The Follower (21 page)

Now there was only one thing. It was against all logic, but there it was, as real as the nagging pain inside him. This was so. That was so. Okay, okay. But beyond anything, he had to know about Frankie.

Ellie was still chattering on. Or was she? He couldn’t be quite sure.

‘Tell me about Frankie and George,’ he said. ‘George was Victor’s barman, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he’s working against him. That’s got to be it. He and Frankie are working against him.’

‘Yes … oh yes. I suppose so. Yes.’

He wouldn’t ask why. Even if Ellie knew why, that didn’t matter at the moment. What mattered was that he had been the greatest fool of all time. Stumbling blindly in pursuit of Ellie, he had always thought of Frankie as the enemy, Frankie as the thing to be destroyed. He had seen falseness and trickery behind everything she had said and done. And yet, all the time, she had been working against Victor.

With a curious, invalid’s clarity — the clarity that comes at the point of complete emotional exhaustion — he saw how, from the start, he had over and over again almost shipwrecked her. By saving Ellie in Mexico City, he had played straight into Victor’s hands. By following Frankie to Acapulco, by holding her up with the magazine at the Belvedere, he had almost done it again.

And that wasn’t all. He, Mark, had given Ellie the chance to call Victor and warn him of the impersonation. Almost certainly Victor had ordered her to pick up Mr Riley in Mexico and drive to Acapulco to warn Gonzales of the false ‘Mrs Liddon’. That morning, at the Belvedere, Gonzales had known Frankie was an impostor. He had put on a smooth front merely to lure her to the villa. She had thought she was fooling him. But, thanks to Mark, she was the one who had been outsmarted.

And now that they had got her, now that they had taken her to the yacht .

He turned suddenly to Ellie. ‘What are they going to do with Frankie?’

His wife seemed even less real to him now — a ghost that had almost entirely faded with only the big, staring eyes swimming in a kind of void.

‘Frankie ?’

‘They’re going to kill her, aren’t they?’

She gave a sort of exasperated shrug. ‘Who cares? Oh, Mark, darling, who cares what they do with her? She’s just nothing. It’s only you and I who matter.’

He despised her then. If he had stopped to think, it would have seemed impossible that those few crowded moments could have been sufficient to change his great love to contempt. But he wasn’t thinking. He was living through the moment and he felt the contempt in his blood like a poison. This was the girl he had loved — a girl who could lie, cheat, play along with gangsters to ‘save her marriage’ and then, having helped to lure Frankie to her certain death, could shrug and say:

‘Who cares whether they kill her or not? It’s only you and I who matter.’

Vaguely, like a snatched glimpse of a photograph before it was whisked away, an image came of Mrs Ross, sitting frostily by her meagre fire, her head bent over her coffee cup.

‘She lies. She always has ever since she was a child. You can’t tell what’s true and what’s lies.’

There was only one thing to do. Of course. He saw that now. He was still holding the ring and Oscar’s wallet. He stuffed them into his pocket. Turning from Ellie, he started to run back towards the villa.

He heard her scream behind him and call out: ‘Mark, Mark, where are you going?’

‘To get Frankie.’

‘No, no; Mark, come back. Mark, they’ll kill you.’

He heard his wife’s footsteps padding behind him.

‘Oh, Mark, darling, I love you. I love you. Come back.’ He vaulted the low stone wall and ran on through the orange trees.

HE came out of the orange grove on to the gravel drive. The villa loomed in front of him. He had to pass it to reach the pier which led to the yacht. There was no cover. He didn’t care about that either.

His mind hadn’t yet had time to catch up with the enormous change in his heart. He knew he was being reckless. But this, in a strange way, was a release. Out of the labyrinth of lies and confusion he had emerged at last with one indisputable truth.

Frankie was against Victor and, partly through his fault, she was in terrible danger.

He had no gun, no plan. He had nothing to offer as a savior except this stubborn determination to salvage at least something. For all he knew, Frankie and George were as crooked as the rest of them - two small-time operators, perhaps, trying to muscle in on Victor’s racket. But there was a chance that Frankie was someone good.

As he thought of Frankie, she sprang vividly alive in his mind exactly as he had seen her that first time at the bullfight, young, cool, with her straight blue eyes surveying him candidly. He had hated her so many times since then, hadn’t he? It seemed to him that he had. But through all those long hours he had misinterpreted his own emotions as much as everything else.

As he ran straight past the house and down the path which led to the pier he felt an improbable exhilaration. At last he was doing something that might be worth doing after days dedicated to the pursuit of a phantom. If there had been anyone in the house, they must have seen him. But there was no outcry, no sound of activity behind him. Perhaps, since Ellie was Victor’s pal, they had all been deliberately allowing him to go and come as he liked. Maybe Ellie had made that request. He could almost hear her saying it. ‘Victor, darling, why don’t we let my poor addle-pated husband get away? What harm can he do? He’s far too dumb and far too much in love with me to be any menace.’

The bitterness was stirring in him again. Yes, that was probably it. That explained why their escape’ from the villa bedroom had been so simple. He had thought he was the dashing hero saving his wife from the clutches of her persecutors. In reality, all he had been was a - clown.

He reached the pier and started to run along its wooden slats towards the yacht moored at the jetty. A large white bird, perched on the railing, squawked, flapped its wings and lumbered away. He reached the gangplank which led on to the yacht’s deck. He hurried across it and paused. There was no sign of any crew. They must have been sent away. He moved to the head of a companionway leading down to the cabins. The searing thought came that maybe he was too late. It was well over half an hour ago that he had left Mr Riley and Frankie on the pier. If they had had her there all that time…

He swung down the companionway. A corridor stretched towards the bows with closed doors leading off to the cabins. As he hesitated, straining his ears, he heard voices coming from one of the rooms ahead. He moved to the closed door. Mr Riley’s braying laugh sounded, followed by another voice - drawling, self-assured. Victor’s voice.

They would be armed, of course. He was walking head-on into danger. But he had made his decision. He pushed the door inward and entered the cabin.

In the same instant that he saw Victor and Mr Riley he saw Frankie, and the sight of her sent his spirits soaring. He was not too late. She was sitting in a chair against the cabin wall. Now that things were really tough for her, she had lost that little-girl frightened look. She seemed as calm as always and rather bored. She was smoking a cigarette and her legs were crossed. She was refusing to admit a crisis again. And suddenly he didn’t care if she were a crook or not. This girl had more guts than the rest of them put together. Whatever she might be, whatever she had done, she was worth saving.

Immediately in front of her Victor was lolling on a bunk. A revolver dangled from his hand. Against the opposite wall was Mr Riley. He too had a revolver. Senor Gonzales was not there.

As Mark entered, all three of them turned. But only Mr Riley registered emotion with a stertorous gasp. Frankie merely glanced at him through cigarette smoke, and Victor continued to lounge on the bunk as indolently as he had lounged in his crimson-canopied bed in New York. His bright, street-urchin’s eyes, under their thick lashes, watched Mark gravely for a moment. Then he nodded to Mr Riley, who crossed to Mark, frisked him and then moved back to his place by the wall. Then Victor’s handsome face broke into a friendly grin.

‘Well, this is a surprise. You’re supposed to be escaping.’ ‘Yes,’ said Mark. ‘That’s what I gathered.’

‘Ellie asked for it special. We’d all of us do anything for Ellie.’ Victor looked down at the gun in his hand. ‘What happened? Didn’t she write you a note to scram?’

‘She did.’

‘And didn’t Gonzales take you upstairs and leave you there to contact her?’

So he had been shepherded into his escape as thoroughly as that. ‘Yes, he did.’

Victor’s lashes veiled his eyes. ‘Then what the hell are you doing here?’

Mark had never felt less like being devious. Trickery and deceit were so inalienably connected now in his mind with Ellie and the life he had to reject if he was to keep sane. Everything in him wanted to yell out, ‘I’ve come to get Frankie’. But he knew his only hope for saving her lay in playing their game, using the technique which had been developed in him by his catastrophic pursuit of Ellie.

He grinned back at Victor. The grin came quite easily. ‘I’m here,’ he said, ‘because I’ve a couple of scores to settle with Frankie myself. I thought I might be able to help.’

If he could make Victor believe, for a little time, that he was prepared to be an ally, he might put him off his guard long enough at least to grab a gun.

Victor accepted this remark in silence. He pushed himself up on one elbow, the gun still drooping from his fingers.

‘First let’s get one thing straight, baby. Just how much do you know?’

‘Enough.’

‘Ellie told you?’

‘I figured it out myself.’

Victor patted the gun affectionately. ‘You could make things sort of awkward for us. Realize that?’

‘Sure. If I wanted to.’

‘But you’re ready to go along with us?’

‘I’ve followed Ellie this far. Think I’d go back on her now?’

Victor grinned again. ‘Love is a wonderful thing. Okay. So you’re mad with Frankie too. Everyone’s mad with Frankie. What have you got against her?’

‘What haven’t I got against her? She and George kidnapped my wife; they tried to beat me up; they … ‘

‘Okay, okay.’ Victor seemed satisfied. ‘So you’re sticking by us. Fine.’ He pointed with the gun at Frankie. ‘Now, we’ve got this little bitch — thanks to Ellie, thanks to you, thanks to a couple of other people. But she’s only half of what we want. The guy I’m mad at is George. He gets himself in jail. Okay. When he comes out, I give him his job back, and what thanks do I get? He and this smart cookie try a little high jacking routine to the tune of seventy grand.’ He shook his head. ‘Yeah, George is the boy I want.’

Mark knew the truth now - if Victor was to be believed. Frankie was just another crook, teamed up with George to highjack a shipment of Victor’s narcotics. This then was to be a story with no heroine and no role for him as Sir Lancelot. But he had already gone so far down the road of disillusionment that this didn’t alter his decision. However tawdry her racket, Frankie was the girl whom Ellie had been prepared to let die in order to ‘save her marriage’. For that reason alone she had to be rescued at all costs.

Victor was still looking at him. ‘Now, Frankie knows where George is. But Frankie isn’t being very co-operative. You could help a lot, kid, if you know where we could locate him.’

‘Last night he was in Mexico City,’ said Mark. ‘That’s all I know.’

‘That’s all?’

‘Afraid so.’

Victor sighed. ‘That’s too bad. So you know what you’re going to do now? You’re scramming out of here back to your little wife. I’m afraid we’re going to have to make Frankie change her mind. It won’t be nice to watch.’

‘On the contrary,’ said Mark, ‘it’ll be very nice. I think I’ll stick around.’

He had expected the other man to see through that. But Victor seemed to accept it. His black eyes merely showed a faintly surprised interest as if he hadn’t credited Mark with such a laudable lack of squeamishness.

‘Okay, baby. If you want to, stick around. The more the merrier.’

Mark was beginning to feel a faint hope. At least he had established himself as something Victor could understand - a petty, revengeful character with a sadistic desire to watch a girl beaten up. All through the conversation Mr Riley had been standing in silence. If there was a weak spot, he would be it. Mark edged towards him. With a quick spring at the right moment he might succeed in getting his gun.

Victor had risen slowly from the bed and was hitching up his pants. With the revolver in his hand, he turned towards Frankie and moved until he was standing directly in front of her. He looked down at her, smiling his warm, affectionate smile.

‘Okay, sugar. Where’s George?’

Frankie smiled back at him with equally matched sweetness. ‘You’re wasting your breath.’

‘I am, am I?’ Victor gave her a light, almost playful slap on the cheek. It knocked the ash from her cigarette on to the floor. Without the slightest change of expression, Frankie clucked disapprovingly and pointed to the ash.

‘Now look what you’ve done - messing up the pretty carpet.’

For the first time a hint of anger showed on Victor’s face. Mr Riley was watching them both, his heavy cheeks twitching in anticipation. Mark moved the fraction of an inch closer to him. He felt a strange excitement. He remembered the moment last night in the apartment on Bolivar when he had tried to bully Frankie. Frankie didn’t bully easily.
You can’t make people tell things with guns.

Victor was half stooped over the girl. ‘Do I have to begin with the bugs and the flowers? We’ve got you here. We’re going to keep you. You’re not going to get away. You’re going to tell us where George is.’

Frankie took the cigarette out of her mouth and brushed a flake of ash from her skirt. ‘And if I don’t?’

Victor shrugged. ‘This happens - and then that happens. And then, finally, you end up dead.’

‘And,’ murmured Frankie serenely, ‘you end up without George.’

Victor laughed. ‘You think we won’t be able to get him? A little jailbird like that floating around on his own without two cents in his pocket?’