Terror's Cradle

by Duncan Kyle

  I knew Alsa. She might have been scared, but she wouldn't have panicked. She'd think, tightly and clearly, before she acted. She wouldn't reach instantly for the phone the way I would. Alsa used to tease me sometimes. You, she'd say, are a telephone reporter; too idle to use your feet. It wasn't entirely untrue.

  I didn't realize it then, but I'd almost got on to something with that train of thought. The train, however, was derailed when I reached the hotel. I was crossing the lobby to the lift when a voice said, 'Is that Mr Sellers?'

  I looked round and he was walking towards me, grinning, apparently, as surprised as I was. Damn it, what was his name? Then I remembered. I said, 'This is a surprise, Mr Elliot. What are you doing here?'

  `Just gonna ask you the same thing.' He laughed. 'Buy you a drink?'

  As we walked towards the bar, I said, 'The odds against this are rather large.'

  `Yeah. Good to see you. I'll say they're large, Mr Sellers. I thought you were staying in London.'

  Ì thought you were going to Lapland.

  `Still am. Question is when. My cameraman's been recalled, so I'm stuck.'

  `But you were flying to Stockholm.'

  `Yeah. Bell's Whisky, right?' I nodded and he, ordered.

  `There's another cameraman been photographing the Norwegian Skerries or some such. He's due back in Gothenburg. Doesn't know I'm waiting, poor bastard. What brings you?'

  I said, 'It's a bit difficult. You know!' One reporter-toanother talk, I'm on a story and I'm not telling you, so don't inquire.

  `Hell. I don't work for the wire services!'

  `There are people in the newspaper game,' I said, 'who don't let their left hands know what their right hands are doing.'

  Òkay, okay. If it's that good. Skol !'

  `Skol.'

  I sipped the whisky, 'making myself smile at him but remembering Schmid counting on his fingers. Who'd be likely to be interested in things brought out of Russia? The Americans for one, and more-than most. I wondered whether Elliot really did work for National Geographic and probed gently as we talked, but he was technically sound and full of Charlie this and Fred that and how pleasant it always was to return from foreign fields to the manicured headquarters in the Maryland countryside. Whether he worked there or not, his cover was too good even to dent, so I stopped trying. He'd just said, 'How 'bout dinner tonight, John?' – by that time we'd reached the John and Harvey stage – when my name was paged over the hotel Tannoy. At the desk I was told there was a phone call for me and I went into the foyer kiosk to take it.

  `Hello?'

  `Mr Sellers. Mr John Sellers?' It was a man's voice, possibly a trace of accent.

  `Yes.'

  `You will be interested in a house at Storgatan forty-one, Gothenburg.'

  Yes, there was a trace of accent. Swedish, I thought, at any rate Scandinavian. 'Why will I be interested? And who's speaking?'

  `Storgatan forty-one,' he said, and hung up.

  I replaced the receiver and went to fetch my raincoat from the bar. Elliot had gone and his glass was empty. I put on the coat, went out to look for a cab and there was Elliot on the steps. He smiled. 'Stuffy in there. Thought I'd get a breath of air.'

  `Fine,' I said meaninglessly, staring angrily across at the empty taxi rank. I crossed the pavement and stood at the edge, looking up and down the road for a cruising cab.

  `Drive you somewhere?' Elliot called. He was holding up his car keys invitingly. I hesitated. I didn't want him with me, but impatience was the dominant emotion at the time. 'All right. Thanks.'

  He walked towards a blue Saab 99 parked just off the road and opened the door. 'Don't worry,' he said as I joined him. Ì'm not horning in on your big exclusive. Just bored; that'

  s all. Where'd you wanna go?'

  `Storgatan forty-one, wherever that is.'

  He laughed. 'It's okay. There's a street guide in the pocket here. You look for it while I get-this thing moving.'

  Storgatan was a dismal street off the main Gothenburg Moludan road, about three miles away, and we cruised slowly along it until I saw number forty-one. Most of the houses were empty and it was probably a demolition area. The house was old, or at least middleaged, one of a terrace, three stories high. I told Elliot to stop the car and walked back to the house.

  There were eight or nine stone steps leading from the iron gate up to the front door and I went up them slowly, already aware that. Storgatan forty-one was empty. The windows were dirty and the only curtains were a couple of tatty rags hanging limply at one upstairs window. The paint of the door and the wooden front was more than peeling, it was almost peeled. The house was fast becoming derelict. Perhaps there wasn't much point in knocking at the door, but

  I knocked anyway, as much from habit as anything else. The knock echoed hollowly : the unmistakable sound of an empty house.

  I gave it a minute, then tried the door. Peeling and dirty it might be, but it was also strong and locked. There was an iron rail to the steps and I held on to it as I tried to peer into the ground floor window. All I could see through the grubby pane was old floorboards with a few bits of yellowish newspaper lying about.

  `No luck?' Elliot called. He'd climbed out of the car and was leaning easily against it. Ì'll try the back,' I said. As I came down the steps I stopped to look in through the cellar window, but that room, too, was deserted; empty and filthy like the rest of the house. As an afterthought, I went back to the door and had a look at the locks, wondering whether they'd been used recently, but it was impossible to tell.

  `Do I come along?' Elliot asked.

  Ìf you like.' I was marching urgently down the street, wondering who'd sent me here and why. The house must hold something, and it must be something to do with Alsa's disappearance. Suddenly I felt bile rush into my throat at the thought of what the secret of Storgatan 41 might be.

  The street at the rear was cobbled and the yards — nobody could call them gardens —

  were full of broken-down outhouses and sour earth. From the rear, number forty-one looked even more dismally decayed than from the front.

  `Realtor's dream,' Elliot said sardonically as I pushed open the bent, wooden gate. A few weeds were fighting their battle for survival in the hard-packed ground. I walked first to the cellar window, rubbed away some of the muck with my hand, and looked in. There was a chipped stone sink and a few rags hanging on nails on the walls. Nothing else. The back door, too, was locked and what I could see of the ground floor back room was simply a repeat of the front : dusty floorboards and old newspapers.

  `How bad you want to get in?' Elliot asked.

  `Badly enough.'

  `Well, I reckon that window there's just waiting for a jack-knife blade.' He was pointing to the cellar window. Ànd I just happen to have the jack-knife. '

  `Give it to me, then.'

  The window was the sliding sash type, with a turner-bar securing the two halves. As Elliot had kindly pointed out, it was easy with the jack-knife. I poked the blade between the top of one frame and the bottom of the other and pushed. The bar turned. Now, would the window slide? The top half wouldn't move, but the bottom half did, with a bit of effort, creaking upward awkwardly. When I'd raised it, I held it carefully in case it crashed down again.

  `Coming?'

  Why not! What's a little burglarizing matter?'

  Strangely enough I hadn't thought of the illegality; now he'd mentioned it, I didn't care anyway. `Coming?' I asked again.

  `Sure. I'll take the weight while you go through.' A second later we were in the house. We looked at the cellars first but they were empty. So were the ground floor rooms. As I started up the worn, wooden stairs, Elliot asked, 'Just what do you plan to find?' There was no answer I could bear to make.

  The first things I found were in what had been a bedroom. A few paper food bags lay crumpled in a corner with some plastic cups that still contained the dregs of coffee with the remains of a film of cream white on the surface. I'm not inexperienced in the matter
of dirty cups and at a guess the liquid was no more than a day old. There was nothing else on the first floor.

  That left the attic rooms and I looked up the gloomy stair in trepidation. It was possible Alsa was up there. And if she was . . . well, if she was, there hadn't been a sound. The stair rail must have been well polished in its time by dedicated Swedish housewives, because it was still shiny brown in patches where the dust had been disturbed as somebody held on to it to go up or down.

  I took a deep breath and hurried up. There were two doors on a little landing at the top. As it happened I opened the wrong one first. That room was empty. The other room was not. In there, two men lay on the floor, both wearing suits, both in early middle-age. Behind me Elliot said suddenly, 'Jesus!'

  I stepped forward and went to look at the man nearest me. His face, mottled with tiny skin haemorrhages, was already darkening, and round his neck was a deep, heavy red mark made by the ligature that had been used to strangle him. The other man had died in exactly the same way.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I recognized neither of the two dead faces. As I crouched beside them, my heart thumping, I wondered whether they'd be unknown to Schmid. Somehow, I thought they wouldn't.

  A moment earlier, Elliot had said in astonishment, 'Hey, those guys are dead!' But the rising inflection in his voice seemed tinny and forced.

  I turned my head and looked up at him. The sound he made wasn't consistent with the expression he wore. Elliot may have been surprised to find the bodies but he wasn't shocked at the sight of them.

  `Who in hell are they?'

  Ì don't know.' I lifted the jacket of one of them and felt in the inside pocket, looking for papers. The pocket was empty. All the pockets were empty.

  Elliot said, 'Hell, you're on this story. You got to have some idea!'

  `You too !' I said. He looked at me in surprise, and somehow that wasn't convincing, either.

  'Me? What do you mean, me? I'm just the guy who drove you here!'

  I said, 'Christ, I'm not stupid. The first time we meet, we just meet. The second time it's 'coincidence. But this — !' `You're crazy!' he said. 'I'm just waiting. I told you—' `Don't wait any longer,' I said. 'Get the police.' Òkay,' he said angrily. 'But Jesus!'

  Àsk for Inspector Schmid.'

  Ìnspector . . .? Listen, what is this?'

  `Get Schmid first, then you can tell me.'

  He nodded and clattered away downstairs. Twenty minutes later there were feet on the wooden steps. Two pairs, at least. Would there be three? Would Elliot have left? No, he'd stayed.

  Schmid glanced at the two bodies, then looked at me grimly. 'Strange, is it not, Mr Sellers?'

  `Do you know who they are?'

  `Do you?'

  I said, 'I have an idea. Just instinct. They could be those two Frenchmen, Maisels and Cohen.'

  `You have not seen them before?'

  `You know I haven't. Are they?'

  He nodded. 'I should like to know how you found them. Here in Storgatan, I mean.'

  À telephone call,' I said. 'Somebody telephoned me at the Scanda and told me to come here. I don't know who it was.'

  Schmid was watching me carefully, but he didn't comment. Instead he turned his head and spoke in Swedish to Gustaffson who promptly went away down the stairs. Then Schmid asked, 'Did you touch them?'

  Ì looked in their pockets.'

  `That was wrong. And the rest of the house?'

  Ì opened the doors. There's nothing. A few paper cups. They'd been here a while.'

  Ànd this man? Mr . .

  Èlliot. Harvey Elliot.'

  Why are you here, Mr Elliot? You are American?' Ì am. I drove John Sellers here, that's all.'

  `So.' Schmid listened to the feet on the stairs, waiting.

  Gustaffson came in, panting a little and spoke softly to him. `The doors were locked. You broke in?'

  Ì did,' I said. 'That didn't seem important.'

  `Perhaps.' He looked again at the bodies on the floor. 'I can hold you for that. Perhaps for more than that.'

  I said angrily, 'For Christ's sake! You know why I'm here?'

  Ì know,' he said, 'why you say you're here. I know why Mr Elliot says he's here.'

  Ì told you. I had the transportation,' Elliot said. 'That's all.'

  `Not all, Mr Elliot. You also entered the house. A criminal act.'

  I was watching Schmid's face carefully, but there was nothing in it to indicate whether he was just going through formalities, or getting ready to be unpleasant. Schmid had made it clear enough a couple of hours earlier that police business should be left to him. He might feel it useful to keep me out of the way for a while. I said, 'Can I talk to you privately?' I didn't want Elliot there. There had to be more to Elliot than there seemed.

  `Later,' Schmid said. Then changed his mind. 'All right, Mr Sellers. Downstairs, please.'

  He stood at the ground floor window looking out at the street. 'Well?'

  Àlsa . . . Miss Hay must have been here!'

  `Why do you say so?'

  I said, 'My God, they were in the next room the night she disappeared! The same night there was a fire in the hotel!'

  Ì know that.' Schmid was extraordinarily impassive. He missed very little, that was clear, but he hardly seemed to react at all. And always the same maddening pat-back of everything I said to him.

  `Then let's speculate a little,' I said savagely. Ìf she was here, with those two upstairs, and she isn't here now, it, means somebody else has taken her!'

  `No. It could mean two other things. Even three. One, she killed them herself—'

  `For Christ's sake!'

  Òh, it is not probable, certainly. Though she could have had assistance, or been party to the killing. No, it is a possibility from a police point of view.'

  `But – '

  `Secondly, she may have been released.'

  Ànd third?'

  `Thirdly,' Schmid said, 'she may not have been here at all.' Then those greyish eyes crinkled a little at the corners. `However, I think you are perhaps right. We will examine

  –' Outside, tyres squealed and two cars disgorged men with equipment. Schmid moved to open the door and added, 'We will examine the evidence and the facts. I promise you that.'

  Men carrying equipment poured past him towards the stairs and he gave rapid instructions, then turned to me again. 'This man Elliot?'

  Ì don't know,' I said. I told him briefly about our first , Meeting on the plane, our second in the hotel and how we'd come to the house together.

  Schmid listened quietly and when I'd finished, said, 'I am a policeman, Mr Sellers. If I met a man who said he was also a policeman, I would know quickly if it was the truth. Is Mr Elliot a journalist?'

  `What else do you think he might be?'

  Ì do not know. Answer my question, please.'

  `He seems to know quite a lot about it. '

  `But you are not certain?'

  `Not certain, no.'

  Ànd the question arose in your mind before I asked it?' I said, 'He says he's with the National Geographic Magazine. A cable to them would confirm it.'

  Ìt might, Mr Sellers. It might.' Then he walked towards the stairs, adding almost as an afterthought, 'Stay here, please. A statement will be required. I am sorry but it may take some time.'

  It took a hell of a white and all the time Schmid kept me carefully apart from Elliot. We were driven to the police

  headquarters in separate cars and interviewed in separate rooms. It was after nine that night before Schmid produced the typed statement and told me I could go when it was signed. He also told me there was nothing in number forty-one Storgatan that suggested Alsa had been there.

  `You're sure she wasn't?'

  `No,' he said. 'I simply have no proof Miss Hay was in the house.'

  `Would there be proof, if she had been there?' Ì cannot say.'

  I walked back to the Scanda alone and deeply depressed. The streets were brightly lit and there wer
e quite a lot of people about. I looked at them sourly. A few nights before, Alsa had been here, somewhere on these same streets. She'd been out three hours. Why? Not, apparently, for dinner. So what the hell had she been doing?

  The door man at the Scanda opened the swing door with a flourish and I muttered my thanks, then stopped as a thought struck me.

  `Were you,' I asked him, 'on duty the night Miss Hay disappeared?'

  He looked at me carefully. Ì was. But you should, see the manag —'

  Ì know,' I said. I gave him twenty kroner and he palmed

  the money with a practised hand. 'Did you see her go out?' Ì open the door when she go and when she come back.'

  He seemed almost proud of it; a big moment in his life. `Did she speak? To you or anybody else?'

  `She ask about cinemas'

  I blinked at him. Alsa didn't like cinemas much. `You're sure. Cinemas, not theatres?'

  `Cinemas. I tell her.'

  `Did you tell the police this?'

  `No.'

  `Why not?'

  `They not ask me. Just when lie go out. When she come back'

  Schmid and his bloody thoroughness! 'What did you tell her?'

  The near one. This street. Three hundred metres.'

  He was glancing round a bit guiltily. 'The manager has told you not to talk?'

  He hesitated, then, 'Yes, sir.'

  `Don't worry.' I gave him another twenty for encouragement. 'Did she go that way?

  Towards the cinema?' `Yes, sir.'

  `What was she wearing?'

  `Sir?'

  `Her clothes?'

  Àh. A coat.'

  `Colour?'