"Maclean, Alistair - 1970 - Caravan to Vaccares" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

'Madame matches the price,' Bowman said resignedly. He peeled off some more banknotes and led Cecile to the Citroen where she sat and smoothed the rich material of her dress approvingly.
'Very nice, I must say. You like dressing girls up?'
'Only when I'm being bank-rolled by criminals. That's hardly the point. A certain dark gypsy girl has been seen with me. There's not an insurance company in Europe would look at that dark gypsy girl.'
'I see.' She smiled wanly. 'All this solicitude for your future wife?'
'Of course. What else?'
'The fact that, quite frankly, you can't afford to lose your assistant at the moment?'
'Never occurred to me.'
He drove the Citroen close to the point where the Hungarian and Rumanian caravans were parked in the square. He stopped the Citroen, lifted his purse-stringed bag, got out, straightened and turned. As he did so, he bumped into a large pedestrian who was sauntering slowly by. The pedestrian stopped and glared at him through a black-beribboned monocle: Le Grand Duc was not accustomed to being bumped into by anyone.
'Your pardon, m'sieur,' Bowman said.
Le Grand Duc favoured Bowman with a look of considerable distaste. 'Granted.'
Bowman smiled apologetically, took Cecile's arm and moved off. She said to him, sotto voce and accusingly: 'You did that on purpose.'
'So? If he doesn't recognize us, who will?' He took another couple of steps and halted. 'Well, now, what could this be?'
There was a sudden stir of interest as a plain black van turned into the square. The driver got out, made what was evidently an enquiry of the nearest gypsy who pointed across the square, entered the van again and drove it across to the vicinity of Czerda's caravan. Czerda himself was by the steps, talking to Ferenc: neither appeared to have made much progress in the recovery from their injuries.
The driver and an assistant jumped down, went to the rear of the van, opened the doors and, with considerable difficulty and not without willing help, they slid out a stretcher on which, left arm in sling and face heavily bandaged, lay the recumbent form of Pierre Lacabro. The malevolent gleam in the right eye—the left one was completely shut—showed clearly that Lacabro was very much alive. Czerda and Ferenc, consternation in their faces, moved quickly to help the stretcher-bearers. Inevitably, Le Grand Duc was one of the first on the immediate scene. He bent briefly over the battered Lacabro, then straightened.
Tsk! Tskl TskP He shook his head sadly. 'Nobody's safe on the roads these days.' He turned to Czerda. 'Isn't this my poor friend Mr Koscis?'
'No.' Czerda spoke with considerable restraint.
'Ah! I'm glad to hear it. Sorry for this poor fellow of course. By the way, I wonder if you'd tell Mr Koscis that I'd like to have another word with him when he's here? At his convenience, of course.'
'I'll see if I can find him.' Czerda helped move the stretcher towards the steps of his own caravan and Le Grand Duc turned away, narrowly avoiding coming into collision with the Chinese couple who had earlier been on the patio of the hotel. He doffed his hat in gallant apology to the Eurasian woman.
Bowman had missed none of the by-play. He looked first at Czerda, whose face was registering a marked degree of
mixed anger and apprehension, then at Le Grand Duc, then at the Chinese couple: he turned to Cecile.
'There now,' he whispered. 'I knew he could swim. Let's not show too keen a degree of interest in what's going on.' He led her away a few paces. 'You know what I want to do —it'll be safe, I promise.'
He watched her as she wandered casually past Czerda's caravan and stopped to adjust a shoe in the vicinity of the green-and-white caravan. The window at the side was curtained but the window itself slightly ajar.
Satisfied, Bowman moved off across the square to where a group of horses were tethered by some trees close by several other caravans. He looked aimlessly around to check that he was unobserved, saw Czerda's caravan door close as the stretcher was brought inside, dug into his bag and fetched out a fistful of coiled, brown-paper sheathed objects, each one fitted with an inch of blue touch-paper: they were, quite simply, old-fashioned fire-crackers .
In Czerda's caravan, Czerda himself, Ferenc, Simon Searl and El Brocador were gathered round Pierre Lacabro's still recumbent form. The expression on what little could be seen of Lacabro's face registered a degree of unhappiness that was not entirely attributable to his physical sufferings: he had about him the wounded appearance of one whose injuries are not being accorded their due meed of loving care and concerned sympathy.
'You fool, Lacabro!' Czerda's voice was almost a shout. "You crazy idiot! No violence, I told you. No violence.'
'Maybe you should have told Bowman instead,' El Brocador suggested. 'Bowman knew. Bowman was watching. Bowman was waiting. Who is going to tell Gaiuse Strome?'
'Who but our unfrocked friend here,' Czerda said savagely. 'I do not envy you, Searl.'
From the look on Searl's face it was clear that he didn't envy himself either. He said unhappily: 'That may not be necessary. If Gaiuse Strome is who we now all think he is, then he knows already:"
'Knows?' Czerda demanded. 'What can he know? He doesn't know that Lacabro is one of my men and so one of bis. He doesn't know that Lacabro didn't have a road accident. He doesn't know that Bowman is responsible. He
doesn't know that once again we've managed to lose track of Bowman—while at the same time Bowman appears to know all our movements. If you think you have nothing to explain, Searl, you're, out of your mind.' He turned to Ferenc. 'Round up the caravans. Now. We leave inside the half-hour. Tell them that tonight we camp by Vaccares. What was that?'
There had come clearly and sharply the sound of a series of sharp reports. Men shouted, horses whinnied in fear, a policeman's whistle blew and still the series of flat staccato explosions continued. Czerda, followed by the three others, rushed to the door of his caravan and threw it open.
They were not alone in their anxiety and curiosity to discover the source of the disturbance. It would hardly be exaggeration to claim that within thirty seconds every pair of eyes in the square was trained on the north-eastern part of it where a group of gypsies and guardians, Bowman prominently active among them, were fighting to restrain a rearing, milling, whinnying and by now thoroughly fear-crazed group of horses.
One pair of eyes was otherwise engaged and those belonged to Cecile. She was pressed close in to the side of the green-and-white-painted caravan, standing on tiptoe and peering through a gap she had just made in the curtain.
It was dark inside the curtained caravan but the darkness was far from total and even Cecile's eyes quickly1 became accustomed to the gloom: when they did it was impossible for her to restrain her involuntary shocked gasp of horror. A girl with dark cropped hair was lying face down on a bunk—obviously the only way she could possibly lie. Her bare and savagely mutilated back had not been bandaged but had been liberally covered with salves of some kind. From her continuous restive movements and occasional moans it was clear that she was not sleeping.
Cecile lowered the curtain and moved off. Madame Zigair, Sara and Marie le Hobenaut were on the steps of the caravan, peering across the square, and Cecile walked by them as unconcernedly as she could, which was not easy when her legs felt shaky and she was sick inside. She crossed the square and rejoined Bowman who had just succeeded in calming down one of the panic-stricken horses. He released the horse, took her arm and led her towards where they'd
left the Citroen parked. He looked at her, but didn't have to look closely.
'You didn't like what you saw, did you?' he said.
Teach me how to use a gun and I'll use it. Even although I can't see. I'll get close enough.'
'As bad as that?'
'As bad as that. She's hardly more than a child, a little thin creature, and they've practically flayed the skin from her back. It was horrible. The poor child must be in agony.'
'So you don't feel so sorry for the man I threw in the Rhone?'
'I would. If I met him. With a gun in my hand.'
"No guns. I don't carry one myself. But I take your point.'
'And you seem to take my news very calmly.'
'I'm as mad as you are, Cecile, only I've been mad about It for a long time now and I can't keep showing it all the time. As for the beating the girl got, it had to be something like that. Like Alexandre, the poor kid got desperate and tried to pass on a message, some information, so they taught her what they thought would be a permanent lesson to herself and the other women, and it probably will.'
'What information?'
If I knew that I'd have those four women out of that caravan and in safety in ten minutes.'
'If you don't want to tell, don't tell.'
'Look, Cecile—'
'It's all right. It doesn't matter.' She paused. 'You know that I wanted to run away this morning? Coming back from the Rhone?'