The Saint in Trouble (18 page)

He’s a lucky lad, is your Yakovitz,” he told Leila. “A few minutes earlier or later, and we’d probably have been scraping bits of him off the walls.”

Lucky,” Yakovitz said stoically, “I have a thick head.”

Most of the bottles and glasses on the hospitality table were in smithereens, but the Saint found a bottle of cognac and a glass that had miraculously survived, and poured Yakovitz a hefty tot.

“While that’s making your head thinner,” he said, “I’d better do something about making our drama less public.”

Outside the front windows there were brightly painted shutters hinged to the wall, ostensibly to give the house a pleasantly rustic air, but they were also functional. Simon had just closed and secured them when a blue-uniformed figure loomed up at his shoulder.

“Would this be where that explosion was?” enquired the Law.

“Oh, did you hear it, or did somebody phone in?” countered the Saint ingenuously, giving himself a moment in which to think.

“Must’ve been here,” returned the police sergeant, thoughtfully crunching some of the telltale shards of glass on the cobblestones under his feet.

He was clearly nearing retirement age, and the expression on his plump face as he tried ineffectually to peep through the shutter louvres suggested that he was more accustomed to feeling collars than coping with terrorists.

Sounded quite like a bomb, it did,” he mentioned stolidly.

“I know,” said the Saint. “The theory is that I, being me, have a great many enemies who wish to enrol me in the celestial choir, and this was obviously the work of one of them. Sorry to disappoint you, but it was nothing so sensational. We must have had a small leak in the gas oven. A friend of mine who doesn’t have such a good sniffer went into the kitchen and struck a match, and it went off with a bang. Fortunately, he wasn’t hurt. Just a few broken dishes, and all this glass blown out.”

“I see,” said the sergeant, as if he rather regretted it. “But since there’ll have to be a report, now, would you mind coming around to the station and making a statement?”

If I can be any help to the Metropolitan Police,” said the Saint resignedly, “nothing is too much trouble. Just let me make my excuses to my guests.”

t was almost two hours before he eventually arrived home again, to find Leila curled up on the settee asleep. Her slender figure was wrapped in his own silk dressing-gown, and she looked so innocent and vulnerable that he found it hard to credit that a little earlier she had been wielding a pistol with the cold professionalism of a seasoned commando.

She awoke with a start at the clink of glass on glass.

“Simon! Well? What happened?”

He settled on the arm of the chair opposite and sipped his brandy before replying.

“I believe the official phrase is ‘helping the police with their enquiries.’ I have been going through the charade of dictating a statement and waiting for it to be typed by some one-fingered truncheon wielder who was as meticulous as if he’d been bidding for a Nobel Prize. I have been signing same and answering a hundred and one questions arising therefrom, all designed to trap me into admitting some kind of guilt or of knowing some guilty person. Of course, I stuck by my gas-leak story, since you and Garvi want to keep the cops out of it.” He took another sip. “How’s Yakovitz?”

“All right. But I ordered him to bed.”

Simon glanced around the room again.

“While you did the housework,” he said. “Thanks for cleaning up the mess, Leila.”

“It was the least I could do. Your beautiful home, wrecked, because of us…”

he stood in front of Mm, and there was a mistiness in her eyes that he had not expected.

“Simon, I’m sorry about how I have spoken to you sometimes.” Her voice trembled slightly. “But when my work here is finished-“

He drew her close and smothered the rest of her words with a kiss. When their lips finally parted she made no move to leave his embrace.

“When your work here is finished, we’ll have time to talk of many things,” he said.

She was about to speak again, but he placed a finger against her lips.

“But not now,” he said. “And the business talk will keep till breakfast. Go on up to bed, and I’ll doss down here.”

Despite the strain of the long night, the Saint was still the first to rise. He had long ago cultivated the ability to keep firing with only a minimum of sleep. He had slumbered peacefully and awakened refreshed at the reveille of his own mental alarm clock, to shower and change his clothes before he roused the others.

eila came down to the invigorating aroma of percolating coffee and sizzling bacon. Yakovitz followed more slowly, but his step was steady and his eyes clear.

“I hope my heathen habits won’t spoil your appetites,” Simon apologised as he seated them. “But you can still eat the eggs.”

Leila had changed back to the fawn tailored suit she had worn when they met, and its faintly military style helped her return to outward impersonality.

“I telephoned Colonel Garvi and told him everything that has happened,” she stated, as if making a formal report.

“And has he any jolly new ideas?” asked the Saint.

eila nodded.

Yes. As soon as we have Hakim we are to take him to another base, a house the embassy owns near Epping. I have written down the address.”

“Why?”

She looked surprised at the question.

“For interrogation,” she answered. “We can’t ask you to let us keep Mm here, and the embassy is not suitable.”

The Saint shrugged.

“What you do with him is your affair,” he said callously. “My job finishes when we catch him. After that, I’m going to have a few scalps of my own to collect.”

“Simon, how do you think Masrouf knew where to find us?”

The Saint buttered another slice of toast.

“That’s been puzzling me too. The only answer I can think of is that he did an about-turn after we scared him off yesterday, and followed us when we left the flat. I’m afraid it didn’t occur to me that he might have got back on our tail so quickly. For which I’ve been taught a damn good lesson.”

“Colonel Garvi said I should tell you that of course we shall pay for the damage.”

“I’m sure you will,” said the Saint. “But you can’t write a cheque for everything I’m holding against the Red Sabbath. Never mind that for now. We’ve got a busy day ahead.”

“What is your plan?” Leila asked.

“We keep close to Yasmina. My guess is that it’ll be her job to make the contact with Parton, but that Hakim won’t be very far away. So eat up, or we’ll be late for school.”

The Hirondel had survived the explosion with no more serious damage than a few scratches in the paintwork caused by flying glass. They drove east, following a similar route to the one they had taken the night before. They passed through White-chapel into Stepney and stopped at last opposite the gates of a modem primary school. The only other vehicles in the road were a yellow van parked a few yards behind a small coach.

Yasmina stood by the gates shepherding children into the coach. In the yellow van, a man sat low in the driving seat with his face buried in the racing pages of a morning newspaper.

he Saint turned to Leila.

“Do you know the phone number of that house at Epping?”

She told him, and he scribbled a few words on a visiting card which he handed to Yakovitz.

“Walk over the road,” he said, “and drop this through the driver’s window of that van as you pass. Then come back.”

Yakovitz obeyed without asking for a reason or even reading the card.

As they watched the maneuver being completed, Leila asked: “Who is in that van?”

“That is Harry-the-Nose,” said the Saint. “Last night I told him to follow Yasmina and report back everything she did, but that was before I found out that the drop was to be today. Still, there’s no reason why he can’t follow her too as a sort of double insurance, in case we get separated for any reason. I gave him the phone number in Epping in case I have to go there with you.”

Yakovitz climbed back into the car as the last of the children boarded the coach. As it moved off, the Saint slid smoothly in behind it, keeping an eye on the rear view mirror to be certain that the yellow van had joined the convoy.

They headed for the Commercial Road and back towards the City, edging their way slowly through the crawling traffic. They skirted the Tower and swung left over London Bridge, turning sharply across to the right as soon as the south bank of the river was reached. As the coach pulled into the kerb beside Southwark Cathedral, the Saint drove on and stopped out of sight around the next corner.

The Borough Market is a mini Covent Garden standing beside Southwark Cathedral in the shadow of London Bridge. Traders conduct their business from open pitches beneath a glass roof supported by thick iron pillars. It is situated in the centre of two access roads leading from the main thoroughfare of Southwark Street. Between the market and the riverside sprawls a web of narrow lanes that twist between towering blocks of warehouses and depositories. The air is thick with the smell of rotting fruit and the distinctive ozone of the Thames. From dawn until midday it is a bedlam of noise and hurrying people.

The Saint looked up at the plaque fixed to the wall on the opposite side of the lane where he had parked, and grinned.

“Clink Street. I can think of quite a few people who think I should have stopped here years ago.”

Leila frowned.

“I do not understand.”

“I’ll explain some other time,” he said hastily.

“Yakovitz, you find a spot on the stairs leading from the front of the cathedral to the bridge. From there you should get a clear view of everything that moves. Leila, you take the viaduct arches so that you can watch the entrance to the cathedral without too much risk of Yasmina spotting you.”

“And you?”

“I’ll go through the market and try and find Parton. Our best chance lies in jumping Hakim when he shows to collect the passport. Yakovitz, you go now. Leila, you follow in a minute. We’ll be too obvious if we keep together. Okay?”

They both nodded, and Yakovitz got out of the car. The events of the night had combined to place the Saint in charge of the operation, and neither of the others thought to question his command.

Yakovitz strolled back into the road that separated the market from the cathedral, and turned in through the wrought-iron gates to cross the precinct immediately in front of the church. Except for Yasmina and her charges standing outside the main doors waiting for their guide, and a couple of tramps asleep on the benches, the area was deserted.

Simon stood at the top of the bridge steps and watched Leila walk past, using the coach to screen her from Yasmina. Behind the coach, Harry was lounging in his van, resuming his studies of the racing columns, apparently oblivious of everything else.

The Saint strode quickly through the back lanes, memorising every twist and turn until he reached the rear entrance to the market.

Two main aisles divide the market into quarters, which are then split into irregular sections by the tall wire pens from which the traders sell. Simon stopped at the junction of the two aisles; from there he had a clear view of the entrance roads on either side. The coach stood opposite the end of the east aisle.

The driver left his seat and climbed down to the pavement. For a while he stood looking across at Yasmina and the children before turning towards the market. As he did so he pushed his peaked cap to the back of his head, and the Saint found himself staring at the face of Abdul Hakim.

8

Hakim stood beside the coach glancing nervously each way before crossing the road and entering the market. He looked older than in the photograph. The cheeks were more hollow and the forehead more lined. The mass of curly hair was uncombed and he had not shaved for a couple of days. He wore a zipper jacket of black leather and tight black corduroy trousers. He moved with the furtive grace of an outcast cat poised to fight or run at any instant, but his eyes had the shifty look of the hunted rather than the hunter.

Simon stepped back into a narrow passage between some piled-up crates and waited as Hakim walked slowly down the main aisle towards him. All around him the porters and traders continued with their noisy everyday business; a few of them looking curiously at the Saint as they passed. He took a notebook from his pocket and pretended to count the boxes and tick them off on an imaginary list while he listened to the sound of Hakim’s footsteps coming nearer.

He was somewhat surprised by the ease with which the trap was preparing to be sprung. Simply to have to wait until Hakim walked into his arms seemed almost an anticlimax after the events of the preceding twenty-four hours, but he had no wish to quarrel with the Fates for smoothing his path.

The clamour of the market, which had seemed almost deafening at first, had now adjusted itself in his hearing into a per manent background which he could screen out of his consciousness while he followed Hakim’s waxy progress along the aisle. Quite apart from that generalised noise, his ears recorded a sound of footsteps approaching from behind him, but his brain was a split-second slow in reacting to them as a danger signal.

He had only half turned when the massive arms of Parton’s bodyguard closed around his chest in a suffocating bear hug. In the same moment he felt himself lifted clear of the ground and hurled through the air as if he weighed no more than a child’s doll.

He had a fleeting glimpse of the forger running past him towards Hakim, before he crashed backwards into a pile of crates that collapsed with the impact and sent him sprawling against the concrete floor. The air was forced from his lungs in one long gasp, and a kaleidoscope of flashing lights danced before his eyes as his head touched the ground.

He felt every bone in his back and shoulders jar with the impact, and only the responses of a veteran fighter saved him as the giant waded in for the kill. Instinctively he rolled to one side and the kick that should have sent him to join all the historic saints actually parted the top of his hair.

As his vision cleared, he saw the giant poising himself to resume the attack. The sheer bulk of the man made him ponderously slow, but the Saint was all too aware that just one blow squarely landed from those huge fists could prelude the end of the contest.