“What kept you?” Dillon asked.

Billy raised the pump gun. “I’ll kill the lot of you!”

“No, you won’t, Billy, leave off,” Harry Salter told him. “Just cut us free.” He glanced at Baxter’s burnt face. “Don’t worry, George, I’ll get you patched up at the London Clinic. Only the best for my boys.” Released, he stood, flexing his hands. “Dillon, you look ridiculous, but I’ll remember you in my will.”

The one Dillon had shot in the thigh and the gypsy were sprawled on the bench seat beneath the mirror. Hooker leaned against the table, moaning, blood everywhere.

Salter laughed. “Out of your league, but you never realized it.”

“Let’s go,” Dillon said. “Your speedboat awaits.”

“All right.” Salter turned to Hooker. “Very good Indian surgeon near Wapping High Street. Name of Aziz. Tell him I sent you.” He went out on deck, and they all followed. He paused at the top of the steps down to the speedboat. “I was forgetting. Let me have that Walther, Dillon.”

Dillon handed it over without hesitation and Salter went back into the saloon. There was a shot followed by another, a cry of pain. He reappeared and handed the Walther back to Dillon.

“What did you do?” Dillon asked as they went down the ladder.

“What your lot do, the bleeding IRA. I gave him one in each kneecap, put him on sticks,” Salter said. “I could have killed him, but he’d be a better advert that way. Now let’s get the hell out of here, and introduce me to your friend. He seems to know what he’s doing.”

Back at the Dark Man, Hall took Baxter away for medical assistance and Salter, Blake, and Billy sat in a booth on the empty bar.

“Champagne, Dora,” Salter called. “You know this bugger likes Krug, so Krug it is.”

Billy said, “Here, I’ll help you, Dora,” and he got up and went behind the bar.

Salter said, “Bloody lucky for me you came along. What was it you wanted to see me about?”

“Something special,” Dillon said. “Very hush-hush, but mixed in is a lawyer who called on a prisoner at Wandsworth using a phoney name. One George Brown.”

“How can you be sure he was a lawyer, or not, for that matter?”

“Let’s put it this way. The way he handled himself would seem to indicate that he knows his way round the criminal system. I thought you might recognize him.”

He took four photos of the mysterious Brown from his inside pocket and spread them out. Salter looked them over. “Sorry, old son, never seen him before.”

Dora came over wrestling with the cork of a bottle of Krug and Billy followed with an ice bucket. He put it down on the table and looked down at the photos. “Blimey, what’s he doing there?”

There was a slight, stunned silence and Dillon said, “Who, Billy, who is he?”

“Berger – Paul Berger.” He turned to Salter. “You remember how Freddy Blue was up for that fraud case nine months ago, taking down payments for television sets that never arrived?”

“Sure I do.”

“This guy, Berger, was his lawyer. He came up with some law nobody had ever heard of and got him off. Very smart. He’s a partner in a firm called Berger and Berger. I remember because I thought it sounded funny.”

Dillon said to Dora, “Get me the telephone book, will you?”

Billy poured champagne. “Was that what you wanted?”

“Billy, you just struck gold for us.” Dillon raised his glass. “Here’s to you.” He took the champagne straight down and got up. “I’ll phone Ferguson.”

He moved down the bar and made his call. After a while, he came back. “Okay?” Blake asked.

“Yes, Ferguson’s having a check via BT.”

“Let’s hope they don’t have a Maccabee on their information service staff,” Blake said.

“Hardly likely. They can’t be everywhere, so no sense in getting paranoid.”

“And what’s a Maccabee?” Salter asked. “Sounds like a bar of chocolate to me.”

“Anything but, Harry,” and Dillon held out his glass for a refill.

His mobile rang and he switched on, taking out a pen and writing what Ferguson told him on the back of a bar mat.

“Fine, we’ll be in touch.” He switched off and nodded to Johnson. “I’ve got his home address. Camden Town. Let’s move.”

He got up and Salter took his hand. “Hope you find what you need.”

“Glad to have been of service, Harry.”

“Not as bloody glad as I am,” Salter said.

The address was in a lane called Hawk’s Court off Camden High Street. “Fifteen – that’s it,” Blake said, and Dillon slowed.

The street was lined with villas built on the high tide of Victorian prosperity and varied greatly. It was obviously what real estate agents call an up-and-coming area, with young professionals moving in and improving the properties they had bought. The result was that some of the houses looked seedy and rundown and others had new windows and shutters and brightly painted doors with brasswork.

Number fifteen filled neither category. It wasn’t exactly rundown, but it didn’t look particularly up-market. Dillon turned at the end of Hawk’s Court. There was an old church there, very Victorian in appearance, with a cemetery. There was a gate through railings, one or two benches, a couple of old-fashioned street lamps. Dillon turned, drove back, and parked on Camden High Street at the side of the road.

They walked back. Blake said, “How do you intend to handle this?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Dillon told him.

“Well, we can’t just leave him around like a loose cannon after speaking to him.”

“We have a suitable safehouse where he could be kept,” Dillon said.

“And what if Judas misses him? Smells a rat?”

“What have we got left, Blake, four days? Maybe the time has come to take chances. Let’s find this Berger and put the fear of God in him. To hell with him anyway. Marie and Hannah are more important.”

They opened the gate, went up a few steps, and rang the doorbell. The house stayed quiet and dark. Dillon tried again. “No good,” he said finally. As he turned to Blake, the door of the next house, one of the rundown variety, opened and a young woman appeared.

She had blond hair topped by a black beret and wore a black plastic mac and plastic boots in the same color. “Sure you’re not looking for me?” she asked.

“No. Mr. Berger,” Dillon told her.

She locked her door. “Sorry, I thought it might be business. He’s out most of the time. Lives on his own since his wife left him. Does he owe you money?”

“Jesus, no,” Dillon said. “We’re just clients. He’s our lawyer.”

“Well, he usually goes to Gio’s Restaurant in the evenings. Turn right at the end and it’s a hundred yards.”

“Thanks very much,” Dillon told her, and she walked away very quickly, high heels tapping.

“Come to think of it, I haven’t eaten,” Blake said.

“Then Gio’s it is. There’s only one problem. We know my cottage in Stable Mews was bugged with directional microphones. Maybe Berger was personally involved, maybe not, but there’s a chance he knows me, so you’ll have to eat alone.”

“Poor old Sean, you’ll starve,” Blake said. “But I see your point.”

Gio’s was a small Italian family sort of place with checked tablecloths, lighted candles, and one or two booths. Dillon stayed back and Blake stood and consulted the bill of fare in the window. He turned his head and said quietly, “He’s alone, second booth from the window, reading a book and eating pasta. He’s heavily into the book. You can look.”

Dillon did as he was told, recognized Berger for himself, and dropped back. “In you go. I’ll just hang around. When he leaves, we’ll take him in Hawk’s Court.”

“You mean follow him into his house?”

“No, he probably has good security, with the kind of clients he’s got. It could be messy. We’ll take him up to that churchyard and have words there.”