Send Superintendent West

by John Creasey

  No one spoke, nothing happened.

  He moved towards the left, where the hut faced the lake, and kicked against steps which led – where else could they lead? – to a front door. There was no rail. He mounted the steps unsteadily. The door faced him, he pushed, and the door opened.

  That was so unlikely, that he stopped swaying drunkenly, hand stretched out, door creaking as it swung away from him. An age passed before he stepped up, and into the hut. It was darker here than it had been outside. That ordeal had ended in an empty hut and a canoe he hadn’t the strength to use, but he could rest. He must rest. There would be a chair, surely there would be a chair.

  He started the cautious circling round the room; it seemed like second nature to walk with his hands outstretched. He felt rough wood walls, kicked nothing, began to think that it was empty of everything, and then his hand touched a shelf. He groped along it. Something moved. He explored it slowly, and knew that it was something cold, smooth and round. He gripped it as tightly as he could and took it off the shelf, and then he realised what it was – a flashlight.

  Would it work?

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Empty’ House

  Roger pressed the switch. There was no strength in his fingers, and it would not budge. He screwed himself up for the effort, and light came on. It shone into his eyes, and he jerked his head away. The beam wove a yellow pattern on walls and floor, before he held it still. He raised it towards the shelf. There was no sound but the creaking of boards beneath his feet, the light shone on some tins, rope, a hurricane lantern – then a rustle of movement made him swing round.

  Before he saw what it was, a heavy weight struck his hand, knocking the torch from his grasp. It clattered to the floor and went out. Blackness – always blackness. His heart thumped and he felt suffocated. They’d caught him.

  ‘You looking for anything?’ a man said laconically.

  Roger opened his mouth, muttered a sound that must have seemed like gibberish.

  The man said: ‘You heard me. What are you doing around here?’

  Roger said slowly and carefully: ‘I—am—lost.’

  ‘That so?’ The voice was still laconic. ‘Just come to the door, friend. I’d like to take a look at you.’

  The voice came from the door, but Roger could see nothing. He moved forward, a step at a time. A light shone into his eyes, not powerful enough to dazzle him. Then it dropped and a woman said: ‘Mike, he’s just another bum.’

  ‘Looks like,’ said Mike. The light travelled again to Roger’s face. ‘Looks like he’s had a long walk, I guess. You a stranger to these parts?’

  ‘I have just come—’ the words seemed to hesitate before they came out—’from England.’ As if that would mean anything to them – except to suggest that he was lying.

  ‘From England,’ the woman echoed.

  ‘That so?’ Mike’s voice had calmness in it and could have been friendly. ‘Then you’re a mighty long way from home.’ He kept the light steady. ‘Honey, you just step behind him and make sure he doesn’t carry a gun.’

  She moved without hesitating. After a moment, Roger felt her hands at his sides, patting his coat and trousers; she was thorough.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, stranger,’ Mike said. ‘You can come this way.’ He began to move, just visible in the reflected fight of the torch. The woman took Roger’s arm, as if she realised his weakness.

  He almost blacked out. He knew they were both helping to keep him on his feet. There was some trouble at a flight of steps before he stumbled inside a dimly lighted room and was lowered into a chair. He heard odd words.

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘Looks mighty sick to me.’

  ‘Don’t wake them kids.’ Kids. The boy!

  He opened his eyes wide and started to speak, but Mike wouldn’t let him. Mike was a big, hardy-looking man with a grey-streaked beard, wearing a lumber jacket of coloured squares, trousers held up by a silver-buckled belt and a pair of old boots. The room was small and two other rooms led off it. The woman had disappeared, but Roger could just distinguish the clink of china and it wasn’t long before she came back with a percolator and cups on a tray. There were sandwiches as well as coffee. She poured out.

  ‘Mike, you want to take his shoes off?’

  ‘For why?’

  ‘You want to use your eyes,’ she said tartly. He’s been wading in the lake.’ She stirred sugar into the coffee and pushed cup and saucer into Roger’s hands. ‘Just you drink that, and then eat some, and then—’

  ‘Thanks,’ Roger said. ‘I—thanks. But don’t touch my shoes.’ Mike was on one knee obediently. ‘I’ve got to—go on. I must get to the police.’

  Mike stopped moving, just stared up at him. His wife went still.

  ‘I must telephone the police,’ Roger said, as if he were repeating a lesson learned parrot-wise. ‘There is a kidnapped boy.’ He waved his left hand, nearly knocked the cup out of the saucer. ‘Up there.’

  Husband and wife looked at each other, looked back at Roger.

  ‘There is,’ he persisted. ‘I must tell the police. How far away—are they?’

  ‘State troopers in Wycoma,’ Mike said, as if he were talking to himself. His wife was staring intently at Roger, but once looked towards the door she hadn’t been through. ‘The nearest telephone is six–seven miles, I guess. You sure about this boy?’

  ‘Yes. We must hurry.’

  ‘Where is he, you say?’

  ‘Drink your coffee,’ the woman ordered.

  ‘Up there. A big house – in a clearing. Trees all round it. Firs – or pines.’ The warm coffee was thawing Roger out, he felt more able to cope, and he was beginning to feel that these people might help. ‘I don’t know how far. Miles. It’s at the top of a hill.’

  Mike said: ‘Webster’s old place. Webster doesn’t live there any more, since his boy died. Heard some funny stories about the guy who took over. So there’s a kid. What’s the name of the kid?’

  ‘Shawn,’ said Roger. ‘Ricky Shawn. He was kidnapped in England—’

  Mike moved quickly for the first time. On his way to the door, he said: ‘You want to look after him while I’m gone, honey? Won’t be that long. Could be the kid’s up there, or could be this guy’s crazy, but it won’t do any harm to look and see. I’ll telephone Wycoma, stranger, and be right back with the police.’ He stopped in the doorway. ‘I’m Mike Hill,’ he said, and obviously expected a comment.

  ‘You’ve been very—’ Roger began, and stopped, forcing a smile. ‘I’m Roger West. I’m not crazy. Hurry, Mike, please.’

  Two minutes later, the quiet of the lakeside was broken by the stutter of a car engine. Soon it moved off, missing on one cylinder but chugging steadily. Mike Hill’s wife was pouring more coffee and urging Roger to eat the sandwich: a chicken sandwich. The sound of the engine died away.

  There were three New York State troopers in uniform, two other men, Mike Hill and Roger. Hill’s old car was left by the lake, his wife stood in the doorway of the cabin, watching a big Pontiac and an Oldsmobile moving along the track towards a dirt road, head-lights carving a light through the trees. By road, Webster’s place was fifteen miles away, Roger was told; he had walked nine. It was nearly four o’clock in the morning.

  They had asked few questions, all seemed sleepy and taciturn. Now he matched their silence. His eyes were so heavy that sleep was always threatening him, and his limbs would not stop aching. He knew that they were in the Adirondacks about two hundred miles from New York City, that was all.

  The narrow road twisted all the way, ran uphill, and on the hairpin bends there was hardly room for two cars to pass. The journey took them forty minutes.

  It didn’t surprise Roger that Webster’s house was empty. Gissing, the boy, the new prisoner – all of them were gone. He forced himself to keep up with the others as they searched. Evidence of hurried departure, bullet marks in the floor and the door-frame, blood on the carpet where
the man had died, told them he hadn’t been lying. Of them all, the most morose was a lean, leathery man with a puckered dent in the side of his neck, from an old injury. The others called him Al, and he had a sergeant’s stripes. They had finished the search and were back in the room where Roger had seen Gissing. Sergeant Al went towards the chair where Gissing had sat, looked at Roger with small shiny brown eyes, and said thinly: ‘Now tell us just what happened, will you.’

  ‘Al,’ protested Mike Hill, ‘the guy’s dead on his feet.’

  ‘I can use my eyes,’ said Al. ‘You keep out of this.’ His hand strayed towards the table by Gissing’s chair, near the paper-knife. ‘Tell us what happened, going right back to—’

  Roger snapped: ‘Don’t touch that! Don’t touch that knife.’

  Al snatched his hands away, as if the knife were red-hot.

  ‘He handled it,’ Roger said, and weariness and pain were wiped out in a flash of exhilaration. ‘The kidnapper handled it, his prints are on it. Don’t touch it. Don’t let anyone else know you’ve got it.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Al, and smiled for the first time. ‘You don’t have to get excited. You want to get me an envelope,’ he said to one of the others. ‘Now, Mr West—’

  He didn’t finish. Someone by the front door called out that a man was approaching, Sergeant Al left Roger, three men went into the night – a night beginning with a false dawn to bring another day. There were voices in the distance. They drew nearer, and men came on to the verandah. Then another man was brought in, dishevelled, face scratched, clothes torn, exhausted – but recognisable through all that.

  ‘Pullinger!’ Roger exclaimed.

  Pullinger looked as if he would have fallen but for the support of strong arms. He grinned weakly.

  ‘Hi, Roger,’ he said. ‘You’re a lucky guy. Let me sit down, and give me a drink. A big drink.’ He grinned as the men led him to a chair, then slumped into it.

  A bath, a shave and bacon and eggs, turned Roger from a wreck into a man again. He would be stiff for several days, but stiffness didn’t matter. Pullinger had called him lucky, and he didn’t argue. Pullinger couldn’t complain, either.

  He told his story to Sergeant Al and Roger, and refused to have anyone else present; a card he showed to Al won him all the necessary respect. After leaving Roger at the New York hotel, Pullinger had felt tired, without reason, and suspected dope, called a colleague and been picked up before he lost consciousness. His colleague had seen Roger half-carried out of the Milton Hotel, like a drunk. With an unconscious Pullinger beside him, the other FBI man followed the car through the night, but without a chance to stop to ask for help. On the Cross Country Parkway, he had been side-swiped by another car, which had gone on, allowing the first car to get well away. But Pullinger’s man had kept going, and had caught up with and seen their quarry.

  ‘It was a raid by ourselves, or lose you for good,’ said Pullinger. Pullinger had come round in the early hours. They had stayed near the place where they had lost the car, and spotted it again the next evening, with Roger still in it. Roger had been unconscious for over twenty-four hours. The two men had then followed the car to Webster’s old house and fallen foul of the trip-wire.

  ‘They caught Buddy,’ Pullinger went on bleakly. ‘I got away. I fell down a gully and into a creek, it seemed hours before I climbed out. I was just in time to see them streaking out of the house as if they had dynamite behind them. So I waited – but I didn’t come too close. Then you arrived, but how was I to know that you were on my side?’

  ‘That’s okay, Mr Pullinger,’ Sergeant Al said. ‘Now you can take it easy. I called State Headquarters, and they called the New York Police Department, and if we have the luck, they won’t get far away with that boy.’

  Pullinger said: ‘I could tear them apart with my own hands.’ He looked down at his hands, but he didn’t look at Roger.

  They were in a hotel in Wycoma, with the remains of breakfast on a table between them, cigarette-stubs messy in a saucer, a vacuum cleaner humming not far away. Outside, the morning sun shone on the lake and the trees which lined its banks. Pullinger stood up.

  ‘Now I’m going to get some sleep,’ he declared. ‘You too, Roger.’

  ‘I’ve had all the sleep I want.’

  ‘I told you you were a lucky guy! Right, then. The Sergeant will take you around. You and I will drive back to New York later in the day, unless we get other orders.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘You’re still the only man here who can put a finger on Gissing.’

  ‘I won’t forget him in a hurry,’ Roger said.

  ‘Sergeant,’ said Pullinger, ‘take good care of Mr West, he’s precious.’ He yawned again and went out of the room.

  The door closed with a snap. Sergeant Al said he must be getting along, and looked into Roger’s eyes, giving the impression that he was asking a question.

  ‘Maybe you’ll come with me, Mr West, because I need to put in a full report.’

  ‘Why not,’ agreed Roger.

  The office wasn’t far away. The wide main street of Wycoma was hard-topped, but the sidewalks were dusty. Few people were about. Big gleaming cars stood by parking meters or in garages. Two drug stores and a supermarket were half empty and Roger’s gaze was drawn to the crowded shelves. Sergeant Al talked, economically. The season was nearly over, the weather would break any time, and then there wouldn’t be much doing until spring. He led the way, nodding without speaking to several clerks and to one of the troopers who had been with him during the night. Reaching his office he ushered Roger inside, then closed the door. He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out the envelope containing the paper-knife.

  ‘I did what you said, Mr West. But I can’t give you this, I must hand it over to my boss. I ain’t said a word to anyone about it, the other guys will keep quiet too.’

  ‘The fewer people who know we have that man’s prints the better,’ said Roger.

  He didn’t know who he would see yet, and wasn’t prepared to voice any doubts about Pullinger’s story. He hadn’t a lead, except through Pullinger, and he wanted one.

  He could telephone Marino.

  He would telephone Marino.

  Al listened.

  ‘Well,’ Al said, and smiled again, ‘I guess this may be the first call ever put through to England from Wycoma, Mr West, but that don’t make any difference. But you could wait until you get to New York or Washington. Or else—’

  He didn’t finish.

  That was because Roger heard a voice in the outer office, and was out of his chair and moving across the room quicker than he had thought he would be able to move for days. There was only one voice like that in the world. He reached the door in two strides, and pulled it open.

  Lissa was saying to a trooper: ‘Will I find Mr Roger West here? I was told—’

  ‘Right here,’ Roger said.

  Lissa swung round, her eyes glowing. There was no sense in it, but it was like coming to the end of a journey.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Shawn Household

  They didn’t move or speak, their hands did not touch. They stood two yards from each other, Roger in the doorway with Sergeant Al behind him, Lissa oblivious of the trooper to whom she had just spoken and of the others now watching her. A girl stopped clattering on the typewriter, and silence fell. It could only have been for a few seconds, but it seemed age-long.

  Sergeant Al, his little eyes bright, made a sound which might have meant anything, and broke the spell. As Roger relaxed, pictures of Janet and the boys flashed into his mind. But he felt no sense of guilt or even disquiet; it was as if emotion had been drawn out of him, leaving a strange emptiness that was both buoyant and satisfying.

  ‘Hi, Roger,’ Lissa said, and they gripped hands. ‘You had me worried.’

  ‘I was worried myself,’ Roger said, and turned, still holding her hand. ‘This is Sergeant Al.’

  ‘Just Al?’ Lissa’s radiance brought a reluctant curve to the Sergeant’s lips.


  ‘Sergeant Al Ginney, ma’am.’

  ‘I’m Lissa Meredith,’ said Lissa.

  All three went into the smaller office, and the Sergeant motioned to chairs and sat down himself, but Lissa continued to stand.

  ‘I can’t wait to hear everything. Roger, is it true that you’ve seen Ricky?’ He nodded.

  ‘How—how was he?’ She seemed almost afraid to ask.

  ‘Frightened,’ Roger told her, ‘but not hurt.’

  ‘You’ll just have to see the Shawns. They’re—they’re worse even than you would expect. David thought that Ricky would be sent back once he came over here. Belle raves at him like a crazy woman. I don’t want to get any nearer hell than that household.’ She paused. ‘Did you see him again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s happening up there?’ Lissa asked. “Washington called me and said Ed Pullinger had arrived, too. I don’t know the whole story yet.’ She glanced at Al Ginney. ‘Have you had instructions from Washington, Al?’

  ‘No, ma’am. I would get them through Albany, anyway,’ the Sergeant told her. ‘But I guess I don’t need instructions to do what Mr Pullinger says, and he says to let Mr West do anything he pleases.’

  ‘Where is Mr Pullinger?’

  ‘In bed. I guess he had a pretty hard time.’

  ‘Do you know what happened to him in New York – and to you?’ Lissa asked Roger.

  ‘He told me about it’

  ‘Then we needn’t disturb him,’ Lissa decided. ‘We’ll drive to the Shawns’ place at once. There isn’t a thing more you can do here. Are you ready?’

  ‘There’s one little thing,’ Roger said. ‘That paper-knife, Sergeant’

  When he told her of the significance of the knife, she opened her handbag and took out a folded card; Roger saw that this had her photograph on it.