Judgment on Deltchev

by Eric Ambler

  ‘Another drink?’

  ‘For God’s sake, yes.’ He leaned forward, his face slightly flushed, his lips still wet with brandy. ‘How does one deal with it, Foster?’

  ‘Brankovitch’s press conference?’ I signalled to the waiter.

  ‘All of it. The whole phoney business. Perhaps it’s all right for you. You’ve got plenty of time. A series of articles, weeks hence. But I’m supposed to be sending news. All I’ve got through so far are those damned official bulletins. I suppose Pashik sends those to your people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know what I’d like to do?’ His dull, hot eyes brooded on mine.

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘I’d like to put it across them. I’d like to split the whole damn business wide open.’ He frowned suddenly as if with irritation at himself. ‘Take no notice. I had drinks before the party.’ He smiled slyly and lowered his voice. ‘Can you keep a secret, Foster?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The funny thing is I can do it.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘What I said — break it open.’ He looked round cautiously and leaned farther forward. ‘I’ve found a way round this bloody censorship.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ My heart began to beat rather unpleasantly.

  ‘I can’t tell you the details because I swore not to, but there’s a little man in the Propaganda Ministry who doesn’t like the regime any more than we do and he’ll play. Of course, if he was found out he’d be lucky if they hanged him quickly, but he’s prepared to take the risk. There’s only one snag.’ He paused. I waited. ‘He can’t do it more than once and the deadline’s tomorrow.’

  ‘That should give you time.’

  ‘It’s a risk.’ He frowned at the table as the waiter put fresh drinks down. ‘A big risk. If I’m caught, I’m out. Of course, that wouldn’t matter to you. It’s not your living. But, by God, it’s a risk I’d like to take.’

  ‘The little man in the Propaganda Ministry must think it worth while.’

  He laughed shortly. ‘You’re right. It’s funny, isn’t it? One minute I’m breathing fire and murder, and the next I’m worrying about a little risk.’ He laughed again. His performance was deteriorating rapidly. I was not helping him and he would have to come to the point himself. I waited, fascinated.

  ‘Would you take the risk?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘I don’t know. The question would have to arise.’

  ‘All right, supposing’ — I thought I detected a note of genuine exasperation in his voice — ‘just supposing you had a chance to file a short message with mine. Would you take it?’

  ‘Is that an offer?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Why should I give you a beat?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why should you?’

  ‘You’d have to make it worth my while.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  He did not answer. He was pretending to debate with himself. ‘Look, Foster,’ he said then, ‘let’s be serious for a moment. If I’d thought you were going to fasten onto the thing like this, I tell you frankly I wouldn’t have mentioned it.’ He paused. ‘But since I have, I tell you what I’ll do. If you’ll undertake to confine your message to pure comment on the trial as a whole, I’ll get it through with mine.’

  ‘If you do send one, of course.’

  ‘Oh, I’m going to send it all right. Don’t you worry. And now you can buy me another drink.’ He sat back with a tremendous air of having sold his birthright. ‘I make only one stipulation. I’ll have to read your stuff before I pass it on. Honestly, I wouldn’t trust my own brother in a thing like this. Right?’

  ‘I understand.’ To give myself time to think I looked round for the waiter. I had had it all now: the confidence-promoting diatribe against the regime, the brandy-laden indiscretion, the indignant denial, the burst of generosity, the second thoughts, the grudging commitment. Petlarov would be amused. Pashik would purse his lips. I looked at my watch. I did not want to have to talk to Sibley any more. The waiter had disappeared. I put some money on the table.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said.

  It took me five minutes and another hastily swallowed drink to do so, but at last I stood up and put on my hat.

  ‘About you-know-what,’ he said; ‘you’d better give me the stuff tomorrow morning. Two hundred words maximum.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ I smiled and shook my head. ‘I don’t think I’ll bother.’

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘No. It’s different for you. For me it’s not worth the risk.’

  He looked at me coldly for a moment. Then very elaborately he shrugged. ‘As you will, mon brave,’ he said.

  ‘Good night.’

  Still seated at the table, he gave me a heavily ironic bow. ‘Don’t change your mind tomorrow, Foster mio,’ he answered, ‘it’ll be too late.’

  ‘I won’t change my mind.’ I nodded to him and walked out of the cafe. Outside I hesitated. Now that the disagreeable part of the encounter was over, I was curious. Sibley the agent provocateur and employee of Brankovitch interested me as Sibley the breezy newspaperman never could. I had an impulse to go back into the cafe, sit down, and try to lure him into explaining himself. I did look back. He was sitting looking down at his drink, his elbows on the table, the thin, fair down on his sunburnt scalp glistening faintly in the evening sun. As I looked, he put his hands up to his head and there was something so hopeless about the gesture that it was quite moving. Then one hand dropped to the stem of his glass and twirled it between a finger and thumb. The other came down too. The money I had put on the table was still there, and now a finger of this other hand crept out rather stealthily toward it and gently sorted it over to see how much was there. Then he looked round for the waiter. I turned away. For the moment there was not much more I wanted to know about Sibley.

  I went back to my hotel. I did not eat much dinner. I remembered that in one dim corner of the hotel foyer I had seen a framed map of the city on the wall. After dinner I went to it and got out Katerina Deltchev’s letter. The address on the envelope was short, ‘ Valmo, Patriarch Dimo 9.’

  With some difficulty I located the street on the map and set out. The girl had said that the street was near the station. It was, but it was also on the other side of the main line, and to get there I had to make a wide detour through a crowded street market to a bridge and walk back along the far side of a freight yard. By the time I had found the church that I had noted as a reference point on the map, it was almost too dark to read the lettering of the street names.

  It was not an inviting locality. On one side of the main road there were tall warehouses and a power station interspersed with ugly apartment blocks; on the other side were small shops and steep lanes of wooden houses, the roofs of which were patched here and there with sheets of rusty corrugated iron; the old slum. There was a tram terminus a short distance down the road and I considered riding straight back into the city without troubling further about the letter. Then I decided to give the search for the street five minutes. If, as I hoped, I had not found it by then, I would go back. I found it almost immediately.

  The street of the Patriarch Dimo was one of the steeper and shabbier lanes. There was a dimly lit wine shop at the corner, and behind it a decrepit wooden building that seemed to be used as a stable for oxen. I walked up the hill slowly. The girl had said hesitantly that her letter was to ‘a young man’. I had, I think, imagined Valmo to be a fellow art student of hers, a handsome lad with other girlfriends who would have no scruples about taking advantage of Katerina’s enforced absence. Now my ideas had to change.

  Number 9 was a house much like the rest, but with the ground-floor shutters crossed with planks and nailed up. There were no lights in any of the upper rooms and the greasy-walled entrance passage at the side was littered with pebbles and marked with chalk lines as if children had been playing a game in it. The house looked empty. I walked along the passage to the door and struck a match.

  At s
ome time recently the building had been a lodging house, for there was a board with names painted on it. The match went out and I struck another. None of the painted names was Valmo. Then, as the second match was going out, I saw it. The top name had been scratched over with the point of a knife and under it the word ‘Valmo’ was crudely written in pencil. I dropped the burnt-out match and stood in the darkness for a moment. I was becoming curious about this Valmo. By the light of another match I looked for a bell and, seeing none, tried the door. It was open.

  I went in.

  There was a small lobby with a flight of stairs in it. The place was quite still and seemed deserted. I looked round for a light. On the ceiling there was a hook and a smoke shield, but no lantern beneath it. I went up the stairs striking matches. There were two doors on the first landing, both open. I looked in. The rooms were empty. In one of them some floorboards were missing. I went on up. I did not stop on the next landing; obviously the house was abandoned. Only one thing delayed my turning back. The rooms I had seen had been deserted for many months. But Katerina had not been confined to her house that long. It was possible, therefore, that Valmo had only recently moved away and had left a notice of his new address.

  As I went up the last flight of stairs, I noticed a peculiar smell. It was ammoniac and very sickly. It became stronger as I reached the landing under the roof. I struck another match. There was only one door here, and it was shut. There was no notice on it. I knocked and waited. The match burned out. I struck another and turned the handle of the door and pushed. The door opened. Then I had a shock: the room inside was furnished.

  I raised the match above my head and moved forward into the doorway. As I did so, I became aware of a sound; there were flies buzzing in the room.

  In the small light of the match I saw an unmade bed, a deal table, and a chair with some newspapers piled on it. There was also a packing case.

  The match burned down and I dropped it. Then, by the pale arc of light it made as it fell, I saw on the floor a dark mass like a crumpled curtain.

  As I struck the next match I took a pace forward into the room. The light from the match flared up.

  The next instant my heart jolted violently. It was not a curtain on the floor. It was a man; and his face was black.

  I stepped back quickly and with some sort of shout, I think. The movement blew the match out or I should have run. I fumbled desperately with the box and managed to get another match alight. I forced myself to look again.

  His hair was close-cropped and white except where the blackness spread. The blackness was congealed blood, and it lay on and about him like spilled wax. His mouth was open and there was a gaping wound by his ear. There was no telling what he had looked like. He was lying on his right side, his knees drawn up to his chest and his elbows nearly touching them. He had a dark serge suit and leather sandals, but no socks. He had been small and thin. The flies buzzed round him. He had been dead for more than a few hours.

  I began to retch and went out on the landing.

  A minute passed and I was beginning to get my breath again when I thought I heard a sound from below.

  The blood was thudding in my head so loudly and my breathing was so quick and shallow that it was difficult to be certain. Then I managed to hold my breath for just over a second and heard the sound again. Very slowly and quietly somebody was coming up the stairs.

  I don’t know who I thought it was; the murderer, I suppose; at that moment I would have panicked if a fly had settled on my hand. In the darkness I stumbled back into the room, shut the door, lighted a match, and looked feverishly for the bolt. There was a bolt, but the socket of it was missing. I looked round desperately for something to jam the door with. I tried to use the chair, but the door handle was too low. The match I was holding went out. I fumbled with the box again, opened it upside down, and the matches spilled on the floor. I was shaking with fear now. I went down on my knees and started to pick the matches up. At that moment I heard the footsteps on the landing just outside the door. I remained motionless. Under the door I saw a light flicker. The person outside had a flashlight.

  Then the light went out and the door opened.

  There was silence for a moment. Suddenly the flashlight went on and swept quickly round the room. It stopped on the body. Then it moved again quickly and stopped on me.

  The end of a revolver barrel gleamed just in front of the flashlight. I did not move.

  A voice said, ‘What are you doing here, Mr Foster?’

  It was Pashik.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I got to my feet.

  ‘Why are you here, Mr Foster?’ he repeated.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Do you mind taking that light off my face?’

  He turned the light down to my feet. I could see him now and the revolver in his hand was still pointing at me. He had his dispatch case under his arm and the medallion on it winked faintly.

  ‘Well, Mr Foster?’

  ‘I might ask you the same question.’

  ‘I followed you, Mr Foster.’

  ‘With a gun?’

  ‘It was possible that we might not be alone.’

  ‘We’re not.’ I looked at the dead man on the floor, but he did not move the light from my feet.

  ‘I want to know why you are here, Mr Foster, and who told you of this place. And I want to know right now.’ There was a very sharp edge to his voice.

  ‘Katerina Deltchev asked me to deliver a letter for her. This was the address on it.’

  ‘Show me the letter.’

  ‘Pashik, do we have to stay in this room? Can’t we go outside? Anyway, shouldn’t we be calling the police? This man’s been murdered.’

  ‘No, Mr Foster, we should not be calling the police. Show me that letter.’

  I got it out. He came forward, took it from me, and turned the light on it.

  ‘She told me that it was to a young man,’ I said.

  Without replying he put the letter in his pocket and swept the light round the room.

  ‘Have you touched anything here, Mr Foster?’

  ‘This chair. Why?’

  ‘What did you touch it for?’

  ‘When I heard you coming up the stairs I tried to jam it under the door handle.’

  ‘Wipe the chair where you touched it and also both sides of the door with your handkerchief. Then pick up all the matches you dropped, including the burnt-out ones, please.’

  I obeyed him. Just then the wish to get out of the room was stronger than my disposition to argue. He held the light down while I picked up the matches.

  ‘Did anyone know you were coming here?’

  ‘Only Katerina Deltchev.’

  ‘You told nobody?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not Petlarov?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr Sibley?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Did anyone see you come in here?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so. There weren’t many people about.’

  ‘Your clothes are noticeably foreign. Did anyone turn to look at you?’

  ‘You should know if you were following me.’

  ‘I was not close enough to see. Was there anybody in the passage below when you arrived?’

  ‘No.’ I had collected all the matches. I straightened up. ‘I can’t stay in this room any longer,’ I said, and went out on the landing.

  ‘Wipe the door, Mr Foster.’

  I did so. He ran the light round the room again and came out. ‘Shut the door with your handkerchief in your hand, please. Yes, that will do. Now, Mr Foster, my car is at the end of the street by the wine shop. You have your matches. Go down as you came up, walk to my car, get in it, and wait for me.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘We must not be seen leaving together.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Get going, Mr Foster.’

  He still had the revolver in his hand and he handled the thing as if he were used to it. Oddl
y, there was nothing incongruous about the look of Pashik with a gun.

  He held the light for me as I went down the top flight of stairs. After that I struck matches again. It was a relief to get into the street. By the time I reached his car I had done a good deal of thinking.

  I smoked the greater part of a cigarette before he joined me. Without a word he climbed into the driver’s seat, took his gun and flashlight from the dispatch case and, putting them in the door pockets, stuffed a greasy rag over them. He started the car. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘we’ll go see a friend of mine.’

  ‘What friend?’

  ‘He will advise us what we must do. He is of a special kind of police.’

  ‘What special kind?’

  ‘You will see, Mr Foster. Perhaps the ordinary police should be told. I do not know.’

  He twitched the wheel suddenly, swerved across the road, and swung round uncertainly into a turning on the left.

  I threw away the cigarette I had been smoking and lit another.

  ‘Why did you follow me, Pashik?’

  ‘I had a hunch that you might be about to do something foolish, Mr Foster.’

  ‘But you did follow me?’

  ‘You will agree that I was justified.’

  I looked at him. ‘I came through a street market that was difficult to get through on foot. How did you follow me in a car?’

  ‘I won’t answer questions while I am driving, Mr Foster.’

  ‘Then let’s stop for a few minutes. I have lots of questions and they won’t keep.’

  He drove on in silence.

  ‘You’ve been to that house before, haven’t you?’ I said after a moment or two.