Алистер Маклин - The Satan Bug

“The Satan Bug, you say. How about – How about the murderer?”

“Recovering the viruses is all that matters. Whether the killer is himself killed or handed over to the cops doesn’t seem that important. Let him look out for himself.”

“I’m more worried about you looking out for yourself. Be very careful, Cavell – a hard thought for you to take, but he may be a cleverer and more dangerous man than yourself.” He reached out and touched me gently below the left shoulder. “I suppose you wear that Hanyatti in bed at night. You know you have no authority from me to use it?”

“I point it at people just to frighten them, sir.”

“Giving people heart attacks doesn’t come under the heading of frightening them. I won’t detain you, boy. How’s Mary?”

“Well, sir. She sent her love.”

“From Alfringham of course.” He forgot for the moment that I was about his only subordinate who didn’t curl up under his level stare, and let me have it with both barrels. “I’m not sure I like my daughter – my only child – being mixed up with something like mis.”

“I needed – I still need – someone I can trust. That’s Mary. You know your own daughter as well as I do; she hates the business we’re in but the more she hates it the more impossible it is to keep her out of it. She thinks I shouldn’t be allowed out alone. She’d have been down in Alfringham within twenty-four hours anyway.”

The General looked at me for a moment then nodded heavily and showed me to the door.

Dr. MacDonald was a big heavily-built man in his late forties, with that well-leathered and spuriously tough look you quite often find among a certain section of the unemployed landed gentry who spend a great deal of time in the open air, much of it mounted on large horses in pursuit of small foxes. He had sandy hair, sandy eyebrows, sandy moustache and the smooth, full, tight, reddish-tanned face indicative of a devotion to the table, a well-stocked cellar, a fresh Gillette every morning and an incipient heart condition. In his own rather arrogant and fleshy way MacDonald was a pretty good-looking and impressive character but, at the moment, he wasn’t looking his best. Not that anyone would be when rubbing sleep from gummed eyelids and welcoming the unexpected caller at 6.15 a.m. on a pitch dark, raining and bitterly cold October pre-dawn.

“Welcoming” perhaps was not the right word.

“What the bloody hell do you mean by coming hammering on my door in the middle of the bloody night?” MacDonald demanded. He clutched a dressing-gown more tightly about his shivering bulk and managed to prop an eye wide enough open to identify me in the faint wash of light coming from the porchway behind him.

“Cavell! What the devil’s the meaning of this?”

“I’m sorry, MacDonald.” Civility. Turning the other cheek. “Terrible hour, I know. But I must talk to you. It’s most urgent.”

“Nothing so damn’ urgent that you have to come hauling a man out of his bed at this time of night,” he said furiously. “I’ve already told the police all I know. Anything else you can see me about in Mordon. Sorry, Cavell. Good night! Or good morning!” He took a long step back and swung the door in my face.

I’d no more cheeks to turn. The sole of my right foot caught the door before it engaged on the latch and I kicked it open. Violently. The sudden transfer of weight to my bad leg didn’t do my left foot any good at all but it was nothing compared to what it did to MacDonald’s right elbow, which was where the flying door must have caught him, for when I passed inside he was clutching his elbow with his left hand and doing a dervish dance with language suitably geared to the occasion: he’d packed in the plummy Debrett accent in favour of broad Scots. For what he had to say, it was much more impressive. It was ten seconds before he was properly aware that I was standing there.

“Get out!” The voice was half-snarl, half-shout, the face twisted in malevolence. “Out of my house at once, you–” He got started on my forebears, but I cut him short.

“Two men are dead, MacDonald. There’s a madman on the loose with the power to turn that two into two million. Your convenience doesn’t enter into it. I want answers to questions. I want them now.”

“ You want them? And who are you to want anything?” The heavy lips were curled into an expression that was half-sneer, half-grimace of pain and the Oxford-Sandhurst drawl was working again. “I know all about you, Cavell. Kicked out of Mordon because you couldn’t keep your big mouth shut. You’re only a so-called private detective, but I suppose you thought there might be better pickings going here than in the dirty little divorce cases you people specialise in. God knows how you managed to push your way into this but as far as I am concerned you can push straight out again. You have no authority to ask me anything. You’re not the police. Where are your credentials? Show me.” To say that he was making no attempt to mask the sneer on his face, the contempt in his voice would have been understating the case.

I hadn’t any credentials to show him so I showed him the Hanyatti instead. It might be enough, bluster is usually a façade that conceals nothing. But it wasn’t enough. Maybe there was more to Dr. MacDonald than I had thought.

“My God!” He laughed, not one of those laughs with a silvery tinkle of bells. An unpleasant laugh. “Guns! At six in the morning. Whatever next? Cheap melodramatic rubbish. I’ve got your number now, Cavell, by God I have. A little ring to Superintendent Hardanger will soon fix you, mister cheap little private detective.” Outside the demands of his job he was obviously no stickler for accuracy: cheap I may have been but I was a good couple of inches taller than he was and at least as heavy.

The phone was on the table beside me. He took two steps towards it and I took one towards him. The muzzle of the Hanyatti caught him just under the breast-bone and I stood aside as he jack-knifed and fell to the floor. It was brutal, high-handed, completely unjustifiable on the face of it and I didn’t like it one little bit: but I liked even less the idea of a madman with the Satan Bug in his possession. I had to use every second I had. By and by, when it was all over, I’d apologise to MacDonald. But not now.

He rolled around for a bit, clutching his mid-riff with both hands and whooping in pain as he tried to drag air into his lungs. After a minute or so he quietened down and struggled to his feet, still clutching his stomach, breathing very quickly, very shallowly, like someone who can’t get enough oxygen quickly enough. His face was grey and puffy and the bloodshot eyes held an expression that was pretty close to hatred. I didn’t blame him any.

“This is the end of the road for you, Cavell.” His voice came in hoarse gasps punctuated by half-sobbing inhalations. “You’ve gone too far this time. Unprovoked assault–”

He broke off, flinching, as he saw the barrel of the Hanyatti arching towards his face. Both hands were flung up in instinctive self-defence and he grunted in agony as my free hand caught him in the midriff again. He stayed down longer this time and when he finally dragged himself, trembling, to his feet, he was in pretty bad shape. His eyes were still burning mad but there was something else in them now as well. Fear. I took two quick steps towards him, lifting the Hanyatti high. MacDonald took two corresponding steps back then collapsed heavily on a settee as it caught him behind the knees. His face held rage and bewilderment and fear, lest I hit him again: it also held hatred for both of us, for me because I was doing what I was doing, for himself because he knew he was going to do what I said. MacDonald wasn’t ready to talk but he was going to all the same and both of us knew it.