Chavasse hit him across the face with the gun twice, knocking him to the floor. He squatted beside him and said pleasantly, “Get the girl’s money. I haven’t got much time.”
Skiros produced a key from his trouser pocket, dragged himself to a small safe beside his bunk and opened it. He took out a bundle of notes and tossed them across.
“You can do better than that.” Chavasse pushed him to one side, reached inside the safe and picked up a black cashbox. He turned it upside down and two or three bundles of notes flopped to the floor. He stuffed them into his pocket and grinned.
“There’s a lesson in this for you somewhere, Skiros, and worth every penny.” He tapped him on the forehead with the barrel of the Smith amp; Wesson. “And now the address-the real address-where we can catch a boat for the Channel crossing.”
“Go to Saint Denise on the Brittany coast near the Gulf of Saint Malo,” Skiros croaked. “Saint Brieuc is the nearest big town. There’s an inn called the Running Man. Ask for Jacaud.”
“If you’re lying, I’ll be back,” Chavasse said.
Skiros could barely whisper. “It’s the truth, and you can do what the hell you like. I’ll have my day.”
Chavasse pushed him back against the wall, stood up and went out. The girl was waiting anxiously at the head of the gangway. She had a scarf around her head and wore a plastic raincoat.
“I was beginning to get worried,” she said, in her soft, slightly singsong voice.
“No need.” He handed her the bundle of notes he had taken from Skiros. “Yours, I think.”
She looked up at him in a kind of wonder. “Who are you?”
“A friend,” he said gently, and picked up her suitcase. “Now let’s get moving. I think it would be healthier in the long run.”
He took her arm, and they went down the gangway together.
CHAPTER 4
France
They caught the night express to Brest with only ten minutes to spare. It wasn’t particularly crowded. Chavasse managed to find them an empty second-class compartment near the rear, left the girl in charge and ran to the station buffet. He returned with a carton of coffee, sandwiches and a half dozen oranges.
The girl drank some of the coffee gratefully, but shook her head when he offered her a sandwich. “I couldn’t eat a thing.”
“It’s going to be a long night,” he said. “I’ll save some for you for later.”
The train started to move, and she got up and went into the corridor, looking out over the lights of Marseilles. When she finally turned and came back into the compartment, a lot of the strain seemed to have left her face.
“Feeling better now?” he asked.
“I felt sure that something would go wrong, that Captain Skiros might reappear.”
“A bad dream,” he said. “You can forget it now.”
“Life seems to have been all bad dreams for some time.”
“Why not tell me about it?”
She seemed strangely shy, and when she spoke, it was hesitantly at first. Her name was Famia Nadeem, and he had been wrong about her age. She was nineteen. Born in Bombay, her mother had died in childbirth and her father had immigrated to England, leaving her in the care of her grandmother. Things had gone well for him, for he now owned a prosperous Indian restaurant in Manchester and had sent for her to join him three months before, on the death of the old woman.
But there had been snags of a kind with which Chavasse was only too familiar. Under the terms of the Immigration Act, only genuine family dependents of Commonwealth citizens already in residence in Britain could be admitted without a work permit. In Famia’s case, there was no formal birth certificate to prove her identity conclusively. Unfortunately there had been a great many false claims, and the authorities were now sticking rigorously to the letter of the law. No absolute proof of the claimed relationship meant no entry, and Famia had been sent back to India on the next flight.
But her father had not given up. He had sent her money and details of an underground organization that specialized in helping people in her predicament. She was disconcertingly naive, and Chavasse found little difficulty in extracting the information he required, starting with the export firm in Bombay where her trip had commenced, passing through Cairo and Beirut, and culminating in Naples with the agents who controlled the
“But why did you give Skiros all your money?” he asked.
“He said it would be safer. That there were those who might take advantage of me.”
“And you believed him?”
“He seemed kind.”
She leaned back in her seat, head turned to look through her own reflection into the darkness outside. She was beautiful-too beautiful for her own good, Chavasse decided. A lovely, vulnerable young girl on her own in a nightmare world.
She turned and, catching him watching her, colored faintly. “And you, Mr. Chavasse? What about you?”
He gave her his background story, cutting out the criminal bit. He was an artist from Sydney who wanted to spend a few months in England, which meant working for his keep, and there was a long, long waiting list for permits. He wasn’t prepared to join the queue.
She accepted his story completely and without any kind of query, which was bad, considering that it was so shot full of holes. She leaned back again and gradually her eyes closed. He reached for his trench coat and covered her. He was beginning to feel some kind of responsibility, which was really quite absurd. She was nothing to him- nothing at all. In any case, with any kind of luck, things would go through pretty smoothly once they reached St. Denise.
But what would happen when they arrived on the English coast and Mallory acted on his information? She’d be on her way back to Bombay for good. They’d never allow her into the country again after an attempt at illegal entry. Life could be very difficult at times. Chavasse sighed, folded his arms and tried to get some sleep.
They reached St. Brieuc just before five o’clock in the morning. The girl had slept peacefully throughout the night, and Chavasse awakened her just before they arrived. She disappeared along the corridor, and when she returned, her hair was combed neatly into place.
“Any hot water down there?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I prefer cold in the morning. It freshens you up.”
Chavasse ran a hand over the hard stubble on his chin and shook his head. “I’m not too fond of being skinned alive. I’ll shave later.”
The train glided into St. Brieuc five minutes later. They were the only passengers to alight. It was cold and desolate and touched with that atmosphere peculiar to railway stations in the early hours of the morning the world over. It was as if everyone had just left.
The ticket collector, well protected against the chill morning air by a heavy overcoat and muffler, looked ready for retirement. He was the kind of man who seemed indifferent to everything, even life itself, and the pallor of his skin, coupled with his constant, repetitive coughing, boded ill. He answered Chavasse with a kind of frigid civility, as if his attention was elsewhere.
St. Denise? Yes, there was a bus to Dinard that would drop them within a mile of St. Denise. It left at nine o’clock from the square. They would find a cafe there that opened early for the market people. Monsieur Pinaud was not one to miss trade. He subsided once more into his own cheerless world, and they moved on.
RAIN drifted across the square as they went down the steps and crossed to the lighted windows of the cafe. It was warm inside, but not busy. Chavasse left the girl at a table by the window and moved to the zinc-topped bar.
A middle-aged balding man in striped shirt and white apron, presumably the Monsieur Pinaud referred to by the ticket collector, was reading a newspaper. He pushed it to one side and smiled. “Just off the train?”
