John Creasey - Send Superintendent West

•     •     •

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 recognizable 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.

19

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.

We’ll take that knife, Al,” she said.

Ginney studied the card, then studied her.

“Sure can, ma’am. I’ve taken the prints off it, they’re on the record, and I’ve sent copies to New York by special messenger and to Washington by air. Mr West thinks they might be that important. There’s a funny thing, Mr West. We’ve men up at Webster’s old house, but haven’t found another set of those same prints. We don’t know for sure, but we think the man who left them on the knife arrived only an hour or so before Mr West got away.

“He wore gloves,” Roger said. “He always wore gloves or had his fingers taped. He forgot himself for ten minutes, and that was enough.” Having the prints, knowing there were no others, heightened his sense of buoyancy. “I’m ready when you are, Lissa.”

What’s holding us back?”

He shook hands with Al Ginney, who stepped with them to the street. A Cadillac convertible, wine-red cellulose and chromium glistening, stood in the shade of a spreading beech tree. By now more people were in the main street and in the shops. Most of the weather-board houses were freshly painted, looking bright and new. Only a duster of shops had two storeys or more, while all the houses were the English bungalow type, but looked much larger.

Lissa took the wheel, and Ginney waved them off. Soon they passed the open doors of the little hotel where Roger had feasted on ham and eggs. Looking between the houses on the left, Roger caught glimpses of the lake; of trees on the lake shore, a brighter green than those farther from the water; of small craft moving slowly, an outboard motor-boat flashed past them with a stuttering roar. The far bank of the lake, where Roger had stood and looked at the lights of Wycoma during the night, now seemed much nearer. Beyond, hills rose in wooded slopes, and beyond the hills, peaks which looked like mountains.

Now he and Lissa were passing the end of a dirt road, and as they did so, a big car which had been standing there slid after them.

“See that?” Roger asked quietly.

We’re well guarded,” Lissa said. “Someone thinks you’re worth taking care of.”

Roger didn’t speak.

“How do you feel?” asked Lissa.

“Stiff in places, otherwise I’m all right.”

“If you were half dead, you’d call yourself all right.”

She didn’t look at him. The hood was down, wind sang past the windscreen and whipped round it, playing with her hair where it escaped the peaked pull-on cap she was wearing. He hadn’t given much thought to her clothes before. The cap, wine red like the Cadillac, a beige shirt with large breast pockets, and a wine red skirt; simple, perfect for her. As she drove, she looked as if she held the secret of life.

“How far is it?” Roger asked.

“Say a hundred and sixty miles; we’ll arrive late this afternoon.”

“How did you get here so soon?”

“I flew,” she said simply. “The car was sent from Albany.”

They look after you well.”

They know how important this is, Roger,” Lissa said. “Anyway they don’t want anything else to happen to an English policeman over here! The fingerprints will help, but you’re still the man who matters. The man who matters,” she repeated softly, and glanced at him. Then she laughed. “It’s too bad. You don’t have two hours in New York before you get carried off, and even when you see the Adirondacks, you’re being hunted or hustled. We’re on the eastern slopes,” she went on. “In a month or six weeks, you ought to come back to see the autumn leaves. I don’t think there is anything like their colours in the world.” She laughed again, as if she were excited, and talked swiftly, as if anxious to stop herself from thinking too much. “You’ll have heard that too often already, Ed Pullinger couldn’t help himself talking about New York. Do we talk too much about America? I often wish I knew just what the English think about us. Is it too bad?”

Roger said easily: “I’d rather work with Marino than with most men I know.”

“Thank you.” She took her right hand off the wheel and rested it for a moment on Roger’s knee. “If there’s one thing I want, it’s that you should think well of us.”