The Last Two Weeks of Georges Rivac (11 page)

‘Gone!' Zia said. ‘But you can describe the boat. There must be evidence that there really was a boat.'

‘Fifty like it on the river. They wouldn't choose anything out of the ordinary. Scrubbed clean by morning and moored where it always is.
Amanda
—hell!
Amanda
—
je m'en fous
! Painted on a strip and stuck on! I could see it when the bows came close, and they would have fixed the stern too.'

‘Then Appinger. He can be traced.'

‘Appinger was only the name he gave me in Lille. It won't be on his passport. And he'll be out of the country tomorrow.'

‘He will not, Georges. Not without you, if he knows what's good for him.'

‘Well, he won't catch me again. Not till I come up before the beaks and he knows where to find me.'

‘What's beaks?'

‘Judges of First Instance. I'm a secret agent, Your Worship. Who for? Don't know. What for? Thought I could be of use. To this country? To Europe. Remanded in custody for medical examination.'

‘
Nous sommes des espions. Des Espions! Plon, plon
!' Zia chanted.

‘
Cachons! Cachons! Entre les pommes de terre
!' he joined in.

‘
Patati! Patata
!'

‘Not so loud! You're so good for me, dear Zia. Now then, down to earth! If we keep moving away from the river we shall come to downs and find a place to lie up. At dawn I can probably tell you where we are.'

‘You haven't told me yet what they wanted from you. The brochures?'

‘Those, yes. And how I recognised Rippmann.'

‘You?'

‘There was no reason to tell the truth.'

‘Georges, I don't deserve such loyalty.'

‘You do. You and Kren and your uncle. What you are serving I serve now.'

There was no way out of the field but the gate which they had climbed, so they had to follow the road until they came to a lane running up hill to the west. The night had become overcast without a star or any moon to show the points of the compass, and it was now Zia's turn to feel lost and apprehensive. In Georges, however, there was still enough of his English upbringing to recognise when he felt it the south-west wind blowing clear over downland; and feel it he did, muttering that the equally cold and mud-soaked Appinger—God damn his eyes!—had a cabin and a drink. A track faced them where it was certain there would be no traffic in the small hours. Thankfully they followed it, but landed in a farmyard where dogs barked furiously and a bedroom light went on. The only quick and obvious way out was over the low roof of a range of pigsties. They dropped into a field and kept going up a steep hillside until they were in thin, wild woodland.

It was her turn to ask if he knew where they were.

‘No. But the light is growing. I can find out before anyone else is awake. You stay here.'

He made a circuit of the farm and regained the lane which they had taken. Higher up it joined a main road and a second lane came out at nearly the same point. All were well signposted forming an unmistakeable rendezvous which could be overlooked from the hillside.

On returning to Zia he proposed that she should go down to the nearest village, which must be Streatley, and telephone Paul Longwill to come out with some clothes. After that they could consider the next move.

‘I'd better not hang about so close,' she said. ‘Suppose the police find out that there was a woman involved. Where is the nearest big town?'

‘Reading. I think. And there must be buses going there from eight o'clock on.'

‘Then I'll aim for the road and the river and catch one. And we had better have fixed times for the rendezvous. You can't be on the lookout for us all day. Shall we make it at twelve, at two and then every two hours till dark?'

‘And you are sure of the rendezvous?'

‘Main road from Streatley to Blewbury. At the junction of lanes to Moulsford and Cholsey,' she repeated.

He went with her for a mile in and out of the shelter of trees and left her on the edge of an open country where a track led east towards the unseen river and she could not miss her way. Then he returned by the same route to the hillside where they had been at dawn.

The view was extensive but there was not much cover. When he had taken off his clothes and spread them out to dry he felt in more danger of arrest for indecent exposure than for murder. Even if clues in and around the marsh ruled out Irata there was no evidence leading to M Rivac of Lille.

The calm early morning passed with no near visitors but rabbits. By eleven his clothes were nearly dry though still filthy enough to arouse suspicion. The lack of a clothes brush absurdly brought home to him his state of absolute destitution—no passport, no possessions, no money except for a damp pound note and some small change in his trouser pocket. His earlier confidence, sparkling as deceptively as the vanished dew, was fatuous. He could not appeal to the police without risking arrest for double murder unless he involved Zia in Rippmann's death and allowed Irata to be arrested for the killing of Fyster-Holmes, both of which were unthinkable. Only perhaps in Lille could he ask for police protection on condition that they believed his unbelievable motives.

What was in those brochures must be of vital importance, and Appinger seemed certain that they had not been delivered and that Kren's agent knew what was in them. Evidently there had not been the time or the facilities for more than a summary interrogation. That awaited him elsewhere until he was mercifully and discreetly killed—a nightmare that he must always keep in the back of his mind wherever he walked or slept. One had only to consider the speed and efficiency of organisation. On Friday they had learned his address. On Monday he had been trapped and all was ready for Tuesday night. Apparently the only slight risk they were compelled to accept was the enlistment of Fyster-Holmes and his hidden mud pool. No doubt the poor devil had protested but he had to obey.

Georges dressed and explored his immediate surroundings to find somewhere to lie up and watch the road junction where Zia and Paul were to wait for him. A patch of young gorse out on the open hillside was the best. Showing only his head he could see the cool peace of the Berkshire Downs and the wooded Chilterns on the other side of the Goring Gap. A very pleasant plot of Europe—but he wished to God he was back on the pavements of industrial Lille, preferably returning from his office with no more thought of Cold War than the forced headlines of the morning paper when there were neither fires nor murders nor political scandals to arouse the righteous indignation of the reader.

Returning? He never could. Goodbye, Zia! He called up picture after picture of her. How had he not realised till parting with her at this lonely sunrise on the downs that she was his life if he had any? A fine time to be dreaming of past and future when the line of the desperate present might continue indefinitely. His only duty was to ensure that she could safely take all that grace and laughter back to Budapest.

The distant farmer over whose pigsties they had climbed seemed to be holding a party; to judge by the scatter of cars someone had died or a daughter was getting married. As he watched, a van drove up and unloaded two dogs. One would have thought that the farm had enough damned dogs already. But that was a uniformed policeman on the other end of the leashes. Hills, Zia, Lille were all blotted out simultaneously by mental images of the banks of the creek, a punt pole, the trail of mud to the potato field, the distance between himself and those police dogs. What tracks had Zia left? She was wearing low-heeled shoes. She had never been into the mud, and it was probable that on grass, lane or dry farmyard she had left no tracks at all—or none that the police would find until they had time for a more exhaustive investigation of Fyster-Holmes's garden. The dogs would presumably know that they were on the trail of two persons, not one. But dogs could not talk.

Dogs couldn't talk. That went round and round his head until between absurdity and terror he almost laughed. Except on his tour of exploration at first light he and Zia had never been more than a yard or two from each other till they separated. By now she should be far away in some kind of public transport. With luck her scent rather than his might be followed.

The dogs, their handler and two constables started at a smart pace up the hill, twice checking where his single track crossed the double line of escape from the farmyard. The check allowed him to get away ahead of them unseen, following his own path exactly—so far as stumbling panic allowed—back to the copse and the spot where he and Zia had rested. The dogs had now clearly decided that the double scent was correct and their duty was to follow it. That was worth knowing. If they were to track Zia travelling alone it would be against their better judgment. The eyes of the handler must be persuaded to overrule those more perceptive noses which couldn't talk. He had seen that happen when he and Paul used to follow the Bicester hounds on foot, seen the huntsman lift them at a check and put them on the wrong line. Once they had been so close to the fox that Paul swore it had winked at them.

He was obsessed by a hollow ash, struck by lightning and thickly draped with ivy, on the edge of the woodland near the point where Zia had left him and taken to the downs. A hollow tree would not be the slightest use as a hiding place, but it was an objective—typically vague and changeable on impulse. When he reached it he had lost his lead, glimpsed during one of his dashes across the open; but still the hounds must be minutes behind and there was time to place a bet on eyes taking over from noses.

He looked inside the tree. The blackened interior was wide enough for a man to climb up—if he could use knees and elbows like a mountaineer—and hide himself among the ivy. Well, they might think he had been fool enough to do it and then lost his nerve. It made a convincing police picture.

He took off his coat. Bought in Paris and without any name inside the collar it would not be much of a clue to identity. Dashing out on Zia's track he threw it down in long grass, not too easy to see but impossible to miss. Then he returned to the blackened ash and left a maze of tracks for the dogs to puzzle out. A hundred yards away and upwind of them he allowed them to pass. Then frozen with terror and blankly trying to think of a story in case his gamble completely failed he left the ground altogether by way of a low beech branch.

The dogs went straight for the hollow tree.

‘Come out, Irata!' the handler shouted. ‘We've got you!'

No answer. It was not surprising that the police should take the missing Irata as the first and obvious suspect. The two constables looked up into the ivy from all angles, but only a nesting thrush at last lost her nerve and flew out with a squawk.

The dogs started to work the maze he had left. The two constables strolled into the open, spotted the coat, still warm, and yelled. Down to the coat, hot on the fresh, straight trail, went the dogs. They were then faced with Zia's single track and wanted to go back, but to their handler the story was plain. Irata had tried the hollow tree, realised that it was useless, dashed about in panic searching for some other hiding place and had then decided to run for it, panting, desperate and discarding his coat. From a fork halfway up his beech Georges could watch the men's enthusiasm and the dogs' reluctance. But the handler cast forward and they obeyed, intelligent eyes looking up at him. ‘If half of what we were chasing is what you want,' they implied, ‘half you shall have.'

Off they went over the grass on Zia's track. Georges, still trembling, stayed in his tree undecided what to do. It was ten to one that when the party reached the road in Streatley it would give up. On the other hand this direct hunt was only the opening move of the police, so fast and unexpected that it nearly succeeded. Subsequent moves would be routine and calm. That bit of Europe which had seemed so friendly was going to be searched with international efficiency. There might also be road checks. The rendezvous with Zia was impossible.

So long as he could get safely out of the district he could go where he liked—up to a point, The description of the wanted man would be that of Irata, short, stocky, dark-haired, speaking with a foreign accent; but the jacket picked up by the police could not possibly fit Irata though it obviously belonged—even before laboratory analysis of the mud—to someone present at the death of Fyster-Holmes.

He was very hungry after all that exercise and nothing to eat for thirty-six hours. Worse still, he had a raging thirst and had not discovered a single stream in the smooth, dry valleys. Thirst decided what he must do. Risk or no risk, he must mix with his fellow men and find a tap.

It was wise to assume that the party with the dogs had by now come to the tentative conclusion that two men were concerned and that Irata had escaped in time while the other had very nearly been caught. This accomplice was coatless—nothing exceptional about that—of medium height, slim build and possibly French nationality. But before that description was broadcast, surely there must be a conference, a report, even an argument? Hurry, then, hurry!

He came down from his tree and ran to the edge of the woodland. The hunt had crossed the dry valley below and were near the skyline on the other side, still going hard on Zia's track. They came into sight again going west on a green road across the downs. Lord only knew what the girl had done! She had turned away from Streatley, buses and the river into the emptiness of the grass. Well, they could not possibly catch her up unless she had kept walking to nowhere for the last five hours. Meanwhile the way into Streatley was clear. He drank at the outside lavatory of a pub, thus leaving no memory of himself at the bar, and boldly crossed the bridge over the Thames. He found a police car waiting on the other side, but there was no turning back. He was not questioned. He did not fit the description of Irata and there cannot have been time, as he had foreseen, for news of the possible accomplice to come through.