The Way to Dusty Death

by Alistair MacLean

  Matters weren’t helped for Rory by the fact that Harlow and Dunnet were carrying on this conversation in very low tones indeed. Both of them had tall clear drinks in front of them, both drinks with ice and lemon in them: only one held gin. Dunnet looked consideringly at the tiny film cassette he was cradling in the palm of his hand then slipped it into a safe inside pocket.

  ‘Photographs of code? You’re sure?’

  ‘Code for sure. Perhaps even along with some abstruse foreign language. I’m afraid I’m no expert on those matters.’

  ‘No more than I am. But we have people who are experts. And the Coronado transporter. You’re sure about that too?’

  ‘No question.’

  ‘So we’ve been nursing a viper to our own bosom – if that’s the phrase I’m looking for.’

  ‘It is a bit embarrassing, isn’t it?’

  ‘And no question about Henry having any finger in the pie?’

  ‘Henry?’ Harlow shook his head positively. ‘My life on it.’

  ‘Even though, as driver, he’s the only person who’s with the transporter on every trip it makes?’

  ‘Even though.’

  ‘And Henry will have to go?’

  ‘What option do we have?’

  ‘So. Exit Henry – temporarily, though he won’t know it: he’ll get his old job back. He’ll be hurt, of course – but what’s one brief hurt to thousands of life-long ones?’

  ‘And if he refuses?’

  ‘I’ll have him kidnapped,’ Dunnet said matter-of-factly. ‘Or other wise removed – painlessly, of course. But he’ll go along. I’ve got the doctor’s certificate already signed.’

  ‘How about medical ethics?’

  ‘The combination of £500 and a genuine certificate of an already existing heart murmur makes medical scruples vanish like a snowflake in the river.’

  The two men finished their drinks, rose and left. So, after what he presumably regarded as being a suitably safe interval, did Rory. In the café opposite, Neubauer and Tracchia rose hurriedly, walked quickly after Rory and overtook him in half a minute. Rory looked his surprise.

  Tracchia said confidentially: ‘We want to talk to you, Rory. Can you keep a secret?’

  Rory looked intrigued but he had a native caution which seldom abandoned him. ‘What’s the secret about?’

  ‘You are a suspicious young person.’

  ‘What’s the secret about?’

  ‘Johnny Harlow.’

  ‘That’s different.’ Tracchia had Rory’s instantaneous and cooperative attention. ‘Of course I can keep a secret.’

  Neubauer said: ‘Well, then, never a whisper. Never one word or you’ll ruin everything. You understand?’

  ‘Of course.’ He hadn’t the faintest idea what Neubauer was talking about.

  ‘You’ve heard of the GPDA?’

  ‘Course. The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association.’

  ‘Right. Well, the GPDA has decided that for the safety of us all, drivers and spectators alike, Harlow must be removed from the Grand Prix roster. We want him taken off all the race-tracks in Europe. You know that he drinks?’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’

  ‘He drinks so much that he’s become the most dangerous driver in Europe.’ Neubauer’s voice was low-pitched, conspiratorial and totally convincing. ‘Every other driver is scared to be on the same track as he is. None of us knows when he’s going to be the next Jethou.’

  ‘You – you mean – ’ ‘He was drunk at the time. That’s why a good man dies, Rory – because another man drinks half a bottle of scotch too many. Would you call that much different from being a murderer?’

  ‘No, by God I wouldn’t!’

  ‘So the GPDA has asked Willi and myself to gather the evidence. About drinking, I mean. Especially before a big race. Will you help us?’

  ‘You have to ask me?’

  ‘We know, boy, we know.’ Neubauer put his hand on Rory’s shoulder, a gesture at once indicative of consolation and understanding. ‘Mary is our girl, too. You saw Harlow and Mr Dunnet in that café just now. Did Harlow drink?’

  ‘I didn’t really see them. I was in the next booth. But I heard Mr Dunnet say something about gin and I saw the waiter bring two tall glasses with what looked like water in them.’

  ‘Water!’ Tracchia shook his head sadly. ‘Anyway, that’s more like it. Though I can’t believe that Dunnet – well, who knows. Did you hear them talk about drink?’

  ‘Mr Dunnet? Is there something wrong with him too?’

  Tracchia said evasively, well aware that that was the surest way of arousing Rory’s interest: ‘I don’t know anything about Mr Dunnet. About drink, now.’

  ‘They spoke in very low voices. I caught something, not much. Not about drink. The only thing I heard was something about changed cassettes – film cassettes – or such-like, something Harlow had given to Mr Dunnet. Didn’t make any kind of sense to me.’

  Tracchia said: ‘That hardly concerns us. But the rest, yes. Keep your eyes and ears open, will you?’

  Rory, carefully concealing his new-found sense of self-importance, nodded man to man and walked away. Neubauer and Tracchia looked at each other with fury in their faces, a fury, clearly, that was not directed at each other.

  Through tightly clenched teeth Tracchia said: ‘The crafty bastard! He’s switched cassettes on us. That was a dud we destroyed.’

  On the evening of that same day Dunnet and Henry sat in a remote corner of the lobby in the Villa-Hotel Cessni. Dunnet wore his usual near-inscrutable expression. Henry looked somewhat stunned although it was clear that his native shrewdness was hard at work making a reassessment of an existing situation and a readjustment to a developing one. He tried hard not to look cunning. He said: ‘You certainly do know how to lay it on the line, don’t you, Mr Dunnet?’ The tone of respectful admiration for a higher intellect was perfectly done. Dunnet remained totally unmoved.

  ‘If by laying it on the line, Henry, you mean putting it as briefly and clearly as possible, then, yes, I have laid it on the line. Yes or no?’

  ‘Jesus, Mr Dunnet, you don’t give a man much time to think, do you?’

  Dunnet said patiently: ‘This hardly calls for thought, Henry. A simple yes or no. Take it or leave it.’

  Henry kept his cunning look under wraps. ‘And if I leave it?’ ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’ Henry looked distinctly uneasy. ‘I don’t know if I like the sound of that, Mr Dunnet.’

  ‘How does it sound to you, Henry?’

  ‘I mean, well, you aren’t blackmailing me or threatening me or something like that?’

  Dunnet had the air of a man counting up to ten. ‘You make me say it, Henry. You’re talking rubbish. How can one blackmail a man who leads the spotless life you do? You do lead a spotless life, don’t you, Henry? And why should I threaten you? How could I threaten you?’ He made a long pause. ‘Yes or no?’

  Henry sighed in defeat. ‘Damn it all, yes. I’ve got nothing to lose. For £5,000 and a job in our Marseilles garage I’d sell my own grandmother down the river – God rest her soul.’

  ‘That wouldn’t be necessary even if it were possible. Just total silence that’s all. Here’s a health certificate from a local doctor. It’s to say you have an advanced cardiac condition and are no longer fit for heavy work such as, say, driving a transporter.’

  ‘I haven’t been feeling at all well lately and that’s a fact.’

  Dunnet permitted himself the faintest of smiles. ‘I thought you might have been feeling that way.’

  ‘Does Mr MacAlpine know about this?’

  ‘He will when you tell him. Just wave that paper.’

  ‘You think he’ll wear it?’

  ‘If you mean accept it, yes. He’ll have no option.’

  ‘May I ask the reason for all this?’

  ‘No. You’re getting paid £5,000 not to ask questions. Or talk. Ever.’

  ‘You’re a very funny journalist, Mr Dunnet.’

&n
bsp; ‘Very.’

  ‘I’m told you were an accountant in what they call the City. Why did you give it up?’

  ‘Emphysema. My lungs, Henry, my lungs.’

  ‘Something like my cardiac condition?’

  ‘In these days of stress and strain, Henry, perfect health is a blessing that is granted to very few of us. And now you’d better go and see Mr MacAlpine.’

  Henry left. Dunnet wrote a brief note, addressed a stout buff envelope, marked it EXPRESS and URGENT in the top left corner, inserted the note and microfilm and left. As he passed out into the corridor he failed to notice that the door of the room next to his was slightly ajar: consequently, he also failed to observe a single eye peering out through this narrow gap in the doorway.

  The eye belonged to Tracchia. He closed the door, moved out on to his balcony and waved an arm in signal. In the distance, far beyond the fore-court of the hotel, an indistinct figure raised an arm in acknowledgment. Tracchia hurried downstairs and located Neubauer. Together they moved towards the bar and sat there, ordering soft drinks. At least a score of people saw and recognized them for Neubauer and Tracchia were scarcely less well known that Harlow himself. But Tracchia was not a man to establish an alibi by halves.

  He said to the barman: ‘I’m expecting a call from Milan at five o’clock. What time do you have?’

  ‘Exactly five, Mr Tracchia.’

  ‘Let the desk know I’m here.’

  The direct route to the Post Office lay through a narrow alleyway lined with mews-type houses and alternate garages on both sides. The road was almost deserted, a fact that Dunnet attributed to its being a Saturday afternoon. In all its brief length of less than two hundred yards there was only an overalled figure working over the engine of his car outside the opened door of a garage. In a fashion more French than Italian he wore a navy beret down to his eyes and the rest of his face was so streaked with oil and grease as to be virtually unrecognizable. He wouldn’t, Dunnet thought inconsequentially, have been tolerated for five seconds on the Coronado racing team. But, then, working on a Coronado and on a battered old Fiat 600 called for different standards of approach.

  As Dunnet passed the Fiat the mechanic abruptly straightened. Dunnet politely sidestepped to avoid him but as he did so the mechanic, one leg braced against the side of the car to lend additional leverage for a take-off thrust, flung his entire bodily weight against him. Completely off-balance and already falling, Dunnet staggered through the opened garage doorway. His already headlong process towards the ground was rapidly and violently accelerated by two very large and very powerful stocking-masked figures who clearly held no brief for the more gentle arts of persuasion. The garage door closed behind him.

  Rory was absorbed in a lurid comic magazine and Tracchia and Neubauer, alibis safely established, were still at the bar when Dunnet entered the hotel. It was an entry that attracted the immediate attention of everyone in the foyer for it was an entry that would have attracted such attention anywhere. Dunnet didn’t walk in, he staggered in like a drunken man and even then would have fallen were it not for the fact that he was supported by a policeman on either side of him. He was bleeding badly from nose and mouth, had a rapidly closing right eye, an unpleasant gash above it and, generally, a badly bruised face. Tracchia, Neubauer, Rory and the receptionist reached him at almost the same moment.

  The shock in Tracchia’s voice marched perfectly with the expression on his face. He said: ‘God in heaven, Mr Dunnet, what happened to you?’

  Dunnet tried to smile, winced and thought better of it. He said in a slurred voice: ‘I rather think I was set upon.’

  Neubauer said: ‘But who did – I mean where – why, Mr Dunnet, why?’

  One of the policemen held up his hand and turned to the receptionist. ‘Please. At once. A doctor.’

  ‘In one minute. Less. We have seven staying here. She turned to Tracchia. ‘You know Mr Dunnet’s room, Mr Tracchia. If you and Mr Neubauer would be so kind as to show the officers – ’

  ‘No need. Mr Neubauer and I will take him up.’

  The policeman said: ‘I’m sorry. We will require a statement from – ’

  He halted as most people did when they were on the receiving end of Tracchia’s most intimidating scowl. He said: ‘Leave your station number with this young lady. You will be called when the doctor gives Mr Dunnet permission to talk. Not before. Meantime, he must get to bed immediately. Do you understand?’

  They understood, nodded and left without another word. Tracchia and Neubauer, followed by a Rory whose puzzlement was matched only by his apprehension, took Dunnet to his room and were in the process of putting him to bed when a doctor arrived. He was young, Italian, clearly highly efficient and extremely polite when he asked them to leave the room.

  In the corridor Rory said: ‘Why would anyone do that to Mr Dunnet?’

  ‘Who knows?’ Tracchia said. ‘Robbers, thieves, people who would sooner rob and half-kill than do an honest day’s work.’ He flicked a glance at Neubauer, one that Rory was not intended to miss. ‘There are lots of unpleasant people in the world, Rory. Let’s leave it to the police, shall we?’

  ‘You mean that you’re not going to bother – ’

  ‘We’re drivers, my boy,’ Neubauer said. ‘We’re not detectives.’

  ‘I’m not a boy! I’ll soon be seventeen. And I’m not a fool.’ Rory brought his anger under control and looked at them speculatively. ‘There’s something very fishy, very funny going on. I’ll bet Harlow is mixed up in this somewhere.’

  ‘Harlow?’ Tracchia raised an amused eyebrow in a fashion that was little to Rory’s liking. ‘Come off it, Rory. You were the person who overheard Harlow and Dunnet having their confidential little tête-à-tête.’

  ‘Aha! That’s just the point. I didn’t overhear what they said. I just heard their voices, not what they said. They could have been saying anything. Maybe Harlow was threatening him.’ Rory paused to consider this fresh and intriguing prospect and conviction burgeoned on the instant. ‘Of course that was what it was. Harlow was threatening him because Dunnet was either double-crossing or blackmailing him.’ Tracchia said kindly: ‘Rory, you really must give up reading those horror comics of yours. Even if Dunnet were double-crossing or blackmailing Harlow, how would beating up Dunnet help in any way? He’s still around, isn’t he? He can still carry on this double-crossing or blackmailing of yours. I’m afraid you’ll have to come up with a better one than that, Rory.’

  Rory said slowly: ‘Maybe I can. Dunnet did say he was beaten up in that narrow alleyway leading towards the main street. Do you know what lies at the far end of the alleyway? The Post Office. Maybe Dunnet was going down there to dispose of some evidence he had on Harlow. Maybe he thought it was too dangerous to carry that evidence around with him any more. So Harlow made good and sure that Dunnet never got the chance to post it.’

  Neubauer looked at Tracchia then back at Rory. He wasn’t smiling any more. He said: ‘What kind of evidence, Rory?’

  ‘How should I know?’ Rory’s irritation was marked. ‘I’ve been doing all the thinking up till now. How about you two trying to do a little thinking for once?’

  ‘We might just at that.’ Tracchia, like Neubauer, was now suddenly serious and thoughtful. ‘Now don’t go talking around about this, lad. Apart from the fact that we haven’t a single shred of proof, there’s such a thing as the law of libel.’

  ‘I’ve told you once,’ Rory said with some acerbity, ‘I’m not a fool. Besides, it wouldn’t look too good for you two if it was known that you were trying to put the finger on Johnny Harlow.’

  ‘That you can say again,’ Tracchia said. ‘Bad news travels fast. Here comes Mr MacAlpine.’

  MacAlpine arrived at the head of the stairs, his face, much thinner now and far more deeply lined than it had been two months previously, was grim and tight with anger. He said: ‘This is true? I mean about Dunnet?’

  Tracchia said: ‘I’m afraid so. Some person or perso
ns have given him a pretty thorough going over.’

  ‘In God’s name, why?’

  ‘Robbery, it looks like.’

  ‘Robbery! In broad daylight. Jesus, the sweet joys of civilization. When did this happen?’

  ‘Couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes ago. Willi and I were at the bar when he went out. It was exactly five o’clock because I happened to be checking a phone call with the barman at the time. We were at the bar when he came back and when he came back I checked my watch – thought it might be useful for the police to know. It was exactly twelve minutes past five. He couldn’t have got very far in that time.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘There. In his room.’

  ‘Then why are you three – ’

  ‘Doctor’s in there with him. He threw us out.’

  ‘He will not,’ MacAlpine predicted with certainty, ‘throw me out.’

  Nor did he. Five minutes later it was the doctor who was the first to emerge followed in another five by MacAlpine, his face at once thunderous and deeply worried. He went straight to his own room.

  Tracchia, Neubauer and Rory were sitting by a wall table in the foyer when Harlow entered. If he saw them he paid no heed but walked straight across the length of the foyer to the stairs. He smiled faintly once or twice in response to tentative approaches and deferential smiles of greeting, but otherwise his face remained its normal impassive self.

  Neubauer said: ‘Well, you must admit that our Johnny doesn’t look all that concerned about life.’

  ‘You bet he doesn’t.’ Rory could not have been accused of snarling, because he hadn’t yet mastered the art, but he was obviously getting close. ‘I’ll bet he’s not very concerned about death either. I’ll bet if it was his own grandmother he’d – ’

  ‘Rory.’ Tracchia held up a restraining hand. ‘You’re letting your imagination run wild. The Grand Prix Drivers’ Association is a very respectable body of men. We have what people call a good public image and we don’t want to spoil it. Sure, we like to have you on our side: but wild talk like this can only damage everyone concerned.’

  Rory scowled at each man in turn, rose and walked stiffly away. Neubauer said, almost sadly: ‘I’m afraid, Nikki, that our young firebrand there is shortly about to experience some of the most painful moments of his life.’