Terror's Cradle

CHAPTER EIGHT

I recognized neither of the two dead faces. As I crouched beside them, my heart thumping, I wondered whether they'd be unknown to Schmid. Somehow, I thought they wouldn't.

A moment earlier, Elliot had said in astonishment, 'Hey, those guys are dead!' But the rising inflection in his voice seemed tinny and forced.

I turned my head and looked up at him. The sound he made wasn't consistent with the expression he wore. Elliot may have been surprised to find the bodies but he wasn't shocked at the sight of them.

`Who in hell are they?'

Ì don't know.' I lifted the jacket of one of them and felt in the inside pocket, looking for papers. The pocket was empty. All the pockets were empty.

Elliot said, 'Hell, you're on this story. You got to have some idea!'

`You too !' I said. He looked at me in surprise, and somehow that wasn't convincing, either.

'Me? What do you mean, me? I'm just the guy who drove you here!'

I said, 'Christ, I'm not stupid. The first time we meet, we just meet. The second time it's 'coincidence. But this — !' `You're crazy!' he said. 'I'm just waiting. I told you—' `Don't wait any longer,' I said. 'Get the police.' Òkay,' he said angrily. 'But Jesus!'

Àsk for Inspector Schmid.'

Ìnspector . . .? Listen, what is this?'

`Get Schmid first, then you can tell me.'

He nodded and clattered away downstairs. Twenty minutes later there were feet on the wooden steps. Two pairs, at least. Would there be three? Would Elliot have left? No, he'd stayed.

Schmid glanced at the two bodies, then looked at me grimly. 'Strange, is it not, Mr Sellers?'

`Do you know who they are?'

`Do you?'

I said, 'I have an idea. Just instinct. They could be those two Frenchmen, Maisels and Cohen.'

`You have not seen them before?'

`You know I haven't. Are they?'

He nodded. 'I should like to know how you found them. Here in Storgatan, I mean.'

À telephone call,' I said. 'Somebody telephoned me at the Scanda and told me to come here. I don't know who it was.'

Schmid was watching me carefully, but he didn't comment. Instead he turned his head and spoke in Swedish to Gustaffson who promptly went away down the stairs. Then Schmid asked, 'Did you touch them?'

Ì looked in their pockets.'

`That was wrong. And the rest of the house?'

Ì opened the doors. There's nothing. A few paper cups. They'd been here a while.'

Ànd this man? Mr . .

Èlliot. Harvey Elliot.'

Why are you here, Mr Elliot? You are American?' Ì am. I drove John Sellers here, that's all.'

`So.' Schmid listened to the feet on the stairs, waiting.

Gustaffson came in, panting a little and spoke softly to him. `The doors were locked. You broke in?'

Ì did,' I said. 'That didn't seem important.'

`Perhaps.' He looked again at the bodies on the floor. 'I can hold you for that. Perhaps for more than that.'

I said angrily, 'For Christ's sake! You know why I'm here?'

Ì know,' he said, 'why you say you're here. I know why Mr Elliot says he's here.'

Ì told you. I had the transportation,' Elliot said. 'That's all.'

`Not all, Mr Elliot. You also entered the house. A criminal act.'

I was watching Schmid's face carefully, but there was nothing in it to indicate whether he was just going through formalities, or getting ready to be unpleasant. Schmid had made it clear enough a couple of hours earlier that police business should be left to him. He might feel it useful to keep me out of the way for a while. I said, 'Can I talk to you privately?' I didn't want Elliot there. There had to be more to Elliot than there seemed.

`Later,' Schmid said. Then changed his mind. 'All right, Mr Sellers. Downstairs, please.'

He stood at the ground floor window looking out at the street. 'Well?'

Àlsa . . . Miss Hay must have been here!'

`Why do you say so?'

I said, 'My God, they were in the next room the night she disappeared! The same night there was a fire in the hotel!'

Ì know that.' Schmid was extraordinarily impassive. He missed very little, that was clear, but he hardly seemed to react at all. And always the same maddening pat-back of everything I said to him.

`Then let's speculate a little,' I said savagely. Ìf she was here, with those two upstairs, and she isn't here now, it, means somebody else has taken her!'

`No. It could mean two other things. Even three. One, she killed them herself—'

`For Christ's sake!'

Òh, it is not probable, certainly. Though she could have had assistance, or been party to the killing. No, it is a possibility from a police point of view.'

`But – '

`Secondly, she may have been released.'

Ànd third?'

`Thirdly,' Schmid said, 'she may not have been here at all.' Then those greyish eyes crinkled a little at the corners. `However, I think you are perhaps right. We will examine

–' Outside, tyres squealed and two cars disgorged men with equipment. Schmid moved to open the door and added, 'We will examine the evidence and the facts. I promise you that.'

Men carrying equipment poured past him towards the stairs and he gave rapid instructions, then turned to me again. 'This man Elliot?'

Ì don't know,' I said. I told him briefly about our first , Meeting on the plane, our second in the hotel and how we'd come to the house together.

Schmid listened quietly and when I'd finished, said, 'I am a policeman, Mr Sellers. If I met a man who said he was also a policeman, I would know quickly if it was the truth. Is Mr Elliot a journalist?'

`What else do you think he might be?'

Ì do not know. Answer my question, please.'

`He seems to know quite a lot about it. '

`But you are not certain?'

`Not certain, no.'

Ànd the question arose in your mind before I asked it?' I said, 'He says he's with the National Geographic Magazine. A cable to them would confirm it.'

Ìt might, Mr Sellers. It might.' Then he walked towards the stairs, adding almost as an afterthought, 'Stay here, please. A statement will be required. I am sorry but it may take some time.'

It took a hell of a white and all the time Schmid kept me carefully apart from Elliot. We were driven to the police

headquarters in separate cars and interviewed in separate rooms. It was after nine that night before Schmid produced the typed statement and told me I could go when it was signed. He also told me there was nothing in number forty-one Storgatan that suggested Alsa had been there.

`You're sure she wasn't?'

`No,' he said. 'I simply have no proof Miss Hay was in the house.'

`Would there be proof, if she had been there?' Ì cannot say.'

I walked back to the Scanda alone and deeply depressed. The streets were brightly lit and there were quite a lot of people about. I looked at them sourly. A few nights before, Alsa had been here, somewhere on these same streets. She'd been out three hours. Why? Not, apparently, for dinner. So what the hell had she been doing?

The door man at the Scanda opened the swing door with a flourish and I muttered my thanks, then stopped as a thought struck me.

`Were you,' I asked him, 'on duty the night Miss Hay disappeared?'

He looked at me carefully. Ì was. But you should, see the manag —'

Ì know,' I said. I gave him twenty kroner and he palmed

the money with a practised hand. 'Did you see her go out?' Ì open the door when she go and when she come back.'

He seemed almost proud of it; a big moment in his life. `Did she speak? To you or anybody else?'

`She ask about cinemas'

I blinked at him. Alsa didn't like cinemas much. `You're sure. Cinemas, not theatres?'

`Cinemas. I tell her.'

`Did you tell the police this?'

`No.'

`Why not?'

`They not ask me. Just when lie go out. When she come back'

Schmid and his bloody thoroughness! 'What did you tell her?'

The near one. This street. Three hundred metres.'

He was glancing round a bit guiltily. 'The manager has told you not to talk?'

He hesitated, then, 'Yes, sir.'

`Don't worry.' I gave him another twenty for encouragement. 'Did she go that way?

Towards the cinema?' `Yes, sir.'

`What was she wearing?'

`Sir?'

`Her clothes?'

Àh. A coat.'

`Colour?'

`White.'

I knew that white' coat.

`She have bag, and . . .' He mimed pulling on gloves. `Gloves?'

`Yes. Glove.'

`When she returned. What then?'

`The same. A pretty lady.'

`Very. You remember anything else?'

`She look . . . mmm-m . . . not happy.'

`When she went out, or when she came back?'

`Both times, sir.'

`Thanks.' I went out through the swing doors again and turned right, the way Alsa had gone, walking until I found the cinema. It was showing two Swedish films and I looked into the lighted foyer for a moment or two, feeling very puzzled. Alsa didn't enjoy the cinema much; I knew that. Theatres, yes, but she had an idiosyncratic dislike of films and TV. I like, she said often, to be entertained by live people, not manipulated images. She hardly ever went to the cinema and certainly wouldn't go alone, not in a strange city. In addition, this place was showing films of no great importance and in a language she didn'

t speak.

Everything about it was odd. I tried to think of some reason, any reason, why Alsa might have gone alone to the

cinema, but nothing suggested itself.

Finally I took Alsa's photograph out of my wallet and went in. Infuriatingly, the box office was closed. I swore to myself. There'd be a manager, but he wasn't likely to be much use; the girl at the box office would have seen all the people go in and out, would perhaps have remembered a striking redhead in stylish white. The manager would spend only part of his time in the foyer. All the same, I went to find him. He was bald, round-headed, wearing a worn dinner jacket and blinking owlishly. I said, '

I'm looking for —' `You are English?'

`Yes.'

`My English bad. Something .. . ah . . . lost? Lost things we keep.'

`Not things. A lady.'

I showed him Alsa's photograph and he frowned. 'Lady is lost? No. I not see.'

`You're sure?'

Ì not see.'

`Thanks anyway.' He was obviously telling the truth; he wasn't used to lost people, just lost property. But something struck me then; cinemas must have a system about lost property: all those gloves and umbrellas and handbags people left behind. I said, 'I understand she may have left something behind.'

`Ya. It was . . .?'

`Gloves,' I lied quickly. 'Brown gloves.

`Come please.'

We went into his little office, with its rolled posters in. one corner and film cans in another. He opened a cupboard and pulled out a cardboard box. In it lay a lot of gloves, a couple of purses tied round with string, a lighter, a copy of Strindberg. I turned them over, but everything was well-worn, lost-looking, rather forlorn. It had occurred to me that Alsa might have left something in the cinema deliberately, but all this stuff was ordinary, the litter of a passing trade.

Back at the hotel, there was a note asking me to telephone Marasov at the Hotel Nord. I went up to my room, thought about the telephone bug, and decided to ignore it. If Marasov wanted 'to say anything important, I'd ring off and phone from somewhere else. He didn't. He asked whether there was any news of Alsa, and when I said there wasn't he said he was sorry and hoped there'd be better news soon.

Ì hope so, too,' I said tersely. 'I'll let you —'

`My superiors,' Marasov said quickly, 'are anxious to know about the publication of Russian Life.',

`They what!' Suddenly I saw red. 'Well, you can bloody well tell them it can wait, as far as we're concerned, until —'

Ì am sorry,' he said quietly. 'We understand, naturally. I was simply instructed to ask you.'

`Well, you asked!' I slammed the phone down angrily. Sorry to hear she's disappeared, but would you mind getting back to more important matters! The bastards ! They could stuff their piddling magazine. So could Scown, sitting comfortably in his half-acre office, also with his mind on more important matters. Meanwhile, Alsa was God knew where, and anything could be happening to her. Schmid could play his verbal games, with hair-splitting answers and tricky questions, but he wasn't getting anywhere either. Marasov had triggered it, and now the fears, the frustrations and the depression of the last few days boiled together inside me. I was furiously angry, and determined, suddenly, to be put off no longer. There was one place where I felt sure I'd find some clue to what had happened, but I'd even been denied that!

Well, I'd be denied no longer. I went out of the room, on to the end of the corridor, summoned the lift and pressed the button for the sixth floor. When the gates opened I headed for the fire-exit door to the hotel roof.

The roof was flat. There was a big water tank and conduits of one kind and another, and a parapet waist high round the four sides. I went to the edge and looked over, but I was on the wrong side. Not for long though. A few

seconds later I'd found the right spot and was looking down on the concrete balconies of the floor below, calculating which belonged to Alsa's room. It would be the fifth one along. Fine. One, two, three, four, five. The drop was about twelve feet, but so be it; it was a direct drop, the balcony would stop me from falling out into space and I was in no mood to be put off, especially since by hanging by my hands, I could cut down the distance by more than half.

As I climbed over the parapet, though, my resolution was evaporating. It might be only a short drop to the balcony but it was a hell of a long one to the street below; not just long, fatal if I missed.

You'll just have to be bloody careful, I told myself savagely. Careful about the drop and careful, too, that I should' not be seen from the street below by some public-spirited Swede who'd howl police. Clinging to the parapet, I lowered one foot into space and reached down with my right hand for the edge of the roof. This was the moment, and I hesitated. Once my left hand left the security of the parapet, I would be committed, unable to climb back, because my other foot would be levered out into space; I forced myself to relax my fingers, and held on desperately as my whole weight swung downward, jerking brutally at my grip. Now there was no changing my mind. I could only go down. I turned my head to squint awkwardly down at the balcony, to be sure I was correctly positioned, then let go.

I landed where I intended to land, smack in the centre of the narrow balcony, but I fell awkwardly, jarring my knees, hips and right wrist and for a moment or two the pain convinced me I had broken bones all over the place. I lay still for a while, then the pain began to ease and I pulled myself shakily to my feet. The sound I'd made seemed to have attracted no attention; surprisingly, because it had seemed very loud to me. When the pain began to recede, I started to examine the double doors that led from the balcony into the room. Inevitably they were locked,

which meant I'd have to do damage to get in, which meant in turn that it would be known the room had been entered. Even Schmid, I thought, wouldn't have much difficulty in guessing who was responsible.

But I wasn't going to let that stop me. It wasn't difficult to tell which of the two doors were bolted and which held by the tenon of the lock. I looked cautiously round in case anyone might be out on one of the other balconies; at that time of night it was unlikely, but I checked. Then I looked down at the street. I watched for a minute or so and no-one seemed to look up at the hotel.

Right, then. I leaned back against the balcony rail, gripping it tightly, and smashed my heel as hard as I could at the point on the door frame where the lock was housed. There was a splintering sound, frighteningly loud in the stillness, and I ducked down quickly in case it attracted attention. A couple of minutes later, certain that it hadn't, I smashed my heel at the door again. This time it gave and I slipped inside quickly, pushing the door closed behind me.

The pale moon gave precious little light; certainly not enough to read by, and the pile of paper I could make out on the little corner desk fitment would need examining with care. I stood for a moment weighing the alternatives : should I take it all and leave, or risk switching on the light? Removing evidence would be a felony, no doubt about that, but then it was a crime to be in the room at all. What decided me was the realization of the futility of taking the

i

stuff away. Schmid might need it to find Alsa. I had no doubt he was searching genuinely enough, but I was beginning to doubt his capacity, or mine, or anybody else's, to find her. Still, Schmid might find her, and to do so he might need the papers. All right, then, I'd have to examine them here.

The curtains weren't thick. Light would show through them. I stripped the heavy candlewick bedspread and draped it from the curtain rail, then switched on the bedside light and looked around. Alsa's handbag lay on a chair, presumably exactly where she'd left it. I opened it and looked at

the contents. There were the usual impedimenta : lipstick, powder, nail file and scissors in a little case, a couple of Russian picture postcards that she hadn't used; a couple of ball point pens and a magnifying glass with a little stand for transparency viewing. It was no help. Suitcase, wardrobe and chest of drawers held only clothes. I crossed the room and started looking at the papers.

There were a few layouts, but just roughs with pictures and type areas blocked in. They told me nothing. Then I started on the typewritten material : about a hundred articles of one kind and another, about a whole spectrum of Russian activities. Each had a note attached saying which Russian magazine it had appeared in and when. I began reading them, but to go through the lot would take all night and I hadn't got all night. So I flicked the pages of each one and got nowhere. Only a few pages showed anything apart from plain typescript, but there were one or two on which Alsa had begun to work; she'd made sub-editorial corrections and marked the type in which she wanted the text to be set. I looked at the familiar markings : twelve-point Medium Gothic lettering here, ten-point Metrolite capitals there, eight-point Times Roman for the bulk of the setting. It was all normal and ordinary; familiar, rabid marks, many indecipherable to the lay eve, but passing effective instructions from sub-editor to typesetter. My eyes ran over the markings absorbing and dismissing them quickly. There were marginal query marks here and there, too; SEE OD, which means she intended to check a spelling in the Oxford Dictionary; SEE Britannica, and so on. I stopped suddenly at one of them. See myopic. Myopic? What the hell was myopic? Hardly a standard reference book, anyway. I made a mental note to try to find out and continued my examination of the articles with a new urgency. A minute before, I'd seriously been doubting whether there was anything at all in the papers. Now instinct told me that there was more.

I found the second oddity on a torn page of one of the articles that had been partly subedited. Paragraph one was Metrolite, twelve-point; paragraph two was ten-point Times. Paragraph three eight-point Times? But it wasn't. The type marking was one I'd never seen before. It said, ten-point Aggie Waggie, but the I opt had been struck through, invalidating the type instructions. I stared at it. Aggie Waggie? There are literally thousands of type faces, and in a long career I'd come across many of them, some with very weird names indeed, but I'd never heard of Aggie Waggie. Some novel Swedish face, perhaps? But worth checking.

Ten minutes later, I found a third thing : a pencil note on top of one article said, 'No contacts. Check.' Contacts are contact photographic prints, made with the negative in direct contact with the photographic paper, and Alsa had none, either here in the room, or at the printers. I puzzled about it for a while, but could make no sense of it at all, partly because I had, by that time, been in the room about forty minutes and was getting jumpy. I'd have to leave soon. The sooner the better, in fact. With luck it would be next day before Schmid discovered I'd been in there and in the meantime I could try to work out what the three strange references meant.

I rose and softly switched off the light, then tiptoed to the door. There was no possibility of leaving the room by any other route. Dropping down from the roof had been difficult enough; getting up again would be impossible. I waited until my eyes adjusted a bit to the. darkness and noticed that the bedspread I'd draped over the window had slipped at one corner. A triangle of light would have been showing, damn it! If anybody had noticed that . . .1

I swallowed. There could now be somebody in the corridor outside, waiting for me, yet it was impossible to know until I opened the door. I'd just have to take the chance. With my hand on the doorknob, I thought of a tiny bit of insurance, went back and carried the little upright chair from the desk to the door and balanced it on its back legs so that the chair back would move beneath the handle as the door opened. Holding it steady with one hand, I turned the handle gently with the other. When the handle was fully turned, I began to ease the door slowly open, leaning to peer

round it. With the crack an inch wide the corridor seemed empty. Another inch revealed nothing. I moved it a little more, until the door touched my fingers where they supported the chair. All well so far. It looked all right.

But it wasn't all right. Suddenly there was a hand holding a gun, pointing at me from behind the angle of the door frame. Then Elliot's voice said, 'Hold it, Sellers. Hold it right there!'