The Way to Dusty Death

by Alistair MacLean

  Harlow left the house and drove off in Luigi’s Renault in a direction opposite to that which Jacobson had taken. After about four blocks, he turned into a narrow lane, stopped the engine, ensured that the doors were locked from the inside, set his wrist alarm for 5.45 a.m., and composed himself for a very brief sleep. As a place to lay his weary head Johnny Harlow had developed a powerful and permanent aversion to the Coronado villa.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was just coming up for dawn when Harlow and the twins entered the Coronado garage. Jacobson and an unknown mechanic were already there. They looked, Harlow reflected, just as exhausted as he himself felt.

  Harlow said: ‘Thought you told me you had two new boys?’

  ‘One of them didn’t turn up. When he does,’ Jacobson said grimly, ‘he’s out. Come on, let’s empty the transporter and load up.’

  The brilliant early morning sun, which presaged rain later in the day, was over the roof-tops when Harlow backed the transporter out into the rue Gerard. Jacobson said: ‘On your way then, the three of you. I’ll be in Vignolles about a couple of hours after you. Some business to attend to first.’

  Harlow didn’t even bother to make the natural inquiry as to what that business might be. In the first place he knew that whatever answer he got would be a lie. In the second place he knew what the answer was anyway: Jacobson would have an urgent appointment with his associates in The Hermitage in the rue Georges Sand to acquaint them with the misfortunes of Luigi the Light-fingered. So he merely contented himself with a nod and drove off.

  To the twins’ vast relief, the journey to Vignolles was not a replica of the hair-raising trip between Monza and Marseilles. Harlow drove almost sedately. In the first place, he had time in hand. Then again he knew he was so tired that he had lost the fine edge of his concentration. Finally, within an hour of leaving Marseilles, it had begun to rain, lightly at first then with increasing intensity, which drastically reduced visibility. Nevertheless, the transporter reached its destination by 11.30.

  Harlow pulled the transporter to a stop midway between the stands and a large chalet-like building and climbed down, followed by the twins. It was still raining, and the skies were heavily overcast. Harlow gazed round the grey and empty desolation of the Vignolles track, stretched his arms and yawned.

  ‘Home, sweet home. God, I’m tired. And hungry. Let’s see what the canteen has to offer.’

  The canteen had not, in fact, a great deal to offer but all three men were too hungry to complain. As they ate, the canteen slowly began to fill up, mainly with officials and employees of the track. Everyone knew Harlow, but almost no one acknowledged his presence. Harlow remained quite indifferent. At noon he pushed back his chair and made for the door and as he reached for the handle the door opened and Mary entered. She more than over-compensated for the general lack of welcome shown by the others. She smiled at him in delight, wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. Harlow cleared his throat and looked round the canteen where the diners were now showing a vast degree more interest in him.

  He said: ‘I thought you said you were a very private person.’

  ‘I am. But I hug everyone. You know that.’

  ‘Well, thank you very much.’

  She rubbed her cheek. ‘You’re scruffy, filthy and unshaven.’

  ‘What do you expect of a face that hasn’t seen water or felt a blade for twenty-four hours?’

  She smiled. ‘Mr Dunnet would like to see you in the chalet, Johnny. Though why he couldn’t come to see you in the canteen – ’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Dunnet has his reasons. Such as not wanting to be seen in my company.’

  She wrinkled her nose to show her disbelief and led the way out to the rain. She clung to his arm and said: ‘I was so scared, Johnny. So scared.’

  ‘And so you’d every right to be,’ Harlow said solemnly. ‘It’s a perilous mission lugging a transporter to Marseilles and back.’

  ‘Johnny.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  They hurried through the rain to the chalet, up the wooden steps, across the porch and into the hall. As the door closed, Mary reached for Harlow and kissed him. As a kiss, it was neither sisterly nor platonic. Harlow blinked his unresisting astonishment.

  She said: ‘But I don’t do that to everyone. Or anyone.’

  ‘You, Mary, are a little minx.’

  ‘Ah, yes. But a lovable little minx.’

  ‘I suppose so. I suppose so.’

  Rory watched this scene from the head of the chalet stairs. He was scowling most dreadfully but had the wit to disappear swiftly as Mary and Harlow turned to mount the stairs: Rory’s last meeting with Harlow was still a very painful memory.

  Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, but still looking very tired, Harlow was in Dunnet’s room. The account of the night’s activities he’d given to Dunnet had been brief, succinct, but had missed out nothing of importance.

  Dunnet said: ‘And now?’

  ‘Straight back into Marseilles in the Ferrari. I’ll check on Giancarlo and the films, then go and extend my sympathies to Luigi the Light-fingered’

  ‘Will he sing?’

  ‘Like a linnet. If he talks, the police will forget that they ever saw his gun and knife which will save our friend from five years’ mailbag sewing or breaking boulders in a quarry or whatever. Luigi does not strike me as the noblest Roman of them all.’

  ‘How do you get back here?’

  ‘By Ferrari.’

  ‘But I thought that James said that – ’

  ‘That I was to leave it in Marseilles? I’m going to leave it in that disused farmyard down the road. I want the Ferrari tonight. I want to get into the Villa Hermitage tonight. I want a gun.’

  For almost fifteen interminable seconds Dunnet sat quite still, not looking at Harlow, then he brought up his typewriter from beneath the bed, upended it and unclipped the base plate. This was lined with felt and was equipped with six pairs of spring clips. In the clips were held two automatic pistols, two silencers and two spare ammunition magazines. Harlow removed the smaller pistol, a silencer and a spare magazine. He pressed the magazine release switch, examined the magazine already in the gun and pressed it home again. He put all three items in the inner pocket of his leather jacket and zipped it up. He left the room without another word.

  Seconds later he was with MacAlpine. MacAlpine’s complexion was quite grey and he was unquestionably a very sick man with an illness insusceptible to physical diagnosis. He said: ‘Leaving now? You must be exhausted.’

  Harlow said: ‘It’ll probably hit me tomorrow morning.’

  MacAlpine glanced through the window. The rain was sheeting down. He turned back to Harlow and said: ‘Don’t envy you your trip to Marseilles. But the forecast says it’ll clear this evening. We’ll unload the transporter then.’

  ‘I think you’re trying to say something, sir.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ MacAlpine hesitated. ‘I believe you have been kissing my daughter.’

  ‘That’s a bare-faced lie. She was kissing me. Incidentally, one of these days I’m going to clobber that boy of yours.’

  ‘You have my best wishes,’ MacAlpine said wearily. ‘Do you have designs upon my daughter, Johnny?’

  ‘I don’t know about that. But she sure as hell has designs on me.’

  Harlow left and literally bumped into Rory in the corridor outside. They eyed each other, speculation in Harlow’s eyes, trepidation in Rory’s.

  Harlow said: ‘Aha! Eavesdropping again. Almost as good as spying, isn’t it, Rory?’

  ‘What? Me? Eavesdrop? Never!’

  Harlow put a kindly arm around his shoulder.

  ‘Rory, my lad, I have news. I not only have your father’s permission for but approval of my intention to clobber you one of these days. At my convenience, of course.’

  Harlow gave Rory a friendly pat on the shoulder: there was considerable menace in the friendliness. Harlow, smiling, descended the stairs to find Mary
waiting.

  She said: ‘Speak to you, Johnny?’

  ‘Sure. But on the porch. That black-haired young monster has probably got the whole place wired for sound.’

  They went out on the porch, closing the door behind them. The chill rain was falling so heavily that it was impossible to see more than half-way across the abandoned airfield.

  Mary said: ‘Put your arm around me, Johnny.’

  ‘I obediently put my arm round you. In fact, as a bonus, I’ll put them both around you.’

  ‘Please don’t talk like that, Johnny. I’m scared. I’m scared all the time now, scared for you. There’s something terribly wrong, isn’t there, Johnny?’

  ‘What should be wrong?’

  ‘Oh, you are exasperating!’ She changed the subject – or appeared to. ‘Going to Marseilles?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Take me with you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s not very gallant.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you, Johnny? What are you doing?’

  She had been pressing closely against him but now she drew back, slowly, wonderingly. She put her hand inside his leather jacket, pulled the pocket zip and took out the automatic: she gazed down, hypnotized, at the blue metallic sheen of the gun.

  ‘Nothing that’s wrong, sweet Mary.’

  She put her hand in his pocket again, took out the silencer and stared at it with eyes sick with worry and fear. She whispered: ‘This is a silencer, isn’t it? This way you can kill people without making a noise.’

  ‘I said “Nothing that’s wrong, sweet Mary.”’

  ‘I know. I know you never would. But – I must tell Daddy.’

  ‘If you wish to destroy your father, then do so.’ It was brutal, Harlow realized, but he knew of no other way. ‘Go ahead. Tell him.’

  ‘Destroy my – what do you mean?’

  ‘There’s something I want to do. If your father knew, he’d stop me. He’s lost his nerve. Everybody’s opinion to the contrary, I haven’t lost mine.’

  ‘What do you mean – destroy him?’

  ‘I don’t think he’d long survive the death of your mother.’

  ‘My mother?’ She stared at him for long seconds. ‘But my mother – ’

  ‘Your mother’s alive. I know she is. I think I can find out where she is. If I do, I’ll go and get her tonight.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ The girl was weeping silently. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure, my sweet Mary.’ Harlow wished he felt as confident as he sounded.

  ‘There are police, Johnny.’

  ‘No. I could tell them where to get the information but they wouldn’t get it. They have to operate within the law.’

  Instinctively, she dropped her brown tear-filled eyes from his and gazed at the gun and silencer in her hand. After a few moments she lifted her eyes again. Harlow nodded slightly, just once, took them gently from her, returned them to his pocket and closed the zip. She looked at him for a long moment, then took his leather lapels in her hands.

  ‘Come back to me, Johnny.’

  ‘I’ll always come back to you, Mary.’

  She tried to smile through her tears. It was not a very successful effort. She said: ‘Another slip of the tongue?’

  ‘That was not a slip of the tongue.’ Harlow turned his leather collar high, descended the steps and walked quickly through the driving rain. He did not look back.

  Less than one hour later Harlow and Giancarlo were occupying the two arm-chairs in Giancarlo’s scientific laboratory. Harlow was leafing through a thick pile of glossy photographs. Harlow said: ‘I’m a very competent cameraman, although I do say so myself.’

  Giancarlo nodded. ‘Indeed. And very full of human interest, those subjects of yours. We are, alas, temporarily baffled by the Tracchia and Neubauer documents, but then that makes them even more interesting, don’t you think? Not that MacAlpine and Jacobson are lacking in interest. Far from it. Do you know that MacAlpine has paid out just over £140,000 in the past six months?’

  ‘I guessed it was a lot – but that much! Even for a millionaire that must bite. What are the chances of identifying the lucky recipient?’

  ‘At present, zero. It’s a Zurich numbered account. But if they are presented with proved criminal acts, especially murder, the Swiss banks will open up.’

  Harlow said: ‘They’ll get their evidence.’

  Giancarlo looked at Harlow in lengthy speculation, then nodded. ‘I should not be surprised. Now, as for our friend Jacobson, he must be the wealthiest mechanic in Europe. His addresses, incidentally, are those of the leading book-makers of Europe.’

  ‘Gambling on the gee-gees?’

  Giancarlo gave him a pitying look. ‘No great feat to find what it was, the dates made it easy. Each lodgement was made two or three days after a Grand Prix race.’

  ‘Well, well. An enterprising lad is our Jacobson. Opens up a whole new vista of fascinating possibilities, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Doesn’t it, now? You can take those photographs. I have duplicates.’

  ‘Thank you very much indeed.’ Harlow handed back the photographs. ‘Think I want to be caught with that bloody lot on me?’

  Harlow said his thanks and goodbye and drove straight to the police station. On duty was the inspector who had been there in the early hours of the morning. His former geniality had quite deserted him: he now had about him a definitely lugubrious air.

  Harlow said: ‘Has Luigi the Light-fingered been singing sweet songs?’

  The inspector shook his head sadly. ‘Alas, our little canary has lost his voice.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘His medicine did not agree with him. I fear, Mr Harlow, that you dealt with him in so heroic a fashion that he required pain-killing tablets every hour. I had four men guarding him – two outside the room, two inside. Ten minutes before noon this ravishingly beautiful young blonde nurse – that’s how those cretins describe her – ’

  ‘Cretins?’

  ‘My sergeant and his three men. She left two tablets and a glass of water and asked the sergeant to see that he took his medicine exactly at noon. Sergeant Fleury is nothing if not gallant so precisely at noon he gave Luigi his medicine.’

  ‘What was the medicine?’

  ‘Cyanide.’

  It was late afternoon when Harlow drove the red Ferrari into the courtyard of the deserted farm just south of the Vignolles airfield. The door of the empty barn was open. Harlow took the car inside, stopped the engine and got out, trying to adjust his eyes to the gloom of the windowless barn. He was still trying to do this when a stocking-masked figure seemed to materialize out of this self-same gloom. Despite the almost legendary speed of his reactions Harlow had no time to get at his gun, for the figure was less than six feet away and already swinging what looked like a pick-axe handle. Harlow catapulted himself forward, getting in below the vicious swing of the club, his shoulder crashing into his assailant just below the breastbone. The man, completely winded, gasped in agony, staggered backwards and fell heavily with Harlow on top of him, one hand on the prostrate man’s throat while with the other he reached for his gun.

  He did not even manage to get the gun clear of his pocket. He heard the faintest of sounds behind him and twisted round just in time to see another masked figure and a swinging club and catch the full impact of a vicious blow on the right forehead and temple. He collapsed without a sound. The man whom Harlow had winded climbed unsteadily to his feet and although still bent almost double in pain swung his leg and kicked Harlow full in his unconscious and unprotected face. It was perhaps fortunate for Harlow that his attacker was still in so weakened a state otherwise the kick might well have been lethal. Clearly, his attacker was dissatisfied with his initial effort for he drew his foot back again but his companion dragged him away before he could put his potentially lethal intentions into effect. The winded man, still bent over, staggered to and sat on a convenient bench while the other man proce
eded to search the unconscious Harlow in a very thorough fashion indeed.

  It was noticeably darker inside the barn when Harlow slowly began to come to. He stirred, moaned, then shakily raised shoulders and body off the ground until he was at arm’s length from it. He remained in this position for some time then, with what was clearly a Herculean effort, managed to stagger to his feet where he remained uncontrollably swaying like a drunken man. His face felt as if it had been struck by a passing Coronado. After a minute or two, more by instinct than anything else, he lurched out of the garage, crossed the courtyard, falling down twice in the process, and made his erratic way towards the airfield tarmac.

  The rain had now stopped falling and the sky was beginning to clear. Dunnet had just emerged from the canteen and was heading towards the chalet when he caught sight of this staggering figure, less than fifty yards away, weaving its seemingly alcoholic way across the airfield tarmac. For a moment Dunnet stood like a man turned to stone, then broke into a dead run. He reached Harlow in seconds, put a supporting arm around his shoulders as he stared into his face, a face now barely recognizable. The forehead was wickedly gashed and hideously bruised and the blood that had seeped – and was still seeping – had completely masked the right side of his face and blinded his right eye. The left-hand side of the face was in little better condition. The left cheek was one huge bruise with a transverse cut. He bled from nose and mouth, his lip was split and at least two teeth were missing.

  ‘Christ Almighty!’ Dunnet said. ‘Dear Christ Almighty!’

  Dunnet half-guided, half-carried the staggering, semiconscious Harlow across the tarmac, up the steps, across the porch and into the hall of the chalet. Dunnet cursed under his breath as Mary chose just that moment to emerge from the living-room. She stood stock-still for a moment, brown eyes huge in a white appalled face, and when she spoke her voice was a barely audible whisper.

  ‘Johnny!’ she said. ‘Oh, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny. What have they done to you?’

  She reached forward and gently touched the blood-masked face, beginning to tremble uncontrollably as the tears rolled down her face.