stuff, but we got here first. I have it in my car.
`You have what in your car?' from Fredericka.
`Everything he needed except for the weapon, of course, and the other personal items he took down on the following day.' `Such as?' `You don't believe me? You think I'm oaf of detective. Come, I will even buy you lunch at one of my favourite restaurants here. Captain Bond, you accompany the pretty lady, I'll follow. Meet you at the bottom, I have to get these flatfooted policemen out of here. They want to open up the chair lift this afternoon so that the crowds can come up and admire the mountain view.' And gawp at the place where a lady got herself killed.' `What is gawp?' Bodo kept his mouth open, waiting for the reply.
`A lower-class British term for stare. Like gawping at me with your mouth open.' `So. Good, I learn something new. Gawp. Is a good word.' `You don't like him much, do you?' Fredericka asked as they sat, swaying down on the chair lift.
`Cunning as a fox, and he knows far more than is good for him.' Bond reached out and took her hand. `Am I forgiven yet?' `Maybe. Wait and see. I'll tell you tonight.' Ah.' `What interests me, James, is that this policeman seems to know much more than we were led to believe.' `Bozo Lempke.' `His name is Bodo, I think, James.' `I know; but I like the name Bozo better. Bozo the clown. Lempke drove like a short-sighted racing driver well past his prime. Rarely had Bond felt so insecure in a car, and Fredericka looked both white and shaken when the policeman finally pulled up outside a small, Mom and Pop restaurant a few kilometres outside Interlaken.
Being Sunday, when Swiss families tend to eat out, the place was full, but Bodo was known, and they soon found themselves in a private room behind the main restaurant. Lempke waved aside all question of Laura March's death until after they had eaten. `You go into a church to pray,' he muttered, `so you go into a restaurant to eat. This is well-known fact, and I enjoy eating.' This became all too clear over the next hour and a half as he efficiently put down two helpings of raclette, that simple, yet wonderfully aromatic, dish of cheese melted over potato, served with pickled onions and gherkins. He also ate three succulent rainbow trout to Bond's two and Fredericka's one.
Two extra large slices of cherry tart, heaped with cream, followed, and he drank the best part of a bottle of red wine with the meal. It was only when coffee was served that Bodo looked satisfied.
He gave an eccentric wink, rubbed his hands together and announced that they should now get down to business as he really did not have all day to waste.
`My superiors tell me that, as the officer in charge of this case, I am to afford you as much help and information as possible.' He looked from Bond to Fredericka and back again, as though waiting for questions.
`So what did you find hidden up there, in the hole under the bushes, Bodo?' `Everything he couldn't take back down the mountain.
Particularly as he wanted to go down as a different person.' `What d'you mean by everything?' Fredericka leaned forward to light a cigarette.
`Everything he couldn't carry down. It was all stashed up there.
`Such as?' `Such as a large canvas holdall. Very dampened by rain and from its contents.' `Which were?' `Waterproof camouflaged coverall with hood and gloves, battery-warmed waterproof sleepingbag, the remains of food-from what the military call a ratpack and a thermos flask. Also one spare CO2 cartridge, so we know what he was using: a high-powered gas-operated rifle. He also left some special attachments for his shoes. Make himself look taller with them.
`And he came up with it? Anybody see him?' `Sure they saw him.
Coming up and going down. One of the men operating the chair lift has identified him, even though he looked quite different both times.
`How?' `How what?' `How did he look so different?' `His tallness, or shortness, depending which day you're talking about. Here, I have artist's impressions.' He delved into the pigskin folder, which had obviously been restocked since they were up on the mountain, and placed two photographs of line drawings on the table.
The first was of a middle-aged man, slightly oriental in appearance with a short drooping mustache and thick-lensed spectacles.
As the legend at the side of the drawing told them, he was a little over six feet in height. The raincoat looked very English, probably Burberry, reaching down to lower calf length. This man carried a canvas holdall and a thick walking stick.
Lempke touched the drawing with a stubby index finger. `Came up a tall man, wearing a raincoat.' He touched the second drawing. `Went down as a cleanshaved man, around five feet eight inches tall, in black cords and a rollneck, carrying a small rucksack. Too small. If he'd bothered to bring a larger size he could have taken everything back with him.' Certainly the drawing showed someone quite different. Much younger, the face more open. The only thing he had in common with the first drawing was that he also carried the heavy stick.
Lempke smiled, producing a third drawing which he laid between the first two.
`This how he was identified?' Bond's mouth tightened.
`Of course. By his walking stick. Very thick, sturdy, with a brass handle shaped like a duck's head.' `You think that was the `I even know the man's name, for it was the real person who went down or as real as we'll ever get. They identified him at his hotel.
An Englishman by the name of David Docking.
They had his passport details, as did the local police, which is the law. Arrived on the Friday night, dressed as you see him there.' He touched the second drawing. `Only luggage was the rucksack quite small and left on the Saturday morning. The head porter of the Beau-Rivage, where he stayed, saw his air ticket. He was due to fly from Zurich on a British Airways flight on the Saturday evening, so it won't surprise you that nobody called David Docking was on that particular flight. Mr Docking left the Hotel Beau-Rivage at ten o'clock on the Saturday morning, and has not been seen, or heard of, since. `So, Mr Docking went up the mountain on Thursday morning. .
`Afternoon. Around four in the afternoon.
`Went up on Thursday afternoon, looking like a middle-aged man with a walking stick. Holed up there overnight, and came down, as himself, on the Friday, when he booked into the Beau-Rivage.
Lempke nodded slowly. `That's how he did it.
One of the men who help people into the chairs noticed the unusual walking stick on the Thursday.
He was also on duty during the Friday afternoon, and his eye caught the stick again. 'Hallo,' he said to himself. 'A lot of people are going around with thick sticks with brass duck's head handles.'
Bond grunted, thinking, yes, there was an elderly man with a stick just like that in Washington only two days before Laura March died.
Mentally he made a note to check out flights.
Could the elderly man with the stick and the funny hat, caught on film near the White House on the Wednesday, have been the same man who took the chair lift at Grindelwald on the Thursday? The timing would work, and he had little doubt that it could be done easily.
`You see, my little pink cells have worked overtime. The man was already waiting for his victim, and he was quite prepared to suffer minor discomfort like a night out in the rain on a bare hillside to get her.
Fredericka spoke. `You think she was a definite victim? The target?
You don't think she could have just got unlucky? That David Docking, or whatever he's called, waited for the first good random target?' `Even in the rain there were quite a lot of people up there on the Thursday, Fraulein von Grusse.
No, this joker-is right in English, joker? waited rot one person.
He waited in cold and rain for Laura March.
`Then he must have been pretty certain that she'd turn up,' Bond mused.
`One hundred percent certain. My pink cells tell me she was the target, and he waited for her only.
He knew she would turn up. `As you are the police officer in charge of the case, d'you think you're ever going to catch him?' `Docking, or whatever his real name is? Oh no.
No, I won't catch him. Already I think he has long left Switzerland. In any case, I am to hand over my report to your Scotland Yard people, Captain Bond, so that they can take the case forward. As soon as the inquest is over, tomorrow, I act only in an advisory capacity. Had you not been told this?' `No. There was some anxiety in certain quarters that Scotland Yard should be kept out.' Lempke nodded ponderously. `So, yes. Yes, I understand this, but all is changed as from a very short time ago. The instructions were waiting for me when I came down from First. Really I'm talking to you as a little favour.
