A tall figure came striding round the end of the lake. His eyes glared from behind his pince-nez. The Minister wore a heavy overcoat with an astrakhan collar and a silk scarf round his long bony neck. He stopped close to them, as tall as Beaurain. His hands were inside his coat pockets and his manner was regal.
'Will someone be so kind as to inform me what has happened? I heard gunfire. I also saw you come out of Billy Hogath's bungalow. So what is going on?'
'The police are on the way,' Newman told him. 'Al-Qa'eda sent four killers to attack us. They are all dead.'
'So,' Paula said pointedly, 'al-Qa'eda have arrived in Britain.. .'
'What proof have you that the men belong to that Organization? You'd better be careful before you spread that sort of speculation.'
'They have brown skins and were wearing black turbans,' Newman snapped. 'Didn't you know that is their favoured uniform?'
'Must have slipped through our net at Dover,' Warner asserted. 'I repeat, this must be kept very quiet. We don't want to start a panic in London. Incidentally, I have arranged a full security meeting for the morning. Ten o'clock at my place.'
'Penthouse or Whitehall guardhouse?' enquired Newman.
'I find your sense of humour rather crude.' He turned to Paula. 'As Tweed is coming I suppose you'll be there too,' he went on in a tone lacking enthusiasm. 'Then you can tell me what you were doing in Billy Hogarth's bungalow. I shall require a complete explanation of your presence here.'
He turned his back on them and strode off to Garda before anyone could reply. Newman looked furious, while Beaurain was smiling as though amused.
'I presume that is your Minister of Security. Not in the best of tempers.'
'Well, I really am not all that surprised,' a smarmy voice said behind Beaurain.
'Jules,' Paula said quickly, 'this is Peregrine Palfry, the Minister's personal assistant.'
'I was going on to say,' Palfry continued, annoyed at her intervention, 'that the Minister works all hours and gets very little sleep. On my way here I passed a nasty body. I was also woken by gunfire. What on earth has been going on?'
'Armed robbers, dear boy,' said Beaurain, who had taken an instant dislike to Palfry. 'It doesn't just happen in London. And before you ask, the police are on their way.'
'But what exactly happened?' Palfry insisted. 'You have told me nothing.'
'That burglar tried to shoot me. I shot him first,' Beaurain said in a bored tone.
'How absolutely frightful. How extremely mind-boggling. We thought we were safe here. The people who live in this village, I mean.'
Palfry was dressed as though he'd just got up. Below his overcoat, buttoned to the neck, protruded a pair of pink striped pyjamas. But Paula noticed that below them were were the cuffs of a dark suit. Did he really sleep in his suit under pyjamas? Palfry was lying.
'The gunfire woke you then?' she enquired.
'I'll say it did. Pretty awful way to start the day if you ask me.' He turned to Paula. 'I heard the Minister inviting you to come with Tweed to the meeting tomorrow morning at his Belgravia apartment. You'll be hungry when it's all over. Maybe you would join me for a little lunch afterwards?'
'Kind of you. Let's see how it goes.'
Palfry walked back towards his 'tub' house. Paula noticed he took a route which kept him well clear of the body lying outside the bungalow.
'I wonder whether he will come over to see us?' Beaurain said.
He pointed across the lake to the cube house. A red MG was emerging from a garage under one of the cubes. In the moonlight she could see the distinctive figure of Drew Franklin behind the wheel. The car sped round the end of the lake and drove at speed towards them. Drew braked feet before he reached them. As he alighted from the car he took off his hat and bowed to Paula.
'So, gentlemen, the war has started.'
'We shot a burglar…' Newman began.
'Burglar my foot.' His headlights were beamed on the body. 'Native clothes and a black turban? That's al- Qa'eda come to town. The lot of you could have been murdered.'
'Yes, we were lucky,' Beaurain said with a smile.
'That will light a fire under Victor Warner. I've called my editor, told him to delay my column twenty-four hours. The headline? Al-Qa'eda Strike in North Downs. How many of 'em?'
'You only see one body,' Beaurain pointed out.
'How many?' Drew demanded again. 'All that gunfire.'
'Four bodies – like that one,' Newman admitted.
'Bigger headline. Massacre of al-Qa'eda near London. The Minister will love that. None of you were hit?'
'We hit them,' Paula said.
'Good for you.' He put his arm round her. 'And I'll bet this lady scored a bull.'
'It was a bull – in every sense of the word,' Beaurain replied.
'I'm off. To rewrite my article. Might just bully the editor into reworking the paper so it will hit today's edition.'
He leapt back behind the wheel of his MG. The car roared off towards London and was gone. Beaurain looked thoughtful.
'That Drew Franklin could be the brightest brain up here. I think someone should interrogate him for a long time.'
'I could do that,' Newman said. 'We're both reporters…'
Paula packed quickly, remade the bed in her room, checked the interior of the bungalow to make sure it looked neat. Swift as she was, two ambulances arrived before dawn. Buchanan jumped out, listened while Beaurain and Newman gave him a quick description of what had happened, where the bodies were. Within twenty minutes, under Buchanan's urging, both ambulances were occupied with their cargo.
'I want to get these bodies out of this village, heading back to London before the inhabitants appear. I know they've been up once but from what you've told me they don't know all that much.'
'Except Drew Franklin,' Beaurain reminded him.
'That's great,' Buchanan said, smiling. 'He'll splash what has happened up here. Finally wake up people to the grim threat al-Qa'eda poses to London.'
'Tweed will be rubbing his hands,' Paula commented.
'And that idiot, Victor Warner, will be wringing his. You will all be leaving, I hope,' Buchanan went on, turning to get aboard one of the ambulances. 'You've done the trick. Rattled al-Qa'eda's cage – and that of the master planner…'
They were leaving. Beaurain locked the front door of Billy's bungalow. He paused, his satchel and 'violin' case looped over his shoulder, his case in his other hand.
'You going back to the Peacock?' Newman asked.
'No, I want to get to London. Paula's car is inside Mrs Goggle's shed. What about you?'
'I left my car at the triangle at the other end of what Paula calls the rabbit warren.'
'Then we'll all drive there in my car so you can pick up your car,' Paula decided. 'I wonder how Billy is getting on in some hotel in town?'
30
Pete Nield shifted his position behind the wheel of his parked car. He was stiff. In the Bloomsbury district of London it was still dark. No streaks of another cold dawn appeared in the heavy sky.
For hours he had waited opposite the front entrance to the Pink Hat, a small hotel in a side street. Its frontage was narrow, four storeys high with steps leading up to the entrance, which had a light glowing over it. In front of grubby net curtains a notice hung hopefully. Vacancies.
