Читать книгу Streaking - Brian Stableford - Страница 6

CHAPTER FOUR

The journey downhill was even more rapid than the journey up, but it still gave Canny time to think.

Had he noticed anyone in the casino who might be the spotter for the thief? No.

Could it possibly be anyone he knew? Certainly not.

In another life, Stevie Larkin might easily have become a petty criminal, but in this one he was a star; he probably didn’t know what Canny knew about the casino’s security, but that wasn’t an issue.

Could the cab driver have been involved? No. He would have recognized the bag for what it was, and would have known that it must contain a tidy sum, but he certainly did know what Stevie didn’t about the kind of resources Meurdon could mobilize.

It had to be someone far less obtrusive than the driver or any of the players at the table, and far more reckless—almost certainly outsiders; almost certainly nomads. What kind of accent had the thief had? Impossible to tell, from just two words, just as it was impossible to be sure whether it had been a man or a woman.

It wasn’t until all these thoughts had run helter-skelter through his head that Canny began to curse himself, silently, for being such a fool. Even if he had done the right thing in letting the thief take the money instead of chancing the Kilcannon luck in some kind of lunatic defensive exercise, he had been a fool. He had said nothing; he had observed no more than was superficially obvious. If he had only persuaded the mugger to issue a further warning or instruction, he might have had a far better chance of identifying his country of origin. If he had only looked harder, more searchingly, at the cut of the black clothing, or the dimensions of the automatic pistol, he might have identified some telling detail that would assist in the hunt.

Henri Meurdon wouldn’t come back to him for more information, of course—Meurdon had his pride, and his own brand of serene confidence—but it wouldn’t have done the least harm to his own image had he been able to take out his mobile phone now, call the casino, and say: “Oh, by the way, there’s one crucial detail I didn’t mention before....”

Mobile phones were banned from the casino, of course, but the spotter must have had one. Whether he had used it inside or waited until he was clear, he must have moved with suspicious rapidity to a place where he couldn’t be observed. Meurdon would surely pick him up on the CC-TV tape—and the casino’s system was state-of-the-art, far more capable of facilitating an identification than anything to be found in an all-night petrol station, or even a bank. If the spotter didn’t get out of Monte very quickly, the Union Corse would be on to him in a matter of hours—and he and his companions would have to travel fast and far to exceed their eager reach.

Was it conceivable, Canny wondered briefly, that the spotter might be making his escape by the same route as he was? Lissa Lo couldn’t possibly be involved in the robbery, but she must have had her own minders at the casino, who would be with her still. She was too valuable a property, with or without her winnings, to be allowed to wander around the Monte Carlo waterfront at four o’clock in the morning without protection. It didn’t seem likely that her bodyguards would cross that kind of line, though—or that they’d have had some kind of set-up in place, waiting for an opportunity to strike.

It took a while, but he finally arrived at the logical end-point of the postmortem, which was that he should never have placed the three fatal bets.

Don’t bring down the lightning. Not, at least, for an item of cheap showmanship like the one he’d pulled. Even a midfielder like Stevie Larkin had been able to see that it was a stupid symbolic gesture—a silly farewell to a childish lifestyle, inspired by the fact that Mummy’s bad news had hit him harder than he cared to admit.

He’d known that his father’s death was coming soon enough, of course, but he hadn’t been ready for it at all. The timing was unexpected, but that was a matter of detail. The simple fact was that he hadn’t been ready for it at all. It meant too much to him. He’d been in denial. This whole trip had been a symptom of his denial. In his own eccentric fashion, he had been asking for some sort of rude awakening; he ought to be grateful that it was just a common-or-garden-robbery by some idiot who should have known better, which might not even cost him forty-seven thousand Euros. Once the Union got on to the case they’d probably pay him back the full amount, less a ten-per-cent commission, even if the stolen money had been half-spent by the time they caught up with the perpetrators—and in spite of the fact that he wouldn’t dream of insisting that they make any kind of redemption, or make any kind of a fuss if they didn’t. The Union had an image and a reputation to maintain, and its members were doubtless even more fanatical in its defense than they had been in the days before Communism had collapsed.

Lissa Lo’s boat was still moored at the end of its jetty when the cab came to a halt on the quay; there were still ten minutes to spare before the deadline the supermodel had set.

Canny gave the driver a hundred-Euro tip, and thanked him sincerely for his effort.

“You’re welcome, Monsieur,” the driver assured him. “Bon voyage.”

Canny was slightly disappointed—but also slightly relieved—when the purser showed him to a cabin, and apologized for the fact that Miss Lo had already retired to her own, in order to rest for a while before boarding the jet. Canny tried to take a nap himself, but even if the heat hadn’t been so oppressive there was far too much buzzing in his head to let him rest, even though none of it was streaky in a meaningful sense.

He made every effort to put the mugging out of his mind, but that still left thoughts of his dying father to clash inconveniently with images of Lissa Lo, all caught in the net of an acute awareness that his former way of life was coming to an irrevocable end, within a maelstrom of possibilities and impossibilities that was dragging him inexorably along into an unanticipatable future.

Okay, he thought, as he tried to focus his mind. So she isn’t in any hurry to make beautiful music. Maybe she is just offering me a lift because Daddy’s at death’s door. I’d still be ahead of the game. On the other hand, if this were the beginning of a friendship that might turn into a relationship...well, there are cases to which the rules simply can’t apply. Some women are just too gorgeous to pass up, if the opportunity arises.

He had never been in love. He didn’t know whether that was an aspect of his consistent good luck or not. If it was, the reduction of his luck to its lowest ebb following is father’s death—if the testimony of the records could be trusted on that point—might give him the opportunity to fall head over heels. If not...the opportunity might still be there. It wouldn’t be sensible to fall in love with someone as beautiful as Lissa Lo, of course, but if he were to receive the slightest encouragement, being sensible would be the last thing on his mind. How Stevie Larkin would envy him, in spite of all the groupies he entranced with every spot-kick!

The boat was fast; it skimmed over the placid waters of the Mediterranean with consummate grace, bumping over the waves in a near-regular rhythm that set up a surreal contrapuntal relationship with the throb of its motor. The darkness of the cabin enhanced the insistence of Canny’s remaining senses, which gave the journey a dreamlike quality even though he never did manage to drift off into sleep. Eventually, he got up from the bunk so he could stare out of the porthole. He was on the starboard side of the boat, so he could see the lights on the shore, and could even make out the dark contour of the horizon against the sky, whose blue was already beginning to brighten slightly as the dawn approached.

“Goodbye, Riviera,” he murmured. “I had a good time, while it lasted, but responsibility calls. From now on, when there’s trouble at t’mill, it’s down to me to sort it out. Maurice Rawtenstall probably doesn’t think I’m up to it, but his predecessor probably thought the same about Dad. It’s traditional, after all. Maybe I’m not—but with luck, I will be, and luck’s something I’ve never been without.”

He shut up then, feeling slightly foolish even though the drone of the boat’s engine would have drowned out his words before they reached the ear of a listener stood directly beside him.

Nice was lit up brilliantly, as a modern twenty-four-seven city ought to be; the Promenade des Anglais seemed endless. The heat in the cabin was stifling, but he remembered only too clearly what had happened last time he’d tried to let in a breeze and he knew that it wouldn’t last much longer. He let the porthole remain shut, and used the towel that had been carefully placed at the foot of his bed to mop the sweat from his face.

He felt a sudden pang of nostalgia, not merely for Cockayne but for Cockayne in Autumn, when the shadow of the Pennines wasn’t quite enough to keep the chill out of the low-lying dale and the sky was as grey as slate and the smoke-blackened stone of the terraces was like a sponge soaking up the moisture from the foggy air.

Soon, it would all be his: his own little Utopia, insulated from the hurricane of change that was sweeping the world by the mass and pressure of all the Credesdale traditions.

For a moment, he could almost believe that he belonged there, cultivating his own narrow garden with infinite patience and stoicism. But then he thought of Lissa Lo, and everything that she symbolized, not merely by her beauty but by her glamour and fame, and told himself that there would be time enough for gardening in Utopia when he had wrung the last few drops of delight from the blazing glory of Cosmopolis.

And then the sun came up, rippling silver across the placid waves of the Mediterranean.