He opened the door and lowered himself tenderly to the ground, massaging the kinks out of his bones.
In front of him, a broad squat mass loomed blackly against the starlight — the Old Barn, which really had been a derelict thatched Tudor barn before Peter Quentin found it and transformed its interior into a cosy rural retreat with enough modern conveniences to compete with any West End apartment. It had the advantage of being far from any listening and peeping neighbours; and the Saint had found those assets adequate reason for borrowing it before. In that secluded bivouac things could be done and noises could be made which would set a whole suburb chattering if they happened in it…
There was an inexorable assurance of those facts implicit in the resilience of the Saint's stride as he rambled towards the rear of the van. And as he approached it, in the silence which had followed the shutting off of the scrangling engine, he heard a hoarse voice raised in wailing melody.
"If I had de wings of a nangel,
From dese prison walls I would fly,
I would fly to de arms of my darling,
An' dere I'd be willing to die…"
Simon unfastened the doors while the discordant dirge continued to reverberate from the interior.
"/ wish I had someone to lurve me,
Somebody to call me her own, I wish—"