"Maclean, Alistair - 1970 - Caravan to Vaccares" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)
'Why don't you stop here and talk to him? He'd never dare do anything here. There are far too many people around.'
'Far too many,' Bowman agreed. 'When I talk to him I don't want anyone within half a mile.'
She glanced at him, shivered and said nothing. Bowman took the Simca over the Rh6ne to Trinquetaille, turned left on to the Albaron road and then left again on to the road that ran south down the right bank of the river. Here he slowed and gently brought the car to a stop. The driver of the Renault, he observed, did the same thing at a discreet distance to the rear. Bowman drove the Simca on its way again: the Renault followed.
A mile farther on into the flat and featureless plains of the Camargue Bowman stopped again. So did the Renault. Bowman got out, went to the rear of the car, glanced briefly at the Renault parked about a hundred yards away, opened the boot, extracted an implement from the tool-kit, thrust it inside his jacket, closed the boot and returned to his seat. The implement he laid on the floor beside him.
'What's that?' Cecile looked and sounded apprehensive.
'A wheel-brace.'
'Something wrong with the wheels?'
'Wheel-braces can have other uses.'
He drove off. After a few minutes the road began to climb slightly, rounded an unexpectedly sharp left-hand corner and there suddenly, almost directly beneath them and less than twenty feet away, lay the murkily gleaming waters of the Grand Rhone. Bowman braked heavily, was out of the car even as it stopped and walked quickly back the way he had come. The Renault rounded the corner and its driver, caught completely unawares, slewed the car to a skidding stop less than ten yards from Bowman.
Bowman, one hand behind his back, approached the Renault and jerked the driver's door open. Pierre Lacabro glared out at him, bis broad brutalized face set and savage.
'I'm beginning to think you're following me around,' Bowman said mildly.
Laeabro didn't reply. Instead, with one hand on the wheel and the other on the door frame to afford him maximum leverage he launched himself from the car with a speed surprising for a man of his bulk. Bowman had been prepared for nothing else. He stepped quickly to one side and as the driving Lacabro hurtled past him he brought the wheel-brace swinging down on Lacabro's left arm. The sound of the blow, the surprisingly loud crack of a breaking bone and Lacabro's shriek of pain were almost instantaneous.
'Who sent you?' Bowman asked.
Laeabro, writhing on the ground and clutching his damaged left forearm, snarled something incomprehensible in Romany.
'Please, please listen,' Bowman said. 'I'm dealing with murderers. I know I'm dealing with murderers. More important, I know how to deal with murderers. I've already broken one bone—I should think it's your forearm. I'm prepared to go right on breaking as many bones as I have to —assuming you stay conscious—until I find out why those four women in that green-and-white-painted caravan are terrified out of their lives. If you do become unconscious, I'll just sit around and smoke and wait till you're conscious again and break a few more bones.'
Cecile had left the Simca and was now only feet away. Her face was very pale. She stared at Bowman in horror.
'Mr Bowman, do you mean—'
IfU'
'Shut up!' He returned his attention to Lacabro. 'Come now, tell me about those ladies.'
Lacabro mouthed what was almost certainly another obscenity, rolled over quickly and as he propped himself up on his right elbow Cecile screamed. Lacabro had a gun in his hand but shock or pain or both had slowed bis reactions. He screamed again and his gun went flying in one direction while the wheel-brace went in another. He clutched the middle of his face with both hands: blood seeped through bis fingers.
'And now your nose is gone, isn't it?' Bowman said. That dark girl, Tina, she's been hurt, hasn't she? How badly has she been hurt? Why was she hurt? Who hurt her?'
Lacabro took his hands away from his bleeding face. His nose wasn't broken, but it still wasn't a very pretty sight and wouldn't be for some time to come. He spat blood and a broken tooth, snarled again in Romany and stared at Bowman like a wild animal.
'You did it,' Bowman said with certainty. 'Yes, you did it. One of Czerda's hatchet-men, aren't you? Perhaps the hatchet-man. I wonder, my friend. I wonder. Was it you who killed Alexandre in the caverns?'
Lacabro, his face the face of a madman, pushed himself drunkenly to his feet and stood there, swaying just as drunkenly. He appeared to be on the verge of total collapse, his eyes turning up in his head. Bowman approached and, as he did so Lacabro, showing an incredible immunity to pain, an animal-like cunning and an equally animal-like power of recuperation, suddenly stepped forward and brought his right fist up in a tremendous blow which, probably due more to good fortune than calculation, struck Bowman on the side, of the chin. Bowman staggered backwards, lost his balance and fell heavily on the short turf only a few feet away from the vertical drop into the Rhone. Lacabro had his priorities right. He turned and ran for the gun which had landed only a foot or two from where Cecile was standing, the shock in her face reflected in the immobility in her body.
still stock-still. Maybe she couldn't even see the damn thing, he thought despairingly, but her eyes couldn't be all that bad, if she couldn't see a gun two feet away she'd no right to be out without a white stick. But her eyes weren't quite so bad as that. Suddenly she stooped, picked up the gun, threw it into the Rhone, then, with commendable foresight, dropped flat to the ground as Lacabro, his battered bleeding face masked in blood and hate, advanced to strike her down. But even in that moment of what must have been infuriating frustration and where his overriding instinct must have been savagely to maim the girl who had deprived him of his gun, Lacabro still had his priorities right. He ignored the girl, turned and headed for Bowman in a low crouching run.
But Cecile had bought Bowman all the time he needed. By the time Lacabro reached him he was on his feet again, still rather dazed and shaken but a going concern none the less. He avoided Lacabro's first bull-rush and wickedly swinging boot and caught the gypsy as he passed: it so chanced that he caught him by the left arm. Lacabro shouted in agony, dragged his arm free at whatever unknown cost to himself and came again. This time Bowman made no attempt to avoid him but advanced himself at equal speed. His clubbing right hand had no difficulty in reaching Lacabro's chin, for now Lacabro had no left guard left. He staggered backwards several involuntary paces, tottered briefly on the edge of the bluff, then toppled backwards into the Rhone.' The splash caused by his impact on the muddied waters seemed quite extraordinarily loud.
Bowman looked gingerly over the crumbling edge of the bluff: there was no sign of Lacabro. If he'd been unconscious when he'd struck the water he'd have gone to the bottom and that was that: there could be no possibility of locating him in those dark waters. Not that Bowman relished the prospect of trying to rescue the gypsy: if he were not unconscious he would certainly express his gratitude by doing his best to drown his rescuer. Bowman did not feel sufficiently attached to Lacabro to take the risk.
He went to the Renault, searched it briefly, found what he expected to find—nothing—started up the engine, let in
first gear, aimed it for the bank of the river and jumped out. The little car trundled to the edge of the bluff, cartwheeled over the edge and fell into the river with a resounding crash that sent water rising to a height of thirty feet.
Much of this water rained down on Lacabro. He was half-sitting, half-lying on a narrow ledge of pebble and sand under the overhang of the bluff. His clothes were soaked, his right hand clutched his left wrist. On his dazed and uncomprehending face was a mixture of pain and bewilderment and disbelief. It was, by any reckoning, the face of a man who has had enough for one day.
Cecile was still sitting on the ground when Bowman approached her. He said: 'You're ruining that lovely gypsy costume sitting there.'
'Yes, I suppose I am.' Her voice was matter-of-fact, remarkably calm. She accepted his hand, got to her feet and looked around her. 'He's gone?'
'Let's say I can't find him.'
That wasn't—that wasn't fair fighting.'
'That was the whole idea behind it, pet. Ideally, of course, he would have riddled me with bullets.'
'But—but can he swim?'
'How the hell should I know?' He led her back to the Simea and after they'd gone a mile in silence he looked at her curiously. Her hands were trembling, her face had gone white and when she spoke her voice was a muted whisper with a shake in it: clearly some sort of delayed shock had set in.
She said: 'Who are you?'
'Never mind.'
'I—I saved your life today.'
'Well, yes, thanks. But you should have used that gun to shoot him or hold him up.'
There was a long pause, then she sniffed loudly and said in almost a wail: 'I've never fixed a gun in my life. I can't see to fire a gun.'
'I know. I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about everything, Cecile. But I'm sorriest of all that I ever got you into this damnably ugly mess. God, I should have known better.'
'Why blame yourself?' Still the near-sob in her voice.
'You had to run some place last night and my room—' She broke off, peered at him and whispered: 'You're thinking of something else, aren't you?'
'Let's get back to Aries,' he said. She peered at him some more, looked away and tried to light a cigarette but her hand shook so much he did it for her. Her hand was still shaking when they got back to the hotel.
CHAPTER SIX
Bowman drew up outside the hotel entrance. Not five yards away Lila sat alone by a table just inside the patio entrance. It was difficult to say whether she looked primarily angry or disconsolate: she certainly did not look happy.
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