Will he sing?’
Take 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’ mail-bag 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 undipped 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 breast-bone. 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.