Алистер Маклин: The Way to Dusty Death

Tracchia emerged from the booth, fists clenched, his face black with anger and softly but audibly swearing to himself. The only printable word, and one that was repeated many times, was ‘Harlow’. The bitter realization had come to Tracchia that Harlow had not phoned Vignolles: he had phoned the local police.

In her room in Vignolles Mary was getting ready for dinner when a knock came at her door. She opened it to find Jacobson standing there. He said: ‘Can I have a private word with you, Mary? It’s very important.’

She regarded him with mild astonishment then opened the door for him to enter. Jacobson closed the door behind him.

She said curiously: ‘What’s so important? What do you want?’

Jacobson pulled a gun from his waist-band. ‘You. I’m in trouble and I need some form of security to make sure that I don’t get into more trouble. You’re the security. Pack an overnight bag and give me your passport.’

She gave him her passport and packed the bag. Jacobson crossed to the bed and snapped shut the catches of her case. ‘You’d better come now.’

‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Now, I said.’ He lifted his gun menacingly.

‘Then you’d better shoot me now.’

‘Cuneo. Then parts beyond.’ His voice was harsh but had the ring of sincerity. ‘I never make war on women. You’ll be released within twenty-four hours.’

‘I’ll be dead in twenty-four hours.’ She picked up her handbag. ‘May I go to the bathroom? I feel sick.’

Jacobson opened the bathroom door and looked inside. ‘No window. No telephone. OK.’

Mary entered the bathroom and closed the door behind her. She took a pen from her handbag, scribbled a few shaky words on a piece of paper, placed the paper face down on the floor behind the door and left. Jacobson was waiting for her. He had her case in his left hand, a gun in the other. Both gun and right hand were buried deep in his jacket pocket.

On board The Chevalier , Yonnie thrust the last of the documents from the chart-table into a large briefcase. He returned to the saloon, placed the briefcase on a settee and went down the companionway to the accommodation quarters. He went to his own cabin and there spent a hurried five minutes in cramming his own most personal possessions into a canvas bag. He then made a tour of the other cabins, rifling the drawers for whatever money or articles of value that he might find. He found a considerable amount, returned to his own cabin and stuffed them inside his bag. He zipped the bag shut and climbed up the companionway. Four steps from the top he stopped. His face should have been masked in disbelief and terror but it wasn’t. Yonnie had run out of emotions and the capacity to display them.

Four very large armed policemen were resting comfortably on the settees in the saloon. A sergeant, with the briefcase on his knees, his elbow on the case and a gun in his hand pointing approximately in the direction of Yonnie’s heart, said genially: ‘Going some place Yonnie?’

Once again, the Ferrari was moving through the darkness. Harlow was not idling but neither was he pushing the car hard. As on the trip from Marseilles to Bandol, it seemed that the need for urgency was not there. Mrs MacAlpine was in the front passenger seat wearing, at Harlow’s insistence, a double safety belt. A rather drowsy Rory was stretched out on the back seats,

Harlow said: ‘So, you see, it was all quite simple, really. Jacobson was the master-mind behind this particular operation. It will turn out that the Marzio brothers were the ones that really mattered. Anyway, it was Jacobson’s idea to gamble on the Grand Prix drivers and he altered the odds in his favour by suborning no fewer that five drivers. Plus even more mechanics. He paid them plenty – but he made a fortune himself. I was the thorn in his flesh – he knew better than to try to get at me, and as I was winning the majority of the races it was making his business very difficult indeed. So he tried to kill me at Clermont-Ferrand. I have proof – both stills and cine film.’

In the rear Rory stirred sleepily. ‘But how could he do that to you while you were on the track?’

‘Me? And a lot of others? Two ways. A radio-controlled explosive device on a suspension strut or a chemically operated explosive device on the hydraulic brake lines. Both devices, I imagine, would blow clear on detonation and leave no trace of their presence. Anyway, it’s on film record that Jacobson replaced both a strut and a brake line.’

Rory said: ‘Which is why he always insisted on being alone when inspecting smashed cars?’

Harlow nodded, temporarily lost in thought. Mrs MacAlpine said: ‘But how – how could you degrade yourself in this awful fashion?’

‘Well, it wasn’t all that pleasant. But you know the blaze of publicity I live in. I couldn’t move privately, more or less to brush my teeth, than to do the job I was asked to. I had to take the heat off myself, step out of the limelight and become a loner. It wasn’t all that difficult. As for working my way down to the transporter job – well, I had to find out whether the stuff was coming from the Coronado garage or not. It was.’

‘The stuff?’

‘The dust. European jargon for heroin. My dear Marie, there are more ways to dusty death than losing control on a Grand Prix race track.’

‘The way to dusty death.’ She shivered and repeated the words. ‘The way to dusty death. Did James know about this, Johnny?’

‘He knew six months ago that the transporter was being used – oddly enough, he never suspected Jacobson. They’d been together too long, I suppose. Some way, any way, they had to have the price of his silence. You were that price. And for good measure he was also being blackmailed for approximately twenty-five thousand pounds a month.’

She was silent for almost a minute then she said: ‘Did James know I was still alive?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he knew about the heroin – all those months he knew. Think of all those people ruined, perhaps dead. Think of all–’

Harlow reached out his right hand and caught her left in his. ‘I think, Marie, that perhaps he loves you.’

A car approached then, headlights dipped. Harlow dipped his. briefly, as if by mistake, the approaching car’s headlights came on full beam, then dipped again. As they passed each other, the driver of the other car turned to his passenger, a girl with her hands bound in front of her.

‘Tut! Tut! Tut!’ Jacobson sounded in almost high humour. ‘Young Lochinvar headed in the wrong direction.’

In the Ferrari Mrs MacAlpine said: ‘And James will have to stand trial for his – complicity in this heroin traffic?’

‘James will never stand trial for anything.’

‘But heroin–’

Harlow said: ‘Heroin? Heroin? Rory, did you hear anyone mentioning the word “heroin”?’

‘Mother’s been through a pretty rough time, Mr Harlow. I think she is beginning to imagine things.’

The Aston Martin pulled up outside a darkened café on the outskirts of Bandol. A violently shivering Tracchia emerged from the shadows and climbed into the back of the Aston Martin.

He said: ‘Complete with insurance policy, I see. Now, for God’s sake, Jake, stop at the first clump of trees outside Bandol. Unless I change out of these clothes damn quick I’m going to freeze to death.’

‘Right. Where’s Yonnie?’

‘In gaol.’

‘Jesus!’ Even the abnormally phlegmatic Jacobson was shaken. ‘What in the hell happened?’

‘I’d sent Yonnie out in the dinghy while I was phoning you. I’d told him to bring ashore all the papers and documents in the two top drawers in the chart-table. You know how important those are, Jake?’