Hopscotch (28 page)

They'd never kept a night watchman and he assumed they'd had no reason to hire one since he'd taken his lessons here. He drove without lights right up to the dark hangars and switched off.

According to Oakley's watch it was four-twenty. This time of year nothing would begin stirring here until at least seven-thirty, more likely eight. There was plenty of time. He checked out the hangars cursorily and then went down the line of aircraft to pick out a plane. He knew what sort he wanted but he wasn't sure there'd be one. He'd settle for something else in that case.

But there was one. It was an old PBY Catalina amphibian—a small twin-engine flying boat on wheels. Some of the vintners liked to use amphibians because it made for handy access to quiet shores along the inlets of Lake Geneva on trips to Swiss banks they preferred not to advertise. It was a service Kendig had used a few times to get his money in and out of Zurich.

He took note of the civil air numbers painted on the plane and he went back to the hangar and broke into the office. He didn't want to turn on a light; there were two chateaus on heights within less than a mile. He lighted a wooden match and found the key on the pegboard by the number on its tag. Nobody stole airplanes; they were too traceable; so there was no security imposed.

He pocketed the PBY key and got back in the car and drove it out the runway, racked it alongside the Catalina and got to work. He checked the fuel gauges and found it full; that was standard procedure—you
filled after you landed, not before you took off; that way you were ready to go on short notice. He took out the three logbooks—by regulation there was one for the airframe and a separate one for each engine—and left them askew on the floor by the right-seat rudder pedals. He didn't care what shape the plane was in but it had to look as if he did. Cutter wasn't going to give him any help if he left too many doors open.

He put the suitcase in the plane, belt-strapping it onto one of the pry-rigged passenger seats in the midships blister. The manuscript was in the suitcase. He had to give it up to them or they wouldn't buy any of it; and it had to be the real manuscript, not a fake and not a partial—no tricks, nothing withheld.

He took the
clochard
out of the trunk and laid him out on the grass under the high wing. He stripped the
clochard
to the skin. There were scars here and there—it hadn't been an easy life for the
clochard
—but none of that would matter. He brought the four-liter can of gasoline out of the Peugeot and bathed the corpse with the stuff to get rid of any telltales that might have adhered. The
clochard
's filthy rags had to disappear; Kendig bundled them up and set the bundle aside.

He poured the acid solution out of the Vittel bottle onto the
clochard
's face. He wasn't cold-blooded enough to do it without a cringing nausea. When the acid had done a fair job of eradicating features he washed it away with gasoline. Then he dressed the body in his own old underwear and socks and Oakley's suit and topcoat; he put Oakley's identification and wallet in the clothes along with
the passport photo of himself that he'd rescued from the London police sergeant's desk. Then he added the Alexandre Vaneau passport—again with his own photo in it—to the contents of the dead man's pockets.

The
clochard
was stiffening with rigor by now and that was all to Kendig's advantage. He dragged the corpse forward, closing his mind to the ghoulishness of it and the reek of gasoline. He propped the body in the pilot's seat and belted it in.

Outside on the grass he opened the bundle of filthy clothes and spread the coat out flat. He piled into the center of it the rest of the clothes, the empty Vittel bottle and his own spare pair of shoes. He tied up the arms and skirt of the coat and carried the bundle into the plane together with the can of gasoline. Then he went back outside again and explored in the trunk of the Peugeot. It was slightly redolent of the dead but that would dissipate. He found a combination windshield-scraper and brush; it would do. He used it to rake the grass where he'd been working. He left no sign in the earth except a set of vague foot-impressions to show he'd walked from the car to the plane; he left the trunk lid ajar with the keys in it both to air it out and to indicate he'd been in a hurry.

When he climbed in the waist door he latched it shut behind him and went forward up the steeply tilted companionway into the cockpit. He tested the
clochard
's limbs but they hadn't stiffened quite enough yet. He couldn't bear the thought of sitting beside the ghastly dead man for any length of time; he went back into the fuselage and sat under the blister watching the night. Along the edge of
the field bare branches were silhouetted against the dark sky, as jagged as cracks in a porcelain surface. Scarves of cloud hung low in the southwest but the clear intense cold held.

He felt a vague urge: the impulse to communicate his gratitude to Carla Fleming. He remembered her soft self-assured voice, her long-boned Modigliani features. He'd never get in touch with her; he couldn't take the chance.

More than half his money was in the
clochard
's money belt and the suitcase but he had about forty thousand dollars in his own belt and pockets and when it ran out he had the talent to make more. He had no papers of any kind but that wasn't a problem either. This would be a poor time to try to make long-term plans. He'd drift a while and think about what he wanted to do with the rest of his years. There was plenty of time for it. He wouldn't get bored; he'd got over that, he'd changed too much to fear it. He was capable of life now; perhaps even capable of love—he'd find out about that someday.

He stripped Oakley's watch off his wrist. After six now; he couldn't wait longer. He moved at a crouch into the cockpit and got the watch onto the dead wrist. The joints were so stiff he had a lot of trouble moving them; that was how he wanted it.

It had to be done with great caution because if there was a spark at the wrong moment it could incinerate him. He threw all the windows wide open before he began to splash the gasoline around. He poured it liberally around the cockpit, over the corpse and the upholstery. Then he capped the gasoline can and stuffed it into the bundle of things he couldn't leave behind. He took the candlewick
fuse from his shirt pocket and wedged it into a metal seam by the edge of the soaked carpeting. Now he had to wait again while the wind carried the fumes off and evaporated the surface petrol and the rest of it soaked deep into things.

It was a risk but he had to take it and when he judged enough time had passed he turned the ignition switch on and pressed the
Mesh
button for the Number One engine. The flywheel spun with a grinding effort but the engine didn't catch right away and he pushed the mixture control to full rich. No sparks in the cockpit; this wouldn't have worked with a plane that had the engine in the nose of the fuselage. Both engines were in nacelles high on the wings and outboard of the cockpit.

The flywheel struggled and he heard the cylinders catch; he revved it a bit and then got the star-board engine running.

He unlocked the brake and ran the engines up and the PBY started to bounce, rolling slowly out of its parking space onto the strip. He kicked the pedal hard and she turned sedately to the right; he lined her up on the runway and taxied slowly to the far end and made the U-turn wide and slow. Now he had the length of the runway in front of him and a row of high trees at the far end. He remembered the strain with which the instructors regarded student takeoffs; if you didn't get the nose up fast enough you'd go right into those trees or the power lines beyond.

The emergency hatch was in the bow forward of the windshield; you had to crawl under the dashboard to get to it. That wouldn't be fast enough. He broke the half-window out of its frame on his right and judged he could work it from there. He set the
bundle on his lap and ran up both engines against the brakes. When the plane began to shudder and lurch he released the brakes. It rolled forward and he throttled back; this had to be done precisely and he couldn't have a lot of speed at first. He bounced forward at twenty miles an hour or so, steering with his feet while he leaned across the aisle and fixed the
clochard
's dead fingers to the crescent wheel. He locked both the fists onto the control yoke and jammed the
clochard
's feet under the rudder pedals so that they couldn't kick back and send the plane into a ground loop.

Bumping along on the uneven ground he had a hard time climbing out the window but finally he was hanging there with both shoulders wedged into the opening so that he wouldn't fall out before he wanted to. The starboard propeller was frighteningly close behind him but he could avoid that easily enough; it was the wing strut and the landing gear he'd have to worry about when he made his drop.

He had two matches in his left hand, pressed together. With that hand he reached the throttles and thrust them all the way forward to emergency speed. There was about a quarter mile of runway left. He struck the two matches and touched the flame to the gasoline-soaked tip of the candlewick. The flame soared bright; he had only a glimpse of it and then he was hunching his shoulders, clutching the dead matchsticks in his left hand and the bundle of oddments in his right.

When he compressed his shoulders he slid down out of the jouncing window. He let go and dropped with his legs all gone to rubber; he felt his feet touch down and he willed himself to collapse and
he was still dropping when he saw the strut coming at him but it only glanced off his upraised arm and then the starboard wheel was rutting past him and he was under it and free.

He rolled over and lay flat while the tail surface rumbled overhead, the tail wheel bouncing and veering a little from side to side. He didn't move after that: he lay prone on his belly and watched, uncaring of the blunt pain in his corded forearm; waiting with his eyes wide stark staring and the breath hung up in his throat.

Gathering speed the PBY began to yaw dangerously and he feared the ground loop but the
clochard
's stiff joints held it on something like a course and it kept wobbling toward the end of the runway with a high angry whine of overaccelerated engines. He saw the flames burst alight in the cockpit, fueled by the gasoline-soaked carpeting and Oakley's saturated clothes. Perhaps it had been unnecessary but he had to make sure the plane caught fire to mask the work he'd done on the
clochard
with the acid.… It veered right and then left but it didn't flip over and it didn't loop around and it must have been doing at least seventy miles an hour when it smashed head-on into the trees. It was an earsplitting crash and there was afterecho and silence before the flames tongued into a ruptured tank and the whole thing went up with a spectacular thundering conflagration: even from where he lay he felt the heat of it on his cheeks.

He picked up the bundle and backed his way to the edge of the runway, dragging the bundle to erase his footprints; he faded into the brush, walking with care and rubbing it out when he left any signs.

At the vineyard fence he went through the staves carefully and then he turned and walked uphill, a bit jaunty and smiling without reservation, toward the violet smear along the east that predicted the dawn.

– 27 –

T
HE AFTERNOON SUN
broke through but it remained bitter cold and the wind went right through Ross's coat. He watched the technicians sift through the rubble. Wisps of smoke still curled from the charred surreal sculpture of the wreckage.

The body—the remains of it—lay on a litter near his feet. Follett spoke across it to Cutter; the wind almost carried his words away. “I don't like coincidences—I don't like handy accidents.”

“He only had a few flying lessons,” Cutter said. “He didn't know how to handle a plane that big. You couldn't call it an accident.”

“I still don't believe he's dead just like that. It's too easy.”

“Everybody dies. It was his turn.”

“Overdue for that matter. But it's still hard to absorb. Son of a bitch made monkeys of us right up to the end.”

Cutter laughed—a dryish cackle.

Follett made way for the SDECE medical examiner; he moved around the corpse and looked at his watch. “You said you'd follow through on the autopsy business, Joe?”

“Yes. It was my case—I might as well handle the rest of it.”

“Then I'd better get back to the salt mines. I've
got a lot of unfinished jobs to reheat.” Follett turned away, picked up his driver and walked back toward the cars, out of step with his companion.

Cutter watched the medical examiner and Ross watched Cutter: his lean mentor looked stupefied. He looked away from the body, studied the backs of his hands and then turned them over and studied the palms.

Cutter turned to face the ruins of the plane. Ross turned with him. They watched the crew extracting the remains of the luggage; the fire hadn't done too much damage that far back in the fuselage. They walked forward and the technician set the suitcase down on the grass. The lid was buckled and scorched. Cutter tipped it up; a hinge corner snapped off and the lid fell askew onto the grass. There was a lot of ash inside; most of it was money. Ross had no trouble recognizing the manuscript for what it was; the edges were burned and curled up but it was still a manuscript. When sheets of paper were compacted together in thick stacks it was remarkable how fire-resistant they could be.

Cutter seemed restless. He walked back to the litter. The ambulance stood where it had been backed up with its doors open but the remains were fragile and the medical examiner wanted to make his preliminary investigation before it was moved. Cutter said, “What does it show, doctor?”

“It will tell us very little,
M'sieur
. The face is burned beyond recognition. If there were distinguishing marks on the body the fire has obliterated them. There was this.”