The aftermath of the avalanche commanded only the inside pages. Rumours of a shooting on the mountain had been dropped; and Packer’s original conviction — that the Ruler’s influence, together with the Swiss determination to avoid scandal, would abort the story before it was even stillborn — seemed proved. It all depended on how the Ruler would now react, following the escape of his three would-be assassins.
Packer waited until the shops opened, bought a beach hat, espadrilles and bathing trunks; then located the central Post Office, two streets away. It was too early to expect a reply from Pol, but he wanted to get his bearings and make sure of what time the office closed.
Next he found the bus terminal and looked up the schedules to Valras-Plage and Montpellier. From now on he was going to avoid taxis. And with nothing else to do, he intended to get in plenty of swimming, so that he would at least be physically fit, if still morally wounded, by the time Pol’s answer came.
He took the first bus to Valras-Plage. It was a clean white town with restaurants and cafés built out on to the sand. There was already a holiday atmosphere, without being crowded. Along the beach were stalls selling mussels and crepes. The sea was still cold and sharp breezes stiffened the flags along the front.
When he returned to Béziers that evening, he called at the Poste Restante, at 7.55. Nothing from Pol.
There was nothing from Pol for the next five days. The newspapers had also dropped the story of the two murdered men in the panel-truck in Näfels. On the fourth day, however, Le Monde reported that the Ruler was cutting short his vacation in Klosters and returning to Mamounia, where there were rumours of political unrest.
On the sixth day Packer began to wonder if he wasn’t wasting his time. In spite of Pol’s insistent misgivings in the Silvretta Hotel on that last night, Packer considered whether the Ruler would not have to be a fanatic and a paranoid to want to hunt them down now.
What made him delay in Béziers, apart from exhaustion and inertia, was the knowledge that Pol would eventually contact him so that they could each collect their share of the half-million pounds. When he called at the Post Office that morning there was still nothing. But Packer was not discouraged; however much Pol had already been paid, he would be just as eager as Packer to draw on their joint account.
That day it clouded over, with a strong wind, and he had lunch inside his usual restaurant, behind the glass-fronted terrace on the beach. He had finished reading Le Monde and was drinking his coffee, when he was aware of someone watching him.
‘Monsieur, je vous demande pardon.’ The man had pulled his chair sideways from the next table, and was pointing at the folded newspaper beside Packer’s bottle of Vichy. ‘May I trouble you to borrow your paper?’
‘Not at all.’ As Packer handed it to him he realized that apart from the couple who ran the hotel and the clerk at the Poste Restante, this was the first person who had spoken to him in nearly a week. Instinctively he pulled down his sunhat, adjusted his dark glasses, which he had worn religiously since that first morning, and brushed a forefinger over his young moustache.
He was afraid, for a moment, that he was going to be engaged in conversation. He drank his coffee, called for the bill; but when he glanced across, he saw the man intent on the paper, studying the financial page. He was a thin bony man, middle-aged, in a white shirt, shorts, plimsolls, and one of those caps with a flap over the neck which racing cyclists wear. He looked up only when Packer had settled his bill.
‘Monsieur, your newspaper.’
Packer gave him a nod. ‘That’s all right, you can have it. I’ve read it.’ He felt vaguely puzzled as he walked out of the restaurant, and as he waited for the bus he felt a distinct unease. Something about the man — that absurd costume, perhaps?
He found a seat at the back of the bus and slept almost into Béziers, waking with a stiff neck and a headache. The afternoon had grown prematurely dark, with the sullen smell of an approaching storm. Gusts of wind swept along the pavements. Across the street was a big hoarding advertising bonds in some industrial development.
It was as though an electric current had passed through him. Christ, what a fool I’ve been! he thought. The financial pages, of course! It was so obvious that it might have been a sign. A sign of what? For him to make the first move, perhaps?
The first drops of rain were splashing on the pavement and he began to run. He reached the Post Office just as the storm broke. At the Poste Restante counter, he heard the rain drumming against the windows.
Both the morning and afternoon clerks knew him well enough by now not to ask for his passport, although he always carried it. The clerk was a waspish little man who gave a now familiar shrug. ‘Rien?’ asked Packer.
‘Rien.’
Packer nodded and turned away. The marble hall was now full of the boom and sizzle of rain, and a crowd had come in for shelter. Packer stopped halfway across the floor and stood looking at a row of telephone kiosks marked ‘Internationaux’; then suddenly walked up to the woman at the desk and asked how long
