Alistair MacLean - Puppet on a Chain

'Well, thank God for that.' Van Gelder drained his glass. 'No injections.'

'Not this time.' I drained my glass in turn, said goodbye and left.

I paid off the taxi in the Marnixstraat. Van Gelder had phoned ahead to say I was coming and Colonel de Graaf was waiting for me. If he was busy, he showed no signs of it. He was engaged in his usual occupation of overflowing the chair he was sitting in, the desk in front of him was bare, his fingers were steepled under his chin and as I entered he brought his eyes down from a leisured contemplation of infinity.

'One assumes you make progress?' he greeted me.

'One assumes wrongly, I'm afraid.'

'What? No vistas of broad highways leading to the final solution?'

'Cul-de-sacs only.'

'Something about a car, I understand from the Inspector.'

'Please.'

'May one enquire why you wish this vehicle?' 'To drive up the cul-de-sacs. But that's not really what I came to ask you about.'

'I hardly thought it was.'

'I'd like a search warrant.'

'What for?'

'To make a search,' I said patiently. 'Accompanied by a senior officer or officers, of course, to make it legal.'

'Who? Where?'

'Morgenstern and Muggenthaler. Souvenir warehouse. Down by the docks — I don't know the address.'

'I've heard of them.' De Graaf nodded, 'I know nothing against them. Do you?'

'No.'

'So what makes you so curious about them?'

'I honest to God don't know. I want to find out why I am so curious. I was in their place tonight — '

'They're closed at night-time, surely.'

I dangled a set of skeleton keys in front of his eyes.

'You know it's a felony to be in possession of such instruments,' de Graaf said severely.

I put the keys back in my pocket. 'What instruments?'

'A passing hallucination,' de Graaf said agreeably.

'I'm curious about why they have a time-lock on the steel door leading to their office. I'm curious about the large stocks of Bibles carried on their premises. 'I didn't mention the smell of cannabis or the lad lurking behind the puppets. 'But what I'm really interested in getting hold of is their list of suppliers.'

'A search warrant we can arrange on any pretext,' de Graaf said. I'll accompany you myself. Doubtless you'll explain your interest in greater detail in the morning. Now about this car. Van Gelder has an excellent suggestion. A specially-engined police car, complete with everything from two-way radio to handcuffs, but to all appearance a taxi, will be here in two minutes. Driving a taxi, you understand, poses certain problems.'

'I'll try not to make too much on the side. Have you anything else for me?'

'Also in two minutes. Your car is bringing some information from the Records Office.'

Two minutes it was and a folder was delivered to de Graaf's desk. He looked through some papers.

'Astrid Lemay. Her real name, perhaps oddly enough. Dutch father, Grecian mother. He was a vice-consul in Athens, now deceased. Whereabouts of mother unknown. Twenty-four. Nothing known against her — nothing much known for her, either. Must say the background is a bit vague. Works as a hostess in the Balinova night-club, lives in a small flat near-by. Has one known relative, brother George, aged twenty. Ah! This may interest you. George, apparently, has spent six months as Her Majesty's guest.'

'Drugs?'

'Assault and attempted robbery, very amateurish effort, it seems. He made the mistake of assaulting a plain-clothes detective. Suspected of being an addict — probably trying to get money to buy more. All we have.' He turned to another paper. 'This MOO 144 number you gave me is the radio call-sign for a Belgian coaster, the Marianne, due in from Bordeaux tomorrow. I have a pretty efficient staff, no?'

'Yes.'

'When does it arrive?'

'Noon. We search it?'

'You wouldn't find anything. But please don't go near it. Any ideas on the other two numbers?'

'Nothing, I'm afraid on 910020. Or on 2797.' He paused reflectively. 'Or could that be 797 twice — you know. 797797?'

'Could be anything.'

De Graaf took a telephone directory from a drawer, put it away again, picked up a phone. 'A telephone number,' he said. '797797. Find out who's listed under that number. At once, please.'

We sat in silence till the phone rang. De Graaf listened briefly, replaced the receiver.

'The Balinova night-club,' he said.

'The efficient staff has a clairvoyant boss.'

'And where does this clairvoyance lead you to?'

'The Balinova night-club.' I stood up. 'I have a rather readily identifiable face, wouldn't you say, Colonel?'

'It's not a face people forget. And those white scars. I don't think your plastic surgeon was really trying.'

'He was trying all right. To conceal his almost total ignorance of plastic surgery. Have you any brown stain in this HQ?'

'Brown stain?' He blinked at me, then smiled widely. 'Oh no, Major Sherman! Disguise! In this day and age? Sherlock Holmes has been dead these many years.'

'If I'd half the brains Sherlock had,' I said heavily. 'I wouldn't be needing any disguise.'

The yellow and red taxi they'd given me appeared, from the outside, to be a perfectly normal Opel, but they seemed to have managed to put an extra engine into it. They'd put a lot of extra work into it too. It had a pop-up siren, a pop-up police light and a panel at the back which fell down to illuminate a 'Stop' sign. Under the front passenger seats were ropes and first-aid kits and tear-gas canisters: in the door pockets were handcuffs with keys attached. God alone knew what they had in the boot. Nor did I care. All I wanted was a fast car, and I had one.

I pulled up in a prohibited parking area outside the Balinova night-club, right opposite where a uniformed and be-holstered policeman was standing. He nodded almost imperceptibly and walked away with measured stride. He knew a police taxi when he saw one and had no wish to explain to the indignant populace why a taxi could get away with an offence that would have automatically got them a ticket.

I got out, locked the door, and crossed the pavement to the entrance of the night-club which had above it the flickering neon sign 'Balinova' and the outlined neon figures of two hula-hula dancers, although I failed to grasp the connection between Hawaii and Indonesia. Perhaps they were meant to be Balinese dancers, but if that were so they had the wrong kind of clothes on — or off. Two large windows were set one on either side of the entrance, and these were given up to an art exhibition of sorts which gave more than a delicate indication of the nature of the cultural delights and more esoteric scholarly pursuits that were to be found within. The occasional young lady depicted as wearing ear-rings and bangles and nothing else seemed almost indecently over-dressed. Of even greater interest, however, was the coffee-coloured countenance that looked back at me from the reflection in the glass: if I hadn't known who I was, I wouldn't have recognized myself. I went inside.

The Balinova, in the best time-honoured tradition, was small, stuffy, smoky and full of some indescribable incense, the main ingredient of which seemed to be burnt rubber, which was probably designed to induce in the customers the right frame of mind for the maximum enjoyment of the entertainment being presented to them but which had, in fact, the effect of producing olfactory paralysis in the space of a few seconds. Even without the assistance of the drifting clouds of smoke the place was deliberately ill-lit, except for the garish spot-light on the stage which, as was again fairly standard, was no stage at all but merely a tiny circular dance floor in the centre of the room.

The audience was almost exclusively male, running the gamut of ages from goggle-eyed teen-agers to sprightly and beady-eyed octogenarians whose visual acuity appeared to have remained undimmed with the passing of the years. Almost all of them were well-dressed, for the better-class Amsterdam night-clubs — those which still manage to cater devotedly to the refined palates of the jaded connoisseurs of certain of the plastic arts — are not for those who are on relief. They are, in a word, not cheap and the Balinova was very, very expensive, one of the extremely few clip joints in the city. There were a few women present, but only a few. To my complete lack of surprise, Maggie and Belinda were seated at a table near the door, with some sickly-coloured drinks before them. Both of them wore aloof expressions, although Maggie's was unquestionably the more aloof of the two.