That was Regan’s case – to solve and answer that. Nothing else. That’s what the British taxpayer wanted in return for his wages. And the first step on the route to that would be near suicide.
He saw the opening. He kicked the accelerator to the floor and pulled the car out of the downhill traffic in a scream of rear tyres. There were two cars in front of him, then the tail Mercedes, then the bread van. Even the French drivers with their national weakness for road slaughter, reacted immediately in a cacophony of horns as Regan sliced down their left hand sides in a desperate attempt to reclaim a position by the time he reached the first blind corner.
Somehow he did it, but there was no good reason for it. The Mercedes 200 was not a performance car. He made it on luck and brakes. He slewed the heavy car sideways round the S-bend and reviewed the new situation. There was now one car, a Peugeot, in front of him, and in front of the Peugeot, the Mercedes and the bread van.
He banged on the accelerator again, hailed the car out on the wrong side of the road. He was now on a straight about a hundred and fifty yards long, with a sign half way down it which he could already see, forecasting a double S-bend at the bottom. There was a lorry lumbering up towards him. He could almost see the driver’s face go white as blood and lunch-time Pernod drained out of it. He could hear a shouted blasphemy from the Peugeot driver, a large bald-headed man, as he pulled the Merc with an inch to spare past the Peugeot, out past the Merc, in for a second into the gap behind the bread van, and then, risking everything, pulled the car out again, overtook the bread van, angling his face away from its driver. But the latter would have enough on his mind holding on to his piece of road as Regan sliced past him, just missing the lorry coming uphill, which by now had thrown on its brakes to avoid a head-on collision.
He was now between Almadi’s car and the Merc. Now phase three. He had to stop the bread van without killing himself or its driver.
He studied the killer in the interior mirror. He had no worries that the killer would recognize him – all he was presenting to the killer’s eyes was the back of a head with a chauffeur’s hat on it.
He began to close in on the rear of the Almadi car. The chauffeur in the Almadi car automatically increased the speed with the result that the two started to bunch up with the Hijaz Mercedes in the lead. Hijaz’s driver increased his speed.
They were still trailing down hill, down from the giddy heights of the Grande Corniche, towards the coast. The three leading Mercs nudging each other, picking up speed. The speed reached and passed the seventy mark. The old Peugeot bread van behind started to fall back. The killer had calculated the risks and decided to come down on the side of caution. Or maybe there were other reasons, the brakes might not be up to it if this downhill chase had to come to a sudden halt. Or maybe the killer knew precisely where they were heading, had known Almadi’s residence was the Hotel du Cap since Almadi’s arrival, or even before.
The bread van began to lose ground. Regan searched for the moment, looked for the suitable lay of the land where he could play his hand. The road wandering down through the massif was still narrow, only on stretches did it run to two wide lanes where it was possible to overtake. Now, ahead, another warning of a double S-bend as the road snaked round the extremities of two abutting cliffs. Regan knew, even before he’d got round the bend and explored the topography, that the time was now. The bread van was a hundred yards behind him as he accelerated the Mercedes around the bend, positioned the car dead centre of the road and threw on the brakes. The Merc burned itself to a smoking-rubber halt. Regan sat there, stiff as a statue, keyed to a millisecond’s reaction as he studied the rear mirror. The bread van was about to come round the blind corner and hit him square in the rear. Regan powered up to the maximum revs, the engine screaming and the car shaking.
The bread van was suddenly careening around the corner and coming at the rear of Regan’s car full tilt. Regan hesitated a split second. That second was to give the killer time to work it out. The killer had three choices, to steer to the left and end up hitting the low wall and sailing in his bread van over the precipice, to steer dead centre and hit Regan’s car square in the rear and end up with his body impaled in the mess of twisted metal of the bread van’s front and the Merc’s rear, or – the only other possibility – drive the van into the deep storm ditch to the right of the road. That was the choice Regan wanted him to make. That was the choice he made.
The storm ditch was six feet wide, four feet deep and walled in on the right by the vertical rock face. The bread van hit the ditch as Regan hit the accelerator. While Regan in the Merc was haring off down the road, the bread van was ripping itself to pieces in its journey along the ditch. Regan saw one of the van’s front tyres split and spin off up into the air. But he knew the killer would step out of the sixty mile an hour crash intact. His object was achieved.
He caught up with the Almadi Mercedes and tailed it through the switchback of the second S-bend. Immediately beyond this, a turning off the Grande Corniche leading presumably down to the Moyenne Corniche. Regan took the left turn as the other two Mercedes sailed on down the Grande Corniche heading for Nice.
He drove down the tree-lined tarmacadam tributary of the main road, huge luxury villas behind high walls on each side. He drove a hundred yards, halted, did a three point turn, and headed back up and turned right again, pointing the car upwards towards the scene of the bread van crash.
He had noticed a garage with an ‘auto lavage’ about three hundred yards down from the scene of the crash. It was on the left hand side of the road. He was taking a certain risk, but he drove the car fast up and turned into the garage. He’d also noticed the garage had a ‘Ferme’ sign in its forecourt, the pump attendants off to lunch. He drove the car round to the back of the garage and into the empty tunnel of the non-functioning car wash. He got out, threw the chauffeur’s cap and dark glasses inside, locked the car, and then started off for the stiff walk up to the second of the S-bends. The bread van had crashed around the corner from the first of the S-bends. Regan approached the corner carefully. There were some bushes growing out of the ditch at the side of the road, and he moved in among them. He could see the little scenario without being seen. A couple of motors had stopped to assist the killer. Their two cars were parked haphazardly on the road and were causing a back-up of traffic. The killer was standing upright, looking shaken but obviously not damaged. He was gesticulating with the matching gesticulations of the other two, presumably describing a certain chauffeur’s insane driving and how it had ended him up in a ditch.
Then Regan was suddenly running down hill back to the deserted garage. Because he’d seen the killer pointing at his watch, and the Peugeot owner agreeing and gesturing him towards the Peugeot. The killer was obviously talking about his need to get somewhere on time and requesting a lift. And the Peugeot owner was consenting. The two men were heading for the Peugeot.
Regan covered the three hundred yards to the garage in record time. He had hardly run inside the auto lavage, halted to look back up the road, when he saw the grey Peugeot now with its two occupants, appear and disappear down the road towards Nice. Regan got into the car, fumbled the ignition key, got it started. He put it in reverse and shot out of the car wash. Seconds later he was back on the Grande Corniche. Thirty seconds later he was tucked in behind a small Alfa Romeo sports car which was trailing a Porsche, which was sitting on the tail of the Peugeot. Cautiously Regan navigated the last five miles of the journey into Nice.
The Grande Corniche enters the north of Nice down the Boulevard Risso, which runs into the Esplanade General de Gaulle. The Peugeot pulled over by the cab rank in the long square. The man with the moustache got out, a cursory wave to the bald head in the Peugeot, and the killer walked over and talked to a cabman, then climbed into his cab. Regan had braked a hundred yards back from the switch of vehicles. He now filtered off slowly as the cab, with the killer inside, headed down the east side of the square, for the port.
; Regan saw the sea, and out in the bay the white horses of the cold unsettled water. The breeze pulled at rain coats on the brave strollers on the front, and fluttered the awnings of the empty pavement bars. He was sure the cab was going to take a right along the Promenade des Anglais, and find the route out past the airport, Cap 3000, and south to Antibes. He was sure his luck was out, his calculations too optimistic. He wanted the M38 expert to lead him to base. Now he felt that all the guy was going to do was to return to the Almadi tail – that had been the man’s objective when he’d picked up the sheikh’s party at the secret installation. He’d lost his bread van, but now that he had a new set of wheels, why should he change objectives? It all seemed obvious and logical. Regan almost did a double take when the cab made a left at the bottom of the Jardin Albert Premier. The killer’s destination was east. He was heading in the opposite direction from Antibes.
Regain trailed the car carefully. The killer would be shaken, suspicious. The cab had to make the journey down the side of the old port and right, across the top of it. The killer only had to incline his head slightly at the north end of the port to see the black Mercedes. But he obviously had other things on his mind and didn’t look back.
Regan saw a sign: ‘Corniche Inferior: Villefranche: Beaulieu’. The cab accelerated up and through the mild mess of lunchtime motorists and cyclists seeking meals away from the expense of the town proper. Regan earned one waved fist and a horn quartet from another outraged group as he cut and thrust with the Mercedes to keep the cab in view and at a distance of no more than a hundred yards between himself and his quarry.
The road to Beaulieu was a repetition of the pendulum route of the Grande Corniche, save this time the ascents and descents were mild. Regan passed pink villas, perched on the rock, imported direct from Disneyland, and low castles behind lawns bordered by private driveways, each pebble hand-selected and polished by Cartier. He passed million-dollar houses lined up like the ribbon development of a fast-buck builder, but he hardly noticed them because his eyes were on the cab, and his brain on his calculation.
Where was the killer going? Where else but some kind of base, house, apartment. Maybe a boat? Below the walls of the coast, down in the gullies of little ports and plages made by man, a continuing spawn of marinas, hundreds and hundreds of fibreglass dreams from ninety feet to nine, from ocean-going cruisers to tiny sailboats, sails up, scattered through the harbours and out on the surface of the ocean like confetti at a wet wedding. Maybe a plane? Maybe the guy was heading for a private plane, or helicopter. There were bound to be small private airports or heliports along this coastline, certain to be one in Monaco.
Now that might be something that Regan would not be able to handle. That’s what worried him almost as much as the need to keep the cab in sight, not lose it for one second. What worried Regan was that it wasn’t enough for him or anybody else just to arrest this man. That would solve no problems, give no answers. He had the killer. The man might escape. But he was after more than this gent who’d dispatched Haffasa in the Wellington Clinic, he was after the reason for it. It was just a gamble that the man, if allowed his head for a few more hours, would lead him to the answers. Regan had never turned down a gamble in his life.
The villa lay low and sprawled down the south side of the first small western promontory on Cap Ferrat. There was a white-sprayed wall ten feet high all around the perimeter of its unseen gardens. It looked like a wall, but maybe it was a fortification, maybe it was designed to resist armour-piercing shells, or heavy mortar attack. The house had a set of double steel gates with a large man hanging around inside the gates. The man had on a dark blue suit, and presumably served the same purposes as a Dobermann Pinscher – he was there to eat anyone who thought it might be fun to call. Regan nosed the Merc gently over the railway bridge to glide on to the peninsula of St. Jean-Cap Ferrat, followed the cab, pulling further back from it now as he saw the universal cul-de-sac sign on a street post. This cul-de-sac was obviously the end of the ride.
Regan saw the cab pull in and halt. The guy got out and paid the driver, who sat there a minute checking the francs away into various change pockets in his paunch. Regan spotted the huge man inside of the gates move a lot quicker than a man of his size was expected to, open the gates and allow the Wellington Clinic killer to enter. Not a word was exchanged between guard and killer. They knew each other. Regan eased the Merc back five yards up the lane, round a first slight bend and halted. He got out.
Meanwhile the cab had turned round, produced a dust cloud on the private road, and headed up past Regan. Regan was a little unsure of the direction of the next move. The ten foot high villa wall effectively screened from view the whole ground and first floor of the three-flour villa. He must find some crow’s nest in the hills and hollows of this mogul’s two-mile strip of real estate, to get a view down and over the walls into the white villa.
He got back into the car, turned it round and drove up the quarter-mile lane to the railway bridge and then took the left turn off the peninsula. He retraced the road a quarter-mile west, in the Villefranche direction, found a parking lay by, parked and got out of the car and crossed to the road wall. The Villefranche coast road at this point was stuck on a cliff five hundred feet above sea level. Regan had stopped at a point where the white villa could quite easily be seen, the germane parts of it. The first and second floors revealed through a clearing in the small woods of palm and acacia which screened most of that part of the promontory.
He saw several men. He started to count and got to six. They were on an open veranda at the sea end of the ground floor. The veranda in fact was cantilevered out over a large kidney-shaped swimming pool. The men all seemed to be large like the gateman and they also wore dark suits. The killer was amongst them. Regan could recognize him over the distance of five hundred yards. He was the only one with a moustache on his face. The men were talking animatedly out under the sun on the veranda, much arm waving and moving about, and forming and reforming of little groups. But Regan was also studying other elements in the cameo view. The second floor had an exterior veranda, something he had not seen from street level. It was a sort of walkway that ran four the sides of the house. There was a man there, another large-built guy, walking that veranda, pacing it out, appearing and disappearing around the house, his paces as regular as a metronome’s tick. So an armed guard at the gate. Presumably the veranda man was also armed. And six men in the rest of the house. How to grab this lot? How to raid this house, with its high walls and exit to the sea, and get both the killer and his pals? And how to do it fast? And the biggest question of all, how to use this discovery to his advantage? Hijaz, Almadi, and the lot back in England, the Special Branch, they had all used him as a floor mop to wipe up various messes. The time had come for Regan to pay them all back, reshuffle the cards, and play a few deft hands of his own.
The English accent and the Mercedes worked. He managed to get a room at La Reserve in Beaulieu without luggage. He produced a story that his own bags had been lost by British Airways at Nice Airport and received knowing nods. All he wanted was a room with a phone. La Reserve in Beaulieu attempts to rival all comers as the most expensive place to breathe air conditioning in the world. It would take some explaining when Regan stuck the Diners Club bill under the nose of Superintendent Maynon in a month from now. Napoleon, or someone like that, had put it in a phrase – ‘There is no price to put on results’. So Regan included in that a bottle of scotch to be sent to the room, a bottle of Evian, and a jug of ice. When that lot arrived he first poured a small sample mix, sat down and picked up the phone.
‘I’d like Hotel du Cap, Eden Roc. 34.29.01.’
‘Please hold on, sir,’ the telephonist said. ‘We have a direct dial facility.’
That was another reason Regan had selected an expensive hotel. He suspected that in order to cope with the nefarious French phone system he would need the help of an English-speaking French operator. Such was more likely to be obtainable at a
pricey place.
‘Hotel du Cap.’
‘Monsieur Hijaz.’
‘Attendez s’il vous plait.’
A moment later Hijaz’s voice came on the line. ‘Yes?’
‘Me, Regan.’
‘Where did you go? You took a Mercedes away. What happened...?’ The man’s voice flat and worried as if he was sure the English cop had got up to mischief and he would get blamed for it.
‘I spotted the man on the way back from that installation,’ Regan said gently. ‘The man who killed Haffasa in London. I followed him, found out where he and his pals live.’
The Sweeney 03 Page 10