Part 38 (2/2)
'Do you remember the number?' I said.
'Derek . . .'
'Go and do it, my dear love.'
She got blindly to her feet and went over to the telephone. I told her the number, which she'd forgotten.
When the impersonal voice of the radio-phone operator said as usual after six or seven rings that there was no reply, I asked her to dial the number again, and yet again. With luck, Brad would reckon three calls spelled emergency.
'When we got here,' Clarissa said, sounding stronger, 'Brad told me there was a grey Volvo parked not far from your gate. He was worried, I think. He asked me to tell you. Is it important?'
G.o.d in heaven . . .
'Will that phone stretch over here?' I said. 'See if it will. Push the table over. Pull the phone over here. If I ring the police from here, and they find me here, they'll take the scene for granted.'
She tipped the table on its side, letting the answering machine fall to the floor, and pulled the phone to the end of its cord. I still couldn't quite reach it, and edged round a little in order to do so, and it hurt, which she saw.
'Derek!'
'Never mind.' I smiled at her, twistedly, making a joke of it. 'It's better than death.'
'I can't leave you.' Her eyes were still strained and she was still visibly trembling, but her composure was on the way back.
'You d.a.m.ned well can,' I said. 'You have to. Go out to the gate. If Brad comes, get him to toot the horn, then I'll know you're away and I'll phone the police. If he doesn't come... give him five minutes, then walk...
walk and get a taxi . . . Promise?'
I picked up the kiyoga and fumbled with it, trying to concertina it shut. She took it out of my hands, twisted it, banged the k.n.o.b on the carpet and expertly returned it closed to her pocket.
'I'll think of you, and thank you,' I said, 'every day that I live.'
'At four-twenty,' she said as if automatically, and then paused and looked at me searchingly. 'It was the time I met Grevilld?
'Four-twenty,' I said, and nodded. 'Every day.'
She knelt down again beside me and kissed me, but it wasn't pa.s.sion. More like farewell.
'Go on,' I said. 'Time to go.'
She rose reluctantly and went to the doorway, pausing there and looking back. Lady Knightwood, I thought, a valiant deliverer with not a hair out of place.
'Phone me,' I said, 'one day soon?'
'Yes.'
She went quietly down the pa.s.sage but wasn't gone long. Brad himself came bursting into the room with Clarissa behind him like a shadow.
Brad almost skidded to a halt, the prospect before him enough to shock even the garrulous to silence.
'Streuth,' he said economically.
'As you say,' I replied.
Rollway had dropped his gun when he fell but it still lay not far from his left hand. I asked Brad to move it further away in case the drug man woke up.
'Don't touch it,' I said sharply as he automatically reached out a hand, bending down. 'Your prints would be an embarra.s.sment.'
He made a small grunt of acknowledgement and Clarissa wordlessly held out a tissue with which Brad gingerly took hold of the silencer and slid the gun across the room to the window.
'What if he does wake up?' he said, pointing to Rollway.
'I give him another clout with the crutch.'
He nodded as if that were normal behaviour.
'Thanks for coming back,' I said.
'Didn't go far. You've got a Volvo . . .'
I nodded.
'Is it the one?'
'Sure to be,' I said.
'Streuth.'
'Take my friend back to the Selfridge,' I said. 'Forget she was here. Forget you were here. Go home.'
'Can't leave you,' he said. 'I'll come back.'
'The police will be here.'
As ever, the thought of policemen made him uneasy.
'Go on home,' I said. 'The dangers are over.'
He considered it. Then he said hopefully, 'Same time tomorrow?'
I moved my head in amused a.s.sent and said wryly, 'Why not?'
He seemed satisfied in a profound way, and he and Clarissa went over to the doorway, pausing there and looking back, as she had before. I gave them a brief wave, and they waved back before going. They were both, incredibly, smiling.
'Brad!' I yelled after him.
He came back fast, full of instant alarm.
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