Алистер Маклин - Fear Is the Key

They started at the car nearest the entrance, with only a quick glance for the car itself but a long penetrating wordless stare for the occupants. They weren’t doing any explaining and they weren’t doing any apologizing: they looked like cops might look if they had heard that another cop had been shot. And was dying. Or dead.

Suddenly they skipped two or three cars and came straight at us. At least, that seemed to be their intention, but they skirted us and headed for a Ford to the left and ahead of us. As they passed by, I felt the girl stiffening, saw her taking a quick deep breath.

‘Don’t do it!’ I flung an arm around her and grabbed her tight. The breath she’d meant for the warning shout was expelled in a gasp of pain. The policeman nearest turned round and saw the girl’s face buried between my shoulder and neck and looked away again. Having seen what he thought he’d seen he made a remark to his companion that wasn’t as sotto voce as it might have been and might have called for action in normal circumstances. But the circumstances weren’t normal. I let it go.

When I released the girl her face was red practically all the way down to the sun-top. Pressed in against my neck she hadn’t been getting much air but I think it was the policeman’s remark that was responsible for most of the colour. Her eyes were wild. For the first time she’d stopped being scared and was fighting mad.

‘I’m going to turn you in.’ Her voice was soft, implacable. ‘Give yourself up.’

The policeman had checked the Ford. The driver had been dressed in a green jacket the same colour as mine, with a panama hat jammed far down on his head: I’d seen him as he’d driven in, his hair was black and his tanned face moustached and chubby. But the police hadn’t moved on. They were no more than five yards away, but the tearing and growling of the big draglines covered our soft voices.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ I said quietly. ‘I have a gun.’

‘And there’s only one bullet in it.’

She was right. Two slugs gone in the courthouse, one blowing out the tyre in the judge’s Studebaker, and two when the police car was chasing us.

‘Quite the little counter, aren’t we?’ I murmured. ‘You’ll have plenty of time to practise counting in hospital after the surgeons have fixed you up. If they can fix you up.’

She looked at me, her lips parted, and said nothing.

‘One little slug, but what an awful mess it can make.’ I brought the gun forward under the coat, pressed it against her. ‘You heard me telling that fool Donnelly what a soft lead slug can do. This barrel is against your hipbone. Do you realize what that means?’ My voice was very low now, very menacing. ‘It’ll shatter that bone beyond repair. It means you’ll never walk again, Miss Ruthven. You’ll never run or dance or swim or sit a horse again. All the rest of your life you’ll have to drag that beautiful body of yours about on a pair of crutches. Or in a bath chair. And in pain all the time. All the days of your life … Still going to shout to the cops?’

She said nothing at first, her face was empty of colour, even her lips were pale.

‘Do you believe me?’ I asked softly.

‘I believe you.’

‘So?’

‘So I’m going to call them,’ she said simply. ‘Maybe you’ll cripple me – but they’ll surely get you. And then you can never kill again. I have to do it.’

‘Your noble sentiments do you credit, Miss Ruthven.’ The jeer in my voice was no reflection of the thoughts in my mind. She was going to do what I wouldn’t have done.

‘Go and call them. Watch them die.’

She stared at me. ‘What – what do you mean? You’ve only one bullet–’

‘And it’s no longer for you. First squawk out of you, lady, and that cop with the gun in his hand gets it. He gets it right through the middle of the chest. I’m pretty good with one of these Colts – you saw how I shot the gun out of the sheriff’s hands. But I’m taking no chances. Through the chest. Then I hold up the other cop – there’ll be no trouble about that, his own gun is still buttoned down, he knows I’m a killer and he doesn’t know my gun will be empty – take his gun, wing him with it and go off.’ I smiled. ‘I don’t think anyone will try to stop me.’

‘But – but I’ll tell him your gun’s empty. I’ll tell–’

‘You come first, lady. An elbow in the solar plexus and you won’t be able to tell anybody anything for the next five minutes.’

There was a long silence, the cops were still there, then she said in a small voice: ‘You’d do it, wouldn’t you?’

‘There’s only one way to find out the answer to that one.’

‘I hate you.’ There was no expression in her voice, the clear grey eyes were dark with despair and defeat. ‘I never thought I could hate anyone so much. It – it scares me.’

‘Stay scared and stay alive.’ I watched the policemen finish their tour of the parking-lot, walk slowly back to their motor bikes and ride away.

The late afternoon wore slowly on. The dragliners growled and crunched and crawled their implacable way out towards the sea. The sidewalk superintendents came and went, but mostly went and soon there were only a couple of cars left in the parking-lot, ours and the Ford belonging to the man in the green coat. And then the steadily darkening cumulus sky reached its final ominous indigo colour and the rain came.

It came with the violence of all sub-tropical storms, and before I could get the unaccustomed hood up my thin cotton shirt was wet as if I had been in the sea. When I’d wound up the side-screens and looked in the mirror, I saw that my face was streaked with black lines from temple to chin – the mascara on my hair had almost washed out. I scrubbed as clean as I could with my handkerchief, then looked at my watch. With the dark cloud obscuring the sky from horizon to horizon, evening had come before its time. Already the cars swishing by on the highway had their sidelights on, although it was still more day than night. I started the engine.

‘You were going to wait until it was dark.’ The girl sounded startled. Maybe she’d been expecting more cops, smarter cops to come along.

‘I was,’ I admitted. ‘But by this time Mr Chas Brooks is going to be doing a song and dance act a few miles back on the highway. His language will be colourful.’

‘Mr Chas Brooks?’ From her tone, I wondered if she really thought I was crazy.

‘Of Pittsburg, California.’ I tapped the licence tag on the steering column. ‘A long way to come to have your car hijacked.’ I lifted my eyes to the machine-gun symphony of the heavy rain drumming on the canvas roof. ‘You don’t think he’ll still be grilling and barbecuing down on the beach in this little lot, do you?’

I pulled out through the makeshift archway and turned right on the highway. When she spoke this time I knew she really did think I was crazy.

‘Marble Springs.’ A pause, then: ‘You’re going back there?’ It was a question and statement both.

‘Right. To the motel – La Contessa. Where the cops picked me up. I left some stuff there and I want to collect it.’

This time she said nothing. Maybe she thought ‘crazy’ a completely inadequate word.

I pulled off the bandanna – in the deepening dusk that white gleam on my head was more conspicuous than my red hair – and went on: ‘Last place they’ll ever think to find me. I’m going to spend the night there, maybe several nights until I find me a boat out. So are you.’ I ignored the involuntary exclamation. ‘That’s the phone call I made back at the drug store. I asked if Room 14 was vacant, they said yes, so I said I’d take it, friends who’d passed through had recommended it as having the nicest view in the motel. In point of fact it has the nicest view. It’s also the most private room, at the seaward end of a long block, it’s right beside the closet where they put my case away when the cops pinched me and it has a nice private little garage where I can stow this machine away and no one will ever ask a question.’