Peter O'Donnell - Cobra Trap

"I think that's a kind decision. Please don't worry about clothes. I'll take him out and buy him the sort of clothes he'll feel comfortable to go back in, then he can stay with me tonight and we'll fly to Perpignan tomorrow."

Mark Sayle said, "Thank you. I'm sure he'll be very happy to have you take him home. Will it offend you if I offer to cover your costs?"

She laughed. "It won't offend me, but no thank you. I felt guilty about causing Alex to be brought here, and I'm relieved to be taking him home."

"You're very kind."

"I hold him in great affection, and not only because he saved my life."

"Yes, I understand. At an appropriate moment please ask if I might one day visit him and his family on the farm, when he's had plenty of time to settle in."

"I will. And I look forward to visiting them myself."

She said her goodbyes, put down the phone and returned to the drawingroom. Old Alex looked up anxiously. She gave him her best smile and said, "It's all settled. I'll phone now to book our flights for tomorrow, then we'll go and get you some proper clothes. You don't want to arrive home in that suit, do you?"

He rose and embraced her wordlessly, then stepped back, grinning in the cheerful Old-Alex way she remembered. "If I go back like this," he said, "perhaps Matilde will marry me after all!" He chuckled happily.

Modesty stared. "You mean she refused when you were young?"

"Refused? Ah, no. I was nobody from nowhere. With nothing. How could I ever ask?"

She exhaled a long breath and gazed at him wonderingly. "Oh Alex," she said, "this is a funny old life, isn't it?" She studied his worn, happy face and straightened the tie he had pulled loose at the neck. "I'm sure Matilde would have married a handsome man like you, if you'd asked."

"Handsome? Me?" He was genuinely amused.

"Of course." She took his arm and moved to the foyer, picking up her handbag from a sidetable. "If you were younger by fifty years or so I'd keep you myself for a toyboy. Come on, let's go and buy you some clothes."

She had used the English word toyboy, knowing of no French equivalent, and Old Alex echoed it, puzzled. "Toyboy? What is that?"

As they went down in the lift she explained. A few moments later the porter watched her crossing the reception area, arm-in-arm with an old man who looked like a peasant and was dressed like a lord. He was grinning broadly and kept saying, "Toyboy! Bloody hell!"

Poised sedately on his motorscooter, Simon Bird kept to a speed he thought suitable for a man of the cloth as he moved along the winding Cornish lane. From time to time he ran a finger round the new clerical collar he wore, and from time to time he reached under his jacket to feel the butt of the Colt.357 in the Berns-Martin shoulder holster under his black jacket. He touched it not because he was in any way apprehensive, but because he was obsessed by it with all the passion of an ardent lover.

It was years since the lane had known any repair, but neither had it suffered more than occasional use. After winding for half a mile through thin woodland it became a rising track that led up across open greensward to a granite headland towering above the Atlantic. Here stood Poldeacon, a folly built a century before by a quicktempered tin magnate who had later cut his wife's throat arid bludgeoned to death the man he believed to have cuckolded him. This proved to be a false belief for which the tin magnate expressed deep regret before being hanged.

The incident gave Poldeacon an unsavoury reputation. By chance, later residents met with a variety of misfortunes and rarely remained for more than a few years. Local people in the village of Mallowby, a mile away, believed that a curse lay upon the pile. Those less superstitious attributed such misfortunes to the theory that anyone who wanted to live in an unimaginative heap of granite confronting the savage force of the Atlantic in winter must be less than fully sane and therefore prone to selfinflicted misfortune.

As he emerged from the woods into noonday sunshine Simon Bird gazed with affection at the dark towers rising beyond the new wall that surrounded the folly. He neither knew nor cared that the wall had been built by a government department ten years ago for a scheme abandoned eight years ago. His heart and mind were already with the companions he knew he would find within that bleak dwelling.

The heavy wooden gates in the outer wall stood open. He rode through into the courtyard and pulled up beside a short row of cars parked against the western wall. Dismounting, he took off his crashhelmet and replaced it with a lowcrowned black hat from one of the saddlebags. As he moved towards the main doors he saw that they were closed, and that at a window above stood a very large man in clerical garb with an impressive mane of white hair. Simon Bird halted. The man at the window made a regal gesture indicating that he should go round to the back of the mansion. Bird raised a hand in acknowledgement and moved off.

A back door stood open, and as he approached it Bird saw that against the wall to one side was the crude figure of a man, cut from plywood and backed by sandbags. A happy smile touched his round cherubic face. He halted six paces from the figure and with a courteous air took off the flat black hat with his right hand, holding it close to his chest.

For a moment he was still, eyes flicking up to a window above where now appeared the same large man with two companions also wearing dark suits and clerical collars. Simon Bird's eyes returned to the wooden figure. The hat slipped from his fingers, then the Colt was in that same hand, firing once, and he stooped only slightly to catch the hat by the brim with his left hand before it reached the ground. The bullet had ripped a hole through the middle of the target's face.

Bird looked up and inclined his head as he slipped the gun back into its holster. The figures at the window clapped politely, unheard. Bird made a slight bow, then moved towards the door. A minute later he was passing through a large room on the ground floor, dreary in design, its decor sadly run down from long neglect. Four apparent vicars were playing poker at a cardtable. Three more sat watching a blue video, slumped in boredom.

Bird said, "Christ, do we wear these togs all the time?"

One of the poker players spoke without looking away from the game. "Mountjoy says we stay in character while we're here. Was that you shooting just now?"

"Who else? Where do I find him, Jacko?"

The man nodded towards a door at the far end of the room. "Through there, and second on the left. Paddy and Silver are bringing the patient up."

Bird nodded, went through into a wide passage and took the second door on the left. It opened into a spacious study. Mountjoy was seated behind a large old desk. He rose ponderously and moved round it to shake hands with Bird. "Simon, my dear fellow. Your arrival is most admirably timed." The white hair swayed as he nodded towards a pair of boltcutters lying across a corner of the desk. "As you see, our visitor has arrived." The face framed by the thick white hair was younger than might have been expected, but broad and unrevealing, an enigma of emptiness.

"Yes, Jacko told me." Bird took off his hat and threw it on a chair, then slipped a hand under his jacket to feel the butt of the Colt for comfort. He could never understand what it was about Mountjoy that made him feel strange twinges of fear. "Are we all here now?" he said.

"You are the last, Simon. As you were attending to the business in London, Jonathan brought your luggage down as requested. You will find it in your room."

The door opened and two more vicars entered, both stronglooking men, both a little breathless, one pushing a trolley bearing a large and obviously heavy wooden crate bound with thick galvanised wire. Several holes were bored in two of the sides. The other man nodded to Bird and said, "You never came all the way from London on that scooter, did you, Birdie?"