The Stone Leopard (15 page)

As the express picked up speed he took hold of his suitcase and went along to the spacious lavatory.

The man who went inside was Alan Lennox, British. The man who emerged ten minutes later was Jean Bouvier, French. Settling down again in his empty compartment, Lennox was dressed in French clothes and smoking a Gitane. He was also wearing the hat he had purchased in Metz and a pair of horn- rim glasses. Normally hatless, Lennox knew how much the wearing of headgear changes the appearance of a man. When the ticket collector arrived a few minutes later and he had to purchase the TEE supplement, Lennox conversed with him in French and a little ungrammatic German.

When the express reached Freiburg, the last stop before the Swiss border, Lennox had a moment's hesitation. One of the three people on Lasalle's list of witnesses—Dieter Wohl—lived in Freiburg. Shrugging his shoulders like a Frenchman, Lennox remained in his seat. At the moment the important thing was to get clear of Germany, to break his trail; Freiburg was just across the Rhine from Alsace and he could visit Wohl later, after he had seen the Frenchmen. Promptly at 3.36 pm the Rheingold stopped at Basel Hauptbahnhof where Lennox got off.

He had now arrived in Switzerland.

Leaving the station he crossed the street and went into the Hotel Victoria where he booked a room for one night only. He had plenty of time then to find the right shop and purchase a second suitcase. Taking it back to his room, he re-packed, putting his British clothes into his own case; the French items he had purchased in Metz—all except those he was wearing— went into the Swiss case he had just bought. Going out again with the British case, he walked into the Hauptbahnhof and locked it away in a luggage compartment. As he shut the door he knew it was by no means certain he would ever see that case again.

Grelle arrived late for the exhumation of the grave of the Leopard. Involved as he was in three major operations— probing the attempt to assassinate the president; investigating the mystery of the Leopard; perfecting the security surrounding Guy Florian—he needed every spare minute he could find in a day. Already he was keeping going on only four hours' sleep a night while he cat-napped during the day when he could—in cars, in aircraft, even in his office when he could snatch time between interviews.

With Boisseau behind the wheel, Grelle was dozing as they turned off the main road into the forest along a muddy track. A gendarme with a torch had signalled them at the obscure entrance, which they would otherwise have missed. Long after dark—the exhumation was being carried out at night to help keep it secret—it was pouring with rain and the rutted track showed two gullies of water in their headlights. The prefect opened his eyes. 'If this goes on much longer,' he grumbled, 'the whole of France will be afloat. . .'

It was a fir forest they were moving into. A palisade of wet trunks rippled past the headlights as the track twisted and turned, as the tyres squelched through the mud and the storm beat down on the car roof. About two kilometres from where they had left the road Boisseau turned a corner and the headlights, shafting through the slanting rain, shone on a weird scene.

Arc-lights glared down on the excavation which was protected with a canvas tent-like erection. Heaps of excavated soil were banked up, and men with shovels were shoulder-deep inside the pit, still lifting hard-packed soil. Through the fan- shapes cleared by the wipers Grelle saw they were inside a wide clearing. Parked police vehicles stood around on carpets of dead bracken. Under the arc-lights a deep-scored mud-track ran away from the grave. Following the track with his eyes, Grelle saw a few metres away the blurred silhouette of the stone leopard effigy which had been hauled off the grave. It looked eerily alive in the beating rain, like a real animal crouched for a spring.

`I'll see how they're getting on,' said Boisseau, who had stopped the car. 'No point in both of us getting wet. . .'

An
agent de la paix
, his coat streaming with water, peered in at the window and his peaked brim deposited rain inside the car. Embarrassed, he took off the cap. 'Put it on again, for God's sake,' Grelle growled. 'Are you getting anywhere?'

`They have found the coffin. . .' The man was boyish- faced, excited at addressing the police prefect of Paris. 'They will have it up within a few minutes.'

`At least there is a coffin,' Grelle muttered. He was anything but excited. Even if there were a body inside he was dubious of what this might prove; after all, 1944 was a long time ago. Pessimistic as he was, he had still arranged for the forensic department at Lyon to be ready to get to work at once when the remains were delivered to them. A pathologist; a man with a fluoroscope who could assess the age of the bones; various other experts.

Grelle followed Boisseau out into the rain, hands tucked inside his raincoat pockets, hat pulled down. He would have to get wet sooner or later, and it looked bad for the prefect to sit in a warm car while the other poor devils toiled in the mud. He had taken the precaution of putting on rubber boots and his feet sank ankle-deep into the slippery mud. He stood under the glow of an arc-light while a drop of rain dripped from his nose-end, staring at the stone leopard crouched in the rain.

Above the noise of the pounding rain, the distant rumble of thunder, a new sound was added as they fastened chains round something in the depths of the pit. The tent was moved away so a breakdown truck could back to the brink. The driver moved a lever and the crane apparatus leaned out over the pit. In case of an accident the men were climbing up out of the pit now, smeared with mud. A filthy job. Probably all for nothing.

It was a disturbing scene: the wind shifting the tree tops, the endless rain, the glare of the arc-lights. And now the men in shiny coats fell silent as they waited expectantly, huddled round the grave. The chained coffin had been fixed to the hoist; the only man doing anything now was the truck driver, sitting twisted round in his seat as he operated levers. The coffin came up out of the shadows slowly, tilting at an acute angle as the machinery whirred, as the rain slanted down on the slowly-turning box. Everyone was very still. Grelle inserted a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and then didn't light it as he saw a gendarme glance at him severely. 'Bloody hell,' he thought, 'does he expect me to take off my hat ?'

Looking to his right again he saw the stone leopard, its mouth open, caught in the arc-light, as though enraged at the desecration. The officer in charge of the whole business shouted an order. The coffin, now above ground, swivelled in mid-air, was carried by the steel arm over to the canvas tent, gently eased and dropped just inside, under cover from the rain. Another shouted order. A man with a power saw appeared, examined the coffin and then began work, slicing the lid above where it had originally been closed. Boisseau made an inquiry, came back to the prefect.

`The screws are rusted in. They were advised not to use chisels and crowbars—any clumsiness might have shivered the remains to powder. . .'

Grelle said nothing, standing quite still with the unlit cigarette now becoming soggy in the corner of his mouth. On Boisseau's orders a light was brought closer, shining directly through the tent's mouth on to the coffin.

`Is it going to tell us anything, I wonder ?' Boisseau murmured and there was a hint of excitement in his voice.

`I wouldn't bet on it. . .'

`They said as far as they could tell it hasn't been disturbed for many years. The earth is packed like concrete.'

`What about that damned statue ?'

`Well bedded in. Again, not touched for years. . .'

The man with the power saw stopped. They were ready. A couple of men stooped at either side of the coffin, began sliding the lid off with care, out of the tent, so until they had removed the whole lid it wasn't possible to see what might lie inside. They seemed to take an age, bent as they were under the canvas roof; and they had to watch their footing; the ground was becoming a quagmire. Then they had moved aside and under the glare of the arc-light everyone could see. There was a gasp of horror.

Grelle stood as immovable as the stone statue a few metres away.

`My God!' It was Boisseau speaking.

Inside the coffin was stretched the perfect skeleton of an enormous hound, lying on its haunches, its huge skull rested between its skeletal paw-bones, its eye-sockets in shadow so that it seemed to stare at them hideously with enormous black pupils.

`Cesar....' The prefect grunted. 'Macabre—and brilliant. He couldn't take his dog with him because that would identify him. And he needed something to weight the coffin. So he killed the dog and provided his own corpse.'

Boisseau bent over the skeleton, examined it briefly. 'I think there is a bullet-hole in the skull.'

`I wonder if the bastard shot his own dog?' Once Grelle had owned a British wire-haired terrier which had eventually been knocked down in the Paris traffic. He had never replaced the animal. He spoke in a monotone, then stiffened himself. 'Tell them to replace the lid and get the whole thing to Lyon. Come on!'

They left the men in the wood lifting the coffin and its contents into the breakdown truck and drove back along the muddy track. The statue would remain in the wood, close to the grave it had guarded so long, which was already filling up with water. Boisseau, noting the frown of concentration on his chief's face, said nothing until they turned on to the main road.

`Surprised ?' he asked as they picked up speed.

`Not really—although I didn't anticipate the dog. The whole thing has worried me since I read the file—it was out of pattern. He took all those precautions to make sure he couldn't be identified and then, when it's nearly all over, he walks into Lyon and gets himself shot. If he'd survived up to then, he should have gone on surviving—which he did.'

`So he's about somewhere ?'

`I know exactly where he is. He's in Paris. The trouble is I don't know who he is.'

`Danchin or Blanc—according to Gaston Martin. It's a nightmare.'

`It will get worse,' Grelle assured him.

Grelle remained in Lyon just long enough to make a few more inquiries and to hear the result of the fluoroscope test on the skeleton. 'I estimate the age of the bones as being somewhere between thirty and forty years,' the expert told the prefect. `That is, they have lain in the forest for that period of time.' Which meant the animal could easily have been shot and buried in August 1944.

Flying back to Paris aboard the helicopter, Grelle told Boisseau about his other inquiries. 'They gave me the details about the sculptor who made the statue. He was found shot in his house soon after he had finished the statue. The place had been ransacked and it was assumed he had disturbed a burglar. It gives you some idea of the ruthlessness of the man we're looking for. He covered his tracks completely—or so he thought. Until Lasalle resurrected him.'

`What the hell are we going to do ?' Boisseau asked. `Track him down.'

CHAPTER NINE

THE TWO MEN walked alone in the Paris garden, one of them tall and stooping slightly to catch what his much shorter companion was saying. The shorter man was thick-bodied and had short, strong legs. He spoke with respect but firmly, as though expecting opposition he must overcome. He spoke in little more than a whisper even though there was no one within twenty metres of where they walked.

'We must add Lasalle to the list. He is a very dangerous man and at this stage we dare not risk leaving him alive. Otherwise he will go on ferreting until he digs up something.'

`I think it's unwise,' the tall man repeated. have given you three names and that is enough. Every one you add to the list increases the risk. Something will go wrong. . .

`Nothing will go wrong. They are using the best people available for this sort of work. I understand the Commando has almost arrived in France—and they should complete their task within six days. . . .' The short man took out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He had a cold coming on; Paris really was an unbearably damp place. 'You haven't heard even a whisper that anyone knows about this ?' he inquired.

`Nothing. Let them just get it over with quickly,' the tall man said sharply. 'And let me know when I can stop worrying about it. I have enough on my mind at the moment.'

The short man glanced quickly at his companion, sensing the undercurrent of tension. This he understood; he felt tense himself.

`And Lasalle?' Since the kidnap operation has been cancelled we really must deal with that problem, too.'

`You can get in touch with the Commando then? Just in case any other problem crops up ?'

The short man hesitated, then took a decision. 'They will make contact with us at regular intervals. So the answer is yes. I hope you haven't left someone off the list ?'

`No one! Now I think we have talked enough. . .