Alistair MacLean - Fear is the Key

"Car Nineteen," I said again. Even to myself my voice didn't sound quite steady. "Would you repeat that, please?"

"Release your suspect," Prendergast said slowly and distinctly. "We have found our man. Repeat, we have found—"

The transmitter leapt backwards about two inches, a great jagged hole appeared in the centre of the timing band and the radio shack seemed to explode about my ears so deafening, so shattering was the effect of a heavy gun being fired in that confined space.

I didn't jump more than a couple of feet and after I came down I got to my feet the normal way, but slowly, carefully. I didn't want anyone getting too nervous, and whoever had pulled that stupid trick, unnecessarily smashing the set and tipping off the cops that something had gone wrong, was very nervous indeed. Almost as nervous as I felt as I turned slowly round and saw who my guest was.

It was Larry and the smoking Colt in his hand was lined up, as nearly as his shaking hand would permit, on a spot somewhere between my eyes. It looked as large as a howitzer. His lank black hair was plastered wetly over his forehead, and the coal-black eye behind that wavering barrel was jerking and burning and crazy as a loon's. One eye. I couldn't see the other, I couldn't see any part of him except half his face, his gun-hand and a left forearm crooked round Mary Ruthven's neck. The rest of him was hidden behind the girl. I looked at her reproachfully.

"Fine watchdog you are," I said mildly.

"Shut up!" Larry snarled. "A cop, eh? A John. A dirty crawling double-crossing screw!" He called me several names, all unprintable, his voice a venomous hiss of hate.

"There's a young lady here, friend," I murmured.

"Lady? A — tramp." He tightened his grip around her neck as if it gave him pleasure and I guessed he had at some time mistakenly tried to make time with her and the roof had fallen in on him. "Thought you were clever, Talbot, didn't you? You thought you knew all the answers, you thought you had us all fooled, didn't you, cop? But you didn't have me fooled, Talbot. I've been watching you, I've been following you every second since we came out to the rig." He was jazzed up to the eyebrows, shaking and jumping as if he had the St. Vitus's Dance, and his voice held all the venomous and vindictive triumph of the consistently ignored and derided nonentity who has been proved right in the end while all those who despised him have been proved wrong. It was Larry's night to sing, and he wasn't going to miss out a single note. But I had listened to pleasanter voices.

"Didn't know that I knew that you were in cahoots with Kennedy, did you, cop?" he went ranting on. "And with this tramp. I was watching you when you came up from the bathyscaphe ten minutes ago, I saw that smooth-talking chauffeur give it to Royale on the head and—"

"How did you know it was Kennedy?" I interrupted. "He was dressed up—"

"I listened outside the door, mug! I could have finished you off there and then, but I wanted to see what you were up to. Think I care if Royale gets sapped down?" He broke off suddenly and swore as the girl went limp on him. He tried to hold her up but heroin is not substitute for protein when it comes to building muscle and even her slight weight was too much for him. He could have lowered her gently, but he didn't: he stood back abruptly and let her collapse heavily on the floor.

I took half a step forward, fists clenched till they hurt, murder in my heart. Larry bared his teeth and grinned at me like a wolf.

"Come and get it, copper. Come and get it," he whispered. I looked from him to the floor and back again and my hands slowly unclenched. "Scared, aren't you, copper? Yellow, aren't you, copper? Sweet on her, aren't you, copper? Just like that pansy Kennedy is sweet on her." He laughed, a high falsetto giggle carrying the overtones of madness. "I'm afraid a little accident is going to happen to Kennedy when I get back over to the other side. Who's going to blame me for gunning him down when I see him sapping Royale?"

"All right," I said wearily. "You're a hero and a great detective. Let's go see Vyland and get it over with."

"We're going to get it over with," he nodded. His voice was suddenly very quiet and I think I liked it even less that way. "But you're not going to see Vyland, copper, you're never going to see anyone again. I'm going to kill you, Talbot. I'm letting you have it now."

My mouth felt as if someone had gone over it with a roll of high-absorbancy blotting-paper. I could fed the slow heavy beat of my heart and the sweat coming on the palms of my hands. He meant every word he said. He was going to squeeze the trigger of that heavy Colt and if he lived to be a hundred nothing would ever give him half so much pleasure again. Finish. But I managed to keep my voice steady.

"So you're going to kill me," I said slowly. "Why?"

"Because I hate your lousy rotten stinking guts, Talbot, that's why," he whispered, a whisper with a shake in it, a horrible sound. "Because you've ridden me and laughed at me from the moment we met, hophead this, junky that, always asking about my syringe. Because you're sweet on this dame here and if I can't get her no one will. And because I hate cops."

He didn't like me, I could see that. Even when he wasn't talking his mouth was working and twitching like an epileptic's. He'd just told me things that I knew he'd never tell another, and I knew why. Dead men tell no tales. And that's what I'd be any second now. Dead. Dead as Herman Jablonsky. Jablonsky in two feet of earth, Talbot in 130 feet of water, not that it made any difference where you slept when it was all over. And it made things no better to reflect that the end was going to come at the hands of a quivering mass of doped-up neuroses disguised as a human being.

"You're going to let me have it now?" My eye never lifted off that jumping trigger finger.

"That's it." He giggled. "In the guts, low down, so I can watch you flop around for a while. You'll scream and you'll scream and you'll scream and no one will ever hear it. How do you like it, copper?"

"Hophead," I said softly. I'd nothing to lose.

"What?" His face was a mask of disbelief. He went into a crouch over his gun that would have been laughable in different circumstances. It wasn't any strain at all not to laugh. "What did you say, copper?"

"Junky," I said distinctly. "You're all doped up so that you don't know what you're doing. What are you going to do with the body?" It was the first time I'd ever thought of myself as a coarse and I didn't care for the feeling very much. "Two of you couldn't lift me out of here and if they find me shot in this cabin they'll know it was you who did it and then you'll be for the high jump, because they still need my services very badly, more than ever. You won't be popular, Larry boy."

He nodded cunningly as if he had just thought up all this himself.

"That's right, copper," he murmured. "I can't shoot you in here, can I? We'll have to go outside, won't we, copper? Near the edge, where I can shoot you and shove you into the sea."

"That's it," I agreed. This was macabre, this arrangement for my own tidy disposal, but I wasn't going as crazy as Larry, I was gambling on my last hope. But the gamble was crazy enough,

"And then they'll all be running around and looking for you," Larry said dreamily. "And I'll be running around and looking for you too and all the time I'll be laughing to myself and thinking about you and the barracuda down among the seaweed there and knowing that I'm smarter than any one of them."

"You have a charming mind," I said.

"Haven't I now?" Again that high falsetto giggle and I could feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck. He poked at Mary with his foot, but she didn't stir. "The dame will keep till I come back. I won't be long, will I, copper? Come on. You first. And don't forget I have a torch and a gun."