Safer Dead

by James Hadley Chase

  After twenty minutes or so, Lydia came out of her room. She was wearing a dark grey suit and she had a fur coat over her arm. Her face was fine drawn and white. She glanced quickly at Juan and then her eyes shifted.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.

  I went into her room and collected her two suitcases. As I reentered the sitting room, Juan gave a muffled groan and moved uneasily.

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ I said. ‘Come on.’

  I went to the door, set down the cases, opened the door and stepped into the passage. At the far end I could see the front door. A man’s shadow lay across the glass panel: a short bulky man with shoulders that looked as wide as a house.

  I stepped back quickly into the sitting room, motioning Lydia to stay where she was. My warning gesture made her catch her breath sharply.

  I peered cautiously into the passage. The front door was opening. I quickly shut Lydia’s apartment door.

  ‘What is it?’ she whispered.

  ‘There’s a guy out there.’

  Softly I turned the key in the lock and waited, listening.

  I heard soft footfalls coming down the passage. They stopped outside the door. Then I saw the door handle turn. Lydia backed away, her face ashen, her hand to her mouth. In the silence of the room, knuckles rapping on the door panel made a loud, startling sound.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I

  I stepped away from the door as knuckles rapped again. Lydia asked in a voice no louder than the rustle of leaves, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. A short, thickset guy.’ My voice matched hers.

  Her eyes dilated.

  ‘It’s Borg. He won’t be alone.’ She looked around the room wildly. ‘Don’t let him in.’

  I saw the door handle turn, and a weight leaned against the door, making it creak.

  I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the bedroom, shut and locked the door.

  ‘You’ll have to leave your cases,’ I said, going over to the window. I raised it and looked out on to a strip of garden of dark shadows and shrubs. ‘We’ll go this way.’

  She joined me. I picked her up and swung her through the window into the garden, then scrambled out after her.

  ‘My car’s at the corner. Can we get around to it?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll show you.’

  She ran down the strip of lawn to a gate.

  ‘Let me go first,’ I said, pulling out Juan’s gun.

  I opened the gate and stepped into a deserted alley that stretched away into darkness.

  I started down the alley, moving quietly. Lydia followed, almost treading on my heels. I could hear her quick, frightened breathing. The end of the alley led out into a side street. At the top of the street I could see the gleam of my parking lights. The street seemed empty. Taking Lydia’s arm and keeping in the shadows, I started towards the car.

  ‘Who’s this guy Borg?’ I asked her.

  ‘One of Royce’s men,’ she said. ‘They won’t let me get away.’

  ‘They haven’t got you yet.’

  We reached within twenty feet of the Lincoln, then I stopped.

  ‘I’ll go first. You wait here. Be ready to move fast.’

  I stepped away from her and cautiously moved to the street corner. I looked up Lennox Drive. A big car stood outside Lydia’s apartment house. A man stood by it, looking towards the house. I crossed the sidewalk to the Lincoln, opened the door and slid into the driving seat.

  ‘Come on!’ I called softly.

  I had the engine running as she darted into the car, and the car moving as she slammed the door.

  Maybe Benn had looked after the Lincoln, but as soon as I started to feed gas into the engine, I knew I wasn’t going to get much of a performance from it. This wasn’t a car to be in to shake off a fast pursuit.

  The driving mirror remained dark: no telltale headlights showed behind me, and I hoped that our getaway hadn’t been spotted.

  I swung the car on to the main road leading out of Tampa City and gradually built up the Lincoln’s speed to fifty-five. At that speed the car began to rock.

  I took out a pack of cigarettes from my pocket and dropped it into her lap.

  ‘Light me one and have one yourself,’ I said, my eyes shifting to the driving mirror again to make sure no car was following us.

  ‘Can’t you go faster?’ she asked.

  Her hands were shaking so badly she had trouble getting the cigarettes out of the pack.

  ‘I might at a pinch, but this is fast enough so long as they’re not following us.’

  She lit the cigarettes and gave me one.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ I said. I didn’t want to scare her, but I wasn’t too sure how much time we had before they came after us. What do you know about Frances Bennett?’

  ‘What has happened to her? Where is she?’

  I gave it to her without gloves.

  ‘She’s dead. She was fished out of a pond in Welden. Royce stayed with her at a hotel in Welden. She was working at a club there. The night she disappeared, Royce left the town.’

  I saw Lydia clench her fists tightly in her lap.

  ‘So she’s dead. Well, I warned her, the little fool. She wouldn’t listen. I told her Royce was using her for his own convenience. He wouldn’t fall for a stupid little fool like her.’

  ‘Don’t cut the corners,’ I said. ‘Let me have it from the beginning. What was Royce to you?’

  She hunched her shoulders and leaned forward to stare at the two pools of light thrown by the Lincoln’s headlamps as they raced ahead of us.

  ‘What was he to me? Everything. We were fixed to be married,’ she said in a cold, flat voice, and I didn’t believe her.

  ‘We were happy; he was crazy about me. Then suddenly it blew up in my face. He started to cool. He wasn’t subtle about it either. I thought at first it was the Van Blake woman. She was always coming to the club. You know the club belonged to her husband?’

  I said I knew.

  ‘But I found out it wasn’t her. It was the Bennett girl. She and Royce were meeting secretly. I had them watched. When he was supposed to be at the club in the morning, he was driving her around. When he told me to go back to the apartment as he had things to do at the club, he was taking her to dinner at Lodoni’s where no one knew either of them.’

  ‘Was this before Van Blake’s death?’

  She turned her head to stare at me. In the dim light from the dashboard I could see her eyes were glittering with unshed tears.

  ‘What’s Van Blake’s murder to do with her?’

  ‘I don’t know; nothing perhaps. I was trying to fix the time.’

  ‘It was just before; two weeks.’

  ‘You said they were meeting secretly. How secretly? Did anyone know what was going on?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t hired an investigator to watch her.’

  ‘But why should Royce bother to keep it quiet? Was he scared you’d make trouble?’

  She laughed; it wasn’t a pretty sound.

  ‘With the thugs he has to look after him, he didn’t have to be scared of anyone.’

  ‘Then why keep it secret?’

  ‘I don’t know. I tried to find out, but I didn’t get anywhere. I talked to the girl. She was crazy about him. I could see that by the way her silly face lit up when I mentioned his name, but she denied ever going out with him. I was fool enough to tell her I had had her watched. That was the worst mistake I’ve ever made.’ Again her fists closed into tight, white knuckled fists. ‘She told Royce. He came back to the apartment, and I could tell by his face it was my finish with him. I thought he was going to kill me. He told me to pack up and get out. I was too frightened even to speak. I think that’s why he didn’t kill me. He stood in the bedroom doorway and watched me while I packed. When I was ready to go, he got hold of my arms and held me while he talked. I had bruises from his fingers on my arms for weeks. He said I was not to leave town. I was to work at the H
ey-Day club and I was never to talk about his affairs. He said Juan was going to be my jailer. If I ever talked about him, tried to leave town or came near him, Juan would take care of me. I could see he meant it. That’s how I’ve been living for the past eighteen months. I haven’t seen him to talk to for all that time. He never gave me a thing: not a nickel. And now look what I’ve done. If they catch up with me, they’ll kill me.’

  ‘They won’t catch up with you,’ I said, urging the car up to fifty-seven. I still had a little in reserve, but not much. The engine was so noisy we were practically shouting at each other now. I drove for a minute or so while I brooded over what she had told me. It hadn’t taken me far. At least, I had a witness now to prove Royce and Rutland were one and the same, and that put Royce in the middle of Fay’s disappearance. That was something, but I knew there must be a lot more to this than I knew. ‘Ever heard of a guy who called himself Hank Flemming?’ I asked abruptly.

  She shook her head.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘He’s hooked up in this. Maybe you’ve seen him. He’s short, thickset with a round, heavy face. The last time I saw him he wore a dirty trench coat and a black slouch hat. Remember seeing anyone like that?’

  It was a shot in the dark, but it scored a bull.

  ‘Andrews saw him.’

  ‘Andrews?’

  ‘He was the investigator I hired. He gave me a description of a man just like that.’

  ‘Where did he see him?’

  ‘He was at Lodoni’s restaurant one night when Royce and the Bennett girl were there. Andrews spotted this man in a car outside the restaurant. Royce took the Bennett girl past the car and as they passed, he dropped back a little and pointed to the girl. The man left the car after a while and went to the door of the restaurant and watched her. Andrews said it was as if Royce had put the finger on her, but I didn’t believe him. He wasn’t much of an investigator. He was always trying to chisel money out of me. I thought it was just a story he had made up to make me think he was doing more than he was.’

  Now I was learning something. So it was Royce who had hired Flemming to murder Fay.

  I started to ask her if Andrews had seen the man again when I happened to glance in the driving mirror. I had been listening so intently to what Lydia had been saying, my attention had strayed from the thought of pursuit. What I saw in the mirror gave me a jolt. Two big yellow blobs of light hung in the darkness behind me. Maybe they were half a mile in the rear, but they were coming fast.

  Lydia saw them at the same time as I did.

  I heard her catch her breath as I shoved my foot down on the gas pedal.

  II

  The four lane highway was as straight as a yard stick and as dark as a chimney. With a flat out speed of sixty miles an hour I knew I had no chance of shaking off the pursuing car. The yellow blobs of light crept closer.

  Lydia, looking over her shoulder through the rear window, watched them, hypnotized, her face pallid in the light of the dashboard, her eyes wild and staring. I nudged her with my knee.

  ‘Can we get off this road?’ I shouted above the noise of the engine.

  She came alive with an effort.

  ‘There’s a turning somewhere ahead.’

  I snapped off the headlights. The following car was still a quarter of a mile or so in the rear. I searched the darkness for an intersection sign and nearly missed it.

  ‘Just ahead now,’ Lydia cried, clutching my arm.

  ‘Watch out!’

  I stamped on the brake pedal as the turning loomed up. The car tyres screamed in protest. Lydia, her hands on the dashboard, swayed forward and sideways against me as the Lincoln slewed around, the back wheels locked. The car wobbled, the offside wheels lifted as I released the brakes, then we shot down the turning on to a snake back road that forced my speed down to a dangerous thirty.

  Without headlights and with the twists and bends I had all I could do not to run off the road. After I had driven three hundred yards or so, Lydia who was staring back through the rear window gasped, ‘They’ve passed! They’ve missed us!’

  ‘Where does this road lead to?’ I asked, turning on my headlights. I edged the speed up to thirty-five.

  ‘Glyne Bay. It’s a small beach town.’

  ‘Can we get back on to the Frisco road from there?’

  ‘No. This is the only road in and out. They’ll come back.’ She beat her fists together hysterically. ‘They’ll know we’ve taken this turning.’

  I thought that was likely but I didn’t say so.

  ‘Take it easy. We’ll ditch the car and hide up somewhere. If I can get to a telephone I’ll call the Welden police. Glyne Bay’s in their district.’

  The road straightened, and ahead I could make out the haze of street lights. I increased speed.

  Lydia’s grip on my arm tightened.

  ‘They’re coming!’ she gasped.

  I looked into the driving mirror. In the rear, on the snake back road, I could see the blaze of headlights. I pushed the gas pedal to the boards and the Lincoln surged forward. Ahead, I saw a neon sign that ran: Turn left for Glyne Beach Motel.

  I turned off my headlights, swung the car left, banged and rocked down a narrow drive-in that led to a large car park where forty to fifty cars stood in two long rows. I slammed on brakes, nailed the Lincoln beside a dusty Ford, opened the car door and slid out.

  ‘Come on!’

  I could see the headlights of the following car turn into the drive-in. Catching Lydia by the wrist, I ran with her across the car park, through a double gateway, along a cinder path that opened out on to a big grass covered lot around which were fifty or so cabins.

  The cabin that housed the renting office stood in the middle of the lot. It was in darkness. I had Juan’s gun in my hand now. Looking back I saw the car park was alight from the following car’s headlamps.

  I paused long enough to try the office door, but it was locked. There was no time to fool around. We had to get under cover. We had only seconds to do it in.

  I heard someone running down the cinder path towards us. I bolted with Lydia across the grass towards a row of dark cabins. One of them had a ‘vacant’ sign hanging on the front door handle. I let go of Lydia’s hand, jumped up the two steps, took off the sign, stepped off the stoop, caught her hand again and pulled her around to the back of the cabin. I tossed the sign into the darkness.

  ‘We’ll get in here,’ I panted.

  One of the back windows was unlatched. I got my fingers under the window frame and pushed the window up. Then I put one arm around Lydia’s waist, the other under her knees and swung her through the window. I climbed in after her, shut and latched the window.

  ‘They’ll find us here,’ she said. ‘They’ll trap us.’

  ‘Maybe they won’t,’ I said, crouching by the window while I looked into the darkness.

  She came near me. I could hear her quick, light breathing. I didn’t see anyone. I didn’t hear anything.

  ‘Stay here while I see if there’s a telephone,’ I said.

  I groped my way across the room, found a door, opened it and stepped into darkness. I scratched a match alight. Down a passage, on the left was a door. Flicking the match out, I turned the handle and moved into what appeared to be a sitting room. Crossing to the window I looked out, keeping to one side. Right in the middle of the neatly cut lawn I saw the dim outline of Borg. His wide shoulders and squat body were unmistakable. His back was turned to the cabin. The faint light of a cloud-covered moon reflected on the steel barrel of a gun he held in his hand.

  I pulled the curtains across the windows, struck another match and spotted a telephone standing on a table near the window. I went over to it, lifted the receiver and dialled emergency.

  The operator sounded eager to be of service.

  ‘Give me the Welden police,’ I said.

  I waited in the darkness, my shirt sticking to my back, my heart thumping while I listened to the clicking on the line.


  A voice growled, ‘Welden police headquarters.’

  ‘Captain Creed there?’

  ‘No, he isn’t. Who’s calling?’

  ‘Give me Sergeant Scaife.’

  ‘Hold a moment.’

  More clicking rapped against my ear, then Scaife’s voice said, ‘Scaife talking.’

  ‘This is Sladen. I’m in a motel at Glyne Beach. A couple of gunmen are looking for me and I want help. What can you do?’

  ‘I’ll fix it,’ he said briskly. ‘I’ve a prowl car in that district. It’ll be over to you in ten minutes.’

  ‘Hey! Make it faster than that. These guys mean business.’

  ‘I’ll fix it,’ he said and rung off.

  I groped my way back to the other room. Lydia was standing against the wall by the window, looking out into the darkness.

  ‘The police are on their way,’ I told her. ‘They’ll be here any moment. Seen anyone out there?’

  ‘No.’

  I could feel her trembling.

  We waited, side by side, watching and listening. Suddenly her hand closed over my wrist. Her flesh felt cold.

  ‘Did you hear something?’ she whispered.

  I listened, holding my breath.

  Somewhere in the cabin a board creaked. In the silence it sounded loud and startling.

  Lydia shivered, and her grip tightened.

  ‘Take it easy,’ I said, my lips close to her face. ‘Move as quietly as you can,’ and I led her across the room to the door. I stood her against the wall so that if the door opened she would be behind it.

  Another board creaked outside, then I heard the door down the passage open.

  ‘They’re here,’ Lydia gasped.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ I said, not feeling anything like as confident as I sounded.

  A soft scraping noise outside in the passage set my heart thumping. Then I heard the door handle creak as a hand closed over it. Stepping in front of Lydia, my finger on the trigger of the gun, I waited.

  The door swung open, pinning us behind it. Lydia’s fingers were digging into my wrist. I hoped feverishly she wouldn’t panic and start to scream.

  Through the crack between the door and the door jamb I caught sight of a squat, wide-shouldered shadow. For some moments Borg stood in the doorway, peering into the dark room, then he took two steps forward that brought him into the room. I was tense and waiting. I heard him cross to the window. His next move must be to look behind the door, and then it would be a question of who would shoot the faster. I wasn’t going to wait for that moment. The advantage was too much on his side. I pulled my wrist from Lydia’s grip, slid past her and out from behind the shelter of the door.