The Stone-­Cold Dead in the Market Affair - Oram John (версия книг .TXT) 📗

"Just one thing," Illya said gloomily. "Where do I pick up my crystal ball?"

Chapter Three

The girl sitting on a stool at the bar was in her late twenties. Her close-cut, shining black hair framed an oval face of almost gypsy swarthiness. Her big eyes were deep hazel, fringed with long curling lashes. The hands that cradled a glass of gin and vermouth were brown and well-shaped, with slender, sensitive fingers. She wore a fluffy white nylon coat over a black cashmere sweater and tight white sharkskin pants. Her shoes, narrow-pointed, high-topped, like those of a medieval pageboy, were in scarlet suede. A tiny gray poodle, no bigger than a kitten, was sleeping placidly in her lap. She looked as out of place in a Welsh seaport pub as a rabbit at a christening.

She looked up when Illya came in, eyed him disinterestedly, then returned to her desultory conversation with an elderly man who looked like a traveling salesman.

The barmaid appeared, smiling, from the back room where the jukebox was blaring lustily. Illya ordered a Scotch on the rocks, and she said, "I don't often get asked for that. Are you an American?"

"Does it show?"

"Not to much, love. I shouldn't worry about it." She laughed throatily.

The salesman had gone and the girl was sitting alone. Illya gestured with his glass toward the poodle and asked, "Did it take you long to knit that?"

She said unoffended, "Don't bother, chum. We've heard them all." She scratched the dog's head. It blinked black shoebutton eyes and yawned widely, showing teeth like tiny ivory needles.

Illya said, "Will you join me? I hate drinking alone."

"If you twist my arm." She slid the glass to the barmaid. "Same again, dear." Then to Illya: "Slightly off your course, aren't you, sailor?"

"Not really. I'm traveling for my uncle."

"Yes," she said. "I thought you might be." She raised her refilled glass. "Here's to him, bless his cotton socks."

They finished their drinks to companionable silence, and then the girl got down from her stool.

"Sorry," she said, "but I must leave you. Got to take the dog for an airing." She smiled at the barmaid. "Same old routine every day. Twice around Belle Vue Park, and then home for tea."

"It's nice up by there," the barmaid agreed, "especially now, with all the dahlias out. See you tomorrow?"

"Maybe." The girl attached a thin scarlet leash to the poodle's jeweled collar. The little dog pattered out beside her, looking like a bug on a string.

Illya bought another whiskey and drank it slowly. Then he walked out into Market Street, made his way to the Dock Street terminus and after some inquiries boarded a bus for Stow Hill.

The conductor put him off at Stow Park Avenue and he walked down the hill, past tall houses that seemed to be occupied almost entirely by doctors and surgeons, to the wrought-iron gates of Belle Vue Park.

The girl was sitting on a yellow bench by a ring of trees that enclosed a Druid's circle. Beyond the trees grassland swept down to the Cardiff road and the ultramarine-painted buildings of the giant Whitehead steelworks. Behind was the vast panorama of the docks, with Bristol Channel a shining silver ribbon on the far horizon.

"Nice spot," Illya said.

"Peaceful," the girl agreed. "At least, it is now. I'm not so sure about the past." She pointed to the ring of rough-hewn stones. "That flat one in the middle was the sacrificial altar. You can see the little step where the Imperial Wizard, or whatever they called him, got to work with the cleaver. I suppose the other boys stood around and cheered."

"Cozy!"

"Yes. I can never figure out whether it's a genuine relic or just something dumped down to amuse the kids.... So you're my Russian cousin?"

He made a formal bow. "Illya Kuryakin. And you are Blodwen — or should I say Cassandra?"

She grinned. "I thought that would get under the old buzzard's skin. Not that it isn't true. This business is a stinker. That's why I yelled for help."

"I'm glad you did," he said with a warmth which would have annoyed the girl on U.N.C.L.E.'s admissions desk. "Have there been any developments?"

"A few. The police have identified the departed. He was a small-time crook from the Birmingham area. Nothing on his sheet but petty larcenies. God knows how he got involved in this set-up. It seems he came into Newport by long-distance bus from Corwen, a little market town in Merionethshire, North Wales. What he had been doing there is anybody's guess. He had been released from Walton Prison, Liverpool, about a mouth ago."

She put the poodle on the ground and stood up. "Let's walk a little. The park is worth seeing. For my money, it's one of the most beautiful in Britain."

Released from its leash, the poodle bounded over the grass, yapping joyously in a high-pitched key, its big ears flapping like wings.

"One of these days," Blodwen said, as they followed, "she's going to take off and fly. The first jet-propelled dog in history."

Illya said, "So he could have picked up the money either in Liverpool or somewhere in North Wales. The question is where he was taking it."

She shrugged. "Obviously, he was just a courier. My bet is that whoever met him in the pub would have taken the cash down to the docks. There's a big trade between Newport, Russia and the Scandinavian ports, and it would be no trick to smuggle the stuff aboard a ship. I think the idea was to start distribution in Europe, not in Britain. That would be logical."

"Have any of the notes shown up here?"

"A few. One or two fivers in Newport and a couple in Cardiff. But the police traced them back to the big scramble in Market Street. They didn't come from the main stream — wherever that is."

They strolled past the children's playground, where West Indians, Arabs, Sikhs, Chinese and whites from the mean streets of dockland crowded the swings and slides in noisy amity. The bright print dresses of the little girls made the place look like an animated flower garden.

They stopped to watch, and Illya said, "Integration at last. It seems a pity they have to grow up."

"Oh, I don't know. There's no color problem in Newport or Cardiff. The races have been living together for years. They've learned to get along with each other." She smiled suddenly. "Maybe it's because we're a minority nation ourselves."

He said, surprised, "But you're not Welsh?"

"Back to the sixteenth century, both sides of the family," she said. "Don't let the voice fool you. My grandmother was one of the last of the great Welsh witches."

"That figures," he admitted. "The spell lingers."

They walked on toward the red-brick bulk of the Royal Gwent Hospital, which overshadows the eastern end of the park.

Illya said quietly, "Don't look now, but we're being followed."

"You're joking, of course."

"No. He's a medium-sized character with gray hair and a cavalry moustache, and he's wearing a sheep-skin jacket. I noticed him dodging around the mulberry bush as I came into the park. And he's still tailing."

She laughed. "It's your suspicious nature. He's probably just an innocent bystander."

"I don't think so. But we can soon find out. Let's get off the main path."

"All right, Sherlock." She turned to the right and headed across the grass toward a circle of eight weather-gnarled may trees.