Alistair MacLean - Puppet on a Chain

I took two steps into the loft and reached an arm for Belinda. She stared at me for unbelieving seconds, then shook off the nerveless hands of Morgenstern and Muggenthaler and came running to me. Her heart was racing like a captive bird's but she seemed otherwise not much the worse for what could only have been the most ghastly experience.

I looked at the three men and smiled as much as I could without hurting my face too much. I said: 'Now, you know what death looks like.'

They knew all right. Their faces frozen, they stretched their hands upwards as far as they could. I kept them like that, not speaking, until de Graaf and van Gelder came pounding up the stairs and into the loft. During that time nothing happened. I will swear none of them as much as blinked. Belinda had begun to shake uncontrollably from the reaction, but she managed to smile wanly at me and I knew she would be all right: Paris Interpol hadn't just picked her out of a hat.

De Graaf and van Gelder, both with guns in their hands, looked at the tableau. De Graaf said: 'What in God's name do you think you are about, Sherman? Why are those three men — '

'Suppose I explain?' I interrupted reasonably. 'It will require some explanation,' van Gelder said heavily. Three well-known and respected citizens of Amsterdam — ' 'Please don't make me laugh,' I said. 'It hurts my face.' That too,' de Graaf said. 'How on earth — ' 'I cut myself shaving.' That was Astrid's line, really, but I wasn't at my inventive best. 'Can I tell it?' De Graaf sighed and nodded. 'In my way?' He nodded again.

I said to Belinda: 'You know Maggie's dead?' 'I know she's dead.' Her voice was a shaking whisper, she wasn't as recovered as I'd thought. 'He's just told me. He told me and he smiled.'

'It's his Christian compassion shining through. He can't help it. Well,' I said to the policeman, 'take a good look gentlemen. At Goodbody. The most sadistically psychopathic killer I've ever met — or heard of, for that matter. The man who hung Astrid Lemay on a hook. The man who had Maggie pitchforked to death in a hayfield in Huyler. The man — '

'You said pitchforked?' De Graaf asked. You could see his mind couldn't accept it.

'Later. The man who drove George Lemay so mad that he killed him. The man who tried to kill me the same way; the man who tried to kill me three times today. The man who puts bottles of gin in the hands of dying junkies. The man who drops people into canals with lead piping wrapped round their waists after God knows what suffering and tortures. Apart from being the man who brings degradation and dementia and death to thousands of crazed human beings throughout the world. By his own admission, the master puppeteer who dangles a thousand hooked puppets from the end of his chains and makes them all dance to his tune. The dance of death.'

'It's not possible,' van Gelder said. He seemed dazed. 'It can't be. Dr Goodbody? The pastor of — -'

'His name is Ignatius Catanelli and he's on our files. An ex-member of an Eastern Seaboard cosa nostra. But even the Mafia couldn't stomach him. By their lights they never kill wantonly, only for sound business reasons. But Catanelli killed because he's in love with death. When he was a little boy he probably pulled the wings off flies. But when he grew up, flies weren't enough for him. He had to leave the States, for the Mafia offered only one alternative.'

'This — this is fantastic.' Fantastic or not the colour still wasn't back in Goodbody's cheeks, 'This is outrageous. This is — '

'Be quiet,' I said. 'We have your prints and cephalic index. I must say that he has, in the American idiom, a sweet set-up going for him here. Incoming coasters drop heroin in a sealed and weighted container at a certain off-shore buoy. This is dragged up by barge and taken to Huyler, where it finds its way to a cottage factory there. This cottage factory makes puppets, which are then transferred to the warehouse here. What more natural — except that the very occasional and specially marked puppet contains heroin.'

Goodbody said: 'Preposterous, preposterous. You can't prove any of this.'

'As I intend to kill you in a minute or two I don't have to prove anything. Ah yes, he had his organization, had friend Catanelli. He had everybody from barrel-organ players to strip-tease dancers working for him — a combination of blackmail, money, addiction and the final threat of death made them all keep the silence of the grave.'

'Working for him?' De Graaf was still a league behind me. 'In what way?'

'Pushing and forwarding. Some of the heroin — a relatively small amount — was left here in puppets: some went to the shops, some to the puppet van in the Vondel Park — and other vans, for all I know. Goodbody's girls went to the shops and purchased those puppets — which were secretly marked — in perfectly legitimate stores and had them sent to minor heroin suppliers, or addicts, abroad. The ones in the Vondel Park were old cheap to the barrel-organ men — they were the connections for the down-and-outs who were in so advanced a condition that they couldn't be allowed to appear in respectable places — if, that is to say, you call sleazy dives like the Balinova a respectable place.'

'Then how in God's name did we never catch on to any of this?' de Graaf demanded.

'Ill tell you in a moment. Still about the distribution. An even larger proportion of the stuff went from here in crates of Bibles — the ones which our saintly friend here so kindly distributed gratis all over Amsterdam. Some of the Bibles had hollow centres. The sweet young things that Goodbody here, in the ineffable goodness of his Christian heart, was trying to rehabilitate and save from a fate worse than death, would turn up at his services with Bibles clutched in their sweet little hands — some of them, God help us, fetchingly dressed as nuns — -then go away with different Bibles clutched in their sweet little hands and then peddle the damned stuff in the night-clubs. The rest of the stuff — the bulk of the stuff — went to the Kasteel Linden. Or have I missed something, Goodbody?'

From the expression on his face, it was pretty evident that I hadn't missed out much of importance, but he didn't answer me. I lifted my gun slightly and said: 'Now, I think, Goodbody.'

'No one's taking the law into his own hands here!' de Graaf said sharply.

'You can see he's trying to escape,' I said reasonably. Goodbody was standing motionless: he couldn't possibly have reached his fingers up another millimetre.

Then, for the second time that day, a voice behind me said: 'Drop that gun, Mr Sherman.'

I turned slowly and dropped my gun. Anybody could take my gun from me. This time it was Trudi, emerging from shadows and only five feet away with a Luger held remarkably steadily in her right hand.

'Trudi!' De Graaf stared at the young happily-smiling blonde girl in shocked incomprehension. 'What in God's name — ' He broke off his words and cried out in pain instead as the barrel of van Gelder's gun smashed down on his wrist. De Graaf's gun clattered to the floor and as he turned to look at the man who had struck him de Graaf's eyes held only stupefaction. Goodbody, Morgenstern and Muggenthaler lowered their hands, the last two producing guns of their own from under their pockets: so vastly voluminous was the yardage of cloth required to cover their enormous frames that they, unlike myself, did not require the ingenuity of specialized tailors to conceal the outline of their weapons.

Goodbody produced a handkerchief, mopped a brow which stood in urgent need of mopping, and said querulously to Trudi: 'You took your time about coming forward, didn't you?'

'Oh, I enjoyed it!' She giggled, a happy and carefree sound that would have chilled the blood of a frozen flounder. 'I enjoyed every moment of it!'