Cloak of Darkness Read Free Page B

the café still be waiting? He started down Bridle Lane toward the square, then halted. Luck was with him: the driver had finished his sausages and mash, or was it hot peas and vinegar? The taxi was coming this way. He signalled, and it stopped. He opened the door. A man raised himself from the back seat, held out an arm covered with a thin raincoat. Renwick saw the business-like nose of a revolver just showing from under the coat’s folds. “Hop in. I’ll give you a lift,” said Alvin Moore.
    Renwick got in. “Unnecessary,” he said, looking at the pistol. The driver hadn’t even noticed; he had had his instructions, for the cab started forward with not a minute lost. A red-necked man, well fed, too, he was only intent on entering Fleet Street and gauging the traffic flow. “And much too noisy,” Renwick went on, controlling his anger. Moore was looking back at Bridle Lane.
    “Not so noisy.” Moore lifted the raincoat’s fold to show a silencer was attached. “And not unnecessary. What guarantee did I have that you wouldn’t use a gun to make me redirect the cabbie to your office?” He kept looking back.
    “No one was there to follow us. As promised.” Renwick was watching the direction the taxi was taking. So far, it seemed normal—allowing for one-way streets. They were now out of Fleet Street, driving north and then swinging west. They could be heading for Paddington Station.
    Moore took the rebuke with a shrug. He was tense, though.
    Preserve me from a jumpy man holding a pistol, Renwick thought. If he releases the safety catch, I’ll grasp his wrist, twist it up. I could draw the Biretta in that split second, but I won’t: a shoot-out in a cab is faintly ridiculous—would upset my British friends, too. Renwick eased his voice and kept a careful eye on Moore’s right hand. “You’ve got some strange ideas about the way we carry on our business at the office. Forcing people inside is not the way we work.”
    “You sure don’t consult or engineer.”
    “No?”
    Moore stared. “You an engineer?” he asked, unbelieving.
    “I was.”
    “Before the army?”
    “And for the first two years of my service.”
    “As I heard it, you engineer more than dams and bridges now.”
    “You’ve heard a lot of things, it seems.” Renwick looked pointedly at the driver’s red neck. “A friend of yours? Then we can start talking about what you’ve heard and where you heard it.”
    Moore shook his head. “Don’t know him. Just doing his job. And we’ll need more time than we’ll have in this cab. There’s a lot to talk about.” He was no longer on edge.
    So Renwick kept the conversation innocuous, nothing to stir up any more tension in Moore. “How did you produce a taxi at the right moment? Quite a triumph.”
    “Easy. I took a cab to Bridle Lane, found it couldn’t park there, so I settled for the square. All thirty feet of it. Some district, this.”
    “And you paid double the fare, promised double again if it waited for you?”
    A grin broke over Moore’s face. “With the cost of a hot supper thrown in. Easy.” He was back to normal, more like the corporal Renwick remembered from seven years ago. There were interesting changes, though: he carried more weight, but that was muscle, not fat. The deep tan, the leather skin with its creases at the eyes, and the furrows on either side of the tight mouth indicated much time out of doors in strong sun and tropical heat. His suit spelled city, however, some place like New York, where summer needed thin clothing. It looked fairly new, expensive but not custom-made. Not enough time for a tailor to measure and fit? A quick visit to America? The crisp white shirt had a buttoned-down collar, the tie was recognisably from Brooks Brothers. A nice picture of an affluent man. Except for the raincoat—definitely incongruous, probably bought in an emergency this morning when the rain had set in.
    Moore noticed the quiet scrutiny. “Well?” he demanded, his