Алистер Маклин: The Way to Dusty Death

‘Where does Johnny go each evening. We hardly ever see him after dinner nowadays.’

‘Johnny?’ Henry adjusted the flower in his button, hole. ‘No idea, miss. Maybe he prefers his own company. Maybe he finds the food better elsewhere. Maybe anything.’

Rory still held the magazine before his face. Clearly however he was not reading for his eyes were very still. But, at the moment, his whole being was not in his eyes but in his ears.

Mary said: ‘Maybe it’s not just the food that he finds better elsewhere.’

‘Girls, miss? Johnny Harlow’s not interested in girls.’ He leered at her in what he probably imagined to be a roguish fashion in keeping with the gentlemanly splendour of his evening wear. ‘Except for a certain you-know-who.’

‘Don’t be such a fool.’ Mary MacAlpine was not always milk and roses. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘What do you mean, miss?’

‘Don’t be clever with me, Henry.’

Henry assumed the sad expression of the continuously misjudged.

‘I’m not clever enough to be clever with anybody.’

Mary looked at him in cold speculation then abruptly turned away. Rory just as quickly averted his own head. He was looking very thoughtful indeed and the expression superimposed upon the thoughtfulness could hardly be described as pleasant.

Harlow, the hooded red light giving all the illumination he required, probed the depths of a box of spares. Suddenly, he half straightened, cocked his head as if to listen, switched off the torch, went to a side window and peered out. The evening darkness had deepened until it was now almost night, but a yellowish half-moon drifting behind scattered cloud gave just enough light to see by. Two men were heading across the transporter park, heading straight towards the Coronado unit, which was less than twenty feet from where Harlow stood watching. There was no difficulty at all in identifying them as MacAlpine and Jacobson. Harlow made his way to the Ferrari transporter’s door, unlocked it and cautiously opened it just sufficiently to give him a view of the Coronado transporter’s door. MacAlpine was just inserting his key in the lock. MacAlpine said:

‘So there’s no doubt then. Harlow wasn’t imagining things. Fourth gear is stripped.’

‘Completely.’

‘So he may be in the clear after all?’ There was a note almost of supplication in MacAlpine’s voice.

‘There’s more than one way of stripping a gear.’ Jacobson’s tone offered very little in the way of encouragement.

‘There’s that, I suppose, there’s that. Come on, let’s have a look at this damned gear-box.’

Both men passed inside and lights came on. Harlow, unusually half-smiling, nodded slowly, closed and gently locked the door and resumed his search. He acted with the same circumspection as he had in the Cagliari pits, forcing open crates and boxes, when this was necessary, with the greatest of care so that they could be closed again to show the absolute minimum of offered violence. He operated with speed and intense concentration, pausing only once at the sound of a noise outside. He checked the source of the noise, saw MacAlpine and Jacobson descending the steps of the Coronado transporter and walk away across the deserted compound. Harlow returned to his work.

When Harlow finally returned to the hotel, the lobby, which also served as the bar, was crowded with hardly a seat left vacant and a group of at least a dozen men pressing in close against the bar. MacAlpine and Jacobson were sitting at a table with Dunnet. Mary, Henry and Rory were still sitting in the same seats. As Harlow closed the street door behind him, the dinner gong sounded – it was that kind of small country hotel, deliberately so styled, where everyone ate at the same time or not at all. It was a great convenience to management and staff though somewhat less so to the guests.

The guests were rising as Harlow made his way across the lobby towards the stairs. Nobody greeted him, few even bothered to look at him. MacAlpine, Jacobson and Dunnet ignored him entirely. Rory scowled at him in open contempt. Mary glanced briefly at him, bit her lip and quickly looked away again. Two months previously it would have taken Johnny Harlow five minutes to reach the foot of those stairs. That evening he made it in under ten seconds. If he was in any way dismayed by his reception he hid his concern well. His face was as impassive as that of a wooden Indian’s.

Arrived in his bedroom, he washed cursorily, combed his hair, crossed to a cupboard, reached for a high shelf, brought down a bottle of scotch, went into the bathroom, sipped some of the scotch, swirled it round his mouth then grimaced and spat it out. He left the glass, with its still almost untouched contents, on the basin ledge, returned the bottle to the cupboard and made his way down to the dining-room.

He was the last arrival. A complete stranger entering would have been paid more attention than was accorded to him. Harlow was no longer the person to be seen with. The dining-room was pretty well filled but not to capacity. Most of the tables held four people, a handful held only two. Of the tables that held four people, only three had as few as three people at them. Of the tables for two, only Henry sat alone. Harlow’s mouth quirked, so briefly, perhaps even involuntarily, that it could have been more imagined than seen, then, without hesitation, he crossed the dining-room and sat down at Henry’s table.

Harlow said: ‘May I, Henry?’

‘Be my guest, Mr Harlow.’ Henry was cordiality itself, and cordial he remained throughout the meal, talking at length on a wide variety of utterly inconsequential subjects which, try as he might, Harlow found of only minimal interest. Henry’s intellectual reach was normally limited in its nature and Harlow found that it was only with considerable difficulty that he could keep up his conversational end against Henry’s pedestrian platitudes. To make matters worse he had to listen to Henry’s observations from a distance of about six inches, an aesthetic ordeal in itself, as at even a distance of several yards Henry could not, with all charity, have been called photogenic. But Henry appeared to have considered this close-range exchange of intimacies as essential and, in the circumstances, Harlow would have found it hard to disagree with him. The silence in the dining-room that evening was more in the nature of a cathedral hush, one that could not have been attributed to a beatific enjoyment of the food which was of a standard to earn for the Austrians the most astronomical odds against in the culinary stakes. It was plain to Harlow, as it was plain to all present, that the very fact of his being there had an almost totally inhibitory effect on normal conversation. Henry, consequently, considered it prudent to lower his voice to a graveyard whisper that could not be heard beyond the confines of their table which in turn necessitated this very personal face-to-face approach. Harlow felt but did not express his profound relief when the meal was over: Henry also suffered from a severe case of halitosis.

Harlow was among the last to rise. He drifted aimlessly into the now again crowded lobby. He stood there in apparent irresolution, quite ignored and glancing idly around. Mary he saw there, and Rory, while at the far end of the lobby MacAlpine was engaged with what appeared to be some form of desultory conversation with Henry.

MacAlpine said: ‘Well?’

Henry was wearing his self-righteous expression. ‘Smelled like a distillery, sir.’

MacAlpine smiled faintly. ‘Coming from Glasgow, you should know something about those things. A good job. I owe you an apology, Henry.’

Henry inclined his head. ‘Granted, Mr MacAlpine.’