The brown suit lay unconscious where I had dropped him. I got out of the car and dragged him over to a wall a short way up the alley, where I manacled him to some iron bars protecting a window. He groaned a little as I moved him, so I knew I hadn’t killed him. I went back to the Bugatti and returned Red’s gun to the glove-box. At the same time I helped myself to the small paper twists of white powder. I didn’t figure that Red Dieter was the type to keep cooking-salt in his glove-box, but I sniffed a pinch anyway. Just enough to recognize cocaine. There weren’t many of the twists. Not more than a hundred marks’ worth. And it looked like they were for Red’s personal use.

I locked the car and slid the keys inside the exhaust, like he’d asked. Then I walked back to the brown suit and tucked a couple of the twists into his top pocket.

‘This should interest the boys at the Alex,’ I said. Short of killing him in cold blood, I could think of no more certain way of ensuring that he wouldn’t finish the job he’d started.

Deals were for people that met you with nothing more deadly in their right hand than a shot of schnapps.

Chapter 14

14

The next morning it was drizzling, a warm fine rain like the spray from a garden-sprinkler. I got up feeling sharp and rested, and stood looking out of the windows. I felt as full of life as a pack of sled-dogs.

We got up and breakfasted on a pot of Mexican mixture and a couple of cigarettes. I think I was even whistling as I shaved. She came into the bathroom and stood looking at me. We seemed to be doing a lot of that.

‘Considering that someone tried to kill you last night,’ she said, ‘you’re in a remarkably good frame of mind this morning.’

‘I always say that there’s nothing like a brush with the grim reaper to renew the taste for life.’ I smiled at her, and added, ‘That, and a good woman.’

‘You still haven’t told me why he did it.’

‘Because he was paid to,’ I said.

‘By whom? The man in the club?’ I wiped my face and looked for missed stubble. There wasn’t any, so I put down my razor.

‘Do you remember yesterday morning that I telephoned Six’s house and asked the butler to give both his master and Haupthandler a message?’

Inge nodded. ‘Yes. You said to tell them that you were getting close.’

‘I was hoping it would spook Haupthandler into playing his hand. Well, it did. Only rather more quickly than I had expected.’

‘So you think he paid that man to kill you?’