Jack Higgins - Dark Side of the Street

"You took your own sweet time getting here, didn't you?" Youngblood said furiously.

Chavasse ignored him. He heaved Pentecost to his feet and shoved him into a chair that stood beside a small deal table. Pentecost seemed completely dazed and wiped blood from his mouth mechanically with the back of one hand.

"My name's Drummond and this is Harry Youngblood," Chavasse said. "Perhaps you've heard of us?"

Pentecost nodded. "You're the two who escaped from Manningham hospital yesterday. I read about it in the paper."

"Were you expecting us?"

Pentecost hesitated and Youngblood took a step forward, right fist clenched. "Let me speak to him."

Pentecost shrank back defensively, one arm raised. "There's no need for that. I'll tell you anything you want to know."

Chavasse nodded to Youngblood. "All right, give him a chance." He repeated the question. "Were you expecting us?"

Pentecost shook his head. "I had a phone call this afternoon so I was expecting somebody. I didn't know it was going to be you two."

"Who gave you the order?"

"He calls himself Smith. That's all I know about him."

"Can you describe him?"

"Good looking, well spoken." He shrugged. "You'd think he was upper-crust until he starts to work."

Youngblood frowned across at Chavasse. "Mackenzie?

"It certainly sounds like it." Chavasse looked down at Pentecost again. "Are you expecting him?"

"He didn't say anything definite."

Youngblood had walked across to inspect the ovens and now he turned. "Do you treat everyone Smith sends you like this?"

Pentecost shook his head. "I pass most of them straight through."

Youngblood stared at him in genuine horror. "Most of them?" He turned to Chavasse. "For Christ's sake, find out what we have to know and let's get out of here. This bloke gives me the creeps."

"The people you passed on," Chavasse said. "What was their destination?"

Pentecost didn't even hesitate. "I used to leave them at a crossroads five miles from here. They were usually picked up by the same van."

"You stayed to watch?"

Pentecost nodded. "I wasn't supposed to know the destination, but I took the registration number and got a friend of mine with the right contacts to check it for me. The van belongs to a bloke called Bragg. He runs a small boatyard at a little place on the Dorset coast near Lulworth called Upton Magna. It's about ninety miles from here."

Youngblood turned to Chavasse excitedly. "That sounds promising, Drum. It could be the end of the line."

Chavasse nodded slowly, never taking his eyes off Pentecost's face. Quite suddenly he rammed the barrel of the revolver against the man's head and thumbed back the hammer.

"You bloody liar!"

Pentecost panicked completely, his face turning grey. "It's the truth, I swear it! On my mother's grave I swear it!"

"You never had a mother," Youngblood said in disgust and he hooked away the chair with a foot so that Pentecost fell to the floor.

He lay there shaking with fear and Chavasse looked down at him coldly. There was an account to be settled here, but that would have to wait until a more appropriate time.

He slipped the revolver into his pocket and took Molly's arm. "Come on, let's get out of here."

"What about this?" Youngblood asked, stirring Pentecost with a foot.

"There's nothing he can do," Chavasse said. "If he tries to warn them we're on our way, they'll want to know how we found put where to head for in the first place. How long do you think he'd last after that?"

Pentecost looked at him over his shoulder, eyes widening as the significance of what Chavasse had said sank home and Youngblood laughed harshly.

"You've got a point there. No reason he shouldn't take a rest for a little while though," and he kicked Pentecost in the side of the head.

Pentecost rolled over, struggling for breath, aware of the clang of the door closing at the top of the steps and then he plunged into darkness.

Pain exploding in a chain reaction brought him back from darkness as someone slapped him across the face and a voice repeated his name over and over again. He opened his eyes and stared up into Simon Vaughan's pale face.

"You do look a mess, old man. Presumably they've been and gone?"

Pentecost pushed himself up on one elbow. "There were three of them," he croaked. "Not two like you said. Two men and a girl."

"So that's where she got to! Dear me, I have been careless. Unfortunately I had a little mechanical trouble with the car on the other side of Worcester. I was delayed for the best part of an hour." He helped Pentecost to his feet and sat him in a chair. "When did they leave?"

Pentecost looked at his watch and found that it was almost seven o'clock. "It can't be more than half an hour."

"I see. You told them where to go, did you? Bragg's Boatyard, Upton Magna?" Pentecost stared at him, uncertain of what to say, so confused by the pain in his head that he was unable to think straight and Vaughan sighed. "You shouldn't have done that, you know."

"I couldn't help it," Pentecost said wearily. "They'd have killed me if I hadn't told them. You could probably still catch them."

"I'm sure I can," Vaughan said. "I have two considerable advantages. A very fast car and the fact that I know exactly where I'm going. They, on the other hand, will have to stick to the backroads and check every signpost and the Dorset countryside can be very confusing at night."

Pentecost stirred uneasily as Vaughan moved round behind him. "You know your trouble, old man? You think you've got brains, but you haven't-just a certain amount of low cunning. I can't say it's been a pleasure."

His clenched right fist rose and descended in a hammer blow that splintered the bone at the base of Penetcost's skull. He gave a strange, choking cry and would have tumbled from the chair if Vaughan hadn't held him upright.

He walked round to the front of the chair quickly, dropped to one knee and then straightened, Pentecost draped across his right shoulder in the fireman's lift.

Vaughan crossed to the oven Pentecost had turned on and switched it off. As the flames died away, he opened the glass door and the seven-foot base plate rolled out smoothly on its castors. He dropped Pentecost on to it, arranging his limbs neatly, pushed the plate with its burden back inside and closed the glass door.

He paused to light a cigarette, then pulled the switch. Pentecost's body seemed to jump out of the darkness as great tongues of flame sprang from the brickword to envelop it. His clothing ignited in a second and then, incredibly, an arm was half raised, flaring like a torch and the body moved.

Vaughan watched with interest for a couple of minutes, then closed the outer steel door, turned the dial up to maximum and went up the stairs quickly.

A mile the other side of Gloucester, he pulled up at a phone box and dialled World Wide Exports in London.

"Hello, sweetie, I'm afraid things didn't go according to plan at all here. Our friends are now on their way to Dorset."

"That's a great pity. What are you going to do about it?"

"I think I'd better handle things personally from now on. I'll see they get the usual transportation, but somehow, I don't think they're going to manage to raise a landfall."

"That sounds promising. I'll pass the message along."

"You do that. I'll follow in another boat to report personally. Should be there for breakfast."

"I'll let him know."

The line went dead and Vaughan moved out, whistling softly, got into the Spitfire and drove rapidly away.

Upton Magna was a fishing village which in other times had enjoyed a considerable importance, but now its population had dwindled to little more than two hundred and there were few boats in the small harbour.