Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

But what had he been writing on? Well, whatever it was, my guess was the killer had lifted it. Probably a telephone notepad. So why pinch a whole pad when you can just tear off a page?

I'm writing something. Important. Secret. Somebody knocks on the door. I'm not expecting anybody, it's late in the day, I'm surprised. I call 'Come in', but at the same time I open the central desk drawer and just slide the notepad in and out of sight, and he comes in before I've had time to put away the pen and – bang. And bang again.

I opened the drawer and took out the pad and tore off the top half-dozen pages. And five seconds after, I was starting down the stairs.

There was still a small crowd in the lobby, so I strolled through listening to the thunder of my heartbeat, and just getting outside was the first day of spring. Even if I knew winter was on its way back.

By then the Fontenen was really filling up with prosperous-looking types steaming out the rain over the first beer of the day. I ordered one for myself, then went to explore the gents' lavatory. It had a modern cistern, but the lid still lifted off, and the Mauser and the derringer – plus the clip holster – went down into the water, well clear of the ball-and-cock gear. The two cartridge cases and five blank sheets of notepaper just got flushed away; I was prepared to chance the sheet with writing on it – even if it did start off with the word card. Five minutes later, I was back in the lobby of Steen's building.

The crowd had thinned to three girls getting the word from two young men. I marched up to the janitor at his marble-topped counter and asked for Jonas Steen.

He looked curiously at me, significantly at the wall clock. 'Does he expect you?'

'He said he'd meet me at the Fontenen cafe, but he's twenty minutes late and I just wondered…'

He shrugged, dialled on the house phone. No reply. He shrugged. 'He has gone.'

'But he can't have. He arranged to meet me. I've come all the way from London to see him.'

He shrugged again, but called something to the group and one of the girls considered and called something back. I don't know what, but enough to get him puzzled. And I'd done my part. Steen wouldn't rest lonely all night.

Even then, it took time. Janitors don't make fast, purposeful decisions. They stand there and think, or at least stand there. Then they pick up the phone and make two other calls and get two other no replies. Then they think, or stand there, some more. And finally they haul out a big bunch of keys and lead you over to the lift.

I watched, trying to look bored, as he went through the inevitable, useless ritual of knocking, knocking again louder, and then pasting an apologetic smile on his face and opening the door and leaning in to have a look.

'-!' he said. I mean, I don't know what he said but I know what he meant. And even from the back of his head I could tell there wasn't any more smile on the front. He lunged into the room, and I followed.

Just for the record, I said something like, 'Good Christ!' but it was wasted. He'd rushed straight across to the body but was just standing there, not touching it, not really looking at it, not doing anything.

'Is it Mr Steen? ' I asked.

'Yes, yes,' he said impatiently – and went on doing nothing.

After a while, I suggested, 'What about the police?'

'Yes, yes.'

And at last he picked up the phone.

They were fast and, as far as I could tell, good. There were a couple of uniformed cops on the spot inside two minutes, two motor-cyclists a half-minute later, and after that a carload of plainclothes jacks. One of these took me back downstairs and parked me in the janitor's room behind the marble counter and leaned against the door to stop the draught coming in or something. And we waited. For a long time voices and feet went hither and yon outside.

Then at last somebody stuck his head around the door and called me out.

They'd turned the marble-topped counter into a sort of interrogation desk and communications centre. One of the plain-clothes men was on the phone to somewhere; a uniformed cop was using a small walkie-talkie and accepting lousy transmission rather than go outside in the wet. Another jack was sitting and writing in a notebook. He looked up as I came in behind him.

He must have been about forty-five, with a rumpled brown suit, a bush of white-grey hair brushed back from a bony, triangular face with a big nose. And a cold. The nose was red and had a permanent drip on the end; the sunken grey eyes were damp and bleary. He looked at me with about as much interest as he'd've given to a lost umbrella and asked, 'You are English?'

'Yes.'

'Your name, please.'

I gave him my passport and he started copying.

'You are at a hotel?'

'The Norge.'

Calmly, without any embarrassment, he reached out for the phone and asked for the hotel, and checked.

When he'd finished, he said, 'You came only today?'

'Yes.'

'When did you come here, to this office? '

'Oh-ten to four maybe.'

The time struck him as odd, so we had to have the story about me waiting in the café and then going out to look if I'd made a mistake and there was another cafénearby (just in case he checked and some waiter remembered my in-and-out bit) and coming back and finally coming to the office and…

Halfway through this there was a shiver in the crowd and everybody seemed to be standing to attention – except my boy. A new man, tall and solid in a smooth black overcoat, black hair except for neat silver wings over the ears, a well-fed face, was suddenly among those present. If we'd been a regiment he'd have been the colonel; as everybody except me was a copper, he had to be the superintendent.

He reviewed the troops with a cold bright eye until he reached me; then came over and asked a couple of brisk questions of my questioner. He answered them without looking up from his notebook and I knew just how he felt about senior officers who think they're helping the Chaps by barging into the middle of an interrogation.

Finally he'd helped enough and went away. My man dug in his pockets and found a handful of used Kleenex to wipe his nose on, a benzedrine sniffer to inhale from, and a couple of yellow pills for dessert.

Then he looked up at me. 'That was the superintendent.'

I nodded. 'I didn't catch your name.'

'Vik. Inspector (First Class) Vik.' He sighed and put away the notebook. 'I will perhaps call on you tonight. You will be at the hotel?'

'Sure. I came over just to see Steen. Now…" I shrugged.

It was getting dark by the time I reached the Norge again, and well into legal whisky time, so I found out why they don't serve the stuff until the end of the working day: because you need a whole day's pay to buy a single shot, that's why. I sat in the lounge bar on the balcony above the lobby and stretched a single Scotch into a slow-drinking record.

Maybe I chose that seat by instinct: at a low table right up against the glass front of the hotel, so that by looking down through the balcony railings and past a modern sunburst chandelier I had a perfect view of the lobby desk and the three lifts. I might have been thinking of getting early warning of Vik; as it was, I got early warning of Draper and Maggie Mack-wood.

She was wearing a thick green-blue tartan cloak and carrying a brown vanity case; he was lugging a soft tapestry bag that looked more hers than his. When they reached the desk, she was obviously the only one checking in. When she and a porter headed for the lift (she actually got her bags carried; my researches had suggested that only happened in Norway for the King, and then only when he'd got a bad back), Draper wandered off and sat down in one of the chairs scattered over the middle of the big lobby.