There’s a Hippie on the Highway

Chapter Two

They had been walking now for some three hours.

The moon hung in the cloudless sky casting black shadows and sharply lighting the white dust road. The air was still and hot, and on either side of the road dense mangrove thickets made a solid black wall.

They walked silently: Harry just ahead: both of them preoccupied with their thoughts, but aware of each other and contented not to be alone.

They had left Yellow Acres soon after 19.00 hours. Each had been given a large wrapped parcel which Morelli had said was a little snack in case they became hungry during the walk. There had been a lot of hand shaking, and Harry had promised to look in on his way back.

He was now thinking of Maria, comparing her to the girl he had spent two nights with in New York who continually called him ‘Ducky’, chain smoked even when they were making love and was as full of boring problems as a pod is full of peas. He wondered about Maria’s ease of manner and her apparent simplicity.

Maybe, he thought, she too had problems, but was in control of herself. He rubbed the back of his neck, thinking. Everyone had problems these days. It depended on how they coped with them. Some people could manage alone: others had to talk about them: others couldn’t stop talking about them. It was a matter of personal pride to him not to weary others with his own problems. He grimaced ruefully. He had plenty of them, but this wasn’t the time to think of them. He had developed a built-in mechanism that controlled his thoughts. The three years in Vietnam were not to be thought of. His ruined domestic life wasn’t to be thought of nor the crap game on the ship he had stupidly got into that practically cleaned him out of all the money the Army had presented him with for services rendered.

Oh yes, he had plenty of problems but this was the wrong time to think about them. At least, the job at the restaurant seemed certain. Randy had told him he had telephoned Solo and Solo was very interested.

Randy said suddenly, ‘A couple of miles further on, we come to the highway.’ He paused to look at his watch in the light of the moon. ‘Half after ten. With any luck we could get a ride.’ He drew level with Harry. ‘The highway should be free of hikers by now.’

‘How’s your head feeling?’ Harry asked.

‘It’s all right... aches a bit and is sore, but all right.’ Randy glanced at him curiously. ‘I’m still thrown by the way you handled those kids. You broke his arm... you know that, don’t you?’

‘Does that worry you?’ There was a sudden edge to Harry’s voice.

‘No. It doesn’t worry me... still... a broken arm.’

‘So it does worry you. Have you been in the Army?’

‘Me?’ Randy made a mock gesture of horror. ‘Not likely! I burned my draft card. Catch me being shanghaied to Vietnam!’

‘Someone has to go.’

‘Okay... but not me.’

‘What’s so special about you then?’

‘I just don’t dig for some fat old bastard controlling my life. The draft board is loaded with fat old bastards who would blow their stacks if someone sent them out there. Why should they have the right to send me?’

Harry laughed.

‘You have a point.’ He walked in silence for a while, then said abruptly, ‘If I’d known what I was going into, I might have burned my draft card too, but at the time it seemed a good idea... an escape.’

‘An escape from what?’ Randy asked curiously.

‘This and that.’

‘Plenty of ways of escaping without going out there.’

‘They can get rough with a draft dodger.’

‘They have to catch him first,’ Randy said complacently.

‘What makes you think they won’t catch you?’

‘They haven’t so far. I worry when things happen, not when they don’t.’

‘Like when I broke that junkie’s arm?’

Randy shifted his duffel bag from one shoulder to the other.

‘I don’t say I really worry about it, but it looked as if you meant to bust his arm. I mean it wasn’t an accident. You sure gave him a hell of a belt.’

‘That’s right. I did mean to break his arm. One thing, among many others, you learn in the army is not to make a mistake in a fight. If you have to hit a guy, then you hit him so he stays hit. If I had tapped that junkie, the rest of them would have been all over me. They were higher than kites. By busting his arm, I shocked them sober, and I had to shock them sober. By busting his arm, I stopped them giving you the treatment.’ He glanced at Randy. ‘Still worrying?’

‘You have a point,’ Randy said and grinned.

Ten minutes later they reached the highway and Randy put down his guitar and duffel bag.

‘Let’s wait here for half an hour and see what turns up,’ he said. ‘We could be lucky. Around fifty miles on is an all-night snack bar. Most truckers stop there. If we can get a ride there, we are almost certain to find some trucker going to Miami and after Miami there’s no trouble.’

They waited by the roadside. After some minutes, the headlights of a big truck came over the distant hill. Randy stepped out onto the road and began waving. The truck thundered past, the driver ignoring Randy’s thumb. Randy muttered under his breath while Harry sat down on the grass verge and lit a cigarette. Both men watched the road.

Four trucks went by during the next fifteen minutes, each ignoring Randy’s thumb.

‘It could be quicker to walk,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t think they fancy you.’

‘Give it another quarter of an hour. Could be the creeps don’t like the way I wear my hair. Suppose you try?’

They changed places, but it didn’t help them to get a ride.

Three more trucks stormed by without stopping.

Randy took off his Mexican boots and cooled his feet in the grass.

‘Keep trying,’ he encouraged. ‘Every door is a door of opportunity.’

As he spoke a car’s headlights showed over the hill. In the light of the moon Harry saw the car was a Mustang and it was towing a small two-berth caravan.

‘Not a hope here,’ he said, ‘but I’ll try.’

He moved further into the road so that the searching fingers of the headlights picked him out with the intensity of a spotlight. He jerked his thumb and put on his wide, disarming smile.

He heard the soft squealing of tyres biting into the tarmac as brakes were applied, and to his surprise the car slowed, came alongside him and stopped.

Hurriedly grabbing up his guitar and duffel bag in one hand and his boots in the other, Randy joined Harry.

Harry was peering at the driver.

‘Are you going to Miami?’ he asked. ‘Any chance of a ride, please?’

As he drew nearer, he could see in the reflected light from the dashboard that the driver was a girl and this startled him. He couldn’t see anything of her face. She was wearing anti-dazzle, dark yellow goggles: a white scarf completely concealed her hair and the rest of her face. The ends of the scarf were tucked into a black open neck shirt.

He could feel the eyes hidden behind the goggles searching his face.

‘Can you drive?’

Her voice was low and husky with a faint accent that Harry couldn’t place.

‘Why, sure.’

‘Got a driving license?’

‘Yes. I’m carrying it.’

The girl heaved a long, weary sigh.

‘That’s wonderful. You can have a ride if you’ll drive.’

‘Does that include me?’ Randy asked anxiously.

She turned her head and looked at him, then at Harry.

‘Is he a friend of yours?’ she asked.

‘Yes. He’s all right. He wears his hair like that to keep his head warm.’

‘You know the way?’

‘Straight ahead.’

‘That’s it. I’ve been driving eighteen hours. I’m bushed.’ She opened the car door and slid out. ‘If I don’t get some sleep, I’ll drive off the road. I’m delivering the caravan to Miami. The jerk who ordered it said he would cancel the order if he doesn’t get delivery tomorrow.’

All this seemed a little odd to Harry.

‘Are you in the caravan trade then?’

‘No, I’m one of the mugs who delivers. Get in and get going. I’m bedding down in the caravan. Don’t wake me for pity’s sake until you reach Miami.’

‘Are there two beds in there?’ Randy asked hopefully. ‘I’m dead on my feet too.’

‘If you can’t control this freak, then he stays on the road,’ the girl said to Harry and there was a snap in her voice that made Randy stiffen. ‘Get in and get going. She walked stiffly around to the back of the caravan. They heard the door open and then slam shut. They heard a bolt snap home.

The two men looked at each other, then Harry slid under the driving wheel.

‘Come on, freak,’ he said, ‘unless you want to walk.’

Randy bolted around the car, jerked open the offside door and got in beside Harry who set the car surging forward.

‘Well, what do you know?’ Randy said. Talk about luck! We could be in Miami by seven o’clock.’

‘Could be luck or something else,’ Harry returned. ‘Do girls ferry caravans for eighteen hours non-stop these days? I wouldn’t know. I’m three years out of date.’

‘Let me tell you, Van Winkle, ol’ pal, ol’ pal,’ Randy said, grinning. ‘The dolls do everything these days. That’s what’s the matter with them. They have no respect for us men either... widow spiders, all of them!’

‘Pretty cool,’ Harry said thoughtfully, ‘stopping like that and then handing us this car. She could have got knocked on the head and raped for all she knew.’

‘They like being raped: it’s their new occupational pastime,’ Randy said bitterly. ‘I bet she was disappointed to find you were an old-fashioned gentleman.’

‘Take a look in the glove compartment See if she’s left any papers in there,’ Harry said. The speedometer needle was now steady at 50 m.p.h.

Randy opened the glove compartment and found a plastic folder. He took out some papers, turned on the map light and leaning forward, examined them.

After reading, he sat back.

‘This is a Hertz hired car, rented at Vero Beach to Joel Black, 1244, Springfield Road, Cleveland.’

‘Have they logged the mileage?’

‘Yeah, 1,550 miles.’

Harry looked at the mileage counter on the dashboard. He did a sum in his head.

‘Since this car was hired, it has driven 240 miles. Not what you would call an eighteen hour drive.’

Randy turned and stared at him.

‘Do you always act like this? You sound like a fuzz.’

‘She isn’t Joel Whatever his name is. She hasn’t been driving eighteen hours. I don’t like it She might have stolen this car.’

‘Look,’ Randy said earnestly, ‘don’t let’s push our luck. We have a car. We will be in Miami by seven. From there we will waltz to Paradise City. We can even go by bus if we can’t thumb a ride. So what do we care?’

‘You’ll care if there’s an alarm out for this car and some cop stops us.’

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake! At this time of night and on this highway, the cops are in bed.’

Harry hesitated. There was something wrong about this setup which he didn’t like, but he told himself that it was the girl’s business. If they were stopped by the police, he would have no difficulty in clearing himself. If Randy was willing to take the risk why should he worry?

He gently squeezed more pressure on the gas pedal and the speedometer climbed to 65 m.p.h.

‘Have you calmed down?’ Randy asked.

‘It’s your headache. I don’t risk a thing. If you don’t care, why should I?’

‘That’s my boy.’ Randy reached into his duffel bag and found the parcel Morelli had given him. ‘My worms are beginning to gnaw at me.’ He undid the parcel and found a roast chicken, neatly quartered, two doughnuts and four slices of buttered bread, smeared with mayonnaise. That Wop certainly knows his food. You want something to eat?’

‘Not now.’

‘Well, I do.’ Randy began to eat contentedly. With his mouth full, he said, ‘Talking about girls: how were they in Vietnam?’

‘You won’t be going there so why should you care?’ Harry said curtly.

Randy looked at him, bit into the bread, munched for a long moment, then said, ‘Do they do it in the usual way or do they do something different?’

‘You won’t be going there so why should you care?’ Harry repeated, staring at the road ahead, lighted by the powerful headlights.

Randy grimaced.

‘Excuse me for speaking. Yeah... why should I care?’ He tossed a chicken bone out of the window and helped himself to a thick slice of the breast.

Harry thought nostalgically of the Vietnamese girl he had left in Saigon. Whenever he had come out of the front line he had found her waiting. She had made a precarious living selling cooked food at a street corner. He had always marvelled that she was able to carry the cooking stove and the sundry pots, slung on a bamboo pole on her shoulder. She had always reminded him of a beautiful butterfly in her pink cheongsam, but he had learned later just how durable and how strong she had been.

She had become the most precious thing in his life during those three dreary years: a thought to cling to during the dark, frightening nights. She represented to him tenderness, interest and love and when she had been blown to pieces along with others by a Viet Cong bomb Harry hadn’t looked at another woman out there, nor could he bring himself to talk about the Vietnam girls neither with his buddies nor with men like Randy who had seen pictures of them and thought they were just companions in bed.

Any suggestive talk about them turned Harry sour. His girl, who had been so much fun, so dependable, always waiting for him, represented to him the women of Vietnam, slighting one meant slighting her.

In the wing mirror, he saw the headlights of a car some half mile behind him and he eased the pressure on the gas pedal. There was a 60 m.p.h. speed limit on this highway and the car behind him might be a patrol car He wasn’t taking any unnecessary risks.

Randy, noticing the fall off of speed, glanced at him.

‘Car behind,’ Harry explained.

He looked in the mirror again. The car was driving at his speed. It remained half a mile behind.

‘The cops are in bed,’ Randy said. ‘I know this road, I’ve never seen a cop on it after eleven o’clock.’

‘All the same, sixty is fast enough.’

Randy lit a cigarette and slouched back.

‘You sure you don’t want to eat? I can drive.’

‘Not yet.’

‘I’d dig for a good, strong cup of coffee.’

‘That’s something I could use.’

‘About fifteen minutes will bring us to that all-night snack bar I was telling you about. They have good coffee there. Let’s stop. Won’t take us five minutes. Maybe the doll could use a cup too.’

‘She said we weren’t to wake her until we get to Miami,’ Harry reminded him. ‘If she wants to sleep, let her sleep.’

‘Did you get a look at her?’

‘No more than you did.’

‘She could be dishy.’

‘So why should you care, freak?’

Randy laughed.

‘That’s the great thing about Solo’s place. It’s alive with dolls. As a lifeguard you’ll have all you can handle. Working behind the bar puts a crimp in my style. I don’t get the opportunities you’ll get. Solo advertises swimming lessons and you’ll handle that Boy! Wouldn’t I like that job! Cuddling a lush babe in the sea is my idea of good living!’

‘You’re still a bit of a kid, aren’t you?’ Harry said with a friendly grin.

‘So what’s wrong with being a kid?’

‘Nothing. Maybe I’m envying you.’

‘Hey you sound as if you were my father! You’re not telling me you don’t dig for dolls?’

Harry thought of his wife lying in the bath with her wrists slashed. He thought of Nhan smeared in a bloody mess against a brick wall. The other women in his life too were uneasy ghosts. He couldn’t think of one of them that he could remember with pleasure.

‘I wouldn’t want to be your father,’ he said, sidestepping the question.

Randy laughed and began to eat a doughnut.

‘While we are talking about dolls,’ he said with his mouth full, I’ll give you the photo about Nina.

Harry glanced into the wing mirror. The headlights of the car behind him remained at its half-mile distance.

‘Nina?’

‘Yes... Solo’s daughter. Maybe I should tell you about Solo first. Twenty years back, Solo was the best peterman in the business. There wasn’t a safe he couldn’t open if he wanted to. The Cops finally caught up with him and he went away for fifteen years. While he was doing his time Nina was born and Mrs. Solo died. When he came out he decided to retire from the racket and he set up this restaurant in Paradise City. He is still considered the best peterman in the game and from time to time he gets propositioned to come out of retirement, but nothing will shift him. He has a good business: he makes a decent profit, and he has Nina.’ Randy paused while he rummaged in the depleted parcel and found the second doughnut. ‘You must treat Solo carefully.

Although he’s over fifty, he’s real tough, mean and rough when he’s in the mood. He acts as his own bouncer, and if a drunk looks for trouble. Solo handles him. I’ve seen Solo handle three punks who got too close to Nina and those three punks landed in the hospital. But Solo is broad minded. He doesn’t mind the staff playing the dolls so long as the dolls are pleased too, but no one and that includes you and me, tries to get close to Nina.’ Randy paused to bite into the doughnut. He munched for a moment, then went on, ‘I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to run into trouble. Nina is something pretty special. You have to see her to understand just how special she is. When I first saw her, I didn’t sleep for a couple of nights. I guess I couldn’t keep my eyes off her and Manuel — he’s the Captain of Waiters — warned me. He said Nina was strictly for the birds. If I started something with her, Solo would finish it for me, and when I say finish, I mean just that.’

Harry moved impatiently.

‘Look, Randy,’ he said, ‘I appreciate what you are telling me, but another thing the Army taught me was not to do it on my own doorstep. If I work for Solo, then his daughter will be just another sun umbrella to me.’

Randy wiped the sugar off his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Don’t be that sure. You haven’t seen her yet.’

‘That’s right: I haven’t seen her, but I’m about four years older than you and that makes a difference. When I need a woman I find one without complications. I’m old enough not to get involved with a woman who could make complications.’

‘Boy! You sound worse than my old man who was always talking like that,’ Randy said. ‘Anyway, I thought it had better come from me than from Manuel You mightn’t like him. He isn’t your type. He isn’t my type either. If he can make trouble for a guy, he makes it. But you don’t have to worry about him. You’ll be an outside man, directly under Solo. It’s my bet Manuel will take one look at you and leave you alone.’

‘What does the daughter do?’ Harry asked.

‘She handles the office, the reservations and the accounts. In the evening she circulates in the bar and the restaurant. Solo does the marketing and the cooking. It’s one of the three top restaurants in the City and that’s saying something. The competition is fierce, but it doesn’t faze Solo. He really knows his job.’

Ahead, Harry saw a big flashing sign that spelt out in red and yellow lettering:

‘This is the place,’ Randy said. ‘Best coffee this side of Paradise City.’

‘We’ll stop then,’ Harry said. ‘Then you can drive and I’ll eat.’

‘Sure. Think we should wake the doll?’

‘Let her be.’

Harry slowed the Mustang as they approached the brightly lit café. In the lay-by were four big trucks and several dusty cars.

Harry found room and manoeuvred the Mustang and the caravan into a space between two trucks.

‘Don’t let’s waste time,’ he said and slid out of the car. He paused for a moment to look back along the highway. The headlights of the car that had been behind them were rapidly approaching.

Randy was already at the door of the café and Harry joined him They entered the big room where four burly truckers were sitting up at the counter, eating and drinking coffee. A few men, obviously from the cars, were at the tables scattered around the room: most of them looked like tired salesmen. Some of them were checking through papers while they drank coffee: a few were eating the night special which Harry saw was a sticky looking goulash.

He and Randy went to the bar and ordered coffee. Harry offered his Camels and they lit up. The truckers eyed Randy. Harry could tell by their expressions none of them had time for a guy who wore his hair that long.

Harry heard a car arrive and stop. He glanced out of the window near him. He could see a white Mercedes SL 180 and he wondered if it was the car that had been behind him. He stepped closer to the window, but the car was already on the move again.

He just had time to see the man at the wheel was wearing a slouch hat, but it was too dark to see his features. With a powerful purr of the engine, the Mercedes went shooting off into the darkness.

‘How’s this for coffee?’ Randy asked.

Harry sipped from his cup and nodded. Any coffee tasted fine after Army coffee. He bought two packs of Camels and asked the counter hand if he could let him have a pint carton of coffee to take on the road.

Five minutes later, they were back in the Mustang with Randy at the wheel.

Still puzzled about the girl driver, Harry opened the glove compartment and examined for himself the Hertz rental contract. As Randy had told him the car was rented to Joel Blach of Cleveland. The contract had been issued at Vero Beach, dated two days ago. Again he checked the mileage... a mere 240 miles. Why had the girl told him she had been driving for eighteen hours? Harry considered this a blatant lie. The only reason he could think of was that it offered an excuse to turn the driving over to him. But why? Had she some reason to keep out of sight? Was the car stolen? He thought that was unlikely since she was travelling with them and if the police stopped him, she too would be in trouble.

‘Are you still doing a Marlow act?’ Randy asked, glancing at Harry’s thoughtful expression, lit by the map lamp.

Harry shrugged and put the Hertz papers back in the glove compartment.

‘I don’t like anything that puzzles me,’ he said. ‘And this setup puzzles me.’

‘Why not ask her to explain when she wakes up? Why batter your brains when she can tell you?’

‘Yeah.’ Harry began opening the parcel Morelli had given him. The coffee had made him hungry.

‘If you don’t want the second doughnut, I’ll help out,’ Randy said hopefully.

‘I do want it. You’ve had enough already.’

‘My pal!’ Randy said with mock bitterness. ‘You’re not planning to eat all that chicken, are you?’

‘I’m going to have a damn good try!’

Randy shook his head incredulously.

‘Didn’t the army teach you among other things to share and share alike?’

‘Why should you care? Harry said and bit into a chicken leg.

‘Hey, wake up!’

Harry stirred, yawned and opened his eyes. He stared through the dusty windshield at the yellow, red and pearl grey sky and at the palm trees that flashed by as the Mustang swept along the highway.

‘We’ve just gone through Fort Lauderdale,’ Randy told him. ‘We’ll be in Miami in twenty minutes.’

Harry rubbed his hand over his face, feeling the stubble of his beard. He hated sleeping in his clothes although during his time in the Army it was an accepted thing but he had never got used to it. He longed for a shave, a cold shower and coffee.

‘Let’s stop at the first café. We’ll wake the girl up and see where in Miami she wants to drop us.’

‘I’m going to miss this car,’ Randy said regretfully. ‘There’s a café coming up now.’

The small wooden building with its glaring neon sign was just off the highway. Lights showed in the windows. As Randy slowed, Harry glanced at his watch. The time was 05.15 hours. He grimaced. A hell of a time, he thought, to wake up.

As Randy pulled up, Harry opened the door.

‘I’ll get a couple of cartons of coffee. You wake her up.’

Randy smirked.

‘It’ll be my pleasure. You know something? I really think you don’t dig for dolls.’

‘Oh, shut up!’ Harry snapped. He wasn’t in the mood for Randy’s corny humour. He went into the café.

A sleepy looking negro was behind the counter. He regarded Harry without enthusiasm.

‘Two cartons of strong coffee,’ Harry said, coming to rest at the counter. ‘Black, and lots of sugar.’

‘You want doughnuts?’

Harry didn’t, but he thought the girl might and he was sure Randy would.

‘Four, please.’

He watched the negro pour coffee into the wax containers. The smell of the coffee made his nose twitch. He lit a cigarette, coughed as the smoke bit at the back of his throat.

The negro put four doughnuts into a paper sack.

‘Ain’t you afraid of lung cancer, mister?’ he asked as he pushed the sack across the counter.

‘Does it scare you?’ Harry asked, taking a dollar from his billfold.

‘I don’t smoke.’

Harry stared at him,

‘So why should you care about me?’

The negro blinked, shrugged and took the dollar.

‘And thirty cents.’

Harry added the money and as he picked up the two cartons, he heard the horn of the Mustang give two sharp bleeps. He frowned picked up the sack of doughnuts and walked quickly to the door.

Randy was sitting behind the driving wheel. As soon as he saw Harry, he made an urgent gesture to hurry.

Harry crossed to the car and stared at Randy through the open window. One look at Randy’s pallid, sweating face told him something bad had happened. He didn’t wait to ask questions. He opened the car door and slid into the passenger’s seat and slammed the door.

Randy sent the Mustang racing along the highway. He was practically standing on the gas pedal.

‘What is it?’ Harry asked quietly, ‘and cut your speed. Do you imagine you’re on a racetrack. Cut your speed!’

Randy shivered. He passed his hand over his sweating face, but Harry’s quiet firm voice steadied him. He eased the speed down to 65 m.p.h.

‘She’s dead,’ he said, his voice quivering. ‘There’s blood on the blanket and she’s as stiff as a board.’

Harry felt a little jolt inside him: a small, controlled explosion of shock. The first sight he had of Randy’s face had told him it would be bad, but he hadn’t expected it to be this bad.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ he said, his voice even and quiet. ‘Pull up! I’ll take a look.’

‘We don’t stop on this highway,’ Randy said wildly. ‘The cops start patrolling any time now! I’m not going to be caught with a body! They’ll think we killed her!’

Harry’s face tightened. He hadn’t thought of that possibility. Yes... if a cop stopped them and found... He stamped down on a tiny spark of panic and extinguished it.

‘You’re sure she’s dead?’

‘I’m sure. I knocked on the door and there was no answer so I tried the door and it opened,’ Randy gulped, swallowed, then went on. ‘She was on the lower berth, covered with a blanket. There was a smell in there that turned me over. Then I saw a smear of blood on the blanket. I nearly flipped. I called to her, then leaned in and took hold of her arm. That was enough for me. It was like catching hold of a lump of wood.’

Ahead of them, Harry saw a turning with a signpost that read: ‘Beach. Safe Swimming.’

‘Turn off here,’ he said, ‘and cut your speed.’ He looked into the wing mirror. The highway was deserted.

Randy slowed and steered the car and caravan down the dirt road. They drove in tense silence for about half a mile. The road opened out onto a vast stretch of golden sand, surrounded by shrubs and hillocks. Some two hundred yards beyond the hillocks was the sea.

‘Pull up here,’ Harry said. ‘The caravan will explain what we are doing. Anyone seeing us will think we’ve spent the night here.’

Randy stopped the car by a grass-covered sand dune. He began to shake as soon as he tinned the engine off.

‘Get hold of yourself,’ Harry said sharply. He thrust a carton of coffee into Randy’s shakes hand. ‘Drink some of this!’

‘I can’t. I’ll throw up!’ Randy moaned.

‘Come on!’

Randy stared with revulsion at the carton. Losing patience Harry slid out of the car.

‘Stay here. I’ll take a look.’

He walked over the soft sand to the rear of the caravan. He paused to look right and left. The two miles of beach was deserted except for a few gulls walking by the surf. The grey had gone out of the sky now and the yellow and red were dissolving into a soft blue as the sun began to rise.

He took out his handkerchief, put it over the handle of the caravan door and turned it, pulling the door open.

The smell of death he had lived with for the past three years came out of the caravan making him grimace. He could see a huddled form, completely covered by a grey blanket, lying on the lower berth. There was a long smear of dried blood on the lower end of the blanket as Randy had described.

Harry stepped into the caravan and lifted the blanket, drawing it back and letting it drop.

He looked down at the face of a man well into his fifties in spite of a thick thatch of dark brown hair: a thin, sun burned face with a small beaky nose, a mean lipless mouth and ice grey eyes that stared up at Harry in a terror that remained in spite of death.

The right side of the face carried a livid bruise. The sharp, yellowing teeth revealed by the lips drawn back were bloodstained and gave to the dead face a snarling, animal defiance.

Harry shifted his eyes and looked quickly around the caravan and then into the top bunk. The dead man was the only occupant.

‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ Randy quavered. He had come around to the back of the caravan, but was standing well away from it, watching Harry with sick, scared eyes.

Harry stepped out of the caravan and fumbled for his pack of Camels. He lit a cigarette, noting his hands were rock steady. But then, he thought, he had lived with dead, stinking bodies for so long: another was merely a problem.

‘She’s gone... it’s a man,’ he said and drew in a deep lungful of smoke.

A light breeze that sprang up to herald the sun, wafted the smell of death to Randy. He paled, turned away and began to vomit. Harry walked to the Mustang, found the carton of coffee and drank deeply. The lukewarm coffee cleared the taste in his mouth. He leaned against the side of the car, holding the carton, his mind busy.

From the moment he had caught the girl in the lie that she had been driving eighteen hours, he had been uneasy. He should have trusted his instinct and have tackled her as soon as he knew she was lying.

Shrugging, he went to where Randy was now sitting on the sand, holding his head in his hands and stood over him.

‘Did you stop any time while I was asleep?’

Randy looked up.

‘No. I kept moving the whole time. Has she gone?’

Harry squatted down beside him.

‘Yes, she’s gone. This guy has been dead some time... forty-eight hours: could be more than that. It’s my bet he was in the caravan when she picked us up. She must have sneaked out of the caravan when we were at that café.’ He suddenly remembered the white Mercedes. ‘The Mercedes that was following us! It stopped for a few moments outside the café. That’s it! He was behind us all the time, waiting for us to stop. When we did stop, she switched to the Mercedes.’ He stared at the sea, frowning. ‘It could be this dead man is Joel Blach who hired the car from Hertz.’

Randy got hurriedly to his feet. There was panic in his eyes.

‘Let’s get the hell away from here!’

Harry stared up at him.

‘Sit down!’ The snap in his voice got obedience from Randy who sat down again. ‘You don’t seem to realise the jam we’re in,’ Harry went on. ‘When the police find the caravan and what’s in it, they’ll start asking questions. You can bet someone has seen us with the Mustang. Once the police get a description of us, it won’t take them long to pick us up. Can you imagine how they will react when we tell them what happened? They’ll think this dead guy gave us a ride and we knocked him off for the car and his money... that’s the way they always think, and that’s what this girl wants them to think.’ He paused, frowning. ‘It was a deliberate plant. She was on the highway to dump the Mustang and the caravan on the first likely hitchhiker she came across. That explains why neither of us got a look at her. With those goggles and that head scarf she is a non-existent woman.’

Randy gnawed at his knuckles.

‘So what do we do?’

‘I want to know more about this guy.’

Harry ground out his cigarette and stood up.

He left Randy and walked to the caravan. Drawing a deep breath, he climbed in and pulled the blanket right off the body. He stood staring for a long moment, feeling his mouth turn dry and the muscles in his stomach contract.

The dead man’s left foot had been stripped of its sock and shoe. The flesh was charred and black. It was a stomach turning sight, and Harry hurriedly picked up the blanket and covered the foot.

He hesitated for a moment, then catching hold of the body, he half dragged, half carried it out into the daylight and laid it on the sand.

From where he sat, Randy watched in horror.

Harry went quickly through the dead man’s pockets, but found nothing. All the pockets had been emptied and checking further he found the tailor’s label in the inside pocket of the jacket had been ripped out.

He covered the body with the blanket, lit another cigarette and then joined Randy.

‘He’s been tortured. Someone put his foot in a fire and held it there. Otherwise he isn’t touched except for a bruise on his face. My guess is he had a heart attack while they were burning him. Maybe they didn’t mean to kill him. They must have been after information. From the look of his foot, he wouldn’t talk, but of course he could have done before he died. I guess when they found they had a dead body on their hands they dreamed up this idea of planting it on some hippy hitchhiker who would automatically be in bad with the police.’

Randy licked his dry lips.

‘Like me.’

‘Yeah... like you.’

‘W-what are we going to do then?’

‘Get rid of him,’ Harry said. ‘There’s nothing else we can do. We’re in a jam so we’re going to bury him. Then we dump the caravan somewhere from here. Then we dump the car somewhere from where we dump the caravan. That way we stand a chance of covering our trail. Make no mistake about it, if the police do catch up with us, they will hang this on us and they could make it stick. Now come on, let’s start digging.’

He chose a sand dune a few yards off. Between them they scooped out a shallow hole big enough to take the body.

‘We’ll shift the sand from the dune down on top of him,’ Harry said, surveying the hole, ‘and make it one continuous dune. Give me a hand with him.’

Randy shuddered and backed away.

‘I couldn’t touch him! I’d throw up!’

Harry looked at his wristwatch. The time was 06.05 hours. Time was getting on. They had still to get rid of the car and the caravan. He went over to the body, caught hold of it by its right foot and dragged it across the sand to the grave.

Randy turned away and closed his eyes.

Harry rolled the body into the grave with his foot. The head banged against the side of the hollow as the body slid in. Then something happened that brought Harry out in a cold sweat.

The thick, heavily dyed thatch of brown hair on the dead man’s head came away like a disarranged hat while the head, now completely bald and looking blue white in the rays of the sun sank into its pillow of sand.

For some seconds Harry remained motionless, fighting the saliva that rushed to his mouth, then he realised that the dead man had been wearing a wig that had completely deceived Harry into thinking it was a head of real hair.

He walked around the grave and with a grimace, picked up the wig between finger and thumb. He was about to toss it into the grave when he paused. He saw a small object strapped to the inside of the wig with a piece of adhesive plaster. He ripped away the plaster and found beneath it a bright steel key. Embossed on its shaft was the wording: Paradise City Airport. Locker 388.

His eyes narrowed. Was this what the killers had been looking for? The reason why they had so savagely tortured the dead man?

He dropped the wig into the grave and the key into his pocket.

‘Come on, Randy!’ he said sharply. ‘Let’s get him buried.’