The Scarlet Thread (53 page)

O'Halloran was to meet Maxton at the turnoff to the
autoroute
to Nice. Nine-thirty. He'd driven very carefully on account of the big drop at the bend of the road. He had the bank draft in his pocket. A blackjack nestled in the other one. A cosh didn't break the surface of the scalp like a blow from something made of metal.

Nine-thirty passed. He wasn't worried. A few minutes either side to allow for Maxton's maneuvering his car back on the road. Maybe Falconi had got out of the car when he was forced to stop.… A few minutes was okay.

Nine thirty-five. “Hell,” he muttered. Where was the son of a bitch? He heard the car before it came into view. A sports model, as you'd expect with that type, the top folded back, the driver easily recognizable as he slowed down and stopped. O'Halloran opened his car door and got out. He walked quite slowly toward Maxton. Not hurrying, not seeming edgy. Like a cop on his beat. His hand was locked around the cosh in his pocket.

He stopped by the side of the little car. He looked down at Maxton. Maybe it was the moonlight, but he looked a ghastly color.

“You got him?”

“Yes. Where's the money?”

“Right here,” Mike O'Halloran said. He had the draft in his left hand. He held it out to Ralph Maxton. “No trouble?”

“No trouble at all.”

He saw the glint of the gun and opened his mouth to yell. The bullet knocked him backward before he could make a sound. He spun and then collapsed facedown. Maxton got out. The American had been right about the damage that caliber could do. There was a gaping hole in his back.

He looked at him for a moment. Nothing moved. A lot of blood was spreading over the road like spilled ink in the silver light.

“Sorry about that,” he said. “But you'd only have found someone else.” He climbed into his car. The bank draft was lying on the seat. “Sorry about you too”—he looked at it—“but I can't cash you. After all, I have my standards.” He tore up the draft and laughed as he threw the pieces into the air. The breeze caught them, whirling them down and out of sight into the valley below. He began to drive, taking the corners at his usual speed. He was a first-class driver, eyesight like an eagle's, reflexes lightning fast. He reached the coast road in less than ten minutes. He stopped at a bistro on the outskirts of Juan-les-Pins.

He bought himself a brandy. The proprietor said he could use the telephone at the back if it was urgent. For five francs.

“Mr. Lawrence, please,” he said. He'd brought the brandy with him. He sipped most of it while he waited.

“Steven Lawrence.”

“Good evening,” Ralph Maxton said. “It's me.”

“What do you want?” Steven's voice grated on him.

“Just to tell you there's a dead man lying in the road on the intersection to the
autoroute
. The shortcut to the airport. He was offering half a million dollars to anyone who'd kill you. You'd be amazed how close I came to doing it. If it wasn't for your wife, I'd be a rich man now. Give her my love.” He put the receiver down, finished his drink and left a twenty-franc note on the counter. The proprietor stared after him in amazement. But he didn't rush out to give him change.

Steven came down the grand staircase at a run. He pushed past anyone who was in the way, rushed outside to where the car was parked. He heard Louis calling after him. He turned and shouted back through the open car window. “I'm going home. Take over for me!”

He drove faster than he had ever driven. Maxton's voice was ringing in his head: “a dead man lying in the road … half a million dollars to anyone who'd kill you.” Angela, Angela and his son and baby daughter, unprotected in the villa, unsuspecting of any danger.

Twice he almost hit another car; he didn't hear the furious honking of horns and the shouts that followed him. Up into the hills, around the dark, twisting little roads, approaching the turnoff to the
autoroute
. He saw lights flashing, police cars, an ambulance. Someone had found the dead man, whoever he was.…

He put his foot down and went faster. He saw the lights on in the villa, in the ground-floor drawing room, where his wife and son would be after Angela had given the little girl her late feeding.

He raced inside, throwing the door open. They were sitting together; the TV was on, and Angela had been reading. He saw they were safe and forgot momentarily about everything else. He heard her say, “Darling, what's the matter? What is it?” He saw Charlie staring at him. Both were on their feet, alarmed.

He said to Angela, “Maxton called me. He said there was a contract out on me. It's Clara—it has to be.”

Angela went white. “Oh, my God—”

Charlie interrupted. “Contract? Dad, what are you talking about?”

Steven said quietly, “A contract to kill me. It failed. The man's dead. But there could be another one—on you and your mother. It's a long story, and this is one hell of a time to tell you—”

“Steven—no!” Angela cried out.

He held his hand up to silence her protests. “It's no good, darling; he's got to know the truth.” He turned to his son. “Charlie, I want you to listen to me. Don't ask questions, just listen.… Your father wasn't killed in the war. I'm your real father.” He paused, seeing the shock on the boy's face. He said, “I loved your mother the first moment I saw her. I married her in Sicily, but we got separated. I thought she'd been killed in that hospital bombing. Years later I married someone else.

“Then I found her again in New York. And I found you, my son, who I'd thought was dead too.” There were tears in his eyes.

Angela came and stood with her arms around him, facing Charlie. She saw her son's pain and confusion. “I lied to you, Charlie,” she said. “We both lied to you, but we did it for the best of reasons. Your father gave up everything to be with us and make a new life for all of us together. He's been in terrible danger ever since. I hope you'll forgive me, but you mustn't ever blame him!”

Charlie looked at them. “I'm not blaming anyone.” His voice wasn't quite steady. “I don't know what to say.… I can't believe it's happening.”

“I love you, Charlie,” Steven said. “You're my son, and I love you. That's the only important thing right now. And I want you to do what I tell you. I want you to take your mother and the baby and get the hell out of here. Just drive. Drive as far away as you can go.”

“Not without you!” Angela insisted. “I'm not going without you.”

“Yes, you are,” Steven told her. “So long as I know you and the kids are safe, I can take care of myself. I'm through running away, my darling. It's between me and Clara now. Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“Come here, my son.”

For a moment he hesitated. A long moment, an eternity to Steven and Angela. Then Charlie rushed forward to be clasped in his father's arms. They didn't speak, just held each other, and then the boy looked up at him and said, “I'm glad. I love you too.” His cheeks were wet.

“We haven't time to talk now,” Steven said. “But we will. I promise. No more secrets between us. Now you get the car, and I'll bring your mother and Anna.”

It took Charlie some seconds to fit the key into the lock, to start the ignition and back out of the driveway. His hands were shaking. He saw the light go on and off in the nursery, and then Steven and his mother were outside, the baby still asleep in her arms. Steven opened the door and helped them inside. He laid a hand on his son's shoulder.

“I'm relying on you, Charlie. Take good care of them. Call me tomorrow and let me know where you are. And stay put till I tell you.”

“I will. Don't worry. And, Dad—you'll be careful, won't you?”

Charlie heard Angela's anguished whisper as she said goodbye: “Oh, Steven darling.” And Steven's reassurance: “Don't worry; we'll be together soon.”

He looked back quickly as he drove away, and saw his father wave once from the doorway, with the lights behind him. In the back seat, cradling the sleeping child, Angela was crying.

It was a lovely night. A perfect night for a drive on the splendid road up to the Moyenne Corniche, and then there was the great panoramic view from the Grande Corniche itself, carved out of the topmost lip of the mountain. Bright moonlight, a little cold up there, a constant breeze that sang around Maxton as he drove. He found a place to stop, reversing carefully back from the edge. It was eerily beautiful to be so high, with the pygmy towns below, their lights reduced to twinkling dots, the black sea spread out around the silver path of moonlight that was supposed to beckon suicides. Like that of his old friend all those years ago. Swimming out because the sharks on land had eaten his heart out.
What a waste my life has been
, Maxton thought.
Worthless
. And so nearly doomed to years of yet more waste. He and his soulmate, Madeleine. No cruise to the delights of the Far East now. No steel bands and limbo dancers in Jamaica, with someone as rotten as himself to share it. And all because he had known what it would do to Angela. It wasn't scruples or a sudden rush of morality that had stopped him; he'd never known the meaning of either. He was rather proud of that.

He just couldn't make her so unhappy. Love, not conscience, had made a coward of him. Poor Madeleine, waiting at the airport. She'd be so furious, so disappointed. Thank God he wasn't going with her. What an appalling prospect!

“You'll come to a bad end if you don't mend your ways.” He could hear his father thundering away at him. Such a Victorian his father was; never quite at home in the modern world. His mother kept hoping against hope that it was just a phase and he'd grow out of it. He'd stolen the jewelry from her bedroom. That was her reward for her faith. He hadn't mended his ways. But he hadn't come to as bad an end as he might have.

He switched the engine on and put the car into first gear. The nose was aimed at the black chasm in front of him. He didn't like the idea of that plunge downward very much. He set his foot on the brake, holding the engine in thrall. Then he put the American's revolver into his mouth and pulled the trigger. A few seconds later there was a distant tinkling crash and a flare of flame that licked upward as the car began to burn.

Steven stood in the darkness for some moments. It was very quiet. Angela, Charlie and the baby were out of reach; if danger threatened, he could meet it alone. He drove his car into the garage, locked the doors and went inside. He was calm, not afraid of what the next few hours might bring. He had never been afraid for himself. He knew the routine by heart; it had been part of his early life experience.

He shuttered every ground-floor window; drew the curtains; doused the lights inside and out; double-locked the doors. At home there was bulletproof glass, fine steel-mesh shutters to ward off a fire bomb or a grenade. Here, in the peace of the villa, nestling in the French hills, there was nothing but locks and bolts to stave off an attacker. Steven checked everything, even the tiny larder window.

He made the place as safe as possible and walked up to the second floor with a flashlight. Darkness would be his friend. If the man found dead on the
autoroute
had failed to recruit Maxton, then he must have hired another killer.

In the bedroom he shared with Angela, he drew the curtains and latched the windows, closing shutters that were designed to keep out nothing more deadly than the afternoon sun. It was Clara. Clara seeking him out, putting a king's ransom on his head. “She's gone on a long vacation,” his brother, Piero, had said. But where? How close was she? Not too far, if he knew her. She'd want to be near, to exult over her vengeance.

He felt cold and, for the first time, felt a sense of fear. She should have been broken, disarmed, but the deaths of her father and her luckless husband were not enough. So long as she lived, he and, more important, Angela and his children would never be safe. A long vacation … He knew with certainty that she was in France. Nearer perhaps, than he dared think. If nothing happened during the night, he would start by checking the hotels. He knew her taste. Only the best would be good enough. First find her, and then face up to what he had decided to do. He settled in a chair to wait out the night.

He fell into a light doze while it was still dark. The dawn chorus of shrilling birds awoke him. He was stiff and weary, and sick inside. Opening the shutters, he saw the lovely glow of the sunrise in the sky. Only yesterday he would have wakened with Angela beside him, his children asleep down the hall, another happy day ahead.

He rested his head on his hands in private anguish. Out of consideration for Angela, he had never kept a weapon. Now he would have to get one. And use it. He went downstairs into the darkened kitchen and made coffee. They would be safe somewhere, out of reach of the Fury that was Clara. Charlie had promised to telephone and let him know where they were. He went back to the bedroom to wait for the call.

It was midmorning, and he still had no word. He switched on the radio to pass the time. It was the first item on the morning news bulletin.

“You're sure?” Madeleine demanded, “You're certain there's no message for me?”

The girl at the departure desk look bored. This was the third time the woman had been back to ask. “No, madame. No message.”

Madeleine turned away. She cursed under her breath. She'd phoned the apartment. No answer. She'd tried the concierge, who was sleepy and ill-tempered. Monsieur Maxton had gone a long time ago. The flat was closed up.

There she was at the airport, all her luggage, her jewelry, the loot of five years on the coast, waiting with her. The last of that night's flights had gone. Something must have happened. An accident? He always drove like a maniac. She wondered for a moment whether he hadn't played a vicious practical joke. He'd been in such a strange mood that evening.