Алистер Маклин - Caravan to Vaccares

Cecile looked up from the remains of her breakfast as Bowman joined her at the table.

‘You took your time,’ she observed.

‘I have not been idle. I’ve been out. Shopping.’

‘I didn’t see you go.’

‘They have a back entrance.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I have urgent business to attend to.’

‘Like this? Just sitting here?’

‘Before I attend to the urgent thing I have to attend to I’ve something else urgent to attend to first. And that involves sitting here. Do you know they have some very nosey Chinese in the city of Arles?’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Couple sitting over by Romeo and Juliet there. Don’t look. Man’s big for a Chinese, forty, although it’s always hard to say with them. Woman with him is younger, Eurasian, very good looking. Both wearing lightly-tinted sun-glasses with those built-in reflectors so that you can’t see through them from the outside.’

Cecile lifted a cup of coffee and looked idly round the patio. She said: ‘I see them now.’

‘Never trust people with reflecting sun-glasses. He seems to be displaying a very keen interest in Le Grand Duc.’

‘It’s his size.’

‘Like enough.’ Bowman looked thoughtfully at the Chinese couple, then at Le Grand Duc and Lila, then back at the Chinese again. Then he said: ‘We can go now.’

She said: ‘This urgent business – this first urgent business you had to attend to–’

‘Attended to. I’ll bring the car round to the front.’

Le Grand Duc watched his departure and announced to Lila: ‘In about an hour we mingle with our subjects.’

‘Subjects, Charles?’

‘Gypsies, dear child. But first, I must compose another chapter of my book.’

‘Shall I bring you pen and paper?’

‘No need, my dear.’

‘You mean – you mean you do it all in your head? It’s not possible, Charles.’

He patted her hand and smiled indulgently.

‘What you can get me is a litre of beer. It’s becoming uncommonly warm. Find a waiter, will you?’

Lila moved obediently away and Le Grand Duc looked after her. There was nothing indulgent about the expression on his face when he saw her talking briefly and smiling to the gypsy girl who had so recently read her fortune: there was nothing indulgent about it when he examined the Chinese couple at an adjacent table: even less so when he saw Cecile join Bowman in a white car in the street: and least of all when he observed another car move off within seconds of Bowman’s.

Cecile gazed in perplexity round the interior of the white Simca. She said: ‘What’s all this about, then?’

‘Such things as phones,’ he explained. ‘Fixed it while you were having breakfast. Fixed two of them in fact.’

‘Two what?’

‘Two hired cars. Never know when you’re going to run short.’

‘But – but in so short a time.’

‘Garage is just down the street – they sent a man to check.’ He took out Czerda’s barely depleted wad of Swiss notes, crackled it briefly and returned it. ‘Depends upon the deposit.’

‘You really are quite amoral, aren’t you?’ She sounded almost admiring.

‘How’s that again?’

‘The way you throw other people’s money around.’

‘Life is for living, money for the spending,’ Bowman said pontifically. ‘No pockets in a shroud.’

‘You’re hopeless,’ she said. ‘Quite, quite hopeless. And why this car, anyway?’

‘Why that get-up you’re wearing?’

‘Why – oh, I see. Of course the Peugeot’s known. I hadn’t thought of that.’ She looked at him curiously as he turned the Simca in the direction of a sign-post saying ‘Nîmes’. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I’m not quite sure. I’m looking for a place where I can talk undisturbed.’

‘To me?’

‘Still your apprehensions. I’ll have all the rest of my life to talk to you. When we were on the patio a battered-looking gypsy in a battered-looking Renault sat and watched us for ten minutes. Both of them are about a hundred yards behind us now. I want to talk to the battered-looking gypsy.’

‘Oh!’

‘Well might you say “Oh!” How, one wonders, is it that Gaiuse Strome’s henchmen are on to us so soon.’ He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘You’re looking at me in a very peculiar manner, if I may say so.’

‘I’m thinking.’

‘Well?’

‘If they’re on to you, why did you bother switching cars?’

Bowman said patiently: ‘When I hired the Simca I didn’t know they were on to me.’

‘And now you’re taking me into danger again? Or what might be danger?’

‘I hope not. If I am, I’m sorry. But if they’re on to me, they’re on to the charming gypsy girl who has been sitting by my side – don’t forget that it was you that the priest was tailing when he met up with his unfortunate accident. Would you rather I’d left you behind to cope with them alone?’

‘You don’t offer very much in the way of choices,’ she complained.

‘I’ve got very little to offer.’ Bowman looked in the mirror. The battered Renault was less than a hundred yards behind. Cecile looked over her shoulder.

‘Why don’t you stop here and talk to him? He’d never dare do anything here. There are far too many people around.’

‘Far too many,’ Bowman agreed. ‘When I talk to him I don’t want anyone within half a mile.’

She glanced at him, shivered and said nothing. Bowman took the Simca over the Rhône to Trinquetaille, turned left on to the Albaron road and then left again on to the road that ran south down the right bank of the river. Here he slowed and gently brought the car to a stop. The driver of the Renault, he observed, did the same thing at a discreet distance to the rear. Bowman drove the Simca on its way again: the Renault followed.

A mile farther on into the flat and featureless plains of the Camargue Bowman stopped again. So did the Renault. Bowman got out, went to the rear of the car, glanced briefly at the Renault parked about a hundred yards away, opened the boot, extracted an implement from the tool-kit, thrust it inside his jacket, closed the boot and returned to his seat. The implement he laid on the floor beside him.

‘What’s that?’ Cecile looked and sounded apprehensive.

‘A wheel-brace.’

‘Something wrong with the wheels?’

‘Wheel-braces can have other uses.’

He drove off. After a few minutes the road began to climb slightly, rounded an unexpectedly sharp left-hand corner and there suddenly, almost directly beneath them and less than twenty feet away, lay the murkily gleaming waters of the Grand Rhône. Bowman braked heavily, was out of the car even as it stopped and walked quickly back the way he had come. The Renault rounded the corner and its driver, caught completely unawares, slewed the car to a skidding stop less than ten yards from Bowman.

Bowman, one hand behind his back, approached the Renault and jerked the driver’s door open. Pierre Lacabro glared out at him, his broad brutalized face set and savage.

‘I’m beginning to think you’re following me around,’ Bowman said mildly.

Lacabro didn’t reply. Instead, with one hand on the wheel and the other on the door frame to afford him maximum leverage he launched himself from the car with a speed surprising for a man of his bulk. Bowman had been prepared for nothing else. He stepped quickly to one side and as the driving Lacabro hurtled past him he brought the wheel-brace swinging down on Lacabro’s left arm. The sound of the blow, the surprising loud crack of a breaking bone and Lacabro’s shriek of pain were almost instantaneous.

‘Who sent you?’ Bowman asked.

Lacabro, writhing on the ground and clutching his damaged left forearm, snarled something incomprehensible in Romany.