In the same spirit, I'd got myself a black turtleneck sweater and a sharp-looking cap. A night of hard driving, and some exposure to rain at various stops, had done the rest, giving us both an authentically shabby, wrinkled, tough, and careless look to go with the jazzy, mud-splashed little car.
As we made our way back along the hillside toward a point from which we should be able to get a view of the road and the wrecked Mercedes, I couldn't help feeling that we'd got a long way from London and civilization in relatively few hours. Driving, I hadn't quite realized how wild the country had become, particularly since we'd turned westward off what seemed to be the main tourist trail, shortly after passing through the town of Inverness, at the end of Loch Ness.
With a little sleep under my belt and nothing on my mind I could really have appreciated the scenery around us. Even under the unfavorable circumstances, I managed to notice that it was pretty spectacular. The vegetation was tough and low and windswept, gray-green in color, with few real trees. All around us, steep mountains rose up into the low-hanging clouds. I had to keep reminding myself that we weren't more than a couple of thousand feet above sea level. The place had that high-country feel that you get in the Rockies above ten thousand feet.
We reached our vantage point in time to witness Madame Ling, her associate, and her chauffeur being invited to climb into the cab of a big truck-excuse me, lorry- that had just stopped, or been stopped, at the scene of the accident. The chauffeur held a stained handkerchief to the side of his face; the others seemed unhurt. At the distance, I couldn't make out their features clearly, but I could see that Madame Ling was smaller than I'd expected-I guess I'd visualized a tall, slinky, Oriental menace. Instead I saw a slight little black-haired woman dressed in smart Occidental clothes, including a mink coat that would have bought a lot of oil for the lamps of China. The cab door slammed and the big truck started up and took them away toward the east.
I said, "They'll probably have him drop them off back in Inverness. I don't think it's any use trying to tail them. They'll be watching for that. How old is Madame Ling?"
Vadya shrugged. "Those smooth-faced yellow bitches have no age, darling. She's over twelve and under eighty. Why, does she attract you?"
"Yeah, like a snake," I said. "I don't like small, subtle women. Big obvious ones are much nicer." Vadya made a face at me, and I grinned and said, "I guess it's safe to go down there now. They aren't likely to double back in that rig. Even if they held a gun on the driver, he couldn't get it turned around on this road."
A bunch of shaggy, black-faced sheep scattered warily as we scrambled down the slope. Reaching the Mercedes, I was surprised at the amount of damage my.38 had done to the window and windshield until I realized that somebody in the Ling party had carefully obliterated all recognizable bulletholes with a rock, to avoid a lot of awkward explanations. On the right side, which had hit the bank, there was a shattered headlight, a bent wheel and front suspension, and some scraped and dented body work. In a way, it was too bad. It was a handsome car.
There was nothing significant inside, just the usual meticulous Mercedes trimmings and upholstery. The keys had been left in the ignition. This caused me a little worry, lest Madame Ling had anticipated our return and set a boobytrap or two, but nothing blew when I took the keys, when I inserted the proper one in the trunk lock, or when I raised the lid. Except for the spare tire and tools, there was nothing in the trunk.
I drew a long breath. I guess I had actually hoped to find something, or somebody. Well, at least it wasn't totally bad news, like a dead body. I straightened up slowly and looked at Vadya.
"So much for your bright idea," I said. "No blood, no bobby pins, no blonde hairs. Two will get you twenty nobody's been carried anywhere in that trunk, dead or alive."
Vadya moved her shoulders easily under the leather jacket, beaded with fine rain. "It seemed like a logical possibility, darling."
"Uhuh, logical," I said. I took the keys from the trunk and tossed them to her. "Put those back in the ignition, will you, doll?"
As she turned away, I took a small metallic object from my pocket and stuck it onto the metal under the lip of the trunk, before I slammed the lid. Colonel Stark might be a little surprised to find his magnetic beeper attached to the wrong car, but I hoped he'd take the hint, when his homing devices led him here, and check up on the damaged sedan and its owner. With his resources, he'd have a greater possibility of getting something that way than we would, but I wasn't optimistic about his chances. Madame Ling would undoubtedly cover her tracks well.
Still, it left somebody with a clue of sorts to follow, if the two of us should fail. I walked forward and found Vadya leaning far into the car to examine the glove compartment.
"Now, that's a hell of an inviting position for a lady to assume," I said. "Find anything?"
She shook her head, backing out and turning to face me. She looked at me rather sharply, and glanced back towards the closed trunk as if suspecting that she might have missed something, but I saw no reason to tell her what I'd done. Her yearning for international cooperation probably wasn't strong enough to include the British. In fact, I rather doubted it was strong enough to include me, in any permanent way.
That doubt had grown stronger since I'd discovered that the Mercedes trunk had been empty. I mean, it had contained no small blonde girls, living or dead, but it had contained no luggage, either, and none had been transferred to the truck that had taken the Ling party away. And a smart-looking woman like Madame Ling would hardly have visited London without at least one well-filled suitcase.
The implication was that she had not just come up from the south ahead of us as Vadya had been so careful to suggest; instead she'd come driving to intercept us from somewhere right here in Scotland, close enough that she'd seen no need to bring even an overnight bag. Madame Ling might not have been in London, kidnapping people, for months. After all, the only one who positively claimed to have identified her there was Vadya…
chapter FOURTEEN
It was Vadya who suggested that we stop for the night, pointing out that we'd hardly be in shape to cope with any serious problems if we didn't get some rest soon. I didn't believe her reasons, but I didn't argue with her suggestion. The place we picked, although it called itself a hotel, was actually a kind of slant-roofed, two-story mountain lodge, located well off the road in a hollow next to a wide, shallow, rocky, fast-running stream. It seemed to be a dual-purpose hostelry, catering to fishermen in summer and skiers in winter. Several trees grew in the hollow, giving the place a sheltered look by contrast with the bleak surrounding moors and mountains.
There were about a dozen cars in the parking area. Numbers of the black-faced Scottish sheep grazed around the hotel. They were just about the wooliest beasts I'd ever seen, like ambulating haystacks. The nearest ones paused to watch us thoughtfully as we parked and went inside, where a man in tweeds rented us a second-floor room for the night and told us that the bathroom was at the end of the hall, that dinner was already being served, and that we'd get breakfast at seven-thirty in the morning. Here, as elsewhere in Britain, breakfast was included in the price of the room.