Алистер Маклин - Caravan to Vaccares

Bowman leaned forward in his seat, his eyes intent. Again he saw what had attracted his attention in the first place – a flash of titian hair, but unmistakable. It was Marie le Hobenaut and she was walking very quickly. Bowman looked away as Cecile rejoined him and sat down.

‘Sorry. Up again. A job. Left on the street–’

‘But don’t you want to hear – and my breakfast–’

‘Those can wait. Gypsy girl, titian hair, green and black costume. Follow her. See where she’s going – and she’s going some place. She’s in a tearing hurry. Now!’

‘Yes, sir.’ She looked at him quizzically, rose and left. He did not watch her go. Instead, he looked casually around the patio. Simon Searl, the priest, was the first to go and he did almost immediately, leaving some coins by his coffee cup. Seconds later, Bowman was on his feet and following the priest out into the street. Le Grand Duc, with his face largely obscured by a huge coffee cup, watched the departure of both.

Among the colourful crowds, the very drabness of Searl’s black robes made him an easy figure to follow. What made him even easier to follow was the fact that, as befitted a man of God, he appeared to have no suspicions of his fellow-men for he did not once look back over his shoulder. Bowman closed up till he was within ten feet of him. Now he could clearly see Cecile not much more than the same distance ahead of Searl and, occasionally, there was a brief glimpse of Marie le Hobenaut’s titian hair. Bowman closed up even more on Searl and waited his opportunity.

It came almost at once. Hard by a group of fish-stalls half-a-dozen rather unprepossessing gypsies were trying to sell some horses that had seen better days. As Bowman, no more than five feet behind Searl now, approached the horses he bumped into a dark, swarthy young man with a handsome face and hairline moustache: he sported a black sombrero and rather flashy, tight-fitting dark clothes. Both men murmured apologies, side-stepped and passed on. The dark young man took only two steps, turned and looked after Bowman, who was now almost lost to sight, edging his way through the group of horses.

Ahead of him, Searl stopped as a restive horse whinnied, tossed its head and moved to block his progress. The horse reared, Searl stepped prudently backwards and as he did so Bowman kicked him behind the knee. Searl grunted in agony and fell to his sound knee. Bowman, concealed by horses on both sides of him, stooped solicitously over Searl and chopped the knuckles of his right hand into the base of the man’s neck. Searl collapsed.

‘Watch those damned horses!’ Bowman shouted. At once several gypsies quieted the restive horses and pulled them apart to make a clear space round the fallen priest.

‘What happened?’ one of them demanded. ‘What happened?’

‘Selling that vicious brute?’ Bowman asked. ‘He ought to be destroyed. Kicked him right in the stomach. Don’t just stand there. Get a doctor.’

One of the gypsies at once hurried away. The others stooped low over the prostrate man and while they did so Bowman made a discreet withdrawal. But it wasn’t so discreet as to go unobserved by the same dark young man who had earlier bumped into Bowman: he was busy studying his fingernails.

Bowman was finishing off his breakfast when Cecile returned.

‘I’m hot,’ she announced. She looked it. ‘ And I’m hungry.’

Bowman crooked a finger at a passing waiter.

‘Well?’

‘She went into the chemist’s shop. She bought bandages – yards and yards – and a whole lot of cream and ointment and then she went back to the caravans – in a square not far from here–’

‘The green-and-white caravan?’

‘Yes. There were two women waiting for her at the caravan door and then all three went inside.’

‘Two women?’

‘One middle-aged, the other young with auburn hair.’

‘Marie’s mother and Sara. Poor Tina.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just rambling.’ He glanced across the courtyard. ‘The love-birds across there.’

Cecile followed his gaze to where Le Grand Duc, who was now sitting back with the relieved air of a man who has narrowly escaped death from starvation, smiled indulgently at Lila as she put her hand on his and talked animatedly.

Bowman said: ‘Is your girl-friend simpleminded or anything like that?’

She gave him a long cool look. ‘Not any more than I am.’

‘Um. She knew you, of course. What did you tell her?’

‘Nothing – except that you had to run for your life.’

‘Didn’t she wonder why you came?’

‘Because I wanted to, I said.’

‘Tell her I was suspicious of the Duke?’

‘Well–’

‘It doesn’t matter. She have anything to tell you?’

‘Not much. Just that they stopped to watch a gypsy service this morning.’

‘Service?’

‘You know – religious.’

‘Regular priest?’

‘So Lila said.’

‘Finish your breakfast.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘I won’t be long.’

‘But I thought – I thought you would want to know what the Duke said, his reactions. After all, that’s why you sent me.’

‘Was it?’ Bowman seemed abstracted. ‘Later.’ He rose and entered the hotel: the girl watched him go with a puzzled expression on her face.

‘Tall, you say, El Brocador. Thick-set. Very fast.’ Czerda rubbed his own battered and bandaged face in painfully tender recollection, and looked at the four men seated at the table in his caravan – El Brocador, the swarthy young man Bowman had bumped into in the street, Ferenc, Pierre Lacabro and a still shaken and pale Simon Searl who was trying to rub the back of his neck and the back of his thigh simultaneously.

‘His face was darker than you say,’ El Brocador said. ‘And a moustache.’

‘Dark faces and a moustache you can buy in shops. He can’t hide his stock in trade – violence.’

‘I hope I meet this man soon,’ Pierre Lacabro said. His tone was almost wistful.

‘I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry,’ Czerda said drily. ‘You didn’t see him at all, Searl?’

‘I saw nothing. I just felt those two blows in the back – no, I didn’t even feel the second blow.’

‘Why in God’s name did you have to go to that hotel patio anyway?’

‘I wanted to get a close-up of this Duc de Croytor. It was you , Czerda, who made me curious about him. I wanted to hear his voice. Who he spoke to, see if he has any contacts, who–’

‘He’s with this English girl. He’s harmless.’

‘Clever men do things like that,’ Searl said.

‘Clever men don’t do the things you do,’ Czerda said grimly. ‘Now Bowman knows who you are. He almost certainly knows now that someone in Madame Zigair’s caravan has been badly hurt. If the Duc de Croytor is who you think he is then he must know now that you suspect him of being Gaiuse Strome – and, if he is, he’s not going to like any of those three things at all.’ The expression on Searl’s face left no doubt but that he himself was of the same opinion. Czerda went on: ‘Bowman. He’s the only solution. This man must be silenced. Today. But carefully. Quietly. By accident. Who knows what friends this man may not have?’

‘I told you how this can be done,’ El Brocador said.

‘And a good way. We move on this afternoon. Lacabro, you’re the only one of us he does not know. Go to his hotel. Keep watch. Follow him. We dare not lose him now.’

‘That will be a pleasure.’

‘No violence,’ Czerda warned.

‘Of course not.’ He looked suddenly crestfallen. ‘But I don’t know what he looks like. Dark and thick-set – there are hundreds of dark and thick-set–’

‘If he’s the man El Brocador described and the man I remember seeing on the hotel patio,’ Searl said, ‘he’ll be with a girl dressed as a gypsy. Young, dark, pretty, dressed mainly green and gold, four gold bangles on her left wrist.’