Puppet On A Chain Part 14

'Oh my G.o.d!' I said. 'Oh my G.o.d!' I looked at Maggie standing there, the smile slowly dying on her lips and for one brief moment I felt like turning savagely on her, for her ignorance, for her stupidity, for her smiling . face, for her empty talk of good news, and then I felt more ashamed of myself than I had ever done in my life, for the fault was mine, not Maggie's, and I would have cut off my hand sooner than hurt her, so instead I put my arm round her shoulders and said: 'Maggie, I must leave you.'

She smiled at me uncertainly. 'I'm sorry. I don't understand.'

'Maggie?'

'Yes, Paul?'

'How do you think Astrid Lemay found out the telephone number of your new hotel?'

'Oh, dear G.o.d!' she said, for now she understood.

I ran across to my car without looking back, started up and accelerated through the gears like a man possessed, which I suppose I really was. I operated the switch that popped up the blue flas.h.i.+ng police light and turned on the siren, then clamped the earphones over my head and started fiddling desperately with the radio control k.n.o.bs. n.o.body had ever shown me how to work it and this was hardly the time to learn. The car was full of noise, the high-pitched howling of the over-stressed engine, the clamour of the siren, the static and crackle of the earphones and, what seemed loudest of all to me, the sound of my harsh and bitter and futile swearing as I tried to get that d.a.m.ned radio to work. Then suddenly the crackling ceased and I heard a calm a.s.sured voice.

'Police headquarters,' I shouted. 'Colonel de Graaf. Never mind who the h.e.l.l I am. Hurry, man, hurry!' There was a long and infuriating silence as I weaved through the morning rush-hour traffic and then a voice on the earphones said: 'Colonel de Graaf is not in his office yet.'

'Then get him at home!' I shouted. Eventually they got him at home. 'Colonel de Graaf? Yes, yes, yes. Never mind that. That puppet we saw yesterday. I have seen a girl like that before. Astrid Lemay.' De Graaf started to ask questions but I cut him short. 'For G.o.d's sake, never mind that. The warehouse -- I think she's in desperate danger. We're dealing with a criminal maniac. For G.o.d's sake, hurry.'

I threw the earphones down and concentrated on driving and cursing myself. If you want a candidate for easy outwitting, I thought savagely, Sherman's your man. But at the same time I was conscious that I was being at least a degree unfair to myself: I was up against a brilliantly directed criminal organization, that was for sure, but an organization that contained within it an unpredictable psychopathic element that made normal prediction almost impossible. Sure, Astrid had sold Jimmy Duclos down the river, but it had been Duclos or George, and George was a brother. They'd sent her to get to work on me, for she herself could have had no means of knowing that I was staying at the Rembrandt, but instead of enlisting my aid and sympathy she'd chickened out at the last moment and I'd had her traced and that was when the trouble had begun, that was when she had begun to become a liability instead of an a.s.set. She had begun seeing me -- or I her -- without their ostensible knowledge. I could have been seen taking George away from that barrel-organ in the Rembrandtplein or at the church or by those two drunks outside her flat who weren't drunks at all.

They'd eventually decided that it was better to have her out of the way, but not in such a fas.h.i.+on that would make me think that harm had come to her because they probably thought, and rightly, that if I thought she'd been taken prisoner and was otherwise in danger I'd have abandoned all hope of achieving my ultimate objective and done what they knew now was the very last thing I wanted to do -- go to the police and lay before them all I knew, which they probably suspected was a great deal. This, too, was the last thing they wanted me to do because although by going to the police I would have defeated my own ultimate ends, I could so severely damage their organization that it might take months, perhaps years, to build it up again. And so Durrell and Marcel had played their part yesterday morning in the Balinova while I had overplayed mine to the hilt and had convinced me beyond doubt that Astrid and George had left for Athens. Sure they had. They'd left all right, been forced off the plane at Paris and forced to return to Amsterdam. When she'd spoken to Belinda, she'd done so with a gun at her head.

And now, of course, Astrid was no longer of any use to them. Astrid had gone over to the enemy and there was only one thing to do with people like that. And now, of course, they need no longer fear any reaction from me, for I had died at two o'clock that morning down in the barge harbour. I had the key to it all now, because I knew why they had been waiting. But I knew the key was too late to save Astrid.

I hit nothing and killed no one driving through Amsterdam, but that was only because its citizens have very quick reactions. I was in the old town now, nearing the warehouse and travelling at high speed down the narrow one-way street leading to it when I saw the police barricade, a police car across the street with an armed policeman at either end of it. I skidded to a halt. I jumped out of the car and a policeman approached me.

'Police,' he said, in case I thought he was an insurance salesman or something. 'Please go back.'

'Don't you recognize one of your own cars?' I snarled. 'Get out of my d.a.m.ned way.'

'No one is allowed into this street.'

'It's all right.' De Graaf appeared round the corner and if I hadn't known from the police car the expression on his face would have told me. 'It's not a very pleasant sight, Major Sherman.'

I walked past him without speaking, rounded the corner and looked upwards. From this distance the puppet-like figure swinging lazily from the hoisting beam at the top of Morgenstern and Muggenthaler's warehouse looked hardly larger than the puppet I had seen yesterday morning, but then I had seen that one from directly underneath, so this one had to be bigger, much bigger. It was dressed in the same traditional costume as had been the puppet that had swayed to and fro there only so short a time ago: I didn't have to get any closer to know that the puppet's face of yesterday would be a perfect replica of the face that was there now. I turned away and walked round the corner, de Graaf with me.

'Why don't you take her down?' I asked. I could hear my own voice coming as if from a distance, abnormally, icily calm and quite toneless.

'It's a job for a doctor. He's gone up there now.' 'Of course.' I paused and said: 'She can't have been there long. She was alive less than an hour ago. Surely the warehouse was open long before -- '

This is Sat.u.r.day. They don't work on Sat.u.r.days.' 'Of course,' I repeated mechanically. Another thought had come into my head, a thought that struck an even deeper fear and chill into me. Astrid, with a gun at her head, had phoned the Touring. But she had phoned with a message for me, and that message had been meaningless and could or should have achieved nothing, for I was lying at the bottom of the harbour. It could only have had a purpose if the message had been relayed to me. It would have only been made if they knew I was still alive. How could they have known I was still alive? Who could have conveyed the information that I was still alive? n.o.body had seen me -- except the three matrons on Huyler. And why should they concern themselves -- There was more. Why should they make her telephone me and then put themselves and their plans in jeopardy by killing Astrid after having been at such pains to convince me that she was alive and well? Suddenly, certainly, I knew the answer. They had forgotten something. I'd forgotten something. They forgot what Maggie had forgotten, that Astrid did not know the telephone number of their new hotel: and I'd forgotten that neither Maggie nor Belinda had ever met Astrid or heard her speak. I walked back round the corner. Below the gable of the warehouse the chain and hook still stirred slightly: but the burden was gone.

I said to de Graaf: 'Get the doctor.' He appeared in two minutes, a youngster, I should have thought, fresh out of medical school and looking paler, I suspected, than he normally did.

I said harshly: 'She's been dead for hours, hasn't she?'

He nodded. 'Four, five, I can't be sure.'

'Thank you.' I walked away back round the corner, de Graaf accompanying me. His face held a score of unasked questions, but I didn't feel like answering any of them.

'I killed her,' I said. 'I think I may have killed someone else, too.'

'I don't understand,' de Graaf said.

'I think I have sent Maggie to die.'

'Maggie?'

'I'm sorry. I didn't tell you. I had two girls with me, both from Interpol. Maggie was one of them. The other is at the Hotel Touring.' I gave him Belinda's name and telephone number. 'Contact her for me, will you, please? Tell her to lock her door and stay there till she hears from me and that she is to ignore any phone or written message that does not contain the word "Birmingham". Will you do it personally, please?'

'Of course.'

I nodded at de Graaf's car. 'Can you get through on the radio telephone to Huyler?'

He shook his head.

'Then police headquarters, please.' As de Graaf spoke to his driver, a grim-faced van Gelder came round the corner. He had a handbag with him.

'Astrid Lemay's?' I asked. He nodded. 'Give it to me, please.'

He shook his head firmly. 'I can't do that. In a case of murder -- '

'Give it to him,' de Graaf said.

'Thank you,' I said to de Graaf: 'Five feet four, long black hair, blue eyes, very good-looking, navy skirt and jacket, white blouse and white handbag. She'll be in the area -- '

'One moment.' De Graaf leaned towards his driver, then said: 'The lines to Huyler appear to be dead. Death does seem to follow you around, Major Sherman.'

'I'll call you later this morning,' I said, and turned for my car.

'I'll come with you,' van Gelder said.

'You have your hands full here. Where I'm going I don't want any policemen.'

Van Gelder nodded. 'Which means you are going to step outside the law.'

I'm already outside the law. Astrid Lemay is dead. Jimmy Duclos is dead. Maggie may be dead. I want to talk to people who make other people dead.'

'I think you should give us your gun,' van Gelder said soberly.

'What do you expect me to have in my hands when I talk to them? A Bible? To pray for their souls? First you kill me, van Gelder, then you take away the gun.'

De Graaf said: 'You have information and you are withholding it from us?'

'Yes.'

'This is not courteous, wise or legal.'

I got into my car. 'As for the wisdom, you can judge later. Courtesy and legality no longer concern me.'

I started the engine and as I did van Gelder made a move towards me and I heard de Graaf saying: 'Leave him be, Inspector, leave him be.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

I didn't make many friends on the way back out to Huyler but then I wasn't in the mood for making friends. Under normal circ.u.mstances, driving in the crazy and wholly irresponsible way I did, I should have been involved in at least half a dozen accidents, all of them serious, but I found that the flas.h.i.+ng police light and siren had a near-magical effect of clearing the way in front of me. At a distance up to half a mile approaching vehicles or vehicles going in the same direction as I was would slow down or stop, pulling very closely in to the side of the road'. I was briefly pursued by a police car that should have known better, but the police driver lacked my urgency of motivation and he was clearly and sensibly of the opinion that there was no point in killing himself just to earn his weekly wage. There would be, I knew, an immediate radio alert, but I had no fear of road blocks or any such form of molestation: once the licence plate number was received at HQ I'd be left alone.

I would have preferred to complete the journey in another car or by bus, for one quality in which a yellow and red taxi is conspicuously lacking is un.o.btrusiveness, but haste was more important than discretion. I compromised by driving along the final stretch of the causeway at a comparatively sedate pace: the spectacle of a yellow and red taxi approaching the village at speed of something in the region of a hundred miles an hour would have given rise to some speculation even among the renownedly incurious Dutch.

I parked the car in the already rapidly filling car park, removed my jacket, shoulder-holster and tie, upended my collar, rolled up my sleeves, and emerged from the car with my jacket hung carelessly over my left arm: under the jacket I carried my gun with the silencer in place.

The notoriously fickle Dutch weather had changed dramatically for the better. Even as I had left Amsterdam the skies had been clearing and now there were only drifting cotton-wool puffs in an otherwise cloudless sky and the already hot sun was drawing up steam from the houses and adjoining fields. I walked leisurely but not too leisurely towards the building I'd asked Maggie to keep under observation. The door stood wide open now and at intervals I could see people, all women in their traditional costumes, moving around the interior: occasionally one emerged and went into the village, occasionally a man came out with a carton which he would place on a wheelbarrow and trundle into the village. This was the home of a cottage industry of some sort: what kind of industry was impossible to judge from the outside. That it appeared to be an entirely innocuous industry was evidenced by the fact that tourists who occasionally happened by were smilingly invited to come inside and look around. All the ones I saw go inside came out again, so clearly it was the least sinister of places. North of the building stretched an almost unbroken expanse of hayfields and in the distance I could see a group of traditionally dressed matrons tossing hay in the air to dry it off in the morning sun. The men of Huyler, I reflected, seemed to have it made: none of them appeared to do any work at all.

There was no sign of Maggie. I wandered back into the village, bought a pair of tinted spectacles -- heavy dark spectacles instead of acting as an aid to concealment tend to attract attention, which is probably why so many people wear them -- and a floppy straw hat that I wouldn't have been seen dead in outside Huyler. It was hardly what one could call a perfect disguise, for nothing short of stain could ever conceal the white scars on my face, but at least it helped to provide me with a certain degree of anonymity and I didn't think I looked all that different from scores of other tourists wandering about the village. I wandered back into the village, bought a pair of tinted spectacles -- heavy dark spectacles instead of acting as an aid to concealment tend to attract attention, which is probably why so many people wear them -- and a floppy straw hat that I wouldn't have been seen dead in outside Huyler. It was hardly what one could call a perfect disguise, for nothing short of stain could ever conceal the white scars on my face, but at least it helped to provide me with a certain degree of anonymity and I didn't think I looked all that different from scores of other tourists wandering about the village.

Huyler was a very small village, but when you start looking for someone concerning whose whereabouts you have no idea at all and when that someone may be wandering around at the same time as you are, then even the smallest village can become embarra.s.singly large. As briskly as I could without attracting attention, I covered every lane in Huyler and saw no trace of Maggie.

I was in a pretty fair way towards quiet desperation now, ignoring the voice in my mind that told me with numbing certainty that I was too late, and feeling all the more frustrated by the fact that I had to conduct my search with at least a modic.u.m of leisure. I now started on a tour of all the shops and cafes although, if Maggie were still alive and well, I hardly expected to find her in any of those in view of the a.s.signment I had given her. But I couldn't afford to ignore any possibility.

The shops and cafes round the inner harbour yielded nothing -- and I covered every one of them. I then moved out in a series of expanding concentric circles, as far as one can a.s.sign so geometrical a term in the maze of haphazard lanes that was Huyler. And it was on the outermost of these circles that I found Maggie, finding her alive, well and totally unscathed: my relief was hardly greater than my sense of foolishness.

I found her where I should have thought to find her right away if I had been using my head as she had been. I'd told her to keep the building under surveillance but at the same time to keep in company and she was doing just that. She was inside a large crowded souvenir shop, fingering some of the articles for sale, but not really looking at them: she was looking fixedly, instead, at the large building less than thirty yards away, so fixedly, that she quite failed to notice me. I took a step to go inside the door to speak to her when I suddenly saw something that held me quite still and made me look as fixedly as Maggie was, although not in the same direction.

Trudi and Herta were coming down the street. Trudi, dressed in a sleeveless pink frock and wearing long white cotton gloves, skipped along in her customary childish fas.h.i.+on, her blonde hair swinging, a smile on her face: Herta, clad in her usual outlandish dress, waddled gravely alongside, carrying a large leather bag in her hand.

I didn't stand on the order of my going. I stepped quickly inside the shop: but not in Maggie's direction, whatever else happened I didn't want those two to see me talking to her: instead I took up a strategic position behind a tall revolving stand of picture-postcards and waited for Herta and Trudi to pa.s.s by.

They didn't pa.s.s by. They pa.s.sed by the front door, sure enough, but that was as far as they got, for Trudi suddenly stopped, peered through the window where Maggie was standing and caught Herta by the arms. Seconds later she coaxed the plainly reluctant Herta inside the shop, took her arm away from Herta who remained hovering there broodingly like a volcano about to erupt, stepped forward and caught Maggie by the arm.

'I know you,' Trudi said delightedly. 'I know you!'

Maggie turned and smiled. 'I know you too. Hullo, Trudi.'

'And this is Herta.' Trudi turned to Herta, who clearly approved of nothing that was taking place. 'Herta, this is my friend, Maggie.'

Herta scowled in acknowledgment.

Trudi said: 'Major Sherman is my friend.'

'I know that,' Maggie smiled.

'Are you my friend, Maggie?'

'Of course I am, Trudi.'

Trudi seemed delighted. 'I have lots of other friends. Would you like to see them?' She almost dragged Maggie to the door and pointed. She was pointing to the north and I knew it could be only at the haymakers at the far end of the field. 'Look. There they are.'

'I'm sure they're very nice friends,' Maggie said politely.

A picture-postcard hunter edged close to me, as much as to indicate that I should move over and let him have a look: I'm not quite sure what kind of look I gave him but it certainly was sufficient to make him move away very hurriedly.

'They are lovely friends,' Trudi was saying. She nodded at Herta and indicated the bag she was carrying. 'When Herta and I come here we always take them out food and coffee in the morning.' She said impulsively: 'Come and see them, Maggie,' and when Maggie hesitated said anxiously: 'You are my friend, aren't you?'

'Of course, but -- '

'They are such nice friends,' Trudi said pleadingly. 'They are so happy. They make music. If we are very good, they may do the hay dance for us.'

'The hay dance?'

'Yes, Maggie. The hay dance. Please, Magg The hay dance. Please, Maggie. You are all my friends. Please come. Just for me, Maggie?' You are all my friends. Please come. Just for me, Maggie?'

'Oh, very well.' Maggie was laughingly reluctant. 'Just for you, Trudi. But I can't stay long.'

'I do like you, Maggie.' Trudi squeezed Maggie's arm. 'I do like you.'

The three of them left. I waited a discreet period of time, then moved cautiously out of the shop. They were already fifty yards away, past the building I'd asked Maggie to watch and out into the hayfield. The haymakers were at least six hundred yards away, building their first haystack of the day close in to what looked, even at that distance, to be a pretty ancient and decrepit Dutch barn. I could hear the chatter of voices as the three of them moved out over the stubbled hay and all the chatter appeared to come from Trudi, who was back at her usual gambit of gambolling like a spring lamb. Trudi never walked: she always skipped.

I followed, but not skipping. A hedgerow ran alongside the edge of the field and I prudently kept this between myself and Herta and the two girls, trailing thirty or forty yards behind. I've no doubt that my method of locomotion looked almost as peculiar as Trudi's because the hedgerow was less than five feet in height and I spent most of the six hundred yards bent forward at the hips like a septuagenarian suffering from a bout of lumbago.

By and by the three of them reached the old barn and sat down on the west side, in the shadow from the steadily strengthening sun. I got the barn between them and the haymakers on the one hand and myself on the other, ran quickly across the intervening s.p.a.ce and let myself in by a side door.

I hadn't been wrong about the barn. It must have been at least a century old and appeared to be in a very dilapidated condition indeed. The floor-boards sagged, the wooden walls bulged at just about every point where they could bulge and some of the original air-filtering cracks between the horizontal planks had warped and widened to the extent that one could 'almost put one's head through them.

There was a loft to the barn, the floor of which appeared to be in imminent danger of collapse: it was rotted and splintered and riddled with woodworm; even an English house-agent would have had difficulty in disposing of the place on the basis of its antiquity. It didn't look as if it could support an averagely-built mouse, far less my weight, but the lower part of the barn was of little use for observation, and besides, I didn't want to peer out of one of those cracks in the wall and find someone else peering in about two inches away, so I reluctantly took the crumbling flight of wooden steps that led up to the loft.

The loft, the east side of which was still half full of last year's hay, was every bit as dangerous as it looked but I picked my steps with caution and approached the west side of the barn. This part of the barn had an even better selection of gaps between the planks and I eventually located the ideal one, at least six inches in width and affording an excellent view. I could see the heads of Maggie, Trudi and Herta directly beneath: I could see the matrons, about a dozen in all, a.s.siduously and expertly building a haystack, the tines of their long-handled hayforks gleaming in the sun: I could even see part of the village itself, including most of the car park. I had a feeling of unease and could not understand the reason for this: the haymaking scene taking place out on the field there was as idyllic as even the most bucolic-minded could have wished to see. I think the odd sense of apprehension sprang from the least unlikely source, the actual haymakers themselves, for not even here, in their native setting, did those flowing striped robes, those exquisitely embroidered dresses and snowy wimple hats appear quite natural. There was a more than faintly theatrical quality about them, an aura of unreality. I had the feeling, almost, that I was witnessing a play being staged for my benefit.

About half an hour pa.s.sed during which the matrons worked away steadily and the three sitting beneath me engaged in only desultory conversation: it was that kind of day, warm and still and peaceful, the only sounds being the swish of the hayforks and the distant murmuring of bees, that seems to make conversation of any kind unnecessary. I wondered if I dared risk a cigarette and decided I dared: I fumbled in the pocket of my jacket for matches and cigarettes, laid my coat on the floor with the silenced gun on top of it, and lit the cigarette, careful not to let any of the smoke escape through the gaps in the planks.

By and by Herta consulted a wrist.w.a.tch about the size of a kitchen alarm clock and said something to Trudi, who rose, reached down a hand and pulled Maggie to her feet. Together they walked towards the haymakers, presumably to summon them to their morning break, for Herta was spreading a chequered cloth on the ground and laying out cups and unwrapping food from folded napkins.

A voice behind me said: 'Don't try to reach for your gun. If you do, you'll never live to touch it.'

I believed the voice. I didn't try to reach for my gun.

'Turn round very slowly.'

I turned round very slowly. It was that kind of voice.

'Move three paces away from the gun. To your left.'

I couldn't see anyone. But I heard him all right. I moved three paces away. To the left.

There was a stirring in the hay on the other side of the loft and two figures emerged: the Reverend Thaddeus Goodbody and Marcel, the snakelike dandy I'd clobbered and shoved in the safe in the Balinova. Goodbody didn't have a gun in his hand, but then, he didn't need one: the blunderbuss Marcel carried in his was as big as two ordinary guns and, to judge from the gleam in the flat black unwinking eyes, he was busily searching for the remotest thread of an excuse to use it. Nor was I encouraged by the fact that his gun had a silencer to it: this meant that they didn't care how often they shot me, n.o.body would hear a thing.