Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,93

or so, I rose to my feet, stretched my spine, paced round Danielle’s car, and sat down again. Nothing of much interest occurred in the mews, and the hands of my watch travelled like slugs; eight o’clock, nine o’clock, ten.

I thought of Danielle, and of what she’d said when I left her.

‘For Aunt Casilia’s sake I must hope that the rattlesnake turns up in the mews, but if you get yourself killed, I’ll never forgive you.’

‘A thought for eternity,’ I said.

‘You just make sure eternity is spent right here on earth, with me.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, and kissed her.

The rattlesnake, I thought, yawning as eleven o’clock passed, was taking his time. I normally went round to the mews at one-thirty so as to be at Chiswick before two, and I thought that if Nanterre was planning a direct physical attack of any sort, he would be there well before that time, seeking a shadow to hide in. He hadn’t been there before seven, because I’d searched every cranny before settling in the garage, and there were no entrances other than the way in from the street. If he’d sneaked in somehow since then without my seeing him, we were maybe in trouble.

At eleven-fifteen, I stretched my legs round Danielle’s car and sat down again.

At eleven-seventeen, unaware, he came to the lure.

I’d been hoping against hope, longing for him to come, wanting to expect it … and yet, when he did, my skin crawled with animal fear as if the tiger were indeed stalking the goat.

He walked openly down the centre of the mews as if he owned a car there, moving with his distinctive eel-like lope, fluid and smooth, not a march.

He was turning his head from side to side, looking at the silent parked cars, and even in the dim light filtering down from the high windows of the surrounding buildings, the shape of nose and jaw were unmistakable.

He came closer and closer; and he wasn’t looking for a hiding place, I saw, but for my car.

For one appalling moment he looked straight at the partly opened door of the garage where I sat, but I was immobile in dark clothes in dark shadow, and I started breathing again when he appeared to see nothing to alarm him or frighten him away.

Nanterre was there, I thought exultantly; right there in front of my eyes, and all our planning had come to pass. Whatever should happen, I reckoned that that was a triumph.

Nanterre looked back the way he’d come, but nothing stirred behind him.

He came close to my car. He stopped beside it, about the length of a Rolls Royce away, and he coolly fiddled about and opened the passenger’s seat door with some sort of key as if he’d spent a lifetime thieving.

Well bloody well, I thought, and heard him unlatch the bonnet with the release knob inside the car. He raised the bonnet, propped it open with its strut, and leaned over the engine with a lighted torch as if working on a fault: anyone coming into the mews at that point would have paid no attention.

After a while, he switched off the torch and closed the bonnet gently, latching it by direct downward pressure of both palms, not by a more normal brisk slam. Finally he shut the open passenger door quietly; and as he turned away to leave, I saw he was smiling.

I wondered whether what he’d left by my engine was plastic, like his guns.

He’d walked several paces along the mews before I stood, slid out through the door and started after him, not wanting him to hear me too soon.

I waited until he was nearing a particular small white car parked on one side, and then I ran swiftly up behind him, quiet in rubber soles on the cobbles, and shone a torch of my own on the back of his neck.

‘Henri Nanterre,’ I said.

He was struck for a long moment into slow motion, unable to move from shock. Then he was fumbling, tearing at the front of a bloused gaberdine jacket, trying to free the pistol bolstered beneath.

‘Sammy,’ I yelled, and Sammy shot like a screaming cannon-ball out of the small white car, my voice and his whooping cries filling the quiet place with nerve-breaking noise.

Nanterre, his face rigid, pulled the pistol free. He swung it towards me, taking aim … And Sammy, true to his boast, kicked it straight out of his hand.

Nanterre ran, leaving the gun clattering to the ground.

Sammy and