The Crocus List - Lyall Gavin (книги онлайн бесплатно без регистрации полностью .txt) 📗

They were going to need that. He crept forward until he could see the whole vehicle: an old hard-topped model with windows all round, and nobody sitting in it. Maxim slid clear of the alley and crouched back against the house wall, covered by a small bush in a rotting tub, and wondered if he could reach the Land-Roverunseen. Ten metres, no more, but ten metres out in the open, under the windows of the house…

Somebody walked out of the glass doors a few metres tohis left, heading for the vehicle. Maxim froze: the man was carrying a Russian submachine-gun.

But he wasn't hunting, just carrying the gun one-handed by its pistol grip, perhaps one second away from firing if trouble came his way. He didn't even have that second, with Maxim's pistol pointed at the middle of his back, but this wasn't war. Not quite.

The man walked round the back of the Land-Roverand opened the driver's door. If he were just getting something out of it, then on his return he would be facing the ludicrously small bush in its tub… The engine whined and blared, and Maxim ran.

The vehicle had just begun to move when he banged the gun against the window. "Stop right there!"

The gaping face stared back down the pistol barrel, then the Land-Roverjumped off, and in that moment Maxim could have blown the face away. But that was too small a satisfaction for the long road he had travelled. He fired twice through the driver's door, low and forward, and then was knocked aside as the rear end slewed on the mossy stone.

He rolled further and came up aiming, but the Land-Roverwasn't going for the driveway; it swung left and smashed into the bushes flanking the terrace where it stretched round that side of the house.

Maxim reached the corner of the terrace overlooking the lawn just as the Land-Roverbroke free of the bushes, and shot twice more, plunging fire through the passenger window towards the driver's legs. He saw glass star and crumble.

The Land-Roverslowed, turned a crawling half-circle across the lawn, and rammed the terrace wall at the far end. Maxim vaulted the balustrade, ran up to the passenger side, yanked open the door and snatched the submachine-gun from the floor. The driver was folded over the wheel. Maxim ducked round the vehicle, so its bulk would shield him from the house windows, and dragged the man out. He gasped as he hit the grass.

There were two bullet wounds: one through the muscles of the right thigh that didn't seem too dangerous, and one in the left knee that was pumping blood steadily.

"Keep your hands spread and still," Maxim ordered, starting on a tourniquet. "Is there anybody else around?"

The man stared blankly, gasping.

"I want to know," Maxim went on, "because if somebody else starts shooting, I shall lose interest in keeping you alive."

"Nobody," the man whispered.

Maxim plugged the wound with lumps of torn handkerchief and began binding it up. "Nobody? Not even a fat friend of mine?-George Harbinger? In his forties?"

"Yes… he's all right…"

"That is nice. I'll ask you where, in a minute-but what were you going to do with him?"

"Nothing… Let him loose…"

"Really? Why snatch him in the first place, then?"

The man closed his eyes, looking very pale. Maxim finished rough-patching the wounds, then reached into the Land-Roverand found a coat. He spread it over the man; no point in him dying of shock just yet.

"All right, you'll live if you stay still. Now, where is he?"

The man told him. Maxim searched him as he did so, indiscriminately, turning everything out of the man's pockets and not caring too much about gulps of pain. Among the odd things were a wristwatch and a handcuff key.

Then he took the keys from the Land-Rover, just in case, and also had a quick rummage through the back. It was hastily piled with suitcases, a box of groceries, a typewriter case, some other, larger sort of plastic case, a workchest of heavy-duty electric tools and a small box holding two old-style Russian grenades.

He took the grenades. "I'm glad you forgot to pocket one of these. Soon you must tell me who the gentleman at the Abbey was."

The french windows at the back were unlocked; in fact, one was open, so the man hadn't been pulling out. Perhaps he'd just been going to position the Land-Roverfor a getaway. It would have been quite possible to drive down the lawn and then away over the fields while the police came charging up the main track. In ordinary cars, they wouldn't have been able to follow.

Nobody had shot at him, but he wasn't taking anybody's word for it. He scoured the ground floor, kicking open doors and waving the pistol in one direction, the submachine-gun in another, ready to use a grenade if anything seemed too suspicious. Then he reached the bedroom floor. One room was clear, and then he was in a big bedroom overlooking the terrace and lawn-and the moving Land-Rover.

The man was gone: just a dark patch on the lawn beside the coat and wheel ruts showed where he'd lain. Maxim felt in his pockets for the keys, but he still had them. A spare key hidden in some corner of the vehicle? He raised the submachine-gun, but the Land-Rover wasalready dipping off the edge of the lawn, jolting over the pasture land-and Maxim realised it was unpowered, just rolling downhill. The man had used the slope of the lawn to roll it back until it had speed to swing into a three-point turn and now… now it was downhill all the way.

It took one wire fence without check or swerve, and there may have been a second, but it was a long way away and the Land-Roverwas just a bobbling black shape. It must have worked up to quite a speed, because it didn't collapse suddenly offthe cliff, but vanished smoothly. He didn't hear a thing. But he did wish he'd remembered that Land-Rovershad been invented before steering-column locks.

George ducked his head against the light, blinking helplessly at the dark figure in the doorway. "Get me some water," he croaked. "Before anything else, just get some water."

"No whisky?" Maxim asked.

"Harry! My God, you're back!" He was still helplessly blind before the neon strips that ran down the long cellar.

"If you will go hiding in dark corners, you miss all sorts of news." He undid the handcuffs.

George stayed on his rickety wooden chair, rubbing his left wrist. "They left me some biscuits and water, but I knocked the water over in the dark. What's the time?"

"Oh… coming up to three."

"What? I thought it was midnight. They took my watch."

Maximgave it him back. "How many did you see?"

"One, but he had a ski-mask on. And I think there was another somewhere. How many did you meet?"

"One. He's just driven himself over the cliff ina Land-Rover, but I… no, it can wait."

"I didn't hear anything."

"Down here, you wouldn't." The door to the second cellar was remarkably thick, but not heavy. The soundproofing could hardly be to keep noiseout, Maxim thought, and he wandered the length of the room. The end wall was just limestone, left as it had been cut, without any facing and now pocked with holes.

"Shooting gallery," he said admiringly. "Neat: no ricochets off limestone, they just go in and stay in. Same thing as Gibraltar: they do all their live firing in the tunnels there."

He helped George, still stiff and cold and perhaps beginning to tremble, through the original cellar-the door had been not exactly secret, but behind a panel that Maxim had found already lifted down-and up the steps to the kitchen. He gave him a mug of water. "You'd better ring Annette."

There was a telephone in the drawing-room, but it was dead. When Maxim traced the Uneto a junction box, it was smashed. He fancied he'd heard that happening. George came in and collapsed on to a sheet-covered chair. "Is my car still here?"

"I doubt it, but I'll check." The only place was the garage. He found the door unlocked and the place empty except for the usual clutter, and a cardboard box in the middle of the floor, as if ready to be taken away. It held a couple of jaggededged bits of metal that might have been cut from a car body, some old rags stained with dark green paint and there was a general dusting of the same colour on the dusty concrete; somebody had been using a spray gun.