‘He will not,’ MacAlpine predicted with certainty, ‘throw me out.’
Nor did he. Five minutes later it was the doctor who was the first to emerge followed in another five by MacAlpine, his face at once thunderous and deeply worried. He went straight to his own room.
Tracchia, Neubauer and Rory were sitting by a wall table in the foyer when Harlow entered. If he saw them he paid no heed but walked straight across the length of the foyer to the stairs. He smiled faintly once or twice in response to tentative approaches and deferential smiles of greeting, but otherwise his face remained its normal impassive self.
Neubauer said: ‘Well, you must admit that our Johnny doesn’t look all that concerned about life.’
‘You bet he doesn’t.’ Rory could not have been accused of snarling, because he hadn’t yet mastered the art, but he was obviously getting close. ‘I’ll bet he’s not very concerned about death either. I’ll bet if it was his own grandmother he’d —’
‘Rory.’ Tracchia held up a restraining hand. ‘You’re letting your imagination run wild. The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association is a very respectable body of men. We have what people call a good public image and we don’t want to spoil it. Sure, we like to have you on our side : but wild >talk like this can only damage everyone concerned.’
Rory scowled at each man in turn, rose and walked stiffly away. Neubauer said, almost sadly: ‘I’m afraid, Nikki, that our young firebrand there is shortly about to experience some of the most painful moments of his life.’
‘It’ll do him no harm,’ Tracchia said. ‘And it certainly won’t do us any either.’
Neubauer’s prophecy was confirmed in remarkably short order.
Harlow closed the door behind him and looked down at the prostrate figure of Dunnet who, although he had been duly and efficiently doctored, had a face that looked as if it had emerged from a major road accident within the past few minutes. Allowing for the areas covered by bruises and a variety of plasters, there was, in all conscience, little enough of his face to be seen, just a nose double its usual size, a completely-closed rainbow-coloured right eye and stitches on the forehead and upper lip, but sufficient to lend credence to his recent life and hard times. Harlow clucked his tongue in the usual sympathetic if rather perfunctory fashion, took two silent steps towards the door and jerked it open. Rory literally fell into the room and measured his length on the splendid marble tiles of the Villa-Hotel Cessni.
Wordlessly, Harlow bent over him, wound his fingers in Rory’s thick black curling hair and hauled him to his feet. Rory had no words either, just a piercing heartfelt scream of agony. Still without speaking, Harlow transferred his grip to Rory’s ear, marched him along the corridor to MacAlpine’s room, knocked and went inside, dragging Rory with him: tears of pain rolled down the unhappy Rory’s face. MacAlpine, lying on top of his bed, propped himself up on one elbow: his outrage that his only son should be so cruelly mishandled was clearly outweighed by the fact that it was Harlow who was ‘doing the mishandling.
Harlow said: ‘I know I’m not very much in the grace and favour line with Coronado at the moment. I also know he is your son. But the next time I find this spying young tramp eavesdropping outside the door of a room I’m in I’ll well and truly clobber him.’
MacAlpine looked at Harlow, then at Rory, then back to Harlow. I can’t believe it. I won’t believe it.’ The voice was flat and singularly lacking in conviction.
‘I don’t care whether you believe me or not.’ Harlow’s anger had gone, he’d slipped on his old mask of indifference. ‘But I know you would believe Alexis Dunnet. Go and ask him. I was with him in his room when I opened the door a bit unexpectedly for our young friend here. He had been leaning so heavily against it that he fell flat to the floor. I helped him up. By his hair. That’s why there’s tears in his eyes.’
MacAlpine looked at Rory in a less than paternal fashion. ‘Is this true?’
Rory wiped his sleeve across his eyes, concentrated sullenly on the examination of the toes of his shoes and prudently said nothing.
. ‘Leave him to me, Johnny.’ MacAlpine didn’t look particularly angry or upset, just very very tired. ‘My apologies if I seemed to doubt you — I didn’t.’
Harlow nodded, left, returned to Dunnet’s room, closed and locked the door then, as Dunnet watched in silence, proceeded to search the room thoroughly. A few minutes later, apparently still not satisfied, he moved into the adjacent bathroom, turned a tap and the shower on to maximum then went out, leaving the door wide open behind him. It is difficult for even the most sensitive microphone to pick up with any degree of clarity the sound of human voices against a background of running water.
Without any by-your-leave, he searched through the outer clothing that Dunnet had been wearing. He replaced the clothing and looked at Dunnet’s torn shirt and the white band that a wrist watch had left on a sun-tanned wrist.
‘Has it occurred to you, Alexis,’ Harlow said, that some of your activities are causing displeasure in certain quarters and that they are trying to discourage you?’
‘Funny. Bloody funny.’ Dunnet’s voice was, understandably, so thick and slurred that in his case the use of any anti-microphone devices was almost wholly superfluous. ‘Why didn’t they discourage me permanently?’
‘Only a fool kills unnecessarily. We are not up against fools. However, who knows, one day? Well, now. Wallet, loose change, watch, cuff-links, even your half-dozen fountain pens and car keys —all gone. Looks like a pretty professional roll job, doesn’t it?’
The hell with that.’ Dunnet spat blood into a handful of tissue. ‘What matters is that the cassette is gone.’
Harlow hesitated then cleared his throat in a diffident fashion.
‘Well, let’s say that a cassette is missing.’
The only really viable feature in Dunnet’s face was his unblemished right eye: this, after a momentary puzzlement, he used most effectively to glower at Harlow with the maximum of suspicion.
‘What the hell do you mean?’
Harlow gazed into the middle distance.
‘Well, Alexis, I do feel a little bit apologetic about this, but the cassette that matters is in the hotel safe. The one our friends now have — the one I gave to you – was a plant.’
Dunnet, with what little could be seen of his sadly battered face slowly darkening in anger, tried to sit up: gently but firmly Harlow pushed him down again.
Harlow said : ‘Now, now, Alexis, don’t do yourself an injury. Another one, I mean. They were on to me and I had to put myself in the clear or I was finished — although God knows I never expected them to do this to you.’ He paused. ‘I’m in the clear now.’
‘You’d better be sure of that, my boy.’ Dunnet had subsided but his anger hadn’t.
‘I’m sure. When they develop that film spool they’ll find it contains micro photos – about a hundred – of line drawings of a prototype gas turbine engine. They’ll conclude I’m as much a criminal as they are, but as my business is industrial espionage, there can be no possible conflict of interests. They’ll lose interest in me.’
Dunnet looked at him balefully. ‘Clever bastard, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, I am, rather.’ He went to the door, opened it and turned round. ‘Especially, it seems, when it is at other people’s expense.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
In the Coronado pits on the following afternoon a heavily panting MacAlpine and a still sadly battered Dunnet argued in low and urgent tones. The faces of both men were marked with worry.
MacAlpine made no attempt to conceal the savagery he felt inside him. He said: ‘But the bottle’s empty, man. Drained to the last drop. I’ve just checked. Jesus, I can’t just let him go out there and kill another man.’
‘If you stop him you’ll have to explain why to the press. It’ll be a sensation, the international sporting scandal of the last decade. It’ll kill Johnny. Professionally, I mean.’
‘Better have him killed professionally than have him kill another driver for real.’
Dunnet said : ‘Give him two laps. If he’s in the lead, then let him go. He can’t kill anyone in that position. If not, flag him in. We’ll cook up something for the press. Anyway, remember what he did yesterday with the same skinful inside him?’
‘Yesterday he was lucky. Today-’
Today it’s too late.’
Even at a distance of several hundred feet the sound of twenty-four Grand Prix racing engines accelerating away from the starting grid was startling, almost shattering, both in its unexpectedness and ear-cringing fury of sound. MacAlpine and Dunnet looked at each other and shrugged simultaneously. There seemed to be no other comment or reaction to meet the case.