The path ahead of us twisted into a wide patch of scrub oak and pines, the trunks of the trees hidden some way up by a thick undergrowth of heath and myrtle. We were fifty yards into the trees when Dawson fell, pulling away from Olaf s great hand that held him.
‘I carry him,’ said Olaf. ‘You cover us.’
He picked Dawson up and slung him over his big shoulders in a fireman’s lift. I was puffed and blown. At the side of the path was a big notice on a pole. The best thing for me to do, I thought, was to get behind it and cover the path. I couldn’t hold them up for long.
Ahead Olaf was trotting along slowly with Dawson. Wilkins stayed with me. ‘Get going,’ I said.
Overhead the helicopter clattered away like a crazy washing machine. She looked at me, tight-mouthed, eyes bright with anger at the indignity of it all. She shook her head.
‘Have you got any matches on you?’ she asked.
‘No. A lighter. Don’t tell me you’re taking up smoking? Now get moving.’
She shook her head. Two hundred yards away I could see Paulet lumbering along.
‘Look at the notice,’ she said.
I did. It was Spanish and not much help to me. Something about Cigarillos . . . Cuidado. . .
‘Lighter,’ she insisted.
I fished in my pocket and gave it to her. She turned and ran along the path after Olaf and Dawson.
I got behind the notice and let off a warning shot at Paulet. I couldn’t hit him at the range but I could stop his headlong rush. I did. He went off the path and I saw Duchêne and Peter Brown do the same behind him.
I fired another shot in their direction and then left the notice and sprinted up the path. As I did so the first acrid breath of smoke came wafting down on the wind to me. Then there was a spurt of flame ahead and just off the path. I got it then; the notice had been a fire warning.
I found Wilkins moving through the trees at right angles to the path, scrabbling up bunches of dried grass and scrub and lighting them from my lighter.
I didn’t stop to tell her what a treasure she was. I was in there, grabbing tufts of last year’s bracken and grass and helping to spread the line of flame. For a few moments the whole thing sulked and then suddenly there was a small whoof and the fire went away, racing and crackling down through the trees towards our pursuers.
On the path in the middle of the trees I saw Paulet suddenly stop. Then a great coil of smoke obscured him. A small pine suddenly went up like a Roman candle.
I swung round and made for Wilkins who was still spreading the line of fire.
‘Enough,’ I shouted, and grabbed her. We turned and ran, and the noise of the spreading fire behind us was music. If you really want a good blaze there is nothing like a sun-baked, scrub-and-pine-and-heath-packed Mediterranean headland . . . a pyromaniac’s dream. In a few minutes the whole headland behind us was ablaze, leaping flames and great clouds of smoke barring the way against pursuit. Two days later, I was told, it was still smouldering.
And that was that. Except for a few minor details.
Duchêne, Paulet and Peter Brown couldn’t face it. But Aunt Saraband had a go. She was in the helicopter. It came down to fifty feet above us, and she hung out, gun in hand. I knew that now, knowing there was nothing to be saved of the grand design, she had to be full of old-maidish spite. She just wanted to hurt someone because she knew that when she reported back to Mr Semichastny she was going to be hurt.
She would have hurt someone, too, if it had not been for Freeman, coming fast up over the top of the cliff from the beach, hunting rifle in hand. He stopped and took a couple of pot shots. However bad he was at other things, he could shoot. One of the shots must have got the helicopter in a non-vulnerable spot. But it was enough. The pilot suddenly opted for discretion. The machine lifted, wheeled and circled away.
After that there was the beach path down to the sea, and waiting a few yards out a motorboat with José Bonifaz at the tiller.
*
There were a few high points after that. I remember particularly Manston’s fury because he had arrived at the airport to find no one there. No Olaf, no Freeman, no José.
It was José’s lust for pesetas, of course, linked with Olafs rum-whipped impatience to come to grips with the people who were holding his precious Wilkins, that had left Manston and company high and dry, without a single shred of information to work on.
José’s parents lived in a small fishing village called Purriog, up the coast from the airport. One could go by sea to the Villa Las Vedras and his father would gladly hire Olaf a motorboat, and, yes, a hunting rifle. Olaf didn’t stop to count the cost. They were off, Freeman dragged with them.
‘Charging in,’ said Manston, ‘like a bull in a china shop. They could have spoiled everything.’
‘They didn’t,’ I said. ‘Anyway, don’t let’s argue about the way it should or should not have been handled. A man in love can only do what at the moment he thinks is the right thing. And don’t forget Wilkins’s M.B.E. or O.B.E. or whatever it is.’
He didn’t.
José, not caring what it had all been about, went happily back to San Antonio, loaded with pesetas. Spain will be hearing from him, I’m sure.
Freeman got a discreet pardon and was ordered to leave the country for good. I heard later that Jane Judd had joined him. Some women are gluttons for punishment.
There was never any publicity, of course.
But there was Sutcliffe in his London flat, mild-mannered but
