He reached out to take her hand. "I want to tell you something strange, sweetheart. It's hard to put into words and it sounds crazy, but I have a curious sense of... of relief, of satisfaction almost, at having endured a beatingup. I'm a cardcarrying coward and the thought of being the kind of victim they sometimes show you on television makes my stomach churn. But now it's happened, and it's past, and I've come out on the other side." He laughed suddenly. "G.o.d, I wouldn't want it to happen again, but... I don't know, I've sort of joined the club of those who've been through it, and I feel a bit braced up by that." He shook his head. "What's a nice girl like you doing, married to a total prat like me?"

"I can't remember now," Dinah said thoughtfully, "but I guess I had nothing better to do that day. Let's give it a bit longer anyway. I think I've started a baby."

Collier stared, then nodded. "Yes. As a professional statistician and l.u.s.tful maths expert I was beginning to suspect something of the sort." He took her hand and touched it to his lips. "That's wonderful, sweetheart."

"Yep. Good old fertile Collier."

"Oh, come now. You were there too, as I remember." He released her hand. "My word, I do lead an interesting life. Do you know this will be the first time I've ever beaten a pregnant woman at backgammon."

"c.o.c.ky sod," said Dinah amiably, and threw the dice. "Not yet you haven't."

Weng sat in a hired car parked a short stone's throw from The Black Horse. During the past week he had checked that the man called Pike came regularly between halfpast seven and eight, and stayed for about an hour. This evening Pike had arrived ten minutes ago, and Weng had used his mobile phone to report this fact. Now he watched with interest as a man and a woman on foot turned the corner and moved towards the pub.

The man was greyhaired, quite tall but paunchy and roundshouldered, wearing a dark, rather shabby suit and a clerical collar. The woman was also greyhaired and running to fat. Incongruously she wore a white T-Shirt with Jesus Saves on it and green corduroy trousers. As they pa.s.sed the car Weng saw that the man had sad, hangdog brown eyes and carried a concertina hung round his neck. The woman had blue eyes, wore grey cotton gloves and carried a small haversack with some papers sticking out of it. In the mirror Weng watched them enter the pub and prepared to follow.

As the door swung to, the clientele of The Black Horse fell suddenly silent, all eyes on the newcomers. Some glanced sidelong to where Pike stood drinking with three or four of his close cronies. Here was unusual fodder for Pike, and they wondered how he would react. Pike favoured younger, possibly tougher prey, but all was grist that came to his mill for the propagation of his image as the hardest of hard men.

The couple gazed benignly around, then the man played a long chord on his concertina. "Good evening, brothers," he said with a strong Scottish accent. "Ah am the Reverend James McNally but Ah'd be much pleased if you'd call me Jamie, and here's my wife, Jeannie. We come not to preach but to lift your hearts with songs of praise to the good Lord." He looked towards the barman. "You've no objection, brother?"

The barman, a dour man in his fifties, looked a question at Pike, who gave a slight shake of his head and set down his gla.s.s. Moving as if to the door, he walked past the woman, jostling her with his shoulder so that she stumbled sideways and almost fell. Her husband said in severe tones, "Have a care, friend. It's no' polite to be near knockin' a woman doon."

Pike turned to him. "Who the b.l.o.o.d.y 'ell d'you think you are? We don't want no biblethumping jocks 'ere." His fist flashed out in a hook to the head, and the man staggered back, yet even as Pike prepared to follow up he had an odd feeling that his blow had barely connected and it was therefore strange that the vicar or whatever he was had gone reeling back across the barroom to fetch up against a table near the door.

Pike had taken no more than a pace after his victim when the woman was suddenly there confronting him, eyes blazing.

"Ye'll no' abuse ma husband when he's speakin' for the Lord!" she cried angrily. "Repent before the Almighty, ye great cowardly bullyin' creature! Doon on yer knees, wull ye? Doon on yer knees an' beg forgiveness, ye fallen brute sinner!" Somebody laughed. n.o.body noticed the young oriental who slipped through the door and stepped lithely up on to the table where the Reverend James McNally now stood.

Then it happened. Pike swung an open hand to slap the woman aside, but by the smallest of movements, seemingly unintentional, she evaded the full force of the blow so that it became little more than a light slap across the face. Then one gloved hand swung in a seemingly casual fashion to hit Pike in the face with the littlefinger edge, and it was as if he had been struck by an iron bar. He reeled back, blood streaming from his nose, shock and fury exploding within him. Then he launched himself at her.

Throughout the next thirty seconds the woman never ceased talking. At first she moved back in a small circle, seeming ever and by chance just beyond reach of Pike, yet hitting him incessantly with her gloved hands and sometimes with a flickering movement of a sensibly shod foot. After fifteen seconds it was Pike who retreated, trying to escape her, limping, clutching at his ribs, cowering with an arm crooked above his head.

And all the time her penetrating voice hammered at him. "Have ye no shame, man? Wull ye lay wicked hands on a poor wee woman who did'nae ask but that ye put aside the ways o' violence an' repent before the Lord? For yer ain soul I'm beggin' ye to remember the worm that dieth not an' the fire that burneth for ay. Up, man! Up!" He had fallen, and she hauled him to his feet by an ear. "I'll have ye fall on yer knees from yer ain guid wish to repent, not from weakness o' the flesh!"

Only one man noticed the young oriental with the camcorder to his eye, and moved towards him. As he approached the table, the vicar with the concertina gave him a friendly smile. An arm shot out, and the man remembered nothing more until he woke under the table several minutes later. Another crony ventured to intervene between Pike and the woman, reaching out to grab her arm. It seemed almost an accident when she backheeled him in the crotch. He gave a screech of pain and sank to his knees, clutching himself. The rest simply watched, transfixed, bereft of all initiative.

Then, in the closing seconds of the woman's exhortation, when Pike was croaking, "No... please... no," the atmosphere among the spectators changed from one of dazed incredulity to something akin to awestruck pleasure. The monster they had long feared and fawned on was being destroyed, and like human jackals they found relish in this.

Pike was on his knees, barely conscious, hands held up before his face. The woman stepped back and took some sheets of paper from her haversack. "Right, Jamie," she said with a glance towards her husband, "Let's have a wee song." She moved around, thrusting papers into reluctant hands, and looked coldly at the barman. "We're stubborn folk for the Lord, and it's a song we'll have now from you good people, else it'll mean our comin' back each night till we've stirred the spirit in yer souls."

The barman had drawn breath to protest, but her last words changed his mind. Stupefied by the concept that this visitation could afflict him nightly, and unable to think of any other action he could take, he looked balefully round at his clientele and muttered hoa.r.s.ely, "Sing. Sing, for Christ's sake!"

The concertina wheezed an introduction, then launched into the verse of Yes, Jesus Loves Me. Led by Jamie and Jeannie, too dazed to resist, the pub regulars began to sing, feebly at first, but then, exhorted by the barman and under the woman's menacing eye, with greater effort. Pike still knelt, the singers grouped roughly behind him. The woman pinched his ear hard. "Sing up, ye glaikit tattiebogle!" she commanded stridently, and Pike began to open and close his swollen mouth in wordless mime.

After one chorus she gave orders for him to be carried outside. The young oriental followed, saw him dumped on the pavement, called for an ambulance on his phone, then listened happily to the renewed singing within for a few moments before making for his car. Two minutes later the greyhaired couple emerged from The Black Horse, walked to the corner and disappeared.

Weng waited, but n.o.body followed, and as soon as he heard the ambulance arriving he drove off.

At nine o'clock that evening Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin called at Kempton Road Hospital. They had changed their clothes in a hotel room and removed padding, wigs, and coloured contact lenses they had worn as Jamie and Jeannie McNally. Modesty had removed the thin strips of lead she had worn inside her gloves along the little finger edges of the hands.

Dr Ramsey said, "Aren't you the couple who were here a week or two ago when that poor blind girl's husband got beaten up at The Black Horse?"

Modesty said, "Yes, that's right. We happened to be pa.s.sing tonight and called in to say that Professor Collier's doing very well and to thank you. We'd like to make a contribution to your staff fund, or to anything for the hospital. Can we leave you and Sister to decide?"

She handed the young doctor a cheque. He looked at it and whistled. "This is very generous, Miss Blaise." Suddenly a huge grin spread across his face. "As a matter of fact we're having rather a good nightshift tonight." He glanced at Sister beside him, who nodded, then went on, "This is off the record. We're over the moon because that Black Horse thug himself was brought in an hour ago, and somebody's beaten the living daylights out of him. You'll never believe this, but apparently it was some old religious bird who duffed him up."

Dr Ramsey shook his head in disbelief. "Pike didn't tell us, he hasn't said a word - oh, not because he's stoic, he's just plain traumatised! But when our ambulance chaps picked him up a couple of his cronies were standing around outside where they'd dumped him ex-cronies maybe, because they seemed quite psyched up about it and weren't doing a thing for him. Anyway, they said this old couple had come in to sing hymns, and Pike hit the man, then slapped the woman and she went for Pike and fairly beat the - er, you know "Beat the s.h.i.t out of him," said Sister happily. "He has just about the same injuries as he caused your friend. It's amazing."

Dr Ramsey lowered his voice. "And Pike's crying," he said with delight. "She's broken the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Modesty and Willie looked at each other in astonishment, then at Dr Ramsey. Willie said, "Well, I'm sure that will help speed up our friend's recovery."

"And we can tell him tonight," said Modesty. "He's staying with us. Thank you very much, doctor."

At noon next day Inspector Brook was in his office with Inspector Harry Lomax watching the tape and listening to the sounds for the third time running. When Brook turned the TV off Lomax wiped his eyes and said, "It's my best day since I joined the force, Brookie. Tell her if she ever wants to murder someone she can come and do it on my patch for free. What in G.o.d's name is a glaikit tattiebogle?"

Brook said, "According to Willie it translates as a clumsy scarecrow, but it's much more scathing than that in the vernacular. A Glaswegian called Jock Miller ran her transport section for The Network, and Willie says she picked it up from him."

"Well, give 'em my very best," said Lomax. He nodded towards the screen. "But I can't tell my boys who they really are?"

"No way, Harry. That was Jamie and Jeannie McNally, who came and went, n.o.body knows where from or to. Wasn't it b.l.o.o.d.y marvellous, though?"

Lomax grinned. "Pike's deader than if they'd killed him. He won't dare show his face in the East End again. Look, can I have copies of that tape? I could push them around a few pubs on my patch where they'll love seeing Pike getting duffed up. Could do us a bit of good."

"I'll ask her," said Brook, "but if she says no, that's final, Harry."

Lomax lifted a hand. "It's final. I owe her more than that." He hesitated. "Any chance of meeting her?"

Brook looked doubtful. "She doesn't like a lot of attention, or thanks either. I can't go to her and say my old mate Harry Lomax is dying to meet her. But... well, if ever something crops up, a window of opportunity as they say, I'll do what I can."

"Thanks. But don't forget." Lomax got to his feet and stood gazing at the blank screen thoughtfully. "You can tell her one thing, though. She'll know it, but tell her anyway. Whoever the big boys behind Pike are, they won't have to guess who Jamie and Jeannie were. By now they'll know exactly what happened, and they'll know those two were Modesty Blaise and Willie Garvin. n.o.body can disguise style, Brookie, and what happened at The Black Horse reeks of their style."

It was ten days later when Modesty rang Willie at The Treadmill. He was working out solo in his combat room behind the pub, and her call was put through to him there.

" 'Allo, Princess, what's new? Has it been confirmed about Dinah's baby?"

"Yes, and I'm so pleased for them after what happened last time."

"Me too. We'll stand guard this time, no messing. You still getting calls from Old Alex?"

"Three last week. He says everybody's very kind, but there's no hint of his memory coming back and I don't think he's happy."

"Fishes out of water usually aren't."

"I know. But listen, Willie, I've rung because something pretty weird happened an hour ago. I had a call from Sir Angus McBeal."

"What?"

"Yes, what indeed."

McBeal was a very rich man, a director of a number of companies. His activities were closely watched by the City, for if McBeal decided that a particular investment was a Good Thing then the City was inclined to follow. What was known to perhaps only three other people in the world beside Modesty and Willie was that Sir Angus McBeal was also one of the four directors of Salamander Four, probably the world's most formidable criminal group outside the Mafia.

There had been a time when Salamander Four accepted a contract for the obscene killing of the Colliers from a client seeking leverage over Modesty and Willie. It was a Dead Man's Handle contract, unstoppable even though the client had been killed. Modesty had confronted McBeal and told him that his life would be forfeit if the Colliers were harmed, also the lives of his three European codirectors, Chard, Gesner and Pereda. The same applied, she had said, if any attempt were made to dispose of her or Willie Garvin, pointing out that she and Willie were highly experienced in not getting killed, while McBeal and his colleagues were not.

McBeal had never admitted his connection with Salamander Four, but the contract had been cancelled and the fifty thousandpound fee sent to Modesty for the Colliers as confirmation that it was no longer running. That was over a year ago. Now, out of the blue, McBeal had made contact and Willie was amazed.

"It couldn't 'ave been for a social chat, Princess. What did he want?"

"I don't know yet. Well, I know he wants to meet me, with you present if you and I so wish. He wants me to name a day and time next week, but I needn't tell him the place until just before we meet. The only thing he asks is that a telephone be available."

There was a long silence. At last Willie said, "Weird isn't the word. When you said he wanted to meet you I started thinking he aimed to set you up for a hit, but he's covered that by letting you fix the time and name the place at short notice."

"Right. So what can he have to say to us?"

"Beats me, Princess, but we'd better find out."

"I have the same feeling. I thought of making it noon next Tuesday if you're free then. He lives in Belgrave Square, so I can ring him there half an hour before and tell him to come to the penthouse. He might antic.i.p.ate that, but I can't see that it matters. We'll be watching him, and anyway he's no hitman, he's a headoffice man."

Willie said, "Tuesday's fine. All right if I come up Monday evening?"

"Yes, I'd like that. Come to dinner."

"Thanks, Princess. See you then."

At noon precisely, five days later, Weng took a call from the porter in reception and was told that Sir Angus McBeal had arrived to see Miss Blaise by appointment. He was alone. "As arranged," Weng reported, "Hudson informed me that Sir Angus was carrying only his hat, umbrella, and a small doc.u.ment case. I have said he was to be sent up."

Modesty and Willie were in the penthouse drawingroom. She said, "All right, Weng. Show him in, then lurk in the kitchen. The intercom's on so you'll hear whatever's said."

When McBeal arrived in the foyer he gave hat and umbrella to Weng but retained the slim doc.u.ment case. Modesty and Willie were standing when he entered the drawingroom. She thought he had aged since she had last seen him a year ago. He still wore the oldfashioned boardroom uniform of dark suit and wing collar, but it seemed to hang looser on him. His thin grey hair was thinner, his long neck more scrawny, and he looked ten years older than a man in his fifties and in normal health should look.

Modesty said, "Good morning, Sir Angus. This is a surprising visit."

"These are surprising times, Miss Blaise," he said in the rather highpitched voice she remembered. "I have come here to thank you and to do you a service."

"To thank me? I can't imagine for what."

"It would be quite impossible for you to do so, Miss Blaise, but I shall be happy to explain. May I sit down?"

She gestured towards an armchair and seated herself on the chesterfield, facing him across a coffee table. He gave her a stiff little bow and moved to the chair. Once he was seated, Willie settled himself beside her on the chesterfield. McBeal cleared his throat and said, "I have discovered that you were the person who recently found Lord Sayle living as a peasant on a farm in the Pyrenees, having suffered total amnesia following the occasion when the aircraft he was piloting crashed in France in 1943."

McBeal paused, looking over his gla.s.ses at her as if giving her the opportunity to comment, but she simply looked at him impa.s.sively. After a moment or two he went on, "Yes, I know your name was never mentioned in the newspapers, but I happen to know that you were in that area at that time and I suspect that Alexander Sayle or another resident of the farm had some hand in your escape from slow death in a cave."

She felt Willie go stiff beside her, and fought to prevent the abrupt shock of McBeal's last words showing in her face or bodylanguage. Her voice was mellow as she spoke. "Are you saying that was a Salamander Four contract?"

McBeal nodded. "Yes. An inhouse operation. There was no client. I hope you will believe that I protested most strongly and was outvoted."

She looked at Willie, who said, "We might need convincing."

"I hope," said McBeal, "to satisfy you on that score later. For the moment may I say that a considerable schism has developed between my colleagues and me. They have never forgiven the loss of face suffered when forced to cancel the Collier contract and pay the contract price to the Colliers as proof of cancellation."

Modesty said, "You took a different view?"

"Certainly. I have dealt with you face to face, Miss Blaise, they have not. I am less given to emotional reaction than are my colleagues. I pressed the view that you were no threat to us, that if we left you and any friend of yours alone, then you would leave us alone. This did not suffice for them. Hence, after a prudent delay, the contract for your slow death, for the execution of which we engaged a South American team of three who had very good references. They are comparatively new on the criminal scene. Have you heard of Las Sombras?"

She looked at Willie, who shook his head. "The Shadows?" she said. "No, but we'll certainly take note of the name."

"You need not trouble to do so, Miss Blaise. They died shortly after we heard of your safe return. We do not usually terminate subcontractors, but in this instance it was necessary to avoid any possibility of your tracing, through them, the partic.i.p.ation of Salamander Four in the enterprise."

Willie Garvin sat with a look of polite interest, trying to conceal the fact that he was struggling to collect his scattered wits. Here was this man, a princ.i.p.al of the most successful criminal group outside America for the past twenty years, sitting before a woman they had tried to kill, and retailing the manner of the event as if presenting a report on the halfyear results to a company boardroom.

Modesty said quietly, "Do you remember what I said we would do about Salamander Four if any attempt was made to kill either of us?"

"I do indeed, and vividly, Miss Blaise. You said you would kill us, the four princ.i.p.als, to prevent any further attempt, and I believed you. It was a very rational proposition."

"Be advised that it still holds, Sir Angus."

McBeal looked at his watch. "As to that, I shall shortly offer an alternative I hope you will find acceptable and may even deem a substantial service. Meanwhile may I proceed to the other purpose of my visit?"

"The other-? Oh, to thank me for something. Yes, I'd be most interested to hear about that."

"It refers to my opening remarks concerning your discovery of Lord Sayle, believed killed in action over fifty years ago." McBeal began to unzip the doc.u.ment case on his lap and Willie reached under his jacket to where twin knives were sheathed, but when McBeal's hand emerged it held only a bundle of a dozen or so letters, the paper on which they were written now yellowing with age. He laid them on the table before Modesty, and when he spoke his voice had changed. The words came hesitantly, as if he were shaken by emotion.

"These letters were sent to my mother during the war," he said. "Her name was Elaine McBeal, and she died when I was five. Her parents brought me up. They are long dead, and I have no other family."

Utterly bewildered and now making no attempt to hide it, Modesty said, "You wish me to read them?"

"At least one or two, if you please. All of them if you so wish."

She picked up the top letter. It was dated September 1942 and bore the letterhead of Sayle Manor, Fenstone Green, Kent. A touch of prescience sent a shiver of strange antic.i.p.ation through her. She drew a deep breath and began to read. The letter was only two short pages, and in it the writer hoped that he and Elaine would be able to make their leave coincide next time round, and that Elaine would spend at least part of it with him at the manor. There was more, for it was a very loving letter.

She read it carefully, pa.s.sed it to Willie and picked up the next. It was, she supposed, a typical wartime letter subject to censorship, giving nothing away and consisting only of small personal hopes and news. She heard Willie mutter 'Jesus!' and waited for him to finish both letters before she spoke.

"I won't read any more, Sir Angus. These are love letters written to Elaine McBeal, serving in the Women's Royal Air Force, by Flight Lieutenant the Honourable Alexander Sayle."

"Who was my father," said McBeal.

Incredibly, there were tears in his eyes now. He swallowed, and made an effort to keep his voice steady as he went on, "I am illegitimate, of course. He went missing six months before I was born. I was in my late teens before my grandparents told me what had happened and gave me the letters. My mother never told him she was pregnant. They said she feared he would think she was trying to force him into marriage. But this is why I have come to thank you, Miss Blaise, for finding my father."

There was a silence while she tried to unravel her tangled thoughts, to understand his motive, to find the right questions. At last she said, "I didn't find your father, Sir Angus. He found me, and saved my life."

"You were the instrument of his being found, Miss Blaise. I cannot tell you how grateful I am."

She said tentatively, "Have you come to me because you wish to see him? Do you feel you have some right of inheritance-?"

"No!" For the first time they saw pa.s.sion in his cold eyes. "No, no, no! He must never know that I exist. He would be so ashamed of me if he... if he knew the truth about his son."