Caravan to Vaccares by Alistair MacLean Page A

and in silence behind Bowman and he was just beginning to congratulate himself on how quickly and well she was responding to his training methods when she caught his left arm firmly and hauled him to a stop. Bowman looked at her and frowned but it didn’t seem to have any effect.
    Short-sighted, he thought charitably.
    â€˜We’re safe here?’she asked.
    â€˜For the moment, yes.’
    â€˜Put those cases down.’
    He put the cases down. He’d have to revise his training methods.
    â€˜So far and no farther,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve been a good little girl and I’ve done what you asked because I thought there was possibly one chance in a hundred that you weren’t mad. The other ninety-nine per cent of my way of thinking makes me want an explanation. Now.’
    Her mother hadn’t done much about training her either, Bowman thought. Not, at least, in the niceties of drawing-room conversation. But someone had done a very good job in other directions, for if she were upset or scared in any way it certainly didn’t show.
    â€˜You’re in trouble,’ Bowman said. ‘I got you into it. Now it’s my responsibility to get you out of it.’
    â€˜I’m in trouble?’
    â€˜Both of us. Three characters from the gypsy caravan down there told me that they were going to do me in. Then you. But first me. So they chased me up to Les Baux and then through the village and the ruins.’
    She looked at him speculatively, not at all worried or concerned as she ought to have been. ‘But if they chased you – ’
    â€˜I shook them off. The gypsy leader’s son, a lovable little lad by the name of Ferenc, is possibly still up there looking for me. He has a gun in one hand, a knife in the other. When he doesn’t find me he’ll come back and tell Dad and then a few of them will troop up to our rooms. Yours and mine.’
    â€˜What on earth have I done?’ she demanded.
    You’ve been seen with me all evening and you’ve been seen to give refuge, that’s what you’ve done.’
    â€˜But – but this is ridiculous. I mean, taking to our heels like this.’ She shook her head. ‘I was wrong about that possible one per cent. You are mad.’
    â€˜Probably.’ It was, Bowman thought, a justifiable point of view.
    â€˜I mean, you’ve only got to pick up the phone.’
    â€˜And?’
    â€˜The police, silly.’
    â€˜No police – because I’m not silly, Cecile. I’d be arrested for murder.’
    She looked at him and slowly shook her head in disbelief or incomprehension or both.
    â€˜It wasn’t so easy to shake them off tonight,’ Bowman went on. ‘There was an accident. Two accidents.’
    â€˜Fantasy.’ She shook her head as she whispered the word again. ‘Fantasy.’
    â€˜Of course.’ He reached out and took her hand. ‘Come, I’ll show you the bodies.’ He knew he could never locate Hoval in the darkness but Koscis’s whereabouts would present no problem and as far as proving his case was concerned one corpse would be as good as two any time. And then he knew he didn’t have to prove anything, not any more. In her face, very pale now but quite composed, something had changed. He didn’t know what it was, he just registered the change. And then she came close to him and took his free hand in hers. She didn’t start having the shakes, she didn’t shrink away in horrified revulsion from a self-confessed killer, she just came close and took his other hand.
    â€˜Where do you want to go?’ Her voice was low but there were no shakes in it either. ‘Riviera?
    Switzerland?’
    He could have hugged her but decided to wait for a more propitious moment. He said: ‘Saintes-Maries.’
    â€˜SaintesMaries!’
    â€˜That’s where all the gypsies are going. So that’s where I want to