"Trevor, Elleston as Hall, Adam - Quiller 03 - The Striker Portfolio 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hall Adam)

'When will you be seeing your friend?'

'My friend?'

The girl you share with.'

'I don't need anyone.'

It began the moment I shut the door after me and I didn't envy whoever it was that the Bureau would send along to see his wife because that was going to be even worse. We ought not to marry or if we marry we ought not to do the things we do.

No one tagged me from the block where she had her flat.

During the afternoon I showed up a few times at the Carlsberg where the manager was looking more cheerful: apparently the exodus of guests had stopped. He gave me the names of a couple of people known to be friends of Herr Lovett and I went to see them but it was no go: instead of telling me anything useful they just kept asking me why 'poor old Bill' should ever have 'done such a thing'.

One of them was at the conference hall and I hired a car to get there because it's easier tagging a car than a man on foot and I wanted to make it easy for them. It was a 250 SE and I chose the new grey because most of them were that colour and I didn't want them to think I was actually advertising or they'd wonder why, I was still drawing blank by nightfall. Either they weren't interested or they thought that with Lovett neutralized the rot had been stopped. All I could do was hang about at the hotel. Normal routine in the case of a bump is to stay clear but sometimes we're told to go in and find out what happened, and quite often the people who did it will keep in the area hoping for more trade. This time they didn't seem ambitious.

Finally I got fed up and drove down to Wernerstrasse and had a meal at the Bavarian place on the corner and when I came out they were sitting in a dark-coloured Opel parked twenty yards or so behind the 250 SE. It was the one that had been outside the Carlsberg when I'd started off from there.

The thing to do now was to make them lose me without my losing them. It's not an easy operation but it's always worth trying because if you're lucky you can find out where they go and that's halfway to finding out who they are. Ferris wanted to know that and it would be nice to ring him up and tell him.

I got in and had a look in the mirror. There were some traffic lights a hundred yards behind where the Opel was parked and that was almost the ideal distance. They were red at the moment. One or two cars were going past, turning out from a street not far up from the restaurant, but it was better to wait for the main bunch of traffic that was held up at the lights.

When they flicked to green I started the engine and sat watching for a bit to judge the conditions. The bunch of cars were coming up from behind me, two abreast and stringing out. I decided to call this one a dry run and wait for the next sequence of lights: it would give the oil more time to get round the engine before I used it as hard as I was going to. The 250 SE had a shoulder-type seat-belt so I put it on, watching the mirror. The lights were at red again and the tail-end of the bunch came past and left the street empty on this side.

It would be useful to edge the revs up a couple of hundred while I was waiting but they might notice the gas-haze and it wasn't worth risking; the engine was at fair working temperature and there shouldn't be any flat-spot even under full gun. There was nothing coming up from in front of me on the other side. In the mirror the lights were green and I touched the gearshift into low and kept the clutch down. The only thing that worried me now was that it was beginning to look too easy.

They must have got their own engine running by now but that wouldn't help them: what they would need was a tank.

In the mirror the two leading cars were halfway down the empty stretch and closing on me fast from behind and it looked about right so I brought the revs up and the wheel hard round and put the 250 broadside on to the bunched traffic in a turn so tight that I felt the nearside front stub-axle hit the buffer even though the weight was shifting aft under the acceleration. The initial wheel-spin cost a little traction but the curve was under control and I cleared the two leading cars with enough to spare although of course they didn't like finding me broadside on across their bows without any warning and they were braking hard and hitting their horns as I straightened out of the U-turn and dragged at the gear-shift and headed for the lights with the power still piling on.

There was some noise behind me on the left as the bunch began shunting and breaking their rearlights but it wasn't my fault because continental drivers never leave enough room for their brakes and they're always leaving red glass on the roadway even when there isn't a 250 across their bows. But the noise wasn't serious so I knew that the Opel hadn't even tried. In any case they wouldn't have stood a chance of making the same U-turn after me because the first two cars had already passed them when I'd pulled out and they could only have rammed into the rest of the bunch and they didn't have a tank.

The start I had on them now wasn't much more than sixty seconds but it was the most these particular conditions could allow: the whole operation was controlled by the traffic lights and their time sequence and when they went red again the hundred-yard stretch would become empty and the Opel would have room to manoeuvre. The lights would have stopped my run and brought the sixty seconds' start to a grinding halt if it weren't for the side-street halfway between the lights and the restaurant, the one where a few cars had been turning out while I was waiting for the off.

I went into it just as the Opel got under way with a lot of tyre-squeal and came up the street in my direction. I didn't lift my foot to give them time to see me because it wasn't necessary: they knew I wouldn't head straight on for the lights - which were now red again - and there was nowhere else to go except into the side-street.

It took seven or eight minutes to lose them. It would have taken less than that to lose them entirely but I wasn't trying to do that: I had to stay near enough to find them again. There was a dodgy bit where someone had double-parked a yolk-yellow Volkswagen and I thought for a minute I was going to clip it but it was all right. The only risk was a one-way street which I had to take in the wrong direction but the single car I met there tucked in so fast to let me through that they must have thought they were going in the wrong direction instead of me.

The engine was smelling a shade hot by now because the acceleration needs had kept me in second gear all the time but the oracle had been worked quite nicely and I put her into third and slowed down for cruising as soon as we were back in the Wernerstrasse.

They were the third car ahead and I stayed where I was for the moment. They seemed to have lost a lot of their excitement but they wouldn't be giving up until they'd combed the area in the hope that I'd pulled into a good place to play possum. They were doing that now.

One of the cars between us peeled off into the Bahnhof and I slowed to let a bus go past. There was more traffic about because people were coming away from the restaurants and the early shows and this was a help. The bus was a hazard though and when it drew in at the next stop there was nothing to do but overtake and expose the image of the 250 SE.

The Opel wasn't ahead any more. It was nearly alongside and we were in a group at some lights. I didn't turn my head to look at them but I knew they were looking at me. They must have spotted me some way back and they'd known I'd have to overtake the bus before long so they'd slowed under its cover and waited till I had to come past.

I decided to call the whole thing off for the night. They knew what I'd been trying to do: flush and follow. They wouldn't let me do it again so I wasn't going to find where their boss was and ring up Ferris and tell him. All I could do now was to get clear and hole up in a different hotel: if I went back to the Carlsberg the people at the Bureau would have to get out the form and deal with it, the one that said next-of-kin unknown.

The lights went green and I found a gap and took it and fouled into the wrong lane and got away with it and started a series of feints through the streets at the back of the Bahnhof but this time they were breaking all the rules too and the Opel left the mirror only twice before it came back again and sat there weaving about on its springs.