Fear is the Key (14 page)

‘I've met your successor,' I nodded. ‘Valentino.
He couldn't guard an empty nursery.'

‘Valentino?' He grinned. ‘Al Grunther. But
Valentino suits him better. You damaged his arm,
so I heard.'

‘He damaged my leg. It's black and blue and purple
all over.' I eyed him speculatively. ‘Forgotten
that you're talking to a murderer, Kennedy?'

‘You're no murderer,' he said flatly. There was
a long pause, then he broke his gaze from me and
stared down at the floor.

‘Patrolman Donnelly, eh?' I asked.

He nodded without speaking.

‘Donnelly is as fit as you are,' I said. ‘Might take
him some little time to wash the powder-stains
out of his pants, but that's all the damage he
suffered.'

‘Rigged, eh?' he asked softly.

‘You've read about me in the papers.' I waved
a hand at the magazine stand in the corner. I was
still front page news and the photograph was even
worse than the previous one. ‘The rest you'll have
heard from Mary. Some of what you've heard and
read is true, some of it just couldn't be less true.

‘My name
is
John Talbot and I am, as they said in
court, a salvage expert. I have been in all the places
they mention, except Bombay, and for approximately
the periods they mention. But I have never
been engaged in any criminal activities of any kind.
However, either Vyland or the general or both are
very cagey birds indeed. They've sent cables to
contacts in Holland, England and Venezuela – the
general, of course, has oil interests in all three
places – to check on my bonafides. They'll be
satisfied. We've spent a long time preparing the
groundwork for this.'

‘How do you know they sent those cables?'

‘Every overseas cable out of Marble Springs in
the past two months has been vetted. The general
– all cables are in his name – uses code, of course.
Perfectly legal to do so. There's a little old man
from Washington living a block away from the
post office. He's a genius with codes: he says the
general's is childish. From his point of view.'

I got up and started to walk around. The effects
of the whisky were vanishing. I felt like a cold wet
flounder.

‘I had to get in on the inside. Up till now we've
been working very much in the dark, but for
reasons which would take too long to explain at
present we knew that the general would jump at
the chance of getting hold of a salvage expert.
He did.'

‘We?' Kennedy still had his reservations about
me.

‘Friends of mine. Don't worry, Kennedy, I've
got all the law in the world behind me. I'm not
in this for myself. To make the general take the
bait we had to use the general's daughter. She
knows nothing of what actually went on. Judge
Mollison's pretty friendly with the family, so I got
him to invite Mary along for a meal, suggesting
that she drop in at the court-house first while she
was waiting for him to clear up the last cases.'

‘Judge Mollison's in on this?'

‘He is. You've a phone there, and a phone book.
Want to ring him?'

He shook his head.

‘Mollison knows,' I continued, ‘and about a
dozen cops. All sworn to secrecy and they know
that a word the wrong way and they're looking for
a job. The only person outside the law who knows
anything about it is the surgeon who is supposed
to have operated on Donnelly and then signed
his death certificate. He'd a kind of troublesome
conscience, but I finally talked him into it.'

‘All a phoney,' he murmured. ‘Here's one that
fell for it.'

‘Everybody did. They were meant to. Phoney
reports from Interpol and Cuba – with the full
backing of the police concerned – blank rounds in
the first two chambers of Donnelly's Colt, phoney
road blocks, phoney chases by the cops, phoney –'

‘But – but the bullet in the windscreen?'

‘I told her to duck. I put it there myself. Car
and empty garage all laid on, and Jablonsky laid
on too.'

‘Mary was telling me about Jablonsky,' he said
slowly. ‘Mary', I noticed, not. ‘Miss Mary'. Maybe
it meant nothing, maybe it showed the way he
habitually thought of her. ‘“A crooked cop”, she
said. Just another plant?'

‘Just another plant. We've been working on this
for over two years. Earlier on we wanted a man
who knew the Caribbean backwards. Jablonsky
was the man. Born and brought up in Cuba. Two
years ago he was a cop, in New York homicide. It
was Jablonsky who thought up the idea of rigging
false charges against himself. It was smart: it not
only accounted for the sudden disappearance of
one of the best cops in the country, but it gave
him the entrée into the wrong kind of society
when the need arose. He'd been working with me
in the Caribbean for the past eighteen months.'

‘Taking a chance, wasn't he? I mean, Cuba is
home from home for half the crooks in the States,
and the chances –'

‘He was disguised,' I said patiently. ‘Beard, moustache,
both home-grown, all his hair dyed, glasses,
even his own mother wouldn't have known him.'

There was a long silence, then Kennedy put
down his glass and looked steadily at me. ‘What
goes on, Talbot?'

‘Sorry. You'll have to trust me. The less anyone
knows the better. Mollison doesn't know, none of
the lawmen know. They've had their orders.'

‘It's that big?' he asked slowly.

‘Big enough. Look, Kennedy, no questions. I'm
asking you to help me. If you're not frightened for
Mary's health, it's time you started to be. I don't
think she knows a thing more about what goes on
between Vyland and the general than you do, but
I'm convinced she's in danger. Great danger. Of
her life. I'm up against big boys playing for big
stakes. To win those stakes they've already killed
eight times. Eight times to my certain knowledge.
If you get mixed up in this business I'd say the
chances are more than even that you'll end up
with a bullet in your back. And I'm asking you to
get mixed up in it. I've no right to, but I'm doing
it. What's it to be?'

Some of the colour had gone out of his brown
face, but not much. He didn't like what I'd just said,
but if his hands were trembling I couldn't notice.

‘You're a clever man, Talbot,' he said slowly.
‘Maybe too clever, I don't know. But you're clever
enough not to have told me all this unless you were
pretty certain I'd do it. Playing for big stakes, you
said: I think I'd like to sit in.'

I didn't waste any time in thanking him or congratulating
him. Sticking your neck in a running
noose isn't a matter for congratulation. Instead I
said: ‘I want you to go with Mary. No matter where
she goes I want you to go also. I'm almost certain
that tomorrow morning – this coming morning,
that is – we'll all be going out to the oil rig. Mary
will almost certainly go along too. She'll have no
option. You will go with her.'

He made to interrupt, but I held up my hand.

‘I know, you've been taken off the job. Make
some excuse to go up to the house tomorrow
morning, early. See Mary. Tell her that Valentino
is going to have a slight accident in the course of
the morning and she –'

‘What do you mean, he'll have an accident?'

‘Don't worry,' I said grimly. ‘He'll have his accident
all right. He won't be able to look after
himself, far less anybody else, for some time to
come. Tell her that she is to insist on having you
back. If she sticks out her neck and makes an issue
of it she'll win. The general won't object, and I'm
pretty sure Vyland won't either: it's only for a day,
and after tomorrow the question of who looks after
her won't worry him very much. Don't ask me
how I know, because I don't. But I'm banking
on it.' I paused. ‘Anyway, Vyland will just think
she's insisting on having you because he thinks
she has, shall we say, a soft spot for you.' He kept
his wooden Indian expression in place, so I went
on: ‘I don't know whether it's so and I don't care.
I'm just telling you what I think Vyland thinks and
why that should make him accept her suggestion
– that, and the fact that he doesn't trust you and
would rather have you out on the rig and under
his eye anyway.'

‘Very well.' I might have been suggesting that he
come for a stroll. He was a cool customer, all right.
‘I'll tell her and I'll play it the way you want.' He
thought for a moment, then continued: ‘You tell
me I'm sticking my neck out. Maybe I am. Maybe
I'm doing it of my own free will. At the same time,
I think that the fact that I'm doing it at all entitles
me to a little more honesty on your part.'

‘Have I been dishonest?' I wasn't annoyed, I was
just beginning to feel very tired indeed.

‘Only in what you don't say. You tell me you
want me so that I'll look after the general's daughter.
Compared to what you're after, Talbot, Mary's
safety doesn't matter a tuppenny damn to you.
If it did you could have hidden her away when
you had her the day before yesterday. But you
didn't. You brought her back. You say she's in
great danger. It was
you
, Talbot, who brought her
back to this danger. OK, so you want me to keep
an eye on her. But you want me for something
else, too.'

I nodded. ‘I do. I'm going into this with my
hands tied. Literally. I'm going into this as a prisoner.
I must have someone I can trust. I'm trusting
you.'

‘You can trust Jablonsky,' he said quietly.

‘Jablonsky's dead.'

He stared at me without speaking. After a few
moments hereached out for the bottle and splashed
whisky into both our glasses. His mouth was a thin
white line in the brown face.

‘See that?' I pointed to my sodden shoes. ‘That's
the earth from Jablonsky's grave. I filled it in
just before I came here, not fifteen minutes ago.
They got him through the head with a small-bore
automatic. They got him between the eyes. He
was smiling, Kennedy. You don't smile when you
see death coming to you. Jablonsky never saw it
coming. He was murdered in his sleep.'

I gave him a brief account of what had happened
since I'd left the house, including the trip in the
Tarpon Springs sponge boat out to the X 13, up to
the moment I had come here. When I was finished
he said: ‘Royale?'

‘Royale.'

‘You'll never be able to prove it.'

‘I won't have to.' I said it almost without realizing
what I was saying. ‘Royale may never stand
trial. Jablonsky was my best friend.'

He knew what I was saying, all right. He said
softly: ‘I'd just as soon you never came after me,
Talbot.'

I drained my whisky. It was having no effect
now. I felt old and tired and empty and dead. Then
Kennedy spoke again.

‘What are you going to do now?'

‘Do? I'm going to borrow some dry shoes and
socks and underwear from you. Then I'm going
to go back up to the house, go to my room, dry
my clothes off, handcuff myself to the bed and
throw the keys away. They'll come for me in the
morning.'

‘You're crazy,' he whispered. ‘Why do you think
they killed Jablonsky?'

‘I don't know,' I said wearily.

‘You must know,' he said urgently. ‘Why else
should they kill him if they hadn't found out who
he really was, what he was really doing? They
killed him because they found out the double-
cross. And if they found that out about him, they
must have found it out about you. They'll be
waiting for you up there in your room, Talbot.
They'll know you'll be coming back, for they won't
know you found Jablonsky. You'll get it through
the head as you step over the threshold. Can't you
see that, Talbot? For God's sake, man, can't you
see it?'

‘I saw it a long time ago. Maybe they know all
about me. Maybe they don't. There's so much I
don't know, Kennedy. But maybe they won't kill
me. Maybe not yet.' I got to my feet. ‘I'm going
back on up.'

For a moment I thought he was going to use
physical force to try to stop me but there must
have been something in my face that made him
change his mind. He put his hand on my arm.

‘How much are they paying you for this, Talbot?'

‘Pennies.'

‘Reward?'

‘None.'

‘Then what in the name of God is the compulsion
that will drive a man like you to crazy
lengths like those?' His good-looking brown face
was twisted in anxiety and perplexity, he couldn't
understand me.

I couldn't understand myself either. I said: ‘I
don't know … Yes, I do. I'll tell you someday.'

‘You'll never live to tell anybody anything,' he
said sombrely.

I picked up dry shoes and clothes, told him good
night and left.

There was nobody waiting for me in my room up
in the general's house. I unlocked the corridor door
with the duplicate key Jablonsky had given me,
eased it open with only a whisper of sound and
passed inside. Nobody blasted my head off. The
room was empty.

The heavy curtains were still drawn shut as I had
left them, but I let the light switch be. There was a
chance that they didn't know that I'd left the room
that night but if anyone saw a light come on in the
room of a man handcuffed to his bed they'd be up
to investigate in nothing flat. Only Jablonsky could
have switched it on and Jablonsky was dead.

I went over every square foot of floor and walls
with my pencil flash. Nothing missing, nothing
changed. If anyone had been here he'd left no
trace of his visit. But then if anyone had been here
I would have expected him to leave no trace.

There was a big wall heater near the communicating
door to Jablonsky's room. I switched this
on to full, undressed by its ruddy glow, towelled
myself dry and hung trousers and coat over the
back of a chair to dry off. I pulled on the underwear
and socks I'd borrowed from Kennedy, stuffed my
own rain-soaked underwear and socks into my
sodden shoes, opened the curtains and windows
and hurled them as far as I could into the dense
undergrowth behind the house, where I'd already
concealed oilskin and overcoat before climbing the
fire-escape. I strained my ears but I couldn't even
hear the sound the shoes made on landing. I felt
pretty sure no one else could have heard anything
either. The high moan of the wind, the drumming
of that torrential rain smothered all sound at its
source.

I took keys from the pocket of my already steaming
jacket and crossed to the communicating door
to Jablonsky's room. Maybe the reception committee
was waiting there. I didn't much care.

There was no committee. The room was as empty
as my own. I crossed to the corridor door and tried
the handle. The door was locked.

The bed, as I expected, had been slept in. Sheets
and blankets had been pulled back so far that most
of them were on the floor. There were no signs of
a struggle. There were no signs, even, of violence:
not until I turned the pillow upside down.

The pillow was a mess, but nothing to what it
would have been if death hadn't been instantaneous.
The bullet must have passed clean through
the skull, not what you would have expected
from a .22 but then Mr Royale used very fancy
ammunition. I found the shell in the down of
the pillow. Cupro-nickel. It wasn't like Royale
to be so careless. I was going to look after that
little piece of metal. I was going to treasure it like
the Cullinan diamond. I found some adhesive in
a drawer, pulled off a sock, taped the spent bullet
under the second and third toes where there would
be no direct pressure on it and where it wouldn't
interfere with my walking. It would be safe there.
The most thorough and conscientious search –
should there be one – would miss it. Houdini went
around for years with tiny steel instruments taped
to the soles of his feet and no one ever thought
to look.

Down on my hands and knees I levelled the torch
along the nap of the carpet and squinted down the
beam. It wasn't much of a carpet but it was enough,
the two parallel indentations where Jablonsky's
heels had dragged across it were unmistakable. I
rose to my feet, examined the bed again, picked up
a cushion that lay on the armchair and examined
that. I couldn't see anything, but when I bent my
head and sniffed there could be no doubt about it:
the acrid odour of burnt powder clings to fabrics
for days.

I crossed to the small table in the corner, poured
three fingers of whisky into a glass and sat down
to try to figure it all out.

The set-up just didn't begin to make any sense at
all. Nothing jibed, nothing fitted. How had Royale
and whoever had been with him – for no one man
could have carried Jablonsky out of that room by
himself – managed to get in in the first place?
Jablonsky had felt as secure in that house as a
stray lamb in a starving wolf pack and I knew he
would have locked the door. Somebody else could
have had a key, of course, but the point was that
Jablonsky invariably left his key in the lock and
jammed it so that it couldn't be pushed out or
turned from the other side – not unless enough
force were used and noise made to wake him up
a dozen times over.

Jablonsky had been shot when sleeping in bed.
Jablonsky, I knew, had pyjamas and used them
– but when I found him in the kitchen garden
he'd been completely clothed. Why dress him?
It didn't make sense, especially trying to dress a
dead man weighing 240 lb didn't make sense.
And why had there been no silencer fitted to
the gun? I knew there hadn't been; with the
pressure absorption of a silencer not even those
special bullets would travel through a skull-bone
twice, and, besides, he'd used a cushion to muffle
the shot. Understandable enough, in a way: those
rooms were in a remote wing of the house and
with the help of a cushion and the background
noise of the growing storm the chances were that
the shot would not be heard in the other parts
of the house. But the point was that I had been
right next door and was bound to have heard it,
unless I were deaf or dead, and as far as Royale had
known – or as far as I thought he had known – I
had been asleep in the next room. Or had Royale
known I was not in that room? Had he come to
make a quick check, found I was gone, knew that
it must have been Jablonsky that had let me go
and killed Jablonsky there and then? It fitted with
the facts: but it didn't fit with the smile on the dead
man's face.

I went back into my own room, rearranged my
steaming clothes on the back of the chair before the
electric fire, then returned to Jablonsky's room. I
took up my glass again and glanced at the whisky
bottle. It was a five-gill flask, still three parts full.
That was no help, what was missing wouldn't
even have begun to affect Jablonsky's razor-edge
vigilance. I'd seen Jablonsky dispose of an entire
bottle of rum – he wasn't a whisky man – in an
evening and the only apparent effect it had had on
him was that he smiled even more than usual.

But Jablonsky would never smile again.

Sitting there alone in the near darkness, the only
illumination the glow from the electric fire in the
next room, I lifted my glass. A toast, a farewell, I
don't know what you'd call it. It was for Jablonsky.
I sipped it slowly, rolling the whisky over my
tongue to savour to the full the rich bouquet and
taste of a fine old Scotch; for the space of two or
three seconds I sat very still indeed, then I put the
glass down, rose, crossed quickly to the corner of
the room, spat the Scotch into the wash-basin and
rinsed my mouth out very carefully indeed.

It was Vyland who had provided the whisky.
After Jablonsky had paraded me downstairs last
night, Vyland had given him a sealed whisky bottle
and glasses to take back to his room. Jablonsky had
poured out a couple of drinks soon after we had
gone upstairs and I'd actually had my glass in my
hand when I remembered that drinking alcohol
before breathing oxygen on a deep dive wasn't
a very clever thing to do. Jablonsky had drained
them both, then had maybe a couple more after
I had left.

Royale and his friends didn't have to batter
Jablonsky's door in with foreaxes, they had a
key for the job, but even if they had used axes
Jablonsky would never have heard them. There
had been enough knockout drops in that bottle of
whisky to put an elephant out for the count. He
must have been just able to stagger as far as his bed
before collapsing. I knew it was stupid, but I stood
there in the silent dark reproaching myself bitterly
for not having accepted that drink; it was a fairly
subtle blending of a Mickey Finn and Scotch, but I
think I would have got on to it straight away. But
Jablonsky wasn't a whisky man, maybe he thought
that was the way Scotch ought to taste.

And Royale, of course, had found two glasses
with whisky dregs in them. That made me as
unconscious as Jablonsky. But it hadn't been any
part of their plan to kill me too.

I understood it all now, everything except the
answer to the one question that really mattered:
why had they killed Jablonsky? I couldn't even
begin to guess. And had they bothered looking in
to check on me? I didn't think so. But I wouldn't
have bet a pair of old bootlaces on it.

There was nothing to be gained by sitting and
thinking about it, so I sat and thought about it for a
couple of hours. By that time my clothes were dry,
or as near dry as made no difference. The trousers,
especially, were lined and wrinkled like a pair of
elephant's legs, but then you couldn't expect an
immaculate crease in the clothes of a man who is
compelled to sleep in them. I dressed, all except for
coat and tie, opened the window and was just on
the point of throwing out the three duplicate keys
for the room doors and the handcuff key to join the
other stuff in the shrubbery below when I heard a
soft tapping on the door of Jablonsky's room.

I only jumped about a foot, then I froze. I
suppose I should have stood there with my mind
racing but the truth was that with what I had been
through that night and with all the inconclusive
and futile thinking I'd been doing in the past two
hours, my mind was in no condition to walk, far
less race. I just stood there. Lot's wife had nothing
on me. For a lifetime of ten seconds not a single
intelligent thought came, just an impulse, one
single overpowering impulse. To run. But I had
no place to run to.

It was Royale, that quiet cold deadly man with
the little gun. It was Royale, he was waiting outside
that door and the little gun would be in his hand.
He knew I was out, all right. He'd checked. He
knew I'd be back, because he knew that Jablonsky
and I were in cahoots and that I hadn't gone
to such extreme lengths to get myself into that
household just to light out at the first opportunity
that offered, and he'd guessed that I should have
been back by this time. Maybe he'd even seen me
coming back. Then why had he waited so long?

I could guess the answer to that one too. He
knew I would have been expecting Jablonsky to
be there when I returned. He would think that
I would have figured that Jablonsky must have
gone off on some private expedition of his own
and that as I'd locked the door when I came back
and left the key there Jablonsky wouldn't be able
to use his own to get in. So he would knock.
Softly. And after having waited two hours for my
partner's return I would be so worried stiff by his
continuing absence that I would rush to the door
when the knock came. And then Royale would let
me have one of those cupro-nickel bullets between
the eyes. Because if they knew beyond doubt that
Jablonsky and I were working together they would
also know that I would never do for them what
they wanted me to do and so I would be of no
further use to them. So, a bullet between the eyes.
Just the same way Jablonsky had got his.

And then I thought of Jablonsky, I thought of
him lying out there jammed up in that cheap
packing case, and I wasn't afraid any more. I
didn't see that I'd much chance, but I wasn't
afraid. I cat-footed through to Jablonsky's room,
closed my hand round the neck of the whisky
bottle, went as silently back into my own room
and slid a key into the lock of the door opening on
to the passage outside. The bolt slid back without
even the whisper of a click and just at that moment
the knocking came again, slightly louder this time
and more sustained. Under cover of the sound I
slid the door open a crack, raised the bottle over
my head ready for throwing and stuck my head
round the corner of the door.

The passage was only dimly lit by a single weak
night-light at the other end of a long corridor, but
it was enough. Enough to let me see that the figure
in the passage had no gun in its hand. Enough to let
me see that it wasn't Royale. It was Mary Ruthven.
I lowered the whisky bottle and stepped back softly
into my room.

Five seconds later I was at the door of Jablonsky's
room. I said in my best imitation of Jablonsky's
deep husky voice: ‘Who's there?'

‘Mary Ruthven. Let me in. Quickly. Please!'

I let her in. Quickly. I had no more desire than
she had that she could be seen out in that passage.
I kept behind the door as she came through, then
closed it swiftly before the pale glimmer of light
from outside gave her time to identify me.

‘Mr Jablonsky.' Her voice was a quick, urgent,
breathless, frightened whisper. ‘I had to come to
see you, I simply had. I thought I could never
get away but Gunther dropped off to sleep and
he may wake up at any moment and find that
I'm –'

‘Easy, easy,' I said. I'd lowered my voice to a
whisper, it was easier to imitate Jablonsky that
way, but even so it was one of the worst imitations
I had ever heard. ‘Why come to see me?'

‘Because there was no one else I could turn to.
You're not a killer, you're not even a crook, I don't
care what they say you've done, you're not bad.'
She was a sharp one, all right, her woman's insight
or intuition or whatever had taken her far beyond
what either Vyland or the general could see. ‘You
must help me – us – you simply must. We – we
are in great trouble.'

‘We?'

‘Daddy and I.' A pause. ‘I honestly don't know
about my father, I honestly don't. Perhaps he's not
in trouble. Maybe he's working with those – those
evil men because he wants to. He comes and goes
as he pleases. But – but it's so unlike him. Maybe
he has to work with them. Oh, I don't know, I
don't know. Perhaps they have power over him,
some terrible hold, perhaps––' I caught the glint of
fair hair as she shook her head. ‘He – well, he was
always so good and honourable and straight and –
and everything, but now –'