"What were you doing that for?"Dannasked as they pulled cautiously away.
"Long story. What happens if I go left?" Left was away from the place the Mobile had last seen him, away from Neptune Court.
"Sooner or later you hit the Lower Road. Where are we going to take him? He looks pretty bad. "
"I just want to get out of the area and reach a phone."
"You can't take him to my place," Dave Tanner said abruptly.
"I wasn't going to." Maxim's thinking had just begun to catch up with why two armed watchmen – the ones outside his own flat hadn't been armed – had suddenly turned up in the service road of Neptune Court. It would be no place to watch from. They must have been coming to collect Blagg, and very certain they would find him.
"D'you work, Dave?" he asked.
"Course I do. I'm a wood machinist, in't I?"
"And your wife?"
"No, not now. She had this job at the checkout in the Co-op, but… I mean, what's this all about?"
"Nothing."
"I mean if you think Ron and my wife, well, you can bleedin' well -"
"I^vasn't thinking – hold it."
Headlights blazed in his rear-view mirror, topped by a flashing blue light. The Rover closed right up, blatantly harassing him into making one mistake that would give them the excuse to stop him. Maxim began driving like a saint on the way to beatification, but with very sub-saintly feelings in his heart.
It couldn't be the same Rover, because they'd have recognised the car, although he hoped they hadn't stopped long enough to get the number. All he could do now was keep steady despite his growing anger.
"What do we do?" Tanner asked fearfully.
"Keep going. Thosebastards."
Hang on, Major,"Dannsaid from the back. "Weare carrying a deserter who's shot somebody."
"They don't know that! If they stop me now…" He took his own pistol from a pocket andjammed it down between his thighs.
Tanner's voice became a squeal. "Here, you can't start using that thing!"
"You can't, Major,"Dannchimed in. "You can't start any more shooting."
Maxim never knew what he might have done. The Rover abruptly swung out and roared past, the passenger cop giving them a suspicious but mostly supercilious glare. It turned right at the next street.
A few minutes later they came out onto the bright and still busy Lower Road. It was like sailing into Harwich harbour after a winter crossing on the ferry; you just didn't believe how smooth and easy life could be.
Maxim stopped at the first phone box; Tanner was out of the car well before him. "I'll get me own way home, thanks…" And he was gone.
"I know just how he feels,"Dannsaid.
Agnes covered the phone mouthpiece with her hand. "Harry's found him. He's wounded. Can we supply a doctor who knows about bullets an'd keeps his mouth shut?"
George rubbed his eyes. "Do we know such a person?"
She nodded.
"I was afraid we might…"
"George, he.'s got us over a barrel. If we let Blagg go to hospital the cops get him, and he could be up on a murder charge. There's no way he's going to keep his mouth shut throughout that. We just have to go along. " She thought for a moment. "The only realistic alternative is to let the boy die, and I can't see our Harry wearing that."
"Nor would I, " George said instinctively."All right. "
Agnes lifted the phone. "Go ahead."
Maxim said: "Tell the doc it's through the chest, in at the eighth rib, definite exit wound at the ninth. Small calibre. There must be bleeding and air in thepleuralcavity that's collapsing the other lung. He should be prepared to tap it. I don't think the bleeding's bad in itself. Okay?"
On the phone he sounded crisp and efficient. But if soldiers can't do that, what can they do?"
"Got it. Where are you?"
Inside four minutes she had a doctor, a plain van and a rendezvous. She could be crisp and efficient herself when the heat was on; it wasn't only soldiers who made the world go round.
It was barely dawn when Maxim reached Albany but it was Annette Harbinger who opened the door to him. She was shortish and had an attractive way of cocking her head on one side and looking up with big dark eyes and a wryly amused smile. "Come on in, Saturday seems to have started rather early this week." She wore a belted Japanese kimono that emphasised her cottage-loaf figure and had a warm, rumpled, half-awake look that made Maxim just want to curl up beside her and sleep for a week.
He sagged past into the smell of frying bacon, and she closed the door. "How d'you like your eggs, Harry?"
"Nothing but tea or juice, thanks." Mrs Caswell had fed them all poached eggs and toast once they had got Blagg bedded down. "D'you mind if I start with the cocktail hour? It rather got lost in the rush. "
Her head went even more on one side. "A whisky breakfast? Don't tell George: he'll be jealous he hadn't thought of it for himself. You know where it all is. "
George was asleep in a big leather chair, making wuffling noises through his open mouth. Carefully not clinking the bottles, Maxim mixed himself a whisky and water, drank it in three gulps, then poured another and began sipping. The lamps were out and the curtains open, letting in an aquarium light that showed up the room for what it really was: a cold, colourless tomb. Maxim shivered and took his drink away to the kitchen.
Agnes was sitting at the table munching bacon and eggs under a bright neon light."'Ello, ahr'Arry. Have you got planning permission to carry that much valuable agricultural land around on your person?" She giggled into her coffee.
Maxim's clothes were still sticky-wet, he was splashed tothe knees with mud, and as for his shoes… With his fair hair, the stubble on his chin showed only as a slight blurring of the normally sharp jawline, but the rest of his face was a bruise of tiredness and strain.
"Don't you taunt the poor man, Agnes," Annette said severely. "Now, would you like to borrow some stuff of George's?"
The idea was briefly attractive, but the difference between George's waistline and his own… "I'll manage, thanks. " He slumped down opposite Agnes, who herself had changed her delicate jacket for one of Annette's cardigans, and kicked off her shoes somewhere.
Annette put down a cup of tea and a glass of orangejuice. "It is lemon and sugar, isn't it? Now you two'll want to talk Top Secrets so I'll go and get dressed. " She bustled tactfully away.
"Went the night well?" Agnes asked.
"Pretty well, if he doesn't get pneumonia, but he's full of antibiotics just as a prophylactic… It was close. Lucky he was young and fit and all. " He took a sip of whisky, thenjuice, then tea.
"He wouldn't have got mixed up in all this if he wasn't young and fit. Is that your normal breakfast?"
"Not exactly. What happened on the home front?"
"You heard it could be murder?-yes, I told you on the phone. Nothing more from that angle except that the police have askedus to check him out, so they're pretty dubious about who he was."
"We know who he was working for, anyway."
"If you mean Six, it really isn't likely," Agnes said. "And I'm not saying that as any friend of theirs."
Unconvinced, Maxim gave a little shrug, then took Blagg's Spanish revolver from his pocket. It was still wet and choked with gritty mud. He emptied out the fired cartridge cases, went across to the sink and washed the gun under the hot tap.
"Where did you take him?" Agnes asked.
"The doc offered one of your safe houses, but I didn't think you'd want to be that much involved. In the end, we went down to a chum in the country. " At first, Mrs Caswell hadn't been all that keen, probably because she didn't want anybodydying on the premises. But Jim, bless him, had taken it with as little fuss as if he'd been asked to feed the cat for a couple of days. "The doc's going again today, and I'll get down this evening."
The door clattered open and George, barely awake, stumbled in. He edged Maxim away from the sink, ran the tap until it was really cold, and mixed a foaming cocktail of Alka-Seltzer and lemon-flavoured Redoxon tablets. Agnes watched, fascinated; George's stomach must be a constant series of coups and counter-coups.