The Danger

ELEVEN

John Nerrity was a heavily-built man of medium height with greying hair cut neat and short; clipped moustache to match. On good days I could imagine him generating a fair amount of charm, but on that evening I saw only a man accustomed to power who had married a girl less than half his age and looked like regretting it.

They lived in a large detached house on the edge of a golf course near Sutton, south of London, only about three miles distant from where their four-legged wonder had made a fortune on Epsom Downs.

The exterior of the house, in the dusk of our arrival, had revealed itself as thirties-developed Tudor, but on a restrained and successful scale. Inside, the carpets wall-to-wall looked untrodden, the brocade chairs un-sat-on, the silk cushions unwrinkled, the paper and paint unscuffed. Unfaded velvet curtains hung in stiff regular folds from beneath elaborate pelmets, and upon several glass and chromium coffee tables lay large glossy books, unthumbed. There were no photographs and no flowers, and the pictures had been chosen to occupy wall-space, not the mind; the whole thing more like a shop-window than the home of a little boy.

John Nerrity was holding a gin and tonic with ice clinking and lemon slice floating, a statement in itself of his resistance to crisis. I couldn't imagine Paolo Cenci organising ice and lemon six hours after the first ransom demand: it had been almost beyond him to pour without spilling.

With Nerrity were Tony Vine, wearing his most enigmatic expression, and another man, sour of mouth and bitter of eye, who spoke with Tony's accent and looked vaguely, in his flannels and casual sweater, as if he'd been out for a stroll with his dog.

'Detective Superintendent Rightsworth,' Tony said, introducing him deadpan. 'Waiting to talk to Mrs Nerrity.'

Rightsworth gave me barely a nod, and that more of repression than of acknowledgement. One of those, I thought. A civilian-hater. One who thought of the police as 'us' and the public as 'them', the 'them' being naturally inferior. It always surprised me that policemen of that kind got promoted, but Rightsworth was proof enough that they did. The old ridiculous joke of 'Where do the police live? In Letsby Avenue,' crossed my mind; and Popsy would have appreciated my struggle to keep a straight face.

Alessia and Miranda had come into the sitting room close together and a step behind me, as if using me as a riot shield: and it was clear from John Nerrity's face that the first sight of his wife prompted few loving, comforting or supportive feelings.

He gave her no kiss. No greeting. He merely said, as if in a continuing conversation, 'Do you realise that Ordinand isn't mine to sell? Do you realise we're in hock to the Emit? No, you don't. You can't do anything. Not even something simple like looking after a kid.

Miranda crumpled behind me and sank to the floor. Alessia and I bent to help her up, and I said to Miranda's ear, 'People who are frightened are often angry and say things that hurt. He's as frightened as you are. Hang on to that.'

'What are you mumbling about?' Nerrity demanded, 'Miranda, for Christ's sake get up, you look a wreck. He stared with disfavour at the ravaged face and untidy hair of his son's mother, and with only the faintest flicker of overdue compassion said impatiently, 'Get up, get up, they say it wasn't your fault.'

She would always think it had been, though; and so would he. Few people understood how persistent, patient, ingenious and fast committed kidnappers could be. Whomever they planned to take, they took.

Rightsworth said he wanted to ask Mrs Nerrity some questions and guided her off to a distant sofa, followed by her bullish husband with his tinkling glass.

Alessia sat in an armchair as if her legs were giving way, and Tony and I retreated to a window seat to exchange quiet notes.

'He…' Tony jerked his head towards Nerrity, 'has been striding up and down here wearing holes in the effing carpet and calling his wife an effing cow. All sorts of names. Didn't know some of them myself.' He grinned wolfishly. 'Takes them like that, sometimes, of course.'

'Pour the anger on someone that won't kick back?'

'Poor little bitch.'

'Any more demands?' I asked.

'Zilch. All pianissimo. That ray of sunshine Rightsworth brought a suitcase full of bugging gear with him from the telephone blokes but he didn't know how to use half of it, I ask you. I fixed the tap on the 'phone myself. Can't bear to see effing amateurs mucking about.'

'I gather he doesn't like us,' I said.

'Rightsworth? Despises the ground we walk on,'

'Is it true John Nerrity can't raise anything on the horse?'

I'd asked very quietly, but Tony looked round to make sure neither the Nerritys nor Rightsworth could hear the answer. 'He was blurting it all out, when I got here. Seems his effing business is dicky and he's pledged bits of that horse to bail him out. Borrowed on it, you might say. All this bluster, I reckon it's because he hasn't a hope of raising the wherewithal to get his nipper back, he's in a blue funk and sending his effing underpants to the laundry.'

"What did he say about our fee?'

'Yeah.' Tony looked at me sideways. 'Took him in the gut. He says he can't afford us. Then he begs me not to go. He's not getting on too effing well with Rightsworth, who would? So there he is, knackered every which way and taking it out on the lady wife.' He glanced over at Miranda who was again in tears. 'Seems she was his secretary. That's her photo, here on this table. She was a knockout, right enough.'

I looked at the glamorous studio-lit portrait; a divinely pretty face with fine bones, wide eyes and the hint of a smile. A likeness taken just before marriage, I guessed, at the point of her maximum attraction: before life rolled on and trampled over the heady dreams.

'Did you tell him we'd help him for nothing?' I asked.

'No, I effing didn't. I don't like him, to be honest.'

We sometimes did, as a firm, work for no pay: it depended on circumstances. All the partners agreed that a family in need should get help regardless, and none of us begrudged it. We never charged enough anyway to make ourselves rich, being in existence on the whole to defeat extortion, not to practise it. A flat fee, plus expenses: no percentages. Our clients knew for sure that the size of the ransom in no way affected our own reward.

The telephone rang suddenly, making everyone in the room jump. Both Tony and Rightsworth gestured to Nerrity to answer it and he walked towards it as if it were hot. I noticed that he pulled his stomach in as the muscles tightened and saw his breath become shallow. If the room had been silent I guessed we would actually have heard his heart thump. By the time he stretched out an unsteady hand to pick up the receiver Tony had the recorder running and the amplifier set so that everyone in the room could hear the caller's words.

'Hello,' Nerrity said hoarsely.

'Is that you, John?' It was a woman's voice, high and anxious. 'Are you expecting me?'

'Oh.' Miranda jumped to her feet in confusion. 'It's Mother. I asked her…" Her voice tailed off as her husband held out the receiver with the murderous glare of a too-suddenly released tensions and she managed to take it from him without touching him skin to skin.

'Mother?' she said, waveringly, 'Yes, please do come. I thought you were coming…'

'My dear girl, you sounded so flustered when you telephoned earlier. Saying you wouldn't tell me what was wrong! I was worried. I don't like to interfere between you and John, you know that.'

'Mother, just come.'

'No, I…'

John Nerrity snatched the telephone out of his wife's grasp and practically shouted, 'Rosemary, just come. Miranda needs you. Don't argue. Get here as fast as you can. Right?' He crashed the receiver down in annoyance, and I wondered whether or not the masterfully bossy tone would indeed fetch the parent. The telephone rang again almost immediately and Nerrity snatched it up in fury, saying 'Rosemary, I told you…'

'John Nerrity, is it?' a voice said. Male, loud, aggressive, threatening. Not Rosemary. My own spine tingled. Tony hovered over the recording equipment, checking the quivering needles.

'Yes,' Nerrity said breathlessly, his lungs deflating.

'Listen once. Listen good. You'll find a tape in a box by your front gate. Do what it says.' There was a sharp click followed by the dialling tone, and then Tony, pressing buttons, was speaking to people who were evidently telephone engineers.

'Did you get the origin of the second call?' he asked. We read the answer on his face. 'OK,' he said resignedly. 'Thanks,' To Nerrity he said, 'They need fifteen seconds. Better than the old days. Trouble is, the crooks know it too.'

Nerrity was on his way to the front door and could presently be heard crunching across his gravel.

Alessia was looking very frail indeed. I went down on my knees by her chair and put my arms protectively around her.

'You could wait in another room,' I said. 'Watch television. Read a book.'

'You know I can't.'

'I'm sorry about all this.'

She gave me a rapid glance. 'You tried to get me to go home to Popsy. It's my own fault I'm here. I'm all right. I won't be a nuisance, I promise.' She swallowed. 'It's all so odd… to see it from the other side.'

'You're a great girl,' I said. 'Popsy told me so, and she's right.'

She looked a small shade less fraught and rested her head briefly on my shoulder. 'You're my foundations, you know,' she said. 'Without you the whole thing would collapse.'

'I'll be here,' I said. 'But seriously it would be best if you and Miranda went into the kitchen and found some food. Get her to eat. Eat something yourself. Carbohydrate. Biscuits, cake - something like that.'

'Fattening,' she said automatically: the jockey talking.

'Best for your bodies just now, though. Carbohydrates are a natural tranquilliser. It's why unhappy people eat and eat.'

'You do know the most extraordinary things.'

'And also,' I said, 'I don't want Miranda to hear what's on the tape.'

'Oh.' Her eyes widened as she remembered. 'Pucinelli switched off that tape… so I couldn't hear.'

'Yes. It was horrid. So will this be. The first demands are always the most frightening. The threats will be designed to pulverise. To goad Nerrity into paying anything, everything, very quickly, to save his little son. So dearest Alessia, take Miranda into the kitchen and eat cake.'

She smiled a shade apprehensively and walked over to Miranda, who was sobbing periodically in isolated gulps, like hiccups, but who agreed listlessly to making a cup of tea. The two girls went off to their haven, and Nerrity crunched back with a brown cardboard box.

Rightsworth importantly took charge of opening it, telling everyone else to stand back. Tony's eyebrows were sardonic. Rightsworth produced a pair of clear plastic gloves and methodically put them on before carefully slitting with a penknife the heavy adhesive tape fastening the lid.

Opening the box Rightsworth first peered inside, then put an arm in and brought out the contents: one cassette tape, in plastic case, as expected.

Nerrity looked at it as if it would bite and waved vaguely at an ornate stretch of gilt and padded wall unit, some of whose doors proved to be screening a bank of expensive stereo. Rightsworth found a slot for the cassette, which he handled carefully with the plastic gloves, and Nerrity pushed the relevant buttons.

The voice filled the room, harsh, thunderous, uncompromising.

'Now, you, Nerrity, you listen good.'

I took three quick strides and turned down the volume, on the grounds that threats fortissimo would sound even worse than threats should. Tony nodded appreciatively, but Rights-worth was irritated. The voice went on, more moderate in decibels, immoderate in content.

'We nicked your kid, Nerrity, and if you want your heir back in one piece you do what you're told like a good boy. Otherwise we'll take our knife out, Nerrity, and slash off something to persuade you. Not his hair, Nerrity. A finger maybe. Or his little privates. Those for sure. Understand, Nerrity? No messing about. This is for real.

'Now you got a horse, Nerrity. Worth a bits we reckon. Six million. Seven. Sell it, Nerrity. Like we said, we want five million. Otherwise your kid suffers. Nice little kid, too. You don't want him screaming, do you? He'll scream with what we'll do to him.

'You get a bloodstock agent busy. We'll wait a week. One week, seven days. Seven days from now, you get that money ready in used notes, nothing bigger than twenty. We'll tell you where to leave it. You do what we tell you, or it's the castration. We'll send you a tape of what it sounds like. Slash. Rip. Scream.

'And you keep away from the police. If we think you've called in the Force, your kid's for the plastic bag. Final. You won't get his body back, Nothing. Think about it.

'Right, Nerrity. That's the message.'

The voice stopped abruptly and there was a numb minute of silence before anyone moved. I'd heard a score of ransom demands, but always, every time, found them shocking. Nerrity, like many a parent before him, was poleaxed to his roots.

'They can't… ' he said, his mouth dry, the words gagging.

'They can,' Tony said flatly. 'but not if we manage it right.'

'What did they say to you this afternoon?' I asked. 'What's different?'

Nerrity swallowed. 'The… the knife. That part. Before, he just said "five million for your kid". And I said I hadn't got five million… He said, "you've got a horse, so sell it." That was all. And no police, he said that too. Five million, no police, or the boy would die. He said he'd be getting in touch. I began to shout at him… he just rang off.

Rightsworth took the cassette out of the recorder and put it in its box, putting that in its turn in the cardboard carton, all with exaggerated care in the plastic gloves. He would be taking the tape, he said. They would maintain the tap on Mr Nerrity's telephone, he said. They would be working on the case, he said.

Nerrity, highly alarmed, begged him to be careful; and begging didn't come easy, I thought, to one accustomed to bully. Rightsworth said with superiority that every care would be taken, and I could see Tony thinking, as I was, that Rights-worth was treating the threats too pompously and was not, in consequence, a brilliant detective.

When he had gone, Nerrity, his first fears subsiding, poured himself another stiff gin and tonic, again with ice and lemon. He picked the ice out of a bucket with a pair of tongs. Tony watched with incredulity.

'Drink?' he said to us as an afterthought.

We shook our heads.

'I'm not paying that ransom,' he said defensively. 'For one thing, I can't. The horse is due to be sold in any case. It's four years old, and going to stud. I don't need to get a bloodstock agent, it's being handled already. Some of the shares have already been sold, but I'll hardly see a penny. Like I said, I've got business debts.' He took a deep drink. 'You may as well know, that horse is the difference to me between being solvent and bankrupt. Biggest stroke of luck ever, the day I bought it as a yearling. He swelled slightly, giving himself a mental pat on the back, and we could both see an echo of the expansiveness with which he must have waved many a gin and tonic while he recounted his good fortune.

'Isn't your business,' I said, 'a limited company? If you'll excuse my asking?'

'No, it isn't.'

'What is your business?' Tony asked him casually.

'Importer. Wholesale. One or two wrong decisions…' He shrugged. "Bad debts. Firms going bankrupt, owing me money. On my scale of operations it doesn't take much of a recession to do a damned lot of damage. Ordinand will clear everything. Set me to rights. Fund me for future trading.

Ordinand is a bloody miracle.' He made a furious chopping gesture with his free hand. 'I'm damned if I'm going to throw away my entire life for those bloody kidnappers.'

He'd said it, I thought. He'd said aloud what had been festering in his mind ever since Miranda's 'phone call. He didn't love his son enough for the sacrifice.

'How much is Ordinand worth?' Tony said unemotionally.

'They got it right. Six millions with luck. Forty shares at a hundred and fifty thousand each.' He drank, the ice clinking.

'And how much do you need to straighten your business?'

'That's a bloody personal question!'

Tony said patiently, 'If we're going to negotiate for you, we have to know just what is or isn't possible.'

Nerrity frowned at his lemon slice, but then said, 'Four and a half, thereabouts, will keep me solvent. Five would clear all debts. Six will see me soundly based for the future.'

Tony glanced about him and the over-plush room. 'What about this house?'

. Nerrity looked at him as if lie were a financial baby. 'Every brick mortgaged,' he said shortly.

'Any other assets?'

'If I had any other bloody assets I'd have cashed them by now.'

Tony and I exchanged glances, then Tony said, 'I reckon we might get your kid back for less than half a million. We'll aim lower of course. First offer, a hundred thousand. Then take it from there.'

'But they won't… they said…' Nerrity stopped, floundering,

'The best thing,' I said, 'would be to get yourself onto the City pages of the newspapers. Go into print telling the world there's nothing like a Derby winner for keeping the bailiffs out.'

'But…'

'Yes,' I interrupted, 'Maybe not in the normal way good for business But your creditors will be sure they'll be paid, and the kidnappers will be sure they won't. Next time they get in touch, they'll demand less. Once they acknowledge to themselves that the proceeds will be relatively small compared with their first demand, that's what they'll settle for. Better than nothing, sort of thing.'

'But they'll harm Dominic…'

I shook my head. 'It's pretty doubtful, not if they're sure they'll make a profit in the end. Dominic's their only guarantee of that profit. Dominic, alive and whole. They won't destroy or damage their asset in any way if they're convinced you'll pay what you can. So when you talk to the press, make sure they understand - and print - that there'll be a margin over, when Ordinand is sold. Say that the horse will wipe out all your debts and then some.'

'But…' he said again.

'If you have any difficulty approaching the City editors, we can do that for you,' I said.

He looked from Tony to me with the uncertainty of a commander no longer in charge.

'Would you?' he said.

We nodded. 'Straight away.'

'Andrew will do it,' Tony said. 'He knows the City. Cut his teeth at Lloyds, our lad here.' Neither he nor I explained how lowly my job there had been. 'Very smooth, our Andrew, in his city suit,' Tony said.

Nerrity looked me up and down. I hadn't replaced my tie, although I'd long unrolled my trousers. 'He's young,' he said disparagingly.

Tony silently laughed. 'As old as the pyramids,' he said. 'We'll get your nipper back, don't you fret.'

Nerrity said uncomfortably, 'It's not that I don't like the boy. Of course I do.' He paused. 'I don't see much of him. Five minutes in the morning. He's in bed when I get home. Weekends… I work, go to the races, go out with business friends. Don't have much time for lolling about.'

Not much inclinations either, I diagnosed.

'Miranda dotes on him,' Nerrity said, as if that were no virtue. 'You'd have thought she could keep her eyes on him for five minutes, wouldn't you? I don't see how she could have been so bloody stupid.'

I tried explaining about the determination of kidnappers, but it seemed to have no effect.

'It was her idea to have the kid in the first place,' Nerrity grumbled. 'I told her it would spoil her figure. She went on and on about being lonely. She knew what my life was like before she married me, didn't she?'

From the other side, I thought. From the office side, where his life was most intense, where hers was busy and fulfilled.

'Anyway, we had the kid.' He made another sharply frustrated gesture. 'And now… this.'

Miranda's mother arrived conveniently at that point, and shortly afterwards I put Alessia in my car and talked to Tony quietly in the garden.

'Thursday, tomorrow,' I said. 'Wittering's a seaside place. Good chance the same people will be on the beach tomorrow as today, wouldn't you think?'

'The Super in Chichester, would he buy that?' Tony asked.

'Yes, I'm sure.'

'I wouldn't mind a day myself of sitting on the effing pebbles.'

'The tide's going out in the mornings,' I said. 'How about if you take the stuff down to Eagler on the train, and I'll join you for a paddle when I've buzzed up the City?'

He nodded. "See you at the Breakwater Hotel, then?'

'Yeah. Tell them at Reception that we're taking over Miranda's room. She's booked in until Saturday. Tell them the boy's ill, she's had to take him home, we're her brothers, we've come down to collect her clothes and her car… and pay her bill.'

'I don't know that sitting around in the Breakwater too long will do much good.'

I grinned in the darkness. 'Make a change from the switchboard, though.'

'You're an effing rogue, I always knew it.'

He vanished into the shadows without noise, departing on foot to his distantly parked car, and I climbed in beside Alessia and pointed our nose towards Lambourn.

I asked if she were hungry and would like to stop somewhere for a late dinner, but she shook her head. 'Miranda and I ate cornflakes and toast until our eyes crossed. And you were right, she seemed a bit calmer by the time we left. But oh… when I think of that little boy… so alone, without his mother… I can't bear it.'

I spent the next morning in Fleet Street swearing various business-page editors to secrecy and enlisting their aid, and then drove back to West Wittering, reflecting that I'd spent at least twelve of the past thirty hours with my feet on the pedals.

Arriving at the Breakwater in jeans and sports shirt, I found Tony had checked in and left a message that he was out on the beach. I went down there and came across him sitting on a gaudy towel, wearing swimming trunks and displaying a lot of impressive keep-fit muscle. I dropped down beside him on a towel of my own and watched the Life of the beach ebb and flow.

'Your Eagler already had the same idea,' Tony said. 'Half the holidaymakers on this patch of sand are effing plain clothes men quizzing the other half. They've been out here since breakfast.'

It appeared that Tony had got on very well with Eagler. Tony considered he had 'constructive effing ideas', which was Tony's highest mark of approval. 'Eagler's already sorted out what arson device was used to fire the dinghy. The dinghy was stolen, what a surprise.'

Some small children were digging a new sandcastle where Dominic's had been wiped out by the tide.

'A little girl of about eight gave Miranda the kidnapper's note,' I said. 'What do you bet she's still here?'

Without directly answering Tony rose to his feet and loped down onto the sand, where he was soon passing the time of day with two agile people kicking a football.

They'll look for her,' he said, returning. 'They've found plenty who saw the boat. Some who saw who left it. The one with the green shorts has a stat of Giuseppe in his pocket, but no luck with that, so far.'

The two boys who had helped me carry the boat up from the grasp of the tide came by and said hello, recognising me.

'Hi,' I said. 'I see the boat's gone, what was left of it.'

One of them nodded. 'We came back along here after supper and there were two fishermen types winching it onto a pickup truck. They didn't know whose it was. They said the coastguards had sent them to fetch it into a yard in Itchenor.'

'Do you live here?' I asked.

They shook their heads. 'We rent a house along there for August.' One of them pointed eastwards, along the beach. 'We come every year. Mum and Dad like it.'

'You're brothers?' I asked.

'Twins, actually. But fraternal, as you see.'

They picked up some pebbles and threw them at an empty Coke can for target practice, and presently moved off.

'Gives you a thought or two, doesn't it?' Tony said.

'Yes.'

'Eagler wanted to see us anyway at about five,' he said. 'In the Silver Sail cafe in that place the boy mentioned. Itchenor. Sounds like some disgusting effing disease.'

The football-kicker in green shorts was presently talking to a little girl whose mother bustled up in alarm and protectively shepherded her nestling away.

'Never mind,' Tony said. 'That smashing bit of goods in the pink bikini over there is a policewoman. What'll you bet green-shorts will be talking to her in two effing ticks?'

'Not a pebble,' I said.

We watched while green-shorts got into conversation with pink-bikini. 'Nicely done,' Tony said approvingly. 'Very natural.'

The pink-bikini girl stopped looking for shells exclusively and started looking for small girls as well, and I took my shirt off and began turning a delicate shade of lobster.

No dramas occurred on the beach. The hot afternoon warmed to tea-time. The football-kickers went off across the breakwaters and the pink-bikini went in for a swim. Tony and I stood up, stretched, shook and folded our towels, and in good holidaymaker fashion got into my car and drove westwards to Itchenor.

Eagler, inconspicuous in an open-necked shirt, baggy grey flannels and grubby tennis shoes, was drinking tea in the Silver Sail and writing a picture postcard.

'May we join you?' I asked politely.

'Sit down, laddie, sit down.'

It was an ordinary sort of cafe: sauce bottles on the tables, murals of sailing boats round the walls, brown tiled floor, plastic stacking chairs in blue. A notice by a cash desk stated 'The best chips on the coast' and a certain warm oiliness in the atmosphere tended to prove their popularity.

'My WPC found your girl child,' Eagler said, sticking a stamp on his postcard. 'Name of Sharon Wellor, seven years old, staying in a guest house until Saturday. She couldn't describe the man who asked her to deliver the note. She says he gave her some fruit pastilles, and she's scared now because her mother's always told her never to take sweets from strangers.'

'Did she know whether he was old or young?' I asked.

'Everyone over twenty is old to a seven-year-old,' Eagler said. 'She told my WPC where she's staying, though, so perhaps we'll ask again.' He glanced at us. 'Come up with any more ideas, have you?'

'Yeah,' Tony said. 'Kidnappers often don't transport their victims very far from their snatching point. Lowers the risk.'

'In holiday resorts,' I said mildly, 'half the houses are for rent.'

Eagler fiddled aimlessly with his teaspoon. 'Thousands of them,' he said dryly.

'But one of them might have been rented sometime last week.'

We waited, and after a while he nodded. 'We'll do the legwork. Ask the travel agents, estate agents, local papers.' He paused, then said without emphasis, The kid may have been taken off in a boat.'

Tony and I paid fast attention.

'There was a motor-boat there,' Eagler said. 'One of those putt-putt things for hire by the hour. My detective constables were told that when the dinghy went on fire the other boat was bobbing round in the shallows with no one in it, but a man in swimming trunks was standing knee-deep in the water holding on to it by the bows. Then, our informants said, the dinghy suddenly went up in flames, very fast, with a whoosh, and everyone ran towards it, naturally. Our informants said that afterwards the motor-boat had gone, which they thought perfectly normal as its time was probably up.' He stopped, looking at us neutrally but with a smile of satisfaction plainly hovering.

'Who were your informants?' I asked.

The smile almost surfaced. 'A ten-year-old canal digger and his grandmother.'

"Very reliable,' I said.

'The boat was blue, clinker built, with a number seventeen in white on its bow and stern.'

'And the man?'

'The man was a man. They found the boat more interesting,' He paused again. 'There's a yard here in Itchenor with boats like that for hire. The trouble is they've got only ten. They've never had one with seventeen on it, ever.'

'But who's to know?' Tony said.

'Look for a house with a boat-shed,' I murmured.

Eagler said benignly, 'It wouldn't hurt, would it, to find the kid?'

'If they spot anyone looking they'll be off in a flash,' I said, 'and it would be dangerous for the boy.'

Eagler narrowed his eyes slightly at our alarm. 'We'll go round the agencies,' he said. 'If we turn up anything likely on paper we won't surround it without telling you first. How's that?'

We both shook our heads.

'Better to avoid raids and sieges if possible,' I said.

Tony said to Eagler, 'If you find a likely house on paper, let me suss it out. I've had all sorts of experience at this sort of thing. I'll tell you if the kid's there. And if he is, I'll get him out.'