Colin Forbes - Double Jeopardy

'Start struggling and I'll break your Goddamn neck

For the first time he saw her mouth go slack with fear and she remained passive as he turned her over, pulled the upper part of her body towards him, then used the belt to strap her ankles to her wrists.

It was the most uncomfortable position anyone can be forced into: if she struggled she would suffer excruciating pain. He tightened the belt to the limit of his strength. Soon the circulation would start to go. He left her on the sofa after using his handkerchief as a gag.

'It's not too clean,' he assured her.

Then he walked into the bedroom where the faint thumping was repeating itself. He opened both doors of the built-in wardrobe cupboard and looked down. The dark-haired girl on the floor had been trussed up like a chicken and her mouth was sealed with a band of sticking plaster.

`Hello, Claire Hofer,' he said. 'Thanks for the warning. Now let's make you comfortable. You have got guts…'

Wednesday May 27

Hofer was emerging from the state of shock brought on by her ordeal inside the cupboard. She had cleared up the mess in the kitchen and was making coffee for herself and Martel.

'How did you know that girl was impersonating me?' she asked.

Their prisoner was lying on the living-room floor. Martel had released her from his belt and replaced it with the ropes used to bind up Hofer. Her mouth was sealed with a fresh strip of sticking-plaster Hofer had provided from the kitchen.

'She made a lot of mistakes,' Martel explained. 'Although her physical description fitted the one I had been given she wore dark-tinted glasses – in a room where the light was dim anyway. Now we know why – her eyes are brown…'

'There must have been more…'

'When I peered into the bedroom your cosmetics were neat and tidy on the dressing-table – one hell of a contrast with the food remains and dirt in here. The bit of sticking-plaster stuck to the scissors intrigued me. She had no visible injury. The normal one is when a woman cuts her hands in the kitchen. There were other things, too…'

'Such as?'

'More damning was the fact she didn't know which cupboard held the coffee cups. She denied Warner had ever made a pass at her – he always made one try for an attractive woman. And she called him Charlie. He always insisted on Charles.'

'You really are observant. Coffee in here?'

'No, in the living-room. I have questions to ask our imposter. She also over-reacted to my leaving the bedroom door half-open. Plus her elaborate explanation to cover your thumping the inside of the cupboard. You took a chance there…'

'I heard a man's voice and guessed you had arrived. I felt such a fool that I'd let her overpower me I had to warn you. Was she going to kill you?'

They had moved back into the living-room where their prisoner was rolled on her side in front of the fireplace. Martel lowered his voice so she couldn't hear him.

'Was she going to kill me?' He picked up the needle weapon he had earlier rescued from the floor and placed on a table. 'I think so. This ingenious little toy is very like a hypodermic. When I grabbed her she was about to ram it into the back of my neck. Press this button a second time and I'd say it injects the fluid. Let's test her reaction to her own medicine…'

Holding the weapon out of sight he knelt on the floor and rolled the girl on her back. With the other hand he took a grip on the plaster and ripped it off her mouth. She screamed. He placed a hand over her lips.

'No more noise. I'm going to ask questions. You're going to answer. Your real name?'

'Go stuff yourself…'

'What would happen if I jab this into you and press the button?'

He showed her the needle weapon. He moved the point close to the side of her neck. Her brown eyes glared up at him with a mixture of hatred and apprehension. -

Tor God's sake, no! Please..

'She says please,' Martel observed sarcastically. 'And yet she was about to give me the same treatment. Oh, well, here we go…'

`Gisela Zobel

`Where is your home base?'

'Bavaria… Munich. For pity's sake…'

`Pity?' Martel glanced up at Hofer who was staring intently, wondering how far he was prepared to go. 'She wouldn't know the meaning of the word, would she?'

'Not from the way she treated me…' Hofer responded with deliberate callousness. `You decide…'

She lit a cigarette and the girl on the floor watched her with bulging eyes. Sweat beads were forming on her forehead.

Martel moved the needle closer as he asked the question. 'Who do you work for?'

'He will kill me…'

'How could he? If you don't give the reply – the right reply – and we have certain information Warner sent by a secret route, you will be dead anyway. That is, unless I'm mistaken about what this instrument you were going to use on me contains. So, once again, here goes…'

`Reinhard Dietrich.

Then she fainted from terror – whether from uttering the name or because of Martel's threat to use the weapon he was not sure. He looked into Hofer's deep blue eyes, shrugged and withdrew the needle tip from the proximity of Zobel's neck.

`Get me a cork to protect this damned thing,' he suggested and while she fetched one from the kitchen he gazed at the weapon. He was convinced that the contents injected into the victim would be lethal, that Gisela Zobel had planned to kill him. He would hand it to the counter-espionage people: Forensic could then check it.

At ten o'clock night had descended and Martel decided they could safely leave the apartment. Hofer packed a bag and Martel arranged with the police to send a plain-clothes man to the Baur au Lac to pay his bill and collect his suitcase. The bag was now standing in the small hall outside the apartment.

'We take a train to St. Gallen,' Martel told the Swiss girl in the living-room. 'We have to pick up Warner's trail there…'

`We have very little to go on,' the girl reminded him. 'Only that he stopped off there on his way here from Bavaria…' `So we make use of what little we have got…'

The evening had been packed with activity. Hofer had looked up the number in her pocket diary and Martel had phoned Berne. While he was talking to her boss, Ferdy Arnold, he had studied her in the mirror.

Her description fitted the one provided by Tweed perfectly but he was puzzled by her passive personality. She was a nice girl with long dark hair, a soft voice and graceful movements. Already he liked her. But he had expected someone more dynamic.

The Swiss counter-espionage chief had flown by private plane to Zurich. The atmosphere changed the moment he entered the place. A small, serious-faced man with rimless glasses, Ferdy Arnold resembled a banker. He took immediate decisions.

'We smuggle her out in an ambulance,' he announced, indicating Gisela Zobel who was now propped up in one of the deep arm-chairs. 'She will be taken to a special hospital. She will be kept under heavy guard. She will be intensively interrogated.'

He looked at Martel, ignoring Hofer. 'Phone me at this number at ten in the morning…' He scribbled a number, on a small pad, tore off the sheet and handed it to the Englishman. 'I've left off the Zurich code in case you lose the paper…'

Arnold, smartly dressed in a dark blue suit, looked at Martel with a wry smile. 'It isn't that I don't trust you…'

`But one English agent, Warner, was spotted – even posing as a German – so you're playing it to cover all angles. And why do I phone at ten in the morning? Surely you'll only just have started Zobel's daily interrogation…'

'On the contrary, we shall just have finished since she will be interrogated throughout the night without a break…'

Martel was not happy. There was an atmosphere which did not ring true. Something in the relationship between Ferdy Arnold and his 'top operative', Hofer. He was damned if he could detect why he sensed he was being tricked – but his instincts had never let him down yet.