using, and be quick about it.’
By the time he finished, Leif had begun to stir and mutter.
‘Shall we put him in the shed?’ I asked. ‘Can you think of any reason why we should open that door?’
‘Actually, I can think of several good reasons why we shouldn’t. Let’s go.’
IT DIDN’T TAKE long to dispose of the extraneous weapons, but John begrudged every second. He was moving with the eellike quickness he displayed when the bad guys were breathing down his neck. He didn’t have to spell it out for me. We had the upper hand, but only temporarily. The only way of immobilizing a crowd like that permanently is with a machine gun. Our inane coup had succeeded because we caught them off guard and hustled them into prison before they had time to realize how vulnerable we were. The shack wouldn’t hold them forever; and the odds were almost four to one against us – higher, considering that they were trained killers, that Max might have a reserve supply of artillery in his luggage, and that Leif was an army in himself. I could picture him snapping his bonds like a comic-book hero bursting out of his shirt when he turns into Captain Muscle. There was no need for a consultation on our next move. We had to go, and stay not upon the order of our going. I had no idea how we were going to get off the island, but when push came to shove I’d have preferred to take my chances in the water rather than huddle in a cul-de-sac with Leif on my trail.
For all his quickness, John was not at his best. When we started back across the pasture towards the house, his breathing was a little too fast.
‘We work so well together,’ he remarked. ‘It almost smacks of clairvoyance – the marriage of true minds.’
‘You needn’t be insulting.’
That shut him up for a while. Then he said, ‘How did you know Leif was one of them?’
‘Anything you can figure out, I can figure out. Or did you know already?’
‘No. I knew Max must be taking orders from someone, and towards the end he was making decisions a little too quickly; there wasn’t time for him to have communicated with a distant headquarters. He also got careless about guarding Hasseltine.’
‘Right.’
‘Right, you say. I’ll wager it was good old feminine intuition.’
I didn’t answer. His hit came too close to the mark.
My discovery had been based on logical reasoning: Leif’s performance, as Swedish cop and as German engineer, had been discordant with sour notes. His suitcase was the giveaway. He could have swum the lake, but not with that heavy bag. I hadn’t thought it out so neatly, though; it had all come together in a wave of instinctive revulsion when Leif made love to me, a dreadful illusion that the hands moving over my body were sticky and slippery with blood – the hands of a killer.
The clouds spit out a windy gust of rain and closed up again. We reached the grove of trees behind the barnyard and John said, ‘Hold on a minute. I want to say something.’
His voice sounded odd. I turned. He clung for support to one of the pale birch trunks, his chest rising and falling rapidly. In the gloom his tumbled hair had a silvery lustre.
‘It’s okay,’ I said gruffly. ‘You don’t have to thank me.’
‘I wasn’t about to.’
‘Well, you damned well should! I didn’t have to stick my neck out for you! In fact, any woman with the brains of a louse would have helped Max beat you up last night.’
‘He had plenty of help.’
After a moment I said, ‘Leif?’
‘He didn’t join in. He just watched. And made a few suggestions.’
‘That was careless of him.’
‘Not really. He’s so rotten with conceit he assumed you wouldn’t believe me even if I had a chance to accuse him. It was,’ John said thoughtfully, ‘becoming more and more difficult for him to restrain himself. His feelings for Georg are the closest he can come to normal human emotions. Unluckily for me . . . Luckily for me, and you, his passion for revenge made him careless. He’s up to his neck in this affair; the police may just manage to pin it on him.’
‘Did you know Georg was his brother?’
‘Good God, no. I wouldn’t have touched that deal with the proverbial ten-foot pole if I had realized the hairy degenerate was related to one of the top men in the business. Blood will tell, though; long before I ran into him, Georg had picked up some of the tricks of the trade, despite Leif’s efforts to keep him legitimate.’
‘Bless your heart,’ I said. ‘I might have known you wouldn’t turn a nice innocent boy on to drugs.’
‘I avoid that aspect of organized crime,’ was the austere reply. ‘It lacks class.’
‘So what do we do now?’
His hair was speckled with dirt and twigs; the trickle of dried blood under his nose looked like a sloppily trimmed moustache. ‘I rather hoped you would have an idea,’ he said.
‘I haven’t had time to think, dammit. The only way of dealing with a chaotic situation like this one is to grab the opportunities as they come up; it’s impossible to plan in advance.’
‘I didn’t ask for a lecture, darling, or for a list of excuses. Hans can probably demolish that shack board by board in a couple of hours. I plan to be miles away by that time.’
‘We could call for help.’
‘Fine, if you happen to have a shortwave hidden in your lingerie. Or shall we all stand on the shore and shout?’
‘Max may have a radio somewhere.’
‘If he has, I haven’t found it, and I assure you, I looked. Besides, I don’t fancy cowering in the cellar waiting for possibly hypothetical help to arrive. Max might decide to fire the house.’
‘Maybe Gus will have a suggestion.’
‘We can certainly ask,’ John said. ‘All right, let’s get him out. What do you propose to do about the guard?’
‘I read a book once where the heroine took off her clothes and walked into the room where the villains were – ’
‘Don’t be vulgar.’
The only tricky part was locating Pierre, who had taken shelter in the garden shed. In the end I had to call him. When he saw me, smiling and innocent and unarmed, he came out, and John took care of the rest. We tied him up with Georg’s twine and tossed him back into the shed, wedging the door with a log from the woodpile.
The barn door was held by a bar so big it took both of us to lift it out of the massive iron staples. When it swung open, the smell struck me motionless with nostalgia; no matter how much you clean, you can never dispel the old ghosts of manure, hay, and warm animal bodies. It smelled marvellous.
It was lucky for me that I stopped. The heavy stick whistled through the air, missing my nose by a few inches.
‘Wait, Gus – ’ Before I could go on, I was enveloped in a rib-cracking hug. ‘Vicky, my dear child – have I hurt you? I dared not wait any longer, I feared for your life – ’
‘It’s okay. But we’ve got to get away, Gus, as fast as we can.’
Gus let me go and turned to John, who was watching with a fixed, ingratiating smile. Before I could speak or move, Gus raised his fist and brought it crashing down on John’s head. He crumpled up like a piece of aluminium guttering.
I caught Gus’s arm. ‘Don’t. He’s on our side.’
‘My poor Vicky, you are mistaken,’ Gus said seriously. ‘He has a gun, don’t you see? And I must tell you that he is not kin to us. It is impossible that Great-great-aunt Birgitta could have – ’
‘I know, I know, know. Actually, he’s – never mind, it would take too long to explain. Just take my word for it.’
I knelt and tried to straighten John’s tangled limbs. This had not been his day. ‘Wake up,’ I said, shaking
