Caravan to Vaccares

Chapter 5

Bowman’s call to England came through quickly and he returned to his hotel within fifteen minutes of having left it. The corridor leading to his bedroom was thickly carpeted and his footfalls soundless. He was reaching for the handle of the door when he heard voices coming from inside the room. No voices, he realized, just one – Cecile’s – and it came only intermittently: the tone of her voice was readily recognizable but the muffling effect of the intervening door was too great to allow him to distinguish the words. He was about to lean his ear against the woodwork when a chambermaid carrying an armful of sheets came round a corner of the corridor. Bowman walked unconcernedly on his way and a couple of minutes later walked unconcernedly back. There was only silence in the room. He knocked and went inside.

Cecile was standing by the window and she turned and smiled at him as he closed the door. Her gleaming dark hair had been combed or brushed or whatever she’d done with it and she looked more fetching than ever.

‘Ravishing,’ he said. ‘How did you manage without me? My word, if our children only look–’

‘Another thing,’ she interrupted. The smile, he now noticed, lacked warmth. ‘This Mr Parker business when you registered. You did show your passport, didn’t you – Mr Bowman?’

‘A friend lent it to me.’

‘Of course. What else? Is your friend very important?’

‘How’s that?’

‘What is your job, Mr Bowman?’

‘I’ve told you–’

‘Of course. I’d forgotten. A professional idler.’ She sighed. ‘And now – breakfast?’

‘First, for me, a shave. It’ll spoil my complexion but I can fix that. Then breakfast.’

He took the shaving kit from his case, went into the bathroom, closed the door and set about shaving. He looked around him. She’d come in here, divested herself of all her cumbersome finery, had a very careful bath to ensure that she didn’t touch the stain, dressed again, reapplied to the palms of her hands some of the stain he’d left her and all this inside fifteen minutes. Not to mention the hair brushing or combing or whatever. He didn’t believe it, she had about her the fastidious look of a person who’d have used up most of that fifteen minutes just in brushing her teeth. He looked into the bath and it was indubitably still wet so she had at least turned on the tap. He picked up the crumpled bath-towel and it was as dry as the sands of the Sinai desert. She’d brushed her hair and that was all. Apart from making a phone call.

He shaved, re-applied some war-paint and took Cecile down to a table in a corner of the hotel’s rather ornate and statuary-crowded patio. Despite the comparatively early hour it was already well patronized with late breakfasters and early coffee-takers. For the most part the patrons were clearly tourists, but there was a fair sprinkling of the more well-to-do Arlésiens among them, some dressed in the traditional fiesta costume of that part, some as gypsies.

As they took their seats their attention was caught and held by an enormous lime and dark green Rolls-Royce parked by the kerb: beside it stood the chauffeuse, her uniform matching the colours of the car. Cecile looked at the gleaming car in frank admiration.

‘Gorgeous,’ she said. ‘Absolutely gorgeous.’

‘Yes indeed,’ Bowman agreed. ‘You’d hardly think she could drive a great big car like that.’ He ignored Cecile’s old-fashioned look and leisurely surveyed the patio. ‘Three guesses as to the underprivileged owner.’

Cecile followed his line of sight. The third table from where they sat was occupied by Le Grand Duc and Lila. A waiter appeared with a very heavy tray which he set before Le Grand Duc who picked up and drained a beaker of orange juice almost before the waiter had time to straighten what must have been his aching back.

‘I thought that fellow would never come.’ Le Grand Duc was loud and testy.

‘Charles.’ Lila shook her head. ‘You’ve just had an enormous breakfast.’

‘And now I’m having another one. Pass the rolls, ma chérie.’

‘Good God!’ At their table, Cecile laid a hand on Bowman’s arm. ‘The Duke – and Lila.’

‘What’s all the surprise about?’ Bowman watched Le Grand Duc industriously ladling marmalade from a large jar while Lila poured coffee. ‘Naturally he’d be here – where the gypsies are, there the famous gypsy folklorist will be. And, of course, in the best hotel. There’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship across there. Can she cook?’

‘Can she – funnily enough, she can. A very good one, too. Cordon Bleu.’

‘Good Lord! He’ll kidnap her.’

‘But what is she still doing with him?’

‘Easy. You told her about Saintes-Maries. She’ll want to go there. And she hasn’t a car, not since we borrowed it. He’ll definitely want to be going there. And he has a car – a pound to a penny that’s his Rolls. And they seem on pretty good terms, though heavens knows what she sees in our large friend. Look at his hands – they work like a conveyor belt. Heaven grant I’m never aboard a lifeboat with him when they’re sharing out the last of the rations.’

‘I think he’s good-looking. In his own way.’

‘So’s an orangutan.’

‘You don’t like him, do you?’ She seemed amused. ‘Just because he said you were–’

‘I don’t trust him. He’s a phoney. I’ll bet he’s not a gypsy folklorist, has never written a thing about them and never will. If he’s so famous and important a man why has neither of us heard of him? And why does he come to this part three years running to study their customs? Once would be enough for even a folklore ignoramus like me.’

‘Maybe he likes gypsies.’

‘Maybe. And maybe he likes them for all the wrong reasons.’

Cecile looked at him, paused and said in a lowered voice: ‘You think he’s this Gaiuse Strome?’

‘I didn’t say anything of the kind. And don’t mention that name in here – you still want to live, don’t you?’

‘I don’t see–’

‘How do you know there’s not a real gypsy among all the ones wearing fancy dress on this patio?’

‘I’m sorry. That was silly of me.’

‘Yes.’ He was looking at Le Grand Duc’s table. Lila had risen and was speaking. Le Grand Duc waved a lordly hand and she walked towards the hotel entrance. His face thoughtful, Bowman’s gaze followed her as she crossed the patio, mounted the steps, crossed the foyer and disappeared.

‘She is beautiful, isn’t she?’ Cecile murmured.

‘How’s that?’ Bowman looked at her. ‘Yes, yes of course. Unfortunately I can’t marry you both – there’s a law against it.’ Still thoughtfully, he looked across at Le Grand Duc, then back at Cecile. ‘Go talk to our well-built friend. Read his palm. Tell his fortune.’

‘What?’

‘The Duke there. Go–’

‘I don’t think that’s funny.’

‘Neither do I. Never occurred to me when your friend was there – she’d have recognized you. But the Duke won’t – he hardly knows you. And certainly wouldn’t in that disguise. Not that there’s the slightest chance of him lifting his eyes from his plate anyway.’

‘No!’

‘Please, Cecile.’

‘No!’

‘Remember the caverns. I haven’t a lead.’

‘Oh, God, don’t!’

‘Well then.’

‘But what can I do?’

‘Start off with the old mumbo-jumbo. Then say you see he has very important plans in the near future and if he is successful – then stop there. Refuse to read any more and come away. Give him the impression that he has no future. Observe his reactions.’

‘Then you really do suspect–’

‘I suspect nothing.’

Reluctantly she pushed back her chair and rose.

‘Pray to Sara for me.’

‘Sara?’

‘She’s the patron saint of the gypsies, isn’t she?’

Bowman watched her as she moved away. She side-stepped politely to avoid bumping into another customer who had just entered, an ascetic and otherworldly looking priest: it was impossible to imagine Simon Searl as anything other than a selfless and dedicated man of God in whose hands one would willingly place one’s life. They murmured apologies and Cecile carried on and stopped at the table of Le Grand Duc, who lowered his coffee cup and glanced up in properly ducal irritation.

‘Well, what is it?’

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, good morning.’ He picked up his coffee cup again. ‘What is it?’

‘Tell your fortune, sir?’

‘Can’t you see I’m busy? Go away.’

‘Only ten francs, sir.’

‘I haven’t got ten francs.’ He lowered his cup again and looked at her closely for the first time.

‘But by Jove, though, if only you’d blonde hair–’

Cecile smiled, took advantage of the temporary moment of admiration and picked up his left hand.

‘You have a long lifeline,’ she announced.

‘I’m as fit as a fiddle.’

‘And you come of noble blood.’

‘Any fool can see that.’

‘You have a very kind disposition–’

‘Not when I’m starving.’ He snatched away his hand, used it to pick up a roll, then glanced upwards as Lila came back to the table. He pointed his roll at Cecile. ‘Remove this young pest. She’s upsetting me.’

‘You don’t look upset, Charles.’

‘How can you see what’s happening to my digestion?’

Lila turned to Cecile with a smile that was half-friendly, half-apologetic, a smile that momentarily faded as she realized who it was. Lila put her smile back in place and said: ‘Perhaps you would like to read my hand?’ The tone was perfectly done, conciliatory without being patronizing, a gently implied rebuke to Le Grand Duc’s boorishness. Le Grand Duc remained wholly unaffected.

‘At a distance, if you please,’ he said firmly. ‘At a distance.’

They moved off and Le Grand Duc watched them go with an expression as thoughtful as possible for one whose jaws are moving with metronomic regularity. He looked away from the girls and across the table where Lila had been sitting. Bowman was looking directly at him but almost immediately looked away. Le Grand Duc tried to follow Bowman’s altered line of sight and it seemed to him that Bowman was looking fixedly at a tall thin priest who sat with a cup of coffee before him, the same priest, Le Grand Duc realized, as he’d seen blessing the gypsies by the Abbey de Montmajour. And there was no dispute as to where the object of Simon Searl’s interest lay: he was taking an inordinate interest in Le Grand Duc himself. Bowman watched as Lila and Cecile spoke together some little way off: at the moment Cecile was holding Lila’s hand and appearing to speak persuasively while Lila smiled in some embarrassment. He saw Lila press something into Cecile’s hand, then abruptly lost interest in both. From the corner of his eye he had caught sight of something of much more immediate importance: or he thought he had.

Beyond the patio was the gay and bustling fiesta scene in the Boulevard des Lices. Tradesmen were still setting up last-minute stalls but by this time they were far outnumbered by sightseers and shoppers. Together they made up a colourful and exotic spectacle. The rare person dressed in a sober business suit was strikingly out of place. Camera-behung tourists were in their scores, for the most part dressed with that excruciating careless abandon that appears to afflict most tourists the moment they leave their own borders, but even they formed a relatively drab backcloth for the three widely differing types of people who caught and held the eye in the splendid finery of their clothes – the Arlésienne girls so exquisitely gowned in their traditional fiesta costumes, the hundreds of gypsies from a dozen different countries and the gardiens, the cowboys of the Camargue.

Bowman leaned forward in his seat, his eyes intent. Again he saw what had attracted his attention in the first place – a flash of titian hair, but unmistakable. It was Marie le Hobenaut and she was walking very quickly. Bowman looked away as Cecile rejoined him and sat down.

‘Sorry. Up again. A job. Left on the street–’

‘But don’t you want to hear – and my breakfast–’

‘Those can wait. Gypsy girl, titian hair, green and black costume. Follow her. See where she’s going – and she’s going some place. She’s in a tearing hurry. Now!’

‘Yes, sir.’ She looked at him quizzically, rose and left. He did not watch her go. Instead, he looked casually around the patio. Simon Searl, the priest, was the first to go and he did almost immediately, leaving some coins by his coffee cup. Seconds later, Bowman was on his feet and following the priest out into the street. Le Grand Duc, with his face largely obscured by a huge coffee cup, watched the departure of both.

Among the colourful crowds, the very drabness of Searl’s black robes made him an easy figure to follow. What made him even easier to follow was the fact that, as befitted a man of God, he appeared to have no suspicions of his fellow-men for he did not once look back over his shoulder. Bowman closed up till he was within ten feet of him. Now he could clearly see Cecile not much more than the same distance ahead of Searl and, occasionally, there was a brief glimpse of Marie le Hobenaut’s titian hair. Bowman closed up even more on Searl and waited his opportunity.

It came almost at once. Hard by a group of fish-stalls half-a-dozen rather unprepossessing gypsies were trying to sell some horses that had seen better days. As Bowman, no more than five feet behind Searl now, approached the horses he bumped into a dark, swarthy young man with a handsome face and hairline moustache: he sported a black sombrero and rather flashy, tight-fitting dark clothes. Both men murmured apologies, side-stepped and passed on. The dark young man took only two steps, turned and looked after Bowman, who was now almost lost to sight, edging his way through the group of horses.

Ahead of him, Searl stopped as a restive horse whinnied, tossed its head and moved to block his progress. The horse reared, Searl stepped prudently backwards and as he did so Bowman kicked him behind the knee. Searl grunted in agony and fell to his sound knee. Bowman, concealed by horses on both sides of him, stooped solicitously over Searl and chopped the knuckles of his right hand into the base of the man’s neck. Searl collapsed.

‘Watch those damned horses!’ Bowman shouted. At once several gypsies quieted the restive horses and pulled them apart to make a clear space round the fallen priest.

‘What happened?’ one of them demanded. ‘What happened?’

‘Selling that vicious brute?’ Bowman asked. ‘He ought to be destroyed. Kicked him right in the stomach. Don’t just stand there. Get a doctor.’

One of the gypsies at once hurried away. The others stooped low over the prostrate man and while they did so Bowman made a discreet withdrawal. But it wasn’t so discreet as to go unobserved by the same dark young man who had earlier bumped into Bowman: he was busy studying his fingernails.

Bowman was finishing off his breakfast when Cecile returned.

‘I’m hot,’ she announced. She looked it. ‘And I’m hungry.’

Bowman crooked a finger at a passing waiter.

‘Well?’

‘She went into the chemist’s shop. She bought bandages – yards and yards – and a whole lot of cream and ointment and then she went back to the caravans – in a square not far from here–’

‘The green-and-white caravan?’

‘Yes. There were two women waiting for her at the caravan door and then all three went inside.’

‘Two women?’

‘One middle-aged, the other young with auburn hair.’

‘Marie’s mother and Sara. Poor Tina.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Just rambling.’ He glanced across the courtyard. ‘The love-birds across there.’

Cecile followed his gaze to where Le Grand Duc, who was now sitting back with the relieved air of a man who has narrowly escaped death from starvation, smiled indulgently at Lila as she put her hand on his and talked animatedly.

Bowman said: ‘Is your girl-friend simpleminded or anything like that?’

She gave him a long cool look. ‘Not any more than I am.’

‘Um. She knew you, of course. What did you tell her?’

‘Nothing – except that you had to run for your life.’

‘Didn’t she wonder why you came?’

‘Because I wanted to, I said.’

‘Tell her I was suspicious of the Duke?’

‘Well–’

‘It doesn’t matter. She have anything to tell you?’

‘Not much. Just that they stopped to watch a gypsy service this morning.’

‘Service?’

‘You know – religious.’

‘Regular priest?’

‘So Lila said.’

‘Finish your breakfast.’ He pushed back his chair. ‘I won’t be long.’

‘But I thought – I thought you would want to know what the Duke said, his reactions. After all, that’s why you sent me.’

‘Was it?’ Bowman seemed abstracted. ‘Later.’ He rose and entered the hotel: the girl watched him go with a puzzled expression on her face.

‘Tall, you say, El Brocador. Thick-set. Very fast.’ Czerda rubbed his own battered and bandaged face in painfully tender recollection, and looked at the four men seated at the table in his caravan – El Brocador, the swarthy young man Bowman had bumped into in the street, Ferenc, Pierre Lacabro and a still shaken and pale Simon Searl who was trying to rub the back of his neck and the back of his thigh simultaneously.

‘His face was darker than you say,’ El Brocador said. ‘And a moustache.’

‘Dark faces and a moustache you can buy in shops. He can’t hide his stock in trade – violence.’

‘I hope I meet this man soon,’ Pierre Lacabro said. His tone was almost wistful.

‘I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry,’ Czerda said drily. ‘You didn’t see him at all, Searl?’

‘I saw nothing. I just felt those two blows in the back – no, I didn’t even feel the second blow.’

‘Why in God’s name did you have to go to that hotel patio anyway?’

‘I wanted to get a close-up of this Duc de Croytor. It was you, Czerda, who made me curious about him. I wanted to hear his voice. Who he spoke to, see if he has any contacts, who–’

‘He’s with this English girl. He’s harmless.’

‘Clever men do things like that,’ Searl said.

‘Clever men don’t do the things you do,’ Czerda said grimly. ‘Now Bowman knows who you are. He almost certainly knows now that someone in Madame Zigair’s caravan has been badly hurt. If the Duc de Croytor is who you think he is then he must know now that you suspect him of being Gaiuse Strome – and, if he is, he’s not going to like any of those three things at all.’ The expression on Searl’s face left no doubt but that he himself was of the same opinion. Czerda went on: ‘Bowman. He’s the only solution. This man must be silenced. Today. But carefully. Quietly. By accident. Who knows what friends this man may not have?’

‘I told you how this can be done,’ El Brocador said.

‘And a good way. We move on this afternoon. Lacabro, you’re the only one of us he does not know. Go to his hotel. Keep watch. Follow him. We dare not lose him now.’

‘That will be a pleasure.’

‘No violence,’ Czerda warned.

‘Of course not.’ He looked suddenly crestfallen. ‘But I don’t know what he looks like. Dark and thick-set – there are hundreds of dark and thick-set–’

‘If he’s the man El Brocador described and the man I remember seeing on the hotel patio,’ Searl said, ‘he’ll be with a girl dressed as a gypsy. Young, dark, pretty, dressed mainly green and gold, four gold bangles on her left wrist.’

Cecile looked up from the remains of her breakfast as Bowman joined her at the table.

‘You took your time,’ she observed.

‘I have not been idle. I’ve been out. Shopping.’

‘I didn’t see you go.’

‘They have a back entrance.’

‘And now?’

‘Now I have urgent business to attend to.’

‘Like this? Just sitting here?’

‘Before I attend to the urgent thing I have to attend to I’ve something else urgent to attend to first. And that involves sitting here. Do you know they have some very nosey Chinese in the city of Arles?’

‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Couple sitting over by Romeo and Juliet there. Don’t look. Man’s big for a Chinese, forty, although it’s always hard to say with them. Woman with him is younger, Eurasian, very good looking. Both wearing lightly-tinted sun-glasses with those built-in reflectors so that you can’t see through them from the outside.’

Cecile lifted a cup of coffee and looked idly round the patio. She said: ‘I see them now.’

‘Never trust people with reflecting sun-glasses. He seems to be displaying a very keen interest in Le Grand Duc.’

‘It’s his size.’

‘Like enough.’ Bowman looked thoughtfully at the Chinese couple, then at Le Grand Duc and Lila, then back at the Chinese again. Then he said: ‘We can go now.’

She said: ‘This urgent business – this first urgent business you had to attend to–’

‘Attended to. I’ll bring the car round to the front.’

Le Grand Duc watched his departure and announced to Lila: ‘In about an hour we mingle with our subjects.’

‘Subjects, Charles?’

‘Gypsies, dear child. But first, I must compose another chapter of my book.’

‘Shall I bring you pen and paper?’

‘No need, my dear.’

‘You mean – you mean you do it all in your head? It’s not possible, Charles.’

He patted her hand and smiled indulgently.

‘What you can get me is a litre of beer. It’s becoming uncommonly warm. Find a waiter, will you?’

Lila moved obediently away and Le Grand Duc looked after her. There was nothing indulgent about the expression on his face when he saw her talking briefly and smiling to the gypsy girl who had so recently read her fortune: there was nothing indulgent about it when he examined the Chinese couple at an adjacent table: even less so when he saw Cecile join Bowman in a white car in the street: and least of all when he observed another car move off within seconds of Bowman’s.

Cecile gazed in perplexity round the interior of the white Simca. She said: ‘What’s all this about, then?’

‘Such things as phones,’ he explained. ‘Fixed it while you were having breakfast. Fixed two of them in fact.’

‘Two what?’

‘Two hired cars. Never know when you’re going to run short.’

‘But – but in so short a time.’

‘Garage is just down the street – they sent a man to check.’ He took out Czerda’s barely depleted wad of Swiss notes, crackled it briefly and returned it. ‘Depends upon the deposit.’

‘You really are quite amoral, aren’t you?’ She sounded almost admiring.

‘How’s that again?’

‘The way you throw other people’s money around.’

‘Life is for living, money for the spending,’ Bowman said pontifically. ‘No pockets in a shroud.’

‘You’re hopeless,’ she said. ‘Quite, quite hopeless. And why this car, anyway?’

‘Why that get-up you’re wearing?’

‘Why – oh, I see. Of course the Peugeot’s known. I hadn’t thought of that.’ She looked at him curiously as he turned the Simca in the direction of a sign-post saying ‘Nîmes’. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I’m not quite sure. I’m looking for a place where I can talk undisturbed.’

‘To me?’

‘Still your apprehensions. I’ll have all the rest of my life to talk to you. When we were on the patio a battered-looking gypsy in a battered-looking Renault sat and watched us for ten minutes. Both of them are about a hundred yards behind us now. I want to talk to the battered-looking gypsy.’

‘Oh!’

‘Well might you say “Oh!” How, one wonders, is it that Gaiuse Strome’s henchmen are on to us so soon.’ He gave her a sidelong glance. ‘You’re looking at me in a very peculiar manner, if I may say so.’

‘I’m thinking.’

‘Well?’

‘If they’re on to you, why did you bother switching cars?’

Bowman said patiently: ‘When I hired the Simca I didn’t know they were on to me.’

‘And now you’re taking me into danger again? Or what might be danger?’

‘I hope not. If I am, I’m sorry. But if they’re on to me, they’re on to the charming gypsy girl who has been sitting by my side – don’t forget that it was you that the priest was tailing when he met up with his unfortunate accident. Would you rather I’d left you behind to cope with them alone?’

‘You don’t offer very much in the way of choices,’ she complained.

‘I’ve got very little to offer.’ Bowman looked in the mirror. The battered Renault was less than a hundred yards behind. Cecile looked over her shoulder.

‘Why don’t you stop here and talk to him? He’d never dare do anything here. There are far too many people around.’

‘Far too many,’ Bowman agreed. ‘When I talk to him I don’t want anyone within half a mile.’

She glanced at him, shivered and said nothing. Bowman took the Simca over the Rhône to Trinquetaille, turned left on to the Albaron road and then left again on to the road that ran south down the right bank of the river. Here he slowed and gently brought the car to a stop. The driver of the Renault, he observed, did the same thing at a discreet distance to the rear. Bowman drove the Simca on its way again: the Renault followed.

A mile farther on into the flat and featureless plains of the Camargue Bowman stopped again. So did the Renault. Bowman got out, went to the rear of the car, glanced briefly at the Renault parked about a hundred yards away, opened the boot, extracted an implement from the tool-kit, thrust it inside his jacket, closed the boot and returned to his seat. The implement he laid on the floor beside him.

‘What’s that?’ Cecile looked and sounded apprehensive.

‘A wheel-brace.’

‘Something wrong with the wheels?’

‘Wheel-braces can have other uses.’

He drove off. After a few minutes the road began to climb slightly, rounded an unexpectedly sharp left-hand corner and there suddenly, almost directly beneath them and less than twenty feet away, lay the murkily gleaming waters of the Grand Rhône. Bowman braked heavily, was out of the car even as it stopped and walked quickly back the way he had come. The Renault rounded the corner and its driver, caught completely unawares, slewed the car to a skidding stop less than ten yards from Bowman.

Bowman, one hand behind his back, approached the Renault and jerked the driver’s door open. Pierre Lacabro glared out at him, his broad brutalized face set and savage.

‘I’m beginning to think you’re following me around,’ Bowman said mildly.

Lacabro didn’t reply. Instead, with one hand on the wheel and the other on the door frame to afford him maximum leverage he launched himself from the car with a speed surprising for a man of his bulk. Bowman had been prepared for nothing else. He stepped quickly to one side and as the driving Lacabro hurtled past him he brought the wheel-brace swinging down on Lacabro’s left arm. The sound of the blow, the surprising loud crack of a breaking bone and Lacabro’s shriek of pain were almost instantaneous.

‘Who sent you?’ Bowman asked.

Lacabro, writhing on the ground and clutching his damaged left forearm, snarled something incomprehensible in Romany.

‘Please, please listen,’ Bowman said. ‘I’m dealing with murderers. I know I’m dealing with murderers. More important, I know how to deal with murderers. I’ve already broken one bone – I should think it’s your forearm. I’m prepared to go right on breaking as many bones as I have to – assuming you stay conscious – until I find out why those four women in that green-and-white painted caravan are terrified out of their lives. If you do become unconscious, I’ll just sit around and smoke and wait till you’re conscious again and break a few more bones.’

Cecile had left the Simca and was now only feet away. Her face was very pale. She stared at Bowman in horror.

‘Mr Bowman, do you mean–’

‘Shut up!’ He returned his attention to Lacabro. ‘Come now, tell me about those ladies.’

Lacabro mouthed what was almost certainly another obscenity, rolled over quickly and as he propped himself up on his right elbow Cecile screamed. Lacabro had a gun in his hand but shock or pain or both had slowed his reactions. He screamed again and his gun went flying in one direction while the wheel-brace went in another. He clutched the middle of his face with both hands: blood seeped through his fingers.

‘And now your nose is gone, isn’t it?’ Bowman said. ‘That dark girl, Tina, she’s been hurt, hasn’t she? How badly has she been hurt? Why was she hurt? Who hurt her?’

Lacabro took his hands away from his bleeding face. His nose wasn’t broken, but it still wasn’t a very pretty sight and wouldn’t be for some time to come. He spat blood and a broken tooth, snarled again in Romany and stared at Bowman like a wild animal.

‘You did it,’ Bowman said with certainty. ‘Yes, you did it. One of Czerda’s hatchet-men, aren’t you? Perhaps the hatchet-man. I wonder, my friend. I wonder. Was it you who killed Alexandre in the caverns?’

Lacabro, his face the face of a madman, pushed himself drunkenly to his feet and stood there, swaying just as drunkenly. He appeared to be on the verge of total collapse, his eyes turning up in his head. Bowman approached and, as he did so Lacabro, showing an incredible immunity to pain, an animal-like cunning and an equally animal-like power of recuperation, suddenly stepped forward and brought his right fist up in a tremendous blow which, probably due more to good fortune than calculation, struck Bowman on the side of the chin. Bowman staggered backwards, lost his balance and fell heavily on the short turf only a few feet away from the vertical drop into the Rhône. Lacabro had his priorities right. He turned and ran for the gun which had landed only a foot or two from where Cecile was standing, the shock in her face reflected in the immobility of her body.

Bowman pushed himself rather dizzily up on one arm. He could see it all happening in slow motion, the girl with the gun at her feet, Lacabro lurching towards it, the girl still stock-still. Maybe she couldn’t even see the damn thing, he thought despairingly, but her eyes couldn’t be all that bad, if she couldn’t see a gun two feet away she’d no right to be out without a white stick. But her eyes weren’t quite so bad as that. Suddenly she stooped, picked up the gun, threw it into the Rhône, then, with commendable foresight, dropped flat to the ground as Lacabro, his battered bleeding face masked in blood and hate, advanced to strike her down. But even in that moment of what must have been infuriating frustration and where his overriding instinct must have been savagely to maim the girl who had deprived him of his gun, Lacabro still had his priorities right. He ignored the girl, turned and headed for Bowman in a low crouching run.

But Cecile had bought Bowman all the time he needed. By the time Lacabro reached him he was on his feet again, still rather dazed and shaken but a going concern none the less. He avoided Lacabro’s first bull-rush and wickedly swinging boot and caught the gypsy as he passed: it so chanced that he caught him by the left arm. Lacabro shouted in agony, dragged his arm free at whatever unknown cost to himself and came again. This time Bowman made no attempt to avoid him but advanced himself at equal speed. His clubbing right hand had no difficulty in reaching Lacabro’s chin, for now Lacabro had no left guard left. He staggered backwards several involuntary paces, tottered briefly on the edge of the bluff, then toppled backwards into the Rhône. The splash caused by his impact on the muddied waters seemed quite extraordinarily loud.

Bowman looked gingerly over the crumbling edge of the bluff: there was no sign of Lacabro. If he’d been unconscious when he’d struck the water he’d have gone to the bottom and that was that: there could be no possibility of locating him in those dark waters. Not that Bowman relished the prospect of trying to rescue the gypsy: if he were not unconscious he would certainly express his gratitude by doing his best to drown his rescuer. Bowman did not feel sufficiently attached to Lacabro to take the risk.

He went to the Renault, searched it briefly, found what he expected to find – nothing – started up the engine, let in first gear, aimed it for the bank of the river and jumped out. The little car trundled to the edge of the bluff, cartwheeled over the edge and fell into the river with a resounding crash that sent water rising to a height of thirty feet.

Much of this water rained down on Lacabro. He was half-sitting, half-lying on a narrow ledge of pebble and sand under the overhang of the bluff. His clothes were soaked, his right hand clutched his left wrist. On his dazed and uncomprehending face was a mixture of pain and bewilderment and disbelief. It was, by any reckoning, the face of a man who has had enough for one day.

Cecile was still sitting on the ground when Bowman approached her. He said: ‘You’re ruining that lovely gypsy costume sitting there.’

‘Yes, I suppose I am.’ Her voice was matter-of-fact, remarkably calm. She accepted his hand, got to her feet and looked around her. ‘He’s gone?’

‘Let’s say I can’t find him.’

‘That wasn’t – that wasn’t fair fighting.’

‘That was the whole idea behind it, pet. Ideally, of course, he would have riddled me with bullets.’

‘But – but can he swim?’

‘How the hell should I know?’ He led her back to the Simca and after they’d gone a mile in silence he looked at her curiously. Her hands were trembling, her face had gone white and when she spoke her voice was a muted whisper with a shake in it: clearly some sort of delayed shock had set in.

She said: ‘Who are you?’

‘Never mind.’

‘I – I saved your life today.’

‘Well, yes, thanks. But you should have used that gun to shoot him or hold him up.’

There was a long pause, then she sniffed loudly and said almost in a wail: ‘I’ve never fired a gun in my life. I can’t see to fire a gun.’

‘I know. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry about everything, Cecile. But I’m sorriest of all that I ever got you into this damnably ugly mess. God, I should have known better.’

‘Why blame yourself?’ Still the near-sob in her voice. ‘You had to run some place last night and my room–’ She broke off, peered at him some more, looked away and tried to light a cigarette but her hand shook so much he did it for her. Her hand was still shaking when they got back to the hotel.