“Yes, it is beautiful. But London isn’t just imposing buildings and monuments, it’s people. I hope you get the chance to meet some of them.”
“So do I. Now please, Simon, just where are we going?”
They were cruising past the Law Courts and entering Fleet Street and he pointed straight ahead.
“There,” he said. “St. Paul’s Cathedral.”
For a while she was silent as she looked up at the black dome with its golden cross that soared above the surrounding offices and shops.
“But why?”
“For the finest view in London. We’ve narrowed the location of that picture down to a fairly small area, but it’s still big enough for a person like Hakim to lose himself in. We can’t simply wander around the streets hoping he’s going to pop out for a packet of cigarets just as we drive by. I’m hoping that by getting a bird’s-eye view we can draw a finer bead on that rooftop.”
He left the car near Ludgate Hill, and as they walked up towards the cathedral he pointed out the balconies that encircle the bottom and top of the dome.
“We’ll start at the Golden Gallery, that’s the one immediately below the cross, and try to get a general fix with the binoculars,” he said. “Then we can go down to the Stone Gallery and use the telescopes there to try and pinpoint it more exactly.”
Side by side they climbed the sweeping flight of stone steps and entered through the main doors. Leila stopped as she passed beyond the shadows of the portico and was suddenly confronted by the spacious grandeur of the white and gold interior.
“It’s magnificent!” she said.
Simon took her arm and led her past the tombs and monuments until they reached the foot of a curving stone staircase cut into the south wall.
“The view is even better from the Whispering Gallery,” he said. “But I’m afraid we really can’t spend too long looking around.”
Leila nodded, but there was genuine regret in her voice.
“No, I suppose not.”
St. Paul’s is 365 feet high and there are 528 steps to the top. The Saint took them two at a time as far as the Whispering Gallery. From there the spiral stone stairway becomes narrower at each turn, and he was forced to bend almost double under the low ceiling. When they finally emerged into the sunlight, even his superbly trained muscles were beginning to protest.
Far below them the streets of London stretched into the distance like the strands of a giant spider’s web. The Saint walked slowly around the north side and leant on the stone balustrade as he adjusted the focus of the binoculars. Leila held out the map and photograph so that he could see them without moving the glasses.
“It has to be somewhere between Grays Inn Road and Kings Cross Road. Beyond the Royal Free Hospital and to the east of the church, but not as far as Bryant Street, or the tower would appear much larger.”
He was talking more to himself than to Leila, and as he spoke he shaded in more of the map, gradually making the triangle smaller and smaller until only three or four streets remained. Finally he lowered the glasses and rubbed the water from his eyes.
“We’re getting closer,” he told her. “The trouble is that from this height all the blocks of houses look roughly the same size, but you can see from the photograph that behind the roof they were standing on there’s a street of buildings a storey taller. If we can use the telescope to locate one of these roads where the houses are lower than those they back onto, then we’ve scored a bull’s-eye.”
Leila was staring out across the skyline, concentrating on the area the Saint had been scanning a few moments before. Her eyes were half closed against the sun, and he could almost feel the tautness of her body. She reminded him of an eagle hovering in the air before swooping on its prey. Her fist clenched, but without crumpling the photograph.
“We must find it,” she said. “There is no time to lose.”
She turned and led the way back down the stairs, walking around the Whispering Gallery without stopping to admire the view it offered. He followed more slowly, and she was already standing beside the telescopes by the time he again came out into the daylight.
A rapid change had come over her with the prospect of getting closer to her quarry. The sharpness had returned to her voice, and the light he had found so unsettling at their first meeting shone again from her eyes. On the drive from his home, she had mellowed from being a soldier to being a woman; now, just as quickly and unpredictably, she had switched back again. He sensed that there was something more behind her dedication than mere patriotism and a hatred of her country’s enemies, something that verged on the fanatical. He had hunted many men, but only a few of them had he truly hated; more than most men he understood the subtle difference between crusade and personal vendetta. At that moment he found Captain Leila Zabin a more interesting enigma than the man they were pursuing.
He angled the telescope and pressed a coin into the slot. The lens cleared to give a needle-sharp view over the rooftops. He was aware of Leila pacing impatiently behind him as he moved the telescope by fractions of a degree until he had studied every inch of the unshaded area on the map.
“Not Caxton Street,” he said, letting her share his thoughts as they came to him, “because they’re five-storey tenements. And it can’t be Swans Court, because they are only two. All the buildings in Alma Street have pitched roofs, so therefore that only leaves Little Claymore or one of the alleys running from it. Yes, that’s it, Little Claymore Street. It’s got to be.”
He straightened and stretched away the cramp from his shoulders. Leila took the map and located the street for herself.
“Are you sure?” she insisted.
The Saint shrugged.
“No, I’m not absolutely sure, but I’d lay odds on it.”
“Good. Let us see if you would win your bet,” she said briskly, and tamed on her heel to lead the way back.
While it may appear on the map as a sprawling metropolis with no clear-cut boundaries except the river that divides north from south, London is really only a collection of villages that have been squashed together. Like a giant amoeba the city has flowed around and absorbed them but never quite managed to crush their separate identities. Although to the visitor it may seem that only the names remain — Kensington, Camberwell, Hackney, Hampstead and the rest — something of the original still exists in each. Consequently extremes are never far apart, with streets of tenements running into avenues of mansions. Only the villagers are aware of the dividing lines, although they are as real as any national frontier.
Clerkenwell lies on the northern doorstep of the City. It begins less than a mile from the Bank of England, yet for all the resemblance the two districts bear to each other they might as well be on opposite sides of the country.
It is an area of back streets, of small shops and factories. Little Claymore Street is the same as the roads that surround it, a narrow backwater running between banks of decaying terraces. The Victorian villas designed for large middle-class families and their maids have long since been converted into warrens of tiny bed-sitters that mainly provide a cheap roof for the ever shifting population of students and immigrants. The iron railings that line the front steps are rusted and bent, the plaster cracked, and the paint peeling from windows and doors.
“The other face of London,” Simon observed as they turned Into the street and he slowed the car to a crawl.
Leila made no reply. She was sitting eagerly forward in her seat, her eyes sweeping the buildings on either side. They were halfway along the street when she grabbed his arm.