‘There,’ he said cheerfully.
I made a small croak. He paid attention.
I said, ‘Let... me... go.’
‘Not a chance.’ He put his hand in his pocket and brought out a bunch of keys. ‘Keys to the car.’ He held them up, jingling. ‘Key to the handcuffs.’ He waved it in front of my eyes.
‘Please...’ I said.
‘You’re worth too much to me dead, pal. Sorry and all that. But there it is.’
He put the keys in his pocket, shut the door on me, and without another glance, drove heartlessly away.
Poor Nerissa, I thought. I hoped she would die before she found out about Danilo; but life was not always kind.
In time, four cars rolled back into the reflection in the driving mirror, and stopped in a cluster round my car. Evan and Conrad’s estate wagon. A chauffeur-driven car with van Huren. Two police cars; the first containing, I later discovered, their photographer and their surgeon; the second, three senior police officers... and Danilo Cavesey.
They all stood up outside the cars; a meal and a half for any passing pride of lion. Wild animals, however, kept decently out of sight. Danilo outdid them all for savagery.
Conrad bustled over and pulled open the door.
‘You all right, dear boy?’ he said anxiously.
I nodded.
Danilo was saying loudly and virtuously, ‘I told you, I’d just found him, and I was driving away to get help.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Conrad muttered, digging out his bits of wire.
‘He has the key of the handcuffs in his pocket,’ I said.
‘You don’t mean it, dear boy?’ He saw I did mean it. He went over and told the police, and after a short scuffle they found the key. Also the car keys. And now, perhaps Mr Cavesey would explain why he was driving away, when he had in his pocket the means of freeing Mr Lincoln?
Mr Cavesey glowered and declined. He had been going for help, he said.
Evan, enjoying himself immensely, walked over to the tree the elephant had uprooted, and from its withering foliage disentangled the Arriflex on its tripod.
‘Everything you did here, we filmed,’ he told Danilo. Link had a cable to the car. He started the camera when you arrived.’
Conrad fished his best tape-recorder out from under the car and unhitched the sensitive microphone from just inside the door frame.
‘Everything you said here,’ he echoed, with equal satisfaction, ‘we recorded. Link switched on the recorder, when you came.’
The police produced a pair of handcuffs of their own, and put them on Danilo, who had gone blue-white under the sun-tan.
Quentin van Huren walked over to the car and looked down at me. Conrad had forgotten the small detail of bringing back the key to free me. I still sat, locked and helpless, where I had begun.
‘For God’s sake...’ van Huren looked appalled.
I smiled lop-sidedly and shook my head. ‘For gold’s sake,’ I said.
His mouth moved, but no words came out.
Gold, greed and gilded boys... a thoroughly bad mixture.
Evan was strutting around looking important, intense, and satisfied, as if he had stage-managed and directed the entire performance. But he saw that I was still tethered, and for once some twitch of compassion reached him. He went to fetch the handcuffs’ key and brought it over.
He stood beside van Huren for a second, staring down at me as if seeing something new. For the first time ever he smiled with a hint of friendship.
‘Cut,’ he said. ‘No re-takes, today.’