‘There.’ Panin pointed to one further on from where they were standing. ‘And we must act now, this minute, because our time is running out… Szymiac has already brought out their car from the garage… Dr Audley?’
‘Suits me.’ Audley shrugged. ‘Let’s get it over with. Tom—?’
Time running out wasn’t to Tom’s taste. But then nothing since Ranulf of Caen’s ditch yesterday had tasted right. And the nasty little Major— more Polish scum!— was already accepting his orders, like the little obedient swine that he was.
They walked the few yards of respectable pavement, then turned up the drive to the house, between rock gardens which had once been lovingly well-tended, when the house had been private and not for hire, but which were now tended just enough to keep them respectable.
And Panin and his watchers had been right: there was a car parked ready, outside the peeling cream-and-brown front door; and, by the coincidence of successful mass-production, it was also a Ford Cortina—and one which matched the front door, near enough, in common milk-chocolate-brown, with a pale beige hardtop, like a million other cars and doors.
‘So what do we do, then?’ inquired Audley politely. ‘Just knock on the door and ask for Mr… Shim-she-ack?’
Panin half turned towards him. “That is exactly what we shall do, Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State Dr Audley. We come in peace, to preserve the peace.‘ He nodded to the Pole. ’Major Sadowski, if you please—?‘
The Pole slid by him and flattened himself against the wall of the house on the left of the door. And, as he did so, he drew a short-barrelled revolver from inside his jacket, holding it flat against his chest.
‘Some peace!’ murmured Audley.
‘A precaution, no more.’ Panin turned towards the door. ‘Have confidence, Dr Audley—David.’ He reached for the heavy black door-knocker.
Audley sneezed explosively as the knocker banged, while Tom stared helplessly at the weapon in the Pole’s hand, which was a kissing cousin of the one he held in his own. All he could do was to remember that peacekeeping forces the world over were usually and prudently armed to the teeth, and hope that the Pole knew his business.
The echoes of Panin’s knocking died away into silence. But then there came an indeterminate sound from inside the house, part scraping, part slithering, followed by a footstep.
‘But first a moment of play-acting.’ Panin nodded to Sadowski again, who seemed to flatten even more against his wall, dead-faced.
The door opened slowly, first only a crack, then somewhat more.
‘Good morning, sir—’ The Russian’s habitually-drooping shoulders had squared, but his voice had stiffened and deepened even more unnaturally. ‘—I wish to speak to Mr Sizzeemeeack.
Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State And my name is Smith—Chief Detective Inspector, CID, Exmoor Division, West of England Police Authority—and I must advise you, sir, that I ’ave a warrant to search these premises, which are surrounded by my officers, acting under my orders.‘ Panin lifted one foot as he spoke, and placed it firmly in the opening of the door.
Audley sneezed again, as a kaleidoscope of bright unreal thoughts and images burst inside Tom’s brain: Professor Nikolai Andrievich Panin’s foot-in-the-door (like an encyclopaedia salesman who didn’t intend to take ‘no’ for an answer) was as heavily caked in red Devon mud as his own: and the Russian’s stage-policeman’s voice, even down to its one carefully dropped ‘h’, was as unnatural as a two-pound note or a three-dollar bilclass="underline" and maybe Audley’s sneeze hadn’t been a continuation of his self-pitying common cold, but the beginning of a shared hysteria—
But then Panin added his hand, placed flat against the door in support of his foot-in-the-gap, and his flattened Polish scum edged his shoulder along the wall, closer to the door, with the weapon in his hand aching to be used, not for peace-keeping but for argument-settling if the door started to close. And then it was no kaleidoscope, and the Smith and Wesson under Audley’s raincoat was huge and heavy, and it was no joke—
‘So we don’t want any trouble now, do we?’ Suddenly Panin’s voice also wasn’t funny, as he caught his breath: it was maybe a travesty of the falsely-friendly, deceptively matter-of-fact policeman’s voice in every tight corner, when the unarmed Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State representative of The Law in all its majesty had to humour some mad bastard who was long past law and reason. But then Panin adjusted his position slightly, spreading the hand suddenly towards Audley while keeping his foot in the door. ‘And I have with me…’
The hand passed Audley ‘… Sir Thomas Arkenshaw, of the Home Office—’ The hand came back from Tom to Audley ‘—and also Dr David Audley… who wish to talk with Mr Sizzeemeeack… So, if you would be so good as to inform ’im of our presence… then that would be to our mutual advantage, sir—‘
Tom struggled against the weight of the Smith and Wesson and his sense of unreality again, knowing that he would nevermore be able to address Jaggard, or anyone else, with such old-fashioned deference: after Panin, with this poor damned anonymous murderous fool, no one could ever be ‘ Sir’ again!
But… it was working, it was working: the door was opening, and Panin was moving into it—and… and even Sadowski was dropping the kissing cousin back into the holster inside his coat—
‘Excuse me, David—’ He pushed past Audley in Panin’s wake, out of the way, ahead of the unwinding Major, too ‘—Minder always comes first—sorry!’
A last breath of rain-sodden wind hit him again, just as he entered the halclass="underline" one door dead-ahead, with half a lavatory-pedestal in view, glimpsed between Panin and his victim; closed doors each side, left and right, with a small table on the left and an old-fashioned hat-and-coat rack on the right, hung with coats; coats under which two cheap, well-worn suitcases and what looked like a golfing bag were inadequately concealed—they had been the Price, Anthony - For the Good of the State source of that scrape-and-slither he had heard before the door was opened, piled ready for departure in the centre of the hall, he could even see the tramline marks they had left on the dirty linoleum on the floor—
But Szymiac’s man was moving again—crabwise and hesitantly towards one of the doors on the left now, where previously he had backed up unwillingly before the advance of the bogus Chief Detective Inspector Smith of the probably non-existent Exmoor Division; and the man’s smooth unhealthy face was as obsequiously blank as Major Sadowski’s—maybe that was their joint stock-in-trade expression for survival on both sides of the law in their native land.
‘ No! You stay where you are!’ Now that they were inside, Panin’s hold on Chief Detective Smith’s voice was already slipping: where it should have been a bark it came out as a biting snap. ‘Zzz—’ But he just managed to catch Sadowski’s name before it completed the slip ‘—Major!’
Sadowski brushed Tom’s shoulder, as he must also have brushed Audley’s in getting ahead of him after Tom, also in the exercise of his minder’s prerogative.
‘Watch this man.’ Panin didn’t take his eyes off this Son of the Eagle. ‘He’s in here, is he? Mr Sizzeemeeack?’
Tom was half-aware of Sadowski on his right, somewhat entangled with the hat-stand-coat-rack and the pile of luggage, but was equally unwilling to take his eyes off the Son of the Eagle, who merely nodded confirmation, as voiceless and obedient as Sadowski himself.