by John Creasey
What was wrong about it? He needn’t give her any information; she wouldn’t be able to drag a word out of him, so – why not? Men did, thousands of men did, most men did. Didn’t they? And it was not as if he would harm her, she was a self-confessed believer in free love, she would give herself wherever her fancy lay, with no thought of right or wrong. He felt quite sure that was true, he remembered something that Soames had said although he couldn’t remember the words clearly, he couldn’t remember anything clearly. He could only see Faith, very clearly. She seemed to be closer. Now the dress was gathered about her waist, and he saw that she had only a gossamer brassiere on, holding her high and proud, concealing nothing.
It wouldn’t do Janet any harm; she would never know; Janet would never know. Janet, Janet, Janet, Janet.
He was sweating.
There was a mist in front of his eyes and he did not understand it, but slowly it cleared, and then he could see that Faith had slipped the dress off and was stepping out of it. She wore no belt, nothing but the bra and close-fitting panties which hardly seemed to disturb the beautiful line of her figure.
She held her hands out towards him.
“Come, my darling,” she said.
He did not know why, but afterwards when he thought about it he believed that it was because she smiled as she spoke, and her smile seemed to say that she knew she had won, and that he could not resist her; her smile seemed to say that she was utterly sure of herself, and could destroy not only his resistance but also his will; could corrupt all that he believed in. Whatever the cause, a different kind of thought entered his mind, and a different mental picture. It was as if, when he had almost cried out, ‘Janet, Janet, Janet, Janet,’ he had been calling for her help, that he knew that without her he was lost; as if out of the depths of his subconscious there was a great need of her. He could see her. It seemed almost that she had come and answered his call, was standing behind Faith but could not draw nearer. She stood there and watched, but her expression seemed to say ‘Choose me.’ Whatever decision he made had to be his own, unaided.
The strange thing was that Janet was not the old Janet, young and lovely in her way, nor the Janet dressed for the occasion and looking at her striking best. It was the tired, rather careworn, rather remote Janet, and in the vision he could believe that she felt remote and aloof, that she knew there was nothing she could do except be with him.
“My darling,” Faith repeated softly. “Take me.”
Words were like stones as Roger spoke.
“I’m going out,” he said. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes. If you’re not gone when I return I shall telephone Wiess and tell him that I caught you here. That you’d forced entry. If you want to talk, I’ll be downstairs in the foyer. We can eat together at the restaurant here.”
He saw the astonishment of utter disbelief in her eyes. They could never have been larger nor more beautiful. Nor had he seen her look so young, so like a child.
He turned away. He strode to the door. He fumbled for the latch, and it slipped from his fingers, so he made himself control them more firmly, and gripped the latch and opened the door. As he did so, a white-clad figure vanished, wraithlike, into another room along the passage, but he hardly noticed it. He closed the door, but it would not fasten, and suddenly, viciously, he tugged at it with all his strength, and it slammed with a crash of sound which seemed to shake the very walls and floor.
20
MORNING
He walked down the stairs rather than be taken down by the diminutive lift-boy. Two parties of four were gathered in the hall, wearing evening dress; they seemed to come from a different world. Two more swept in, and from a room out of sight there came the sound of music. Someone was singing a ballad. Roger looked about for the bar, found an American Bar sign and went into a box of a room with a coloured bartender and the usual miscellany of bright colours in the bottles behind the counter. He ordered a double Scotch, and tossed it down, ordered another, and sipped. The Indian bartender was watching him curiously. Two other men on their own sat at the bar, one of them with his face buried in his hands, his attitude strangely despondent. One or two couples were at tiny tables round the walls. Roger found the round-topped stool hard and uncomfortable. He felt low and almost depressed, without knowing why. He did not want to think. He finished the second drink and went into the foyer; more dancing couples were arriving, everyone seemed gay and carefree and happy.
The manager came up, also in dinner jacket.
“Have you everything you require, Mr West?”
“Everything, thanks.” It had been a mistake to tell the girl that he would wait for her downstairs. But he hadn’t. He said he would be back in twenty minutes, and if she wasn’t out of his room he would call the police. It need not take her more than a few minutes to dress. Minutes? A few seconds, to pull that dress over that slim body. Would she have dinner with him? Had he been wise to suggest that they should eat together? The truth was that he did not want to make an enemy of her, but probably he had done that already. My God! What must she have felt like when he had turned away from her? Pride in her body, in her sex, in her ability to conquer a man, had all been spoiled. What would she do and how would she react?
He had been down for nearly half an hour, so he went upstairs by the lift. This time there was a tall, lanky boy on duty; lift attendants seemed to change every hour or so. He strode briskly along to his room, opened the door, and went in. He was not fully convinced that Faith would be gone; she might have decided to accept his challenge, and to try again.
She wasn’t here.
There was a note on the stool on which she had sat, and he picked it up. It read:
I’ll dine in my room.
Did that mean that she felt much the same as he, and didn’t want to make an enemy of him? That kind of thing could cut both ways. He felt glad that she had taken the trouble to leave the note behind, and wondered whether he would be wise to telephone her. Not tonight, he decided, what kind of fool would that make of him? He went downstairs again, and out into the well lit streets, and walked for twenty minutes until he came upon a restaurant with curtained windows, and the words Cuisine Française in gilt lettering across the glass panel of the door. He went in. The room was low ceilinged, candle-lit, pleasant, and quiet, just right for his mood. A surprisingly youthful-looking man led him to a table in a corner where he was sheltered by a screen that appeared to be made of palm fronds. The menu seemed promising. There was background music, as at the hotel. He ordered a half-bottle of a South African claret and a bifstek en casserole, and found it delicious and satisfying. In one way it was a pity he was on his own, but in another it meant that he could let his thoughts drift over all aspects of the situation, and did not have to put up an act with other people. Before he had finished the meal he was thinking almost exclusively about the case, and even wondering whether he had been left on his own deliberately. That was an absurd thought. He began to think of Nightingale’s story and the fact that Van der Lunn might be a serious suspect. What would Wiess and the Minister of Justice and all the rest think if that were the case?
By the time he was ready to leave, Roger felt almost normal, except that he was very tired, both physically and mentally; one good night’s sleep would put that right. He went back to the hotel and upstairs, hoping that he would have no more shocks.
The suite was empty, but the bed had been turned down.
Last night he had slept in snatches on the aircraft, the night before he had been very late and wakeful, lying next to Janet. Janet, Janet, Janet, Janet. As he got ready for bed he wondered what she would think if she knew what had happened tonight.
He dropped off into deep, dreamless sleep – so absolute that although he heard the sound of a bell ringing he was not really conscious of what it was for a long time. There it rang, a million miles away, from another world but with an insistence which
gradually brought awareness of it. Brrr-brrr. Brrr-brrr. Slowly, reluctantly, resentfully, he became aware of the urgency, became aware of the fact that it was to do with his waking life, not something he could ignore. So, slowly, he woke. The bell was the telephone bell, of course. It kept on and on. It was a long time before he was awake enough to know that he had only to stretch out his hand and lift the receiver to stop the ringing. There would be an obligation beyond that, one which he did not want.
He turned over, stretched out his hand and lifted the telephone. It was as smooth as a serpent, and slipped out of his grasp. It clattered on the floor, but at least the ringing stopped. Should he leave it there? He knew that he should not and knew that he wanted to above everything else. But he was awake now; his conscience as well as his consciousness were working together. He stretched down to the floor at the side of the bed and groped for the telephone. He heard a sound.
He put the receiving end to his ear, and he heard a woman, shouting, “Answer me – please answer me.”
A woman. In distress, in despair, in fear.
Her voice was shrill, touched with desperation.
“Please answer me!”
Roger said, “Who’s that? What do you want?”
He was lying on his stomach, nearly halfway off the bed, but his mind was vividly alert; sleep was in the past and all he could think of was this woman.
“Handsome!” she cried, and her voice seemed to cut through him. “I’ve been kidnapped. I’m in a village about halfway between Pretoria and Johannesburg.”
He did not know whether the fear in her voice was real or pretended, whether this was another way to win his interest; he only knew that there seemed to be horror in her voice.
Then she gasped, “They’re coming!”
Roger said, “Now listen. Listen. Where are you?”
“I’m on a road near Johannesburg, I tell you. A man—a man phoned and said he was a friend of Jim’s. I can see them – two men. Handsome! I’m—scared.”
“What car is it?”
“A Ford, a Ford Consul.”
“Colour?”
“It’s black. They’re coming nearer – I can see them; they’re slowing down.” He could hear the sound of a car engine. He thought he heard a man’s voice, beyond Faith’s. “I’m on the outskirts of a village, there’s a telephone – they’re coming.”
“Are they black men or white?” He heard the bedroom door open and saw light streaming in from the passage and two men outlined against it: Percival and someone in police uniform.
He called to them, “Telephone police headquarters! There’s been a kidnapping – the road between here and Johannesburg on the edge of a village.”
He could hear the girl gasping for breath; it was easy to believe she was struggling.
“Handsome!”
And then she screamed.
And then the line went dead.
In the doorway, Percival was standing and staring. Along the passage a Bantu policeman was running very fast but making little sound. Roger banged the receiver back on to the platform, and rolled over and got up quickly. He sprang to his feet and ran towards the door; Percival dodged to one side as if he were scared. Roger reached the door of 501 and banged on it, but there was no answer.
“Open this door!” he roared at Percival.
The room-boy’s hand was trembling so much that he could not insert the key. Roger snatched it away and thrust it in, turned the handle and flung the door open.
It was a large room, and the bathroom was on the right, a hanging cupboard with sliding doors on the left, and beyond these there was the foot of a double bed. There were some woman’s clothes, neatly folded. He ran in, and saw the crumpled bedclothes and a pillow on the floor, a book on its face, a bedside lamp still alight, a pair of glasses by the book. So she had been to bed, and the call had come, and she had gone away in response to it.
Captain Standish was in the police car with him. Another police car was fifteen minutes ahead of them, and the Johannesburg police had been called out, too. Probably the whole of the police in the area had been alerted. Standish looked as wide awake as if it were the middle of the morning, not the middle of the small hours; in fact, it was half past three. The sky was still vivid with stars. Very little moved, and there were no lights except in the distance, making a canopy over Johannesburg, and far behind them, over Pretoria.
Standish was saying, “. . . she must have gone through the kitchen, that was the only exit not watched. It looks as if she was kidnapped, but could she have been foxing?”
Roger said, “Yes. I wondered if she was.”
He did up the collar of his shirt, for it was cooler here by night than he had expected, and the heat generated by exertion and alarm had gone from him. He looked and felt dishevelled, but there was some satisfaction in the fact that it was less than half an hour since he had been called, and when so much had been put in hand.
He saw some red lights ahead; the rear lights of a car.
“What made you think she might have been lying to you?” Standish wanted to know.
“She tried to do a deal with me earlier in the evening. She badly wanted to know what Nightingale had said. I turned her down. I had a feeling she might hate my guts because of that.”
“That kind of turn-down,” Standish said: there was a half sneer in his voice. “Quite the soul of rectitude, aren’t you?”
Roger stared at the red light and saw some pale yellow lights on the right and left, and realised that they were approaching a village. Two cars were standing just off the road, and the headlights of another were coming from Johannesburg, the car swaying up and down.
“Looks as if they’ve found something. Did anyone else say anything?”
Roger said, “She sounded as if she was hysterical with fear.” Then, “No. I heard a car, and fancied there was a man’s voice, that was all.”
The driver slowed down, and a police lieutenant came towards them. He put his head to the window close to Standish, and said, “The Ford Consul was here, Captain.”
“Sure of that?” Standish pushed the door open.
“Yes, Captain. We have found a boy who was sneaking away from his girlfriend’s quarters, and he saw the car. It was a dark one and a Consul – the boy works at a garage, he knows. He saw two men carry a struggling woman from the telephone box into the car.”
“We’ve an eye-witness!” Roger exclaimed as he scrambled out.
“For what it’s worth,” said Standish.
At least this seemed to be confirmation of everything that Faith had said over the telephone.
Roger saw a little man standing between two Bantu policemen, some distance off the road, and saw two policemen searching the road and the telephone kiosk, one of them using a torch the beam of which seemed very bright.
“It was too dark to see them properly, but he says they were white,” went on the lieutenant. “We’ve sent a message back to Johannesburg, as it went in that direction,” he added. “We’ll get it.”
A man called out from the kiosk, “Here’s something.”
He did not seem to realise who had arrived in the other car, but stood beckoning. Two more men moved towards the spot, one of them carrying an even larger torch. They converged on the kiosk and Roger was almost afraid of what they were going to find.
It was a tiny purse, wide open. Some rand notes were folded and tucked into it, and there were pennies on the floor, and the glint of silver, too.
“And something else, Lieutenant,” said the man who had called out in that guttural voice. “A torn dress, I think.”
“Dress,” echoed Roger.
Undoubtedly, it was part of a torn dress, the one which he had seen a few hours earlier as Faith had shrugged it off her shoulders. He was quite sure of the material and the colou
r as he fingered it and looked at it; and the shape and the edge showed that it had come off the neck.
“There isn’t anything else we can do,” Standish said. “But you can be sure we’ll search for her as if she was worth all the missing diamonds. You’d better come back to Pretoria. I can imagine what you feel like, but this isn’t a case for the Yard.”
It was half past four when Roger entered the bedroom again. He did not get undressed, but kicked his shoes off, undid his collar, and stretched out on the bed, quite sure that he would not get off to sleep again. His mind was working at top speed, sifting everything he knew and everything he suspected, separating facts from rumours and suspicions, trying to see what he knew existed in the pattern of events but was obscured or too complex. At least the kidnapping of the girl had jolted him out of the mood he had been in last evening; now he could look on her as someone in whom he had to be interested. There was no feeling of guilt in allowing himself to think about her.
He and Standish had asked the obvious question time and time again in the car coming back.
Why should anyone kidnap the girl?
There must be an answer.
As he lay there, feeling more sleepy than he had expected, Roger turned that question over and over in his mind, but could not get an answer. He had a feeling that it was so obvious that it was like something on the tip of his tongue, but it would not come.
Sleep did . . .
The second sleep was as deep as the first, but there was one big difference; when he woke, it was on the instant, without any sense of fear or of reluctance, and yet with a sense of urgency. The bell wasn’t ringing. No one was tapping at the door. There was an unfamiliar sound, of rushing water – water running into a bath. Then he saw Percival, immaculate and smiling, step out of the bathroom.
“Baas take bath?” he enquired.