Alistair MacLean - Puppet on a Chain

'How can you help me?'

'By destroying the people who have destroyed your brother. By destroying the people who are destroying you. But I need help. In the end, we all need help — you, me, everyone. Help me — and I'll help you. I promise you, Astrid.'

I wouldn't say that the despair in her face was replaced by some other expression but at least it seemed to become a degree less total as she nodded once or twice, smiled shakily and said: 'You seem very good at destroying people.'

'You may have to be, too,' I said and I gave her a very small gun, a Lilliput, the effectiveness of which belies its tiny.21 bore.

I left ten minutes later. As I came out into the street I saw two shabbily dressed men sitting on a step in a doorway almost opposite, arguing heatedly but not loudly so I transferred my gun to my pocket and walked across to where they were. Ten feet away I sheered off for the pungent odour of rum in the air was so overwhelming as to give rise to the thought that they hadn't so much been drinking the stuff but were newly arisen from immersion in a vat of the best Demerara. I was beginning to see spooks in every flickering shadow and what I needed was sleep, so I collected the taxi, drove back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Remarkably, the sun was shining when my portable alarm went off the following morning — or the same morning. I showered, shaved, dressed, went downstairs and breakfasted in the restaurant with such restoring effect that I was able to smile at and say a civil good morning to the assistant manager, the doorman and the barrel-organ attendant in that order. I stood for a minute or two outside the hotel looking keenly around me with the air of a man waiting for his shadow to turn up, but it seemed that discouragement had set in and I was able to make my unaccompanied way to where I'd left the police taxi the previous night. Even though, in broad daylight, I'd stopped staring at shadows I opened the hood all the same but no one had fixed any lethal explosive device during the night so I drove off and arrived at the Marnixstraat HQ at precisely ten o'clock, the promised time.

Colonel de Graaf, complete with search warrant, was waiting for me in the street. So was Inspector van Gelder. Both men greeted me with the courteous restraint of those who think their time is being Wasted but are too polite to say so and led me to a chauffeur-driven police car which was a great deal more luxurious than the one they'd given me.

'You still think our visit to Morgenstern and Muggenthaler is desirable?' de Graaf asked. 'And necessary?'

'More so than ever.'

'Something has happened? To make you feel that way?'

'No,' I lied. I touched my head. 'I'm fey at times.'

De Graaf and van Gelder looked briefly at each other. 'Fey?' de Graaf said carefully.

'I get premonitions.'

There was another brief interchange of glances to indicate their mutual opinion of, police officers who operated on this scientific basis, then de Graaf said, circumspectly changing the topic: 'We have eight plain-clothes officers standing by down there in a plain van. But you say you don't really want' the place searched?'

'I want it searched all right — rather, I want to give the appearance of a search. What I really want are the invoices giving a list of all the suppliers of souvenir items to the warehouse.'

'I hope you know what you are doing,' van Gelder said. He sounded grave.

'You hope,' I said. 'How do you think I feel?'

Neither of them said how they thought I felt, and as it seemed that the line of conversation was taking an unprofitable turn we all kept quiet until we arrived at our destination. We drew up outside the warehouse behind a nondescript grey van and got out and as we did a man in a dark suit climbed down from the front of the grey van and approached us. His civilian suit didn't do much for-him as disguise went: I could have picked him out as a cop at fifty yards.

He said to de Graaf: 'We're ready, sir.'

'Bring your men.'

'Yes, sir.' The policeman pointed upwards. 'What do you make of that sir?'

We followed the direction of his arm. There was a wind blowing gustily that morning, nothing much but enough to give a slow if rather erratic pendulum swing to a gaily coloured object suspended from the hoisting beam at the top of the warehouse: it swung through an arc of about four feet and was, in its setting, one of the most gruesome things I had ever encountered.

Unmistakably, it was a puppet, and a very large puppet at that, well over three feet tall and dressed, inevitably, in the usual immaculate and beautifully tailored traditional Dutch costume, the long striped skirt billowing coquettishly in the wind. Normally, wires or ropes are used to pass through the pulleys of hoisting beams but in this instance someone had elected to use a chain instead: the puppet was secured to the chain by what could be seen, even at that elevation, to be a wicked-looking hook, a hook that was fractionally too small for the neck it passed round, so small that it had obviously had to be forced into position for the neck had been crushed at one side so that the head leaned over at a grotesque angle, almost touching the right shoulder. It was, after all, no more than a mutilated doll: but the effect was horrifying to the point of obscenity. And obviously I wasn't the only one who felt that way.

'What a macabre sight.' De Graaf sounded shocked and he looked it too. 'What in the name of God is that for? What — what's the point of it, what's the purpose behind it? What kind of sick mind could perpetrate an — an obscenity like that?'

Van Gelder shook his head. 'Sick minds are everywhere and Amsterdam has its fair share. A jilted sweetheart, a hated mother-in-law — '

'Yes, yes, those are legion. But this — this is abnormality to the point of insanity. To express your feelings in this terrible way.' He looked at me oddly, as if he were having second thoughts about the purposelessness of this visit. 'Major Sherman, doesn't it strike you as very strange — '

'It strikes me the way it strikes you. The character responsible has a cast-iron claim to the first vacancy in a psychotic ward. But that isn't why I came here.'

'Of course not, of course not.' De Graaf had a last long look at the dangling puppet, as if he could hardly force himself to look away, then gestured abruptly with his head and led the way up the steps towards the warehouse. A porter of sorts took us to the second floor and then to the office in the corner which, unlike the last time I had seen it, now had its time-locked door hospitably open.

The office, in sharp contrast to the warehouse itself, was spacious and uncluttered and modern and comfortable, beautifully carpeted and draped in different shades of lime and equipped with very expensive up-to-the-minute Scandinavian furniture more appropriate to a luxurious lounge than to a dock-side office. Two men seated in deep armchairs behind separate large and leather-covered desks rose courteously to their feet and ushered de Graaf, van Gelder and myself into other and equally restful armchairs while they themselves remained standing. I was glad they did, for this way I could have a better look at them and they were both, in their way, very similar, well worth looking at. But I didn't wait more than a few seconds to luxuriate in the warmth of their beaming reception.

I said to de Graaf: 'I have forgotten something very important. It is imperative I make a call on a friend immediately.' It was, too: I don't often get this chilled and leaden feeling in the stomach but when I do I'm anxious to take remedial action with the least delay.

De Graaf looked his surprise. 'A matter so important, it could have slipped your mind?'

'I have other things on my mind. This just came into it.' Which was the truth.