Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

My professional appeal availed nothing. He said, in the tone which he presumably kept for reproaching the more backsliding of his flock: ‘I insist on seeing for myself.’

He pressed firmly forward and I pressed him firmly back again. I said: ‘Don’t make me lose my licence. Please.’

‘I knew it! I knew it! Something is far amiss. So I can make you lose your licence?’

‘Yes. If I throw you into the canal then I’ll lose my licence. If, that is,’ I added consideringly, ‘you manage to climb back out again.’

‘What! The canal! Me? A man of God? Are you threatening me with violence, sir?’

‘Yes.’

Dr Goodbody backed off several rapid paces.

‘I have your licence, sir. I shall report you–’

The night was wearing on and I wanted some sleep before the morning, so I climbed into the car and drove off. He was shaking his fist at me in a fashion that didn’t say much for his concept of brotherly love and appeared to be delivering himself of some vehement harangue but I couldn’t hear any of it. I wondered if he would lodge a complaint with the police and thought that the odds were against it.

I was getting tired of carrying George up stairs. True, he weighed hardly anything at all, but what with the lack of sleep and dinner I was a good way below par and, moreover, I’d had my bellyful of junkies. I found the door to Astrid’s tiny flat unlocked, which was what I would have expected to find if George had been the last person to use it. I opened it, switched on the light, walked past the sleeping girl, and deposited George none too gently on his own bed. I think it must have been the noise the mattress made and not the bright overhead light in her room that wakened Astrid: in any event, she was sitting up in her bed-settee and rubbing eyes still bemused from sleep as I returned to her room. I looked down at her in what I hoped was a speculative fashion and said nothing.

‘He was asleep, then I went to sleep,’ she said defensively. ‘He must have got up and gone out again.’ When I treated this masterpiece of deduction with the silence it deserved she went on almost desperately: ‘I didn’t hear him go out. I didn’t. Where did you find him?’

‘You’d never guess, I’m sure. In a garage, over a barrel-organ, trying to get the cover off. He wasn’t making much progress.’

As she had done earlier that night, she buried her face in her hands: this time she wasn’t crying, although I supposed drearily that it would be only a matter of time.

‘What’s so upsetting about that?’ I asked. ‘He’s very interested in barrel-organs, isn’t he, Astrid? I wonder why. It is curious. He’s musical, perhaps?’

‘No. Yes. Ever since he was a little boy–’

‘Oh, be quiet. If he was musical he’d rather listen to a pneumatic drill. There’s a very simple reason why he dotes on those organs. Very simple and both you and I know what it is.’

She stared at me, not in surprise: her eyes were sick with fear. Wearily, I sank down on the edge of the bed and took both her hands in mine.

‘Astrid?’

‘Yes?’

‘You’re almost as accomplished a liar as I am. You didn’t go looking for George because you knew damn well where George was and you know damn well where I found him, in a place where he was safe and sound, in a place where the police would never find him because they would never think to look for anyone there.’ I sighed. ‘A smoke is not the needle, but I suppose it’s better than nothing.’

She looked at me with a stricken face, then got back to burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as I knew they would. How obscure or what my motives were I didn’t know, I just couldn’t sit there without holding out at least a tentatively comforting hand and when I did she looked up at me numbly through tear-filled eyes, reached up her hands and sobbed bitterly on my shoulder. I was becoming accustomed to this treatment in Amsterdam but still far from reconciled to it, so I tried to ease her arms gently away but she only tightened them the more. It had, I knew, nothing whatsoever to do with me: for the moment she needed something to cling to and I happened to be there. Gradually the sobs eased and she lay there, her tear-stained face defenceless and full of despair.

I said: ‘It’s not too late, Astrid.’

‘That’s not true. You know as well as I know, it was too late from the beginning.’

‘For George, yes, it is. But don’t you see I’m trying to help you?’

‘How can you help me?’

‘By destroying the people who have destroyed your brother. By destroying the people who are destroying you. But I need help. In the end, we all need help you, me, everyone. Help me and I’ll help you. I promise you, Astrid.’

I wouldn’t say that the despair in her face was replaced by some other expression but at least it seemed to become a degree less total as she nodded once or twice, smiled shakily and said: ‘You seem very good at destroying people.’

‘You may have to be, too,’ I said and I gave her a very small gun, a Lilliput, the effectiveness of which belies its tiny .21 bore.

I left ten minutes later. As I came out into the street I saw two shabbily dressed men sitting on a step in a doorway almost opposite, arguing heatedly but not loudly so I transferred my gun to my pocket and walked across to where they were. Ten feet away I sheered off for the pungent odour of rum in the air was so overwhelming as to give rise to the thought that they hadn’t so much been drinking the stuff but were newly arisen from immersion in a vat of the best Demerara. I was beginning to see spooks in every flickering shadow and what I needed was sleep, so I collected the taxi, drove back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Remarkably, the sun was shining when my portable alarm went off the following morning – or the same morning. I showered, shaved, dressed, went downstairs and breakfasted in the restaurant with such restoring effect that I was able to smile at and say a civil good morning to the assistant manager, the doorman and the barrel-organ attendant in that order. I stood for a minute or two outside the hotel looking keenly around me with the air of a man waiting for his shadow to turn up, but it seemed that discouragement had set in and I was able to make my unaccompanied way to where I’d left the police taxi the previous night. Even though, in broad daylight, I’d stopped staring at shadows I opened the hood all the same but no one had fixed any lethal explosive device during the night so I drove off and arrived at the Marnixstraat HQ at precisely ten o’clock, the promised time.

Colonel de Graaf, complete with search warrant, was waiting for me in the street. So was Inspector van Gelder. Both men greeted me with the courteous restraint of those who think their time is being wasted but are too polite to say so and led me to a chauffeur-driven police car which was a great deal more luxurious than the one they’d given me.

‘You still think our visit to Morgenstern and Muggenthaler is desirable?’ de Graaf asked. ‘And necessary?’

‘More so than ever.’

‘Something has happened? To make you feel that way?’

‘No,’ I lied. I touched my head. ‘I’m fey at times.’

De Graaf and van Gelder looked briefly at each other. ‘Fey?’ de Graaf said carefully.

‘I get premonitions.’

There was another brief interchange of glances to indicate their mutual opinion of police officers who operated on this scientific basis, then de Graaf said, circumspectly changing the topic: ‘We have eight plain-clothes officers standing by down there in a plain van. But you say you don’t really want the place searched?’

‘I want it searched all right rather, I want to give the appearance of a search. What I really want are the invoices giving a list of all the suppliers of souvenir items to the warehouse.’