Cloak of Darkness (32 page)

In silence, Renwick and Claudel walked over to his body. It had been slammed backward against the steps, jolted so hard that the white wig had slipped. Renwick pulled it aside, shone his flashlight on the startled face that stared blankly at the sky above.

“Erik,” said Claudel.

Renwick switched off the flashlight and entered the hall. Marchand was alive but unsteady on his feet. He had sensed the blow coming, tried to avoid it, and had almost succeeded. There was a savage weal across one cheek, a jaw beginning to swell, perhaps a collarbone smashed. Renwick helped him down the steps, past Erik’s body, left him by the dead policeman to hear the rifleman’s explanations.

Claudel closed the chalet’s door and came over to join him. “I thought you had packed it in,” he told Renwick. “You weren’t hit, were you?”

Renwick raised his left arm, looked at the singed streak across its inner sleeve.

Too close for comfort,” Claudel said. “Where did he learn to shoot like that?”

“In a South Yemen training camp,” Renwick said grimly.

“What now?” Claudel looked in the direction of the Chalet Ruskin. “He heard that shot.”

“A rifle. It could be explained, perhaps.” Renwick tried to think. “Accidental discharge by a—hunter or poacher— someone out on this hillside.” Renwick made an effort. “Tell Marchand to phone Sudak and the neighbouring chalets. Explain—reassure them all.”

“Reassure Sudak?” Claudel was disbelieving.

“Try it, anyway. What else?” Renwick’s voice was sharp. “If Marchand has a better idea, let him use it.” Then he sat down, legs crossed, and stared out over the patchwork of faint light and dark shadow that covered the hillside. Behind him, Erik lay staring up at the stars.

Marchand was angry, obdurate, and in pain. He had lost a man, and nothing compensated for that. Not the Mercedes driven back downhill with bicycles and prisoner intact, an easy capture. Its chauffeur—perhaps exhausted by a day of hard travelling, perhaps surprised by a totally unexpected danger almost at the entrance to the Chalet Ruskin—had been slow to resist. Not the death of a murderer, the leader of a vicious gang of West German terrorists. Not even the fact that he, himself, had escaped that savage blow and remained alive. He had lost a man.

“Enough,” Marchand said. He had rejected the idea of explaining the rifle shot to any chalet on this hillside. Instead, he had ordered his van partway up the road, and, with it, two stretchers. “Enough,” he repeated. “Tonight we rest. I have a report to make. Tomorrow, early, we shall visit Sudak.”

“We will lose him,” Renwick said quietly.

“How? The road ends above the Chalet Ruskin. If he tries to leave, he must drive downhill to the town. I have cars blocking the exit. He will be stopped. And what evidence do we have against him if the Mercedes’ driver won’t talk? A dead terrorist? He can’t talk.”

“He never would have.”

“Sudak will claim total ignorance that the man was ever here. As for that guest—the hysterical female you saw today— what excuse could we offer to drag her out of bed at this time of night? No, tomorrow morning, early, we can prepare a reason, visit the chalet—”

“And why should we expect to find Sudak there?”

“I told you—”

“There’s no way out by car except by this road.” Renwick held down his impatience, kept his voice even. “But are there foot-paths—through the trees—like the one we took today from Ruskin’s Chair? A path that doesn’t end in a cliff or a steep drop to the valley?”

Obviously, there was one. Marchand fell silent.

“What part of town does such a path reach?”

Marchand’s eyes widened, then narrowed.

“You had a report about a second car—one that followed the Mercedes into Chamonix. It stopped at a house on the outskirts—isn’t that what you said?”

“A wild guess, if you mean Sudak will try to reach that house.”

So it did lie somewhere near the end of a path from the Chalet Ruskin. “Have you a map you could show us?”

“Haven’t you one of your own?”

“Forgot to buy one today.” The only map they had been able to find was one of the town with surrounding hills and mountains named, but with no details such as paths or trails. “We all make mistakes,” Renwick added with considerable tact.

That admission was accepted with a nod. And a small confession followed, making a nice diversion from the subject of maps. “I thought we could trap that man—Erik?—inside the house. But”—Marchand shrugged—“there may have been an identification signal necessary. Yet, he gave no time for that. I invited him to enter, and he attacked.”

Renwick refused to be diverted. “Have you a map you could show us?” he repeated. “One with ski trails and climbing paths clearly marked?”

“Not enough light to look at it here. You can study it in the van. Unless, of course—” Marchand’s sardonic mood was back—“you insist on visiting the Chalet Ruskin now.”

“No interest.” The visit should have been made forty-five minutes ago, just after the rifle had been fired. “By this time, Sudak—”

“Sudak will have sent someone to investigate this small chalet. But I have already ordered two men to keep watch around it. And two more near the Chalet Ruskin. Sudak will wait for a report, and when none reaches him—my men will take care of that—he will then assess the situation, and perhaps move. Or stay, to face us and play the complete innocent.” Marchand nursed his jaw, now so swollen that even talking was difficult. But he persisted. “And we still have our problem. What connection between all this—” he tried to gesture to the house, flinched as his collarbone’s pain sharpened—“and Sudak? He will send no one here whom we can identify. His men never were known in the town. If they appeared there, it was as tourists, day visitors.”

Renwick nodded his agreement on that point. But he exchanged glances with Claudel, and they shared the same thought. Klaus Sudak wasn’t the type to wait and assess any situation. His assessment would be done when he reached safety. He moved on instinct.

“The van has arrived,” Marchand said, listening. He began walking rapidly to the road. “We’ll take it down, send it back for the stretchers.”

Renwick gave one last look at the chalet, tightly shuttered, deserted, a sad and lonely place, with two men lying still and another standing guard. And amid that silence, among the dark trees lost in shadows? Someone moving around, trying to guess what could have happened? If Sudak had even stayed this long to receive a report, then let him. This was one defeat he’d never repair.

***

In the van, they studied a detailed map. “Now, where’s that house on the outskirts of town?” Renwick asked.

“There!” Marchand pointed to one of the neat small squares that were dotted over the layout of the valley like a scattered flock of sheep. “It was rented two weeks ago for the rest of the summer.”

“Occupied?”

“Not until tonight, except for an occasional caretaker.”

“What kind of car arrived there?”

“A white Fiat. Italian registration.”

“Milan?” Claudel asked quickly.

Marchand looked at him, then at Renwick. “Perhaps my biggest problem is that I’ve been told so little. How did you know about Milan? Why didn’t you tell me?”

Renwick finished memorising the position of the house reached by the Fiat. It was among a cluster of five, the last group on the road from town. Fields around their sides, a wooded slope behind them. And the path that could lead from the Chalet Ruskin ended not too far away—close to a runoff stream from the hillside: a good marker, he thought, in a valley that was as flat as a billiard table.

“Why?” Marchand repeated, his lips tight.

“We didn’t know,” Renwick said. “Just another wild guess.”

Marchand’s look sharpened, but the American was rolling up the map, handing it over with a polite thank-you.

“What colour is the house?” Renwick asked.

“White. Blue shutters.”

“Not tightly closed, I hope,” said Claudel. He was feeling a delayed elation. Even if we win nothing more, he was thinking, we found Erik. We found him. And no sharpshooter in Marchand’s outfit would have been there to get him if we hadn’t flushed him out.

“Keep away from that house,” Marchand told them. “There’s no need for you to go near it. I have posted two men already. If anything develops, I’ll know at once.”

“So we just go to bed and enjoy sweet dreams?” Claudel asked.

“Yes. You’re lucky. I have work to do.”

“First,” Renwick said, “have that shoulder looked at.”

“Then what? You’ll write my report for me?” Marchand’s temper was fraying rapidly.

“Tomorrow, when there’s a quiet moment, we’ll sit down with you in a closed and very private room. We’ll answer your questions if we can.” Renwick looked at his watch as the van came to a halt.

Marchand opened its door. “If you can,” he mocked, but he was partly mollified. “Tomorrow morning we meet here at the foot of the road. Six o’clock sharp. That will give us time to make our plans before we pay a visit to—” He broke off, staring uphill.

A small vehicle, headlights blazing through the darkness, had swerved around the last turn on the steep slope. It was out of control, driving right at them with incredible speed, its horn blasting as its powerful beam swept over the group of men near the van and parked cars. Barely ten yards away, a violent twist of its steering wheel sent the yellow jeep careening over to the road’s left side. It hit the low bank, leaped wildly, turned over, came to rest on its side in the field beyond.

Renwick and the van’s driver reached it, Claudel and Marchand at their heels. “Light here!” Marchand yelled over his shoulder to the men at the roadblock, who had been standing as if paralysed. It came on full strength.

The driver was dead, still held in position by a safety belt. His passenger had been thrown clear—a young woman, dark-haired, wrapped in a travelling coat. A suitcase was some distance away, its contents spilled onto the bank and the field.

Claudel went over to her. “Alive,” he called to Renwick, who was looking at the driver, partly unrecognisable. But he was the blond young man who had sat and joked with Annabel in the café that early afternoon. The ski instructor, Renwick had named him. Whoever he was, he had saved some people from injury, perhaps some lives, and lost his own.

“Annabel?” Renwick asked very quietly as Marchand and he reached Claudel.

Claudel nodded. “She’s hurt but alive.”

Annabel’s eyes had opened. She said, “Oh! My leg! I can’t move it.”

“Don’t,” Renwick said. Her voice had been natural. Nothing too seriously wrong. A broken leg, perhaps. She would live. “Why were you leaving, Annabel?” he asked gently.

“Wait until we get her to the hospital,” Marchand said, and turned away to direct the removal of the body from the jeep.

“Annabel,” Renwick repeated, dropping on one knee beside her, “why were you leaving? At this hour?”

“He told me—told me to pack and leave. Oh, my leg!”

“Don’t move it. Lie still. You’ll be all right. When did Klaus tell you to leave? What time?”

Her voice was angry, indignant. “Midnight—after midnight. Didn’t stay around to say goodbye, can you believe it?” She was suddenly worried. “Where’s Jerri? Hurt, too?”

“What went wrong? Isn’t Jerri a good driver?”

“The best. It was the jeep—the brakes.” She struggled to rise, cried out with pain. She began to weep. “Where is Jerri? Where is he?”

Renwick rose. “You handle this,” he told Claudel and went over to the jeep, interrupting Marchand, who was ordering an ambulance.

“Yes, again!” Marchand almost shouted into his transceiver. “Return here! At once!” He switched it off, looked at Renwick. “Brakes, did you say? Tampered with?”

“Get your best mechanic to find out how they were put out of commission, and you’ll have a case of homicide against the Chalet Ruskin.” Renwick was speaking rapidly, signalling Claudel to join him. “Who gave the order? Question them all. Jerri’s death may loosen some tongues. The girl—name is Annabel Vroom—could be a good witness.” And with that, Renwick moved quickly to his car.

He was already in the Audi, had its motor running, by the time Claudel reached it. “Slightly abrupt,” was his comment on Renwick’s speedy departure. “I suppose Marchand guessed why.”

“He didn’t try to stop us anyway.” That was a relief: no more argument, no more wasted time.

“Now he will be warning his two men who are watching the house in the valley to expect a couple of lunatics in ten minutes.”

“Five.” The street was empty of traffic.

“Even at this hour there’s still a speed limit.” Claudel flinched at a sharp corner, added, “We’ll enter for Le Mans next year.” Then he turned serious. “Do you really think that Klaus Sudak is now climbing down a dark path over a rough hillside?”

“No. I think he is at the end of the path by this time. You saw the map.”

Claudel nodded. The path would only take about an hour of walking, even by night. We may be too late, he thought as he looked at his watch. It was almost ten past one. If Klaus had set out as soon as Annabel had orders to leave, he could now be reaching the meadows at the foot of the hill. From there to the house with blue shutters was a short distance. “Let’s hope he delayed.”

For what? For news that two people had been killed in a car crash? He believes they’re dead. A jeep without brakes on that hill road at night? A disaster. But Jerri could drive.” And with his hands gripping the wheel he hadn’t a second to unbuckle his safety belt. “If there hadn’t been a roadblock, he might have made it. He just might.”

They took the road that lay on the right bank of a narrow river that ran through this broad, flat valley toward the town. Houses were now sparse, set down here and there, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, square blobs of ghostly white, and all neat and solid and fast asleep.

“This might be it,” Renwick said as he saw a cluster of houses ahead of him. He wasn’t sure. They weren’t the close group he had expected. Three seemed more or less together, fields at their sides and backs. Then two followed, slightly apart. Behind all the stretch of fields was definitely a dark hillside, heavily wooded. By daylight it would be easy to identify a path coming down from the hill; by night, impossible. “See any blue shutters?” he asked as they passed the first three houses at a reduced speed.