Near the last of the trees I put him carefully down again, got out his gun, broke out the magazine, and counted the rounds. There were too many for what I planned; I left him just three. Then I sneaked forward to the edge of the field.
One of the cops was standing in plain view about a hundred yards away, up to the middle of his thighs in long grass, and staring hard at the trees. I couldn't see the other. I pulled back and went on hands and knees to the road I needed to account for the four earlier shots – and a dead man. I tucked the Mauser into my shoulder and fired two careful shots at the nearest house in the village, a quarter of a mile off. I saw a cloud of dust fall off the wall. Now the cops down there knew they'd been fired at; maybe they'd believe some of the earlier shots had been aimed at them, too.
I crept back to the dead man. The cop was still in the middle of the field, staying out of what he thought was accurate pistol range. With the Mauser and its shoulder-piece, I could have plucked his eyebrows at that range. Well, that was about what I wanted to do. But I would have preferred to know where his partner was.
I propped myself carefully behind a tree, and shouted at him. I told him to come on if he felt brave enough. Gendarmes had killed my father and brother. Now let him try and kill me. I was going to take one with me when I went.
I tried to make it sound crazy; an impression of craziness might help fog up some awkward details. He had half ducked when I started shouting, but stayed in view. I put a shot close enough to his head for him to know I meant him. He threw himself flat.
His partner knelt up suddenly from the grass near him and loosed off his sub-machine-gun in my direction. Sprigs of fir and cones spattered down on my head. That was good enough for me. I let out a long dying scream, ending in a nasty little choked gurgle.
Then I threw the empty Mauser cartridge case into the field, patted the dead man on the shoulder, said: 'That'll teach you to shoot at cops,' grabbed my briefcase, and ran.
I caught up with them just where they were about to re-cross the stream and get to the road. By there, my run had turned into a gentle trot.
Harvey gave me a bleak little smile and said: 'I like the idea, but d'you think it'll fool them for long?' He must have heard all my little performance.
'Long enough, maybe.'
'Sooner or later they'll find the guy got hit by a thirty-eight, not one of their machine-guns.'
'They won't rush a post-mortem on him if they think they already know what happened.'
We splashed across the stream and up into the cover of the wall leading to the road. I looked at my watch and made it just over half an hour since I'd left Miss Jarman. My feet were beginning to remind me that I'd got them wet four times since then. We stumbled on.
Parked in the gateway at the top of the field was a grey Citroen van with corrugated sides and clos pinel painted across its rear doors. Miss Jarman and somebody else were kneeling by the front wheels, pretending to be interested in the tyres.
As we staggered up, blowing like a herd of tired horses, the other person stood up and came quickly to the back of the van. It was Ginette, in a neat grey skirt and a smudged old suède jacket.
And older than when I'd last seen her, twelve years ago -but not twelve years older. Perhaps a gentle weariness in her dark eyes, a slowness and steadiness in her expression. But the same dark-chestnut hair, the soft pale skin that never seemed to be touched by the sun, the same sad amused smile I'd remembered far too well.
She touched my arm. 'Hello, Louis. You haven't changed a bit.'
My legs were soaked to the knees, my jacket and shirt were covered in mould and pine-needles, half my hair was dangling in my face, and half the forest was in my hair. And I had the big Mauser in my hand.
I nodded. 'Maybe I should have.' We started climbing into the back of the van.
FOURTEEN
When the doors opened again, we were on the gravel driveway just in front of the Château.
It was the sort of château that looks like one – to an Englishman. Probably that was why one of the earlier Comtes had built it that way: he wanted something that would make a good picture on his wine labels.
It didn't belong to this part of the country; he'd pinched the idea from up on the Loire. It was a solid piece of fake Gothic, with tall windows and a round tower at each side, with peaked witch's-hat roofs of blue slate that jarred with the warm pink southern stone of the house itself. But that wouldn't show on the neat engraving on the labels, of course.
By now the others had climbed out. I turned to Ginette. 'I don't know if you want any introductions…'
She was looking curiously at Maganhard. 'I think I'd better know,' she said.
I said: 'Mr Maganhard – Ginette, Comtesse de Maris.' Her eyebrows lifted just a fraction at his name. He took her hand, came to attention, and bowed slightly.
I introduced Miss Jarman and Harvey. He wasn't looking his best: the lines on his face weren't any deeper, but the whole face had frozen.
Ginette said: 'I believe you are wounded. If you will go inside, Maurice will bandage you.' I saw the grey-haired, white-jacketed character hovering in the background, up on the terrace in front of the windows. I went up and shook his hand, and the old brown crab-apple face crinkled into a vast grin. We asked each other how things marched, and said they marched as well as one could hope. Then he said it was quite like old times, grinned again, and led Harvey off inside. The others came up on to the terrace. Maganhard said: 'How long are we staying here, Mr Cane? I believe we have gone less than one hundred kilometres today.'
Ginette said: 'We needn't discuss that just now. Giles, will you give Mr Maganhard a drink?' She swung round on the girl. 'My dear, let me show you your room.' She collected Miss Jarman, who was looking a bit pale, and led the way.
Nothing inside the Château seemed to have changed much – but no reason why it should when you've got a big house filled with furniture that's taken a century to collect. The front room on the right as you went in was still a sort of office/drawing-room, and the booze was still tucked away in a solid dark Louis Treize cupboard facing the window.
I peered in at the bottles. 'What'll you have?'
Maganhard said: 'Sherry, if you please.'
'Sorry, the French don't drink the stuff.'
'A weak whisky and soda, then.'
I hauled out a bottle of Scotch and mixed him one. I poured myself three fingers of it, neat.
Maganhard sipped. 'What do you plan now, Mr Cane?'
'I want to cross into Geneva early tomorrow morning -just before dawn.'
'Dawn? Why not before?'
I found a slightly crumpled packet of Gitanes and lit one. 'We've got to cross illegally – we daren't show our passports now. So we've got to wait until night. If we get there just after dark, we'll be stuck in Geneva overnight; it'll be too late to hire a car and I don't like overnight trains. The Swiss don't use them much – we'd be too conspicuous.
'But if we cross just before dawn, we won't have to hang around looking obvious. The streets'll start filling up, we can get moving quickly.'
He frowned into his glass. 'I believe Monsieur Merlin said he would be in Geneva. If we rang him there now, he could have a car waiting for us. So we could cross immediately after dark.'
I shook my head wearily; he wasn't going to like what 1 was going to say. Hell, he probably wasn't going to understand it. 'Things have changed since I spoke to Merlin yesterday. Somebody's been tracing us; they could have done it by tapping Merlin's phone. If so, why shouldn't they be doing the same thing in Geneva?'
'You said the police would not dare do that to an important lawyer.'
'That doesn't apply to the Other Side – and it's them been doing the tracing.'