‘Without waiting to find out if there was anything in the bottle except pills?’
‘Risk,’ he nodded. ‘I told you. We can’t afford it. And that reminds me; where is Searle’s message?’
‘No message,’ I said wearily.
‘Of course there was, my dear boy,’ he chided. ‘You’ve shown so little surprise, asked so few questions. It was clear to me at once that you knew far too much when Billy brought you back to the plane. I have experience in these things, you see.’
I shrugged a shoulder. ‘In my wallet,’ I said.
He drew on his cigarette, gave me an approving look, stepped over Patrick, and fetched my jacket from the washroom. He took everything out of the wallet and spread them beside him on the flattened box. When he picked out the hundred dinar note and unfolded it, the pieces of writing paper and hay fell out.
He fingered the note. ‘It was plain carelessness on Billy’s part,’ he said. ‘He didn’t hide the canisters properly.’
‘There was a lot of money, then, on the plane?’
‘Wheels have to be oiled,’ Yardman said reasonably, ‘and it’s no good paying Yugoslavs in sterling. All agents insist on being paid in the currency they can spend without arousing comment. I do, myself.’
I watched him turn the scrap of his stationery over and over, frowning. He saw the pin holes in the end, and held them up to the light. After a few seconds he put it down and looked from me to Rous-Wheeler.
‘Men,’ he said without inflection. ‘And when you read that, my dear boy, you understood a great deal.’ A statement, not a question.
Gabriella, I thought dumbly, for God’s sake live. Live and tell. I shut my eyes and thought of her as she had been at lunch. Gay and sweet and vital. Gabriella my dearest love...
‘Dear boy,’ said Yardman in his dry unconcerned voice, ‘are you feeling all right?’
I opened my eyes and shut Gabriella away out of reach of his frightening intuition.
‘No,’ I said with truth.
Yardman actually laughed. ‘I like you, my dear boy, I really do. I shall miss you very much in the agency.’
‘Miss...’ I stared at him. ‘You are going back?’
‘Of course.’ He seemed surprised, then smiled his bony smile. ‘How could you know, I was forgetting. Oh yes, of course we’re going back. My transport system... is... er... much needed, and much appreciated. Yes. Only the plane and Mr Rous-Wheeler are going on.’
‘And the horses?’ I asked.
‘Those too,’ he nodded. ‘They carry good blood lines, those mares. We expected to have to slaughter them, but we have heard they will be acceptable alive, on account of their foals. No, my dear boy, Billy and I go back by road, half way with Giuseppe, the second half with Vittorio.’
‘Back to Milan?’
‘Quite so. And tomorrow morning we learn the tragic news that the plane we missed by minutes this afternoon has disappeared and must be presumed lost with all souls, including yours, my dear boy, in the Mediterranean.’
‘There would be a radar trace...’ I began.
‘My dear boy, we are professionals.’
‘Oiled wheels?’ I said ironically.
‘So quick,’ he said nodding. ‘A pity I can’t tempt you to join us.’
‘Why can’t you?’ said Rous-Wheeler truculently.
Yardman answered with slightly exaggerated patience. ‘What do I offer him?’
‘His life,’ Rous-Wheeler said with an air of triumph.
Yardman didn’t even bother to explain why that wouldn’t work. The Treasury, I thought dryly, really hadn’t lost much.
Billy’s voice suddenly spoke from the far end of the plane.
‘Hey, Mr Yardman,’ he called. ‘Can’t you and Mr Rous-flipping-Wheeler come and give us a hand? This ruddy aeroplane’s bloody covered with names and letters. We’re practically having to paint the whole sodding crate.’
Yardman stood up. ‘Yes, all right,’ he said.
Rous-Wheeler didn’t want to paint. ‘I don’t feel...’ he began importantly.
‘And you don’t want to be late,’ Yardman said flatly.
He stood aside to let the deflated Rous-Wheeler pass, and they both made their way up past the two boxes, through the galley, and down the telescopic ladder from the forward door.
Desperation can move mountains. I’d never hoped to have another minute alone to put it to the test, but I’d thought of a way of detaching myself from the mare’s box, if I had enough strength. Yardman had had difficulty squeezing the rope down between the banding bar and the wooden box side when he’d tied me there: he’d had to push it through with the blade of his penknife. It wouldn’t have gone through at all I thought, if either the box side wasn’t a fraction warped or the bar a shade bent. Most of the bars lay flat and tight along the boxes, with no space at all between them.
I was standing less than two feet from the corner of the box: and along at the corner the bar was fastened by a lynch pin.
I got splinters in my wrists, and after I’d moved along six inches I thought I’d never manage it. The bar and the box seemed to come closer together the further I went, and jerking the rope along between them grew harder and harder, until at last it was impossible. I shook my head in bitter frustration. Then I thought of getting my feet to help, and bending my knee put my foot flat on the box as high behind me as I could get leverage. Thrusting back with my foot, pulling forward on the bar with my arms, and jerking my wrists sideways at the same time, I moved along a good inch. It worked. I kept at it grimly and finally arrived at the last three inches. From there, twisting, I could reach the lynch pin with my fingers. Slowly, agonisingly slowly, I pushed it up from the bottom, transferred my weak grip to the rounded top, slid it fraction by fraction up in my palm, and with an enormous sense of triumph felt it come free. The iron bands parted at the corner, and it required the smallest of jerks to tug the rope out through the gap.
Call that nothing, I said to myself with the beginnings of a grin. All that remained was to free my hands from each other.
Yardman had left my jacket lying on the flattened box, and in my jacket pocket was a small sharp penknife. I sat down on the side of the shallow platform, trying to pretend to myself that it wasn’t because my legs were buckling at the knees but only the quickest way to reach the jacket. The knife was there, slim and familiar. I clicked open the blade, gripped it firmly, and sawed away blindly at some unseen point between my wrists. The friction of dragging the rope along had frayed it helpfully, and before I’d begun to hope for it I felt the strands stretch and give, and in two more seconds my hands were free. With stiff shoulders I brought them round in front of me. Yardman had no personal brutality and hadn’t tied tight enough to stop the blood. I flexed my fingers and they were fine.
Scooping up wallet and jacket I began the bent walk forward under the luggage rack and over the guy chains, stepping with care so as not to make a noise and fetch the five outdoor decorators in at the double. I reached the galley safely and went through it. In the space behind the cockpit I stopped dead for a moment. The body of Mike the engineer lay tumbled in a heap against the left hand wall.
Tearing both mind and eyes away from him I edged towards the way out. On my immediate right I came first to the luggage bay, and beyond that lay the door. The sight of my overnight bag in the bay made me remember the black jersey inside it. Better than my jacket, I thought. It had a high neck, was easier to move in, and wouldn’t be so heavy on my raw skin. In a few seconds I had it on, and had transferred my wallet to my trousers.
Five of them round the plane, I thought. The exit door was ajar, but when I opened it the light would spill out, and for the time it took to get on to the ladder they would be able to see me clearly. Unless by some miracle they were all over on the port side, painting the tail. Well, I thought coldly, I would just be unlucky if the nearest to me happened to be Billy with his gun.