But he had to do it right: custom decreed that, and with Lexy there, almost at arm's-length, custom and inclination both—
and even something more than that, maybe even Audley's Kipling-bred, self-denying honour. He looked at his watch again, and still didn't look at the trees on the bank—he didn't need to look at them, he knew Galles was there waiting for him—but looked instead at Lexy.
The unattainable Lady Alexandra Mary Henrietta Champeney-Perowne, pink-and-blonde in her unsuitable scarlet bikini: she had heard what the little boy had said to him in that childish treble whisper, which mocked the secrecy he had been trying to achieve for half-a-crown in francs. Probably she had already looked where the boy had nodded, and she wasn't stupid, no matter what she said.
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She didn't know—couldn't know the tenth of it, never mind the half of it. But it didn't matter now, whatever she guessed, or didn't guess, because he had nothing to lose now, anyway.
The last thought armoured him against any reaction she could have against what he was about to say, because he was at last truly angry with her.
He raised himself up on the towel.
"I've got to go—I've got work to do. You go back to the Tower
—don't worry about my car, I'll collect it later—you go back and tell Audley I'm getting what he wants, and he's to wait for me there. Do you understand?"
Yes, David." She sat up to match him, hair every-which-way, and busting-out-all-over-like-June, and cornered by realities she couldn't possibly comprehend; but neither subservient, nor concerned to vex him with silly questions about anything
—least of all about herself.
"Your trouble, Lady Alexandra, is that you're selling yourself cheap, to clever bastards like Audley—and cheapskates like me. What you want to do is to sell yourself dear, to someone who understands your true value, damn it—if you want to be dear to anyone, then force the price up ... be as expensive as you really are, Lady Alexandra!"
He turned from her, grabbed his clothes and headed for the gap in the trees, beyond the parked cars, towards which the little boy had nodded.
There was no one there, but he saw the little grey corrugated dummy5
Citroen parked just off the track further down, near the main road, yet half-hidden by bushes.
So Galles was at pains not to advertise himself more than necessary now. But perhaps that was understandable, after what had happened to Miss Stephanides last night.
He looked at his watch again, trying to judge minutes against distances. As usual on such occasions, time was behaving erratically: it had gone slowly at first, and then it had speeded up while Lexy had taken his mind off it. But it was still too early for his final contact with Genghis Khan, and that was what mattered. Unless and until he could be sure that the man had superimposed his own plan on Audley's, he had to take things easily.
So ... trousers first, and then socks and shoes . . . because a man without trousers couldn't face the world, and a man without shoes couldn't run away from it.
Then shirt and tie: shirt to make him respectable, tie to add formality, because a man in a Royal Signals tie was ready for anything and anywhere, even Le Château du Cingle d'Enfer.
He slung his coat over his shoulder, feeling the comforting weight of passport and wallet (a man with those could run faster and further), tucked his bastide- book and notes under his arm, and advanced in Full Service Marching Order towards the Citroen.
The engine was already running.
He bent down to the window. "What's all the hurry?"
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Galles scowled at him. "Get in the car, m'sieur."
The little Citroen eased forward slowly, protesting at the potholes on the track, laboured up the incline on to the road, and then slammed him back in the seat as it accelerated away.
"What's all the hurry?" repeated Roche.
"No hurry, m'sieur." Galles had his foot down on the floor.
"M'sieur Audley wishes me to say that he has telephoned M'sieur d'Auberon, and that M'sieur d'Auberon awaits your visit with the keenest interest, at 6.30 if that is convenient."
"Are we being followed?" inquired Roche, even though the question was superfluous, since Galles was already staring fixedly into the wing mirror.
"M'sieur Roche—" Galles continued to study the mirror "—I have been followed ever since I picked you up at the station yesterday. And I should guess that you have also been followed. Have you not noticed?"
"By whom?" Roche ignored the question of his own inadequacy.
"I do not know. To my shame, I failed to remark upon the coincidences until this morning. It... has been a long time, since the old days, m'sieur. I am not as suspicious as I once was."
Shit! thought Roche. It could hardly be the Comrades, or Genghis Khan would have told him so. Therefore it had to be ... whoever had attended to Miss Stephanides . . . and that dummy5
was frightening, even though Genghis Khan had promised to attend to them himself.
"A motor-cyclist, I think," said Galles. "Though I cannot see him at this moment."
Shit again! thought Roche. There were altogether too many faint motorcycle noises in his memory, from the last twenty-four hours back.
"Lose him, then," he commanded. This sort of thing, beyond a little checking before he made a carefully prepared contact, was out of his routine experience. He had never been a bloody cloak-and-dagger man.
"M'sieur . . . one does not lose a motor-cyclist—he has too many advantages. One kills motor-cyclists—nothing else will serve."
"Kills?"
"But yes! I killed one once—by accident, of course, you understand . . . on the blind corner before La Roque, it was ...
I braked to avoid a child who had run into the road—my cousin's little niece, it was—and there was a cement-lorry broken down on the other side of the road at that exact moment—the child ran out from behind it ... so there was nowhere the motor-cyclist could go—he was travelling too fast, of course—and nothing anyone could do. It was a tragic accident, with no one to blame except the victim himself, poor fellow."
Yes?"
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Galles shrugged. "Well... it will take me at least twenty-four hours to find another niece, and another cement-lorry, if that is what you want, M'sieur Roche."
Roche reviewed the situation. A single follower was there to follow and observe. And Genghis Khan himself had required him to lay on an observer for what he had in mind, whatever it was—a reliable observer. So one more trained observer couldn't do too much harm.
"We'll go on—and let him follow." Long-forgotten OCTU
training supported him: orders must always be given confidently, to encourage the other ranks' ill-founded belief that the officers know what is going on. "But I need a telephone at 6.15—I must report in before I see d'Auberon."
Galles gave him a searching look, as though to suggest that, however rusty and far-removed from tragic accidents he might be, he was too old a hand to cherish ill-founded beliefs.
"Go on, man!" He tried to meet the look arrogantly. "But just don't drive like a maniac any more. This is important, and I don't want to be part of any tragic accidents."
The look continued to search him. "Like that which befell Mademoiselle Meriel last night?"
The poor sod was as much in the dark about Steffy as everyone else, thought Roche. The years of peace since 'the old days' had not prepared him for a new generation of violence.