Blame The Dead

by Gavin Lyall

'No, of course you cannot. You cannot come ever.'

  'Ah, I bet you say that to everybody. Snap out of it, get sociable. Just think of the trouble I've taken merely to get here: d'you really think I'm going to turn around and go home, just like that? No, of course not. I'm going to stick around and stir up a fuss. Talk to people about Fenwick, and books you sent him and things…'

  'I did not.'

  'No?'

  I waited. Then, suddenly sounding weary about it, he said, 'Oh, so all right.'

  'When? -now?'

  'No – do not come to the office. I will finish at half past three today. There is a café, the Fontenen, by the office. I will see you there.'

  'Half past three, Fontenen – right.' He rang off.

  Nice hours they work; wonder if I could get Britain to take them up? Though, come to think of it, most places in the City already have.

  By then I reckoned it was a bit late for my own lunch -though I found out later I was wrong – and tried the sandwiches-at-the-desk routine by having Room Service send up one of their specials: smoked salmon and scrambled egg, which was a new experience. After that I felt dry enough to go exploring; it was still raining outside, so I just changed some more money, pinpointed various restaurants and bars – 'I'm sorry, sir, but nobody in Norway is permitted to serve spirits before three in the afternoon' (which may account for the size of that lobby) – and got hold of a town map.

  Still no sign of Draper, not since breakfast.

  When it came time to go, the rain had eased up, fooling me into trying to walk it: according to the map, Steen's office and the Fontenen were only about eight blocks away. The centre of the town, the business area, seemed to be built over a short steep peninsula – and I mean steep – that separated two harbours. By now a lot of it had been rebuilt in that glass-and-concrete style that doesn't tell if you're in Tallahassee or Tashkent, but the dockside of the north harbour was a row of solid, high-peaked old warehouses, somehow bare-looking without the forest of sailing-ship masts in front of them. And behind, a steep wooded slope with crooked shelves of modern houses stepped up and up into the cloud that spilled over the mountain top.

  A clean-looking, fresh-painted town, even in that weather, or maybe because of it. All the cars seemed to be white or pastel colours, every building – offices included – had the windows jammed with indoor plants. So then it had to start raining again and I made the last quarter mile to the Fontenen dodging the citizens playing at overhead fencing-matches with umbrellas across the narrow pavements.

  The caféwas low-ceilinged, smoky, dark-panelled, and as clearly Men Only as a nudie magazine. And they didn't serve whisky at all, ever or any time. I ordered beer and waited.

  He was late. After half past three the place started gradually filling up, but not with anyone who announced himself as Jonas Steen. When he was ten minutes late I found a phone and rang him and got no reply.

  And so? So, being a master of disguise, he'd transformed his features with a couple of smears of greasepaint and shipped out as a Chinese cook on a guano boat bound for Chile. Or, realising that he could never match his puny wits against the mighty brain of James Card, he'd taken a long step out of a tenth-floor window…

  I found myself swallowing hard. That last idea wasn't too impossible, not when I remembered how jittery he'd sounded on the phone. I gobblectmy beer and hurried out to see for myself. The building was one of the new jobs, slim, glassy, five storeys high, with a small lobby of veined cat-grey marble, now jammed with typists waiting for the rain to stop or the boyfriends to start or just swapping gossip. I picked the name Steen off the board – third floor – pushed through the mob, and piloted myself up in a lift.

  Seventeen

  Up there, it was quiet and empty under cold neon lighting, just a straight bare corridor with offices at either side. I prowled the names – most of them seemed to be connected with shipping in some way – until I found Steen's. There was a light on behind the glass panel, so I knocked. And waited. And waited.

  So? So because the door didn't seem to be locked and I'd come all the bloody way from bloody London via bloody Newcastle, I went in.

  And I was just too late. By maybe a few minutes and certainly a lifetime. He didn't look anything but dead – sprawled back in his chair, arms and legs outflung, two neat, slightly bloody holes in his temple. When I took a deep breath I could smell the sweet-sour scent of powdersmoke.

  I shut the door quietly and just stood for a while. Then I remembered he might not be Steen at all, so I wrapped a handkerchief round my hand and explored the pockets of the natty golden-brown suit. And it was him, all right. Alive, I'd guess he'd been in his late thirties, with fair hair left a bit long for Norwegian standards, no sideboards or moustache, a handsome fleshy face whose eyes probably hadn't bulged like that until a couple of small bullets burst his brain.

  I moved away and something crunched under my foot: a little copper-coloured cartridge case. A -22, which I'd guessed already. And what else did I want to know? – apart from the way home to Mummy. But not this time; this time I had to stay. I reached for the phone, then remembered the cops would prefer me to use another one, and then noticed the gun beside it. A -22, of course – Mauser HSC model, just like the one the Pentathol boys had pinched a few evenings back.

  It even had the same number.

  'Now that,' I said out loud, 'really is cheating.' Then I just stood and looked carefully around the office. Time was running out and I was following it – but I'd still come all the way from London to see this bloke and – well, here he was.

  It wasn't a particularly big room, and the only desk was Steen's own oiled-teak job, so he didn't have a full-time secretary. The rest of the room matched the desk: teak arms on the slim black-leather chairs, low teak bookcase, teak filing cabinets. Even the indoor plants on the window-sill were in a long teak trough. Maybe he knew somebody in a teak jungle.

  All of which was fine if I were writing him up in Homes ‹Sr Gardens but no help when it came to explaining things to the boys with big feet and disbelieving eyes. And I was going to have to explain – some, anyhow.

  Top priority was that second cartridge case; that wasted me another half minute. There were also a small cushion and a pen down on the floor – the sort of pen you stick in a desk-top holder. Probably he'd been writing when he got shot. I left it lying there, then started on the filing cabinet. D, E, F for Fen-wick… Fenwick… no Fenwick. Not a whisper of one. Odd? How could I tell? Try Lloyd's – and there was more than a drawerful of that, but subdivided by what looked like ship names. Anyway, still no Fenwick.

  Try the desk diary – a nice big affair bound in black leather. Appointments for today: a shipping line in the morning, Larsen at two-fifteen. Fontenen at three-thirty, but no mention of my name. And whoever Larsen had been, he wouldn't have left that diary if he was the killer. The rest of the desk was pretty clear: a small card index – names of ships and shipping lines – a brass pot full of pencils, the empty penholder.

  But what had he been writing on? Well, whatever it was, my guess was the killer had lifted it. Probably a telephone notepad. So why pinch a whole pad when you can just tear off a page?

  I'm writing something. Important. Secret. Somebody knocks on the door. I'm not expecting anybody, it's late in the day, I'm surprised. I call 'Come in', but at the same time I open the central desk drawer and just slide the notepad in and out of sight, and he comes in before I've had time to put away the pen and – bang. And bang again.

  I opened the drawer and took out the pad and tore off the top half-dozen pages. And five seconds after, I was starting down the stairs.

  There was still a small crowd in the lobby, so I strolled through listening to the thunder of my heartbeat, and just getting outside was the first day of spring. Even if I knew winter was on its way back.

  By then the Fontenen was really filling up with prosperous-looking types steaming out the rain over the first beer of the day. I ordered one for myself, then went
to explore the gents' lavatory. It had a modern cistern, but the lid still lifted off, and the Mauser and the derringer – plus the clip holster – went down into the water, well clear of the ball-and-cock gear. The two cartridge cases and five blank sheets of notepaper just got flushed away; I was prepared to chance the sheet with writing on it – even if it did start off with the word card. Five minutes later, I was back in the lobby of Steen's building.

  The crowd had thinned to three girls getting the word from two young men. I marched up to the janitor at his marble-topped counter and asked for Jonas Steen.

  He looked curiously at me, significantly at the wall clock. 'Does he expect you?'

  'He said he'd meet me at the Fontenen cafe, but he's twenty minutes late and I just wondered…'

  He shrugged, dialled on the house phone. No reply. He shrugged. 'He has gone.'

  'But he can't have. He arranged to meet me. I've come all the way from London to see him.'

  He shrugged again, but called something to the group and one of the girls considered and called something back. I don't know what, but enough to get him puzzled. And I'd done my part. Steen wouldn't rest lonely all night.

  Even then, it took time. Janitors don't make fast, purposeful decisions. They stand there and think, or at least stand there. Then they pick up the phone and make two other calls and get two other no replies. Then they think, or stand there, some more. And finally they haul out a big bunch of keys and lead you over to the lift.

  I watched, trying to look bored, as he went through the inevitable, useless ritual of knocking, knocking again louder, and then pasting an apologetic smile on his face and opening the door and leaning in to have a look.

  '-!' he said. I mean, I don't know what he said but I know what he meant. And even from the back of his head I could tell there wasn't any more smile on the front. He lunged into the room, and I followed.

  Just for the record, I said something like, 'Good Christ!' but it was wasted. He'd rushed straight across to the body but was just standing there, not touching it, not really looking at it, not doing anything.

  'Is it Mr Steen? ' I asked.

  'Yes, yes,' he said impatiently – and went on doing nothing.

  After a while, I suggested, 'What about the police?'

  'Yes, yes.'

  And at last he picked up the phone.

  They were fast and, as far as I could tell, good. There were a couple of uniformed cops on the spot inside two minutes, two motor-cyclists a half-minute later, and after that a carload of plainclothes jacks. One of these took me back downstairs and parked me in the janitor's room behind the marble counter and leaned against the door to stop the draught coming in or something. And we waited. For a long time voices and feet went hither and yon outside.

  Then at last somebody stuck his head around the door and called me out.

  They'd turned the marble-topped counter into a sort of interrogation desk and communications centre. One of the plain-clothes men was on the phone to somewhere; a uniformed cop was using a small walkie-talkie and accepting lousy transmission rather than go outside in the wet. Another jack was sitting and writing in a notebook. He looked up as I came in behind him.

  He must have been about forty-five, with a rumpled brown suit, a bush of white-grey hair brushed back from a bony, triangular face with a big nose. And a cold. The nose was red and had a permanent drip on the end; the sunken grey eyes were damp and bleary. He looked at me with about as much interest as he'd've given to a lost umbrella and asked, 'You are English?'

  'Yes.'

  'Your name, please.'

  I gave him my passport and he started copying.

  'You are at a hotel?'

  'The Norge.'

  Calmly, without any embarrassment, he reached out for the phone and asked for the hotel, and checked.

  When he'd finished, he said, 'You came only today?'

  'Yes.'

  'When did you come here, to this office? '

  'Oh-ten to four maybe.'

  The time struck him as odd, so we had to have the story about me waiting in the café and then going out to look if I'd made a mistake and there was another cafénearby (just in case he checked and some waiter remembered my in-and-out bit) and coming back and finally coming to the office and…

  Halfway through this there was a shiver in the crowd and everybody seemed to be standing to attention – except my boy. A new man, tall and solid in a smooth black overcoat, black hair except for neat silver wings over the ears, a well-fed face, was suddenly among those present. If we'd been a regiment he'd have been the colonel; as everybody except me was a copper, he had to be the superintendent.

  He reviewed the troops with a cold bright eye until he reached me; then came over and asked a couple of brisk questions of my questioner. He answered them without looking up from his notebook and I knew just how he felt about senior officers who think they're helping the Chaps by barging into the middle of an interrogation.

  Finally he'd helped enough and went away. My man dug in his pockets and found a handful of used Kleenex to wipe his nose on, a benzedrine sniffer to inhale from, and a couple of yellow pills for dessert.

  Then he looked up at me. 'That was the superintendent.'

  I nodded. 'I didn't catch your name.'

  'Vik. Inspector (First Class) Vik.' He sighed and put away the notebook. 'I will perhaps call on you tonight. You will be at the hotel?'

  'Sure. I came over just to see Steen. Now…" I shrugged.

  Eighteen

  It was getting dark by the time I reached the Norge again, and well into legal whisky time, so I found out why they don't serve the stuff until the end of the working day: because you need a whole day's pay to buy a single shot, that's why. I sat in the lounge bar on the balcony above the lobby and stretched a single Scotch into a slow-drinking record.

  Maybe I chose that seat by instinct: at a low table right up against the glass front of the hotel, so that by looking down through the balcony railings and past a modern sunburst chandelier I had a perfect view of the lobby desk and the three lifts. I might have been thinking of getting early warning of Vik; as it was, I got early warning of Draper and Maggie Mack-wood.

  She was wearing a thick green-blue tartan cloak and carrying a brown vanity case; he was lugging a soft tapestry bag that looked more hers than his. When they reached the desk, she was obviously the only one checking in. When she and a porter headed for the lift (she actually got her bags carried; my researches had suggested that only happened in Norway for the King, and then only when he'd got a bad back), Draper wandered off and sat down in one of the chairs scattered over the middle of the big lobby.

  Well, well. There wasn't any problem to how she'd got here – given a bit of luck in the air schedules she could have been here this morning to meet me – but that didn't tell mewhy. Unless she was thinking of taking up tailing me where Draper had left off.

  Then one of the lobby porters started calling my name. It took a few moments for it to sink into Draper and for him to start wriggling to peer all around him, so I had time to duck. But now he knew I was still around the hotel.

  A couple of minutes later the message reached my bar and a waiter with a nice balletic style curvetted over with a folded message slip. It said just: With reference to HSC will you take a telephone call at 7 this night exactly?

  No signature.

  Nijinsky was still hanging around because I was still clinking coins in my pocket. I asked, 'Who took this?'

  'The telephone lady, sir.'

  Was it worth chasing her up? – asking what accent the caller had had? But they never remember. I nodded and dumped some coins – too much, by his expression and fast take-off – on the tray.

  I suppose it was as good a way to do it as any. They'd be calling from a public phone so it didn't much matter if I had the cops listening in – and they knew I wouldn't have. But it didn't exactly help the naked feeling of wandering around without a gun. A quick trip back to the Fontenen? –
but that area would still be under two thick coatings of coppers, and Vik would likely want to search me and mine if he came in tonight. The pistols would just have to stay there overnight and I hoped they would.

  I had most of an hour before the phone call that would tell me something to my disadvantage, but the next drink was coming out of my own bottle. So I went upstairs, poured one, and tried putting a call through to Willie. I dug out Steen's last words and studied them while I was waiting. They went: CARD Gulbrandsens??

  H amp; Thornton??

  ??

  And a power of good that was to man, beast, or female.

  The operator couldn't raise anybody on the syndicate's number at Lloyd's, which wasn't so surprising at that hour, so I told her to switch to Willie's Berkshire one. Then I copied out Steen's message and threw the original down the lavatory. At least, I suppose it was a message: a note of what hemight-as those question marks implied – have been going to tell me. H amp; Thornton didn't mean a thing except sounding English; Gulbrandsens just sounded like a name… well, that was easily settled: the telephone directory gave a choice of a dozen. Apart from anything else, it was a Bergen street name: Gulbrandsens Gate. But Steen hadn't lived there – that was the next thing I checked.

  Then an elderly, well-bred female voice came through from darkest Berkshire to say Willie was expected back around nine and would I like to leave a message? I just gave my name and said I'd call back.

  After that, I sat and stared at Steen's message until the phone rang – a couple of minutes after seven, by my watch.

  A voice asked, 'James Card?'

  'That's me. Who's that?'

  'Never mind. Are you alone?'

  'Yes.' I was trying to place the voice; it just might have been Norwegian – I'd learned that the time they spend not carrying your bags they use practising perfect English – but I didn't quite think so.

  I said, 'So what d'you want?'

  'I'm glad you asked that question. A certain book you have with you, I believe. It doesn't belong to you, so…'