Fear is the Key (5 page)

When I released the girl her face was red practically
all the way down to the sun-top. Pressed in
against my neck she hadn't been getting much air
but I think it was the policeman's remark that was
responsible for most of the colour. Her eyes were
wild. For the first time she'd stopped being scared
and was fighting mad.

‘I'm going to turn you in.' Her voice was soft,
implacable. ‘Give yourself up.'

The policeman had checked the Ford. The driver
had been dressed in a green jacket the same colour
as mine, with a panama hat jammed far down
on his head: I'd seen him as he'd driven in, his
hair was black and his tanned face moustached
and chubby. But the police hadn't moved on.
They were no more than five yards away, but the
tearing and growling of the big draglines covered
our soft voices.

‘Don't be a fool,' I said quietly. ‘I have a gun.'

‘And there's only one bullet in it.'

She was right. Two slugs gone in the courthouse,
one blowing out the tyre in the judge's
Studebaker, and two when the police car was
chasing us.

‘Quite the little counter, aren't we?' I murmured.
‘You'll have plenty of time to practise
counting in hospital after the surgeons have fixed
you up. If they can fix you up.'

She looked at me, her lips parted, and said
nothing.

‘One little slug, but what an awful mess it can
make.' I brought the gun forward under the coat,
pressed it against her. ‘You heard me telling that
fool Donnelly what a soft lead slug can do. This
barrel is against your hipbone. Do you realize what
that means?' My voice was very low now, very
menacing. ‘It'll shatter that bone beyond repair.
It means you'll never walk again, Miss Ruthven.
You'll never run or dance or swim or sit a horse
again. All the rest of your life you'll have to drag
that beautiful body of yours about on a pair of
crutches. Or in a bath chair. And in pain all the
time. All the days of your life … Still going to
shout to the cops?'

She said nothing at first, her face was empty of
colour, even her lips were pale.

‘Do you believe me?' I asked softly.

‘I believe you.'

‘So?'

‘So I'm going to call them,' she said simply.
‘Maybe you'll cripple me – but they'll surely get
you. And then you can never kill again. I have
to do it.'

‘Your noble sentiments do you credit, Miss
Ruthven.' The jeer in my voice was no reflection
of the thoughts in my mind. She was going to do
what I wouldn't have done.

‘Go and call them. Watch them die.'

She stared at me. ‘What – what do you mean?
You've only one bullet –'

‘And it's no longer for you. First squawk out of
you, lady, and that cop with the gun in his hand
gets it. He gets it right through the middle of the
chest. I'm pretty good with one of these Colts –
you saw how I shot the gun out of the sheriff's
hands. But I'm taking no chances. Through the
chest. Then I hold up the other cop – there'll be
no trouble about that, his own gun is still buttoned
down, he knows I'm a killer and he doesn't know
my gun will be empty – take his gun, wing him
with it and go off.' I smiled. ‘I don't think anyone
will try to stop me.'

‘But – but I'll tell him your gun's empty. I'll
tell –'

‘You come first, lady. An elbow in the solar
plexus and you won't be able to tell anybody
anything for the next five minutes.'

There was a long silence, the cops were still
there, then she said in a small voice: ‘You'd do
it, wouldn't you?'

‘There's only one way to find out the answer to
that one.'

‘I hate you.' There was no expression in her
voice, the clear grey eyes were dark with despair
and defeat. ‘I never thought I could hate anyone
so much. It – it scares me.'

‘Stay scared and stay alive.' I watched the policemen
finish their tour of the parking-lot, walk
slowly back to their motor bikes and ride away.

The late afternoon wore slowly on. The dragliners
growled and crunched and crawled their implacable
way out towards the sea. The sidewalk superintendents
came and went, but mostly went and
soon there were only a couple of cars left in the
parking-lot, ours and the Ford belonging to the
man in the green coat. And then the steadily
darkening cumulus sky reached its final ominous
indigo colour and the rain came.

It came with the violence of all sub-tropical
storms, and before I could get the unaccustomed
hood up my thin cotton shirt was wet as if I
had been in the sea. When I'd wound up the
side-screens and looked in the mirror, I saw that
my face was streaked with black lines from temple
to chin – the mascara on my hair had almost
washed out. I scrubbed as clean as I could with
my handkerchief, then looked at my watch. With
the dark cloud obscuring the sky from horizon to
horizon, evening had come before its time. Already
the cars swishing by on the highway had their
sidelights on, although it was still more day than
night. I started the engine.

‘You were going to wait until it was dark.' The
girl sounded startled. Maybe she'd been expecting
more cops, smarter cops to come along.

‘I was,' I admitted. ‘But by this time Mr Chas
Brooks is going to be doing a song and dance act
a few miles back on the highway. His language will
be colourful.'

‘Mr Chas Brooks?' From her tone, I wondered
if she really thought I was crazy.

‘Of Pittsburg, California.' I tapped the licence
tag on the steering column. ‘A long way to come
to have your car hijacked.' I lifted my eyes to
the machine-gun symphony of the heavy rain
drumming on the canvas roof. ‘You don't think
he'll still be grilling and barbecuing down on the
beach in this little lot, do you?'

I pulled out through the makeshift archway and
turned right on the highway. When she spoke this
time I knew she really did think I was crazy.

‘Marble Springs.' A pause, then: ‘You're going
back there?' It was a question and statement both.

‘Right. To the motel – La Contessa. Where the
cops picked me up. I left some stuff there and I
want to collect it.'

This time she said nothing. Maybe she thought
‘crazy' a completely inadequate word.

I pulled off the bandanna – in the deepening
dusk that white gleam on my head was more
conspicuous than my red hair – and went on: ‘Last
place they'll ever think to find me. I'm going to
spend the night there, maybe several nights until
I find me a boat out. So are you.' I ignored the
involuntary exclamation. ‘That's the phone call I
made back at the drug store. I asked if Room 14
was vacant, they said yes, so I said I'd take it,
friends who'd passed through had recommended
it as having the nicest view in the motel. In point
of fact it has the nicest view. It's also the most
private room, at the seaward end of a long block,
it's right beside the closet where they put my case
away when the cops pinched me and it has a nice
private little garage where I can stow this machine
away and no one will ever ask a question.'

A mile passed, two miles, three and she said
nothing. She'd put her green blouse back on, but
it was a lacy scrap of nothing, she'd got just as wet
as I had when I was trying to fix the roof, and she
was having repeated bouts of shivering. The rain
had made the air cool. We were approaching the
outskirts of Marble Springs when she spoke.

‘You can't do it. How can you? You've got to
check in or sign a book or pick up keys or have to
go to the restaurant. You can't just –'

‘Yes, I can. I asked them to have the place
opened up ready for us, keys in the garage and
room doors, and that we'd check in later: I said
we'd come a long way since dawn, that we were
bushed and that we'd appreciate room service for
meals and a little privacy.' I cleared my throat.
‘I told the receptionist we were a honeymoon
couple. She seemed to understand our request for
privacy.'

We were there before she could find an answer.
I turned in through an ornate lilac-painted gateway
and drew up near the reception hallway in
the central block, parking the car directly under
a powerful floodlamp which threw such black
shadows that my red hair would be all but invisible
under the car roof. Over by the entrance
stood a negro dressed in a lilac, blue and gold-
buttoned uniform that had been designed by a
colour-blind man wearing smoked glasses. I called
him across.

‘Room 14?' I asked. ‘Which way, please?'

‘Mr Brooks?' I nodded, and he went on: ‘I've
left all the keys ready. Down this way.'

‘Thank you.' I looked at him. Grey and bent and
thin and the faded old eyes the clouded mirrors
of a thousand sorrows and defeats. ‘What's your
name?'

‘Charles, sir.'

‘I want some whisky, Charles.' I passed money
across. ‘Scotch not bourbon. And some brandy.
Can you?'

‘Right away, sir.'

‘Thanks.' I let in the gear, drove down the block
to No. 14. It was at the end of a narrow peninsula
between the gulf to the left and a kidney-shaped
swimming pool to the right. The garage door was
open and I drove straight in, switched off the car
lights, closed the sliding door in the near-darkness,
then switched on the overhead light.

At the inner end of the left-hand wall a single
door led off the garage. We went through this,
into a kitchenette, neat, hygienic and superbly
equipped if all you wanted was a cup of coffee
and had all night to make it. A door led off this
into the bed-sitting-room. Lilac carpet, lilac drapes,
lilac bedspread, lilac lamp-shades, lilac seatcovers,
the same excruciating motif wherever you looked.
Somebody had liked lilac. Two doors off this room:
to the left, let into the same wall as the kitchen
door, the door to the bathroom: at the far end, the
door leading into the corridor.

I was in the corridor within ten seconds of
arriving in the room, dragging the girl after me. The
closet was no more than six feet away, unlocked,
and my bag still where it had been left. I carried
it back to the room, unlocked it and was about to
start throwing stuff on the bed when a knock came
to the door.

‘That will be Charles,' I murmured. ‘Open the
door, stand well back, take the bottles, tell him to
keep the change. Don't try to whisper, make signs
or any clever little jumps out into the middle of
the corridor. I'll be watching you from the crack
of the bathroom door and my gun will be lined up
on your back.'

She didn't try any of those things. I think she
was too cold, miserable and exhausted by the
accumulated tension of the day to try anything.
The old man handed over the bottles, took the
change with a surprised murmur of thanks and
closed the door softly behind him.

‘You're frozen and shivering,' I said abruptly.
‘I don't want my insurance policy to go catching
pneumonia.' I fetched a couple of glasses. ‘Some
brandy, Miss Ruthven, then a hot bath. Maybe
you'll find something dry in my case.'

‘You're very kind,' she said bitterly. ‘But I'll take
the brandy.'

‘No bath, huh?'

‘No.' A hesitant pause, a glint in her eyes more
imagined than seen, and I knew I'd been mistaken
in imagining her to be too worn out to try anything.
‘Yes, that too.'

‘Right.' I waited till she'd finished her glass,
dumped my case on the bathroom floor and stood
to let her pass. ‘Don't be all night. I'm hungry.'

The door closed and the key clicked in the
lock. There came the sound of water running into
the bath, then all the unmistakable soaping and
splashing sounds of someone having a bath. All
meant to lull any suspicions. Then came the sound
of someone towelling themselves, and when, a
minute or two later, there came the furious gurgling
of water running out of the waste pipe, I
eased myself off the door, passed through the
two kitchen doors and outside garage door just
in time to see the bathroom window open and a
little cloud of steam come rushing out. I caught her
arm as she lowered herself to the ground, stifled
the frightened gasp with my free hand, and led her
back inside.

I closed the kitchen door and looked at her. She
looked fresh and scrubbed and clean and had one
of my white shirts tucked into the waistband of
her dirndl. She had tears of mortification in her
eyes and defeat in her face, but for all that it was
a face worth looking at. Despite our long hours in
the car together it was the first time I had really
looked at it.

She had wonderful hair, thick and gleaming and
parted in the middle and of the same wheat colour
and worn in the same braids as that often seen in
girls from the East Baltic states or what used to be
the Baltic states. But she would never win a Miss
America contest, she had too much character in
her face for that, she wouldn't even have been
in the running for Miss Marble Springs. The face
was slightly Slavonic, the cheekbones too high and
wide, the mouth too full, the still grey eyes set
too far apart and the nose definitely retroussé. A
mobile and intelligent face, a face, I guessed, that
could move easily into sympathy and kindness and
humour and laughter, when the weariness was
gone and the fear taken away. In the days before
I had given up the dream of my own slippers and
my own fireside, this was the face that would have
fitted the dream. She was the sort of person who
would wear well, the sort of person who would still
be part of you long after the synthetic chromium
polished blondes from the production lines of the
glamour factory had you climbing up the walls.