled, had wounded her by stealing from her purse.
‘We entered,’ she said, ‘into an honourable contract with your government. They have broken the contract. It could have very serious consequences, particularly for young Mr Dawson.’
‘People,’ I said, ‘are always letting other people down. I gave up crying about it long ago. Anyway, a contract is only as honourable as the people who make it. In my book you and Sutcliffe are nonstarters.’
She smiled then. ‘Considering your position, you are remarkably provocative.’
‘You’ve only got to shoot me to make an end of it.’
But I knew she wouldn’t. Not yet. If a posse of tricorn-hatted Spanish police came roaring up in the night she wanted to have hostages, a couple of good cards in her hand to play with until the helicopter came. I knew it, and she knew that I knew it. Aunt Saraband was no fool.
‘Put him up with the others,’ she said, and she went out. Paulet and Duchêne moved towards me and formed a prisoner’s escort.
*
They were in a long upstairs room, directly over, I judged, the room in which I had been interviewed. It had two camp beds in it, discreetly screened from one another by a couple of sheets hung on a wire. There was a table and a few odd chairs, and some gay rugs on the bare wood plank floor. Against the far wall was an old-fashioned wash-hand stand. There was a small window, set low in the wall, but no light came through it because it had been boarded up outside, and there were bars—their ends set in the stone—on the inside. The light in the room came from two oil lamps. The atmosphere was warm and thick.
Bill Dawson sat on the end of one bed. He was in shirt sleeves and trousers. He had a square, freckled face and a mouth that smiled easily, and he wore thick, horn-rimmed glasses. He might have been a first-class geologist, but it soon became clear that he was a young man who took people on trust too easily. He had to be to be where he was. The first thing he said, after the introductions, was, ‘Have you got a British cigarette on you?’
I tossed him my packet. He was easily satisfied. Wilkins less so. She stood by the table, rusty hair a little untidy, a cold glint in her blue eyes, and marked the silence between us with an occasional sniff.
‘You’ve caught another cold,’ I said sympathetically.
‘It’s the same one,’ she said, and fished in the pocket of her cardigan for a handkerchief.
‘Hilda’s like me,’ said Dawson. ‘Once I get one it takes ages to go—’
I looked around. ‘Do you think they’ll bring another bed up for me?’
‘It’s the least of our problems,’ said Wilkins. She sat down on a chair,
