"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise 07 - silver mistress" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)

Reilly stepped back, lowering the gun, and wiped his brow as he watched the two women ease Tarrant to the ground. The younger one looked across the road, clamped her lower lip between her teeth and gave a sharp whistle. A bearded man in a black blazer appeared on top of the rock wall. He looked down, nodded, then dropped to the ground like a cat and crossed to where Tarrant lay.
'Very good, ladies,' he said, and smiled brightly. Bending, he lifted Tarrant's body as if it had been a truss of hay, and carried it down the road to the Dormobile. The older nun followed. The other remained near Reilly, her eyes fixed on him. Neither of them spoke. Reilly's face was haggard as he put the gun in his pocket. He watched as the man and the taller nun put Tarrant on some sort of bunk in the back of the Dormobile, strapped him down, then got out and closed the doors. The nun remained by the van, looking down the road. The man walked back to the Peugeot.
'Very good, Reilly,' he said, and took an envelope from inside his jacket. 'Five thousand dollars. The balance due.'
Reilly opened the envelope, pulled out a slip of blue paper and studied it. His hands were shaking. The younger nun walked a little way up the road to the next bend and stood there.
Reilly said, 'All right.' He put the envelope away and looked at the man in the black blazer. 'We stopped because he wanted to stretch his legs. He was standing by those stones on the bend there, near the edge. I was cleaning the windscreen. I heard him call out, but when I looked round he'd gone. Must have felt dizzy and fallen.'
Mr Sexton nodded, merriment in his pale blue eyes. 'Keep it as simple as that,' he said. 'You'd better find the nearest phone now.'
Reilly turned to get into the car. As he did so, Mr Sexton moved. He glanced up and down the road. Neither of the two nuns gave any sign. He took a quick step forward. His right arm swung up and down with such sudden speed that to the normal eye it would have blurred like the spoke of a turning wheel. The edge of the stiffened hand struck Reilly on the back of the skull, exactly in the centre. There was a soft, deadened sound of impact.
Reilly sprawled forward across the front seat of the car. There was a three-inch fracture in his skull, and pieces of shattered bone were embedded in his brain. He was not dead yet, but he was dying fast. Mr Sexton looked pleased as he transferred the gun and the envelope from Reilly's pocket to his own, took hold of the man's limp legs and pushed him fully into the car. He looked towards Angel, then Clare. They were watching the road as before.
The rear door of the car was still open. Mr Sexton wound down the window, looked at the set of the hinges, then bent and gripped the bottom of the door with one hand, the upper framework of the window with the other. His eyes half-closed and he seemed to relax in this strange position, his hands moving just a little, very gently, as if seeking some esoteric communion with what he held. Then he drew a deep breath, his eyes opened wide, and he straightened up slowly but smoothly.
There came the sound of rending metal as the steel surrounding the riveted hinges gave way beneath the inexorable pressure. The door broke away from the lower hinge. Mr Sexton continued lifting and twisting. The metal round the upper hinge tore. He stepped back, hoisted the door on to the roof of the car, dusted his hands, pushed Reilly's body into a crumpled ball on the nearside of the front seat, and climbed in behind the wheel.
The engine came to life and the Peugeot moved forward. Mr Sexton slipped into third gear, then steered with one hand, holding the door open. The car gathered speed. The line of stones protecting the outer curve of the bend made a frail barrier. One second before the wheels struck, Mr Sexton dived. He hit the road, rolling in a perfect break-fall, and came lightly to his feet, watching as the Peugeot reared up over the stones, hesitated, hovered, then lurched forward to plunge over the edge. It did not once touch the inward-leaning side of the great gorge. The first thing it struck was the river, six hundred feet below.
Angel and Clare walked to the Dormobile. Mr Sexton brushed dust from his jacket and said, 'One last look round, ladies.' He moved to the wall of the cutting and drew himself up.
Angel muttered, 'Bloody show-off.'
'Now, Angel.'
'Well, 'e is. Smashing the mick's 'ead when it just needed a tap on the neck. And ripping that door off so they won't be surprised when they don't find the old bloke's body in the car. It'll be split open like a sardine can anyway, after that drop—'
She broke off as Mr Sexton jumped down to the road again and walked towards them. He carried the field glasses and wore a thoughtful look.
'There's a man across the gorge,' he said. 'On a ledge a little way from the top. He was waving an SOS, but then he stopped and toppled over sideways. Passed out, I imagine.'
Clare gave him a startled look. 'D'you think he saw anything, Mr Sexton?'
The broad shoulders shrugged. 'He wouldn't be able to make out much detail without glasses. Anyway, he must be too badly hurt to climb up, so he's stuck there. A night in the open might well finish him off.'
'All the same, if he did see something, and if he's found before he dies of exposure...' Clare peered across the valley. 'Perhaps we should see to him, Mr Sexton?'
'We'd have to get across to the other side, then back up-river from the bridge. And there's no road that side. It might take four or five hours to find him, Mrs McTurk, especially after dark.' He glanced at the Dormobile. 'And we can't roam around with that cargo aboard.'
'You'll just leave him, then?'
'He'll keep for tonight.' Mr Sexton looked at his wrist-watch. 'We'll be back at base in four hours, then Colonel Jim can decide. He might send me back, or put in one of the odd-job teams to fix it.'
'Well... it's your decision, Mr Sexton.'
'Always remember that, Mrs McTurk. Colonel Jim is very hot on chain-of-command. We don't want him sending you along to me for disciplinary measures.' His eyes twinkled. He reached out suddenly and pinched Angel's buttock, saying, 'Or do you think she might enjoy it, Angel?'
The girl bit off a scream of pain and jumped back, teeth set in her lip, face screwed up in agony. Foul abuse was on her tongue, but with an effort she held it back. 'No,' she said, panting. 'I don't reckon she'd enjoy it much, Mr Sexton.'
'There's the voice of experience.' Mr Sexton opened the back doors of the Dormobile. 'We'll get started, then.' He climbed in and sat down beside Tarrant's unconscious form. 'Drive carefully, Mrs McTurk. We want no trouble. That's more important than speed.' He closed the doors.
Clare and Angel moved to the cab, Angel limping a little and rubbing her buttock. 'Bastard!' she hissed. 'I'd like to get be'ind him one night with a bit of wire. Make 'is eyes pop clean out of 'is rotten 'ead, I would. He's just about made a bloody 'ole right through my bum.'
'You're being coarse again, Angel.'

two
Four hours later, in the Auberge du Tarn, Modesty Blaise stood by the big window which looked out over the river and tried not to let her mind picture Tarrant's broken body.
Mme Martine stood with hands clasped beneath her large bosom and said, moist-eyed, 'I'm so sorry, mam'selle. So very sorry. Milord was an old friend?' Since she had known that Modesty's guest was called Sir Gerald Tarrant she had insisted on referring to him as milord.
Modesty said, 'Yes. I was very fond of him.' She wore slacks and a sweater, both damp with the same heavy night dew that lay on her hair. It was now three hours since a boatman passing down the Tarn had seen, in the last of the dying light, the wreckage of a car protruding from the shallows. On his report, two men from the Poste de Police at La Malиne had taken a motorboat up-river to investigate. One of them had braved the chill waters to find a body in the car and two torn suitcases in the broken boot.
It was two hours since they had sent another man up to the heights from which the car had fallen; and there, even by torchlight, he had found evidence of the car's plunge to destruction in the metal-scrapes on the rocks bordering the curve. On his way back he had called at the auberge to drink a pastis and tell of the accident. It appeared that there had been two in the car, he said, and they were foreigners, English. A search would be made for the other body down-river by daylight. The clothes in one of the suitcases had tailor's name-tabs. The name was different from that in the passport found on the dead man. Presumably it was the name of the other unfortunate, whose body was missing. A M'sieu Tarrant.
Mme Martine had clasped hands to her head in shock, and run to tell Modesty. In the past two hours Modesty had been down to the Poste de Police to look at the body. She knew Reilly as Tarrant's driver, and had identified him. She had taken a large flash-lamp, driven up the road to the point where the car had gone over the edge, and spent twenty minutes there. A strange thing to do, Mme Martine thought, but then Mam'selle Blaise was an unusual young woman. Even now, as she stood looking down from the window upon the river where her milord friend had died, there were no tears. Except for her stillness and the quiet emptiness in her eyes, one would not have known that she grieved. The English were strange people.
The telephone rang. Mme Martine ran into the hall to answer it, and returned a few moments later. 'It is your call to London, mam'selle.'
'Thank you, madame.'
Modesty went through to the phone, flinching from what she now had to do. This was going to hit Jack Fraser badly. He had spent fifteen years as an Intelligence agent in the field before taking a desk job as Tarrant's number two, a man who had walked with death and dealt it out himself when occasion called. Under Tarrant he had sent men on missions from which they had not returned, and he had the case-hardened attitude his job demanded; but this would hurt him deeply. Fraser held no more than a handful of people in any esteem, but Tarrant was one of them.
She picked up the phone and said, 'Jack?'
'Fraser speaking, Miss Blaise.' The voice was humble and ingratiating, Fraser's habitual pose.
She said, 'I'm sorry to hit you with this, Jack, but it's bad news. About Tarrant.'
A pause, then 'How bad?' The voice had changed.
'There's been an accident, and he's dead.'
Fraser said softly, 'Oh, God.'
She gave him the facts briefly, and ended, 'They don't seem too certain about finding his body. Apparently it could get sucked into one of the under-surface caves before it reaches the Garonne, and then just ... stay there. I've given them your number to call—not this one, the official one.'
Fraser said, 'Thank you.' After a long silence he went on, 'You don't think this might have been arranged?'
'I wondered, and I've had a quick look round, but it seems like a straight accident. Would any of the various oppositions make him a target today?'
'I doubt it.' Fraser's voice was flat. 'That's gone out, like gunboat diplomacy. It was only a thought.' Another long silence. 'This probably won't be published for a day or two, until the Minister's had a full report from the French. Do you want me to call Willie and tell him?'
'No, I'll call him myself tomorrow. There's nothing he can do, so I don't want to hand him this as a night-cap. I'm sorry, Jack. So damn sorry.'