Message From Malaga

by Helen Macinnes

  And then Ferrier’s senses came alive. Across the room from him was the studio door. It had been closed when he had left here. Now it was ajar, a slit widening as he watched. “Keep down, Tavita!” he yelled, watched her fall to her knees beside Magdalena as he flattened out against the bedroom door and raised the heavy revolver.

  “Just me,” Sam’s voice said from the window, and he stepped into the light of the room with his revolver prodding the wounded man ahead of him. “So keep your itching finger off that trigger, Ian. You really took care of this character, didn’t you?” He urged the man forward.

  “Studio!” Ferrier shouted as its door swung open. He fired as a shot hit the wall beside him.

  So did Sam, going into an automatic crouch, swerving, all in one quick movement. Then he was circling the room at a run to reach the studio, drew on one side and fired again. “Drop the gun, hands high, come out,” he said in rapid Spanish.

  There was a brief hesitation. Ferrier kept his eyes fixed on that black gap of studio door. A strange battle, he thought; nothing but an interchange of mild plops from three silencers. Comic, in a way; but deceptive, too. These bullets were twice as lethal as those of his small automatic. So he kept watching the studio, didn’t relax until a revolver was tossed out and Zacarías followed with his hands at least half-way raised.

  No one else. Just Zacarías.

  “I’ll have that knife, too,” Sam told him, and picked it neatly out of the man’s cuff. “Face the wall, legs apart, and lean!” The search was professional, speedy, and thorough. It uncovered a second knife, strapped above the ankle. “Just a bundle of tricks,” Sam said, and herded Zacarías well away from the other two. “Keep an eye on this fellow, Ian.” Sam turned to the little man with the wounded shoulder and wrist, searched cautiously, discovered a sheathed knife in a hip pocket. “Lucky you spoiled his reach.” He studied the man critically; he was suffering considerable pain, now, but he was still rebellious, ready for any despairing move. “Kneel!” Sam told him. The man looked at him angrily, drew himself more erect. “Kneel, or you’ll get a bullet in the leg.” The man knelt.

  “I’ll keep an eye on that one, too,” Ferrier said, and Sam moved over to search the uniformed man sprawled on the floor.

  The man groaned, but offered no resistance. He had brass knuckle-dusters in one pocket, a switchblade and a coil of thin metal chain in the other. “Glad this wasn’t the one I met on a dark terrace,” said Sam.

  So he had got one of the two men who had made their entry by way of the garage, Ferrier guessed. Which one? And where was the other? Gone? Sam would not be here if there was one left prowling around. “Let’s stash these people in the bedroom,” Ferrier said, “and then we can talk.” There were several answers he wanted out of Sam. “Tavita—you’ll find a spare revolver at the corner of the couch. Keep that man saying his prayers while I tie up Zacarías.”

  Tavita found the pistol, picked it up with distaste, saw the kneeling man was watching her. She stood quite still. Her face hardened as slowly she pointed the revolver at his mouth. “I will end his prayers forever,” she said.

  “No! No firing,” Sam said quickly. He had finished his search, and was holding the last two finds in his hands. He rose to his feet, frowning down at them. The lighter he recognised as one of the neatest little cameras that had been so far developed for long-distance work. One of ours, he thought, but how the hell did this crude type get his hands on it? The other small object, very small this one, was a thin little silver pencil with elaborate decorations. Puzzling. Sam slipped them into his pocket. Zacarías, he noted, had seen them. Zacarías was showing his first sign of fear.

  Tavita said angrily, “Why not? He deserves to die, this one. More than any of them. He is a monster.” She didn’t fire, but she was supporting her right wrist with her left hand.

  “No, Tavita,” Ferrier said quietly. He gestured angrily to Zacarías. “Over here, you. Into the bedroom! Come on, hurry it up.”

  “Monster!” Tavita repeated. Her voice changed to bitterness. “Who started all this, anyway?”

  And that was a damned good point, thought Ferrier grimly, as Zacarías came obediently forward. Strangely obedient. What had scared him? But that moment passed. Zacarías looked at him contemptuously and spat. “You should listen to the lady,” Ferrier told him. “That’s the question that is going to defeat all you guys once people start asking it. Or would you rather hear it according to Lenin?”

  Zacarías stared at him. He may not have known much English, but the word “Lenin” got through.

  “Who, whom?” Ferrier quoted. Then he hit Zacarías smartly on the back of his neck and made sure he would be totally harmless for the next ten minutes. “Ready for packaging,” he called to Sam, who was pulling the other uniformed man by the heels into the bedroom. “Hey there—aren’t you a bit rough on him?”

  “Not rough enough.” Sam was thinking of a miniature camera and a small silver pencil. He let the man drop far away from Zacarías. “We’ll keep them well separated.”

  “There’s one in the bathroom.”

  Sam looked inside quickly, came out with both eyebrows raised. “And you called me rough,” he said, shaking his head. “Or was it our avenging angel? My God—” He rushed back into the living-room, grabbed the kneeling man by his collar, and yanked him to his feet. “You don’t know how close you were to getting your brain blown into mush,” Sam told him as he hauled the man into the bedroom. “Or perhaps you do,” Sam added, noticing the man’s frozen fear.

  Ferrier was pulling off the heavy curtain cords, testing them for strength. “Do we really need these? The police will be here any minute.”

  Sam said nothing, just began tying Zacarías securely. “I trust this one least of all. Know what I found down on the first floor? Right in the middle of the kitchen? A delayed-action bomb. Timed for midnight. They thought they’d be well away by then, business completed, corpses obliterated. Nice people.” He made an extra loop around Zacarías’ wrists, with an additional tug on the tight knot. “Don’t worry. We’ll have our bomb expert around here long before midnight. He’ll take care of it.” He looked up at Ferrier. “Don’t worry, I said!”

  They finished tying up the three men in silence.

  25

  They came back into the big room without speaking, Sam avoiding Ferrier’s eyes. Tavita was sitting on the floor, one hand on Magdalena’s shoulder, the other dropping down toward the efficient pistol lying beside her knees. Her head was bent. She was utterly exhausted. There was no sound at all except the quiet, steady breathing of Magdalena.

  Sam walked to the terrace, pulling out his cigarette case. Ferrier followed him, suspicion now a certainty. “So,” he said sharply, “Al didn’t send my message.”

  “About the police?” Sam was conciliatory. “He tried. The inspector was off duty.”

  “Like hell he was.”

  “Al tried,” Sam repeated, and started making contact with his radio.

  “Not hard enough.”

  “And do you want the police here now?” Sam turned his back. “Would it have been a good idea?”

  “Not particularly,” Ferrier admitted slowly. As things had turned out—not particularly, he repeated to himself. “But I don’t like being lied—”

  “Look—would you have preferred being told that there was no outside help coming? That you and I and Tavita were on our own?”

  Put that way—no. “Where was Al?” Ferrier asked angrily.

  “Busy,” Sam said, made contact, began talking quickly and quietly.

  Ferrier went back into the room.

  He walked around for a couple of minutes.

  “Where is Sam?” Tavita asked.

  “Getting help,” said Ferrier bitterly. But he remembered the time-bomb in the kitchen waiting for an expert’s loving care and he calmed down. Sam’s help might be on the late side, but it was welcome. “I’ll drive you and Magdalena to a hospital. Some quiet little place—do you know o
ne?”

  She nodded. Then she looked at him in horror. “Dressed like this? Bloodstains all over my skirt?”

  She’s getting back to normal, thought Ferrier.

  “And what could I tell them? I have thought and thought and I do not know what I can say. Not even if I explained exactly what happened would they believe me. It just couldn’t sound true.” She glanced at the locked door of her bedroom, perhaps saw beyond to the bathroom floor.

  “These men attacked you inside your own home,” he reminded her. “They used—”

  “I know, I know.” She kept staring at the bedroom door, now seeing the weeks, the months of enquiries and testimony and the whole smothering octopus arms of the law courts. “Ian—what do I tell them—the police?”

  “No police. Sam’s advice.”

  “But how do we—” She gestured to the bedroom hopelessly.

  “That’s Sam’s problem. He says he can solve it.”

  She drew a long breath. “Thank God,” she said fervently, “thank God for that.”

  Ferrier watched the relief spread over her face. He nodded. Then he walked out on to the terrace and joined Sam. The dark sky was bright with stars and a clear moon. From somewhere far below came the intermittent drift of guitars. The night-flowering shrubs around him were heavy with scent. “What now?” he asked as Sam closed the cigarette case.

  “Al will be here in a couple of minutes. He and three friends—Max sent them in from Córdoba just in case we needed some support—are up on the road above the house.” And I still don’t know what made them drag their bloody feet, thought Ferrier, but he said nothing.

  “They saw Gene Lucas get into his car and drive off.”

  “Al let him go—just like that?” It was hard for Ferrier to keep criticism out of his voice in spite of all his good resolutions.

  “We want Lucas in Málaga. That’s where he will be heading, right now. We want him to feel safe and undiscovered.” Sam laughed softly. “He kept well out of sight tonight, didn’t he? But that’s his line; he’s the boy in the background, pulls the wires, watches the puppets jump. And we’ll watch his puppets, too, see just how far and deep they reach back into America.”

  “When did he start running out of here?”

  “As soon as your toy pistol started shooting. He had come partway up through the terrace, just to check—from the background, of course—what was going on. I kept in the shadows. I had hidden—well, come on and see. We’d better carry it upstairs, anyway, help Al and his Spanish friends clean up the mess.” He was hurrying along the narrow terrace; Ferrier following quickly. “There wasn’t much cover for me up here, so I went down on to the second tier.” He descended a short flight of steep stone steps, high and narrow. “I chose this one, right here.” He pointed to the apricot tree, planted close against the wall that backed up to the terrace overhead.

  “More comfortable than those,” Ferrier said, and looked at a neighbouring clump of stiff saw-toothed leaves. “Spanish bayonets.” But the Spaniards wouldn’t call them that. Perhaps French bayonets? Napoleon’s legacy.

  “Then this figure came drifting up from the third terrace. A careful type. Melted into the shadows. Moved soundlessly. Except I was expecting someone to come up and guard these windows upstairs. If you and Tavita were the kind who’d leave old Magdalena on the couch and make a dash for the terrace—well, you’d never have made it.” Sam shook his head. He said nothing more. He led the way down on to the lowest terrace. Here, there were more bushes and shrubs planted against its back wall. “And this is where he landed.” He pointed to the paving stones underfoot.

  “You threw him from the second terrace?”

  “After I jumped him.” Sam chopped his hand sharply, karate-style.

  “And where—”

  “Behind here. Small problem. Give me a hand.” Sam reached behind a high flowering shrub, avoided the jagged blades of Spanish bayonets which grew nearby. “I had to hide him in a hurry when I heard Lucas’ footsteps coming this way.”

  They got the man out from his shroud of sweet-smelling petals, laid him on the terrace flagstones. Ferrier struck a match, shielded it, looked down at the dead man’s face. He looked peaceful. He was the man who had killed Jeff Reid, and then walked so calmly out of the hospital.

  “Did I get the right one?” Sam asked, showing his first sign of anxiety.

  “Yes.”

  “Heave him over my shoulders.”

  “Why not over the wall?”

  “And let him scare the daylights out of some poor guy who’s strumming his guitar in his own back yard? No. We’ll give him a taste of his own brew. He was going to drive the Buick. It’s up on the road waiting for him.” Sam’s lips were tight. “Let’s get him upstairs.”

  Amanda’s car. Ferrier looked at Sam’s strangely grim face, felt his own heart flinch. “I’ll give you a hand. Quicker, that way. Tell me—is there any news of—”

  “Wiser, too. If Al doesn’t wait for someone to answer the doorbell, Tavita may start using that .38 on him. She isn’t much in the mood for any more invasions.” That silenced any questions from Ferrier. Both their energies went into getting the limp body up the steep climb to the main terrace. There, they dropped it just outside the wall of windows. “That’s far enough.” Sam was watching Tavita. She had recovered a little; and was working off her restlessness by walking around the room, closing drawers, pushing back silks and satins into the chests. On the couch, Magdalena was deep in an untroubled sleep.

  Ferrier caught Sam’s arm as he was about to enter. “Did Al have any news of Amanda?”

  “He has been searching for her. That was the delay—”

  “News?” Ferrier insisted.

  How do I tell him? Sam wondered. He brought two small objects out of his pocket, opened his palm to let Ferrier see them. “I found these on the man with the chest wound.”

  Ferrier picked up the pencil. “This is Amanda’s. I don’t know about the lighter.”

  “It’s a camera, actually. That son of a bitch who stole it didn’t know its value, either.”

  Ferrier said slowly, “She wanted to take a photograph. I talked her out of it.” He handed the little silver pencil back to Sam. “But perhaps I didn’t,” he said very quietly. “Did she go back up there?” And then, “But I saw her get into a cab. I saw her. And drove away.”

  “We found the driver. She got into his taxi, changed her mind, joined a busload of people walking up to the Generalife. But they were too slow for her. She hurried ahead of them. Then the taxi driver got another fare.”

  Ferrier said nothing.

  “Al started an intensive search, once we had placed her at the Generalife. We knew the exact area where she was heading, so we concentrated on that. But no results.”

  She is dead, Ferrier thought and Sam is wondering how to tell me. “And where did you find her?”

  “In her car.”

  “Up there on that road? When?”

  “Five minutes ago. Just before I spoke with Al.” Sam waited. There were no further questions. So he tried to explain. “First, they must have taken her to the house where they put the old girl.” He looked over at Magdalena. “But nothing like that,” he added quickly. “No marks on her. A broken neck. What you might expect if her car crashed into a tree on her way back to Málaga. Yes, I think that was their plan for her.”

  Ferrier turned away, started indoors.

  “Look—I’m just telling you why Al was late in getting here.” Sam had been more resentful about that than he had allowed himself to appear. “When the Lucas car and the Buick left the hotel early, Al had a couple of men tail them. That’s how we discovered the house. They saw Magdalena being taken out; then Amanda—”

  “I don’t need the details,” Ferrier said harshly. “And there’s the doorbell.”

  * * *

  Tavita stood in the middle of her peaceful room. She looked around her with wonder. The strange young men had left, and Sam was out in the garag
e. The two bodies had been removed, a thin carpet was rolled around one of them, while the other—brought in from the terrace without a wound on him—was being taken to some Buick up on the road. The prisoners had gone, too, jammed into the big American car that had stood for all that hideous hour outside her front door. There were still scars and stains, her quick eyes noted, but rugs had been pulled over the worst ones. And tomorrow, she thought, I will have my own people scour and polish. Now all she had to do was to close the door behind her and go to the garage, where Sam had already placed Magdalena inside the big car. He was going to drive them. Ferrier, Sam had explained to her privately, had to get back to the hotel, and she wasn’t to question him or talk much, and least of all was she to let him know that Sam had told her so.

  “I’m ready,” she told Ian Ferrier now. Together they walked out of the house. Ferrier locked the door, gave her the key. “Don’t worry,” she told him, “I shall be safe. I am taking Magdalena to friends—a doctor who is devoted to me—he runs a very good clinic. She will get well. And I am no longer afraid. Thank you, Ian.”

  “I’ll be leaving Granada tomorrow.”

  I guessed that, she thought. “Then we will meet when you come back.” She reached up, kissed him. “To some happier time,” she said, with tears suddenly filling the large beautiful dark eyes. She left him before he could say anything, got into the car.

  Sam waved as they passed Ferrier, felt better when he saw Ferrier nod and wave back.

  “Did he really want to walk to the hotel?” Tavita asked. “We could easily have given him a lift.”

  “He wanted to walk.”

  “And not talk?” she asked shrewdly.

  “Well—he’s had a pretty rough day.”

  She was silent for a few moments. “Tell me, was there really a bomb? In my house?”

  “You have quick ears.”

  “The men were speaking in Spanish. It was easy to have quick ears. A bomb... Esteban will never believe it.”