The Secret Pilgrim Read Online Free PDF Page B

pick a marital dispute with him. I tried to see whether Paul had unbuttoned his jacket, for he too favoured the cross draw. But his broad back was turned away from me.
    â€œAll right, College, show me,” said Money brightly into my left ear, appearing beside me as if by magic. How long had he been there? I had no idea. It was past midday and our time for standing down, but this was no moment to change the guard. The monkey was not five yards from us, stepping lightly but determinedly after the Panda.
    â€œWe can take him at the stairs,” I murmured.
    â€œSpeak louder,” Monty advised me, in the same unabashed voice. “Speak normally, no one listens to you. Mutter, mutter out of the corner of your mouth, they think you’ve come to rob the till.”
    Since we were on the first floor, the Panda’s party was sure to take the lift, whether they went up or down. Beside the lift stood a pair of swing doors opening on to what in those days was a stone emergency staircase, rather dank and insanitary, with linoleum treads. My plan, which I outlined to Monty in staccato sentences as we followed the monkey towards the archway, was simplicity itself. As the party approached the lift, Monty and I would close on him from either side, grab an arm each and sweep him into the staircase. We would subdue him with a blow to the groin, remove his weapon, then spirit him to Green Street where we would invite him to make a voluntary statement. In training exercises we had done such things a dozen times—once, to our embarrassment, to an innocent bank clerk who was hurrying home to his wife and family, and whom we had mistaken for a member of the training staff.
    But if Monty heard me, to my frustration he gave no sign of having done so. He was watching the floorwalkers clear a path through the crowd to the lift so that the Panda’s party could ride in privacy. And he was smiling like any casual commoner who stumbles on a glimpse of royalty.
    â€œShe’s going down,” he declared with satisfaction. “Pound to a penny it’s the costume jewellery she’s after. You’d think the Gulfies wouldn’t bother with the artificial stuff, but they can’t get enough of it; they think it’s got to be a bargain. Come on, son. This is fun. Let’s go and take a look.”
    I like to think that even in my perplexity I recognised the excellence of Monty’s tradecraft. The Panda’s exotic entourage, mostly in Arab dress, was arousing lively curiosity among the shoppers. Monty was just another punter, enjoying the spectacle. And yes, he was right again, their destination was the costume jewellery department, as the monkey also had divined, for as we emerged from our lift the monkey scampered ahead of the party to take up a favoured place alongside the glittering displays, his left shoulder nearest to the wall, exactly as required of a right-handed gunman who draws across his chest.
    Yet, far from choosing a strategic position from which to return fire, Monty merely wandered after him, and, having placed himself next to him, beckoned me to join them, and in such a way that I had no alternative but to leave Monty, not the monkey, at the centre of our trio.
    â€œThis is why I always come to Knightsbridge, son,” Monty was explaining, loudly enough for half the floor to hear. “You never know who you’re gong to meet. I brought your mother last time— you remember—we’d gone to the Harrods Food Hall. I thought: ‘ Hullo, I know you, you’re Rex Harrison.’ I could have held out my hand and touched him but I didn’t. It’s the crossroads of the world, Knightsbridge is, don’t you agree, sir?”—lifting his hat to the monkey, who smiled wanly in return. “Now I wonder where this lot would be from. Arabs, by the look of them, with the wealth of Solomon at their fingertips. And they don’t even pay taxes, I dare say. Not