Shaw went quickly past the exit, ran up on to the back row of seats where it was wider and he could pass behind the bodies, and, followed by Debonnair and Ackroyd, crouching low so as not to make too good a target — though the men were unlikely to open fire from the ringside, really — slipped down the next gangway but one. He went down towards Karina’s seat. She had watched him come, her face full of hate, but calm and icy cool as she waited for those men to get him. Shaw sat down beside her, pressed his revolver into her ribs through the cover of his pocket, hard.
He said, “That piece of metal, Karina. You know what I mean. And no scenes or I’ll shoot.”
Karina didn’t move. Shaw sweated blood in those next few moments, while the men below struggled past the furious patrons who were now openly doing all they could to hinder them, to give them such kicks as they deserved for behaving in this fashion. The men were hot, dishevelled, staggering about… Karina sat still, disdainful, and suddenly, as the band started up again and a great gasp rose from the crowd, rose and spread, Shaw knew it was now or never — the Kill was imminent, the matador’s sword was ready behind the red cape. Soon, so very soon now, the first fight would be over, the carcase dragged away, the men raking over the blood and sand. The crowd’s attention would wander until the next fight started, the pursuing men would be allowed on their way. Shaw rammed his gun into Karina’s side harder, until he felt the gasp of her breath on his cheek, and he put his left arm round her as though helping her to her feet, and he dragged her bodily up from the seat. As he lifted her out into the gangway, holding her fast, Debonnair went round to her other side. Karina screamed, fought, was unseen, unheard in the din. No one in all that vast, intent mass paid the slightest heed, the band and the swelling Olés from the crowd drowning Karina’s cry.
It was no distance to the exit. As Shaw and the little party plunged down into the cavern-like mouth and ran down the steps the crowd’s increased, stupendous roar, a deluge of sound, told them that the kill had been made. And then they were out into the open.
As they dashed out the hysterical aficionados, now that the fight was over, let the two gunmen past. They went fast for the exit, they and now the other pair of the four, drawing their guns as they ran, silently, and then they too came out into the open.
There was no hope now of getting aboard the Algeciras-Gibraltar ferry.
Shaw had tried five cars before he found one that was unlocked, rushing in desperation from one to the other; and by this time all four of the men were running out. Shaw’s gun came up, and he fired at them as he twisted behind the steering-wheel of the unlocked car. He saw one double up, and then, even before the car doors had slammed, he was on the move, steering between the lines of parked cars and the market-stalls. As he went he heard and felt the thud of bullets hitting the side of the car, and then a low exclamation of pain from Karina. Then he had the car — it was an elderly Citroen, big and heavy and old-fashioned, but he could feel its power potential — through into the clear, and he was getting all he could out of her as he shot into the San Roque road.
Behind him Debonnair said breathlessly, “It’s okay, darling, I’ve got it!”
She sounded triumphant, and he didn’t need to ask what she meant. And he thanked God in his heart; in the panic he’d quite lost sight of the possibility that Karina might not have had that missing part actually on her still — though come to think of it she’d probably consider that the safest and most sensible thing to do — but how wrong she’d been!
He asked, “She all right — she was hit, wasn’t she?”
“Uh-huh… but she’ll live!”
In a cloud of dust he saw the bonnet of a car behind, looming into his mirror. Then two flashes came from the dust-cloud and the handle of his driving door zipped away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Shaw felt that he was on the last lap now, and he meant to make it; his one real, gnawing anxiety was whether or not he’d make it in time, though it was only some twelve miles into Gibraltar by road. He knew well enough what the shipping in Algeciras Bay meant, and all the time he drove that dreadful rhythm was thumping away inside his head. And, as though in sympathy with his thoughts, little Ackroyd alongside him in the front seat began again:
“Dum-da, dum-da, dum-da…"
“Shut up!” Shaw’s long chin jutted.
Ackroyd looked at him, hurt. “Eh, lad, ah was only—”
Shaw said, between his teeth, “I don’t give a damn what you were only. Just shut up, like a good chap, will you?”
There was something in Shaw’s tone that penetrated what still functioned of Ackroyd’s mind, and he subsided into indignant mutterings. Bloody hell, thought Shaw in anguish, is Gibraltar depending on this poor little bloke?
His mouth set in a thin, tight line which brought his chin up, Shaw drove fast, his foot hard down for most of the way, trying to concentrate his whole mind on the job of sending that Citroen for the frontier; his eyes glared redly ahead through the insect-spattered windscreen. He was away from Algeciras in a flash, headed for the Palmones river. He screamed across the bridge, hurtling along the white ribbon of road that tore away beneath his wheels, shaking up his passengers as he took the bends fast, the vehicles in the opposite traffic lane coming up to him like so many scurrying beetles, then sweeping past him with a momentary whoosh of wind and dropping back into the distance behind.
The countryside sped past, ever-changing — mountains, purple as the sun went down gloriously to set, glimpses of the darkening seas beyond the valleys, fields of corn and forests of cork-oak and the eucalyptus-trees between the Palmones and Guadacorte rivers… but, most of all, the great Rock of Gibraltar itself stood out, immense and strong and towering to the eastward for much of the way. In that brilliant sunset the whole Rock glowed a fiery red, the windows of its buildings reflecting back the light in huge pools of spreading flame, just as though the very rock was on fire — was it an omen, that burning redness which enveloped Gibraltar, an omen of the horror to come, a sign?
Shaw forced his mind away from that, concentrated on the road ahead again. But every now and then that magnificent sight would come up before him. And then it was quite dark, and he crashed on behind the twin probing beams of the headlights, never dipping, challenging anyone to stray into his path that night.
The pursuing car was on his tail all the way, its big headlights beaming into his rear window and lighting up the Citroen’s interior like day, sending odd shadows chasing across the windscreen and the roof, vague spears of light which came and went as the following headlights flickered up and down with the sway of the two headlong-rushing vehicles. That car, Don Jaime’s car, seemed neither to gain nor to lose. Shaw wondered what those men intended to do. There were good reasons now why they couldn’t open fire, but they must have something up their sleeves.
Karina sat in a corner, her face quite blank; Debonnair had quietly ripped up some of her own clothing to provide a bandage and tourniquet for Karina’s flesh-wound, which had bled a lot. After that Debonnair kept her revolver pointed at the woman; Karina’s own little jewelled one, together with a knife, had gone out of the window somewhere back by the Palmones river crossing, and some lucky hombre scavenging there one day was going to come into a small fortune… Now and again, as Shaw glanced into his driving-mirror, he saw the odd, appraising looks which Debonnair kept giving Karina sidelong fashion. Shaw smiled rather bitterly to himself; he felt troubled. He knew just what Debonnair must be thinking — after all, whatever she might say to the contrary, it couldn’t be particularly pleasant for her to be sitting alongside a woman who’d been his mistress, and with whom he’d been associated so closely in business and danger as well as pleasure for so long.