The Man Who Stayed Alive

by John Creasey

  Whittaker wondered what was passing through her mind.

  ‘Did he nearly kill you?’ she asked at last.

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t as bad as that,’ said Whittaker. He spoke very slowly, articulating carefully, because he knew that the assumed voice was hard for a child to understand unless it was uttered slowly and distinctly. ‘But he was a pretty bad man.’

  ‘I could see that,’ said Mimi. ‘Just one look, and I could see.’

  In five minutes she was almost completely herself. Still a little pale, but full of curiosity, lively for a five-year-old, with Bob Gann shining in her eyes and in her fair, wavy hair. Soon, Mrs. Gann was able to say:

  ‘Why don’t you go and play with your dolls, Mimi?’

  ‘I don’t want to play with my dolls.’

  ‘Just you go along and play,’ Mrs. Gann said, and laughed. That wasn’t really forced. Whittaker could tell that she was giving thanks for the fact that the crisis was over, that Mimi was so nearly back to normal.

  Mimi went out to the front lawn.

  Mrs. Gann turned to face Whittaker for the first time, and he could not find words, could only look at her. Her eyes were questioning at first, but that changed; fright came into them. Face to face, he saw her simply as a beauty, and as a woman worthy of Bob Gann; of any man. She was nervous from reaction to the shock, and began to talk, too quickly. Her accent wasn’t marked to Whittaker’s ears, but was attractive.

  ‘It’s been such a morning,’ she said. ‘I hardly know how to

  say I’m sorry. I just felt too scared. I didn’t know anything

  until that shot, and——’ She broke off.

  Whittaker said, ‘It’s all right, remember it’s over.’ He was thinking: when she had come running towards him, and they had passed each other, she hadn’t thought of anyone but her child.

  ‘The neighbours were out,’ she went on, still speaking too quickly: she gave the impression that she was trying to fend off some unseen thing. ‘There’s nobody nearer than Mrs. Pyne, and I guess she wouldn’t hear anything — she’s too far away. I’m so sorry that I——’

  ‘Mrs. Gann,’ Whittaker said in a flat voice, ‘I can’t stay there for long, but I wanted to tell you about this myself. It’s not going to be good to hear.’ He found words difficult, hard to find and as hard to utter. ‘Will you sit down, please ?’

  He heard the child talking to a doll on the lawn, but was oblivious of that, oblivious of everything but Bob Gann’s wife and the news that he had to give her.

  He was conscious of another, strange feeling.

  He was glad he had come; glad that he had not left this task to anyone else.

  Slowly she sat down.

  Fearfully, she waited.

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE TELLING

  When Whittaker began to speak again, Mrs. Gann looked as if she wanted to stop him, as if she would gladly shut her ears to words, as if she were badly frightened, and wanted to fight off the causes of fear. All that showed itself, as Whittaker watched her with great intentness, and as he said:

  ‘I’ve brought bad news with me, Mrs. Gann, and I wish it could all be disposed of as easily as — as that man.’ He didn’t look away from her. ‘Did he tell you that I travelled with Bob from England?’

  Her right hand rose to her breast.

  ‘No,’ she said in a whisper.

  ‘I had a lot in common with Bob, and he with me,’ Whittaker went on. ‘I used to be in the M.I.5 before I started to work on my own. Together we had a job to do on the ship coming from England. It didn’t look particularly dangerous, but it seemed to be important. We had to watch over a man. We didn’t like him much, but the voyage started without any sign of trouble, and it began to look as if were all a mistake.’

  Whittaker paused again.

  The woman’s hands were raised, now, just above the level of her chin, as if to hide the fact that her lips began to quiver. Of course, she now knew; but still she wanted to fight, still she wanted to turn the inescapable aside.

  ‘Last night,’ Whittaker said, ‘it boiled over. I was lucky. Bob wasn’t. There’s only one thing I can say that might help. It was quick, so quick that I doubt if he knew what was coming. I don’t think he even suspected that death was on the way.’

  There it was, the awful truth told.

  Outside, Mimi was talking to her dolls, as if to human beings; scolding, loving, laughing, gay. Outside, the trees shaded the house and the windows from the sun, there was quietness and a beauty of its own. Outside, the world went on, and the people who had been alive yesterday were alive today. Somewhere was the hard-voiced man in the Chrysler, the killer who had run. There was the Queen B. alongside now, and Morrison with his three corpses and his thousands of impatient, restless, angry passengers, all with some special reason for favoured treatment.

  In this house, he lived with tragedy.

  Mrs. Gann’s lips quivered and her hands were unsteady, and there was a shimmering pain in her eyes, as if the dawn itself were crying. Her face, touched by grief, had a starkness which impressed itself more deeply on his mind than any human face he had ever known. It would haunt him. Whenever he saw a woman, tall and deep-bosomed and with golden hair, he would think of what he was seeing now — the sheer, stark lines of beauty moulded by grief.

  Then, very slowly and in a low voice, she said, ‘Bob.’

  That was all for a long time. Then:

  ‘Bob,’ she repeated.

  Whittaker didn’t speak. The child still talked and played, and he felt as if the only thing that could help this woman was prayer; and he did not know what kind of prayer would help her. He wished that she would look away, he wished that he could wrench his gaze away from her; but he could not. They were there as if some compulsion made them look up on each other, so that he would never be in any doubt as to the measure of her hurt.

  ‘Bob, Bob, Bob,’ she said.

  Whittaker made himself say: ‘You can believe that, Mrs. Gann. He didn’t know what was coming, couldn’t have felt hurt.’

  ‘ ‘Bob,’ she repeated, like a sigh on an evening breeze.

  Whittaker had no desire to move or speak, and had no way of helping her. He was still glad that he had come, that he had seen her before the news, before her desperate grief.

  ‘Is there anyone I can send for?’ he made himself say.

  Slowly she shook her head.

  He stood near her, and suddenly she leaned her head in her hands and began to cry; the sound seemed touched with the awfulness of despair. He stood with one hand on her shoulder. Outside, the child still played, unsuspecting. Nothing else had changed. Whittaker felt something of his own tension go, because he knew that this was why he had come; to be with her now.

  Whittaker sat in the living-room, alone.

  Nearly an hour had passed, and he was able to think of other things, including the fact that a gunman had been here, waiting for him. If anyone had reasoned so quickly that he would come straight here, the police might, too; in any case, they would soon be here and tell Mrs. Gann.

  He kept watching the window and the road, but no one approached.

  He couldn’t keep his mind off Bob Gann’s wife.

  Without a word, she had eased herself out of her chair and gone out of the room, then come from the kitchen and turned up the wide, white-painted staircase, going slowly towards the room upstairs, holding onto the handrail as if afraid that without its help, she would fall. She hadn’t looked round, and for a while it had seemed almost as if she had forgotten that Whittaker existed, as if she were wiping out all recollection of his visit. He had heard sounds of movement above his head, and the sounds from the child; and he had sat there, listening intently, half fearful that Mrs. Gann would do some desperate, fateful thing, yet believing that the child here and the young Bob he didn’t know, would hold her back.

  He couldn’t stay.

  The police could not wait much longer, would have to tell Mrs. Gann what had happened, and she
would tell them that he had been here. Well, that wouldn’t help them much, he could lose himself in New York, and he had come only to break the news to her.

  The police would hear about the gunman; they would know he had come to kill Whittaker. That hard-voiced, vicious man with the coldness of death in his voice, had wanted to know what Pirran had told him, had been ready to kill to make sure he couldn’t pass any knowledge on.

  Whittaker looked up, suddenly.

  He heard Mrs. Gann walking above his head, quite steadily; and this time she came out of a room, for he could hear a door open. She walked across the landing and started down the stairs. She approached quietly, not quickly nor slowly. Every movement she made had its own peculiar grace. She had beautiful legs; beautiful; and as her foot came down, the lines of the ankle moved with easy rhythm; then the other foot touched a lower step. It was like watching someone dancing, not walking.

  She had washed her face, and put on powder, but no lipstick; that gave her a pallor which the silvery greyness of her eyes couldn’t.hide. Her arms were by her side, now, and she didn’t hold on to the handrail. She reached the foot of the wide stairs, and said:

  ‘I won’t keep you waiting long.’

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ he heard himself saying.

  There was all the hurry in the world.

  She went into the kitchen. He heard a sharp ting! and, a moment later, she spoke clearly:

  ‘Hallo, Louise, is Mrs. Gardner there? . . . Yes, I’ll wait for her, tell her it is Mrs. Gann.’

  Silence.

  Whittaker stood up, puzzled because Mimi had stopped talking. He went to the window. The Venetian blinds were opened, so that he could see the green lawn, the trees with their silvery barks, the prams, the dolls, the shawls spread out, all the paraphernalia of the child’s toys. Mimi herself was right at the end of the garden, poking at the ground with a stick, with that intentness which children show in the unusual. A red car came in sight.

  Police? Whittaker’s heart seemed to stop. No; the car swerved on the uneven road, and the driver waved to Mimi, who didn’t seem to notice Whittaker.

  ‘Elise, is that you?’ Mrs. Gann said. ‘Elise, I wonder if you would do me a big favour. . . . That’s very kind of you, if you would have Mimi for the day, and Bob when he comes home from school. . . . Well, yes, it’s bad news, Elise, but I can’t talk about it right now. I don’t want the children to know, yet. . . . Will you do that for me? . . . You’re very kind, Elise, you don’t know how much I appreciate it. I——’

  She broke off, and seemed to catch her breath. The woman Elise obviously talked for a long time.

  At last.

  ‘Yes, it’s Bob, but I just don’t want to talk about it now. I have to — I have to go into New York to see — to see him.’

  There was another pause, and then the softer ting of the telephone as she replaced it, a few moments of silence; and soon the sound was followed by the sight of her as she came towards Whittaker.

  ‘Mimi Ml be going to a neighbour,’ she said flatly, ‘and I hope it will be convenient for me to come with you to the ship.’ She had complete control of herself now, and there was not the slightest quiver in her voice. ‘It won’t take me long to get ready. I’ll tell Mimi.’ The only sign of her tension was the way she talked, almost without a pause, as if she dared not stop.

  ‘No,’ Whittaker said, ‘I can’t come with you, Mrs. Gann.’

  She stopped in front of him.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’re going to find this hard to believe,’ he said. ‘I am on the run. Bob wasn’t the only victim last night. There was a woman, too, and I had been in her cabin.’ He watched the changing expressions on Mrs. Gann’s face; she wasn’t at all sure what to make of this, but there was one way in which he thought he could win her confidence completely. ‘Bob was telling me of the time when he was after Nasaki. He told you about that.’

  She followed his meaning at once, and said: ‘He went on the run because it looked as if he had been guilty of taking bribes. He had to clear himself.’ The understanding that Whittaker wanted to see dawned in her eyes. ‘Is that how things are with you?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Why — why did you come here?’

  Whittaker said: ‘We were on the job together, Mrs. Gann, and I wanted to see it through — in all ways. I’m going to finish it off. I want to find who killed him. All I know now is that we were guarding Pirran, and Pirran is alive but Bob’s dead. It’s the kind of situation that won’t let me sleep. I’d like to find all the answers, and I don’t think I would have a chance if I were to give myself up.’

  She was quiet for a long time.

  ‘I’m beginning to think that anyone who could understand Bob could understand you,’ she said at last. ‘But I think you’re wrong to attempt this.’

  ‘What makes you think it?’

  ‘You knew Bob for — five days.’

  ‘Six,’ corrected Whittaker; ‘one and a half in England, four and a half on board the Queen B. It was long enough.’

  “They killed him, and they killed others. They tried to kill you, here.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Whittaker softly, ‘and they’ll probably try again. I haven’t really started to work this thing out, Mrs. Gann. I just know that I started the job and I’m going to finish it. That’s how simple it is. I think I know how, too.’

  She asked flatly, ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll keep that to myself,’ Whittaker said.

  Mrs. Gann’s lips twisted in what he knew was a smile, so wry, so painful, that it took a long time coming, but it came. »

  ‘I know what you mean,’ she said. ‘If I knew that, I would be in danger; that I would be vulnerable . . . well’ — she drew a deep breath — ‘I don’t know how vulnerable I am, but I’m going to spend all the time I have in finding out who killed Bob. From now on that’s what I’m going to live for.’ She stopped, but Whittaker thought that she could have added something which would make everything she said fall into place. She might have added, ‘I don’t think I shall feel alive again until they’re caught.’

  That was how she would react. . . .

  For the first time it came to Whittaker that his coming here had been the finger which pointed their way, their way together, until they had found the killer of Bob Gann. He didn’t know whether that was in her mind yet; it just came to him that it was inescapable. This was no brief meeting which would soon be forgotten. This was a beginning.

  ‘I’m still not going to tell you how I mean to start,’ Whittaker said. ‘I’m on the run. Anyone with me will be, too. There’s a job for a man, and this is mine; one for a woman, and Mimi and young Bob makes yours.’

  ‘They’ll stay with Bob’s family in New Jersey,’ Mrs. Gann announced. ‘I shall take them tomorrow. And by tomorrow I should know a little more — about what the police say, for one thing.’ That wry, painful smile came again. ‘Do the police really think that you killed that woman ?’

  ‘If they do, I can’t blame them. But I didn’t.’

  She asked quietly, ‘You did not kill Bob, did you ?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t kill Bob.’

  She said: ‘Go to that window in the corner, will you, and watch ? It’s the only road to this house from Scarsdale. You’ll get good warning if the police are coming.’

  He said, ‘Thanks, but I must go, I haven’t much time.’ He was adding to his danger every moment he stayed here.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ she promised, and went out.

  She went upstairs again. He stood near the window, able to see the road as it wound through wooded land, all gardens, and past houses which seemed a long way off.

  He wished Gann’s wife would hurry.

  If he left her . . .

  He couldn’t leave her, don’t be a fool.

  She came hurrying at last, wearing a little hat and white gloves, ready to go out. There was no need to waste words.

  ‘We’ll take my
car,’ she said. ‘We’ll be away from Scars-dale in five minutes.’

  She was commiting herself to helping Whittaker. She drove him out of Scarsdale and to New York, finally onto the Henry Hudson parkway. The neighbour had come for Mimi and Gann’s widow was going to Newark to arrange for Bob’s parents to look after the children for the next few weeks. It was all said and done with that calm deliberation which Whittaker half admired, yet which in some ways repelled him.

  She would not really live again until full vengeance was done.

  He wondered when he would see her again.

  He wondered if he would ever see her without the thought and shadow of vengeance in her eyes.

  CHAPTER IX

  THE LAMPREY HOTEL

  Whittaker put the Master-at-Arms’ uniform into the cardboard box in which he had brought his linen clothes away, tied it up, and checked it at Grand Central Station, he posted the key to the Queen B, where it would be delivered next day. He bought a beige skull-cap with a wide peak at a Five and Ten Cent Store, which sold goods of all prices up to a hundred dollars, and an overnight bag in which he could put all the oddments he had with him.

  That took him all the morning. He was as sure of himself and his anonymity as a man could be. He had used his great asset before. A droop of one shoulder, a curve at one lip, the dull eyes, and above all the voice which aroused no comment at all, would see him through.

  Well, it should——

  By mid-day it was so hot that everyone on the streets looked ready to drop. No one hurried. The traffic moved at a slower rate. The traffic cops got bad-tempered, whistled, shrilled, and men bellowed. The stench of petrol fumes seemed to fill every corner of every street. The throbbing heart of the city beat a little less fiercely than usual, and seemed to have a sluggish note of anger. The one relief came inside the shops, where the air-conditioning brought coolness, but there was also the dread of going out into the humid heat of the streets.

  By two o’clock, when Whittaker left a drug store where he had a sandwich and ice-cream, the heat seemed to strike at him. His coat was damp at the collar and his shirt stuck to his back.