Harlow said: ‘Look at my face, Rory.’
Rory looked, winced and the colour drained from his own.
Harlow said : ‘You’re responsible for that, Rory.’
Suddenly, without warning, he struck Rory flatly handed across the left cheek. It was a heavy blow and would normally have sent Rory reeling but he couldn’t in this case because Harlow’s left hand was firmly entwined in his hair. Harlow struck him again, backhanded and with equal force, across the right cheek, then proceeded to repeat the process with metronomic regularity.
Mary screamed: ‘Johnny! Johnny! Have you gone mad?’ She made to throw herself at Harlow but Dunnet moved swiftly to pin her arms from behind. Dunnet appeared remarkably unperturbed by the turn events had taken.
‘I’m going to keep this up, Rory,’ Harlow said, ‘until you feel the way I look.’
Harlow kept it up. Rory made no attempt to resist or retaliate. His head was beginning to roll from side to side, quite helplessly, as Harlow continued to strike him repeatedly. Then, considering that the softening-up process had probably gone far enough, Harlow stopped.
Harlow said: ‘I want information. I want the truth. I want it now. You eavesdropped on Mr. Dunnet and myself this afternoon, did you not?’
Rory’s voice was a trembling pain-wracked whisper. ‘No! No! I swear I didn’t. I swear—’
He broke off with a screech of pain as Harlow resumed the treatment. After a few seconds Harlow stopped again. A sobbing Mary, still securely held by Dunnet, was looking at him in stupefied horror.
Harlow said: ‘I was beaten up by some people who knew I was going to Marseilles to see about some very important pictures. They wanted those pictures very very badly. They also knew that I would be parking the Ferrari in a barn in a disused farmhouse a little way down the road. Mr. Dunnet was the only other person who knew about the pictures and the farmyard. You dunk perhaps he told?’
‘Maybe.’ Like ‘his sister’s, Rory’s cheeks were now liberally streaked with tears. ‘I don’t know. Yes, yes, he must have done.’
Harlow spoke slowly and deliberately, interspersing every other few words with a resounding slap.
‘Mr. Dunnet is not a journalist. Mr. Dunnet has never been an accountant. Mr. Dunnet is a senior officer of the Special Branch of New Scotland Yard and a member of Interpol and he has accumulated enough evidence against you, for aiding and abetting criminals, to ensure that you’ll spend the next few years in a remand home and Borstal.’ He removed his left hand from Rory’s hair. ‘Whom did you tell, Rory?’
Tracchia.’
Harlow pushed Rory into an arm-chair where he sat hunched, his hands covering his aching scarlet face.
Harlow looked at Dunnet. ‘Where’s Tracchia?’
‘Gone to Marseilles. He said. With Neubauer.’
‘He was out here, too? He would be. And Jacobson?’
‘Out in his car. Looking for the twins. He said.’
‘He’s probably taken a spade with him. I’ll get the spare keys and fetch the Ferrari. Meet you at the transporter in fifteen minutes. With the gun. And money.’
Harlow turned and walked away. Rory, rising rather unsteadily to his feet, followed. Dunnet put an arm round Mary’s shoulders, pulled out a breast handkerchief and proceeded to clean her tear-ravaged face. Mary looked at him in wonderment.
‘Are you what Johnny said you were? Special Branch? Interpol?’
‘Well, yes, I’m a police officer of sorts.’
Then stop him, Mr. Dunnet. I beg of you. Stop him.’
‘Don’t you know your Johnny yet?’
Mary nodded miserably, waited until Dunnet had effected his running repairs, then said: ‘He’s after Tracchia, isn’t he?’
‘He’s after Tracchia. He’s after a lot of people. But the person he’s really after is Jacobson. If Johnny says that Jacobson is directly responsible for the deaths of seven people, then he’s directly responsible for the deaths of seven people. Apart from that he has two personal scores to settle with Jacobson.’
‘His young brother?’ Dunnet nodded. ‘And the other?’
‘Look at your left foot, Mary.’
CHAPTER TEN
At the roundabout south of Vignolles, a black Citroen braked to give precedence to Harlow’s red Ferrari. As the Ferrari swept by, Jacobson, at the wheel of the Citroen, rubbed his chin thoughtfully, turned his car towards Vignolles and stopped by the first roadside telephone booth.
In the Vignolles canteen MacAlpine and Dunnet were finishing a meal in the now almost deserted room. They were both looking towards the door, watching Mary leave.
MacAlpine sighed. ‘My daughter is in low spirits tonight.’
‘Your daughter is in love.’
‘I fear so. And where the hell has that young devil Rory got to?’
‘Well, not to put too fine a point on it, Harlow caught that young devil eavesdropping.’
‘Oh, no. Not again ?’
‘Again. The ensuing scene was quite painful really. I was there. I rather think that Rory was afraid that he might find Johnny here. Johnny, in fact, is in bed -I don’t think he’d any sleep last night.’
‘And that sounds a very attractive proposition to me. Bed, I mean. I feel unaccountably tired tonight. If you will excuse me, Alexis.’
He half rose to his feet, then sat down again as Jacobson entered and approached their table. He looked very tired indeed.
MacAlpine said : ‘What luck?’
‘Zero. I’ve searched everywhere within five miles of here. Nothing. But I’ve just had a report from the police that two people answering closely to their descriptions have been seen in Le Beausset — and there can’t be many people around like the terrible twins. I’ll just have a bite and go there. Have to find a car first, though. Mine’s on the blink — hydraulics gone.’
MacAlpine handed Jacobson a set of car keys. take my Aston.’
‘Well, thank you, Mr. MacAlpine. Insurance papers?’
‘Everything in -the glove box. Very kind of you to go to such trouble, I must say.’
They’re my boys too, Mr. MacAlpine.’
Dunnet gazed expressionlessly into the middle distance.
The Ferrari’s speedometer registered 180 kph. Harlow was clearly paying scant attention to the French no kph restriction, but from time to time, purely from instinct, for it seemed unlikely that there was any police car in France capable of overtaking him, he consulted his rear mirror. But there was at no time anything to be seen except the coils of rope, hook and first-aid box on the back seat and the hump of a dirty white tarpaulin which had been clearly flung carelessly on the floor.
An incredible forty minutes after leaving Vignolles the Ferrari passed the Marseilles sign. A kilometre farther on the Ferrari pulled up as traffic lights changed to red. Harlow’s face was so battered and bruised and covered in plaster that it was impossible to tell what expression it wore. But the eyes were as calm and steady and watchful as ever, his posture as immobile as ever : no impatience, no drumming of fingers on the wheel. But even Harlow’s total relaxation could be momentarily upset.
‘Mr. Harlow.’ The voice came from the rear of the car.
Harlow swung round and stared at Rory, whose head had just emerged from its cocoon of canvas tarpaulin. When Harlow spoke it was with slow, deliberate, spaced words.
‘What the hell are you doing there?’
Rory said defensively : ‘I thought you might be needing a bit of a hand, like.’
Harlow restrained himself with what was obviously an immense effort.
‘I could say this is all I need, but I don’t think that would help much.’ From an inner pocket he fished out some of the money that Dunnet had given him. ‘Three hundred francs. Get a hotel and phone Vignolles for a car in the morning.’
‘No, thank you, Mr. Harlow. I made a terrible mistake about you. I’m just plain stupid, I guess. I won’t say sorry, for all the sorties in the world are not enough. The best way to say ‘sorry’ is to help. Please, Mr. Harlow.’
‘Look, laddie, I’ll be meeting people tonight, people who would kill you soon as look at you. And now I’m responsible for you to your father.’
The lights changed and the Ferrari moved on. What little could be seen of Harlow’s face looked slightly bemused.
‘And that’s another tiling,’ Rory said. ‘What’s wrong with him? My father, I mean.’
‘He’s being blackmailed.’
‘Dad? Blackmailed?’ Rory was totally incredulous.
‘Nothing he’s ever done. I’ll tell you some time.’
‘Are you going to stop those people from blackmailing him?’
‘I hope so.’
‘And Jacobson. The man who crippled Mary. I must have been mad to think it was your fault. Are you going to get him, too?’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t say ‘I hope so’ this time. You said ‘Yes’.’
That’s right.’
Rory cleared his throat and said diffidently: ‘You going to marry Mary, Mr. Harlow?’
The prison walls appear to be closing round me.’
‘Well, I love her too. Different like, but just as much. If you’re going after the bastard who crippled Mary I’m coming too.’