The Way to Dusty Death (11 page)

Has-been? Did you see his times this morning?’

‘Has-been I said and has-been I meant. You’ll see — he’ll crack tomorrow just as he’s cracked in the last four GPs.’

‘Yes. Another strange .thing. Why is he so good in practice and such a failure in the races themselves?’

‘No question. It’s common knowledge that Harlow’s pretty close to being an alcoholic — I’d say he already is one. All right, so he can drive one fast lap, maybe three. But in an eighty-lap Grand Prix —how can you expect an alco to have the stamina, the reactions, the nerve to last the pace? He’ll crack.’ He looked away from the other cafe and took a morose sip of his drink. ‘God, what wouldn’t I give to be sitting in the next booth to those two.’

Tracchia laid a hand on Neubauer’s forearm. ‘Maybe that won’t be necessary, Willi. Maybe we’ve just found a pair of ears to do our listening for us. Look!’

Neubauer looked. With what appeared to be a considerable degree of stealth and secrecy Rory MacAlpine was edging his way into the booth next to the one occupied by Harlow and Dunnet. He was carrying a coloured drink in his hand. When he sat it was with his back to Harlow : physically, they couldn’t have been more than a foot apart. Rory adopted a very upright posture, both his back and the back of his head pressed hard against the partition: he was, clearly, listening very intently indeed. He had about him the look of one who was planning a career either as a master spy or a double agent. Without question he had a rare talent for observing — and listening — without being observed.

Neubauer said: ‘What do you think young MacAlpine is up to?’

‘Here and now?’ Tracchia spread his hands. ‘Anything. The one thing that you can be sure of is that he intends no good to Harlow. I should think he is just trying to get anything he can on Harlow. Just anything. He’s a determined young devil —and he hates Harlow. I must say I wouldn’t care very much myself to be in his black books.’

‘So we have an ally, Nikki, yes?’

‘I see no reason why not. Let’s think up a nice little story to tell him.’ He peered across the street. ‘Young Rory doesn’t seem too pleased about something.’

Rory wasn’t. His expression held mixed feelings of vexation, exasperation and perplexity: because of the high back of the booth and the background noise level created by the other patrons of the cafe, he could catch only snatches of the conversation from the next booth.

Matters weren’t helped for Rory by the fact that Harlow and Dunnet were carrying on this conversation in very low tones indeed. Both of them had tall clear drinks in front of them, both drinks with ice and lemon in them: only one held gin. Dunnet looked consideringly at the tiny film cassette he was cradling in the palm of his hand then slipped it into a safe inside pocket.

‘Photographs of code? You’re sure?’

‘Code for sure. Perhaps even along with some abstruse foreign language. I’m afraid I’m no expert on those matters.’

‘No more than I am. But we have people who are experts. And the Coronado transporter. You’re sure about that too?’

‘No question.’

‘So we’ve been nursing a viper to our own bosom - if that’s the phrase I’m looking for.’

‘It is a bit embarrassing, isn’t it?’

‘And no question about Henry having any finger in the pie?’

‘Henry?’ Harlow shook his head positively.
‘My
life on it.’

‘Even though, as driver, he’s the only person who’s with the transporter on every trip it makes?’

‘Even though.’

‘And Henry will have to go?’

‘What option do we have?’

‘So. Exit Henry — temporarily, though he won’t know it: he’ll get his old job back. He’ll be hurt, of course -but what’s one brief hurt to thousands of life-long ones?’

‘And if he refuses?’

‘I’ll have him kidnapped,’ Dunnet said matter-of-factly. ‘Or otherwise removed - painlessly, of course. But he’ll go along. I’ve got the doctor’s certificate already signed.’

‘How about medical ethics?’

The combination of £500 and a genuine certificate of an already existing heart murmur makes medical scruples vanish like a snowflake in the river.’

The two men finished their drinks, rose and left. So, after what he presumably regarded as being a suitably safe interval, did Rory. In the cafe opposite, Neubauer and Tracchia rose hurriedly, walked quickly after Rory and overtook him in half a minute. Rory looked his surprise.

Tracchia said confidentially:
‘We
want to talk to you, Rory. Can you keep a secret?’

Rory looked intrigued but he had a native caution which seldom abandoned him. ‘What’s the secret about?’

‘You
are
a suspicious young person.’

‘What’s the secret about?’

‘Johnny Harlow.’

‘That’s different.’ Tracchia had Rory’s instantaneous and co-operative attention. ‘Of course I can keep a secret.’

Neubauer said: ‘Well, then, never a whisper. Never one word or you’ll ruin everything. You understand?’

‘Of course.’ He hadn’t the faintest idea what Neubauer was talking about.

You’ve heard of the GPDA?’

‘Course. The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association.’

‘Right. Well, the GPDA has decided that for the safety of us all, drivers and spectators alike, Harlow must be removed from the Grand Prix roster. We want him taken off all the race-tracks in Europe. You know that he drinks?’

‘Who doesn’t?’

‘He drinks so much that he’s become the most dangerous driver in Europe.’ Neubauer’s voice was low-pitched, conspiratorial and totally convincing. ‘Every other driver is scared to be on the same track as he is. None of us knows when he’s going to be the next Jethou.’

‘You-you mean-’

‘He was drunk at the time. That’s why a good man dies, Rory-because another man drinks half a bottle of scotch too many. Would you call that much different from being a murderer?’

‘No, by God I wouldn’t!’

‘So the GPDA has asked Willi and myself to gather die evidence. About drinking, I mean. Especially before a big race. Will you help us?’

‘You have to ask me?’

‘We know, boy, we know.’ Neubauer put his hand on Rory’s shoulder, a gesture at once indicative of consolation and understanding. ‘Mary is our girl, too. You saw Harlow and Mr. Dunnet in that cafe just now. Did Harlow drink?’

‘I didn’t really see them. I was in the next booth. But I heard Mr. Dunnet say something about gin and I saw the waiter bring two tall glasses with what looked like water in them.’

‘Water!’ Tracchia shook his head sadly. ‘Anyway, that’s more like it. Though I can’t believe that Dunnet — well, who knows. Did you hear them talk about drink?’

‘Mr. Dunnet? Is there something wrong with him too?’

Tracchia said evasively, well aware that that was the surest way of arousing Rory’s interest: ‘I don’t know anything about Mr. Dunnet. About drink, now.’

They spoke in very low voices. I caught something, not much. Not about drink. The only thing I heard was something about changed cassettes — film cassettes — or such-like, something Harlow had given to Mr. Dunnet. Didn’t make any kind of sense to me.’

Tracchia said : that hardly concerns us. But the rest, yes. Keep your eyes and ears open, will you?’

Rory, carefully concealing his new-found sense of self-importance, nodded man to man and walked away. Neubauer and Tracchia looked at each other with fury in their faces, a fury, clearly, that was not directed at each other.

Through tightly clenched teeth Tracchia said : The crafty bastard! He’s switched cassettes on us. That was a dud we destroyed.’

On the evening of that same day Dunnet and Henry sat in a remote corner of the lobby in the Villa-Hotel Cessni. Dunnet wore his usual near-inscrutable expression. Henry looked somewhat stunned although it was clear that his native shrewdness was hard at work making a reassessment of an existing situation and a readjustment to a developing one. He tried hard not to look cunning. He said : ‘You certainly do know how to lay it on the line, don’t you, Mr. Dunnet?’ The tone of respectful admiration for a higher intellect was perfectly done. Dunnet remained totally unmoved.

‘If by laying it on the line, Henry, you mean putting it as briefly and clearly as possible, then, yes, I have laid it on the line. Yes or no? ‘

‘Jesus, Mr. Dunnet, you don’t give a man much time to think, do you?’

Dunnet said patiently : This hardly calls for thought, Henry. A simple yes or no. Take it or leave it.’

Henry kept his cunning look under wraps. ‘And if I leave it?’

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
^’

Henry looked distinctly uneasy. ‘I don’t know if I like the sound of that, Mr. Dunnet.’

‘How does it sound to you, Henry?’

‘I mean, well, you aren’t blackmailing me or threatening me or something like that?’

Dunnet had the air of a man counting up to ten. ‘You make me say it, Henry. You’re talking rubbish. How can one blackmail a man who leads the spotless life you do? You do lead a spotless life, don’t you, Henry? And
why
should I threaten you?
How
could I threaten you?’ He made a long pause. ‘Yes or no?’

Henry sighed in defeat. ‘Damn it all, yes. I’ve got nothing to lose. For £5,000 and a job in our Marseilles garage I’d sell my own grandmother down the river -God rest her soul.’

That wouldn’t be necessary even if it were possible. Just total silence that’s all. Here’s a health certificate from a local doctor. It’s to say you have an advanced cardiac condition and are no longer fit for heavy work such as, say, driving a transporter.’

‘I haven’t been feeling at all well lately and that’s a fact.’

Dunnet permitted himself the faintest of smiles. ‘I thought you might have been feeling that way.’

‘Does Mr. MacAlpine know about this?’

‘He will when you tell him. Just wave that paper.
^’

‘You think he’ll wear it?’

‘If you mean accept it, yes. He’ll have no option.
^’

‘May I ask the reason for all this?’

‘No. You’re getting paid £5,000 not to ask questions. Or talk. Ever. ‘

‘You’re a very funny journalist, Mr. Dunnet.’

‘Very.’

‘I’m told you were an accountant in what they call the City. Why did you give it up?’

‘Emphysema. My lungs, Henry, my lungs.’

‘Something like my cardiac condition?’

‘In these days of stress and strain, Henry, perfect health is a blessing that is granted to very few of us. And now you’d better go and see Mr. MacAlpine.’

Henry left. Dunnet wrote a brief note, addressed a stout buff envelope, marked it EXPRESS and URGENT in the top left corner, inserted the note and micro-film and left. As he passed out into the corridor he failed to notice that the door of the room next to his was slightly ajar: consequently, he also failed to observe a single eye peering out through this narrow gap in the doorway.

The eye belonged to Tracchia. He closed the door, moved out on to his balcony and waved an arm in signal. In the distance, far beyond the forecourt of the hotel, an indistinct figure raised an arm in acknowledgment. Tracchia hurried downstairs and located Neubauer. Together they moved towards the bar and sat there, ordering soft drinks. At least a score of people saw and recognized them for Neubauer and Tracchia were scarcely less well known that Harlow himself. But Tracchia was not a man to establish an alibi by halves.

He said to the barman: ‘I’m expecting a call from Milan at five o’clock. What time do you have?’

‘Exactly five, Mr. Tracchia. ‘

‘Let the desk know I’m here.’

‘The direct route to the Post Office lay through a narrow alleyway lined with mews-type houses and alternate garages on both sides. The road was almost deserted, a fact that Dunnet attributed to its being a Saturday afternoon. In all its brief length of less than two hundred yards there was only an overalled figure working ‘ over the engine of his car outside the opened door of a garage. In a fashion more French than Italian he wore a navy beret down to his eyes and the rest of his face was so streaked with oil and grease as to be virtually unrecognizable. He wouldn’t, Dunnet thought inconsequentially, have been tolerated for five seconds on die Coronado racing team. But, then, working on a Coronado and on a battered old Fiat 600 called for different standards of approach.

As Dunnet passed the Fiat the mechanic abruptly straightened. Dunnet politely side-stepped to avoid him but as he did so the mechanic, one leg braced against the side of the car to lend additional leverage for a take-off thrust, flung his entire bodily weight against him. Completely off-balance and already falling, Dunnet staggered through the opened garage doorway. His already headlong process towards the ground was rapidly and violently accelerated by two very large and very powerful stocking-masked figures who clearly held no brief for the more gentle arts of persuasion. The garage door closed behind him.

Rory was absorbed in a lurid comic magazine and Tracchia and Neubauer, alibis safely established, were still at the bar when Dunnet entered the hotel. It was an entry that attracted the immediate attention of everyone in the foyer for it was an entry that would have attracted such attention anywhere. Dunnet didn’t walk in, he staggered in like a drunken man and even then would have fallen were it not for the fact that he was supported by a policeman on either side of him. He was bleeding badly from nose and mouth, had a rapidly closing right eye, an unpleasant gash above it and, generally, a badly bruised face. Tracchia, Neubauer, Rory and the receptionist reached him at almost the same moment.

The shock in Tracchia’s voice marched perfectly with the expression on his face. He said: ‘God in heaven, Mr. Dunnet, what happened to you?’

Dunnet tried to smile, winced and thought better of it. He said in a slurred voice: ‘I rather think I was set upon.’

Neubauer said : ‘But who did — I mean where — why, Mr. Dunnet, why?’

One of the policemen held up his hand and turned to the receptionist. ‘Please. At once. A doctor.’

‘In one minute. Less. We have seven staying here. She turned to Tracchia. ‘You know Mr. Dunnet’s room, Mr. Tracchia. If you and Mr. Neubauer would be so kind as to show the officers —’