The Melting Man

CHAPTER NINE

I turned off the main road into the driveway to the château, but I didn't go straight to the place. I swung off up the track to the lake.

The Rolls-Royce was standing outside the cottage on flat rear tyres. I went into the cottage, looking for something that would weigh nicely in the hand and give me a feeling of confidence. I had no luck inside. My suit was there with my passport gone, and there was a mass of fishing tackle, but I couldn't find a single sporting gun or any other weapon. The best I could do was a heavy wrench from Kermode's bench.

But outside, an idea struck me. I went over to the Rolls-Royce. In the glove compartment was the compressed-air pistol which had been taken off me when they had jumped me in Geneva. I took it and left the wrench.

I drove back almost to the main driveway and then left the car in the cover of some trees. I made the rest of the way to the château on foot, keeping well off the drive.

A big shooting brake was parked by the entrance steps. I watched the château from the cover of the trees, saw no movement, and started to work my way around the back. I wanted to be inside without anyone seeing me enter. I found a side door and enough cover from a thick thuya hedge to get me to it unseen.

I went into a wide, stone-flagged corridor. When I was half-way down it a door opened suddenly a few yards ahead of me and a man came out and dropped a suitcase on the stone floor. It was Durnford and he saw me.

I went up to him, gun in hand, and he backed into the room. I went after him. It was a bedroom and one glance showed me that he was in the process of packing up.

'Leaving the happy home?'

'Yes.'

He hadn't been drinking. He was stone cold sober. He was more than that. He was pure ice. Gone was the nervous flicker of the eyes, gone the bad-tempered officiousness. Something had happened to change him. Normally I might have tried to find out what, but at the moment I had my own problems.

I said, 'Where are they?'

He turned and began to stuff shirts and underwear into another case. Over his shoulder, he said, 'On the second floor.'

'In the waxworks?'

'Yes. Celebrating. They had a case of champagne sent up.'

'Celebrating what?'

'I don't know. And if I did, I wouldn't tell you.'

He was right back to not liking me. And not only me. At this moment he wasn't liking anybody.

I said, 'How long will they be there?'

'Until they come out.'

'If they had a case sent up it might be a long time.'

'Yes. When they decide to get drunk, they take their time. They're both Irishmen. You know how drunk an Irishman can get.'

'I know how drunk anyone can get if they really set their mind to it. You've been sacked?'

'I handed in my notice.'

'Same thing. Can I get into that room?'

'Not unless they let you in.'

'But you've got some way of communicating with them — or they with you, surely?'

'Yes.'

'Lead me to it.'

'I'm not doing anything for you. You're as bad as they are. Money, that's all you're interested in. You never stop to think about anything else but that. Just money — and to hell with what happens to anyone else. People don't mean anything to you.'

I said, 'I seem to remember a coloured number called Joseph Bavana that you helped once — to something very unpleasant.'

That wasn't me. That was O'Dowda's personal secretary carrying out orders.'

'Same thing.'

He swung round from his pile of candy-striped pants and shouted, 'It is not! He's gone! Now — this is me! A different man!'

I said, 'Work it out any way you want. I'm not going to argue. But I want to talk to them and you're going to show me how. If you don't, I'll just tell the police what I know about Bavana, and the new Durnford won't get very far. It's not something I want to do, but push me and I will.'

He looked at me in silence for a while and then he said bitterly. 'Yes, you'd do it. You'd do anything to get what you want. Just for a while I thought that you might have something that a man could respect. But I know better now. You're like them. You'd put up any front, tell any lie that would help you to get what you want.'

'It's an interesting point, but I haven't time to discuss it. Just show me how to talk to them.'

For a moment or two I thought he was going to refuse. He just stared belligerently at me, hating me, hating himself more probably, and his mind all twisted up with memories of the woman he had loved who had been drowned in the lake; a mind that had been warped and commanded by O'Dowda to the point of revolt. Beyond that in fact. At this moment he wasn't sane. He was capable of anything. If he refused to show me, I knew that I could never make him.

With a slow, cunning look, he said, 'What are you going to say to him.'

'That's my business. I've got to have a talk with him. Come on, show me how.'

He gave me a nasty little smile and said, 'You're still trying to make something for yourself, aren't you? Still after a profit — no matter who else suffers?'

'I've got things to do. For my own personal satisfaction.'

'Quite.' He snapped the word at me. Then, abruptly, he turned and walked from the room. I followed him.

We went through a rabbit warren of corridors and finally fetched up at the foot of the main staircase. He went up ahead of me and down the wide upper hallway to the tall leather-covered steel doors of the waxwork room and halted in front of them.

I said, 'Can't they be opened from this side? I'd like to go in unannounced.'

He shook his head. 'Not if they've got the trip over on the inside. And they will have. Always do when they have a drinking bout.'

He went to the side of the doors and opened a small recess let into the wall. He pulled out a microphone speaker, flicked a switch in the recess somewhere, and said, 'O'Dowda!'

The way he said it must have given him great pleasure. He put into it everything he disliked about the man and worked off just a little of the years of servitude behind him.

There was no reply.

'O'Dowda!' Louder this time, and knocking off a few more years.

This time there was a reply.

From a concealed loudspeaker over the top of the doors O'Dowda's voice boomed, 'Who the hell is that?'

'Durnford.'

'Then get the hell off my property!' O'Dowda boomed, and roared on, 'Try to steal my wife, would ya, you rabbit-eyed bastard! Get to hell with ya!'

He'd been drinking all right, not yet drunk but expansive.

I saw Durnford's face tighten as he held on to his control. He put the microphone to his mouth and said, 'Carver is here. Wants to see you. And one of these days I'll prove you murdered her, you black-hearted bog-trotter.'

'Carver!' The voice boomed, and then a great gust of laughter came over the speaker. He said, 'Well now, is he? Clear off, the both of ya.'

I said to Durnford, 'All right, you've done your bit, I'll take it from here.'

He handed me the microphone, and said, 'If you're wise you'll get out of this place. He's not drunk yet but he's in a mad mood. Whatever you want from him, you'll never get it.'

'You're damned right about that, boyo,' O'Dowda roared.

'Make yourself scarce,' I said to Durnford 'When they do open up you might find Kermode at your throat. Go on.'

He hesitated for a moment and then said, 'Even if you can, I advise you not to go in there.'

'Don't worry.'

'I'm not. If you don't want my advice, don't take it.'

He turned and went away down the gallery. I watched him go and then walked down to the head of the stairs to check that he was really gone. I went back to the microphone.

As I picked it up, O'Dowda's voice yelled, 'Are you still there, Carver?'

I said, 'Why should I not be? I'm going to take at least five thousand pounds off you.'

There was silence. There had to be. I'd mentioned money, and money to O'Dowda was important, so important that any mention of it aroused his curiosity.

'And why would you be taking five thousand pounds off me?' His voice had lost some of its kick.

'In a straight sale. That's excluding my fees, of course.'

'And what would you have for sale, boyo?' He was coming back a bit, but I knew that I had him hooked.

I said, praying it would be so, 'Don't tell me that you just collected that parcel from Evian and stuck it straight in your safe without checking it?'

There was silence, a long one, and a heavy one for me. It was the kind of thing he could have done. It was what I wanted him to have done, because it was the one thing which would give me the little edge over him that I wanted, the one thing which gave me the remotest chance of getting Julia back. The silence went on. I let it. The longer it went on the better it was for me. I let it run until I knew that I was betting on a certainty.

I said, 'Don't tell me that a careful man like you put it away without checking it?'

He tried to bluff. It was clear in his voice.

'Of course I checked it.'

I laughed. 'You're a bad liar, O'Dowda. You think I'm such a fool that I wouldn't keep one ace up my sleeve? Dealing with types like you, Najib and Interpol? And anyway, I'm like you, O'Dowda, I don't trust the mails. That parcel at Evian was a phoney. Sent there to give me a breathing space if things went wrong — which I'll admit they damned nearly did at the lake. Are you with it? Are you listening good and hard? You haven't got what you think you've got, O'Dowda. If the safe's in there, check it and see — and then we'll talk.'

I sat down on an Empire chair by the door and lit a cigarette, blew smoke, and prayed. Hard. That his safe was not in the banqueting room. If it were my bluff was called.

I sat there, pretending to myself to be cool, knowing the runners were coming up to the last fence and mine leading, knowing that anything can happen at the last fence — and usually the thing you're praying will not happen. I blew a smoke ring and watched it spin up towards the loudspeaker over the door and then fade away like a grey dream.

Suddenly the big double-doors whined and slid back on their runners. Kermode stood just inside the threshold and he was holding a gun on me.

He said, 'Come in slowly and keep your hands out in front.'

I gave him a beaming smile. Why not? I'd won the first round. I was feeling good, but being careful not to be overconfident.

I went in and he halted me. Holding the gun at my navel, he ran his hands over my pockets. Aristide wouldn't have thought much of the job he made, or Najib, I guessed. I'd got the compressed-air pistol stuck barrel first into the inside of my left ginger suede shoe and the turn-up of the suit trousers came well down, hiding it. The pistol was ten inches long, three or four inches of barrel in my shoe and the butt just above my ankle. The only thing I had to be careful about was fast movement because it weighed just under two pounds and could be shaken loose unless I watched it. I wasn't worried. I wasn't going to make one fast movement until I reached for the gun. Kermode's hand came down my leg, over my calf and stopped short a couple of inches above the pistol. He stood back.

'Take a seat over there,' he said. He pointed through the crowd to a divan that stood just in front of the Cairo merchant or whatever who had gypped O'Dowda in a diamond deal.

I went over and sat down carefully, crossing my legs so that the inside of my left shoe was hard up against the front of the divan and out of sight.

I looked around at the wax figures and said, 'Same old crowd you've got, I see. Time you made some new enemies.'

O'Dowda was sitting at the far end of the room, just in front of the candelabra-flanked, oversized effigy of himself. He was wearing a loose oriental dressing gown for comfort, black patent leather shoes with elastic sides, and a white turtle-necked shirt. The dressing gown was black with silver peacocks on it. He was lounging comfortably in an armchair with a table at his side on which stood glasses and a champagne bottle, and a hand microphone with a flex that trailed away into a far wall recess.

He stared at me with his small blue eyes out of a very red face, and said, 'Don't worry — you'll join 'em soon, you bastard.'

I said, 'If you want to do a deal with me, you overstuffed bullfrog, just keep things polite, will you?'

I was in, and I was enjoying myself, and I was full of comforting hatred for him, a warm, intoxicating desire to see all the kick and egotism knocked out of him. I'd taken a chance so far and it had worked. It had to be my day. I had that feeling that all men know… that feeling that the moment you strike the twenty-foot putt you know it's going to drop, that the moment you flick the line out with a Blue Upright on the end and it settles like a fairy on the water under the alders that a three-pounder is going to bulge up to it, that the moment you swing the gun up as they come fast and oblique down wind you're going to get one with each barrel… I was feeling good, optimistic, ready for anything.

O'Dowda reached for his champagne glass on the table, lowered his head and sipped, watching me over the rim. Two yards from him was another armchair and a table stacked with bottles and glasses. That's how they liked it. To sit there, drinking, steadily getting tighter and shouting comments and abuse at their guests. Fun… once in a while.

O'Dowda said, 'You're a fool. You think I believe that stuff about the parcel? You're bluffing. If you had the real thing you'd never poke your nose in here.'

I gave him a friendly smile. 'If you really thought I was bluffing you'd never have opened the door. You couldn't have cared less about me. I'd come in the Julia category. By the way, I've decided that I don't want anything to do with that either. Oh, I've got a weakness for pretty women, but it never goes over the five-hundred-pound mark. My price, exclusive of my fee, is five thousand pounds.'

Kermode said, 'If the parcel isn't genuine, boss, all we have to do is persuade him, like before.'

'Do that,' I said. 'But it won't get you anywhere. The parcel's with a friend in Geneva. If I don't call her within the hour, she'll just phone Interpol and tell them I'm out here. They won't waste any time getting here.'

O'Dowda said, 'Her? What woman?'

I said, impatiently, 'For God's sake what woman do you imagine? How do you think I got out here, away from Najib? Miss Panda, of course. We sort of got together, financially and otherwise, to do ourselves a bit of good.' I reached for a cigarette in my pocket, saw Kermode tighten up, reassured him with a shake of my head, lit up, and said, 'Come on — check the parcel and let's get this over.'

I was doing well. I had them. I just told myself to go easy and not get too confident. The difficult part was still to come. I wanted the parcel brought back into this room for checking.

The champagne helped me. O'Dowda was comfortable in his chair, he was used to having servants do things for him.

He said to Kermode, 'Go and get it. But give me that gun first.'

Kermode handed him the gun. Then he went out of the room.

O'Dowda held the gun on me with one hand and drew a new bottle of champagne across the table towards him with the other. He began to fiddle with the wire around the cork, one-handed, to open it, found it awkward and gave up. Kermode could do it when he returned. Behind him the lit candles surrounding his effigy flickered and smoked a little in the draught from the open doors.

He said, 'You could have got a price from Najib.'

I said, 'Yes.'

'Or from Interpol.'

'Yes.'

'Why come to me then?'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'You're slow, boyo. Bejabbers, you're slow, slower than an old bog donkey with a load of peat.'

He didn't like it, and I was happy. I went on, 'I want to take you. I want to show you that there's somebody around who can make you look like a shagged-out carnival giant. That's what you like doing to people, isn't it? Rubbing their noses in it. Well, that goes for me, too.'

Slowly, he said, 'I'm promising myself the pleasure of killing you inch by inch one day.'

'And there's another thing,' I said, ignoring him. 'I want you to have it. The moment you have, I'm getting on to my stockbroker to buy me a fat slice of snares in United Africa Enterprises. I should make a healthy profit from that when you begin to operate the monopoly you will get when Gonwalla goes.'

For a moment he screwed up his face, as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. He said, 'You're just like all the rest. You hate my guts because I'm a millionaire, but all the same you'd like to be one. But remember this, Carver, whatever happens — I'll get you. You'll wish that you'd never been born.'

'We'll see,' I said. 'If I make enough money I might even have my own waxworks. I can think of a lot of people I'd like to have in it.'

I looked slowly around at the assembled company. Yes, I could think of a lot of people for my own collection. I finished up with my eyes on the steel doors. Kermode had left them open. When he came back he would be sure to shut them, so that if I were bluffing I couldn't make a quick departure. I wanted to see how the doors were operated. I wondered just how fast and how accurate I could be with the compressed-air pistol. As far as I could remember from sessions with Miggs, this type of pistol usually grouped at under three-quarters of an inch at twenty-five feet. It ought to do the job I had in mind.

From outside, far down the gallery, I heard the sound of footsteps on the" marble. Kermode was returning.

I glanced at O'Dowda, and said, 'Remember, no bargaining. Five thousand plus my fees and expenses, and I'll need it in cash at the handover.'

He said nothing. His big head was lowered, bull-like, and he was watching me and the door behind me. I screwed round a little to keep the door in view. Just behind me a dowager-type with a little coronet perched on straw-coloured hair stared blankly towards the big wax figure of King O'Dowda on the raised dais.

Kermode came into view in the gallery, hugging my parcel to his chest. He came through the door, went to the right of it, raised his hand and pushed one of the two white knobs that were let into the wall — one for opening and one for shutting the door. He had pressed the one nearest the door. I would have to press the one farthest from the door to open it.

The doors slid across, and Kermode came up the room, past me and heading for O'Dowda. I knew the exact moment I wanted. It would be when Kermode handed the parcel over to O'Dowda for him to open and O'Dowda handed him the gun to keep me covered. I would have to shoot fast and move fast. I dropped my right hand low, just touching the inside of my left leg, feeling gently for the wide trouser turn-up so that I could get at the pistol.

Kermode stopped at the table by O'Dowda. O'Dowda ignored him and looked at me, gun in his hand still.

He said, 'Feeling nervous, boyo? You think I don't know you? You're playing a bluff right up to the last moment, hoping to get some advantage. I could even like you for it. You've got guts, all right. You sit there, smiling, but you're sweating inside.'

I said, 'You're the one who's nervous. You know you've been out-smarted, but you don't want to face the moment. Go on, open it. I want to see your face as you do.'

O'Dowda tapped the table for Kermode to put the parcel down. As he did so, O'Dowda handed him the gun.

'Keep that Anglo-Saxon bastard covered,' he said.

He was too late. As the gun rested between their two hands, butt towards Kermode, I jerked out the pistol and began to fire as it came up from near ground level. I went for Kermode's legs, hoping to make him fall. As I pumped away I was on my feet and moving for them. My aim was something that would have made Miggs spit with contempt. I saw wood-chips fly off the far leg of the table as the slugs smacked into it, saw Kermode moving fast, swinging the gun round, and saw O'Dowda throw up a fat hand to protect his face against the flying chips, and then the god of battles — who often makes up his mind far too late to be of any help in a just cause — came up trumps for once. Still firing, I swung the pistol left to get Kermode's legs and the movement made me fire high. The lead slugs smashed into the bottles of champagne that stood on the table and they went off like bombs. Froth spouted high, spraying over O'Dowda and Kermode. Shards of glass whined through the air viciously. I saw a red streak suddenly appear down the side of Kermode's face. Despite himself, he raised his gun-hand to it and by then I was in among them. I grabbed at the gun, got it, and wrenched it round until he had to let go to save his arm from being broken. It came free in my hand and I kicked out at his feet and he went down, thudding into the table, sending glass, broken bottles and parcel flying.

By the time they had sorted themselves out, I was standing ten yards back from them, pistol in my pocket, parcel in one hand, and their gun in the other.

O'Dowda, who had been knocked backwards, picked himself up and stood shaking his head and rubbing at his eyes. Kermode sat on the floor, face wincing with pain, grabbing at one of his legs — in the last second a couple of stray slugs must have got him. An ugly line of blood ran down his face from a glass cut.

Suddenly O'Dowda came out of his shock. He looked at me, his face purpling and he roared, 'You bastard! By Jasus…' He started to come for me, crashing through the wreckage of the table. I fired at his feet, obliquely. The bullet hit the stone floor and ricocheted away, thudding into the stomach of the policeman effigy. It tottered and then fell to the floor.

O'Dowda pulled up fast.

'You come a step farther, O'Dowda,' I said, 'and I'll let you have one where the bobby just got his.'

He teetered there, mad with frustration, and it was touch and go whether he came on. Then he saw wisdom and moved back a little and looked down at Kermode.

'You useless sod. I told you to keep him covered.'

Kermode didn't say anything. Buddies they might be but he still knew when not to argue with his master.

I said, 'Don't fuss, Kermode. You can pick the pellets out with some tweezers later. Just get on your feet and sit somewhere where I can see you. And that goes for you, O'Dowda. Sit down somewhere and keep your hands in the open.'

They did it slowly, under protest, but they did it.

I stood there, watching them dispose of themselves, and I was feeling good. I had O'Dowda exactly where I wanted him. And I was human. I had to tell him so. It was a pity, but there it was. I just had to tell him. It would have been better if I had been magnanimous in victory and just cleared off. I should have stuck to action and left the preaching to others.

I held up the parcel. 'You were right, O'Dowda. I was bluffing. This is the genuine article. The blue films and a nice roll of tape that's political dynamite. How do you feel, master mind? King O'Dowda outwitted by one of the palace servants. O'Dowda, with men and money at his command; O'Dowda, who, if he wants a thing a certain way, fixes it that way and no expenses spared… How does it feel to sit there now, feeling the wind going out of you?'

I should have known better. It was schoolboy stuff. Gloating stuff. When you've got what you want, get out quick is the motto. I ought to have known that, but then, again, it wasn't often that I had a chance to cast myself for the role of boy David, or Jack the Giant-Killer, with a touch of Sir Galahad thrown in.

I began to back to the door, covering them.

'Know what I'm going to do with the parcel? I'm handing it over to Najib in exchange for Julia. No money, just a straight exchange. That means you'll never get a thumb in Gonwalla's pie, ever. Means, too, that I'll lose my fee from you, but it will be worth it. Oh, yes, it'll be worth it. Every time your name comes up somewhere, I'll have a little chuckle to myself. I'll think of the oversized O'Dowda that I put in the hot seat to melt down to size.'

He sat there and looked at me. He said nothing, but I knew that he was feeling a lot. Close to him Kermode, still shaken, dabbed at his face with a handkerchief. Behind them, on their tall holders the candles flickered around the giant, throned effigy of King O'Dowda, lording it over his once-rebellious subjects, over the people who had thwarted him, or tried to out-cheat him from cheating them.

Then he said, 'One of these days, I'll get you, Carver.'

I backed to the wall by the door. 'Oh no you won't. The moment I'm gone, you'll want to forget me. You'll make a good job of it, too. You'll bribe your memory to make it a blank. But every so often it will come back.'

'Get the hell out of here!' He bellowed it at me.

'Gladly, O'Dowda.'

I tucked the parcel under my gun-arm and reached behind me for the wall knobs, found them, and pressed the one to open the door.

Nothing happened.

I pressed again. Still nothing happened. I pressed the other knob in case I had got them mixed up. Nothing happened.

Stupidly, I said, 'The damned door won't open.'

O'Dowda with a flicker of new interest said, 'That's your problem, boyo.'

To Kermode, I said, 'These are the pushes, aren't they?'

O'Dowda said, 'They are.'

I tried them again. Still nothing happened Just then there was a crackle from the loudspeaker over the door, and Durnford's voice came booming into the room. He sounded in good spirits as he announced a servant's farewell to a well-hated master.

'Be happy in there, you bastards! I'm glad to think that I shan't see any of you again. Goodbye — and the devil take you!'

'Durnford,' I shouted.

The loudspeaker gave a click and went dead.

'How the hell could he do it?' I asked.

Kermode said, 'He's pulled the main fuses from outside.'

"The doors are inch steel. You couldn't force them, Carver. You're stuck.' O'Dowda had begun to sound happy.

The man's mad.'

'I'm inclined to agree. What the hell does he think this will achieve? Not that I care.' O'Dowda smiled. 'I'm just content to know that you're not away yet, Carver.'

After victory never preach. I could have been out of the place if I had kept my mouth shut.

I moved away from the door, covering them.

'I'm going to be very nervous if either of you two makes a move.'

I went slowly round the room. All the windows were closed barred on the outside. The glass could have been smashed but no one could ever have squeezed between the bars. Keeping the two men in view, I went up as far as the curtained throne and looked behind. There was no other door leading out of the room. I went back to the main door and sat down.

'You were doing a lot of gabbing about master minds, Carver. Let's see you tackle this one.' O'Dowda got up and began to move towards the upturned table.

'You sit tight,' I said.

'You go to hell,' he said. 'You stay up there. This is our half of the room. And I'm thirsty.'

He salvaged a bottle and a glass and poured himself some champagne and then sat on the foot of the throne under his own outsized figure.

I said, 'Kermode. Get over to one of the windows, break it and the moment you see anyone outside give them a shout.'

Kermode looked at O'Dowda.

O'Dowda said, 'Do as the master mind says.'

Kermode went over to one of the windows, jabbed a lower pane with the leg of a chair, placed the chair by the window and sat down.

O'Dowda wrapped his loose robe tighter round himself and said, pointing, 'See that smooth city type.'

He indicated an elderly, distinguished-looking man in pin-striped trousers and black coat; a man with a square, honest face and nicely greying hair.

'Floated a company with him once. He was clever. Brilliant. And he got me to the point when he thought he had me on toast to the tune of thousands. He damned near did. As near as you are at this moment to doing me. Know where he is now? Doing time — eight years — for fraud. It must be bitter for him because the fraud was mine not his. I heard that his wife committed suicide. No kids, thankfully. I don't like hurt- ing children until they're over eighteen.' O'Dowda rose and came halfway up the room carrying a bottle and a spare glass. He put them on a chair. 'This may be a long wait. No reason why you shouldn't have a drink.'

I said, 'If you come past that chair, I'll shoot.'

O'Dowda said calmly, 'I know you will.'

He went back to his throne and sat down. He filled his glass, raised it to me, and said, 'It'll take some time, but eventually I'll be missed and one of the servants will be up here. We'll get out — and then I'm shouting for the police, for Interpol, the whole boiling. I'm laying charges. Assault, armed robbery, the whole book. I'll make such a fuss that Interpol will have to back out because they'll be scared of the publicity. They will forget the parcel. Even they have their limits. Yes, boyo, one way and another it's you sitting in the hot seat. Ever been in a French prison? No coddling like in ours. French are the practical people. Punishment is punishment.'

I said, 'Before that happens I'll set fire to this lot.' I tapped the parcel.

'Yes. I see you'd do that. I'll accept that. But I'd still lay the charges. Eventually, boyo, I'll have you keeping my city friend company. Pilch his name was. Eye for the women, he had, too. Not that his wife ever knew, or she might not have committed suicide.'

I said, 'What happens up here if you want someone, want to have something sent up?'

'Good question,' said O'Dowda. 'And I'll be honest with you. Nothing. This is my place. When I come up here, I make sure there's everything I want here. Only two men have permission to disturb me up here, Kermode and Durnford. They use the loudspeaker. But if we sit here long enough, Kermode will spot someone from the window.'

I stood up and walked towards the champagne.

He grinned. 'Thought you might get round to it. If I'd known I'd have had some non-vintage stuff up here for you. Veuve Clicquot is only for friends. But this time I'll overlook it. You get a wine issue in French prisons, you know. Probably only plonk. So enjoy that while it lasts.'

I went back and sat down, put the parcel on the floor between my feet, and opened the champagne one-handed, steadying the bottle between my knees.

I was in a jam. I drank some champagne and tried to think. Lots of thoughts came, but none of them seemed to have much comfort to offer in the present situation. I was really in it, up to my neck. We might be stuck here for hours. All day, all night. They could take it in turns to cat-doze. They were two to one. Eventually they would get me. There was no question about that.

I looked at my watch. We'd already been locked in for half an hour. I was feeling hot and tempted to take another glass of champagne, but I put the temptation from me. At any time O'Dowda or Kermode might try something. I couldn't afford to be fuddled.

Maybe some such thought had occurred to O'Dowda for he raised his glass to me and beamed over the top of it.

Across the room at the windows, Kermode kept watch on the outside world. If he did see anyone he probably would not say so, not yet, because he, too, must know that the waiting game up here was the one which would pay off for O'Dowda.

I picked up the parcel and, with the gun in my other hand, went over to the windows and pushed a chair into place. To Kermode, I said, 'You get back with him.'

He quit his place without a word and went over to O'Dowda. He sat down, rolled up his trouser leg and began to examine his pellet wounds. I sat at an angle, so that I could cast an eye outside from time to time and also keep the two of them in view. Outside it was a beautiful late September day, and miles away I could just glimpse a corner of the lake and a huddle of white houses shimmering in the heat haze on the far side. It was hot in the room. I ran the back of my hand across my forehead O'Dowda said, 'Finding it warm, eh?'

I said, 'You don't need the heating on on a day like this.'

He shrugged his big shoulders. 'On all the time. But there's an automatic control. Constant temperature of sixty-eight. You're only feeling hot because you're worried, Carver. You don't know what to do. Things are going to be much hotter for you before we finish. Pity — because if you'd played ball with me, I could have learnt to like you and put a lot of work your way. I might even have taken you into one of my organizations and made a fortune for you. But not now… oh no! I'm going to see you fry. I'm going to have you regretting that you ever knew me.'

I didn't answer. I sat there, enjoying the coolish air through the broken window. But for all the draught, I was still hot.

After a while I got up and moved so that I stood above one of the grids that covered the underfloor heating. Warm air was flooding up through it. For my money, it was a damned sight more than sixty-eight in the room. Something must have gone wrong with the thermostat. I went back to the window.

It grew hotter. There wasn't any doubt about it.

O'Dowda had noticed it too. He loosened the front of his oriental gown and said, 'What's that thermometer say?' He nodded to a wall space between the two windows close to me.

I got up and checked the thermometer.

'Something's wrong with your system. It's seventy-two. Where's the thermostat?'

'In the gallery outside.'

'Well, if it gets any hotter you'll have all your guests here melting on you.'

He grinned and drank another glass of champagne.

I lit a cigarette, and glanced out of the window, and was rewarded with a sunny world in which nothing stirred except a pair of blackbirds kicking up soil in a worm search on one of the garden beds.

Kermode and O'Dowda refreshed themselves with champagne, and I sat smoking, one sticky hand holding the gun across my knees, and thought about the closed steel doors. Durnford was crazy. What he hell was the point of shutting us all in here? In fact, if he'd known that it was going to help O'Dowda, then he would never have done it — because O'Dowda was the man he hated. Then, why the hell be content to go off just leaving us all locked in? It was like throwing a snowball at a tank as far as O'Dowda was concerned. He really was crazy — yet crazy or not he was basically an intelligent man and intelligence did not just disappear in a mad moment of hatred. Usually it reinforced the crazy action. He didn't have a very high opinion of me — largely because he thought that I'd failed him in mucking up O'Dowda's plans. But he didn't hate me as he hated O'Dowda. He'd advised me not to come in this room and see O'Dowda.

I stood up and loosened my tie, opening the neck of my shirt. Then I walked over and had another look at the wall thermometer. It was now reading eighty. I really was worried then because something had begun to nag at me.

I looked at the copper grid in the floor by the window. There was a line of them all round the room, set about two feet back from the walls. This one was fastened to the floor by a couple of screws at each end. Hot air streamed up through the ornamented grid work, very hot air.

I looked at the thermometer again. It now ready eighty-two. Ever since Durnford had closed the doors on us the temperature had started to rise. When I had first come in here the place had been at a comfortable room heat. Now it was hot enough to grow orchids.

I looked across at O'Dowda and Kermode. O'Dowda, his gown flowing open untidily, was leaning back in his chair, glass in hand, watching me, the light from the candles behind him on the raised throne burnishing the stiff stubble of his red hair.

Kermode was sitting on the edge of the throne, a small, bent-up grasshopper of a man, the side of his face caked with dried blood, his dark eyes on me, full of interest, promising himself, no doubt, some dark pleasure of revenge when the moment came.

O'Dowda, imagining I was about to say something, said, 'Not so cocky now, eh? But don't waste your breath trying to make any deal. You're here and we're here and we're going to get you. So no deals.'

He was right. I was going to speak, but not about deals.

I said, 'What's the temperature limit on this heating system?'

They both looked surprised at the question, then Kermode said, 'Somewhere around ninety-five.'

I said, 'It's gone up from seventy to over eighty in the last ten minutes.'

'So what? It's that bloody fool Durnford. He's locked us in and turned up the regulator,' said O'Dowda. 'The man's gutless. He doesn't like us and that's all he can think of doing. I'd have had some respect for him if he'd pulled a gun on me — even though he was talking through his hat about all that murder stuff. Sit down, boyo, and take your jacket off and finish your champagne. Might feel like a nice sleep afterwards.' He chuckled to himself.

I had it then, of course. For the last few minutes it had been at the back of my mind, but now I had it clear. Durnford was crazy, but he was no fool. And there wasn't any question of his being willing to wound and afraid to strike.

I said quickly, 'Remember the first time I was in this room, O'Dowda? I handed over a thermal bomb to you. A big overweight beast of a thing that could blow this room to bits. What did you do with it?'

He wasn't any fool either. He was with me at once.

'I gave it to Durnford to get rid of.'

'Well, my guess is that he has. Somewhere in this room. Probably, on the pipes under one of the floor grids, that bomb is sticking like a limpet waiting for the temperature to hit the right mark. Durnford has pulled a gun on you all right, and the rest of us.'

They were both on their feet.

I said, 'Kermode, go quickly round this room and see if you can spot any grid screws that have been scratched or tampered with.'

'The windows,' said O'Dowda, and now there was alarm in his voice. 'Smash 'em open, that'll bring the temperature down.'

'Only the air temperature. It won't affect the bomb. It's clamped against a pipe somewhere.'

'We can take up all the grids and turn the heat off at the individual radiators,' said O'Dowda.

He was panicking now.

I said, 'There are about two dozen in this room, and we need a screwdriver. The only thing to do is to spot the grid he used. We can rip that up, maybe.'

As I spoke Kermode was already on his way round the room, examining the grids.

I checked the grids along the window wall. None of them showed signs of having been moved. The thermometer on the wall now read eighty-five. What would he have set the temperature control at on the bomb? Ninety? Eighty-seven?

Kermode came out from behind the throne and said, 'I can't see any grid that's marked.'

'Pull 'em all up,' shouted O'Dowda. 'Come on.'

He went to the nearest grid, bent, got his huge fingers in the ornamented copper-work and pulled. The soft copper face bulged upwards, stretching under his power, but the screws at either end held. And they would hold, I knew that. He was a millionaire. Millionaires don't tolerate shoddy work. In any suburban house the screws would have come out as though they had been set in soap. Anyone who worked for him was forced to give full value for money. That was his epitaph. I couldn't bother with mine. I checked the thermometer again; it was eighty-seven. I put what might be my last bet on Durnford having plumped for ninety and headed for the door. The grids ran all around the room except across the door end. If any spot was going to be safer than another, it might be this end. Also it was well away from the windows. I didn't want momentarily to survive the blast and have a sheet of glass take my head off.

Kermode stood, lost, at the foot of the throne and shouted, 'What the hell do we do?'

I said, 'Come down here and fix yourself some cover.'

As I spoke, I toppled over a duchess and laid her lengthways as a barricade. I piled a gent in diplomatic corps dress on top of her. At least I was observing social levels.

Kermode began to move, but O'Dowda, panicking, not believing that there wasn't something that could be done, working on the old millionaire's principle of maintaining immunity from everything unpleasant, shouted, 'Give me a hand with this!'

He was tugging at another grid, the sweat lacquering his red face. Kermode hesitated, glancing towards me as I broke the social code and put a Coptic bazaar merchant on top of the diplomatic corps man.

O'Dowda roared at Kermode again and Kermode went to him. He had to, he had to bank on survival, and that meant he had to be in O'Dowda's good books. Master and man, it's a bond that lasts right up to death, when the master is a millionaire. I was glad I was my own master and man. There was no quarrel between us. I added three more bodies and then propped a tall, thin, ascetic-faced university don with a fur- tipped robe against the pile. I wondered what he'd done to annoy O'Dowda. Voted against him in convocation, maybe, when the others wanted to give him an honorary law degree in return for some new university building.

Between them, they ripped up the grid at last, buckling it back. The screws were still holding but they gained enough room to feel inside. O'Dowda bent and groped and almost immediately was up and reaching for another grid. He was a trier. With luck — and it would have to be the luck of the Irish — he might strike the right grid this time, might even get it opened up and have his hand poised, but he was running a race with ninety degrees Fahrenheit and my bet was that it was pushing the eighty-nine mark already.

Gun and parcel in either hand, I settled behind my barrier and shouted, 'For God's sake be sensible. Get some cover away from the grids!'

Kermode, straining at the grid with his master, turned and looked at me. All he could see was my head behind the barricade. His eyes were full of longing, but he dared not leave his master.

Then suddenly he straightened up, taking his hands off the grid.

'KERMODE!' roared O'Dowda angrily.

'Wait a minute.'

Kermode turned and ran towards the throne. There was a strip of fine Persian carpet across the floor four yards away from the monstrous effigy of O'Dowda. He ripped it aside. There was a grid underneath it.

'I'd forgotten this one…' He bent over, examining the screws. 'This one! This one!'

O'Dowda moved towards him, gown flying, knocking over a table as he went, shoving a Rajah-like figure, turbanned, white-suited, out of his way.

'The screws… look!' Kermode pointed.

And then they were at it, fingers gripped in the copper work, both of them putting their backs into it. The bomb had to be under there. That's where Durnford would have put it. Under the monstrous effigy, and close to where O'Dowda normally sat. If Kermode had remembered that grid at the start…

I yelled, 'Give it up! Get down here!'

They took no notice of me. Big man and little man, sweating at the grid, master and man, linked by so many things in the past: loyalties, villainies, drinking bouts, fishing trips, rough houses in the old days, sophisticated manipulations as the master grew richer, and always the one thinking he was untouchable, his own law, and the other knowing himself safe in the shadow of the other's power. And they didn't listen to me. They had forgotten that I was there. You don't sit down and let unpleasant things happen to you, not an O'Dowda, you fight and you overcome. That was how it had always been and that was how it would be, had to be, or life was not worth living.

I dropped behind my barrier, snuggled in against the cold, bare wax back of the duchess and then pulled the don down on top of me.

As I did so it happened. The end of the world. There was a bang as though a jet had broken the sound barrier in the room, and everything moved. I was slammed backwards, tangled up in duchess, diplomat and don, towards the steel doors. I should have been killed. I thought I was killed, ears ringing, all breath gone from my body. The steel doors waited for me, waited for the shock-wave to slam me against them and flatten me. But the wave must have hit the doors a second ahead of my body and flung them back like untidy crumpled wings. I slid twenty yards down the gallery and lay flat, eyes closed, waiting… And in the waiting I heard glass crashing, heard plaster and stone and wood falling and breaking.

I came slowly to my feet and, dazed, rubbed dust and grit from my eyes and face. On the floor at my feet was my gun and the parcel, and the severed head of the duchess with a six-inch glass splinter sticking out of her right cheek. I stepped over a red-tabbed general, half of his white moustache torn away and one glass eye shattered, and made for the door.

The room was full of smoke and dust and I could only just see the full length of it. There was no sign of O'Dowda or Kermode. But there were heads and arms and legs scattered all over the place. Most of them were wax. As I went over the threshold, staggering, not really knowing what I was doing, a gentle rain began to fall on me from the remnants of the fire sprinkler system in the roof. I went through it to the throne. The curtains and woodwork on both sides were burning away, and the robes of O'Dowda's effigy were blazing. The flames licked up around its face as it lay on the floor, one arm and one leg severed. I stood looking at it from a distance, and wondered if I were still really alive, or trapped for ever in some nightmare of death. O'Dowda was burning and melting away.

The wax of the face began to run. With the heat beating at my face, still full of stupidity from the shock-wave, I watched the great figure slowly melting before me, melting down to size, melting down to less than size. The sprinkler rain fell on my bare head, streaking down my dirty cheeks like tear-runnels, and the blaze burned fiercely at my skin so that I slowly began to step back, my eyes on O'Dowda's wax face. As the features ran away into shapelessness, I watched in horror at the thing that came swelling up through the wax into the flickering flame-light. Slowly, like a film developing, another face surfaced, grimacing up at me through the running, bubbling wax, another face, fleshless, eyesockets first dark, then filled by the fire and alive with hissing little flames. A mouth grinned, tight, and then slowly fell open as the jaw broke away and slid to the floor with burning wax spurting little red and yellow tongues from it.

Behind me, miles away it seemed, I heard voices shouting, heard a great stir of life, bells, sirens, and the clatter of feet.

I staggered to a far wall, bent over and vomited, knowing that the horror was going to be with me on many a night…the sight of a small fragile skull slowly coming back into the light as O'Dowda's face melted away.

As I straightened up, I saw the real O'Dowda. When the bomb had exploded Kermode must have been shielding him. He had been slammed away across the room to hit the window wall like a two-hundredweight sack of corn. He lay huddled against the wall and floor angle, naked from the waist up, his head cocked horribly to one side and his one remaining leg twisted back up under his body. In the fingers of his right hand, outflung, was still held a large, jagged piece of the copper grid-work.

I went back, out of the room, leaving the fire flaring away around the throne. I picked up the parcel, nearly falling from giddiness as I did so, and then staggered away down the corridor, tucking the parcel into the wasitband of my trousers and buttoning my jacket-front over it.

Sitting in a red velvet chair at the head of the stairs was Durnford, smoking, quiet, composed. He looked at me, nodded, as though congratulating himself on a neat piece of arrangement. O'Dowda and Kermode killed — main targets; Carver, shaken, contrite — minor target; and he, himself, not caring what happened now, because no one could ever take away from him the savour of the last hour, content to wait, no man able to touch him.

He said mildly, 'I phoned the fire brigade. They're arriving now.'

I said, throat dry, words coming like the dry rustle of old reeds, 'I don't feel in the mood for company.'

He pointed to a side door behind his chair. 'Go through there. Down the stairs at the end and you'll find the garage.' Then, as I braced myself for the move, he said, 'How was he at the end?'

I said, 'I thought it was panic, but it wasn't. He just knew, as always, that nothing could ever beat him. He missed out by about five seconds.' Then I went to the door and, my hand on it, added, 'When the police get here they won't let you into that room. If you want to make your farewell, do it now.'

'To him?'

'No, to her. She's on the throne, waiting for you.'

He looked at me, not understanding for a moment, and then he got up slowly and began to move away, up the gallery towards the smoke-veiled and water-sprayed room. I found my way down to the garage and out across the grounds, knowing that I had been lucky. The exception. I had got away with something that belonged to O'Dowda. That was a record. Even the things he owned but no longer wanted, he kept. Just as he had kept her, locked up in himself…