The Stone Leopard (30 page)

Through the mist he could see a car approaching from the direction of Saverne, its silhouette still too blurred for him to recognize the make of vehicle. He glanced at his watch.

3.15 pm.

Behind him Annette Devaud stood inside the barn, leaning on a window ledge as she tried to see what was happening. The car crawled closer, coming very slowly as though lost, and then he felt sure it was a Renault. Crawling past the concealed entrance to Woodcutter's Farm—now completely invisible because the signboard had been removed—it continued up the highway until it was below where Lennox stood and he was looking down directly on its roof. Pausing for a few seconds, it turned off the highway, vanishing from view as it headed up the mud-track which led to the bluff.

'They're coming up here,' Lennox called out to Madame Devaud. 'Get round here as fast as you can. . .

She hurried out of the barn and round the back of it and Lennox sent her down the thread of a path to the summerhouse. He waited for a second, watching her move down the path sure-footed as a goat before running round to the front of the barn, then he hid himself inside a clump of undergrowth close to the sheer drop and waited. In his right hand he held the Luger.

Vanek drove slowly up the track and beside him Lansky put on a pair of thin and expensive kid gloves. It seemed likely that he would have to throttle the old woman the barman at the Auberge des Vosges had told them lived alone. One kilometre back down the highway they had again asked for directions at the office of a sawmill. 'One kilometre up the highway from here,' they had been told. 'Up an old mud-track. . . .' Driving past the concealed entrance which led to Woodcutter's Farm they had turned up the next track. Turning a corner, they arrived on top of the bluff.

'Something's wrong—look. . .' Vanek nodded towards the Mercedes parked on the bluff. cover you. . . .' They exchanged no more words as Lansky opened the car door very quietly and slipped out. Trained to operate as a team there was no need to say any more as both men grasped the situation; somewhere concealed on the bluff was the man Lansky had bumped into in the rue de 1'Epine, the man who less than an hour ago had tried to kill them by driving them off the road. Inside the car Vanek waited, his own Luger in his hand, waited for any sign of movement while outside the car Lansky studied the lie of the land and noted that the open-ended barn was empty. Crouched inside the undergrowth Lennox couldn't see the man behind the wheel because the Renault had stopped on a rise and the car's bulk hid the second man. Lansky's sudden manoeuvre caught him off-balance.

The Czech sprinted the short distance across the open and disappeared inside the barn. Then, for a minute or two nothing happened, or so it seemed to Lennox. Inside the barn Lansky sought elevation, somewhere high up where he could look down on the whole bluff. Very quietly he began climbing up the inner wall of the barn, using the cross-beams along the wall as steps until he reached a hole where he could peer down into the Mercedes. The car was empty. He scanned the bluff carefully until he found the silhouette of a man crouching in the undergrowth. Then he climbed down again.

With the body of the parked Mercedes between himself and Lennox he crept forward, pausing only once to make a gesture to Vanek. The Czech nodded. Lansky had located the target. Reaching the side of the Mercedes, Lansky opened the door- handle a centimetre at a time, then opened the door itself. He slid behind the wheel and reached for the ignition key he had seen dangling from his barn wall perch. To shoot him the Frenchman would have to stand up—and if he exposed himself to view, Vanek would shoot him first.

Crouched a dozen or so metres behind the rear of the Mercedes, Lennox resisted the almost overwhelming impulse to lift his head, to see what the hell was going on. So far he had heard no sound since the second man had vanished inside the barn. Lansky, who carried in his head the precise location of the crouching man, paused as he touched the ignition key. This was going to have to be very fast indeed. And he was going to have to pull up in time or else the Mercedes would go over the sheer drop with the Frenchman. Either way the unknown man was dead: if he stayed where he was the car would topple him over the brink; if he exposed himself Vanek would kill him with a single shot. Then all four people on the bluff heard it— Madame Devaud waiting in the tiny summerhouse with her heart beating like a drum and the three men above her— heard the distant wail of an approaching police car siren. Lansky didn't hesitate. Turning on the ignition, flipping the gear into reverse, he began moving backwards at speed.

Lennox grasped what was happening instantly. Someone had got into his car. They were going to knock him over the edge. He timed it to a split second, standing up and exposing his silhouette at the moment when it was masked from the Renault by the speeding Mercedes heading straight for him. He had a camera-shutter image of the Mercedes's rear window framing the twisted-round head-and-shoulders of the driver. He fired twice through the centre of the frame, angling his gun downwards, then dived sideways, sprawling on the ground. Both bullets hit Lansky in the back and neither was instantaneously fatal. The spasm of reaction drove his right foot hard down on the accelerator. The Mercedes tore over the shrubberies and went on beyond, arcing into nothingness and then plunging down and down until it hit the highway one hundred feet below.

The police patrol-car, with Boisseau inside and a local driver behind the wheel, was turning into the entrance to Woodcutter's Farm when the Mercedes landed. As the patrol-car changed direction the Mercedes burst into flames.

Vanek had heard the police siren and he reacted as he saw the Mercedes with Lansky inside disappear over the edge; he drove the Renault round in a tight circle so it faced back down the track. A few metres away he saw Lennox sprawl on the ground, then start to get back to his feet. Braking, Vanek grabbed the Luger out of his lap, took instinctive aim and fired. The Englishman was aiming his own pistol when the bullet hit him and he went down again.

Vanek drove down the twisting track at reckless speed but he managed to keep the vehicle under control. When he emerged at the bottom the blazing Mercedes blocked the road to his right, blocking off the patrol-car. He turned left and started driving west along the deserted highway, his mind racing as he worked out what he had to do next. The answer could be summed up in one word: vanish. It was the death of his partner he had just witnessed which gave him the idea. Climbing a steep stretch of highway he came to a point where the road curved sharply with a fence to his right and a warning notice. Dangerous corner. Stopping the Renault just beyond the bend he got out and walked back to the recently-erected fence.

Beyond it the ground dropped away a good two hundred feet to a rock-pile with a canal crossing the field beyond. Vanek ran back to the Renault, switched on the ignition again from outside the car, released the hand-brake, slammed the door shut as the car started moving backwards slowly, and then guided it with his hand on the steering-wheel through the open window.

He had stopped the car on a reasonably level patch of tarmac before the highway went into a further steep ascent so it moved back quite gently for a few seconds as he walked alongside; then the road began to slope down and the car picked up momentum. Vanek had withdrawn his hand from the wheel and the Renault was moving faster when it hit the white- painted fence—erected only to define the edge—broke through and dropped out of sight. He heard it hit the rock-pile with a crunch of disintegrating metal but unlike the Mercedes it did not burst into flames. Satisfied that he had given himself a temporary breathing-space, the Czech left the highway, climbing up into the forest above and began moving back at a trot towards the craggy bluff where Lansky had died.

CHAPTER THREE

MAKING HIS WAY through the woods, following the road below to guide him, Vanek arrived back at a knoll which overlooked the bluff in time to see Madame Devaud being escorted by a squad of men to a patrol-car. There had been a delay while she was guarded in the barn until more patrol-cars, summoned by radio, arrived with men who made a quick search of the wooded area surrounding the bluff. It was Lennox, still conscious and now inside an ambulance, who had warned Boisseau that these men were professional killers that no chance must be taken with the life of Madame Devaud.

By the time Vanek reached the wooded knoll looking down on the bluff the convoy of patrol-cars was ready to leave. Using the small but powerful monocular glass he always carried, hidden behind a clump of pines, the Czech watched while Annette Devaud was escorted to one of the cars. The glass brought her up so close that he saw her head and shoulders clearly in his lens and he reflected that had he been equipped with a telescopic rifle she would be dead by now. Then as though his thought had travelled down to them, the police escort huddled round her and she disappeared behind a wall of uniforms. The range was far too great for him to even contemplate using his Luger.

Crouching on his haunches, Vanek waited as the patrol-cars disappeared down the track, led by the ambulance, and later reappeared on the highway where the mist had now dissolved. Even so, in the late afternoon light the cars were no more than a blur but it was the direction they took which interested him. Towards Saverne.

`The second killer went off the road and down to the edge of a canal,' Boisseau reported to Marc Grelle over the phone from Saverne police headquarters. 'Men should be arriving at the point of the crash just about now. And the Englishman, Lennox, has appeared. It was he, in fact, who shot the first assassin, and was then shot himself. . .'

`He is dead?' the prefect inquired from Paris.

`No, he will be all right, but he will be in hospital for a few days. He has a message for you. A very cautious man, Mr Lennox—I had to show him my card before he would pass on the message through me. He says he believes Madame Devaud can identify the Leopard. . .

`You have Madame Devaud with you ?'

`I can see her from where I am sitting. . . '

Boisseau broke off as the Saverne inspector who had just taken a call on another line signalled to him. Listening for a moment, Boisseau resumed his call to Paris. 'This may be bad news. The Renault—the assassins' car—which went off the highway has now been examined. There was no trace of anyone inside and it appears it may have been tipped off the road deliberately to throw us off the scent. One of the assassins is still at liberty. . .'

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The motor-barge chugged slowly forward out of the mist towards Vanek where he stood waiting for it by the edge of the lonely canal. His breathing was still a trifle laboured from his exertions when he had come down the mountainside from the knoll, making his way through the woods until he cautiously crossed the highway and negotiated the lower slope which brought him to the edge of the canal. He had been walking along the deserted tow-path—keeping well clear of the highway —when he heard the chugging motor coming up behind him.

Gesturing to the man in yellow oilskins and peaked cap behind the wheel at the rear of the barge, Vanek called out `Police' several times, then waited until the barge was steered close enough to the bank for him to jump on board. He showed the leathery-faced bargee his Surete card. 'Are you alone ?' The man assured him he was and pointed out he had already been stopped higher up by policemen who were examining a crashed car. 'How far to the next lock ?' Vanek demanded, ignoring the question. It was six kilometres. ' I'll travel with you,' Vanek told the man. 'I'm looking for the murderer who escaped from that car. . .'

For several minutes Vanek stood behind the man, pretending to watch the fields they were passing through while he observed the way the bargee handled the controls. Idly, as though to pass the time, he asked one or two technical questions as the barge chugged on through a remote section of the canal fogged with drifting mist. Clearing off the mountains, the mist was now settling in the narrow gulch through which the canal passes on its way to the Strasbourg plain. 'Your cap looks like a chauffeur's,' Vanek remarked. 'But then, fair enough, instead of a car you drive a barge. . .' He was still talking when he took out his Luger and shot the man in the back.

Before he threw him overboard Vanek took off his oilskin coat and put it on himself, then he donned the bargee's cap. He used a heavy chain lying on the deck of the barge to weight the body, bringing it up between the legs and over the shoulders. The barge, which he had stopped, was drifting gently as he heaved the weighted corpse over the side; pausing only to watch it sink out of sight under the grey, murky water. He re-started the engine and took up station behind the wheel. A few minutes later a bridge appeared out of the mist with a patrol-car parked in the middle and a policeman leaning over the parapet. The policeman waited until the barge was close.

`Have you seen a man by himself as you came along the canal ?' he shouted down.

`Only a lot of your friends checking a car which drove off the highway,' Vanek shouted back.

The policeman waited, staring down from the parapet as Vanek, looking straight ahead, guided the barge through the archway and continued down the canal. A few minutes later the bridge behind him had vanished in the mist as he saw the faint outline of another bridge ahead. Vanek reckoned he had now moved out of the immediate area where they would be searching for him and in any case he had to leave the barge before he reached the lock. Passing under the bridge, he stopped the barge, hid the oilskin under a coil of rope and climbed the muddy path which took him up to a country road. The cap he had tucked away inside his coat.