Caravan to Vaccares

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 scree-covered 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.’

‘Saintes-Maries!’

‘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.’

Two minutes later, pressed deeply into shadow, he stood at the side of the entrance to the forecourt. Three caravans, the three he had examined earlier, still had their lights burning, but only one of them – Czerda’s – showed any sign of human activity. It came as no surprise to him to discover that his guess as to what Czerda and his headmen would be doing had proved to be so remarkably accurate, except that he had no means of checking whether the alcohol they were putting away in such copious quantities was slivovitz or not. It was certainly alcohol. The two men sitting with Czerda on the caravan steps were cast in the same mould as Czerda himself, swarthy, lean, powerfully built, unmistakably Central European and unprepossessing to a degree. Bowman had never seen either before nor, looking at them, did he care very much whether he ever saw either of them again. From the desultory conversation, he gathered they were called Maca and Masaine: whatever their names it was clear that fate had not cast them on the side of the angels.

Almost directly between them and Bowman’s place of concealment stood Czerda’s jeep, parked so that it faced the entrance of the forecourt – the only vehicle there so positioned: in an emergency, clearly, it would be the first vehicle that would be pressed into service and it seemed to Bowman prudent to do something about that. Crouched low, moving slowly and silently across the forecourt and at all times keeping the jeep directly between him and the caravan steps, he arrived at the front end of the jeep, edged cautiously towards the near front tyre, unscrewed the valve cap and inserted the end of a match into the valve using a balled-up handkerchief to muffle the hiss of the escaping air. By and by the rim of the wheel settled down until it was biting into the inner carcass of the tread. Bowman hoped, fervently if belatedly, that Czerda and his friends weren’t regarding the front near wing in any way closely for they could not have failed to be more than mildly astonished by the fact that it had sunk a clear three inches closer to the ground. But Czerda and his friends had, providentially, other and more immediate concerns to occupy their attention.

‘Something is wrong,’ Czerda said positively. ‘Very far wrong. You know that I can always tell about those things.’

‘Ferenc and Koscis and Hoval can look after themselves.’ It was the man whose name Bowman thought to be Maca and he spoke confidently. ‘If this Bowman ran, he could have run a very long way.’

‘No.’ Bowman risked a quick glance round the wing of the jeep and Czerda was now on his feet. ‘They’ve been gone too long, far too long. Come. We must look for them.’

The other two gypsies rose reluctantly to their feet but remained there, as Czerda did, their heads cocked and slowly turning. Bowman had heard the sound as soon as they had, the sound of pounding feet from the patio by the pool. Ferenc appeared at the top of the steps, came down three at a time and ran across the forecourt to Czerda’s caravan. It was the lurching stumbling run of a man very close to exhaustion and from his distressed breathing, sweating face and the fact that he made no attempt to conceal the gun in his hand it was clear that Ferenc was in a state of considerable agitation.

‘They’re dead, Father!’ Ferenc’s voice was a hoarse gasping wheeze. ‘Hoval and Koscis. They’re dead!’

‘God’s name, what are you saying?’ Czerda demanded.

‘Dead! Dead, I tell you! I found Koscis. His neck is broken, I think every bone in his body is broken. God knows where Hoval is.’

Czerda seized his son by the lapels and shook him violently. ‘Talk sense! Killed?’ His voice was almost a shout.

‘This man Bowman. He killed them.’

‘He killed – he killed – and Bowman?’

‘Escaped.’

‘Escaped! Escaped! You young fool, if this man escapes Gaiuse Strome will kill us all. Quickly! Bowman’s room!’

‘And the girl’s.’ Ferenc’s wheezing had eased fractionally. ‘And the girl’s.’

‘The girl?’ Czerda asked. ‘The dark one?’

Ferenc nodded violently. ‘She gave him shelter.’

‘And the girl’s,’ Czerda agreed viciously. ‘Hurry.’

The four men ran off towards the patio steps. Bowman moved to the offside front tyre and because this time he didn’t have to bother about muffling the escaping hiss of air he merely unscrewed the valve and threw it away. He rose and, still stooping, ran across the forecourt and through the sculptured arch in the hedge to the parking space beyond.

Here he ran into an unexpected difficulty. A blue Peugeot, Cecile had said. Fine. A blue Peugeot he could recognize any time – in broad daylight. But this wasn’t daytime, it was nighttime, and even although the moon was shining the thickly-woven wickerwork roofing cast an almost impenetrable shadow on the cars parked beneath it. Just as by night all cats are grey so by night all cars look infuriatingly the same. Easy enough, perhaps, to differentiate between a Rolls and a Mini, but in this age of mindless conformity the vast majority of cars are disturbingly alike in size and profile. Or so, dismayingly, Bowman found that night. He moved quickly from one car to the next, having to peer closely in each case for an infuriating length of time, only to discover that it was not the car he was seeking.

He heard the sound of low voices, but voices angry and anxious, and moved quickly to the archway. Close by Czerda’s caravan, the four gypsies, who had clearly discovered that their birds had flown, were gesticulating and arguing heatedly, holding their council of war and obviously wondering what in hell to do next, a decision Bowman didn’t envy their having to make for in their position he wouldn’t have had the faintest idea himself.

Abruptly, the centre of his attention altered. Out of the corner of an eye he had caught sight of something which, even in that pale moonlight, definitely constituted a splash of colour. This brightly-hued apparition, located on the upper terrace, consisted of a pair of garishly-striped heliotrope pyjamas and inside the pyjamas was no other than Le Grand Duc, leaning on the balustrade and gazing down towards the forecourt with an expression of what might have been mild interest or benign indifference or, indeed, quite a variety of other expressions as it is difficult to be positive about those things when a large part of what can be seen of the subject’s face consists of jaws champing regularly up and down while most of the remainder is concealed by a large red apple. But, clearly, however, he wasn’t in the grip of any violent emotion.

Bowman left Le Grand Duc to his munching and resumed his search. The inner end of the parking lot, she had said. But her damned Peugeot wasn’t at the inner end. He’d checked twice. He turned to the west side and the fourth one along was it. Or he thought it was. A Peugeot, anyway. He climbed inside and the key fitted the ignition. Women, he thought bitterly, but didn’t pursue the subject with himself, there were things to be done.

The door he closed as softly as he could: it seemed unlikely that the faint click would have been heard in the forecourt even if the gypsies hadn’t been conducting their heated council of war. He released the hand-brake, engaged first gear and kept the clutch depressed, reached for and turned on the ignition and the headlamp switches simultaneously. Both engine and lamps came on precisely together and the Peugeot, throwing gravel from its rear wheels, jumped forward, Bowman spinning the wheel to the left to head for the archway in the hedge. At once he saw the four gypsies detach themselves from the rear of Czerda’s caravan and run to cover what they accurately assumed would be the route he would take between the archway and the exit from the forecourt. Czerda appeared to be shouting and although his voice couldn’t be heard above the accelerating roar of the engine his violent gesticulations clearly indicated that he was telling his men to stop the Peugeot although how he proposed to do this Bowman couldn’t imagine. As he passed through the archway he could see in the blaze of the headlamps that Ferenc was the only one carrying a firearm and as he was pointing it directly at Bowman he didn’t leave Bowman with very much option other than to point the car directly at him. The panic registering suddenly on Ferenc’s face showed that he had lost all interest in using the gun and was now primarily concerned with saving himself. He dived frantically to his left and almost got clear but almost wasn’t enough. The nearside wing of the Peugeot caught him in the thigh and suddenly he wasn’t there any more, all Bowman could see was the metallic glint of his gun spinning in the air. On the left, Czerda and the two other gypsies had managed to fling themselves clear. Bowman twisted the wheel again, drove out of the forecourt and down towards the valley road. He wondered what Le Grand Duc had made of all that: probably, he thought, he hadn’t missed as much as a munch.

The tyres squealed as the Peugeot rounded the right-angle turn at the foot of the road. Bowman drew up beside Cecile, stopped, got out but left the engine running. She ran to him and thrust out a suitcase.

‘Hurry! Quickly!’ Angrily, almost, she thrust the case at him. ‘Can’t you hear them coming?’

‘I can hear them,’ Bowman said pacifically. ‘I think we have time.’

They had time. They heard the whine of an engine in low gear, a whine diminishing in intensity as the jeep braked heavily for the corner. Abruptly it came into sight and clearly it was making a very poor job indeed of negotiating the right-hand bend. Czerda was hauling madly on the steering-wheel but the front wheels – or tyres, at least – appeared to have a mind of their own. Bowman watched with interest as the jeep carried straight on, careered across the opposite bank of the road, cut down a sapling and landed with a resounding crash.

‘Tsk! Tsk!’ Bowman said to Cecile. ‘Did ever you see such careless driving?’ He crossed over the road and looked into the field. The jeep, its wheels still spinning, lay on its side while the three gypsies, who had clearly parted company with their vehicle before it had come to rest, lay in a sprawled heap about fifteen feet away. As he watched they disentangled themselves and scrambled painfully to their feet. Ferenc, understandably, was not one of the three. Bowman became aware that he had been joined by Cecile.

‘You did this,’ she said accusingly. ‘You sabotaged their jeep.’

‘It was nothing,’ he said deprecatingly. ‘I just let a little air out of the tyres.’

‘But – but you could have killed those men! The jeep could have landed on top of them and crushed them to death.’

‘It’s not always possible to arrange everything as one would wish it,’ Bowman said regretfully. She gave him the kind of look Dr Crippen must have got used to after he’d been hauled into court, so Bowman changed his tone. ‘You don’t look like a fool, Cecile, nor do you talk like one, so don’t go and spoil the whole effect by behaving like one. If you think our three friends down there were just out to savour the delights of the night-time Provencal air, why don’t you go and ask them how they are?’

She turned and walked back to the car without a word. He followed and they drove off in a one-sidedly huffy silence. Within a minute he slowed and pulled the car into a small cleared area on the right-hand side of the road. Through the windscreen they could see the vertical limestone bluffs with enormous man-made rectangular openings giving on the impenetrable darkness of the unseen caverns beyond.

‘You’re not stopping here?’ Incredulity in her voice.

He switched off the engine and set the parking brake.

‘I’ve stopped.’

‘But they’ll find us here!’ She sounded a little desperate. ‘They’re bound to any minute now.’

‘No. If they’re capable of thinking at all after that little tumble they had, they’ll be thinking that we’re half-way to Avignon by this time. Besides, I think it’s going to take them some time to recover their first fine enthusiasm for moonlight driving.’

They got out of the car and looked at the entrance to the caverns. Foreboding wasn’t the word for it, nor was sinister: something stronger, much stronger. It was, quite literally, an appalling place and Bowman had no difficulty in understanding and sympathizing with the viewpoint of the policeman back at the hotel. But he didn’t for a moment believe that you had to be born in Les Baux and grow up hand-in-hand with all the ancient superstitions in order to develop a night phobia about those caves: quite simply it was a place into which no man in his right mind would venture after the sun had gone down. He was, he hoped, in his right mind, and he didn’t want to go in. But he had to.

He took a torch from his suitcase and said to Cecile: ‘Wait here.’

‘No! You’re not going to leave me alone here.’ She sounded pretty vehement about it.

‘It’ll probably be an awful lot worse inside.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘Suit yourself.’

They set off together and passed through the largest of the openings to the left: if you could have put a three-storey house on wheels you could have trundled it through that opening without any trouble. Bowman traversed the walls with his torch, walls covered with the graffiti of countless generations, then opted for an archway to the right that led to an even larger cavern. Cecile, he noticed, even although wearing flat-heeled sandals, stumbled quite a bit, more than the occasional slight undulations in the limestone floor warranted: he was pretty well sure now that her vision was a good deal less than twenty-twenty which, he reflected, was maybe why she had consented to come with him in the first place.

The next cavern held nothing of interest for Bowman. True, its vaulted heights were lost in darkness, but as only a bat could have got up there anyway that was of no moment. Another archway loomed ahead.

‘This is a dreadful place,’ Cecile whispered.

‘Well, I wouldn’t like to live here all the time.’

Another few paces and she said: ‘Mr Bowman.’

‘Neil.’

‘May I take your arm?’ In these days he didn’t think they asked.

‘Help yourself,’ he said agreeably. ‘You’re not the only person in need of reassurance round here.’

‘It’s not that. I’m not scared, really. It’s just that you keep flashing that torch everywhere and I can’t see and I keep tripping.’

‘Ah!’

So she took his arm and she didn’t trip any more, just shivered violently as if she were coming down with some form of malaria. By and by she said: ‘What are you looking for?’

‘You know damned well what I’m looking for.’

‘Perhaps – well, they could have hidden him.’

‘They could have hidden him. They couldn’t have buried him, not unless they had brought along some dynamite with them, but they could have hidden him. Under a mound of limestone rock and stones. There’s plenty around.’

‘But we’ve passed by dozens of piles of limestone rocks. You didn’t bother about them.’

‘When we come to a freshly made mound you’ll know the difference,’ he said matter-of-factly. She shivered again, violently, and he went on: ‘Why did you have to come in, Cecile? You were telling the truth when you said you weren’t scared: you’re just plain terrified.’

‘I’d rather be plain terrified in here with you than plain terrified alone out there.’ Any moment now and her teeth would start chattering.

‘You may have a point there,’ he admitted. They passed, slightly uphill this time, through another archway, into another immense cavern: after a few steps Bowman stopped abruptly.

‘What is it? she whispered. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know.’ He paused. ‘Yes, I do know.’ For the first time he shivered himself.

‘You, too?’ Again that whisper.

‘Me, too. But it’s not that. Some clod-hopping character has just walked over my grave.’

‘Please?’

‘This is it. This is the place. When you’re old and sinful like me, you can smell it.’

‘Death?’ And now her voice was shaking. ‘People can’t smell death.’

‘I can.’

He switched off the torch.

‘Put it on, put it on!’ Her voice was high-pitched, close to hysteria. ‘For God’s sake, put it on. Please.’

He detached her hand, put his arm round her and held her close. With a bit of luck, he thought, they might get some synchronization into their shivering, not as much perhaps as the ballroom champions on TV got in their dancing, but enough to be comfortable. When the vibrations had died down a little he said: ‘Notice anything different about this cavern?’

‘There’s light! There’s light coming from somewhere.’

‘There is indeed.’ They walked slowly forward till they came to a huge pile of rubble on the floor. The jumble of rocks stretched up and up until at the top they could see a large squarish patch of star-dusted sky. Down the centre of this rockfall, all the way from top to bottom, was a narrow patch of disturbed rubble, a pathway that seemed to have been newly made. Bowman switched on his torch and there was no doubt about it: it was newly made. He traversed the base of the rockfall with the beam of the torch and then the beam, almost of its own volition, stopped and locked on a mound of limestone rocks, perhaps eight feet in length by three high.

‘With a freshly made mound of limestone,’ Bowman said, ‘you can see the difference.’

‘You can see the difference,’ she repeated mechanically.

‘Please. Walk away a little.’

‘No. It’s funny, but I’m all right now.’

He believed her and he didn’t think it was funny. Mankind is still close enough to the primeval jungles to find the greatest fear of all in the unknown: but here, now, they knew.

Bowman stooped over the mound and began to throw stones to one side. They hadn’t bothered to cover the unfortunate Alexandre to any great depth for inside a moment Bowman came to the slashed remnants of a once white shirt, now saturated in blood. Lying in the encrusted blood and attached to a chain was a silver crucifix. He unclipped the chain and lifted both it and the crucifix away.

Bowman parked the Peugeot at the spot in the valley road where he had picked up Cecile and the cases. He got out.

‘Stay here,’ he said to Cecile. ‘This time I mean it.’ She didn’t exactly nod her head obediently but she didn’t argue either: maybe his training methods were beginning to improve. The jeep, he observed without any surprise, was where he’d last seen it: it was going to require a mobile crane to get it out of there.

The entrance to the Baumanière’s forecourt seemed deserted but he’d developed the same sort of affectionate trust for Czerda and his merry band of followers as he would have for a colony of cobras or black widow spiders so he pressed deep into the shadows and advanced slowly into the forecourt. His foot struck something solid and there was a faint metallic clink. He became very still but he’d provoked no reaction that he could see or hear. He stooped and picked up the pistol that he’d inadvertently kicked against the base of a petrol pump. Young Ferenc’s pistol, without a doubt. From what last Bowman had seen of Ferenc he didn’t think he’d have missed it yet or would be wanting to use it for some time: but Bowman decided to return it to him all the same. He knew he wouldn’t be disturbing anyone for lights from inside Czerda’s caravan still shone through the windows and the half-open door. Every other caravan in the forecourt was in darkness. He crossed to Czerda’s caravan, climbed the steps soundlessly and looked in through the doorway.

Czerda, with a bandaged left hand, bruised cheek and large strip of sticking-plaster on his forehead, wasn’t looking quite his old self but he was in mint condition compared to Ferenc to whose injuries he was attending. Ferenc lay on a bunk, moaning and barely half-conscious, exclaiming in pain from time to time as his father removed a blood-soaked bandage from his forehead. When the bandage was at last jerked free to the accompaniment of a final yelp of pain, a pain that had the effect of restoring Ferenc to something pretty close to complete consciousness, Bowman could see that he had a very nasty cut indeed across his forehead, but a cut that faded into insignificance compared to the massive bruising of forehead and face: if he had sustained other bodily bruises of comparable magnitude Ferenc had to be suffering very considerably and feeling in a very low state indeed. It was not a consideration that moved Bowman: if Ferenc had had his way he, Bowman, would be in a state in which he’d never feel anything again.

Ferenc sat shakily up on the bunk while his father secured a fresh bandage, then sat forward, put his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands and moaned.

‘In God’s name, what happened? My head–’

‘You’ll be all right,’ Czerda said soothingly. ‘A cut and a bruise. That’s all.’

‘But what happened? Why is my head–’

‘The car. Remember?’

‘The car. Of course. That devil Bowman!’ Coming from Ferenc, Bowman thought, that was rather good. ‘Did he – did he–’

‘Damn his soul, yes. He got clear away – and he wrecked our jeep. See this?’ Czerda pointed to his hand and forehead. Ferenc looked without interest and looked away. He had other things on his mind.

‘My gun, Father! Where’s my gun?’

‘Here,’ Bowman said. He pointed the gun at Ferenc and walked into the caravan: the bloodstained chain and crucifix dangled from his left hand. Ferenc stared at him: he looked as a man might look with his head on the block and the executioner starting the back swing on his axe, for executioner Ferenc would have been in Bowman’s position. Czerda, whose back had been to the door, swung round and remained as immobile as his son. He didn’t seem any more pleased to see Bowman than Ferenc did. Bowman walked forward, two paces, and placed the bloody crucifix on a small table.

‘His mother might like to have that,’ he said. ‘I should wipe the blood off first, though.’ He waited for some reaction but there was none so he went on: ‘I’m going to kill you, Czerda. I’ll have to, won’t I, for no one can ever prove you killed young Alexandre. But I don’t require proof, all I need is certainty. But not yet. I can’t do it yet, can I? I mustn’t cause innocent people to die, must I? But later. Later I kill you. Then I kill Gaiuse Strome. Tell him I said so, will you?’

‘What do you know of Gaiuse Strome?’ he whispered.

‘Enough to hang him. And you.’

Czerda suddenly smiled but when he spoke it was still in the same whisper.

‘You’ve just said you can’t kill me yet.’ He took a step forward.

Bowman said nothing. He altered the pistol fractionally until it was lined up on a spot between Ferenc’s eyes. Czerda made no move to take a second step. Bowman looked at him and pointed to a stool close to the small table.

‘Sit down,’ he said, ‘and face your son.’

Czerda did as he was told. Bowman took one step forward and it was apparent that Ferenc’s reactions weren’t yet back in working order for his suddenly horrified expression in what little was left of his face that was still capable of registering expressions and his mouth opening to shout a warning came far too late to be of any aid to Czerda who crashed heavily to the floor as the barrel of Bowman’s gun caught him behind the ear.

Ferenc bared his teeth and swore viciously at him. At least that was what Bowman assumed he was doing for Ferenc had reverted to his native Romany but he hadn’t even started in on his descriptions when Bowman stepped forward wordlessly, his gun swinging again. Ferenc’s reactions were even slower than Bowman had imagined: he toppled headlong across his father and lay still.

‘What on earth–’ The voice came from behind Bowman. He threw himself to one side, dropping to the floor, whirled round and brought the gun up: then, more slowly, he rose. Cecile stood in the doorway, her green eyes wide, her face stilled in shock.

‘You fool,’ Bowman said savagely. ‘You almost died there. Don’t you know that?’ She nodded, the shock still in her face. ‘Come inside. Shut the door. You are a fool. Why the hell didn’t you do what I asked and stay where you were?’

Almost as if in a trance she stepped inside and closed the door. She stared down at the two fallen men, then back at Bowman again.

‘For God’s sake, why did you knock those two men senseless? Two injured men?’

‘Because it was inconvenient to kill them at present,’ Bowman said coldly. He turned his back on her and began to search the place methodically and exhaustively. When one searches any place, be it gypsy caravan or baronial mansion, methodically and exhaustively, one has to wreck it completely in the process. So, in an orderly and systematic fashion, Bowman set about reducing Czerda’s caravan to a total ruin. He ripped the beds to pieces, sliced open the mattresses with the aid of a knife he’d borrowed from the recumbent Czerda, scattering the flock stuffing far and wide to ensure that there was nothing hidden inside, and wrenched open cupboards, all locked, again with the aid of Czerda’s knife. He moved into the kitchen recess, smashed all the items of crockery that were capable of holding anything, emptied the contents of a dozen food tins into the sink, smashed open preserving jars and a variety of wine bottles by the simple expedient of knocking them together two at a time and ended up by spilling the contents of the cutlery drawers on the floor to ensure that there was nothing hidden beneath the lining paper. There wasn’t.

Cecile, who had been watching this performance still in the same kind of hypnotic trance, said: ‘Who’s Gaiuse Strome?’

‘How long were you listening?’

‘All the time. Who’s Gaiuse Strome?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bowman said frankly. ‘Never heard of him until tonight.’

He turned his attention to the larger clothing drawers. He emptied the contents of each in turn on the floor and kicked them apart. There was nothing there for him, just clothes.

‘Other people’s property doesn’t mean all that much to you, does it?’ By this time Cecile’s state of trance had altered to the dazed incomprehension of one trying to come to grips with reality.

‘He’ll have it insured,’ Bowman said comfortingly. He began an assault on the last piece of furniture still intact, a beautifully carved mahogany bureau worth a small fortune in anybody’s money, splintering open the locked drawers with the now invaluable aid of the point of Czerda’s knife. He dumped the contents of the first two drawers on the floor and was about to open a third when something caught his eye. He stooped and retrieved a pair of heavy rolled-up woollen socks. Inside them was an elastic-bound package of brand-new crackling banknotes with consecutive serial numbers. It took him over half a minute to count them.

‘Eighty thousand Swiss francs in one-thousand franc notes,’ Bowman observed. ‘I wonder where friend Czerda got eighty thousand Swiss francs in one-thousand-franc notes? Ah, well.’ He stuffed the notes into a hip pocket and resumed the search.

‘But – but that’s stealing!’ It would be too much, perhaps, to say that Cecile looked horrified but there wasn’t much in the way of admiration in those big green eyes: but Bowman was in no mood for moral disapprobation.

‘Oh, shut up!’ he said.

‘But you’ve got money.’

‘Maybe this is how I get it.’

He broke open another drawer, sifted through the contents with the toe of his shoe, then turned as he heard a sound to his left. Ferenc was struggling shakily to his feet, so Bowman took his arm, helped him to stand upright, hit him very hard indeed on the side of the jaw and lowered him to the floor again. The shock was back in Cecile’s face, a shock mingled with the beginnings of revulsion, she was probably a gently nurtured girl who had been brought up to believe that opera or the ballet or the theatre constituted the ideal of an evening’s entertainment. Bowman started in on the next drawer.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said. ‘Just an idle layabout laying about. Not funny?’

‘No.’ She had her lips compressed in a very schoolmarmish way.

‘I’m pressed for time. Ah!’

‘What is it?’ In even the most puritanical of females repugnance doesn’t stand a chance against curiosity.

‘This.’ He showed her a delicately fashioned rosewood lacquered box inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl. It was locked and so exquisitely made that it was quite impossible to insert the point of even Czerda’s razor-sharp knife into the microscopic line between lid and box. Cecile seemed to derive a certain malicious satisfaction from this momentary problem for she waved a hand to indicate the indescribable wreckage that now littered almost every square inch of the caravan floor.

‘Shall I look for the key?’ she asked sweetly.

‘No need.’ He laid the rosewood box on the floor and jumped on it with both heels, reducing it at once to splintered matchwood. He removed a sealed envelope from the ruins, opened it and extracted a sheet of paper.

On it was a typewritten – in capitals – jumble of apparently meaningless letters and figures. There were a few words in plain language but their meaning in the context was completely obscure.

Cecile peered over his shoulder. Her eyes were screwed up and he knew she was having difficulty in seeing.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

‘Code, looks like. One or two words straight. There’s “Monday”, a date – May 24th – and a place-name – Grau du Roi.’

‘Grau du Roi?’

‘A fishing port and holiday resort down on the coast. Now, why should a gypsy be carrying a message in code?’ He thought about this for a bit but it didn’t do him any good: he was still awake and on his feet but his mind had turned in for the night. ‘Stupid question. Up, up and away.’

‘What? Still two lovely drawers left unsmashed?’

‘Leave those for the vandals.’ He took her arm so that she wouldn’t trip too often on the way to the door and she peered questioningly at him.

‘Meaning you can break codes?’

Bowman looked around him. ‘Furniture, yes. Crockery, yes. Codes, no. Come, to our hotel.’

They left. Before closing the door Bowman had a last look at the two still unconscious and injured men lying amidst the irretrievably ruined shambles of what had once been a beautifully appointed caravan interior. He felt almost sorry for the caravan.