Alistair MacLean - Puppet on a Chain

The ancient had a close and apparently attentive audience of one. I recognized him as being one of the group I had seen by the organ outside the Rembrandt. His clothes were threadbare but neatly kept, his lanky black hair tumbled down to his painfully thin shoulders, the blades of which protruded through his jacket like sticks. Even at that distance of about twenty feet I could see that his degree of emaciation was advanced. I could see only part of one side of the face, but that little showed a cadaverously sunken cheek with skin the colour of old parchment.

He was leaning on the end of the barrel-organ, but not from any love of Mimi. He was leaning on the barrel-organ because if he hadn't leaned on something he would surely have fallen down. He was obviously a very sick young man indeed with total collapse only one unpremeditated move away. Occasionally his whole body was convulsed by uncontrollable spasms of shaking: less frequently he made harsh sobbing or guttural noises in his throat. Clearly the old man in the great-coat did not regard him as being very good for business for he kept hovering around him indecisively, making reproachful clucking noises and ineffectual movements of his arms, very much like a rather demented hen. He also kept glancing over his shoulder and apprehensively round the square as if he were afraid of something or someone.

Astrid walked quickly towards the barrel-organ with myself close behind. She smiled apologetically at the bearded ancient, put her arm around the young man and pulled him away from the organ. Momentarily he tried to straighten up and I could see that he was a pretty tall youngster, at least six inches taller than the girl: his height served only to accentuate his skeleton frame. His eyes were staring and glazed and his face the face of a man dying from starvation, his cheeks so incredibly hollowed that one would have sworn that he could have no teeth. Astrid tried to half lead, half carry him away, but though his emaciation had reached a degree where he could scarcely be any heavier than the girl, if at all, his uncontrollable lurching made her stagger across the pavement.

I approached them without a word, put my arm round him — it was like putting my arm round a skeleton — and took his weight off Astrid. She looked at me and the brown eyes were sick with anxiety and fear. I don't suppose my sepia complexion gave her much confidence either.

'Please!' Her voice was beseeching. 'Please leave me. I can manage.'

'You can't. He's a very sick boy, Miss Lemay.'

She stared at me. 'Mr Sherman!'

'I'm not sure if I like that,' I said reflectively. 'An hour or two ago you'd never seen me, never even knew my name. But now that I've gone all sun-tanned and attractive — Oops!'

George, whose rubbery legs had suddenly turned to jelly, had almost slipped from my grip. I could see that the two of us weren't going to get very far waltzing like this along the Rembrandtplein, so I stooped down to hoist him over my shoulder in a fireman's lift. She caught my arm in panic.

'No! Don't do that! Don't do that!'.

'Why ever not?' I said reasonably. 'It's easier this way.'

'No, no! If the police see you they will take him away.'

I straightened, put my arm around him again and tried to maintain him as near to the vertical as was possible. 'The hunter and the hunted,' I said. 'You and van Gelder both.'

'Please?'

'And of course, brother George is — '

'How do you know his name?' she whispered.

'It's my business to know things,' I said loftily. 'As I was saying, brother George is under the further disadvantage of not being exactly unknown to the police. Having an ex-convict for a brother can be a distinct disadvantage.'

She made no reply. I doubt if I've ever seen anyone who looked so completely miserable and defeated.

'Where does he live?' I asked.

'With me, of course.' The question seemed to surprise her. 'It's not far.'

It wasn't either, not more than fifty yards down a side-street — if so narrow and gloomy a lane could be called a street — past the Balinova. The stairs up to Astrid's flat were the narrowest and most twisted I had ever come across, and with George slung over my shoulder I had difficulty in negotiating them. Astrid unlocked the door to her flat, which proved to be hardly larger than a rabbit-hutch, consisting, as far as I could see, of a tiny sitting-room with an equally tiny bedroom leading off it. I went through to the bedroom, laid George on the narrow bed, straightened and mopped my brow.

'I've climbed better ladders than those damned stairs of yours,' I said feelingly.

'I'm sorry. The girls' hostel is cheaper, but with George… They don't pay very highly at the Balinova.'

It was obvious from the two tiny rooms, neat but threadbare like George's clothes, that they paid very little. I said: 'People in your position are lucky to get anything.'

'Please?'

'Not so much of the "please" stuff. You know damned well what I mean. Don't you, Miss Lemay — or may I call you Astrid?'

'How do you know my name?' Off-hand I couldn't ever recall having seen a girl wring her hands but that's what she was doing now. 'How — how do you know things about me?'

'Come off it,' I said roughly. 'Give some credit to your boy-friend."

'Boy-friend? I haven't got a boy-friend.'

'Ex-boy-friend, then. Or does "late boy-friend" suit you better?'

'Jimmy?' she whispered.

'Jimmy Duclos,' I nodded. 'He may have fallen for you — fatally fallen for you — but he'd already told me something about you. I even have a picture of you.'

She seemed confused. 'But — but at the airport -'

'What did you expect me to do — embrace you? Jimmy was killed at the airport because he was on to something. What was that something?'

'I'm sorry. I can't help you.'

'Can't? Or won't?'

She made no reply.

'Did you love him, Astrid? Jimmy?'

She looked at me dumbly, her eyes glistening. She nodded slowly.

'And you won't tell me?' Silence. I sighed and tried another tack. 'Did Jimmy Duclos tell you what he was?'

She shook her head.

'But you guessed?'

She nodded.

'And told someone what you guessed.'

This got her. 'No! No! I told nobody. Before God, I told nobody!' She'd loved him, all right, and she wasn't lying.

'Did he ever mention me?'

'No.'

'But you know who I am?'

She just looked at me, two big tears trickling slowly down her cheeks.

'You know damn well that I run Interpol's narcotics bureau in London.'

More silence. I caught her shoulders and shook her angrily. 'Well, don't you?'

She nodded. A great girl for silences.

'Then if Jimmy didn't tell you, who did?'

'Oh God! Please leave me alone!' A whole lot of other tears were chasing the first two down her cheeks now. It was her day for crying and mine for sighing, so I sighed and changed my tack again and looked through the door at the boy on the bed.

'I take it,' I said, 'that George is not the breadwinner of the family?'

'George cannot work.' She said it as if she were stating a simple law of nature. 'He hasn't worked for over a year. But what has George to do with this?'

'George has everything to do with it.' I went and bent over him, looked at him closely, lifted an eyelid and dropped it again. 'What do you do for him when he's like this?'

There is nothing one can do.'

I pushed the sleeve up George's skeleton-like arm. Punctured, mottled and discoloured from innumerable injections, it was a revolting sight: Trudi's had been nothing compared to this. I said: 'There's nothing anyone will ever be able to do for him. You know that, don't you?'

'I know that.' She caught my speculative look, stopped dabbing her face with a lace handkerchief about the size of a postage stamp and smiled bitterly. 'You want me to roll up my sleeve.'