Seven Days to a Killing by Clive Egleton

Author:Clive Egleton [Egleton, Clive]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Ostara Publishing
Published: 2012-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

12

JARMAN ARRIVED IN ST MALO A FEW MINUTES BEFORE SIX AND CHECKED IN AT the Hotel Central in the Grande Rue. He asked for a single room with a private bathroom and was offered one on the second floor overlooking the street, which he promptly accepted. He registered under the name of Marcel Vergat, confirmed with the receptionist that he could stay on until the following Monday and then went up to his room.

Jarman closed the French windows which opened on to a tiny balcony overlooking the narrow cobbled street, drew the blinds and locked the door before he started to unpack. Tarrant’s briefcase lay on top of the clothes, and he wished now that he had got rid of it en route and just kept the velvet bag which contained the diamonds, but, at the time, he had been reluctant to stop and find a secure hiding-place for it. He hung up his suits in the wardrobe, left a clean shirt and a fresh change of underwear on the chair and put the rest away in the chest of drawers. Loosening the cord around the neck of the bag, Jarman tipped the diamonds out on to the bed, and having sorted them into eight piles roughly equal in size, he then filled the pouches on the money belt. He took the belt with him into the bathroom, stripped off, showered and then dressed for dinner. He checked his appearance in the full-length mirror and satisfied himself that the receptionist would have to be particularly observant to notice that his waistline had become a little thicker in the space of an hour.

The dining-room was a European melting pot. A party of six Italian nuns held silent court at one table with their Mother Superior whose facial expression clearly showed that neither the group of German students who were loud in voice and spirit, nor the young French couple who held hands while they fed each other with delicate slices of lobster met with her approval. She appeared to make an exception where Jarman was concerned, for every time their eyes happened to meet, she favoured him with an acid smile. Deep in thought, he returned her smile vacantly.

Jarman was thinking about Melissa Julyan and wondering how far he could trust her. Until this moment, he had dealt all along with professionals whose competence he respected, but now he was being forced to deal with an amateur and his security would be at risk. He had never been totally enthusiastic about this operation from the time it was first mooted in Berlin, but he had been ordered to do it by the KGB, and if you were a Russian it paid never to argue with those people. He remembered that evening as if it were only yesterday.

He had left his hotel in the Linden Allee and walked briskly towards the U Bahn in Theodor-Heuse Platz and the savagely cold January night had turned his escaping breath into a white cloud and the frozen snow had crunched under his feet.

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