“I’m pretty certain it hadn’t. I check the rear-view mirror regularly, even on that kind of a road, and there was no sign of it until it was right behind us.”
“You must know it didn’t stop after the accident. The lorry driver says that when he last saw it, it was travelling very steadily at high speed. It doesn’t seem as if the driver could have been drunk.” Raoux, watching Sterne’s face, continued: “Can you suggest a reason why someone might have deliberately tried to kill you?”
“No, no way. I’m just out here on holiday.”
Raoux turned. “And you, Mademoiselle Backman — have you been able to think of a reason?”
“I’m sure there isn’t one.”
“Then I have no more questions… Thank you for your help.” He stood. “And may I wish you both a very speedy recovery.”
After he’d gone, Sterne said: “I don’t think he bought the idea that the driver was tight.”
“Maybe not right away. The only thing is, if he can’t find any other explanation, he’ll have to fall back on that one. Surely there must be people who can be as tight as ticks and yet drive in a straight line?”
“Could be, I suppose, but everyone I know ends up doing the wiggle-woggle… Still, let’s hope you’re right. In the meantime, I’ve got to start moving.”
“You’re not going anywhere until the doctor says you’re fit enough.”
“All I have now is a bit of a head…”
“Please, Angus, don’t be stupid.”
“But it’s Saturday already and…”
“It’s Tuesday,” she corrected. “You were unconscious for over twenty-four hours and then they kept you very well sedated.”
“Tuesday! Christ! Ralph will be going round the bend as he’s not heard from me.”
“Then ring him and tell him what’s happened. Or if you’re not up to it, I’ll speak to him.”
“I’d better do it. If he thinks someone else knows I’m travelling on his passport he’ll put his head under a train… Can you organise a phone in here and explain I must get through to England?”
She kissed him, running her fingertips over his cheek. “And after that I must go and do some shopping.” She kissed him again, then left.
A nurse carried a telephone into the room and plugged it into a wall socket. She said in French that if he told the hospital operator what number he wanted, it would be obtained for him. He lifted the receiver and gave the number of Parsonage Farm, repeated this twice more before the operator was satisfied she’d correctly understood him. The connection was made in less than a minute and the ringing note began. It continued. The operator broke in to ask him if he wanted to try another number. He gave Ralph’s office number.
This time, the call was answered almost immediately. “Prince, Hatley, and Shayborne,” said a woman with a plummy voice.
“Is Mr Sterne there?”
“One moment, please, while I see if he’s in his office.” A brief pause, a couple of clicks, and then Ralph said: “Sterne speaking.”
“Sterne speaking.”
“Angus? Thank God you’ve phoned. We’ve been going frantic. How badly were you injured?”
“Just a bang on the head. It doesn’t seem to have done any permanent damage. I’ll soon be out of hospital.”
“Angela’s been practically burying you.”
“Tell her from me that it’s only the good who die young.” It was only as he finished speaking that he remembered something. “How in the hell did you know I’d been in a car accident?”
“It was in the Sunday Telegraph.”
“It was what?” he said loudly, then regretted this because there was a sudden stab of pain in his head.
“There were just a couple of lines at the bottom of a page — I think they’re called fillers. An English tourist, Ralph Sterne, had been in a car accident near Fauteville, in central France, and had been severely injured.”
“If Young or any of his blokes read the Sunday Telegraph rather than the News of the World…”
“Young was round before lunch on Sunday to find out if I was the injured Ralph Sterne. He demanded to know where you were and asked to see my passport.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him you were moving around the country and I didn’t know exactly where, but if you got in touch with me I’d ask you to ring him.”
“And what did you do about the passport?”
“Told him of course he could see it. Went up to our bedroom, waited a bit, returned downstairs and apologised because Angela had been tidying up and changing things around and I didn’t know where she’d put the passports for safety.”
“Did he believe you?”
“I… No, not really.”
“So he’ll have contacted all ports and airports and warned them to look out for me, travelling on your passport?”
“I think you’d better reckon on that.”
If they caught him on entry, they’d arrest him for breaking bail and they’d charge Ralph with aiding and abetting — not forgetting the twenty thousand pounds which would be forfeited. If he stayed abroad and failed to turn up at the trial, they’d issue a warrant for his arrest… “Ralph, we’ve still one chance. You’ve got to take the risk of giving Young the registration letters…”
“Angus, we’ve been through all that before, but you still don’t seem to understand. Right now, whatever Young’s suspicions, he can’t be certain it was you in that car crash. After all, there are hundreds of other Ralph Sternes in the world and the one who crashed in central France just could have been one of them, I just could have mislaid my passport, and you just could be drifting around England using up the time until the trial. So to prove it was you would take time and work and he’s told us that he can’t ask a foreign force to undertake anything unless he can fully justify the request at the time it’s made. At the moment he won’t act, then. But if I give him the car registration letters it becomes obvious you’ve managed to find Belinda Backman which means it was you in that crash in France…
“Not necessarily. When I told him about Belinda I said she’d promised to phone me if she decided she wanted to see me again. All right, she did and she’s just phoned. I wasn’t at home so you took the message and then asked her about the registration letters. She gave them to you.”
“And you think he’ll swallow that? The first thing he’ll do is demand that you identify yourself to someone in authority to prove you’re still in this country.”
“Identify myself in person?”
“What the hell d’you think?”
“All right. Then I’ve just got to sneak back into the country without anyone knowing.”
“Impossible.”
“The impossible merely takes a little longer.”
“For God’s sake, stop thinking everyone but yourself is a bloody fool. You’ll be caught the moment you try to get in… Look, forget all that nonsense. Hang on where you are until the doctors are absolutely certain it’s safe for you to move: don’t rush back here for nothing, risking a relapse…”
“It’s a risk I’m going to have to take,” cut in Sterne.
“Don’t be so goddamn stupid,” said Ralph, exasperation making him angry. “There’s no way you can get back without being spotted.”
“Like to bet on that?”
“It’s betting that started this whole mess off, isn’t it?”
“Thanks very much for that timely reminder.”
“Angus, I was…” Ralph stopped abruptly. When he next spoke, his voice was flat in tone: “I’ve told Angela what’s happening. She can accept trouble so much better if she’s forewarned about it.”
Sterne wondered how she’d received the news. Had she been bitter that things had gone so wrong? Almost certainly not, he decided. She was someone who could make a decision which involved risk and then, if the decision turned out to have been the wrong one, accept the consequences without bitter recriminations.
Chapter 19
There w
as a restaurant in the basement of the hospital. Belinda and Sterne sat at one of the corner tables. He finished a plate of trifle, flavoured with brandy and topped with whipped cream, looked across at her. “Coffee?”
“Please. Black with a dash.”
He left the table and went over to the self-service counter, returning with two cups and saucers on a tray. He crossed to another, unoccupied table, for a bowl of sugar, then sat. She helped herself to sugar. “Have you decided what to do when we leave here?” she asked.
“I have to try and get back into England so that Ralph’s in the clear. That means returning via either the Channel Islands or Ireland. The immigration officials won’t be so alert, even if they’ve been briefed. And from either place I can travel on without going through immigration again.”
“Surely the police will have thought of that possibility and countered it?”
“The detective-superintendent is a dogged man, but not overburdened with imagination.”
Her voice sharpened. “You don’t really believe that; you can’t. A man doesn’t reach high rank if he’s a fool.”
“High rank often means conformity rather than initiative.”
“You must think up something better.”
“That’s the best there is.”
“Then we drive back home and see if Jean can help.”
“How could he begin to?”
“Because… What do you make of him?”
“Make?”
“What kind of work did he do?”
He shook his head.
“I told you, I don’t know either. All I do know is that he retired before he married Evelyn. But retired from what? To us he’s always been kind, generous, loving, gentle… But sometimes, when something’s happened which he doesn’t like, or someone’s rude or deliberately obstructive, there’s a sudden suggestion about him of… of a tiger: as if he’s all tensed violence. And he’s wealthy, but where did all his money come from?”
“Where’s this leading to?”
“That he may have unorthodox sources to call on. So that if anyone can help you, he can.”
“Maybe. But I’m not involving him. When people have been as welcoming as Evelyn and he, you don’t repay them by involving them in some stinking trouble.”
She drank some coffee, replaced the cup on the saucer. “Angus… He’s already involved.”
“How the hell d’you mean?”
“The last time I phoned him I explained what had happened and asked if he could help… Please don’t get too angry.”
*
They turned into the drive and L’Ile Blanche came into view: in the deepening shadows and the space of the park it was easy to visualise the house as an island.
Evelyn and de Matour hurried out of the house and there was an emotional reunion. Again and again, Evelyn demanded to know if they were both really all right.
In the family sitting room, they drank a bottle of welcome-home champagne, after which Belinda stood and said she was going upstairs for a long, hot, scented bath. Evelyn turned to Sterne. “You’ll want to do the same… you’re in the red bedroom again, so the bathroom next door is all yours. There are towels and…”
“The domestic details can wait,” said de Matour, “as can the bath until Angus and I have had a little discussion. To help us along with this, we will open — and perhaps consume — a second bottle of champagne.”
Evelyn looked quickly at her husband, then nodded. “All right. And I’ll see dinner’s coming along smoothly and that Cécile hasn’t let the foul mood she’s been in all day ruin the coq au vin.”
After Evelyn and Belinda had left, de Matour opened a second bottle of champagne and refilled Sterne’s and his own glass. He returned to his chair. “Belinda told me over the telephone that you had a difficulty and would like some help?” His tone wasn’t hostile, but it was reserved.
“She spoke to you without any reference to me: if I’d known what she intended to do, I’d have stopped her.”
“Would it not, perhaps, be more accurate to say you would have tried to stop her? She is a woman of decided character… Why would you have tried to stop her asking me for help? When she was in trouble, you helped her.”
“My trouble is a filthy mess.”
“Rape also is not pleasant.”
“I didn’t run any risks. Anyone helping me could.”
“Is it not for such person, rather than you, to judge whether to accept that risk?”
“I’m not involving you,” said Sterne stubbornly.
“As to that… Will you tell me one thing? Did you not suspect that you were carrying drugs in the Mercedes?”
The expression on de Matour’s face — in particular in his eyes — was hard. Sterne was abruptly reminded of Belinda’s description of tensed violence. “The money seemed a lot for just driving back to England so at the beginning I did reckon someone might be trying to take me for a sucker. So I had the car searched in Cala Survas by a mechanic who found nothing. This made me think I was being paid the extra solely to compensate for the risk of being picked up with false papers. Like a fool, I never imagined that anything might be planted on the car in Lençon.”
“If you were guilty of anything, then, it was of naivety.” De Matour drank. His expression relaxed and returned to its normal state of good humour. “As an old man with too much experience, I have great sympathy for naivety. Therefore, I shall help you.”
“There’s nothing you can do.”
“How can you be quite so certain?”
“I’ve only one hope and that’s to try and make it back via the Channel Islands or Ireland, hoping the immigration officers won’t be as wide awake as on the mainland.”
“You think that is possible? Or have you said that to Belinda in order to try and calm her fears?”
“Perhaps. And my own.”
De Matour chuckled, which seemed an odd thing to do at such a moment. He stood, went over to the champagne bottle, withdrew it from the ice bucket, carefully wrapped a napkin around it, and refilled Sterne’s glass, even though Sterne had drunk only a couple of mouthfuls. “Tell me, Angus, how well do you understand the official mind?”
“I’m not quite certain what you mean.”
“Have you had often to deal with the bureaucrats who govern — or try to — one’s life in every civilised country, and most uncivilised ones as well?”
“No more often than’s been absolutely necessary.”
“A very sensible attitude to adopt… I, on the other hand, once had to have a great deal to do with them. But perhaps Belinda has told you this?”
“Not really, no.”
De Matour chuckled. “She’s convinced that at one time I was a pirate and I have no intention of disillusioning her. A woman will respect a man only when she loves him a lot or fears him a little… When I started work, I put all my money into a partnership and after a couple of years my partner disappeared, having swindled me out of everything because I’d trusted him implicitly. This taught me something which throughout my subsequent business career has been of the greatest possible value: you can make money or you can remain honest, but you cannot do both together. I started afresh and soon made a great deal of money. Eventually, because of my success, I was approached by the government of the day and asked if I’d investigate the country’s public sector with a view to suggesting ways of improving its standards of efficiency. I discovered two things. First, that the public sector was an even greater morass of inefficiency than I had imagined: secondly, that although I could make recommendations which if implemented might introduce a degree of efficiency, such proposals would engender tremendous resentment and in any case would never actually come into effect because of bureaucracy’s inbuilt tendency to inertia. Do you see where all this is leading?”
“Not really. I’m probably being very slow on the uptake.”
“I will explain more particularly. You are here and you need to be there, in England, but it is essential that no
official can ever prove that you have been here or have travelled there. Now, how will the British Authorities expect you to try to return to England?”
“By smuggling myself in in a yacht, but that would take a lot of organising and time’s short, or entering through normal channels, choosing a port or airport where the immigration officials will not be very alert.”
“In other words, relying on their incompetence? Then remember that, despite popular belief, few bureaucrats are totally incompetent… So let us examine the problem from their view-point. How will they set about alerting staff at ports and airports to watch out for you?”
“They’ll draw up a description of me and add to that a copy of my passport photo and the number of Ralph’s passport.”
“What will they do with this information?”
The question seemed so unnecessary that Sterne replied impatiently. “Make certain the men at the immigration desks have it.”
“Be more precise. The men at which desks?”
“The ones at which the passengers have to show their passports on arrival.”
“But these days, at the major points of entry, there are three — one for the British, the gentlemen, one for members of the Common Market, the players, and one for foreigners, the uninformed spectators. Will the details concerning you be sent to all three immigration desks at each port of entry?”
“No, of course not. They’ll only go to the British one.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m British.”
“Exactly. An official mind knows that a British national must hold a British passport and so will always pass through the immigration control for Britons, even if travelling on another’s passport. Therefore, to provide the other two desks with this information would be a waste of time and effort and the official mind never wastes his own time and effort, merely other persons’… So your way into the UK is obvious. You appear at the desk for Common Market citizens since there the official list of undesirables will be restricted to Marxists, assassins, and French politicians.”
“That’s a non-starter. If I try that and show a British passport, I’ll immediately be sent over to the British desk where I’ll be scrutinised twice as thoroughly.”
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