Fletcher half-expected the Leopards to walk over to his table and speak to him, but they were content just to look. And then, as on the previous occasion, they finished their drinks and swaggered out; and the tension eased and the hum of conversation rose again as it does in a barrack room after the orderly officer has left.
Fletcher got up and walked to the bar and bought another rum-and-ginger.
“What did they want?” he asked.
Annie stared at him with a blank expression. “Who?”
“Those Leopards.”
“They wanted drinks,” Annie said.
“Is that all?”
“What else would they want?”
He saw that if she had any information she was not going to share it with him. He was not her favourite customer and never would be again. He drank the rum-and-ginger and decided that he had had enough of the Treasure Ship. He walked away from the bar and went out through the swing-doors for the last time.
Again it was like the other time: the car was parked a little way along the street and they were sitting in it smoking cigars. When he drew level the one in the passenger seat pushed the door open and said:
“You in a hurry, Mr. Fletcher?”
Fletcher paused. “Not particularly. Why?”
The man dropped his cigar on the ground; it was only half-smoked, but perhaps he had plenty more and perhaps they had cost him nothing, so he could afford to be profligate.
“Like we thought mebbe we’d give you a ride.”
“Thanks,” Fletcher said, “but I’d rather walk.”
He was starting to move away, but the man shot out a hand and gripped his arm.
“Like mebbe we’d rather you took the ride, man.”
Fletcher could feel the fingers digging into his arm; it was a powerful grip, but he knew that he could have broken free if he had tried. He thought of doing so and making a run for it, because the invitation to take a ride was a bit too pressing for his taste; indeed, it was not really an invitation at all; it was more like an order. And of course it would not be just a ride; there would be more to it than that, and it might end up with a lot of unpleasantness. Nobody in his senses would have gone for a car ride with a couple of Leopards at that time of night — not if it could have been avoided.
“I don’t want a ride,” he said. “Not just now. Some other time perhaps—”
“No; this time.”
The man was out of the car now, but he still had a grip on Fletcher’s arm. The other man leaned over and spoke through the open door.
“Why you gotta argue? When we offer a ride you take it. What’s wrong, man? You scared?”
“No,” Fletcher said; “I’m not scared.” But he was not fooling himself and he was not fooling them. They both laughed, as though he had made a joke.
“You should be,” the man in the car said. “You should be shit scared.”
Fletcher discovered that the man standing beside him had released his arm. Perhaps they meant to let him go after all; perhaps they had just been playing a game. He began to turn away.
“Good night.”
The one in the car laughed again.
The other one said: “Get inside, man.”
He was playing no game; he had a pistol in his hand. It was like Fat Annie had said: they had guns sure enough. Fletcher remembered something else she had said — that they would get away with murder. He wished he had not remembered that; it did nothing for his morale.
“Get in‚” the man said; and he sounded impatient. He prodded Fletcher with the pistol.
Fletcher looked for help, but he knew there would not be any and there wasn’t. He got into the car. The man with the pistol followed him in and slammed the door. Fletcher sat wedged between the two of them. The man at the wheel started the engine and got the car rolling.
SEVEN:
WITH US NOW
“Do I get told where we’re going?” Fletcher asked. “Or is that a state secret?”
They both laughed. It was a deep, throaty kind of laughter and it seemed to come easy to them, though Fletcher was not sure that he cared for their sense of humour. He could imagine them laughing their heads off if somebody happened to step in front of the car and got himself run over — just as long as the car sustained no damage.
“No secret,” the man who had handled the pistol said. He had put the weapon away now; he knew that Fletcher was not going to make any attempt to escape. “We’re going to a place of business.”
It was not the most revealing of information. A place of business could be almost anything. So could the business.
“For what purpose?”
This time they just chuckled. The chuckling was, if anything, a shade less pleasant than the laughter; there was a kind of anticipatory relish in it.
“Business,” the driver said.
“What kind of business?”
“You’ll see.”
It was what Fletcher was all too afraid of. He decided not to ask any more questions but to sit back and await events.
Before long they were clear of Port Morgan and had got on to the road to Jamestown. It was a narrow road with a pretty rough surface, and there was not much traffic using it at that hour. This was just as well, since the man at the wheel was one of the craziest drivers Fletcher had ever come across; he seemed to have a death wish — which would have been fine if he had had only one passenger and that passenger had been the other Leopard. He could have killed the pair of them and Fletcher would not have given a damn, but he had rather more respect for his own skin and he wished he had been wearing a seat-belt because he had visions of being flung through the windscreen when the car ran off the road and hit a tree or a post or something of that description.
But nothing happened, and after about ten minutes of this hair-raising travel they were in among the shanty dwellings on the eastern fringes of Jamestown and going at a less breakneck speed. The place they finally arrived at looked like a junk-yard; it was enclosed by a corrugated-iron fence, and there were a lot of wrecked cars and worn-out refrigerators and old electric cookers and rusty oil-drums, all revealed by the headlights as they drove in through a gate which the non-driving Leopard had got down to open.
The driver stopped the car and fished a torch out of the door-pocket and switched off the lights. He got out and joined the other man, who had the pistol in his hand again. Fletcher remained in the car, not moving. The one with the pistol rapped on the door with the barrel, making a metallic, imperious sound.
“Move it, man. This here’s the end of the line. From here you make with the legs.”
Fletcher got out; there was no alternative. He could see the dark shape of a building of some sort in a corner of the yard. The man with the torch started walking towards it and the other two followed, Fletcher in the middle, with the pistol prodding him now and then for encouragement.
It was not a very impressive place of business; it was no more than a shack with a roof of corrugated-iron and sides of unpainted timber. The door was locked, but the man with the torch had a key; he opened it and they went in. The man with the pistol closed the door.
It seemed to be a kind of workshop; there was a bench along one side and there was a smell of oil and rubber. The man with the torch laid it down on the bench and found a hurricane lantern and lit it. He switched the torch off. The glass of the lantern was smoky and the light that came from it was scarcely brilliant, but it was enough to reveal a selection of spanners and other tools, a couple of gas-cylinders and an oxy-acetylene burner, some wooden crates, a pile of worn tyres and various odds and ends.