John Creasey: Send Superintendent West

“Do we have to stay here?” he asked.

“No, I’ll come back and have a look later,” said Marino. “We’ll go into Trenton. I’ve had a man call David, he and Belle will be at Trenton as fast as an aeroplane can bring them. Get in, Roger.”

Roger got into the back of the car, and the driver, who seemed never to say a word, started off. Several men waved. A crowd had gathered near the creek, thirty or forty people whose ranks were swelling every minute. Marino seemed hardly to notice them, and did not speak until they were on the road and driving past the restaurant. Then he turned his head as far as he could turn it with comfort

“You don’t talk enough,” he said. “I know how you feel about Lissa. I also know you for a man who won’t make a fool of himself. You suspected Lissa once, in spite of the way you felt, but you can’t suspect her now. We know there was someone besides Pullinger, we know it wasn’t Lissa, so we shall have to have a talk with Carl Fischer, and I’m not going to like it You agree?” He was almost aggressive.

“You could talk with someone else.” mo?”

“Someone who knew about that damaged corner of the gold identity tag. Someone who once had a fortune and lost it Someone who could torment a man she was supposed to love, who stayed married to him because of his money, and whom money would have set free. Someone who did her devilish best to make her husband turn against her, because if he gave her freedom he’d give her money to make it real But he wanted her too much. Someone who could fly into a rage and shout and scream and claw at her husband’s face — and then calm down as if a tap had been turned off. Someone who could pick up that money and pass part of it on, keeping the rest for herself — to live on when she left her husband.”

Marino strained his neck to look round, opened his mouth as if to cry: “No!” but didn’t speak.

“The one woman who could influence Shawn enough to make him turn his back on working for you and all it meant,” Roger went on. “Who was already making life hell for him, and would listen to anyone else who would help her get free. Someone she didn’t love, but hated.”

Marino said hoarsely: “No. Not the boy’s mother.”

“Grant her that Gissing convinced her that Ricky would never be hurt, and what makes it impossible?” Roger asked.

25

REUNION

BELLE looked younger. She had freed her hair, and it hung down in waves to her shoulders. She wore a pale-green linen dress trimmed with yellow, carried a green handbag, and wore attractive green shoes. In spite of the dress and the air of simplicity, she seemed to offer a particular kind of sensual ripeness. She greeted Roger as if he were a friend who made her heart beat faster, yet she clung to Shawn’s arm. He dwarfed her.

He looked like a man at rest.

They had come from the private room in the hospital, where Ricky lay sleeping. Marino and Roger were waiting at the hospital gates, Marino in and Roger by the side of the Lincoln. As Belle had walked towards them, Marino had said:

“If you’re wrong, he’ll kill you.”

“If I’m right, he’ll always be on bail from hell,” Roger had answered.

“It’s so wonderful,” Belle greeted them brightly. “He looks so peaceful. And he hasn’t been hurt, you were right, they didn’t hurt him. His lips are red where that plaster was stuck on, but that will soon go, and the doctor says he’ll be fine. Roger, how can David and I ever thank you?”

Shawn gulped. “I wish I could even try.”

“We’re staying until we can take him away, of course, it’ll be two or three days. Do come and stay with us, Roger.” Belle put a hand on his, squeezed and wouldn’t let go. “He must, David, mustn’t he?”

“He couldn’t say no,” said Shawn.

Every minute that Shawn lived in this fool’s paradise would make the revelation hurt more. They could wait in the hope that Gissing or Pullinger would talk, but Pullinger wouldn’t be able to do so for twenty-four hours or more. In twenty-four hours Roger hoped to be flying home, to the good things there. If it would have helped he would have stayed here for weeks, but this had to be done with the swift incision of a surgeon’s knife.

“One thing stops me staying here,” Roger said. The enormity of the accusation and the likely fury of Shawn’s reaction swept over him, and he paused. Marino’s eyes were on him He put his hand into his pocket as if for cigarettes, and wished he had a gun. Shawn might be cataclysmic. “Only one thing, Mrs Shawn. I’ve two sons of my own. They mean a great deal to me.” Her great eyes were fixed on his, and he thought that she had some inkling of what he was going to say; if he were right in that, then he was right about the rest. “That makes it hard for me to sit at the same table, even to breathe the same air as you.”

She didn’t speak.

Shawn seemed too stunned to resent the insult, if he understood it.

“Gissing didn’t think I would ever get away alive,” Roger said. “So he told me. How you hated your husband’s job, worked on your husband’s nerves — that was nothing new — and agreed to help with the kidnapping. Gissing gave you the drug, and you used it You told him how the dent in the identity tag had been caused, and he pointed it out so as to prove he had Ricky. You knew him for a devil, and you made it easy for him to kidnap the child. You believed him when he said Ricky wouldn’t be hurt. My God, how any woman could take a chance like that, any mother —”

“But he wasn’t hurt, was he?” she cried. “Gissing kept —”

She didn’t add “his word”. She spun round, and her gaze was on Shawn, who was staring at her while the truth seeped awfully into his mind. Roger had thought that Shawn would want to kill, but all he did was to keep looking at her, his features gradually stiffening, until he groaned as if in agony, and buried his face in his hands.

• • •

Hours afterwards, Gissing answered all their questions, soon there was nothing left that they did not know. Belle was under a form of house arrest at the hotel, Shawn was waiting in another room. He was not the caged tiger Roger had expected but a stony-faced man who spoke and acted mech-anically, and whose eyes were like the embers of a dying fire.

Roger was glad that he would have no part in clearing things up, that the case was finished for him. Marino had not suggested that he should stay longer; it was as if the other man knew of his compelling reasons for wanting to get home.

Roger was alone in his room at the hotel when the telephone bell rang. It was early evening.

“Hallo.”

“Come down and see me, Roger, will you?” It was Marino, who had a room on the ground floor.

“Yes, right away.”

Marino, in the wheeled chair which couldn’t be disguised, sat alone, smoking, a drink by his side. He waved to whisky and a soda siphon. He looked more settled in his mind, no longer as if he were trying to work out an insoluble problem. Almost casually, he said:

“I’ve just seen Lissa, she’s come round. The bullet was lodged just beneath her ribs, but they’ve got it out.” He smiled almost drolly. “There was talk about prompt action saving her from bleeding to death.”

“I couldn’t be more glad,” Roger said warmly.

“I knew you would want to know. I’ve seen Shawn, as well. It’s too early to be sure what will happen. I don’t know what we’ll do with Belle, or whether there will be a charge. I should think, no. She didn’t know about the murder, simply made a deal with Gissing, whom she knew slightly. She raged about being tied to Shawn in Gissing’s presence, and he told her how to get free. Fake a kidnapping, he said, and make Shawn pay up, then share the ransom. She probably passed on half of what Shawn paid, through Pullinger; we found it in her room. We could make a charge, you could make one in England, but I should still think no. Agree?”