John Creasey - Send Superintendent West

“Now tell us just what happened, will you.”

“Al,” protested Mike Hill, “the guy’s dead on his feet.”

“I can use my eyes,” said Al. “You keep out of this.” His hand strayed towards the table by Gissing’s chair, near the paper-knife. “Tell us what happened, going right back to —”

Roger snapped: “Don’t touch that! Don’t touch that knife.”

Al snatched his hands away, as if the knife were red-hot. “He handled it,” Roger said, and weariness and pain were wiped out in a flash of exhilaration. “The kidnapper handled it, his prints are on it. Don’t touch it. Don’t let anyone else know you’ve got it.”

“Okay,” said Al, and smiled for the first time. “You don’t have to get excited. You want to get me an envelope,” he said to one of the others. “Now, Mr West —”

He didn’t finish. Someone by the front door called out that a man was approaching, Sergeant Al left Roger, three men went into the night — a night beginning with a false dawn to bring another day. There were voices in the distance. They drew nearer, and men came on to the verandah. Then another man was brought in, dishevelled, face scratched, clothes torn, exhausted — but recognizable through all that.

“Pullinger!” Roger exclaimed.

Pullinger looked as if he would have fallen but for the support of strong arms. He grinned weakly.

“Hi, Roger,” he said. “You’re a lucky guy. Let me sit down, and give me a drink. A big drink.” He grinned as the men led him to a chair, then slumped into it.

• • •

A bath, a shave and bacon and eggs, turned Roger from a wreck into a man again. He would be stiff for several days, but stiffness didn’t matter. Pullinger had called him lucky, and he didn’t argue. Pullinger couldn’t complain, either.

He told his story to Sergeant Al and Roger, and refused to have anyone else present; a card he showed to Al won him all the necessary respect. After leaving Roger at the New York hotel, Pullinger had felt tired, without reason, and suspected dope, called a colleague and been picked up before he lost consciousness. His colleague had seen Roger half-carried out of the Milton Hotel, like a drunk. With an unconscious Pullinger beside him, the other FBI man followed the car through the night, but without a chance to stop to ask for help. On the Cross Country Parkway, he had been side-swiped by another car, which had gone on, allowing the first car to get well away. But Pullinger’s man had kept going, and had caught up with and seen their quarry.

“It was a raid by ourselves, or lose you for good,” said Pullinger. Pullinger had come round in the early hours. They had stayed near the place where they had lost the car, and spotted it again the next evening, with Roger still in it Roger had been unconscious for over twenty-four hours. The two men had then followed the car to Webster’s old house and fallen foul of the trip wire.

“They caught Buddy,” Pullinger went on bleakly. “I got away. I fell down a gully and into a creek, it seemed hours before I climbed out. I was just in time to see them streaking out of the house as if they had dynamite behind them. So I waited — but I didn’t come too close. Then you arrived, but how was I to know that you were on my side?”

“That’s okay, Mr Pullinger,” Sergeant Al said. “Now you can take it easy. I called State Headquarters, and they called the New York Police Department, and if we have the luck, they won’t get far away with that boy.”

Pullinger said: “I could tear them apart with my own hands.” He looked down at his hands, but he didn’t look at Roger.

They were in a hotel in Wycoma, with the remains of breakfast on a table between them, cigarette-stubs messy in a saucer, a vacuum cleaner humming not far away. Outside, the morning sun shone on the lake and the trees which lined its banks. Pullinger stood up.

“Now I’m going to get some sleep,” he declared. “You too, Roger.”

“I’ve had all the sleep I want.”

“I told you you were a lucky guy! Right, then. The Sergeant will take you around. You and I will drive back to New York later in the day, unless we get other orders.” He stifled a yawn. “You’re still the only man here who can put a finger on Gissing.”

“I won’t forget him in a hurry,” Roger said.

“Sergeant,” said Pullinger, “take good care of Mr West, he’s precious.” He yawned again and went out of the room.

The door closed with a snap. Sergeant Al said he must be getting along, and looked into Roger’s eyes, giving the impression that he was asking a question.

“Maybe you’ll come with me, Mr West, because I need to put in a full report.”

“Why not,” agreed Roger.

The office wasn’t far away. The wide main street of Wycoma was hard-topped, but the sidewalks were dusty. Few people were about. Big gleaming cars stood by parking meters or in garages. Two drug stores and a supermarket were half empty and Roger’s gaze was drawn to the crowded shelves. Sergeant Al talked, economically. The season was nearly over, the weather would break any time, and then there wouldn’t be much doing until spring. He led the way, nodding without speaking to several clerks and to one of the troopers who had been with him during the night. Reaching his office he ushered Roger inside, then closed the door. He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out the envelope containing the paper-knife.

“I did what you said, Mr West. But I can’t give you this, I must hand it over to my boss. I ain’t said a word to anyone about it, the other guys will keep quiet too.”

“The fewer people who know we have that man’s prints the better,” said Roger.

He didn’t know who he would see yet, and wasn’t prepared to voice any doubts about Pullinger’s story. He hadn’t a lead, except through Pullinger, and he wanted one.

He could telephone Marino.

He would telephone Marino.

Al listened.

“Well,” Al said, and smiled again, “I guess this may be the first call ever put through to England from Wycoma, Mr West, but that don’t make any difference. But you could wait until you get to New York or Washington. Or else —”

He didn’t finish.

That was because Roger heard a voice in the outer office, and was out of his chair and moving across the room quicker than he had thought he would be able to move for days. There was only one voice like that in the world. He reached the door in two strides, and pulled it open.

Lissa was saying to a trooper:

Will I find Mr Roger West here? I was told —”

“Right here,” Roger said.

Lissa swung round, her eyes glowing. There was no sense in it, but it was like coming to the end of a journey.

19

SHAWN HOUSEHOLD

THEY didn’t move or speak, their hands did not touch.

They stood two yards from each other, Roger in the doorway with Sergeant Al behind him, Lissa oblivious of the trooper to whom she had just spoken and of the others now watching her. A girl stopped clattering on the typewriter, and silence fell. It could only have been for a few seconds, but it seemed age-long.

Sergeant Al, his little eyes bright, made a sound which might have meant anything, and broke the spell. As Roger relaxed, pictures of Janet and the boys flashed into his mind. But he felt no sense of guilt or even disquiet; it was as if emotion had been drawn out of him, leaving a strange emptiness that was both buoyant and satisfying.

“Hi, Roger,” Lissa said, and they gripped hands. “You had me worried.”

“I was worried myself,” Roger said, and turned, still holding her hand. “This is Sergeant Al.”

“Just Al?” Lissa’s radiance brought a reluctant curve to the Sergeant’s lips.

“Sergeant Al Ginney, ma’am.”