Whiteout - Ken Follett [28]
At last he was summoned to Harry’s presence. Nervous, he followed the bodyguard through the laundry at the back of the house to the pool pavilion. It was built to look like an Edwardian orangery, with glazed tiles in somber colors, the pool itself an unpleasant shade of dark green. Some interior decorator had proposed this, Kit guessed, and Harry had said yes without looking at the plans.
Harry was a stocky man of fifty with the gray skin of a lifelong smoker. He sat at a wrought-iron table, dressed in a purple toweling robe, drinking dark coffee from a small china cup and reading the Sun. The newspaper was open at the horoscope. Daisy was in the water, swimming laps tirelessly. Kit was startled to see that she seemed to be naked except for diver’s gloves. She always wore gloves.
“I don’t need to see you, laddie,” Harry said. “I don’t want to see you. I don’t know anything about you or what you’re doing tonight. And I’ve never met anyone called Nigel Buchanan. Are you catching my drift?” He did not offer Kit a cup of coffee.
The air was hot and humid. Kit was wearing his best suit, a midnight-blue mohair, with a white shirt open at the neck. It seemed an effort to breathe, and his skin felt uncomfortably damp under his clothes. He realized he had broken some rule of criminal etiquette by contacting Harry on the day of the robbery, but he had no alternative. “I had to talk to you,” Kit said. “Haven’t you seen the news?”
“What if I have?”
Kit suppressed a surge of irritation. Men such as Harry could never bring themselves to admit to not knowing something, however trivial. “There’s a big flap on at Oxenford Medical,” Kit said. “A technician died of a virus.”
“What do you want me to do, send flowers?”
“They’ll be tightening security. This is the worst possible time to rob the place. It’s difficult enough anyway. They have a state-of-the-art alarm system. And the woman in charge is as tough as a rubber steak.”
“What a whiner you are.”
Kit had not been asked to sit down, so he leaned on the back of a chair, feeling awkward. “We have to call it off.”
“Let me explain something to you.” Harry took a cigarette from a packet on the table and lit it with a gold lighter. Then he coughed, an old smoker’s cough from the depths of his lungs. When the spasm had passed, he spat into the pool and drank some coffee. Then he resumed. “For one thing, I’ve said it’s going to happen. Now you may not realize this, being so well brought up, but when a man says something’s going to happen, and then it doesn’t, people think he’s a wanker.”
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t even dream of interrupting me.”
Kit shut up.
“For another thing, Nigel Buchanan’s no drugged-up schoolboy wanting to rob Woolworth’s in Govan Cross. He’s a legend and, more important than that, he’s connected with some highly respected people in London. When you’re dealing with folk like that, even more you don’t want to look like a wanker.”
He paused, as if daring Kit to argue. Kit said nothing. How had he got himself involved with these people? He had walked into the wolves’ cave, and now he stood paralyzed, waiting to be torn to pieces.
“And for a third thing, you owe me a quarter of a million pounds. No one has ever owed me that much money for so long and still been able to walk without crutches. I trust I’m making myself clear.”
Kit nodded silently. He was so scared he felt he might throw up.
“So don’t tell me we have to call it off.” Harry picked up the Sun as if the conversation were over.
Kit forced himself to speak. “I meant postpone it, not call it off,” he managed. “We can do it another day, when the fuss has died down.”
Harry did not look up. “Ten a.m. on Christmas Day, Nigel said. And I want my money.”
“There’s no point in doing it if we’re going to get caught!” Kit said desperately. Harry did not respond. “Everyone can wait a little longer, can’t they?” It was like talking to the wall. “Better late than never.”
Harry glanced toward the pool and made a