Harlow said anxiously: ‘I hope she was able to identify her attacker.’
‘Impossible. All she remembers is a masked giant jumping out of a wardrobe and attacking her.
He was carrying a club, she said.’ He put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Excuse me. The police.’
Harlow turned, exhaled a long slow sigh of relief, walked away, passed out through the revolving doors, turned right and then right again, re-entered the hotel through one of the side doors and made his way unobserved back up to his own room. Here he withdrew the sealed film cassette from his miniature camera, replaced it with a fresh one — or one — that appeared to be fresh — unscrewed the back of his cine-camera, inserted the miniature and screwed home the back plate of the cinecamera. For good measure, he added a few more scratches to the dulled black metal finish. The original cassette he put in an envelope, wrote on it his name and room number, took it down to the desk, where the more immediate signs of panic appeared to be over, asked that it be put in the safe and returned to his room.
An hour later, Harlow, his more conventional wear now replaced by a navy roll-neck pullover and leather jacket, sat waiting patiently on the edge of his bed. For the second time that night, he heard the sound of a heavy diesel motor outside, for the second time that night he switched off the light, pulled the curtains, opened the window and looked out. The reception party bus had returned. He pulled the curtains to again, switched on the light, removed the flat bottle of scotch from under the mattress, rinsed his mouth with some of it and left.
He was descending the foot of the stairs as the reception party entered the lobby. Mary, reduced to only one stick now, was on her father’s arm but when MacAlpine saw Harlow he handed her to Dunnet. Mary looked at Harlow quietly and steadily but her face didn’t say anything.
Harlow made to brush by but MacAlpine barred his way.
MacAlpine said: the mayor was very vexed and displeased by your absence.’
Harlow seemed totally unconcerned by the mayor’s reactions. He said: ‘I’ll bet he was the only one.’
‘You remember you have some practice laps first thing in the morning?’
‘I’m the person who has to do them. Is it likely that I would forget?’
Harlow made to move by MacAlpine but the latter blocked his way again.
MacAlpine said: ‘Where are you going?’
‘Out.’
‘I forbid you — ‘
‘You’ll forbid me nothing that isn’t in my contract.’
Harlow left. Dunnet looked at MacAlpine and sniffed.
‘Air
‘We missed something,’ MacAlpine said. ‘We’d better go and see What it was we missed.’
Mary looked at them in turn.
‘So you’ve already searched his room when he was put on the track. And now that his back is turned again you’re going to search it again. Despicable. Utterly despicable. You’re nothing better than a couple of — a couple of sneak-thieves.’ She pulled her arm away from Dunnet. ‘Leave me alone. I can find my own room.’
Both men watched her limp across the foyer. Dunnet said complainingly: ‘Considering the issues involved, life or death issues, if you like, I do consider that a rather unreasonable attitude.’
‘So is love,’ MacAlpine sighed. ‘So is love.’
Harlow, descending the hotel steps, brushed by Neubauer and Tracchia. Not only did he not speak to them, for they still remained on courtesy terms, he didn’t even appear to see them. Both men turned and looked after Harlow. He was walking with that over-erect, over-stiff posture of the slightly inebriated who are making too good a job of trying to pretend that all is well. Even as they watched, Harlow made one barely perceptible and clearly unpremeditated stagger to one side, but quickly recovered and was back on an over-straight course again. Neubauer and Tracchia exchanged glances, nodded to each other briefly, just once. Neubauer went into the hotel while Tracchia moved off after Harlow.
The earlier warm night air had suddenly begun to chill, the coolness being accompanied by a slight drizzle. This was to Tracchia’s advantage. City-dwellers are notoriously averse to anything more than a slight humidity in the atmosphere, and although the Hotel-Villa Cessni was situated in what was really nothing more than a small village, the same urban principle applied: with the first signs of rain the streets began to clear rapidly: the danger of losing Harlow among crowds of people decreased almost to nothingness. The rain increased steadily until finally Tracchia was following Harlow through almost deserted streets. This, of course, increased the chances of detection should Harlow choose to cast a backward glance but it became quickly evident that Harlow had no intention of casting any backward glances: he had about him the fixed and determined air of a man who was heading for a certain objective and backward glances were no part of his forward-looking plans. Tracchia, sensing this, began to move up closer until he was no more than ten yards behind Harlow.
Harlow’s behaviour was becoming steadily more erratic. He had lost his ability to pursue a straight line and was beginning to weave noticeably. On one occasion he staggered in against a recessed doorway shop window and Tracchia caught a glimpse of Harlow’s reflected face, head shaking and eyes apparently closed. But he pushed himself off and went resolutely if unsteadily on his way. Tracchia closed up even more, his face registering an expression of mingled amusement, contempt and disgust. The expression deepened as Harlow, his condition still deteriorating, lurched round a street corner to his left.
Temporarily out of Tracchia’s line of vision, Harlow, all signs of insobriety vanished, moved rapidly into the first darkened doorway round the corner. From a back pocket he withdrew an article not normally carried by racing drivers — a woven leather black-jack with a wrist thong.
Harlow slipped the thong over his hand and waited.
He had little enough time to wait. As Tracchia rounded the corner the contempt on his face gave way to consternation when he saw that the ill-lit street ahead was empty. Anxiously, he increased his pace and within half a dozen paces was passing by the shadowed and recessed doorway where Harlow waited.
A Grand Prix driver needs timing, accuracy and eyesight. All of those Harlow had in super-abundance. Also he was extremely fit. Tracchia lost consciousness instantly. Without as much as a glance at it, Harlow stepped over the prostrate body and strode briskly on his way. Only, it wasn’t the way he had been going. He retraced his tracks for about a quarter of a mile, turned left and almost at once found himself in the transporter parking lot. It seemed extremely unlikely that Tracchia, when he came to, would have even the slightest idea as to where Harlow had been headed.
Harlow made directly for the nearest transporter. Even through the rain and near darkness the name, in (two feet high golden letters, was easily distinguishable: CORONADO. He unlocked the door, passed inside and switched on the lights and very powerful lights they were too, as they had to be for mechanics working on such delicate engineering. Here there was no need for glowing red lights, stealth and secrecy: there was no one who was going to question Johnny Harlow’s right to be inside his own transporter. Nevertheless, he took the precaution of locking the door from the inside and leaving the key half-turned in the lock so that it couldn’t be opened from the outside. Then he used ply to mask the windows so that he couldn’t be seen from outside: only then did he make for the tool-rack on the side and select the implements he wanted.
MacAlpine and Dunnet, not for the first time, were 76 illegally in Harlow’s room and not feeling too happy about it: not about the illegality but what they had found there. More precisely, they were in Harlow’s bathroom. Dunnet had the cistern cover in his hand while MacAlpine held up a dripping bottle of malt whisky. Both men regarded each other, at a momentary loss for words, then Dunnet said: ‘Resourceful lad is our Johnny. He’s probably got a crate hidden under the driving seat of his Coronado. But I think you’d better leave that bottle where you found it.’
‘Why ever should I? What’s the point in that?’
‘That way we
‘I suppose so, I suppose so.’ He looked at the bottle and there was pain in his eyes. the most gifted driver of our time, perhaps the most gifted driver of all time, and now it’s come to this.
Why do the gods strike a man like Johnny Harlow down, Alexis? Because he’s beginning to walk too close to them.’
‘Put the bottle back, James.’
Only two doors away was another pair of unhappy men, one of them markedly so. Tracchia, from the
