Dead or Alive (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  “That wasn’t much.”

  “I realised then why you never talked about it,” said Mae, and gave an unexpected laugh. “I told him what a brave man you were, testing out these new aeroplanes! After a while, I think he almost believed me!”

  Ross grinned.

  “I’ve told all this to one of your colleagues,” Mae said. “Loftus sent him along with me — he wanted to stay, and he’s in the dining-room now.”

  “We don’t want more trouble for you,” said Ross. “Until this is over, you’ll be having a paying guest.”

  Mae shrugged.

  He began to see her properly for the first time since he had arrived, was no longer dazzled by bright-blue eyes. She had changed into a black gown of simple cut, with long sleeves and a high neck. She had the figure of a Juno. She had made up lightly, and her hair looked as well as it had done at the Dive. She showed no signs at all of the ordeal, unless it were in dark patches under her eyes, and they were very faint. She showed the effect mostly in her quiet manner, and somehow it wasn’t Mae, not the Mae he knew. But she was beautiful, and — desirable.

  Her eyes were more grey than green.

  “Did you know he searched the flat?” asked Ross.

  “Oh, yes, he told me he was going to,” said Mae. “And I told him it was a waste of time. Peter, he didn’t have it all his own way, I wasn’t completely cowed.”

  Ross chuckled.

  “Show me the man who could cow you!”

  “You’re very sweet,” said Mae, and it wasn’t the adjective he had expected. “He thought you and I worked together.”

  “What?”

  “I told him he was dreaming, but he still thought so. If we didn’t, he said, why was I with you last night, why did I follow you? He just wouldn’t take no for an answer, that was the only time he tried to frighten me. He made a lot of threats about torture, but didn’t carry them out. And while he was making them, I was thinking that if you’d ever told me anything, I’d probably pass it on. I don’t think I could stand physical pain. You heard me squeal tonight. I’ve always — dreaded being hurt. When I was quite young I had an accident in the Welsh mountains, I was there alone for hours and in agony. Since then ——”

  “I’m not surprised,” interrupted Ross. “It isn’t a womanly requisite to stand up to that kind of pain, and the boy friend used nice methods.”

  “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come,” said Mae. “Peter, I don’t think I shall ever be much good to you.”

  “Nonsense!”

  His voice was louder than he intended it to be.

  “Oh, I know you’ll say it, but I don’t think I shall. In the long run, you’ll wish that you had a wife who was more like you. Who could stand the strain of — your work. You can’t give that up, I can see that, but you’ll need help which I may not be able to give you. I’m — frightened for you. I think subconsciously I’ve been more worried about you being hurt than about anything else. It was a wonderful time, but ——”

  He stood up slowly, went across to her, and rested his hands gently on her shoulders, slid them down, and took her hands. They gripped. He pulled her up. They stood very close together, and he could see the flawless beauty of her, felt something of the suffocating wildness of his passion for her.

  He kissed her, roughly.

  She gasped: “Peter, oh, Peter!”

  He kissed her again, and when he stood back, she was breathless, but her eyes were like stars. He felt the wildness in him, but there was something missing — or rather, a something added, a heaviness in his breast, almost a physical thing. He hadn’t meant that, had simply put on an act; and Mae had been fooled.

  He slid his hand to his waistcoat pocket, and drew out the ring. He tossed it up.

  “See that?”

  “Peter ——”

  “It may be your last chance.”

  She said in an unsteady voice: “Don’t unless you’re sure, darling.”

  If he hesitated, she would know the truth, and he sensed that it would hurt her more, perhaps, than she would realise herself. He knew that she would take whatever came with her chin up, but — he couldn’t bear to hurt her. He took her hand and slid the ring back on to her finger, kissed it lightly, then kissed her lips.

  “Let’s make it soon,” he said.

  “Whenever you like, my darling.”

  The words were the same, but the vitality wasn’t in them. She’d changed; she’d probably changed for the better, but she wasn’t the woman whom he had loved.

  He left the flat a little after midnight, and drove at once to Whitehall, parked the car in the usual place, then went to Craigie’s office. It was second nature to look about him, taking all the usual precautions, but they mocked him. He had taken them when Mae had followed him, had been fooled by an amateur. He was smiling when he stepped into the big room, and saw Craigie sitting back in one of the arm-chairs. No one else was in the office.

  “’Lo, Gordon.”

  “Come and sit down, Peter. A drink?”

  “I think I’ll give it a miss, thanks.” Ross took out cigarettes. “How’s business? Anyone else after the air-defence secrets?”

  “Not yet!”

  “How’s Conway?”

  “He’s much better — he’ll be able to leaving the nursing-home in the morning,” said Craigie. “He remembers everything, but his story doesn’t help us much. It’s a simple business, I think, except — we don’t know who’s behind it. We must find out.”

  “It shouldn’t take long, now — the boy friend can’t stay in hiding indefinitely. What about the taxi he got away in?”

  “We’ve found it, but he was dropped near Piccadilly — and he walked all right, couldn’t have been too badly hurt. The police are searching Soho, all doctors are being approached to find out if they’ve attended a man with a gunshot wound, and the hospitals are on the look-out. This is one job where we need police co-operation.”

  Loftus hadn’t been wrong about the police.

  “But our man may not be the leader,” said Craigie, who talked casually and quietly, and was fiddling with his meerschaum. “I doubt if he is. Would the big shot of a job like this do so much himself? Who’s behind it, Peter? And what else do they want?”

  Ross didn’t answer.

  Craigie said: “I’ve seen the beginning of a lot of jobs, and when they start like this, they usually finish up in a big way if we can’t stop it early. Divide the case into two. First, the Conway side and the air-defence, which is big enough in itself to scare the pundits in Downing Street — you should have heard some of the comments I’ve had in the past two days! Second — what may follow. They’ve failed so far with Conway, but they still have his daughter. As soon as he’s out of the nursing-home, they may try to have another go at him. He’ll be more closely watched, but they’ll take every chance they can. We can’t be sure what Conway will do if he thinks it’s to save his daughter from injury or being killed. There’s a wide gap in those defences, and we haven’t filled it yet.”

  Ross said: “I see.”

  “And there are the other back-room boys. We’re having all of them watched,” Craigie went on, “and I’m half-expecting to hear that one or two of them have been attacked. I don’t think Conway was the beginning or the end of this business. I do think that the setback they’ve had is making the other side slow down, but the pace might quicken. Don’t make any mistake — the missing Alice Conway is the weak link in the chain. Half an hour’s talk with Conway could give these people practically everything they want. He probably wouldn’t have talked for his own security, but — and it’s worth repeating — he might for his daughter’s. We’ll follow him wherever he goes, but we don’t know whom we have to guard against. He could sit on a bus and give the whole game away to anyone with expert knowledge, who only needs to know the key to those air-defence plans to have the whole story. That girl’s the pivot on which everything turns, Peter.”

  “Oh, she’s the pi
vot all right,” said Ross. He wanted to change the subject. “Did you find anything at Millicent Street?”

  “We haven’t found a thing. Tiger led to Bray, Bray led to the unknown. Tiger’s part seems pretty self-contained, and he’s been killed to make sure he can’t talk. I’ve three men watching Bray, I think there might be an attempt to kill him. If there is, we’ll have another lead. We want to be after anything that leads to Alice Conway as fast as we can go. And just as your job was to find Conway and get him out alive, now it’s to find his daughter. I’ll look after him. And the same conditions apply.”

  Ross said: “Meaning?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Ross said slowly: “I suppose I do.”

  He had to de-humanise himself when he worked for the Department. He had to realise that if Alice Conway were alive and could be hurt, she represented a grave danger. If her father knew she was safe, or if he knew she was dead, there need be no fear.

  Craigie was telling him the obvious; get Alice Conway, dead or alive.

  He stood up.

  “Have you let Dolly Leeming go back to Bray?”

  “Not yet,” said Craigie. “I shan’t be able to hold her for long, if Bray starts pressing — and he might, he’s hopelessly infatuated with her — he could make a sensation out of this, for wrongful arrest. I don’t think we could stand it for long, but we can for another twenty-four hours. What’s in your mind?”

  “Bray might know a little more,” said Ross. “I’ll go and see.”

  20

  QUIET NIGHT

  ROSS drove to within a hundred yards of Bray’s block of flats, and then deliberately walked away from it; he wanted time to think, and he thought best when he was walking. He kept to the side streets, and the night was very quiet, London had been asleep for an hour. Only an occasional car passed him, and as one o’clock struck, he could hear Big Ben and other chimes, few of them striking simultaneously. He knew that he was not being followed, and yet stopped at most corners to look round.

  The unknown was on the run, but Craigie was obviously right, that man wasn’t the leader.

  Who was?

  How much did he know but hadn’t recognised yet?

  There were puzzling features, and he had been too preoccupied to try to sort them out. No doubt Craigie and Loftus were doing that, but they couldn’t know everything he did — the little, obscure things which seemed to have no significance, but which were important when seen in their proper perspective. One factor running constantly through the affair was different from anything he had met before. Practically without exception, each discovery was complete in itself; or seemed to be.

  He’d got to Tiger, and that was as far as he could get. It had been the same with Bray. Conway had flared up as the supremely important objective, but that was no longer true of him. Even Mae had loomed very large at one time — but everything that had happened to her had been explained neatly and logically.

  Ah!

  Everything was too neat and logical, that was what he was trying to tell himself.

  Tiger was just a bad man who had twisted and turned — and got himself killed. Bray had started off with some piece of crookedness, and laid himself open to blackmail, and the explanation had seemed perfectly satisfactory, so much that it almost stifled further investigation; it shouldn’t have done, but it had — because it fitted in with the pattern like everything that had occurred.

  Now, it was simply a question of finding a girl with startlingly blue eyes — alive or dead.

  Craigie had put his finger on the facts with ruthless logic. It wasn’t the kind of job Ross had envisaged when he had joined the Department, but he could see its importance. Work for the Department was like working in a kind of home-made hell. He had to squeeze the humanity out of himself, and that was also logical — no man who allowed his ordinary human emotions free rein could serve the Department as it had to be served.

  Harry Marshall and Brown had served; and died.

  But he wasn’t to work because of the hatred he felt towards their killers. Their deaths had been incidental to the main issue. Brown would go in Craigie’s little black book and be marked Number 118. The coldness of it was the worst factor.

  Now, coldly and deliberately, he had to find the way to Alice Conway, and if he couldn’t rescue her alive, had to make sure that she died.

  He neared the big block of flats. A car passed and pulled up outside it, and a man and a woman in evening-dress got out and were saluted by the night-porter; their chauffeur drove the car away.

  He mustn’t forget the risk — that because so much was logical and fully explained, some things might not be. He had a feeling — Loftus would call it a hunch — that he had missed something which was so obvious he would be aghast when he realised what he’d done.

  Was it with Bray?

  Bray’s story had been convincing, and Bray had led him to the mystery man, which had seemed thoroughly satisfactory. Was it?

  The porter wasn’t alone; one of Craigie’s men was sitting at a table, glancing through glossy magazines. He looked up, incuriously, and showed no sign that he recognised Ross.

  “Good evening, sir,” greeted the porter.

  “I’m going to see Mr. Bray.”

  “Second floor, sir, I’ll take you up.”

  “Thanks.”

  Another of Craigie’s men was at the second floor landing, sitting in an easy-chair which commanded a view of the front door of Bray’s flat. He winked. Department Z men were everywhere — surely Conway could be fully protected, now.

  Alice was the weak link.

  Ross went along the passage, but returned when the lift had taken the porter down.

  “Has he been out and about?”

  “Not lately,” said the agent. “His man came in an hour ago — we’d tailed him, and Craigie knows where he’d been. No other visitors.” The agent was a young, willowy man, who had not been long in the Department’s service. “Any hope?”

  “Of what?”

  “Fun and games,” said the other, promptly.

  Ross forced a grin.

  “There’s always hope,” he said.

  He knew that most of the others found flippancy and facetiousness an aid to the work — it stopped them from becoming too tense. Probably it would be a good thing if he could feel flippant, too, but he certainly didn’t as he rang the bell at Bray’s flat.

  Bray’s man, tall, elderly, and obsequious, opened the door.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  It was now ten past one in the morning; late for a man to be on duty.

  “Tell Mr. Bray I’ve called, will you? Ross.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Watson went off in stately fashion across the hall, and Ross followed swift and silent, so that he could look into the big room. Watson stepped just inside. Bray was sitting back in a deep arm-chair, and smoking a cigar.

  “Mr. Ross has called, sir.”

  “Ross? Oh, Ross,” repeated Bray, and sighed. “Show him in, Watson, show him in at once. Any time Mr. Ross calls, I’ll be glad to see him.”

  Watson turned, as Ross backed away. The man did not seem surprised to see his visitor so close. The absurd formality was continued.

  “Mr. Bray will see you, sir.”

  “Thanks,” said Ross.

  He went in and waited until the door closed. Bray was standing up now, cigar in his hand. He looked tired and rather flabby. He wore the same suit that he had earlier in the evening, and there was almost pathetic eagerness in his expression as he spoke. Ross watched him closely, trying to judge whether what he said was the truth or a lie, trying to find out whether this man had deeper qualities than anyone yet suspected.

  “I kept my part of the bargain, Ross,” said Bray.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “And” — Bray’s eyes almost glowed — “did you find the man?”

  “He escaped.”

  Bray said: “Oh, no! No, you shouldn’t have let him do
that.” He sat down abruptly, his colour faded. “Ross, that was a terrible mistake, terrible, because he may know I led him into a trap. Oh, Ross!”

  “Has he been in touch with you?”

  Bray said: “Of course he hasn’t. But he may try, now.”

  “Why so scared?”

  “I think you should know,” said Bray. “That man has always alarmed me, I have always felt that there was great capacity for evil in him. Do you mean to tell me — you didn’t — find Mae?”

  Ross kept silent.

  “But there’s nothing more I can do,” protested Bray. “I did my share, it was your own folly to let the man go. You can’t expect me to do anything more.”

  “What else can you do?”

  “Nothing! That’s the whole point, I’ve done my level best, and gave you a chance at great risk to myself — and you’ve thrown that chance away. Now — Dolly ——”

  He broke off.

  “Poor Dolly,” said Ross.

  Bray sat back and looked at him, put the cigar to his mouth, took it away again, and then stood up. Every movement was slow and considered, and, as once before, he assumed a kind of dignity; it was easy to smile at it, but the dignity was there. He walked towards Ross, and peered up at him; he looked very tired.

  “Where is Miss Leeming?”

  “We’ll talk business when ——”

  “You will release Miss Leeming forthwith, or I shall complain first to Scotland Yard and then, if necessary, to the Home Secretary’s Private Parliamentary Secretary,” said Bray, uttering the words with great care. “I shall, if necessary, carry the matter to the highest possible authority. I know that you have some authority yourself, I am not deceived, but by these means you are exceeding it. I hope you understand me, Ross. If you release Miss Leeming now, I shall say nothing about it, but failing that ——”

  He glanced at the telephone.

  “I’m nervous,” said Ross.

  “You have cause to be. Let me remind you that the Press of this country is always watchful in the interests of the freedom of the citizen. In a matter of this kind several of the big newspapers would be only too ready to take up an abuse of authority, and I know several influential men in Fleet Street. I shall fight, Ross — no matter how strong your hand nor how great your own authority, and I do not think that would be a good thing for you.”