Then he just waited impatiently as the barge puttered nearer at a pace that would have sent a snail to sleep. Unconsciously, his more mechanically sensitive ear picked up the occasional hiccups in the engine note, showing that O’Gilroy had fixed but not cured it. Then, consciously, he chided himself for being pleased about that; he might be thinking of a man already dead.
Or one who had simply accepted a ride on the barge, he thought. That sounded more like O’Gilroy’s opportunism: get to know the barge and its inhabitants better. In which case his bicycle should be on the deck somewhere, so Jay peered for it. And saw it glitter among the dull, matt tones of the barge and its rusted gear. That was better; if they’d killed him, they’d surely have thrown the bicycle into the canal after him.
Then he realised the barge wasn’t stopping. It crept up to and then under the bridge, staying several feet out in the channel, its slogging engine note unchanged. Stooping, Jay hurried to the other side of the bridge and thought he saw O’Gilroy’s tweed suit and flat cap standing beside a wider figure in the faint lamplight of the steering shelter, but couldn’t be sure. He thought for a moment, then grabbed up the hated bicycle and charged downhill into Trilbardou village.
The simple fact was that O’Gilroy didn’t know Trilbardou bridge from any other bridge they had passed under. It didn’t obviously belong to a village, which was to one side and downhill, behind a high bank. Kaminsky had mentioned – once O’Gilroy had stopped extolling the position of Renault’s radiators – putting him off at the village’s landing-place. Which sounded reasonable: such a place must be obvious to Jay and Ranklin as well.
So they passed beneath the bridge and Jay, with Kaminsky explaining that he did indeed come of a canal-barge family, but had worked ashore for the past twenty years. Handling canal-borne goods to start with, expanding to other items . . . a “man of affairs”, as he called himself. Lies, but Kaminsky seemed to enjoy lying. Most crooks did; some wrecked themselves by enjoying it too much and lying about unnecessary and easily checked things.
The canal curved gently to the right and then ran straight past the landing-place and the dim blur of the tow-path cottage.
“That’s the place,” Kaminsky said. “Where that house is. Leon!” And after a moment Leon climbed the ladder from the cabin to take the bow mooring rope.
From the undergrowth beside the tow-path Jay and Ranklin saw him walk forward along the barge in the faint starlight.
“They’re stopping,” Jay panted. “Two of them have to come ashore to moor the thing. Then . . . then what do we do?” He had arrived just two minutes before, throwing the bicycle into the undergrowth and gasping out his tale.
“We wait,” Ranklin said firmly. “We wait until O’Gilroy’s ashore and clear before we do anything.” Certain that the barge was stopping, he let the now-pointless clothes line slip into the water and took out his revolver. “Then we tell those ashore to surrender, and threaten to . . . to throw burning petrol down over those left inside if they don’t give up, too. We don’t mean it, but we threaten it. Unless O’Gilroy’s got any better ideas,” he added.
The engine beat faster as Kaminsky yanked the lever out of gear and angled the gliding barge towards the landing-place. Liar or not, he knew how to handle the thing, barely grazing the bank as it drifted to a stop. Leon scrambled down, carrying a thick rope and tied it to a mooring post.
And then O’Gilroy jumped down, himself carrying a rope: with Kaminsky around, others did the work. He wrapped it around another post, just behind the barge’s stern, bringing himself within a few yards of Ranklin and Jay.
From the darkness Ranklin hissed: “When you’ve got the bicycle, bugger off!”
O’Gilroy nodded to show he’d heard, and finished his knot.
“Not too tight,” Kaminsky called. “Leon will pass down your bicycle.” Already Leon was climbing back on board.
“Oh, shit!” Ranklin groaned. Now neither of the barge crew was ashore.
“Shoot the buggers,” Jay muttered. He had a gun in each hand, O’Gilroy’s in his left.
“Wait.”
O’Gilroy moved forward to take the bicycle, promptly got on it, shouted: “Bon soir, M’sieu,” and shot off down the little lane.
Kaminsky stepped to the side of the barge, staring and then exploding into language that should have boiled the canal dry. The Irlandais was supposed to cast off for them, the ungrateful, lazy, dog-begotten, whore-born . . . and quite forgetting in his anger that Leon could do it just as well, Kaminsky jumped heavily down.
“Get him,” Ranklin ordered.
Kaminsky found O’Gilroy’s idea of a mooring knot and a new fund of language immediately after; you could say this for the man, he wasn’t repetitive. Then he saw the movement beyond and looked up.
“M’sieu Kaminsky, je crois?” Ranklin guessed and then, because they were too far away to grab him and he wasn’t sure Kaminsky could see the guns pointing at him, fired past him into the canal.
Kaminsky straightened up carefully.
“The other one’s gone to ground,” jay warned. “Still on the boat.”
“Only to be expected. Venez ici, M’sieu.”
Kaminsky lumbered towards them, breathing heavily. Ranklin put his revolver against his chest and ran his hand across the man’s pockets, finding only a modestly small pistol. However, doubtless the barge was crammed with bigger, more powerful weapons; a certain breed of anarchist never seemed to leave home without an arsenal. He stepped back out of range of Kaminsky’s breath.
“I think you have to speak some English, but so that I’m sure you understand me, I’ll stick to French. Now, I won’t introduce ourselves, just bear in mind our pistols. I have a simple proposition: we’ll exchange you for Mrs Langhorn. The real Mrs Langhorn this time, if it pleases you.”
Kaminsky absorbed this. “Why should I trust you?”
“Why do people say things like that?” Ranklin sighed. “I’m sorry, but whether you trust us or not is not important. Only, if we don’t get Mrs Langhorn we’ll all just wait until the Surete arrive.”
“Why should they come?”
“Hmm. No, probably just one shot is not sufficient. Fire three more, Mr Jay.”
Jay loosed off the automatic into the air.
In the ringing silence, there was a scrabbling in the bushes behind them and O’Gilroy saying: “Hey, that’s my gun yer emptying.”
And he stumbled out on to the tow-path to take the pistol from Jay’s hand. Kaminsky peered through the gloom. “You? You perfidious maggoty turd-”
“Sure, sure,” O’Gilroy said. “But we’re all in plain sight from the barge – or would be saving the dark. Would anybody mind stepping into cover?”
So they retreated a few yards to a stand of trees and got, more or less, behind them. O’Gilroy explained about the others left on the barge, and then Ranklin suddenly remembered Corinna, waiting in the motor-car with Berenice and wondering what the hell those gunshots meant. And also with nothing and nobody but fifty yards of the lane between them and the barge.
“Jay, double back and tell Mrs Finn we’re all right. And then stand guard there. We’ll be along in a minute.” And when Jay had moved off through the bushes back the way O’Gilroy had come, he changed to French for Kaminsky. “Now, call to your friends on the barge and tell them you’ll be set free when we’ve got the real Mrs Langhorn.”
“No, you will let me go at the same moment they let her go and-”
“Please just say what I said.”
There was a pause filled with more heavy breathing. Perhaps Mrs Langhorn was Kaminsky’s ace, his one hope of salving something from what, for him, was becoming a costly mess. Or perhaps she was just an insurance, a bargaining counter. Either way, he wouldn’t have guessed what she might be used to bargain for: himself, his own freedom, possibly his life. So in the end, Ranklin was pretty sure he would do what he’d been told; it was the sensible thing. But his pride required this pause, and Ranklin was willing to allow him that. Wipe your feet on a man’s pride and he might do something not sensible at all.