Алистер Маклин - Puppet on a Chain

‘Then why–’

‘Why come up here in the first place? Two small requests. Find out, please, if any telephone message has come through for me.’

‘Message?’

‘From this person I had to go to see when we were down in the warehouse.’ I was getting so that I could hardly tell whether I was telling the truth or lying.

De Graaf nodded, picked up a phone, talked briefly, wrote down a long screed of letters and figures and handed the paper to me. The letters were meaningless: the figures, reversed, would be the girls’ new telephone number. I put the paper in my pocket.

‘Thank you. I’ll have to decode this.’

‘And the second small request?’

‘Could you lend me a pair of binoculars?’

‘Binoculars?’

‘I want to do some bird-watching,’ I explained.

‘Of course,’ van Gelder said heavily. ‘You will recall, Major Sherman, that we are supposed to be co-operating closely?’

‘Well?’

‘You are not, if I may say so, being very communicative.’

‘I’ll communicate with you when I’ve something worth communicating. Don’t forget that you’ve been working on this for over a year. I haven’t been here for two days yet. Like I say, I have to go and lie down and think.’

I didn’t go and lie down and think. I drove to a telephone-box which I judged to be a circumspect distance from the police headquarters and dialled the number de Graaf had given me.

The voice at the other end of the line said: ‘Hotel Touring.’

I knew it but had never been inside it: it wasn’t the sort of hotel that appealed to my expense account, but it was the sort of hotel I would have chosen for the two girls.

I said: ‘My name is Sherman. Paul Sherman. I believe two young ladies registered with you this morning. Could I speak to them, please?’

‘I’m sorry, they are out at present.’ There was no worry there; if they weren’t out locating or trying to locate Astrid Lemay they would be carrying out the assignment I’d given them in the early hours of the morning. The voice at the other end anticipated my next question. ‘They left a message for you, Mr Sherman. I am to say that they failed to locate your mutual friend and are now looking for some other friends. I’m afraid it’s a bit vague, sir.’

I thanked him and hung up. ‘Help me,’ I’d said to Astrid, ‘and I’ll help you.’ It was beginning to look as if I were helping her all right, helping her into the nearest canal or coffin. I jumped into the police taxi and made a lot of enemies in the brief journey to the rather unambitious area that bordered on the Rembrandtplein.

The door to Astrid’s flat was locked but I still had my belt of illegal ironmongery around my waist. Inside, the flat was as I’d first seen it, neat and tidy and threadbare. There were no signs of violence, no signs of any hurried departure. I looked in the few drawers and closets there were and it seemed to me that they were very bare of clothes indeed. But then, as Astrid had pointed out, they were very poor indeed, so that probably meant nothing. I looked everywhere in the tiny flat where a message of some sort could have been left, but if any had been, I couldn’t find it: I didn’t believe any had been. I locked the front door and drove to the Balinova nightclub.

For a night-club those were still the unearthly early hours of the morning and the doors, predictably, were locked. They were strong doors and remained unaffected by the hammering and the kicking that I subjected them to, which, luckily, was more than could be said for one of the people inside whose slumber I must have so irritatingly disturbed, for a key turned and the door opened a crack. I put my foot in the crack and widened it a little, enough to see the head and shoulders of a faded blonde who was modestly clutching a wrap high at her throat: considering that the last time I had seen her she had been clad in a thin layer of transparent soap bubbles I thought that this was overdoing it a little.

‘I wish to see the manager, please.’

‘We don’t open till six o’clock.’

‘I don’t want a reservation. I don’t want a job. I want to see the manager. Now.’

‘He’s not here.’

‘So. I hope your next job is as good as this one.’

‘I don’t understand.’ No wonder they had the lights so low last night in the Balinova, in daylight that raddled face would have emptied the place like a report that one of the customers had bubonic plague. ‘What do you mean, my job?’

I lowered my voice, which you have to do when you speak with solemn gravity. ‘Just that you won’t have any if the manager finds that I called on a matter of the greatest urgency and you refused to let me see him.’

She looked at me uncertainly then said: ‘Wait here.’ She tried to close the door but I was a lot stronger than she was and after a moment she gave up and went away. She came back inside thirty seconds accompanied by a man still dressed in evening clothes.

I didn’t take to him at all. Like most people, I don’t like snakes and this was what this man irresistibly reminded me of. He was very tall and very thin and moved with a sinuous grace. He was effeminately elegant and dandified and had the unhealthy pallor of a creature of the night. His face was of alabaster, his features smooth, his lips non-existent: the dark hair, parted in the middle, was plastered flat against his skull. His dress suit was elegantly cut but he hadn’t as good a tailor as I had: the bulge under the left armpit was quite perceptible. He held a jade cigarette-holder in a thin, white, beautifully manicured hand: his face held an expression, which was probably permanent, of quietly contemptuous amusement. Just to have him look at you was a good enough excuse to hit him. He blew a thin stream of cigarette smoke into the air.

‘What’s all this, my dear fellow?’ He looked French or Italian, but he wasn’t: he was English. ‘We’re not open, you know.’

‘You are now,’ I pointed out. ‘You the manager?’

‘I’m the manager’s representative. If you care to call back later–’ he puffed some more of his obnoxious smoke into the air ‘–much later, then we’ll see–’

‘I’m a lawyer from England and on urgent business.’ I handed him a card saying I was a lawyer from England. ‘It is essential that I see the manager at once. A great deal of money is involved.’

If such an expression as he wore could be said to soften, then his did, though you had to have a keen eye to notice the difference. ‘I promise nothing, Mr Harrison.’ That was the name on the card. ‘Mr Durrell may be persuaded to see you.’

He moved away like a ballet dancer on his day off and was back in moments. He nodded to me and stood to one side to let me precede him down a large and dimly lit passage, an arrangement which I didn’t like but had to put up with. At the end of the passage was a door opening on a brightly lit room, and as it seemed to be intended that I should enter without knocking – I did just that. I noted in passing that the door was of the type that the vaults manager – if there is such a person – of the Bank of England would have rejected as being excessive to his requirements.

The interior of the room looked more than a little like a vault itself. Two large safes, tall enough for a man to walk into, were let into one wall. Another wall was given over to a battery of lockable metal cabinets of the rental left-luggage kind commonly found in railway stations. The other two walls may well have been windowless but it was impossible to be sure: they were completely covered with crimson and violet drapes.

The man sitting behind the large mahogany desk didn’t look a bit like a bank manager, at any rate a British banker, who typically has a healthy outdoor appearance about him owing to his penchant for golf and the short hours he spends behind his desk. This man was sallow, about eighty pounds overweight, with greasy black hair, a greasy complexion and permanently bloodshot yellowed eyes. He wore a well-cut blue alpaca suit, a large variety of rings on both hands and a welcoming smile that didn’t become him at all.