The Saint and the People Importers (8 page)

Tammy nodded in agreement. Mahmud was a somehow pathetically small shadow among other shadows at the edge of the garden that bordered the street. The lights and then the black gleaming shape of a taxi came into sight and slowed in front of the house.

“Lord,” Tammy said tensely, as if she half expected the quietness of her neighbourhood to erupt into an ear-shattering exhibition of submachine-gun fire in the grandest Chicago tradition.

But Mahmud only climbed with painful slowness into the taxi and then was driven unspectacularly away. Tammy breathed again and Simon spoke.

“I’ll be going, then. Thanks very much for the talk -and the exercise.”

“We’ll be going, and that’s the last time I intend to correct you,” Tammy said. “Let me change into a skirt and grab my purse. Have you got any money? I never do. You didn’t bring your car?”

“Yes, I do have some money, and no, I didn’t bring my car. Do you have one?”

“Yes. That’s one reason why I don’t have any money. With my wheels and your cash we should go a long way, though. Ready?”

“Eminently.”

“Onward, the Light Brigade,” Tammy said. “Into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell, or whatever the poet said.”

“Don’t forget, he was also a prophet,” Simon remarked.

They had just stepped into the hall, and Tammy locked the door behind her.

“What is that ominous statement supposed to mean?” she asked.

“I know we made a deal,” Simon answered, “but as the older and possibly more clearheaded member of this partnership I think I ought to remind, you that instead of being the toast of Fleet Street when this expedition is over, you may end up as dead as Ali, and just as uncomfortably.”

“Rot!” Tammy said defiantly. “We’ll see who’s the most clearheaded. Come on.”

“I think I’d better remind you of something else,” Simon told her as she started off down the hall.

“What?”

“You forgot to put on your shoes.”

3
HOW SHORTWAVE WAS
RECEPTIVE, AND MAHMUD
LOST HIS COOL

When Tam Rowan had gone back into her flat and returned to the Saint properly shod, the two of them walked quietly downstairs to the entrance hall.

“Much more practical,” Simon said with a glance at her low-heeled brown shoes. “And I congratulate you on your presence of mind: they’re both the same colour.”

She compressed her lips and did not say anything. He stopped her with a touch on her arm as she headed for the door.

“Is there a back way out of this place?” he asked. “Just in case some of your fans are watching in front.”

“Of course,” she said haughtily. “This way.”

She led him down the hall into its dark nether regions and disengaged the bolt which held the rear door shut. They stepped out into a tiny fenced yard where the apartment building’s wastepaper and orange peels overflowed several containers.

“Through here,” she pointed.

They went through an opening in the wooden fence and were standing in a narrow cul-de-sac just wide enough to allow a row of cars to park along one side and still leave access for driving in and out.

“We can walk around and catch a taxi,” Simon said. “My car’s at my flat.”

“Mine’s right here,” Tammy said. “Let’s take it. There’s no point in wasting time.”

“Okay.”

She took him to a long, low, scarlet sports car with gleaming wire-spoke wheels.

“Very nice,” the Saint said.

“Thank you. It’ll be mine in another eight hundred and forty-five payments-assuming I can come up with enough dirt on this immigration racket to keep my boss doling out the wherewithal.”

Simon opened her door for her and went around to jackknife himself into the low bucket seat on the other side.

“I wonder if you couldn’t have bought something a little more roomy for eight hundred and forty-six payments,” he commented.

“The littler they are the more fun they are to scoot around in,” she said. “You obviously weren’t designed for overpopulated areas.”

“I’m strictly designed for wide open spaces,” he agreed. “Shall we try the ignition and see what happens?”

She reached for the key, then hesitated, looking at him in the dim greenish light of the instrument panel.

“What do you mean, see what happens?”

“See if it blows up in our faces,” he elucidated.

“Are you insulting my car or are you implying there might be a bomb planted in the engine?” she asked uncertainly,
“The latter; but I don’t think your sparring partners are that technologically advanced. You’re much more likely to get a knife between your charmingly upholstered ribs, or a piano-wire collar around your neck.

She swallowed audibly.

“I’m going to start it,” she threatened, as if hoping that he would stop her.

“Go ahead. Take a chance.”

She turned the key with stabbing determination. The engine coughed and burbled to a steady rumble. There was, as Simon had expected, no explosion. Tammy took a deep breath and presented him with a triumphant look.

“So there,” she said. “Satisfied?”

“Alive,” he said. “And that’s good enough for me. Let’s go.”

She backed the car out of the cul-de-sac and he directed her to circle the block to avoid passing in front of the building.

“If the subjects of your biographical essays happen to be watching your front door, this may help us to give them the slip,” Simon explained. “On the other hand, unless they’re totally incompetent, they could be watching the back too, but there’s no harm in trying.”

“Do you really think somebody might follow us?”

Simon meditated on her snub-nosed, tense-lipped profile for a few seconds.

“You always sound so surprised at these things,” he remarked. “Don’t you have any idea at all of what you’ve gotten yourself into?”

“Of course I do!” she retorted. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.” She slowed down and then continued irritably. “What’s the best way to Datchet?”

“The shortest way you know from here to the M4, for a start.”

He kept a sharp lookout while she steered them southwards through a minimum of traffic to join the major westward motorway. The suburban commuters and shoppers were safely home, and it would be some time before the theatre goers started back.

“At this hour, we should make it comfortably in thirty minutes,” he said.

“There’s one thing neither one of us has mentioned,” Tammy said.

She seemed less tense now that they were putting a good distance between themselves and her flat. The Saint, finally satisfied that nobody was following the red sports car, settled more comfortably in his own incapacious seat.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“The police,” she said in fateful tones.

“There are lots of other things we haven’t mentioned either,” Simon said, stretching out his long arm across the back-rest behind her shoulders. “Popcorn, Mount Fujiyama, Ivan the Terrible …”

“Oh you’re impossible!”

He was smiling at her.

“It’s true, I am,” he said modestly. “And I apologise for not mentioning the police. What would you like me to mention about them? Their social usefulness, their handsome uniforms, their unfailing graciousness, their marytrdom at the hands of bearded baboons breaking up park benches for holy causes?”

“Why can’t you be serious? People are getting their arms broken and all you can do is make jokes.”

“That’s not all I’m doing. I’m putting my life in the hands of a woman driver. Greater love hath no man. What about the police?”

“Shouldn’t we tell them what’s going on?”

“It’s their job to know what’s going on,” Simon said. “They have nothing else to do for twenty-four hours a day but poke around finding out what’s going on. If we know more than they do, it hardly makes me feel they’re deserving of our help. Besides, what could we tell them? We’ve got nothing they could take action on.”

“But we might get in trouble.”

The Saint nodded complacently.

“We undoubtedly will.”

“With the police, I mean.”

“That too,” he concurred. “Especially considering how much they already love me for my past services.”

He watched her face in the irregular play of lights that swept continuously through the car. She looked as if she was beginning to have doubts about the bargain she had made.

“You’ve been in trouble with them before, haven’t you?” she asked.

“Oh, yes.”

“You’ve stolen things, haven’t you … and killed people.”

“I have been known to supplement the efforts of the State to balance the distribution of wealth and do justice as it should be done.”

“And I had to get myself mixed up with you!”

“I shall try to prove that I’m not a total liability. Love, of course, may take a little longer to burgeon.”

That silenced her until they were past the exit to Heathrow Airport, and may have added some helpful weight to the pressure of her foot on the accelerator. The Saint was not alarmed, for by that time he had been able to rate her as a fast and proficient driver, and for a while he was satisfied to let her concentrate on that.

After he estimated that her blood-pressure should be close to normal again, he said: “Just to pass the time, I’d like to hear more about this Kalki the Kook who does the bone-breaking bit.”

“Kalki? What about him?”

“That’s my question. What else do you know?”

Tammy made a perceptible effort to meet him on the same impersonal plane.

“He came to England about ten years ago, before there were many restrictions on commonwealth immigration. He has no police record, but they say he used to pad his income as a wrestler and lorry driver by meeting new arrivals from Pakistan at the airport, offering to help them, and then charging them a small fortune for a ride to their destination, where he dumped them and disappeared.”

“Charming fellow,” said Simon. “And now he’s fishing in more troubled waters. Anything else?”

“That’s about it on Kalki.” Tammy pulled out to pass a convoy of three lumbering trucks. “Do you really know where we’re going?” she asked.

“Yes. We take the next exit-it’s marked ‘A331 Slough-Colnbrook.’ Meanwhile, what’s the dossier on Kalki’s sidekick? American, ex-jockey, what else?”

“Crazy as a loon, for a start,” Tammy replied. “He fell off a horse years ago and cracked his skull. The doctors took a piece of bone out of his cranium and roofed him over with a stainless steel plate. Ever since then he claims he can pick up wireless broadcasts, and that’s why they call him Shortwave.” She laughed. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Oh, I do. Fascinating. A human radio.”

“So he says, and it may even be true. I had a close-up look at him at a pub one afternoon when I first started prowling around Soho, and he was giving everybody the latest odds from Ascot.”

“Right off the top of his head, so to speak,” mused Simon. “A mobile betting shop. If we can bring him back alive maybe we can sell him to Ladbrooke’s. What are his other distinctions besides access to the radio waves?”

“He likes hurting people,” Tammy said flatly. “And he’ll do anything for money. But as far as I know, he’s just a tool.”

“I wonder if he needs to be plugged in before he operates,” Simon ruminated.

“Considering the kind of operations he’s supposed to perform on people, I’d just as soon not find out,” Tammy said. “In fact, I’m beginning to wonder if I won’t ask the editor to transfer me to the cookery page.”

The Saint chuckled.

“Don’t chicken out now,” he told her. “We’ve got some three-star thrills to look forward to. Just think of it: Super-thug and his marvellous electronic midget. That combination beats steak-and-kidney pie any day. Here’s our turn-off, coming up now.”

“I saw it,” Tammy said in a grim voice.

“You’re welcome to hitch a ride back to town if you feel a little nervous,” Simon said maliciously. “Just let me borrow your baby hot-rod, and I’ll give you an exclusive interview when the rough stuff’s over.”

The lights of an approaching car flared across the girl’s face as she came down to the roundabout at the bottom of the exit ramp. Her face was tense with the determination of a novice high-wire walker about to give her first performance without benefit of net.

“Never mind,” she said, between what Simon imagined were clenched teeth. “Just never mind the comical comments! I’ll be right with you through the Hallelujah Chorus.” She slowed the car. “What next?”

“Bear that way, where the little sign says Datchet. Then look out for another side marker that says Wraysbury … From here on, if you won’t let me take over, you’ll have to let me side-seat drive …”

He continued his coolly confident pilotage, even when an unlikely turning into which he had ordered her became a narrow track which dipped, twisted, and writhed through a thick coppice as if its original course had been charted by a drink-crazed Hottentot on the trail of a devious wart hog.

It bored its tortuous way under a tunnel-like covering of trees for a quarter of a mile before the tenuous strip of mud and gravel shook itself, straightened, and took off like an arrow between two open fields.

“I hope you really do know this road,” Tammy said sceptically, and pressed the accelerator almost to the floor.

Simon heard one rifle shot over the steepening roar of the engine, and then the explosion of the left front tyre. Tammy screamed as her car tried to leap from under them like a shying horse.

2

At the instant of its skid the red sports car became a hurtling missile instead of a vehicle. All the Saint could do was to grab the steering wheel and keep Tammy from giving it a hysterical overcorrection that would have launched the car into a series of flips and turned its occupants into little more than unsightly stains on the upholstery.

The infuriating sense of powerlessness that overwhelmed him was at least shortlived. The buck and swerve of the car, the squeal of the tyres, the crazy Cossack dance of a hedge in the sweeping headlights, were all over in a jagged lightning-flash of time that ended in a strangely anticlimactic muffled thud, and total darkness.

The darkness, too, lasted a very short time. Even while the Saint was half stunned, every cell in his brain was struggling for life, clawing back to full consciousness. The distant sound of the rifle shot that had made the car veer off the road still echoed in his skull like a shouted word of warning bouncing down and down through a nerve-net of subterranean chambers. A less experienced, less finely tuned mind would not even have separated out and identified the gunshot for what it was; it would have been merely a meaningless part of the panic-fused sensation of what would later have been recognised as an automobile accident.