As soon as the chopper settled on the yard and the blades began to slow, the side door slid open and an armed man in military fatigues jumped out, followed by two men in whites. Stretchers and medical equipment were unloaded and within thirty seconds the doctor had taken over caring for Dave from Liz and Seurat. Before long Dave was strapped to the stretcher, drugged now with a morphine injection, a drip in his arm, and loaded into the helicopter. The doctor quickly turned his attention to Laval, who had been hit high in the collarbone. He too was strapped to a stretcher and loaded on board.
Liz, Martin Seurat and the two commandos stood in the courtyard looking up as the helicopter lifted away. As the noise died down, Gilles came over and spoke to Seurat. ‘L’autre, monsieur?’ was all Liz could hear above the deafening whirr of the chopper.
‘L’autre?’ asked Seurat, frowning with incomprehension.
‘Oui, oui. L’autre. Le troisième. Où est-il?’ said the commando insistently.
‘He means Milraud,’ said Liz, suddenly conscious of what the commando was saying. ‘Where is he?’
Seurat froze, a look of anguish on his face. ‘He’s gone. He slipped away while I was focused on what was happening in the courtyard.’
‘Oh no,’ said Liz. ‘Just when you thought you’d got him.’
‘He can’t have got very far,’ said Seurat. ‘Radio to the team at the ferry and alert them,’ he ordered Gilles. ‘I’ll call for air surveillance. He knows the island well but it’s pretty small, and if he can’t get off it I’m sure we’ll soon track him down.’
59
But they didn’t. All day helicopters hovered over the island of Porquerolles and the surrounding sea. Some had heat-seeking equipment that flushed out a couple of cyclists, a walker, and two lovers furious to be disturbed from above. But no Milraud.
Gendarmerie had been recruited from as far as Marseilles to search the mainland ferry port and the nearby town of Hyères. The CRS had sent a platoon to go through the empty houses and hotels on the island, and the navy had been patrolling a two-mile sea perimeter around the island. But the results for all these seekers, on land and at sea, was so far the same: no Milraud.
As Liz sat in the naval base canteen in Toulon the next afternoon, watching through the window the daily life of the base going on outside, she gave a silent prayer of thanks for the hundredth time that Dave had survived. Although Martin Seurat was furious that Milraud seemed to have escaped, Milraud had not been her priority.
She’d been to see Dave that morning in the base hospital. He was drowsy with morphine but he’d given Liz a weak smile as she came in. ‘I’ll be fine again sooner than you know,’ he’d declared, and Liz had refrained from sharing with him what the doctor had told her the day before – a half-inch higher, and the bullet fired by Gonzales would have killed him. A close call then, but Dave would be well enough to be flown back to hospital in London the next morning. As it was, he had a deep gunshot wound, two broken ribs, and a persisting concussion to show for his involuntary stay in the Ile de Porquerolles. Liz wondered if he’d be sent back to Belfast after recuperating, and hoped so. Life there would not be the same without him.
‘I suppose I’ll be in trouble when I get back,’ Dave had said ruefully. ‘Judith warned me not to go back to Milraud’s shop and she was right. I can’t think what I was doing.’
‘Don’t worry, Dave. Everyone will just be delighted you’re alive.’
‘Do we actually know what Piggott and Milraud were trying to achieve?’
She’d given him a look of mock-sternness, like a ward sister with a recalcitrant patient. ‘There will be lots of time for that. Right now, you just concentrate on getting better.’
‘Okay, okay. But I can’t do that till I know what it was all about. Why did they bring me all the way down here if they were going to end up shooting me? Did they have a plan?’
‘Hard to say. Our French colleague Martin Seurat thinks they panicked and made it up as they went along. His guys found two laptops in the farmhouse. They’d been sending emails to somebody. They may tell us what the plan was, but it will take a bit of time to unscramble it all. And that’s all I’m telling you now. Go back to sleep; I’ll see you in the UK.’
Now as she watched some workmen erecting a grandstand on the parade ground, her mind still on the dramatic events of the day before, she felt a hand on her shoulder and a voice asked quietly, ‘Where are we now?’ Martin Seurat sat down at the table opposite her.
‘I was just thinking about our mysterious Monsieur Milraud. How did he get away and where has he gone?’
‘There’s some news about that. We’ve been conducting a house-to-house search on the island – and it appears that a summer cottage on the outskirts of the village has been broken into. Nothing’s been taken, but some food from the freezer was heated up in the kitchen. We’ve also just heard from the harbour master that a resident in the village reported his skiff’s been stolen from a small jetty near the harbour.’
‘When was this?’
‘The owner can see the skiff from his house, but he was off the island yesterday. When he got back this morning, it wasn’t there. We think Milraud may have taken it some time yesterday, before the cordon round the island was in place. They’re looking for it now along the mainland coast.’
‘Where would Milraud head for?’
‘He could go anywhere, especially since I think he had help once he reached the mainland. I’ve just come back from his house in Bandol – Annette Milraud has disappeared as well. We had surveillance outside the house but she fooled them. We found her maid tied up in the kitchen.’
‘The maid?’
‘She’d been there since last night – mon dieu, was she cross! Especially as she was in her underwear.’
‘What?’ asked Liz, laughing.
‘Annette made her take her clothes off, then she put them on herself, before driving away in the maid’s car. Our surveillance thought she was the maid going home and didn’t stop her. They are very embarrassed – I’m not surprised. They should have been onto a trick like that.’ He frowned and shrugged. ‘But it’s too late now. She’s gone.’
‘Presumably the car will be stopped soon.’
‘It’s been found already. Parked in Cannes. We think they must have a safe house there. Knowing Milraud, he’ll have a set of false documents too.’
‘So where do you think they’ll go?’
‘Somewhere far away – like South America. Or perhaps one of the former Soviet Union states. But Milraud will pop up again – give him time. Annette will grow dissatisfied with life in a backwater, and the lure of the arms trade will have Antoine back in circulation. He’ll need the money too. I would say my hopes of catching him have been deferred, not destroyed.’
Seurat brushed his chin thoughtfully with one hand. ‘You know, it’s a very strange feeling, sitting here talking like this – I mean, after so much événement only yesterday. It seems slightly unreal.’
Liz nodded. ‘I know. I feel the same.’
‘I was considering taking a few days off. If only to readjust oneself to the obvious fact that life goes on.’
Liz laughed. ‘That sounds like a good idea. What are you thinking of doing?’
Seurat paused, then said lightly, ‘There’s a little hotel I know. Not far from here, up in the hills – a beautiful setting, though the hotel itself is nothing fancy. Still, it has excellent food, and the walks are simply wonderful. At this time of year, you’re beginning to see the first signs of spring. It starts early in the south.’