Alistair MacLean - Puppet on a Chain

I hauled George none too gently from his seat, got him over my shoulder, carried him upstairs to the church proper and dumped him unceremoniously behind the pulpit where he would be out of sight of anyone who might glance in casually from the main door, although why anyone should take it into his head to glance in at that time of night I couldn't imagine. I opened the main door and glanced out, although far from casually, but the canal street was deserted in both directions.

Three minutes later I had the taxi parked not far from the church. I went inside, retrieved George, dragged him down the steps and across the road and bundled him into the back seat of the taxi. He promptly fell off the seat on to the floor and as he was probably safer in that position I left him there, quickly checked that no one was taking any interest in what I was doing and went back inside the church again.

The dead man's pockets yielded nothing except a few homemade cigarettes which accorded well enough with the fact that he had obviously been hopped to the eyes when he had come after me with the whippet. I took the whippet in my left hand, seized the dead man by the collar of his coat — any other method of conveying him from there would have resulted in a blood-stained suit and this was the only serviceable suit I'd left — and dragged him across the basement and up the stairs, closing doors and putting out lights as I went.

Again the cautious reconnaissance at the church main door, again the deserted street. I dragged the man across the street into what little cover was offered by the taxi and lowered him into the canal as soundlessly as he would doubtless have lowered me if he'd been a bit handier with the whippet, which I now lowered into the canal after him. I went back to the taxi and was about to open the driver's door when a door of the house next to the church swung wide and a man appeared, who looked around uncertainly and then made his way across to where I was standing.

He was a big, burly character dressed in what appeared to be some kind of voluminous night-gown with a bathing wrap over it. He had rather an impressive head, with a splendid mane of white hair, a white moustache, a pink-cheeked healthy complexion and, at that moment, an air of slightly bemused benevolence.

'Can I be of help?' He had the deep resonant modulated voice of one obviously accustomed to hearing quite a lot of it. 'Is there something wrong?'

'What should be wrong?'

'I thought I heard a noise coming from the church.'

'The church?' It was my turn to look bemused.

'Yes. My church. There.' He pointed to it in case I couldn't recognize a church when I saw one. 'I'm the pastor. Goodbody. Dr Thaddeus Goodbody. I thought some intruder was perhaps moving around — '

'Not me, Reverend. I haven't been inside a church for years.'

He nodded as if he weren't at all surprised. 'We live in a godless age. A strange hour to be abroad, young man.'

'Not for a taxi-driver on the night shift.'

He looked at me with an unconvinced expression and peered into the back of the taxi. 'Merciful heavens. There's a body on the floor.'

'There isn't a body on the floor. There's a drunken sailor on the floor and I'm taking him back to his ship. He just fell to the floor a few seconds ago so I stopped to get him back on his seat again. I thought,' I added virtuously, 'that it would be the Christian thing to do. With a corpse, I wouldn't bother.'

My professional appeal availed nothing. He said, in the tone which he presumably kept for reproaching the more backsliding of his flock: 'I Insist on seeing for myself.'

He pressed firmly forward and I pressed him firmly back again. I said: 'Don't make me lose my licence. Please.'

'I knew it I I knew it! Something is far amiss. So I can make you lose your licence?'

'Yes. If I throw you into the canal then I'll lose my licence. If, that is,' I added consideringly, 'you manage to climb back out again.'

'What! The canal! Me? A man of God? Are you threatening me with violence, sir?'

'Yes.'

Dr Goodbody backed off several rapid paces.

'I have your licence, sir. I shall report you — '

The night was wearing on and I wanted some sleep before the morning, so I climbed into the car and drove off. He was shaking his fist at me in a fashion that didn't say much for -his concept of brotherly love and appeared to be delivering himself of some vehement harangue but I couldn't hear any of it. I wondered if he would lodge a complaint with the police and thought that the odds were against it.

I was getting tired of carrying George up stairs. True, he weighed hardly anything at all, but what with the lack of sleep and dinner I was a good way below par and, moreover, I'd had my bellyful of junkies. I found the door to Astrid's tiny flat unlocked, which was what I would have expected to find if George had been the last person to use it. I opened it, switched on the light, walked past the sleeping girl, and deposited George none too gently on his own bed. I think it must have been the noise the mattress made and not the bright overhead light in her room that. wakened Astrid: in any event, she was sitting up in her bed-settee and rubbing eyes still bemused from sleep as I returned to her room. I looked down at her in what I hoped was a speculative fashion and said nothing.

'He was asleep, then I went to sleep,' she said defensively. 'He must have got up and gone out again.' When I treated this masterpiece of deduction with, the silence it deserved she went on almost desperately: 'I didn't hear him go out. I didn't. Where did you find him?'

'You'd never guess, I'm sure. In a garage, over a barrel-organ, trying to get the cover off. He wasn't making much progress.'

As she had done earlier that night, she buried her face in her hands: this time she wasn't crying, although I supposed drearily that it would be only a matter of time.

'What's so upsetting about that?' I asked. 'He's very interested in barrel-organs, isn't he, Astrid? I wonder why. It is curious. He's musical, perhaps?'

'No. Yes. Ever since he was a little boy — '

'Oh, be quiet. If he was musical he'd rather listen to a pneumatic drill. There's a very simple reason why he dotes on these organs. Very simple — and both you and I know what it is.'

She stared at me, not in surprise: her eyes were sick with fear. Wearily, I sank down on the edge of the bed and took both her hands in mine.

'Astrid?'

'Yes?'

'You're almost as accomplished a liar as I am. You didn't go looking for George because you knew damn well where George was and you know damn well where I found him, in a place where he was safe and sound, in a place where the police would never find him because they would never think to look for anyone there.' I sighed. 'A smoke is not the needle, but I suppose it's better than nothing.'

She looked at me with a stricken face, then got back to burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as I knew they would. How obscure or what my motives were I didn't know, I just couldn't sit there without holding out at least a tentatively comforting hand and when I did she looked up at me numbly through tear-filled eyes, reached up her hands and sobbed bitterly on my shoulder. I was becoming accustomed to this treatment in Amsterdam but still far from reconciled to it, so I tried to ease her arms gently away but she only tightened them the more. It had, I knew, nothing whatsoever to do with me: for the moment she needed something to cling to and I happened to be there, gradually the sobs eased and she lay there, her tear-stained face defenceless and full of despair.

I said: 'It's not too late, Astrid.'

'That's not true. You know as well as I know, it was too late from the beginning.'

'For George, yes, it is. But don't you see I'm trying to help you?'