Hope. Len Deighton

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ anxiously. ‘Who are you? This is Kosinski’s place.’ If he had been a bit stronger he might have been angry.

      ‘I’m just a friendly burglar,’ I explained.

      I got him back on his feet and dragged him to the bathroom and to the tub. He rolled over the edge of it until he was full length in the empty bath. It was better that he bled there. ‘I’m Kosinski’s partner,’ he said.

      ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Sure.’ It was a preposterous claim.

      I got his jacket off and pushed him flat to open his shirt. I could see no arterial bleeding and most of the blood was in that tacky congealed state. There were a dozen or more deep cuts on his hands and arms where he had deflected the attack, but it was the small stab wounds on his body that were the life-threatening ones. Under his clothes he was wearing a moneybelt. It had saved him from the initial attack. It wasn’t the sort of belt worn by tourists and backpackers, but the heavy-duty type used by professional smugglers. Almost six inches wide, it was made of strong canvas that from many years of use was now frayed and stained and bleached to a light grey colour. The whole belt was constructed of pockets that would hold ingots of the size and shape of small chocolate bars. Now it was entirely empty. Loaded it would have weighed a ton, for which reason there were two straps that went over the shoulders. It was one of these shoulder straps that had no doubt saved this man’s life, for there was a fresh and bloody cut in it. A knife-thrust had narrowly missed the place where a twisted blade floods the lungs with blood and brings death within sixty seconds.

      ‘Just a scratch,’ I said. He smiled. He knew how bad it was.

      To my astonishment George Kosinski, my brother-in-law, arrived five minutes later. George who had left England never to return was back! I suppose he’d been trying to head off my visitor, for he showed little surprise to find him there. George was nearly forty years old, his wavy hair greying at the temples. He took off his glasses. ‘I came by cab, Bernard. A car will arrive any minute and I’ll take this fellow off your hands.’ He said it as casually as if he were the owner of a limousine service. Then he took out a handkerchief and began rubbing the condensation from his thick-rimmed glasses.

      ‘He loses consciousness and then comes back to life,’ I said. ‘He urgently needs attention. He’s lost a lot of blood; he could die any time.’

      ‘And you don’t want him to die here,’ said George, putting his glasses on and looking at the comatose man in the bathtub. His eyes were tightly closed and his breathing slow, and with the sort of snoring noise that sometimes denotes impending death. George looked at me and said: ‘I’m taking him to a Polish doctor in Kensington. He’s expected there. He’ll relax and trust someone who can talk his language.’ George moved into the drawing-room, as if he didn’t want to think about the man expiring in my bathtub.

      ‘It’s internal bleeding, George. I think he’s dying.’

      This prognosis showed no effect on George. He went to the window and looked down at the street as if hoping to see the car arrive. I think it was done to reassure me rather than because he really thought he’d see the promised car. George was Polish by extraction and a Londoner by birth. He was not handsome or charming but he was direct in manner and unstinting in his generosity. Like most self-made men he was intuitive, and like most rich ones, cynical. Many of the men he did deals with, and the ones who sat alongside him on his charity committees, were Poles, or considered themselves as such. George went out of his way to be sociable with Poles, but he was a man of many moods. Where his supporters found a cheerful self-confidence others encountered a stubborn ego. And when his mask slipped a little, his energetic impatience could become raging bad temper.

      Now I watched him marching backwards and forwards and around the room, flapping the long vicuna overcoat, or cracking the bones of his knuckles, and displaying that kind of restless energy that some claim is part of the process of reasoning. His face was clenched in anger. You wouldn’t have recognized him as a man grieving for his desperately loved wife. Neither would you have thought that this apartment had been until recently his own home, for he blundered against the chairs, kicked his polished brogues at the carpets and fumed like a teetotaller held on a drunk-driving charge.

      ‘He had nowhere to go,’ said George.

      ‘You’re wrong,’ I said, waving the key at him. ‘He had a key to this apartment. He tried the doorbell only to discover if it was clear.’

      George scowled. ‘I thought I’d called in all the keys. But perhaps you’d better have the locks changed, just to be on the safe side.’ He lifted his eyes quickly, caught the full force of the annoyance on my face and added: ‘They can’t just walk the streets, Bernard.’

      ‘Why not? Because they’re illegals? Because they don’t have papers or passports or visas? Is that what you mean?’ I put the key in my pocket and resolved to change the locks just as soon as I could get someone along here to do it. ‘Damn you, George, don’t you have any consideration for me or Fiona? She’ll be furious if she hears about this.’

      ‘Must you tell her?’

      ‘She’ll see the blood on the mat in the hall.’

      ‘I’ll send someone round to clean up.’

      ‘I’m the world’s foremost expert on cleaning blood marks off the floor,’ I said.

      ‘Then get a new mat,’ he said with exasperation, as if I was capriciously making problems for him.

      ‘I can’t think of anything more likely to excite Fiona’s suspicions than me going out to buy a new mat.’

      ‘So confide in her. Ask her to keep it to herself.’

      ‘It wouldn’t be fair to ask her. Fiona is big brass in the Department nowadays. And anyway she wouldn’t agree. She’d report it. She prefers doing things by the book, that’s how she got to the top.’

      George stopped pacing and went to take a brief look at the man in the bath, who was even paler than before, although his breathing was marginally easier. ‘Don’t make problems for me, Bernard,’ he said in an offhand manner that angered me.

      ‘My employers…’ I stopped, counted to ten and started again. More calmly I said: ‘The sort of people who run the Secret Service have old-fashioned ideas about East European escapers having the doorkey to their employees’ homes.’

      George put on his conciliatory hat. ‘I can see that. It was a terrible mistake. I’m truly sorry, Bernard.’ He patted my shoulder. ‘That means you will have to report it, eh?’

      ‘You’re playing with fire, George.’ I wondered if perhaps the death of his wife, Tessa, had turned his brain.

      ‘It’s simply that I’m not supposed to be in this jurisdiction: tax-wise. I’m in the process of losing residence. Just putting it around that I’ve been in England could cause me a lot of trouble, Bernard.’

      I noted the words – jurisdiction, tax-wise. Only men like George had a call on words like that. ‘I know what you’re doing, George. You’re asking some of these roughnecks to investigate the death of your wife. That could lead to trouble.’

      ‘They are Poles – my people. I have to do what I can for them.’ His claim sounded hollow when pitched in that unmistakable East London accent.

      ‘These people can’t bring her back, George. No one can.’

      ‘Stop СКАЧАТЬ