was careful, though, not to take too much for granted. It was entirely possible that all he was being offered, by Lissa Lo and Lady Luck alike, was a lift to Church Fenton.
“I have to go back to my hotel,” he said, in a deeply apologetic manner that—for once—wasn’t feigned. “There mightn’t be time to get up the hill, pack my cases and get back down again before your boat casts off.”
“Why don’t you try?” she said. “The boat’s practically on the doorstep. I’ll hold it for you for...oh, an hour should still leave plenty of time. Not a moment longer, though.”
“If you really wouldn’t mind,” Canny said, in frank astonishment, as the cashier rammed wads of bills into a leather-clad bag.
“I really wouldn’t,” she assured him. “I’ll probably try to take a nap on the boat, but I can never sleep on planes—I’d be glad of the company. It’s a pity that the news about your father has spoiled your lucky day.” She glanced at the cash that was stacking up in the bag, but she obviously meant the outrageous good fortune that had thrown him at the feet of a woman whose private jet was landing two hundred miles closer to his home than the scheduled flight he’d intended to catch.
“Yes it is,” he agreed, prepared for the moment to regard the coincidence in exactly that light. “They say that these things always balance out in the long run, but there’s no compensation for losing a father.”
“Mine died some time ago,” she said, “but I know what you mean. People who think that things always balance out don’t understand the real nature of chance, do they?”
She turned away as she said it, denying him not only the opportunity to answer the rhetorical question but also the opportunity to look into her lovely eyes in the hope of figuring out exactly what she meant to imply.
CHAPTER THREE
Stepping out of the air-conditioned casino into the warm night air was like stepping into a bath. Sweat immediately began to form on his brow. The Mediterranean coast benefited from sea breezes, of course, but the sea never cooled enough to impart any real freshness to them. In Paris, it was said, thousands of people were dying from the heat every week. That was partly because so many doctors and other medical workers took their holidays in August, just like everyone else, but it was mostly the fact that the temperature never got much below blood heat, even at night. In Bordeaux, so rumor had it, even the age-old habit of throwing all the doors and windows open in the darkness before the dawn and then sealing the shutters tight against the sun wasn’t saving the populace from cooking slowly in their skins. Even in England—in Yorkshire, no less—the temperature was ten degrees above normal. No wonder his father had run out of energy with which to fight his cancer.
Mercifully, the cab was air-conditioned. It got Canny to the hotel in less than fifteen minutes, despite the tight bends it had to negotiate as it climbed the sheer face of the lavishly-overbuilt cliff. The driver was perfectly happy to wait for him, in order to make a return journey to the quay.
A breeze was stirring the foliage of the syringas in the garden as Canny made his way up the old stone steps, but it made little difference to the cloying warmth of the night. It seemed, in fact, to have a more tangible effect on the shadows gathered around him, which rippled and swayed in a curiously serpentine fashion. The soughing of the wind in the branches was easily imaginable as the hissing of snakes.
Canny always tried to listen to what the shadows were trying to tell him, but he couldn’t help wondering whether Stevie’s sports-psychology symbolism was playing games with him. He still felt a little nauseous, and a little fearful, but that was only to be expected, given the violence and complexity of the streak. Sometimes, darkness was perfectly natural, even when it shifted restlessly as he passed by.
The night-manager was waiting at the desk to see if Canny needed anything further, and Canny explained the change of plan.
“I’ll just pack the essentials in a single bag, if that’s okay,” Canny said. “Could you have the rest packed up properly in the morning and send them on? I’ll send Bentley to pick them up at Leeds airport.”
“Of course, Monsieur.”
“Thanks. Can you get the stuff from the safe and have my bill ready in twenty minutes?”
“Yes, Monsieur.”
Canny went up the stairs two at a time rather than waiting for the elevator. He only had to go up to the first floor.
Because it looked out on to the elevated rear garden—the monks’ garden, it was called, although Canny doubted that the hotel had ever been a convent—the room didn’t have the feel of a first-floor room. One could easily jump from the balcony to the lawn without serious risk of injury. The balcony doors were closed, of course, and the curtains were drawn, but the first thing Canny did was to draw them open and open the door to let the breeze in so that the stuffiness did not become too oppressive as he packed. He switched on a bedside lamp and then switched off the strip light, so that he wouldn’t be displaying such an obvious beacon to every moth in Monaco.
He pulled out the smallest of his suitcases and placed the leather-bound bag from the casino in it before going to his drawers. He’d been on the move for more than two weeks, so he had a fairly extensive survival kit, but he had a reserve wardrobe at home so he didn’t need to worry too much about the possibility that his luggage might not follow him as quickly as it ought. He stripped off the clothes he was wearing, though, and put those in the case. Before getting dressed again he went to the bathroom to use the facilities and collect his shaver and toothbrush.
When he came back again there was a black-clad figure in a ski-mask standing by the bed, pointing a gun at him.
Canny’s first thought was that he had been an utter fool to let the intruder in, given the serpentine quality of the shadows that had pestered him on his approach—whose real symbolism now seemed far more obvious than he had carelessly assumed. Even by the muted light of the bedside lamp, though, the shadows that were actually congregated in the room didn’t seem panic-stricken. His unfocused fear hadn’t amplified itself into alarm, let alone panic. The gun-toter didn’t seem to have any immediate intention of shooting him—and probably wouldn’t form any such intention, unless he did something stupid.
Canny tried hard to judge the expression in the bandit’s eyes, but it wasn’t possible. There was uncertainty, of course—but in a situation like theirs, there would always be uncertainty. In a situation like theirs, there would always be scope for chance to take a hand, for action to be inhibited or encouraged by a wayward whim.
“Don’t move,” was all that the intruder said, in a voice so neutral in its quality that Canny couldn’t be certain whether it was male or female. Canny knew that the thief had already spotted the leather-bound bag in the suitcase, imperfectly obscured by a crumpled shirt. Now’s the moment, he thought, as the other moved to take the bag containing the forty-seven thousand Euros—but he didn’t move a muscle. He felt safe, as long as he didn’t precipitate another streak, and safety seemed enough, for the moment. He had already won one gamble at long odds—even if the highly-colored streak had contained some bad omens as well as bright ones—and it would undoubtedly be pushing his luck to conjure up another. He was five or six inches taller than the thief, and just as athletically built, and he had the Kilcannon luck on his side, but a gun was a gun and money was only money.
He did as he was told, and didn’t move.
The intruder picked up the bag containing his winnings and weighed it carefully, but didn’t bother to open it. He—assuming that it was a he—put out his right hand to flip aside the breast of the jacket Canny had discarded, exposing the wallet in the inside pocket, but he couldn’t take it out without putting down either the gun or the bag containing the forty-even thousand Euros. After a moment’s hesitation, he left the wallet where it was and turned back to Canny.
By that time, Canny had thought of several good reasons to justify his decision not to move. It simply wasn’t worth it; the money might be slightly more than a drop in the ocean, but it wasn’t anything he