Caravan to Vaccares (9 page)

Bowman waited until the gypsy was fractionally away from the point which would make discovery certain, then hurled himself from the dark niche, managing to grab his knife wrist more by good luck than good judgment. Both men fell heavily to the ground, fighting for possession of the knife. Bowman tried to twist Koscis's right wrist but it seemed to be made of overlaid strands of wire hawser and Bowman could feel the wrist slowly breaking free from his grasp. He anticipated the inevitable by suddenly letting go and rolling over twice, rising to his feet at the same instant as Koscis did. For a moment they looked at each other, immobile, then Bowman backed away slowly until his hands touched the low wall behind him. He had no place to run to any more and no place to hide.

Koscis advanced. His face, at first implacable, broke into a smile that was notably lacking in warmth. Koscis, the expert with a knife, was savouring the passing moment.

Bowman threw himself forward, then to the right, but Koscis had seen this one before. He flung himself forward to intercept the second stage of the movement, his knife arcing up from knee level, but what Koscis had forgotten was that Bowman knew he had seen this one before. Bowman checked with all the strength of his right leg, dropped to his left knee and as the knife hooked by inches over his head, his right shoulder and upper arm hit the gypsy's thighs. Bowman straightened up with a convulsive jerk and this, combined with the speed and accelerating momentum of Koscis's onrush, lifted the gypsy high into the air and sent him, useless knife still in hand, sailing helplessly over the low wall into the darkness below. Bowman twisted round and watched him as he fell, a diminishing manikin tumbling over and over in almost incredibly slow motion, his passing marked only by a fading scream in the night. And then Bowman couldn't see him any more and the screaming stopped.

For a few seconds Bowman stood there, a man held in thrall, but only for a few seconds. If Ferenc hadn't been afflicted with a sudden and total deafness he was bound to have heard that eldritch fear-crazed scream and come to investigate and immediately.

Bowman ran from the square towards the main street: halfway up the narrow connecting lane he slid into a darkened alleyway for he'd heard Ferenc coming and for a brief moment saw him as he passed the end of the alleyway, pistol in one hand, knife in the other. Whether the pistol had been reloaded or not or whether Ferenc had balked at firing it so near the village was impossible to say. Even in what must have been that moment of intolerable stress Ferenc was still possessed of a sufficient instinct of self-preservation to keep exactly to the middle of the road where he couldn't be ambushed by an unarmed man. His lips were drawn back in an unconscious snarl compounded of rage and hate and fear and his face was the face of a madman.

CHAPTER 3

It isn't every woman who, wakened in the middle of the night, can sit bolt upright in bed, sheets hauled up to the neck, hair dishevelled and eyes blurred with sleep, and still look as attractive as if she were setting out for a ball, but Cecile Dubois must have been one of the few. She blinked, perhaps, rather more than a would-be dancer would have done, then gave Bowman what appeared to be a rather penetrating and critical look, possibly because as a result of all that climbing in the ruins and falling down screecovered slopes Bowman's dark broadcloth had lost some of its showroom sheen: in fact, now that he could clearly see it for the first time, it was filthily dirty, stained and ripped beyond repair. He waited for her reaction, sarcastic, cynical or perhaps just plain annoyed, but she wasn't an obvious sort of girl.

She said: ‘I thought you'd be in the next county by this time.'

‘I was almost in another land altogether.' He took his hand from the light switch and eased the door until it was almost but not quite closed. ‘But I came back. For the car. And for you.'

‘For me?'

‘Especially for you. Hurry up and get dressed. Your life's not worth a tinker's cuss if you stay here.'

‘My life? But why should I – '

‘Up, dress and pack. Now.' He crossed to the bed and looked at her, and although his appearance wasn't very encouraging it must have been convincing for she compressed her lips slightly, then nodded. Bowman returned to the door and looked out through the crack he had left. Very fetching though the dark-haired Miss Dubois might be, he reflected, it did not mean that she had to conform to the beautiful brunette pattern: she made decisions, quickly accepted what she regarded as being inevitable and the ‘if you think I'm going to get dressed while you're standing there' routine apparently hadn't even crossed her mind. Not that he would have seriously objected but, for the moment, the imminent return of Ferenc held prior claim to his attentions. He wondered briefly what was holding Ferenc up, he should have posted hotfoot by that time to report to his old man that they had encountered some unexpected difficulties in the execution of their assignment. It could have been, of course, that even then Ferenc was prowling hopefully and stealthily through the back alleys of Les Baux with a gun in one hand, a knife in the other and murder in his heart.

‘I'm ready,' Cecile said.

Bowman looked round in mild astonishment.

She was, too, even to the extent of having combed her hair. A strapped suitcase lay on her bed. ‘And packed?' Bowman asked.

‘Last night.' She hesitated. ‘Look, I can't just walk off without – '

‘Lila? Leave her a note. Say you'll contact her Poste Restante, Saintes-Maries. Hurry. Back in a minute – I have to collect my stuff.'

He left her there, went quickly to his own room and paused briefly at the door. The south wind sighed through the trees and he could hear the splash of the fountain in the swimming pool but that was all he could hear. He went into his room, crammed clothes anyhow into a suitcase and was back in Cecile's room within the promised minute. She was still scribbling away industriously.

‘Poste Restante, Saintes-Maries, that's all you've got to write,' Bowman said hastily. ‘Your life story she probably knows about.'

She glanced up at him, briefly and expressionlessly over the rims of a pair of glasses that he was only mildly surprised to see that she was wearing, reduced him to the status of an insect on the wall, then got back to her writing. After another twenty seconds she signed her name with what seemed to be a wholly unnecessary flourish considering the urgency of the moment, snapped the spectacles in the case and nodded to indicate that she was ready. He picked up her suitcase and they left, switching off the light and closing the door behind them. Bowman picked up his own suitcase, waited until the girl had slid the folded note under Lila's door, then both walked quickly and quietly along the terrace, then up the path to the road that skirted the back of the hotel. The girl followed closely and in silence behind Bowman and he was just beginning to congratulate himself on how quickly and well she was responding to his training methods when she caught his left arm firmly and hauled him to a stop. Bowman looked at her and frowned but it didn't seem to have any effect.

Short-sighted, he thought charitably.

‘We're safe here?'she asked.

‘For the moment, yes.'

‘Put those cases down.'

He put the cases down. He'd have to revise his training methods.

‘So far and no farther,' she said matter-of-factly. ‘I've been a good little girl and I've done what you asked because I thought there was possibly one chance in a hundred that you weren't mad. The other ninety-nine per cent of my way of thinking makes me want an explanation. Now.'

Her mother hadn't done much about training her either, Bowman thought. Not, at least, in the niceties of drawing-room conversation. But someone had done a very good job in other directions, for if she were upset or scared in any way it certainly didn't show.

‘You're in trouble,' Bowman said. ‘I got you into it. Now it's my responsibility to get you out of it.'

‘I'm
in trouble?'

‘Both of us. Three characters from the gypsy caravan down there told me that they were going to do me in. Then you. But first me. So they chased me up to Les Baux and then through the village and the ruins.'

She looked at him speculatively, not at all worried or concerned as she ought to have been. ‘But if they chased you – '

‘I shook them off. The gypsy leader's son, a lovable little lad by the name of Ferenc, is possibly still up there looking for me. He has a gun in one hand, a knife in the other. When he doesn't find me he'll come back and tell Dad and then a few of them will troop up to our rooms. Yours and mine.'

‘What on earth have
I
done?' she demanded.

You've been seen with me all evening and you've been seen to give refuge, that's what you've done.'

‘But – but this is ridiculous. I mean, taking to our heels like this.' She shook her head. ‘I was wrong about that possible one per cent. You
are
mad.'

‘Probably.' It was, Bowman thought, a justifiable point of view.

‘I mean, you've only got to pick up the phone.'

‘And?'

‘The police, silly.'

‘No police – because I'm not silly, Cecile. I'd be arrested for murder.'

She looked at him and slowly shook her head in disbelief or incomprehension or both.

‘It wasn't so easy to shake them off tonight,' Bowman went on. ‘There was an accident. Two accidents.'

‘Fantasy.' She shook her head as she whispered the word again. ‘Fantasy.'

‘Of course.' He reached out and took her hand. ‘Come, I'll show you the bodies.' He knew he could never locate Hoval in the darkness but Koscis's whereabouts would present no problem and as far as proving his case was concerned one corpse would be as good as two any time. And then he knew he didn't have to prove anything, not any more. In her face, very pale now but quite composed, something had changed. He didn't know what it was, he just registered the change. And then she came close to him and took his free hand in hers. She didn't start having the shakes, she didn't shrink away in horrified revulsion from a self-confessed killer, she just came close and took his other hand.

‘Where do you want to go?' Her voice was low but there were no shakes in it either. ‘Riviera?

Switzerland?'

He could have hugged her but decided to wait for a more propitious moment. He said: ‘Saintes-Maries.'

‘SaintesMaries!'

‘That's where all the gypsies are going. So that's where I want to go.'

There was a silence, then she said without any particular inflection in her voice: ‘To die in Saintes-Maries.'

‘To live in Saintes-Maries, Cecile. To justify living, if you like. We idle layabouts have to, you know.' She looked at him steadily, but kept silent: he would have expected this by now, she was a person who would always know when to be silent. In the pale wash of moonlight the lovely face was grave to the point of sadness. ‘I want to find out why a young gypsy is missing,' Bowman went on. ‘I want to find out why a gypsy mother and three gypsy girls are terrified out of their lives. I want to find out why three other gypsies tried their damnedest to kill me tonight. And I want to find out why they're even prepared to go to the extraordinary lengths of killing you. Wouldn't you like to find those things out too, Cecile?'

She nodded and took her hands away. He picked up the suitcases and they walked down circumspectly past the main entrance to the hotel. There was no one around, no sound of any person moving around, no hue and cry, nothing but the soft quiet and peacefulness of the Elysian Fields or, perhaps, of any well-run cemetery or morgue. They carried on down the steeply winding road to where it joined the transverse road running north and south through the Valley of Hell and there they turned sharply right – a ninety-degree turn. Another thirty yards and Bowman gratefully set the cases down on the grassy verge.

‘Where's your car parked?' he asked.

‘At the inner end of the parking area.'

‘That
is
handy. Means it has to be driven out through the parking lot and the forecourt. What make?'

‘Peugeot 504. Blue.'

He held out his hand. ‘The keys.'

‘Why? Think I'm not capable of driving my own car out of – '

‘Not out of, chérie. Over. Over anyone who tries to get in your way. Because they will.'

‘But they'll be asleep – '

‘Innocence, innocence. They'll be sitting around drinking slivovitz and waiting happily for the good news of my death. The keys.'

She gave him a very old-fashioned look, one compounded of an odd mixture of irritation and speculative amusement, dug in her handbag and brought out the keys. He took them and, as he moved off, she made to follow. He shook his head.

‘Next time,' he said.

‘I see.' She made a face. ‘I don't think you and I are going to get along too well.'

‘We'd better,' he said. ‘For your sake, for my sake, we'd better. And it would be nice to get you to that altar unscarred. Stay here.'