Terror's Cradle

by Duncan Kyle

  When the knock came on the door, I opened it and two men came into my room.

  `Mr Sellers?' the first one asked. He was surprisingly small, no more than five feet six or so. I nodded. The size of policemen is in reverse ratio to the prosperity of a country. Ì am Inspector Schmid. This is Sergeant Gustaffson. I understand you are here about the case of Miss Alison Hay.'

  `Sit down,' I said. Schmid sat. His sergeant apparently preferred to stand.

  `How much do you know, Mr Sellers?'

  `Not much. What the hotel manager told me.'

  `We ourselves know very little more.'

  `No news, then?'.

  `None.'

  I said, 'People don't just vanish. Do you know how she left the hotel?'

  `We are concerned,' Schmid said, 'because this lady had just returned from the Soviet Union.'

  Ì know she had. Why do you think it's relevant?'

  He smiled. 'I prefer to believe everything is relevant until it is eliminated. May I see your passport?'

  I handed it over and he flipped through the pages, then looked up at me. 'I see you have been to the Soviet Union recently, too.'

  Not too recently. Some time ago'

  `Yes.' He gave the passport back to me. 'I know, of course, the reason for her presence in Gothenburg. But not in detail.'

  I said, 'The company she works for is producing a magazine about Russia for sale in Britain. She went to Russia to collect material and came here to put it together. The magazine's being printed here.'

  `Why is that?'

  Ùsual reasons. Suitable printer at a suitable price.' `Yes.' He looked at me for a moment.

  'Why was a woman sent?'

  `Because . . I hesitated. I didn't fully understand Scown's reasons myself. 'I suppose because she was the right person to do it. She knew magazine production.'

  `But it would be unusual to send a woman?'

  À bit,' I said. 'We're male chauvinist pigs in Fleet Street.' `You're what?'

  Ìt's a man's world,' I said. The thing is, it wasn't just

  "a woman" who was sent, any more than they'd send just any man. She went because she'

  s damn good.'

  Ànd very attractive? I have seen her photograph.' `Then you know the answer.'

  Àlso, she has charm?'

  `More than most,' I said. More than any was what I meant, but I was keeping things deliberately fiat. Police forces the world over send worried lovers and husbands home for a cup of tea. It's a conditioned reflex.

  He saw through me though. 'Your relationship with Alison Hay?'

  Ì've known her a long time. Her father was a friend. So is she. And we worked together for a while.'

  He nodded, glanced down at his fingers, and muttered something I didn't quite catch.

  `Sorry?'

  He looked up, met my eyes deliberately and said quickly: `Why did you go to Russia, Mr Sellers?'

  If I hadn't been so worried about Alsa, I'd have laughed. The old interrogator's punctuation trick ! I said, 'On the same thing.'

  `The same magazine?'

  `That's right.'

  `Why? Why was it necessary to—'

  I interrupted. 'Because I made a mess of things and they

  threw me out. She apparently did the job properly.' Schmid nodded and rose. 'Thank you. If we have any

  news, you will be informed.'

  Not so fast,' I said. 'There are things I want to know.' `Well?'

  Ì'd like to see her room.'

  `No.'

  `Why not?'

  `We want nothing disturbed. It may be important, Mr Sellers.'

  `There may also,' I said sarcastically, 'be something there that will help.. Something you wouldn't see and I would. That could be important, tool'

  `Possibly. However, that is the decision. As I said, you will be informed a any development.'

  I wanted to hit him, instead I made myself speak quietly. Ìt's forty-eight hours now, Inspector Schmid. Are you really telling me you've discovered nothing? Don't you even know where she went, who she saw, why she was afraid?'

  Schmid said, 'One possibility, Mr Sellers, is that she was carrying something out of the Soviet Union. Had that occurred to you?' He was pulling the same trick again, looking me suddenly hard in the eye.

  I said, 'Sure she was. She was carrying articles and pictures. Enough for six issues of the magazine. She was a journalist, not a spy.'

  Ìs the distinction always so clear?'

  `She wasn't a spy,' I said. 'You can be quite certain of that. If she was carrying anything, it was planted on her.'

  Schmid nodded. 'We are aware of that possibility, too.'

  Then he slid out, without looking back, and the big sergeant followed. I watched the door close. Appropriate. I faced a closed door, all right. I picked up the phone and gave the operator Scown's phone number, the line that wasn't intercepted by secretaries, and listened to the assorted clicks as the call was routed.

  `What is it?' Other people give their names or numbers, or at least say, yes? Scown assumes the worst.

  `The police aren't very co-operative,' I said.

  `Who's that?'

  `Sellers.'

  Àre they ever?'

  `They've closed the door,' I said. Tut I want to check one thing. She phoned the office that night. To whom did she speak and what did she say?'

  `Your number?'

  I told him and he put the phone down.

  Miss ,Harrison, the editor's secretary, rang me back ten minutes or so later. She said, '

  Miss Hay spoke to me the

  other night, Mr Sellers.'

  `What did she say?'

  `She wanted to know where you were. Whether I had a number for you. I told her where you were staying in Washington.'

  `How did she sound?'

  There was a pause. 'I don't quite see what you mean.'

  So Miss Harrison didn't know! Scown was keeping the whole thing to himself ! I thought angrily about those bloody official circles. 'Did she seem worried?'

  `Well, I don't quite know. She just said she wanted the number. I don't remember anything unusual.'

  I thanked her and hung up, wondering whether she'd gossip in the ladies'. But she wouldn't. Editors' secretaries are hired because they won't gossip, in the ladies' or anywhere else. I stood at the window, brooding, for a while; wondering if Alsa was somewhere among all those lights. A couple of times another question flickered in my mind. Was she even still alive? I tried not to think about that. Instead I tried to think what I could do next. In the face of police non-cooperation I could do precious little, and my mind was now so weary and leaden I was incapable of thinking clearly. I hated the idea of going to bed and leaving it till morning, but knew I had to.

  I woke at four. No, that's not quite accurate. I was awakened at four. There was no intermediate, dopey stage. One minute I was fast asleep; the next I was awake, alert and tense, and wondering why. Someone in the room? I lay still,. listening hard, but I could hear nothing except my own heartbeat. I reached for the light switch, but carefully. If someone were in the room, bed was not a helpful place to be. With my thumb on the switch, I hesitated. Somewhere in my mind there was the memory of a small sound. Had I heard it, or had it been part of a dream? Was it the sound that had awakened me?

  I switched on the light and looked round the room, blinking. Nobody there. Nobody in the bathroom either. Odd. I had a feeling it was a sound that had awakened me, but the silence was complete; few things are quieter than a hotel at four A.M. I began to prowl round, looking at things. Maybe it had been one coat hanger banging against another, something like that. I looked, but they all seemed still enough and there was no draught in the wardrobe to set them swinging. Then my bare foot touched something moist on the carpet. Water? I glanced at the ceiling, but there was no sign of moisture up there, so I bent and rubbed the carpet with my fingers and found the moist spot. All right; where had the water come from? Was it, for instance, raining? I pulled back the curt
ain and it was raining cats and dogs. But it hadn't been raining when I went to bed, had it? No. I crawled round on my hands and knees wondering if there were other drops of water, and there were, several of them, half a dozen single drops more or less in a line from the door across the room, and two or three close together by my bed.

  It was no longer a question of whether somebody had been in the room, but of who? And why? My scalp was still prickling; my heart thudding. There's nothing quite so alarming as the knowledge that somebody broke through and found you defenceless, even if he did nothing.

  I thought about that for a moment. The intruder, whoever he was, hadn't come here to do nothing. He'd come to do something. What? My bag lay on the stand. I lifted the lid and looked at the contents, but they hadn't been particularly tidy to begin with; there was no way of knowing if he'd been through them, and it didn't really matter, because the bag held only my clothes. My passport and wallet, then? Hotel thieves like to have passports and wallets, not just for the money, but because there may be credit cards and almost certainly things like driving licences and letters, and documentation of a personality can be useful to criminals.

  But both were still in my pockets, so it wasn't a hotel thief. Those drops of water beside the bed puzzled me: had the intruder just stood there, looking at me— the thought made me shiver involuntarily — or was there something else?

  The Bible lay in the drawer with the telephone directory; the phone on the bedside table. The phone. I picked it up, not just the receiver, the whole thing. Then I turned it over and looked carefully at the screws that held on the base plate. Steel screws, and in two places there were small, shiny scratch marks on the screw heads. Fresh scratch marks.

  I've been through the experience before, in one or two places. I'd been bugged.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Pm no-electronics engineer, so there was no way of knowing whether the bug only worked when the phone was used, or whether it was the nastier type that listened constantly. If it were the second variety, the listener would know I'd been handling the phone, and might be wondering if I'd inspected it. The best thing now would be to pretend to make a call, any call, and behave as naturally as possible. I picked it up and waited a while, deliberately mumbling and muttering to myself when there was no answer. The hall porter was presumably dozing in his cubicle somewhere; either that 'or he'd been paid to stay out of the way while somebody came up to my room. I held on for a couple of minutes, then swore softly, replaced the receiver and went back to lie on the bed and brood.

  I was wiser about only one thing. The fact that somebody had me bugged was clear proof Alsa hadn't voluntarily gone off somewhere. But then I'd never believed she had. Apart from that, two hours' thought got me precisely nowhere. I wasn't even sure what to do next.

  Around six I took a shower, shaved and dressed and went downstairs in search of nourishment. The hotel dining room wouldn't be open for another hour, so I went out, found a workman's café and had some breakfast. As I finished the second cup of coffee, I decided I'd start at the obvious place and went to look for a taxi. Strom Brothers AB was about three miles from the city centre and still not open when I arrived. I hung about in the drizzle for a while, and then the gates opened and cars began to roll up. The usual thing: works people arriving half an hour before the office staff. I persuaded the watchman to open up the waiting room. At five-to-eight people began flooding in and exactly at eight a girl asked what I wanted. I explained and was taken to see the works manager, a man called Morelius.

  Morelius was grave and sorry and said he 'understood my concern for Miss Hay. He, too, was concerned and he would naturally help in any way he could. I asked if he'd seen Alsa.

  He told me she had spent just one afternoon at the print works. She'd arrived from Moscow, booked herself into the Scanda Hotel, then rung Strom Brothers and they'd sent a car to pick her up. The way I saw it, while she was waiting for the car, she must have rung Scown in London to say she'd arrived safely.

  `Did she bring material here that afternoon, Mr Morelius?' `Some, I think.' He frowned, remembering. 'She had a

  briefcase and one of those flat portfolios artists use.' Ìs any of it still here?'

  'Yes.'

  `May I see it?'

  The corners of his mouth turned down. 'The police . unfortunately they insist that—'

  I said, 'We're deeply concerned about Miss Hay, of course. But we're worried too about the production of the magazine, the schedule.'

  Morelius was looking at me carefully. He said, We meet our schedules, Mr Sellers. Always we meet them.'

  `Doesn't look as though you will this time.'

  No. But the fault is not ours. And there is a clause in me contract covering events such–'

  'We're not thinking, are we,' I said pointedly, 'of just

  one little contract?' •

  He blinked a couple of times, feeling the nutcracker squeeze, then said defensively, 'This is not fair. We — '

  I interrupted him again. 'This contract is for six issues of forty thousand copies. Woman's Week is two million copies a week for the foreseeable future. That's number one. Number two is that Mr Scown is fond of Alison Hay.'

  Morelius was blinking even harder. 'You mean, personally . . .?'

  `Not like that,' I said. 'But it's as if she were his daughter.' He hesitated. 'The police would be angry.'

  I said, 'The police don't place two-million-copy print orders. Mr Scown will also be angry.'

  Morelius thought for a moment. 'You will undertake to be most careful?'

  `Certainly.'

  Then, reluctantly he conceded. 'I show you. One moment please.' He picked up the phone and spoke in Swedish. When he'd finished, he said, 'I will be told if the police come here. If they do, you will have time to come away from the room. You will do that?'

  Òf course.'

  The room was plain and tidy. All magazine printers have places like it, where editorial production people can work. There were a couple of desks, a layout table, a frosted glass with a light beneath it for transparency viewing, a couple of telephones, a photo-copying machine.

  `Thanks.'

  He didn't want to leave me. I said 'You must have other problems.'

  `Please. If the police come, you will —'

  I nodded. 'Like a rat down a rope. So let's not waste time.' He left me to it. There were a few rough layouts on the desk, some black and white prints in a wire basket, and that was all. Alsa must have taken the briefcase and the artwork portfolio back to the Scanda Hotel. I sat at the desk and began to go through the material carefully. The pictures were the usual Russian

  propaganda stuff: new cities mushrooming out of the Siberian vastness, kids at a ballet school, more kids doing exercises in a beautifully equipped gymnasium, watchmakers at work. A few had pencil marks on the back in Alsa's writing; she'd sized one or two up provisionally. It all seemed very innocent.

  The layouts were roughs for various pages in the magazine, with type areas and pictures blocked in and not much else. A few were front-cover designs, with scribbled-in picture outlines and a few rough type styles for the title. Russian Life. They didn't look particularly exciting, though one was fairly striking: a rough map of Russia with flags sticking out of it. Alsa clearly intended to put a picture inside each flag. Nice idea if the artists didn't foul it up and the printers got the register right and didn't blur the edges. I stayed for an hour or so, and went through the stuff carefully three times, but there was nothing I could see that might give me a lead. All the same, I made quite a few photocopies in case there was something important I'd missed. When I'd finished I left everything as I'd found it, picked up the key Morelius had left on the table, locked the door behind me and went back to Morelius' office.

  `No police?'

  'No.' He managed a smile. 'It was useful?'

  Ì don't think so,' I said. 'Sorry about the pressure. I felt I had to look.'

  Morelius smiled. 'Now it is over, I do not worry. I would
like to help. If there is anything

  . .

  I nodded. 'I'll ask. Thanks.'

  `You tell Mr Scown we wish to help, please.' Ì'll tell him.'

  `Where will you go now?'

  I had no idea. 'Back to the hotel, I suppose.'

  `We will send you by car,' Morelius said. He got up and opened the door. 'You will have spoken to Mr Marasov?' I turned to look at him. 'Who?'

  He looked surprised. 'You did not know? Mr Marasov 'came here with Miss Hay. He is a press attaché, I think anyway, at the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm.'

  `What,' ',asked, `was he doing?'

  `Miss Hay said he was helping her with some translation.' Was he, now?' I thought about that. 'Did they leave together?'

  `Yes. In our car.'

  Where did they go?'

  `To the Scanda Hotel. The police know this. They asked the driver.'

  I asked the driver myself on the way back into Gothenburg and he confirmed it. He'd taken Alsa and the Russian to the Scanda and when he dropped them, they both went inside.

  `What were they talking about?'

  He shrugged. 'I not listen. My English .

  `You heard nothing?'

  `No. Once he say he is sorry. I hear that.'

  I wondered what he'd been sorry about, but there was no mileage in it. He could have been sorry about dropping cigarette ash.

  I thanked the driver, watched the Volvo move away, and wandered into the Scanda's lobby. At least I now knew what to do next. I was heading for the lift and my bugged telephone when the porter called my name and hurried over. À visitor asks to see you, sir.'

  Òh? Who is he?'

  Òver there, sir.' He nodded towards the apology for a lounge, where a man sat quietly, smoking a cigarette. He looked up as I approached and began to rise. Ì'm Sellers,' I said.

  `Pavel Marasov. I am Press Attaché at the Soviet Embassy in Stockholm.' He offered his hand and I shook it: a cold hand, limp grip. He was a bit like his handshake, too. Rimless glasses of Glenn Miller vintage. Medium height, nondescript, in a slightly scruffy suit, but with a kind of intensity around the eyes. 'I came here to see if there was news and was told you are here.'