Dead or Alive (Department Z)

by John Creasey

  “No one’s tried to get at him at the nursing-home, about Alice?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks,” said Ross.

  He was on the way to the bathroom when the front-door bell rang. He hesitated.

  He went back into the bedroom, took a gun from the chair by the bed and slipped it into his dressing-gown pocket, then went along and opened the door, standing to one side, prepared for anything; if they’d tried to kill once, they would again.

  “Hallo, Peter,” said Mae.

  “Well, well,” said Ross, “you’ve caught me at my best.” He drew aside, and Mae came in. “Verbal salutations only, I’m not respectable enough to be kissed.”

  “You’re no worse than I was last night.”

  “Don’t you believe it. How are you? Evil memories gone?”

  “Not yet.” She peered into his eyes. “What happened to you, after you left me?”

  “A thoughtless tough hit me over the head, I wasn’t drinking too much,” said Ross. “And he didn’t last long, Williamson was acting as my bodyguard. See how important I am — I have people to make sure I don’t run into trouble.”

  “I don’t think anything could stop you from running into trouble,” said Mae.

  She went straight into the kitchen. Occasionally they had spent the evening here, and she had cooked an omelette and prepared a light supper.

  “Had breakfast?”

  Her voice was casual.

  “Not yet, and it’s nearly lunch-time.”

  “I’ll get you something,” said Mae. “You go and shave.”

  He went into the bathroom and ran the bath; he had seldom bathed and shaved so quickly. Twenty minutes later, fully dressed, he went into the kitchen and found Mae with one of the daily woman’s aprons round her beige-coloured suit, frying eggs. Her hair was a little untidy, and she was flushed from the heat of the gas-stove. She looked almost gay. As her left hand moved, the sun which shone through a corner of the kitchen window glinted on the great diamond of the engagement ring. Ross looked away from it.

  “Domestic bliss, preview thereof! Can I help?”

  “I’ve laid the table,” said Mae. “Do you mind company for breakfast?”

  “Shape of things to come!”

  They carried bacon and eggs, coffee and toast into the living-room, where she had laid a table in the window. He didn’t know why this evidence of Mae’s domesticity puzzled him, he’d seen it before. It was largely because he knew she hadn’t yet explained why she had come. She remained gay, it was a good half-hour until they were drinking the second cup of coffee and smoking cigarettes.

  “How do I look now I’m fed?”

  “You look all right,” said Mae; “a knock over the head won’t hurt you, provided nothing worse happens. What did happen last night?”

  “We caught some bad men. Your boy friend’s name was Elliott.”

  She sat motionless, elbow resting on the table and smoke curling up from her cigarette. When her face was in repose, as now, she had a classic beauty.

  “So you found him.”

  “Elliott won’t give us any more trouble.”

  “Is it — over?”

  Ross said: “No, not quite.”

  “What do you mean by quite?”

  “That we haven’t caught them all,” said Ross. “No reason why I shouldn’t tell you that much, but I can’t go too far, sweet. Against orders! I should say you can put a time limit to your fears.”

  “I wonder,” said Mae.

  Her bag was on a chair, nearby. She opened it and took out a folded newspaper, one of the Daily Mirror size, and all pictures and headlines. She unfolded it slowly, to the middle pages, and handed it to him. As he glanced down, he knew that she was watching him intently.

  Alice Conway’s photograph stared up at him; it took a quarter of the page. There was a news story with the headline: PROFESSOR’S DAUGHTER KIDNAPPED. He glanced up at her, and she didn’t show any expression. He read the story, which told the simple truth, gave few details, and said that it was understood that security police were working against the kidnappers; and thus it went farther than it should have done, but would do no great harm.

  “Is that the girl you want?” asked Mae.

  “What?”

  She smiled faintly.

  “I mean, the girl you were asking me about — you wanted to know whether I’d seen one.”

  “Oh, that. Yes, that’s the lady. Not bad to look at, is she?” asked Ross. “I think she’s having a rough time. Recognise her?”

  He forced the light note, was angry with himself because for a moment he had read the wrong meaning into her: “Is that the girl you want?” Mae couldn’t guess the absurdity of his feelings, that haunting longing to find and know the girl whom he had seen for less than half an hour.

  “Yes,” said Mae.

  His expression changed.

  “What’s this, Mae?”

  “When you look like that I know what it must feel to be a man like Elliott with you after him,” said Mae. “I’ve often seen her, Peter. She hasn’t been there lately, but at one time she was often with Bray at the Dive and other places — before he took up with Dolly Leeming. I thought you ought to know.”

  24

  REUNION

  IT could be coincidence, but he didn’t think it likely.

  He looked at Alice’s picture and then at Mae, whose gravity was so unlike her that it was almost as if he were looking at a stranger. She finished her cigarette and stubbed it out in a saucer.

  “Will it help?”

  “It might, at that,” said Ross. “I’ve never seen her at the Dive.”

  “No, she hasn’t been there much lately,” said Mae. “I haven’t seen her for months, and I never knew her well. We’d say ‘hallo’, that was all. She seemed very young and too sweet to haunt the Dive with a man like Bray, but you can never tell with these innocents.” Mae laughed, with a flash of her old self. “Have you seen Bray lately?”

  He had to decide how much he should tell her.

  “Yes.”

  “About this case?”

  Ross smiled.

  “I ought to call in Loftus, remember him?”

  “I only want to know because I think I might be able to help,” said Mae. “No, don’t throw your hands up in horror, listen and be serious, darling. I want to help. Unless I do, I don’t think I’ll ever live down what I started the other night. Say I want to rehabilitate myself, and ——”

  “Damn it, you weren’t as bad as that!”

  “Peter, I’m not a fool,” said Mae. “I can see that I was forcing you to think of me when you ought to have been concentrating on your job. For all I know, something went wrong because of it. Now I want to pull my weight. Just once — and I think there might be a way.”

  “Oh,” said Ross, and didn’t answer, just watched her with smiling eyes.

  She lit another cigarette. Every movement she made had grace and beauty, she did the smallest things in a way which couldn’t fail to attract attention; because she was what she was. Her beauty was near perfection, and yet it didn’t give him what he had always believed possession of it would give.

  “Let me see Bray,” said Mae.

  “But my sweet ——”

  “I know Bray,” said Mae, almost contemptuously. “He seems a harmless little man, and probably he is. He’d do anything for money, and gives away a lot as a sop to his conscience. I think he’s smart enough to fool you, darling. But I think I could get the truth out of him.”

  “I wonder.”

  “I know,” said Mae, emphatically.

  “What would you try to find out?”

  Mae tapped the picture.

  “You want to find Alice Conway, don’t you? He may have some idea about her — after all, he was all for her until he met Dolly. Usually, he makes friends because of what he wants to get, and he wanted something from Alice Conway. It should be possible to find out what he was after and whether he got it.”

/>   “I see,” said Ross.

  The two motives were warring with each other again. He did not think that Mae could do anything useful; but if she were allowed to try, it might help her.

  “Tell me I’m a fool,” said Mae.

  “But you’ve just said you’re not!” He leaned forward and patted her hand. “I’ll have a word with my boss.”

  Mae’s eyes glowed.

  Craigie was still looking tired when Ross arrived at the office, half an hour later. He was alone. As always, he dropped what he was doing, and seemed to be ready to give all his attention to Ross. Nothing hurried and nothing flurried him — and in a moment of detachment, Ross marvelled at the man’s qualities.

  He talked ...

  “Bill Loftus half-suggested that we might try to get her to help — as a solution to your emotional problem,” said Craigie. “I didn’t think it was the right one. Think she might do anything with Bray?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Do you think Bray’s still in the running?”

  Ross shrugged.

  “The evidence all suggests that he was framed, but he may be in deeper than he admits. Or he may have been in deeper once. That’s one thing we’ve never checked — the reason why he allowed himself to be blackmailed. At least, I haven’t.”

  “We’ve tried, but don’t yet know the secret.”

  “It could be this. Supposing he was in the business at the start, and worked on Alice Conway — and supposing he got cold feet. That would give the others a pretty strong hold on him.”

  “Could be,” agreed Craigie.

  Ross said slowly: “Did you get anything from those offices last night? Anything that matters, or might show the way to Alice?”

  “Not the second,” said Craigie, and took his meerschaum from the desk and began to fill it from a flat tin of tobacco. “They’ve another hide-out, and although we alerted the police in London and the Home Counties, we didn’t get any news about them. We don’t know how many there were, except that there are indications that at least four people were working in that underground office. Most of the papers had been taken away — secret papers, that is. We found one empty filing-drawer, and a safe was open. There was a legitimate business — importing and exporting — which was obviously a cover for the real activities. They vanished — and left us with exactly the same problem, but with fewer men to look for.”

  “What about Elliott and Higson?”

  “They haven’t said a word — and I doubt if we can make them.”

  “Don’t we have our methods?”

  “It’s nearly got past that stage, but I’ll have a shot,” said Craigie. “None of this has run according to normal form. It reminds me of a ship with watertight compartments — they keep getting through one section, and we come up against the next door. But there’ll be an end to it. I still think the most important thing is to find Alice Conway.”

  Ross said slowly: “Yes. Gordon, I’ve got a notion which might be crazier than anything else.”

  “What?”

  “Could the Conways be in this?”

  Craigie didn’t answer, didn’t say no, didn’t suggest that he ruled the suggestion out of court. After a while, he lit his pipe and remarked:

  “We don’t know who’s in it, and we don’t know all their motives.”

  “So you’ve thought of it. The immediate question is to find out what Bray wanted with Alice Conway, isn’t it?”

  Craigie nodded.

  “Going to let Mae try?”

  “I think so.”

  “That’ll please her.” Ross leaned back in his chair, so that it balanced precariously on the back legs. “It might be an idea to let him have his Dolly back first; he’d really be in a happy mood, then.”

  Sammy Bray did not go to his office that morning, but had several telephone conversations with his secretary, all of them apparently on normal business; each was taken down in shorthand and carefully reported to Craigie within a few seconds of the conversation finishing. When he left the telephone, Bray went into the large and lovely drawing-room, and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking moodily out of the window. Now and again, he sighed.

  A car drew up, and he craned his neck to try to see who came out, but it was too close to the door, and he couldn’t tell whether it was a man or a woman. He turned away and looked at the telephone, actually went across and picked up the receiver, then put it down again. He had not yet made any complaint to his friends in high places or given any statement to a newspaper.

  There was a ring at the front-door bell.

  Watson appeared from the kitchen.

  “If that is the man Ross, bring him in straight away,” said Bray. “I wish to talk to him.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Watson was unimpressed by the weighty manner of the instructions. Bray, frowning, went to his chair and sat down, expected to hear voices but heard none, then fancied he heard light footsteps. He started to his feet.

  The door burst open, and Dolly came rushing in, beaming, eyes glistening.

  “Darling!” cried Bray.

  “Precious!” gasped Dolly.

  Bray hugged her, Dolly gasped and squeezed him; they were breathless when they stood back; still holding each other’s hands. Dolly was half a head taller, and compared with Bray, almost slender. She wore a black suit and a mink collar, her make-up was good, she was brimming over with happiness.

  “Sammy,” she breathed.

  “This is wonderful, my treasure!”

  “I thought they were never going to release me,” said Dolly. “Do give me a cigarette, and could I have a teeny-weeny drink? I know it’s early, but I’m so thirsty and excited, I could dance!”

  She backed away, squeezed his hands before freeing them, and pirouetted round. The flared skirt whirled up above her knees — Dolly had not been selected as a chorus girl for nothing, and she couldn’t act. She finished, and collapsed into his arms.

  “Wonderful!” bubbled Bray. “Marvellous!”

  He poured drinks with an unsteady hand, was much more nervous than he had been with Ross. They clinked glasses. He stood and stared at her as she sat back, legs crossed, skirt modestly pulled low over her knees. She was fresh-skinned, her hair was hennaed to hide the greyness, she had good eyes and long lashes — there was a hint of blowsiness about her, a touch of coarseness, but she was good enough to look at.

  Bray finished his drink.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She’d been coming to see him when a man had stopped her, showed her a special police card, and taken her away; she had been flabbergasted. He’d taken her to a police station and spent a lot of time questioning her, mostly about Sammy Bray, and there wasn’t a thing she knew that they wanted. They’d asked questions at various times, and she’d always told them the truth as far as she could, and:

  “Honey, every time I could I told them what a wonderful man you are, I said you were smashing. I just wouldn’t hear a word against you, and I wouldn’t let them say anything, either. You should have heard me giving them a piece of my mind, you should, really.”

  “I wish I had,” said Bray fervently. “Precious, they didn’t ill-treat you?”

  “Oh, no,” said Dolly, “they were quite nice, really, although rather stern — you remember that policeman we had here when you’d left your car without lights, rather like that, only they were all in plain clothes. I couldn’t understand it, I kept wondering why you didn’t send for me, it wasn’t as if I was under arrest. I kept protesting and protesting, and they fobbed me off with a lot of silly answers, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter now, here I am.”

  Bray sealed that with a kiss.

  “The things they wanted to know! All about your friends, Mae Harrison, you know Mae, a man named Tiger — do you know, I had to sit down and write out a list of everyone you knew. And you know how hopeless I am on names, darling, I could tell them their Christian names, but couldn’t remember the surnames. It
was funny, really, they thought I was lying to them, and I got all worked up and angry, and as soon as they saw that, they calmed down. They weren’t satisfied until they were sure I’d remembered everyone. They even included Sam at the Dive, and everyone else there, and the Dive itself — oh, and there’s one name they were very interested in.”

  She waggled a finger at him, and smiled as if reprovingly. Bray went across and patted her cheek.

  “What name, sweet?”

  “You’ll never guess — Alice Conway,” said Dolly. “I didn’t want to tell them about you and Alice, but they sprang it on me this morning, just before I came away. When they forced me to talk — well, they didn’t exactly force, they made it very difficult not to, though, I told them how she was always trying to make you give her presents, and she clung like a leech — I told them a thing or two about Alice, believe me. I told them everything that you’ve ever told me about her, but I can’t understand why they were interested in that little gold-digger, can you?”

  “I most certainly cannot,” breathed Bray.

  He didn’t look so happy for a few moments, but soon recovered.

  He sat opposite her, beaming, close enough to stretch out and touch her, blissfully quiet — and then the front-door bell rang. He thought immediately of Ross, and for the first time since Dolly had returned, he frowned. He heard Watson go across and open the door, and heard a woman’s voice. Then:

  “I will find out if he is in, Miss,” said Watson.

  “Why, who can that be?” asked Dolly, and put her head on one side roguishly. “You haven’t been making new friends while poor little Dolly’s been locked up, have you, precious?”

  “Don’t you worry,” said Bray. “I can’t imagine who this is ——”

  “Miss Harrison, sir,” said Watson, coming in and closing the door.

  “Mae!’ exclaimed Dolly.

  “Miss Harrison.”

  “Yes, sir, she ——”

  “That’s right,” said Mae.

  She opened the door and thrust her way past Watson, who waited for instructions from Bray and received them with a wave of the hand. Mae smiled across at Dolly, while Bray backed to his chair, struck against it with the back of his legs, and sat down heavily.