Terror's Cradle

CHAPTER NINE

`Step back and open the door,' he said. 'Don't put on any lights.'

Àll right. 'As I took a step backward, I remembered my right hand was still holding the chair. I disengaged it successfully and took another step and the gun followed me round the door. As Elliot's head came after it, I whipped the chair upward hard, hitting the gun hand from underneath, and simultaneously smashed my foot against the door. The gun spun upward and fell with a thud on the carpet; the door cracked hard against the side of his head.

With my foot jammed against the door to stop it opening, I flipped on the light and reached for the gun, then snapped the light off again. I'd never fired a hand gun in my life, but I felt a lot safer holding it, if only because Elliot was unlikely to have another. I moved the chair out of the way, reached for the handle, opened the door quickly, and stepped back. Then, I hurled myself out of the room into the corridor. It was empty. Elliot had gone, or if he hadn't gone, at least he wasn't anywhere I could see him. He could be waiting anywhere though, behind a door somewhere, in the lift, in my room. Or he might not be waiting at all, might have disappeared once he'd lost his advantage.

I decided I'd get out of the hotel, if I could, and then

stay out. Perhaps find myself another hotel; certainly get away from the immediate area. But first I had to get out. Available alternatives were the lift and the fire escape. If Elliot watched one, presumably he couldn't watch the other. Unless he had help. In any case, I had the gun, though I couldn't quite see myself using it.

I chose the lift. It came up empty and I punched the Garage button, keeping a careful finger on the Doors Closed button as the lift descended. I stepped out into the sharplyshadowed light of the garage with the gun held inside my jacket, and looked round. The place was deserted and a concrete ramp, two cars wide, led upward to the street. I went up the side of it close to the steel guard rail and examined the street outside. There were a few people in sight still, but no obvious sign of Elliot, though he could easily be standing quietly in any of a hundred doorways.

I came out sprinting, racing for the first cover, my bruised knee and hip joints protesting. As I ran, I rounded every corner I came to, every time I came to one. After two hundred yards I'd put three corners between myself and the Scanda Hotel and was standing in a doorway myself, trying hard to breathe without gasping noisily. I waited five seemingly endless minutes, then decided to take a chance, and walked quickly towards a brightly lighted thoroughfare fifty yards away. There I was lucky. A taxi was cruising towards me as I emerged in the street and I flagged it down.

Somehow or other, amidst all the exertion, an idea had come to me and I wanted to investigate it while I had the chance. While the taxi was heading for the cinema I'd visited, I kept a careful watch, through the rear window to see whether anybody was following. Nobody seemed to be, at any rate not obviously, though among the fairly heavy late-night traffic it could have been done discreetly. At the cinema, I paid off the cab and began to walk back towards the hotel.

It was Alsa's word contacts that interested me. No con-tacts — check. That was what Alsa's note had said, and I'd assumed, naturally in the context of articles and pictures, that it meant contact prints. But it could refer to something else. Alsa wore contact lenses. They hadn't been in her handbag, where she would normally keep them. Nor were her ordinary glasses, the heavy ones with the black library frames there either. It could mean nothing, of course; just that she'd left them somewhere else in the room and I hadn'

t noticed. Or it could mean something else entirely.

I remembered the little case in which she kept the contact lenses : a small, plastic tube about two inches long and one in diameter. She'd shown it to me once, a couple of years earlier, when the lenses were new. The case had a lid at each end. The lids were marked L and R for left and right, so the lenses didn't get mixed up, and the tube itself was filled with some protective fluid. There was one further thing about that little plastic case : it had a small transparent window for the owner's name and address in case it got lost. No contacts — check.

It all fitted. She'd phoned me in America. She knew how I felt about her, knew that if anything happened to her, I'd be there come hell or high water. The note itself would mean nothing to anybody unless that person knew that Alsa wore contact lenses and perhaps not even then, because it was a commonplace thing to find written at the top of an article. I walked slowly along, looking at those buildings whose lights were on. There were a few restaurants still open, a cigarette kiosk, a news stand. Then a chemist's and I , hurried across the road, but the lights were display lights and the place was closed. I swore to myself and moved on.

The shop, when I found it, wasn't in the main street and I almost walked past. It was tucked away perhaps fifty yards down a side street and it was the glowing pair of spectacles, neatly executed in red neon, that caught my passing glance. And this shop was open! There was a woman at the counter and a back room which must be the dispensary.

I said to the woman, 'Good evening. My wife thinks she mislaid her contact lenses here the other night.'

Òne moment.' She disappeared through to the room at

the back and a moment later a man in a white coat came out and spoke to me. I said, 'I'm sorry. I don't speak Swedish.'

Ènglish?'

`Yes. My wife thinks she may have left her contact lenses here.'

He smiled. 'Ya. On the counter she leave them. Tell her she not worry.'

I manufactured what I hoped looked like a grin of relief and put out my hand. 'Can I have them please. '

Ì am sorry. I send them away by post. I not know where the lady is. I was most careful. I put them in a box with cotton wool to protect them. You see? Then I copy address from the case.'

I said, 'Oh, that's marvellous! Thank you. Just one thing. Which address was on them?'

His eyebrows rose. 'You have more than one?'

I smiled. 'Two. Plus her office address. She wasn't quite sure which Àh ... mmm . . I think . . . was Norway, I remember.' He looked at me suddenly in surprise. 'Norway? You are English?'

`My wife's Norwegian,' I lied quickly.

`Ya. It was Norway.' He smiled. 'I remember exactly! Jarlshof, Sandnes G.B., Norway, Mr Anderson: You see how well I remember.'

I could hardly ask him to write it down, but I'd got most of it. I thanked him, trying to remember every detail until I got outside.

`Ya. She came to buy Kleenex, I remember. She must have leave it on the counter. I find next morning.'

`Thanks so much,' I said, repeating: Anderson, Sandnes G.B., Norway in my mind. 'It was very kind.'

I took out a few kroner and offered them. 'Postage?'

`No, no. A pleasure. To lose them would be bad, eh?' `Very bad. She'll be very glad to have them back. Thanks

again.' And I was off, walking away from the shop, then

stopping to write it down.

At last I knew something more about what Alsa had done! I tried to think what I did know. One, she'd left the hotel, quite deliberately, to get rid of something. Two, it had to be something small to go into that little lens case. The lens case and the optician's shop made an obvious enough connection: Alsa could have been reasonably sure that an optician of all people would take the trouble to return contact lenses to their owner. But why the cinema? I pondered for a while and decided she might have intended to leave the case in the cinema, for the cleaners to find, but had decided against it in case the cinema people weren't too meticulous about lost property. But what was in the case? It was ludicrous to believe she'd taken all that trouble about the cover transparency for Soviet Industry. If she'd found that, she'd simply have returned it to Marasov. All the same, I was prepared to bet on a transparency. The Russians had detained her in Moscow to search for one. My God, I thought, what had Alsa been carrying? Already two men had died for it, and Alsa herself had been kidnapped once and probably twice and was now either somebody's prisoner or dead.

I went back to the open news stand and bought a Scandinavian guide book, then took myself for a cup of coffee. I found Sandnes, Norway, easily enough near Stavanger, but Jarlshof wasn't big enough to show on the map or be mentioned in the guide,'and I didn't know what G.B. meant in , relation to Norway. Could it be the Norwegian equivalent of '

and Company Limited?' Like AG in Switzerland and GmbH in Germany? That was the likeliest explanation, but who was Anderson, and why had she sent the damn' thing to Norway? To the best of my knowledge Alsa knew nobody in Norway. She might, of course; anybody can know anybody anywhere; Anderson could be an old schoolfriend, or a distant relative.

I looked at my watch. It was now close to midnight. If Sandnes was where the trail led, then I was going to Sandnes. But clearly, there'd be no transport that night. I ordered another cup of coffee and a sandwich; the sight of the café's menu had reminded me I'd eaten nothing for

hours and though I wasn't hungry I forced the sandwich down. Then I fished the bit of paper out of my pocket and stared at it until Anderson, Jarishof, Sandnes G.B., Norway, was so fixed in my mind I'd never forget it. After that I burned the scrap of paper in the ash tray, powdered the ashes and thought about the three things I had: that Norwegian address and the words myopic and Aggie Waggie. The clue to Alsa's disappearance lay in them somewhere, but for the life of me I couldn't see what the clue might be. Myopic means short-sighted. Shortsightedness was the reason Alsa wore glasses — or the contact lenses she'd disposed of so carefully in the one place she'd be fairly certain they'd be found and forwarded. But so what? The thing led round in a circle. And the address in Norway was no more helpful. She wouldn't normally have a Norwegian address on the lens case and her name wasn't Anderson. So why had she put that name and that address on the label? She'd obviously done it deliberately, and the whole business of the visit to the cinema, followed by the visit to the late-night chemist/ optician, where she'd left the case on the counter to be found after she'd gone, indicating that she knew she was being watched and followed. She'd done it because it was the only way to get rid of the thing!

All right. But it still didn't tie up. That fire in the mailbox at the Scanda Hotel was the odd item out. It suggested she'd posted something that must be destroyed and had in fact been destroyed. But that had been before she left the hotel; before she took the lens case to leave it in the shop!

I didn't want to go to Sandnes. All my instincts were screaming to me that Alsa was still in or near Gothenburg, and the idea of leaving Gothenburg to travel into another country felt badly wrong. Still, logically it was the only thing to do; I must follow the only lead I had.

In the meantime, what? It was now after midnight and I dared not return to the Scanda. I'

d pay my bill later, by sticking money in an envelope and sending it. All I'd left at the hotel was a few clothes. Everything that mattered

was on .my person, including the bulky wad of photocopies that had been forcing my suit out of shape since early morning.

I decided I'd take a cab to the airport and wait there for the first morning plane to Norway. That way, with luck, I'd stay out of everybody's clutches. Schmid was unlikely to know, until morning, that Alsa's room had been entered. Unlikely, anyway, unless Elliot told him, and considering the nature of Elliot's activities, I. felt I could rule out the possibility.

I paid for the coffee and sandwich and went out to look for a cab. There wouldn't be a lot of direct flights, if any, from Gothenburg to Stavanger, but there was a strong possibility of very early feeder links to Copenhagen, hub of the Scandinavian Airlines System. After that, well Copenhagen-Stavanger was probably well serviced. Or maybe I could go via Oslo; I didn't mind Which, as long as I could get to grips with Anderson, Jarlshof, Sandnes, G.B., Norway.

At the airport I paid off the cab and took a seat in a quiet corner of the lounge. The place was still quite busy. The Tannoy system was going on about a flight from New York that had been delayed and wasn't due in Copenhagen for another hour, and quite a number of people were pulling long faces about it because they were clearly destined to wait half the night for relatives and friends to arrive. It suited me fine; the last thing I wanted was to be the sole occupant of an otherwise deserted lounge, eyed by airport coppers wondering who and what I was, and, with time heavy on their hands, deciding to find out.

From where I sat I could see the departures board. There was a Copenhagen flight at 6 A. M. and after the next announcement I joined the angry crowd at the SAS Information desk and fought my way forward to speak to one of the two harassed girls who were trying to explain that they hadn't exactly delayed the transatlantic DC8 themselves .and everything possible was being done. The girl I spoke to seemed relieved to deal with a rational inquiry and I learned

that the six o'clock Copenhagen flight connected onward at seven-ten to Stavanger. I went and bought a ticket, then returned to my seat.

The New York people came in at four, to the accompaniment of sighs of relief, not least from the girls on the information desk, who departed promptly, still looking remarkably self-contained, for what was probably a relaxing cup of 'coffee but may have been a necessary schnapps.

In a few minutes I was alone. It would probably be an hour before the place became busy again, as passengers arrived for the Copenhagen and other early flights. A couple of cleaners mooched around in a desultory kind of way and one or two people in uniform crossed the lounge occasionally, but otherwise the place was too still and quiet for comfort. Sitting there I felt exposed. I'd committed felonies and Schmid would want me. And not only Schmid, either. As the minutes ticked by I became progressively more uncomfortable. To sit like a statue was to attract attention; to move was to attract attention. After a bit I decided I couldn't stand it any longer and headed for the door bearing the silhouette picture of a man. With all these women in trouser suits they're going to have to find a new international sign before long. I went into one of the cubicles sat down and began to watch my watch. Five-thirty was flight check-in time and I hoped that by five-twenty there'd be enough bright, early-morning faces around to lose myself among. At five-fifteen I rose, flushed the toilet for the benefit of nobody in particular, and had a wash and shave by courtesy of one of those coin-in-the-slot electric shavers that are labelled Hygienic but don't always look it, then straightened my tie, combed my hair and stepped out.

As I did so, a policeman not ten yards away glanced at me, did a swift double-take and marched purposefully towards me. I looked round for somewhere to run, but there were several other policemen about and they looked young and fit and I'd never have got away with it.

`Passport, please,' the policeman said. I sighed, reached into my pocket and handed it to him.

`Come with me, Mr Sellers.'

So I went with him. As I did so, the loudspeaker was reminding intending passengers for the first morning flight to Copenhagen to check in. I tried once. 'I'm booked on that flight,' I said, with what innocence I could muster. 'Will this take long?'

The young policeman didn't smile, didn't even reply. He took me to the airport police block and phoned. I could distinguish only two words of what he said. The words were: Inspector Schmid. When he put the phone down, I expected to be loaded into a car and taken to the main police station to see Schmid, but nothing happened. After a while I said, 'What now? My plane's still waiting.'

`You wait, too.'

The plane was long gone before anything more happened. I'd been given a cup of coffee and had twiddled my thumbs _extensively, but nobody spoke to me and all my conversational overtures were rejected. Then the door opened and Schmid came in. It was a quarter to seven and he looked morning grim. News of my capture must have dragged him from beneath his down quilt and he was angry about it.

`Come with me,' he said. Just that.

I rose and followed him out of the room. Outside a police Volvo stood, but he didn't walk towards it. Instead he headed for the departure gates. I walked along with him, puzzled. When we reached the gate he produced a ticket and handed it to the official who glanced at me and asked for my passport. A moment later I was through and walking with a stillsilent Schmid along the corridors. Finally we turned right at Gate Four and I stopped and stared. The board above the gate said SK 463 Gothenburg-London. And outside on the tarmac stood a nice, shiny DC9.

Schmid escorted me aboard, took me to a seat in the tail, and handcuffed me to it. I'd asked him what-the-hell once or twice and he hadn't responded. Now I said it again and he still didn't respond. He merely slid into a seat on

the other side of the gangway, opened a copy of the Svenska Dagbladet and began to read. He glanced at his watch from time to time as though expecting somebody. Outside, ground crews and fuel trucks swarmed round the DC9 and I watched them without seeing. I was trying to work out several things. One was why I hadn't been searched when there was a gun weighing down my jacket and the thick wad of photocopies bulging in my inside pocket. The second was why Schmid was hustling me out of Sweden.

It must be, I thought, because I was just a damn' nuisance to him, getting in the way of his inquiries. But that seemed pretty thin. Schmid was a policeman, a policeman's job was to apprehend and bring charges against lawbreakers; I was a lawbreaker. So why this?

I found out at about a quarter to eight, when footsteps sounded on the boarding ladder outside and two men entered ' the aircraft. At the sight of them, Schmid folded his paper, gave me a hard glare, and rose.

The two men came towards me, squeezing past Schmid in the narrow gangway, and sat in my row. One I didn't know. But the other was Elliot.