by Ellis Peters
He was on the climbing sector now, bend after sharp bend, the margins unfenced and with only shallow ditches, the trees crowding close. Silence all round, apart from his own re-echoing sounds, and darkness but for his own headlights glazing and gilding the embossed trunks of the trees, the inset panels of mirror, the scoured faces of rock. If he craned to look upwards he could not distinguish a line where earth and sky met. It had rained fitfully all the way, and was raining still. The sky was shrouded, there were no stars, and no moon.
There must have been someone watching for him, to make sure that he took the Kempten road and drove into the trap. Maybe they had lost time in setting out after him when he swung past it and turned towards Austria, but he had been fool enough to mention Scheidenau, and they were on his heels now, he was sure of that. The young man in the leather jacket had loosed the hunt after him with a vengeance, and if he was going to shake it, it would have to be now, on this complex stretch where the echoes would play on both sides, and confuse every issue. He put his foot down hard, and gave the car its head. The bends were well engineered, a joy to drive round, but also blind and deaf, at every swing light and sound cut off together, sharp as the descent of a guillotine.
All his senses were so trained on the threat behind that he was, in any case, curiously vulnerable to any hazards ahead. Anything approaching from Austria was his friend and ally, he had no need to be wary of it. Where there was company on the road there was safety. Who could close on him and attack while neutral headlights were bearing down on the scene?
He swung at speed round a right-handed bend, sharp as a shrew’s elbow, and straight into the glare of headlights cut off sharp by the curtain of dark trees. Someone was running along the road towards him, a torch in an extended hand waving him down. He braked sharply and drew in to the right, and the face and the torch plunged to a halt and turned back, running alongside him. On the left of the road headlights leaned drunkenly into the ditch. A panting voice alongside implored him:
‘Bitte… bitte, halt! Unfall…’
Somebody else’s accident was due to be Francis Killian’s salvation. Why not buttonhole the pursuers, too, from safe ambush among the victims, flag them down and send them back to call an ambulance, if necessary, or the police? What an irony! Francis pulled in obediently to the side of the road, half on the bald grass verge, swung open the door and piled out of the car, turning to meet the young man who came panting towards him with the torch. He saw a young, frightened, boyish face, wild with relief, blazing at him wide-open welcome.
Something hit him hard on the back of the head. The lights and darks exploded before him, changed places, merged, blinked out into single and absolute darkness. The ground came up and struck him in the face, scoring his cheek and lips raw. He groped along the grass, and the grains of loam were large as boulders. Dimly his mind pursued logic, argued, reproached him. The enemy were in front, not behind. Then who was behind? Someone else, assiduous on his heels, but not the enemy. The enemy were these shadows who had struck him down. Enemies of the enemy, perhaps? Leave them a sign! Not far behind, he had wondered when they would close the gap. The fingers of his right hand, hooked deep into his left inside pockets, gouged out the wallet that held his photographs, and spilled it into the lush, overgrown autumn grass in the ditch below him. He prised himself up arduously from the ground, the lighter by that load, his head spinning, and levered himself upright on wavering legs, one arm flailing to ward off the first assault.
They were three, he saw them clearly, even photographed them on some emulsion in his mind, his eyes recording nothing. The image sank in, and left his eyes blind.
Two of the three rushed him, one from either side. The third, the boy with the torch, swerved round him as he swayed to his feet, and plunged on. Francis stiff-armed the first of his attackers half across the road, but the second one was on his back in the same moment, one arm crooked round his neck, dragging him over backwards into the shallow ditch. They rolled confusedly together, the wet grass stinging and cold against their faces.
Francis heard a car door slam and a motor thrum into life, and knew it for the note on his hired Dodge from Zurich. Its lights swung impetuously forward and back, forward and back in the road, cutting yellow swathes out of the darkness as it turned, and then it surged past them and roared away at speed in the direction of Felsenbach. That was the last thing Francis knew. His assailant enveloped him suddenly in both arms, and rolled over beneath him, holding him helpless and exposed for the second blow. This time the man with the cosh made no mistake. The world exploded in a flash of light, and collapsed into chaotic darkness. Francis slid slowly into the ditch, and lay still.
CHAPTER NINE
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The blanket of cloud on the heights had ripped into tatters and begun to dissolve away just before the smooth sound of the car ahead, steadily climbing, braked into a protesting whine, and the minor confusion of voices, barely audible, nevertheless made itself felt against the surrounding silence.
‘Now what?’ grunted George, who was driving. He put his foot down, willing to narrow the gap a little; nobody was going to hear them approaching, not until they reached that right-hand bend. They were making too much noise themselves, up there. They! Somebody had been waiting for Francis Killian, somebody for whom he wasn’t prepared, by all the signs. George wanted to know who. ‘I’m tired of this,’ he said aloud, ‘I’m closing up. Hang on, here we go!’
But there they didn’t go, or no farther than the twenty yards or so it took him to brake sharply, swing the wheel, wallow across the ditch where a rough logging track crossed it, and burrow an abrupt and hazardous way in among the trees on their right. For at that instant both he and his passenger had caught the sudden rocketing plunge of the Dodge into gear, the sawing alternations of its lunges fore and aft as it turned, and the triumphant roar as it launched into high speed. Its headlights were slicing round the fringe of the trees as the little black police Volkswagen rocked and waddled to a standstill deep among the firs, and George cut motor and lights and prayed that they had been neither seen nor heard.
The young Austrian detective had the passenger door open before the car was still, and was groping and stumbling his way back the few yards to the road. George, afraid to leave the wheel, clawed his way round to peer intently over the back of the driving seat. The car from Zurich shot by at speed, hurtling back the way it had come a few minutes ago, with enough aggression and bravura in the driving to demonstrate blind that it was driven now by another hand. Somebody crude, young and violent. They had followed Francis Killian yesterday, they knew his touch. George never saw the face behind the wheel, but he knew it was not Francis Killian’s face. He began to back his way out, tickling the wheel this way and that, grateful that he had grazed nothing in getting in, and fastidiously sensitive to the hazards in getting out. The Austrian detective came running, clambering back into his place and slamming the door just short of the last tree.
‘Not your man… young fellow driving… Couldn’t see any passenger. Which way now?’
‘Ahead!’ said George, and didn’t wait to have his judgment endorsed. They swayed drunkenly out on to the road. George cut the lights to sidelights, and nosed uphill, swinging the wheel for the turn.
There were other headlights, somewhere a hundred yards or so round that hairpin, manoeuvring rapidly but gently back and forth in a turn, just as the Dodge had done, but this time in the other direction. Their beams lurched upwards and levelled out, as though the car was just heaving itself clear of the ditch, and then danced forward and back and forward again, and the dwindling arc of their light wheeled, threaded the edge of the trees for an instant, and recoiled as the car came round, leaving the bend in the road darkened. But only for a moment. The moon sailed out from rags of cloud, pouring a wash of pallor down the tall faces of rock ahead, and bleaching the hunched shoulder of the bend to the white of bone. George accepted the omen with aplomb, and switched off his lights altogether. H
e went round the curve on faith and moonlight, hugging the dark side.
The car that had just heaved itself out of the ditch opposite and turned was drawn up now, somewhat farther ahead than George had estimated, engine running, wheels barely turning, close to the grass verge. On the verge itself, faintly outlined by the roof-light through the open door, one man was stooping with his arms about the end of a long, unwieldy bundle, which he was thrusting into the rear seat of the car. Someone else was already in there ahead of it, hauling it in.
A limp, dead weight, all too recognisable as the feet were dragged aboard and the door slammed on them. The inside light blinked off, blinked on again as the front passenger door opened to let the last man leap aboard, blinked out once again as the car, broad and powerful, soared into speed and shot away.
Three to one, counting the man at the wheel; four, taking into account the young one whose job it was to whip away the hired Dodge somewhere into Germany, and no doubt get it a new paint job and a changed registration before daylight to-morrow. Much chance Francis Killian had had, George thought grimly, drawing a bead on the receding rear lights, with his foot flat to the floor and his lights still off. If they were, as he hoped, still undetected, they might as well stay that way as long as possible. The road surface, thank God, wasn’t bad at all, and the fitful moonlight made the edge of the grass show up like a kerb; and there was nothing meeting them, and at this hour of the night, with luck, there might be nothing all the way to the crest and the frontier. The lights ahead would indicate the bends, and give him a chance to use his sidelights without being spotted. With luck! With, in fact, a lot more luck than Francis Killian had had.
At the moment the chief trouble was that the big car in front was gaining rapidly.
‘Mercedes, I think!’ yelled the young Austrian in his ear, peering excitedly after the shape ahead. His name was Werner Frankel, and he had been assigned to George as escort and assistant because he had received the whole of his primary education and most of his advanced education in English, as a refugee with his family during and after the war, ‘We shan’t overhaul him!’
There was no arguing with that; they would be lucky if they could even keep those diminishing tail-lights in view.
‘Any hope of a telephone up here?’ asked George, keeping his foot down hard, and his eye on the distant spark.
‘Yes, an inn, half a mile ahead. You won’t see it, but I’ll tell you.’ They were both thinking on the same lines, and it was pleasing to find that they both knew it, without any waste of words. ‘Drop me off there, and try to hang on to him.’
‘Sure? You know these roads better than I do.’
‘You don’t speak German,’ said Werner unanswerably.
George would have managed to make himself understood somehow, but Werner wouldn’t even have to try, and delay was what they could least afford.
‘You’ll call the German police, too? They might pick up the Dodge before they get it into hiding.’ Nobody was going to be able to identify it afterwards, that was plain. ‘And the frontier, in case. Though I doubt if they’ll risk the frontier… not on the road.’
‘At night it could be a very nominal check… they might. If they try some other way over, it has to be a rough one. You’ll have a better chance of staying with him.’
‘And the other side? What choice of roads?’
‘After Scheidenau, it has to be Bregenz or Langen. I’ll call both. Pity we weren’t near enough to get a number, but a Mercedes in a hurry… black or dark blue?… I’d say black.’
‘And the Dodge you know.’ A cigarette-end in the dark, the sole trace of the Mercedes, vanished round one more bend ahead. George switched on dipped headlights, and made up a little of the lost ground while there was a ridge of rock between them.
‘The Dodge I know. Slow round this bend, my inn’s on the right. You’ll see a track going off uphill.’
George saw the pole first, the telephone wire sliding away from the road. He braked to a halt where the climbing path began, and Werner was out like a greyhound. ‘Good luck!’ He waved and darted away into the dark; and George ranged through the Volkswagen’s willing gears and set off doggedly after the vanished Mercedes.
And now he was on his own, and any communing he was going to do would be done strictly with himself. But give Werner ten minutes with that telephone, and there would be large numbers of invisible allies turning out to his aid. He could use as many as he could get. The outfit that could plant four men and that kind of car to pick off Francis Killian had plenty of resources at its disposal. The thing began to look promisingly big. Big, thorough, and highly sensitive to any display of curiosity. Now which of those calls Killian had made to-day in Regenheim could have caused Them—whoever They were!—to set up this efficient ambush?
No doubt about now Werner would be reeling off the whole list to the German police, and leaving them to do the rest. If he was fast enough they might be able to stop the Dodge in Felsenbach, before some discreet garage doors closed on it somewhere—those double doors in Regenheim, perhaps?—and three or four waiting experts fell on it and transformed everything on it or in it that was transformable, and sent it out again to be palmed off on some innocent sucker the other side of the country. George had known the whole job done inside four hours, even in England, and in comparison with these big boys with the whole of Europe open to them the English were mere amateurs.
And if the car was meant to vanish without trace, ten thousand to one so was Francis Killian. Like anybody else who got too nosy about this complicated corner of Central Europe, about anonymous graves and mysterious disappearances. Like Robin Aylwin himself? Like Peter Bromwich? Hang on tightly enough to this one, thought George, picking up the distant spark and breathing again, and you may find out what happened to the others.
He wished he knew whether the men in that car knew he was there on their tail. His impression was that they did not, for though they were moving briskly, and had left him well behind, the fact remained that with their power they could have been much farther ahead of him had they wished. It looked as if speed, though important and desirable, was not the first consideration. They wouldn’t wish to storm the frontier post as if they were in flight from the law; and if, on the other hand, they intended to evade Customs altogether, perhaps they had to look for a way not familiar to them. The crossing between Scheidenau and Felsenbach was a quiet one at any time, surely practically dead at night; but that might be a mixed blessing. Bored Customs men might take more interest in a car passing through than would those who had a constant stream of traffic. No, George’s best bet was that they wouldn’t go near the post. There are more ways over any hill frontier than are covered by the authorities.
About a mile to go now to the crest. If they were going to leave the road it must be soon, for the descent on the other side was through much more open country. It seemed that suddenly he was gaining on them a little; he could see the spark of red, obviously round another bend from his stretch of road, proceeding in a diagonal incline to the right, and now decidedly at a more sedate speed. He eased up slowly to hold his distance. Arrival at the point where he had seen the quarry change course gave him a shock, for he had been relying on the Mercedes as a guide, and travelling by mere unreliable moonlight or sidelights, or into the sharp cut-off of dipped headlights, which made progress hazardous and the angles of the road deceptive. So far from swinging to the right here, it turned somewhat to the left. He braked with his nose on the grass verge, and risked switching his lights on full beam for an instant. He had slightly overshot the opening of a narrow, stony track that branched off sharply to the right.
Where they could go, he could go, with room to spare. He backed a few yards, and turned into the track after them. His guess had been accurate, they had no intention of entering Austria by the road.
Now he had to use his lights, he would not have survived long without them. Luckily the driver of the Mercedes must also be having to concentrate hard, and
the noise they were making up there would effectively drown out the noise he was making down here. Once launched on this track there was only one way to go, for trees and rocks encroached on it irregularly on either side. The surface was beaten earth, like any ramblers’ path in the mountains, liberally toothed with outcrop rock and loose stones. In places it was more like a dried watercourse than a track, and in other places more like a bog than either, and reinforced with half-peeled logs laid as a causeway. It climbed steeply, twice negotiating narrow wooden bridges which George took at a crawl, forewarned by the earthquake rumblings his quarry had set up in crossing. Most of the time he lost sight of the Mercedes altogether, but from time to time he caught a glimpse of the rear lights, and knew he was holding his own. Caution, not haste, was what mattered to them here. He could even have closed up on them, at some risk, but he was unarmed, and there were three of them, almost certainly provided with guns. Much better hang back and remain undetected, as rather surprisingly he still seemed to be, until he could make contact with the reinforcements called out by Werner.
He had not the least idea at what point they re-entered Austria; there was never anything to mark the change. Nor had he any notion of how far they had come on this travesty of a road; three miles of strained attention can seem more like thirty. But it occurred to him suddenly that they had ceased to climb, and on either side of the belt of trees that shrouded them he could see the faintly lambent sky, still frayed with broken cloud. Then the descent, which was mercifully more gradual than the ascent had been, but still testing enough. The track, doubling like a coursed hare, tipped them abruptly into a lane enclosed between stone walls, no wider than the way they had come, but at once smoother, an ordinary dirt road that might have led to some isolated farm, and probably did. This in turn brought them at length to a metalled road, fields opening out on either side. George rolled the Volkswagen cautiously up to the turn, and cut his lights.