by Jack Gerson
'Oh, yes?' Crane replied, aware that Martindale was inventing a pretext in order to pursue some other topic.
'Come into the office, both of you,' Martindale went on,' as they reached the door of his office.
Inside, he settled behind his desk, a desk that seemed pristine in its tidiness. He waved them to sit and then stared a.t Crane from under half-shut eyelids.
'Where have you been, Tom?' he asked, pretexts dropped.
Crane glanced sideways at Anne. The night before he had told her of his experience with Jane Devereaux. Had she reported to Martindale? She looked around at him and her eyes flickered as if to deny his thought.
'I've been doing some investigating of Drexel's past activities,' he explained.
Martindale frowned, shifting uneasily in his chair. 'I know you would like to find Drexel,' he said. 'And I appreciate your reasons for being so concerned about him. But the work of the Department must go on. And, also, should you stumble over an indication of Drexel's whereabouts, I trust you would inform us. He is not a man to be tackled alone as you know.'
Crane didn't reply. He had his own thoughts about tackling Drexel and they did not include Martindale or the Department.
Martindale suddenly seemed to relax, and standing up, he offered them a drink. When he was settled once again with glass in hand he smiled expansively at them.
'I may have something rather special for you two.'
'Tell us,' Anne said, sipping her whisky.
'An old woman up in Orkney,' Martindale explained. 'From the reports we've had, her clairvoyant powers seem rather well developed. The locals think she's some kind of a witch. I'd like both of you to go up to Orkney and see what you can make of her.'
'Catriona McMichael?' Anne broke in.
'Yes, that's the one.'
Anne frowned. 'Prothero went up last year. He spent a week with her. His report wasn't very encouraging.'
'Prothero never had enough imagination for this Department,' Martindale came back at her quickly, too quickly, Crane thought.
'Prothero was a predecessor of yours, Tom,' Martindale went on. 'A mild sensitive but too weak to pick up anything from others. Also his addiction to whisky was extreme.'
But Anne was not to be silenced. 'The McMichael woman had built her own reputation. She fancied herself as a witch but any powers she had were hit and miss. Prothero said there was nothing in it for us.'
'My dear Anne, you must let me be the judge of that.'
'Anyway you hardly need a biophysicist...'
'I would like you both to see the woman!' Martindale said, his voice rising slightly to emphasise his point.
Later that evening Anne sat in the armchair in Crane's flat nursing a mug of coffee. Crane sat facing her beside his brother's record player. On the record player Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G Minor came to an end.
After a long moment of silence Crane spoke.
'One of Julia's favourites,' he murmured, staring into space.
Anne could almost physically feel his pain. The depth of his sadness overwhelmed her momentarily and she had to make a great effort to free herself.
She decided to change the subject. 'Roy wants you away from Edinburgh,' she said.
Crane looked up from some private deep. 'What do you mean?'
'I think he wants you to stop looking for Drexel.'
'Scott-Erskine said the Department would help me find Drexel. Or at least he implied it.'
Anne shrugged. 'I expect Roy thinks he's being kind. Trying to get you away from the whole business.'
'I don't want to get away!'
'I know, Tom, but is it doing you any good?'
Crane looked angry. 'Listen, Anne, for the past weeks I've done everything the Department wanted of me. I've been subjected to psychoanalysis and every test in the book.
All right, I'm a "sensitive"! I've got something in my head that only a few people have...'
'We may all have it,' she interrupted. 'But only some, like you, can use it.'
'All right, but I want to use it to get Drexel. He killed Julia, I'm sure of it. Once that's done I'll be of more use to the Department than I can be now.'
'Be careful of obsession, Tom.'
He glared at her. 'Anne, your friendship was probably one of the two things that kept me sane when Julia was killed. But the other was the thought of finding Drexel.'
'Revenge?'
'Of course. One of the oldest motivating forces in the world. And all that I found at Musselburgh only adds to my wanting to destroy that old man.' Crane ran the back of his hand across his forehead. He could feel the perspiration coming from the pores. 'Anyway he should be stopped before he kills again.'
'I know,' Anne sighed. 'But I only hope you know what to do when you find him.'
Crane gave a dry smile. 'No plans. Just play it by ear.'
'Meanwhile you and I are supposed to go to Orkney.'
'Oh, we'll go,' he replied. 'If my predecessor was right we won't be there long, I don't imagine Scott-Erskine will approve of Martindale sending us on wild goose chases.'
'Unless we come up with some psychic wild geese,' Anne smiled. She stood up and stretched. 'Time I was home.'
'I'll take you.'
'No need, I have my own car.'
He came with her to the door.
'I meant it, Anne. You have helped keep me sane.'
His face was tired and strained. It had been like that ever since the funeral. Each time she looked at him, she hoped she would see a change, an easing of the strain, a relaxation of tension. So far there had been very little change. Perhaps, when there was, there might be something else for the two of them. She dismissed the thought instantly. She had been Julia's friend, she had felt her own sorrow; she must not turn their mutual grief into something else.
'Day after tomorrow we'll leave for Orkney,' she said quickly suppressing the thought process that was unnerving her. 'Take a rest tomorrow.'
He nodded. 'I'll take in a movie or something. University Film-Society are showing The Bride of Frankenstein and Ernest Thesiger's Dr Praetorius reminds me of Roy Martindale.'
He was smiling as he showed her out, but, the moment he was alone, the smile disappeared. He sat in the armchair staring into the middle distance. Oh, God, why, why, why? The thought went round and round in his head. Why Julia, why so young and so beautiful? And why this void in his life?
He sat for fully an hour, staring into the void that had filled up with his agony. He hardly moved for the hour but sat thinking of her as if the strength of his thoughts might conjure her up. Yet the ever present knowledge that he could never do this was the major source of pain that was always with him.
Eventually he moved, leaning forward to reach and light a cigarette. Pins and needles shot through his right leg and he grimaced and bent to massage it. Finally he stood up and stretched and realised how tired he was. He decided to go to bed; in sleep there was the possibility of dreaming of Julia.
It had happened twice since her death. The first time she was, in his dream, in front of him, smiling, relaxed, talking, and yet he couldn't hear the words and he strained forward in the depths of the dream, hoping to catch a word, a fragment of a sentence, trying desperately to hear her voice. He heard nothing. And when he struggled from sleep up into consciousness the pain of remembering she was gone, came back as it had in the beginning.
Later he admitted to himself that the pain was worthwhile if only he would dream of her again. The second time, a few nights later she had come back, leaning over him, desperate to convey some statement to him which she seemed to know herself she could not convey. Yet the strength of her desperation and frustration made her even more real than in the first dream.
The telephone rang.
Crane was sitting on the edge of the bed when it rang and his first inclination was to ignore it. Occasionally Martindale had telephoned late in the evening to discuss some aspect of the day's work, more often than not in Crane's opinion a triviality. It wa
s as if Martindale wanted to be sure he was still with them; even more as if Martindale was testing Crane's power, as if Crane might reveal something from the day's work that had been omitted.
The telephone was insistent.
It might be Anne. With that thought he wanted to answer, as if he could see and make contact with his lifeline. He was beginning to acknowledge Anne was more than a friend, she was an anchor. He rose and went into the other room. He sat down and lifted the receiver.
'Crane? Tom Crane?' The voice was thick, heavy, lugubrious. Talking through drink. If alcohol had a sound, the sound of alcohol. And familiar but Crane could not immediately place the voice.
'This is Tom Crane.'
'Ah! Been trying to get you all day! Well, most of the . day.'
'Who is that?'
There was a chuckle at the other end of the line. 'Mean to say you don't know?'
Crane felt exasperated. Games played on the telephone late at night did not appeal to him.
'That is correct. I don't know,' he said.
'Oliphant, dear boy, the divine Alfred!'
The voice seemed now from some distant past. Yet it was barely three months since Oliphant had sent him on the road to Edinburgh. And the road to Julia's death? Crane dismissed the thought. Cause and effect, maybe, but not blame; not to be laid on the fat sagging shoulders of a half-mad old confidence man in London.
'What do you want, Oliphant?'
'Bit peremptory, that question. Throwing it at an old friend...' The voice was full of mock indignation. '.'. . No enquiries about my health and -well-being?'
'You sound perfectly healthy. And it is rather late...'
'Only eleven-thirty, old man. I just arrived home. Pub closes at eleven. You'd hardly expect me to phone between opening and closing time.'
'Surprised you can afford extended alcoholic sessions,' Crane said, yawning. What the hell was he phoning for?
'Ah,' the voice boomed out. 'Financially things are quite sound. A young lady with a little money and some perverse notions has taken an interest at once in my philosophy and in this ageing hulk. She is providing for my wants.'
Crane had a vision of the dead eyes of Jane Devereaux. You aren't by any chance following in Drexel's footsteps?' he found himself saying, acidity creeping into his voice.
There was a pause at the end of the line. Then Oliphant coughed. 'Oh, I see what you're implying. That I exercise psychic power over women in order to reap financial rewards?'
God, thought Crane, he will talk in clichés.
Oliphant boomed on. 'I admit, Tom Crane, that I receive financial benefit occasionally in return for favours.' The voice suddenly hardened. 'But I do not, repeat not, use people in the way that Edward Drexel does. The man drains them of money and he drains them of psychic energy. I have never done the latter. And I only negotiate small monetary favours.'
Crane suddenly wearied of the conversation.
'Look, once more, why are you phoning me?'
The reply came quickly and, from Oliphant, tersely. You brought up the subject of Drexel! Very well, that is why I am phoning. But before I say more let me tell you something of Drexel. Oh, he has destroyed people who stand in his way, many many people. Others he has used for financial gain and left bereft perhaps of their senses. But that's only a game he plays between times. When he is truly occupied he has bigger fish to fry.'
'Go on,' Crane said.
'By the way, I wrote you a note of commiseration about the death of your wife. Saw it in the papers. Condolences and all that. But you wouldn't have got the note. At the time I could ill afford the cost of even a postage stamp and I therefore did not send it. But I felt having written it was sufficient to convey my regrets on a psychic plane, at least.'
Damn him, thought Crane, he's getting verbose again.'
'You were phoning about Drexel. Tell me about him.'
'From the nature of the accident and what I have learned since I gather Drexel was responsible. Would that be correct?'
'Yes, I believe that,' Crane replied. 'He was trying to kill me because I discovered something that linked him with a woman's death in Edinburgh. I came out of it but... but Julia...'
Again a pause, as if Oliphant was collecting his thoughts. Then he went on. 'I thought it was something like that Only I have to tell you, in one respect you have been misinformed. Or you have misinterpreted what happened.'
'What do you mean?'
'You were not Drexel's intended victim, Crane. Your wife, Julia, was the one he intended to kill from the start.'
Crane felt ice creeping into his body. 'Go on,' he demanded hoarsely.
'Oh, you were dangerous to Drexel, I'm sure, dear boy. But Julia Crane was ten times more dangerous.'
'Why should Julia be..?'
Oliphant cut in. 'Of course I can't explain it all over the telephone. Apart from which it is costing money. Which I shall expect you to reimburse. Why don't you come and see me? Bethnal Green is quite pleasant at this time of the year. I don't know how you can possibly live among all those hairy Celts. But then, as the song goes, maybe it's because I'm a Londoner.'
'Listen, Oliphant, I must know...' The desperation in Crane's voice couldn't be hidden.
'Then come and see me. I might even be able to tell you where you can find Drexel.'
The sound of the receiver being replaced at the other end of the line echoed loudly in Crane's ear. Slowly he replaced his own receiver. He sat for some minutes trying to collect his thoughts. Was this another ploy of Oliphant's to extract money? The old man was not above such actions, living as he did on the edge of nothing but social security.
Yet there was something in Oliphant's voice, a kind of nervous excitement, an anxiousness to be believed that could indicate he was telling the truth. Further, there was no purpose in saying that Julia had been Drexel's target unless Oliphant believed it to be true.
But why would Drexel want to kill Julia? As far as Crane knew they had never met. Of course as far as he had known Martindale and Julia had never met. He had only discovered otherwise after Julia was dead. Could there be yet another connection of which he knew nothing? Julia and Drexel? His mind shied away from the thought with a feeling of nausea. Yet if it was true that Drexel had set out not to kill him but to destroy Julia, then there had to be reasons and connections.
He went to bed. Sleep did not come for over an hour during which the questions went round and round in his mind. Finally he drifted off through a dazed twilight into the depths of sleep.
Julia was there in the depths. She came out of a brilliant whiteness that resembled his old recurring dream. This time, however, he knew this was no man-made attempt at communication. This was the dream ghost of his wife, a figment of his subconscious mind, perhaps more than that, a manifestation of her own departed spirit. He lay in sleep, wanting to believe this, as she came closer and closer. Her face was strained and drawn and it was as if she was begging forgiveness for some obscure harm she had done to him.
After a time the surrounding whiteness began to darken and vague shapes seemed to form around Julia's figure. Crane wanted to reach out in his dream and brush away the shapes as if they were cobwebs. Up until this point he had only been an observer, not a participant in his own dream, but now, suddenly it was all around him. He moved to brush away the shapes and it seemed as if he were plunging his hands into same glutinous substance. He withdrew his hands, pulling them back, aware that they were cold and sticky.
He turned to the shape of Julia and reached out. She smiled, at first a pleasant smile, then the lips parted, bared the teeth and the smile became ugly and menacing. The structure of her face seemed to alter, as if melting and reforming; and then he was no longer looking at Julia but at the face of the girl, Morag, grinning at him with a madness, an insanity in her eyes. And she came towards him with her arms outstretched and he knew if once she touched him he would be dead.
He backed away as the figure came closer and closer until in its proximity he c
ould feel the iciness of her body and taste a fetid quality in her breath. Back he moved and back until he stopped and knew he couldn't move further back. He was at the edge of a great primeval abyss and one step more would plunge him into a bottomless chasm. Still the figure of Morag came on.
Crane opened his mouth to try and scream and at first no sound would come and his throat was filled with smoke and a cloying, sweet smelling taste that made him want to vomit. Then he made some great inner effort and he could hear himself screaming from a distance. And Morag's shape, dissolving and reforming again, was about to embrace him.
He woke as the scream merged into the sound of his alarm clock. It was seven in the morning and a watery daylight peered around the edge of the curtains.
He washed, shaved and sat down, half-dressed, to drink a cup of hot coffee. The dream was still with him and he was aware that he felt ice cold and still very afraid.
Gradually the chill left him as he crouched over the electric fire and the coffee took its effect. As his temperature reached a degree near normality, he found himself making decisions. He reached for the telephone and dialling Anne's number, he lit a cigarette.
'Anne? It's me, Tom. Look, we're not going to Orkney!'
'But Roy expects...'
'Roy can go himself if he's so concerned. Anyway, if what you told me is true... and I believe you... Roy Martin-dale has simply resurrected the old woman in Orkney to stop me looking for Drexel.'
'That may be true but he believes it is for your own good, Tom. And he could be right.'
'He happens to be wrong. I had a phone call last night from London, and I think, if I go down there now I may get a lead to wherever Drexel is hiding.'
'Tom, you can't just go off to London...'
'Anne, I can and I intend to. Today!'
He stopped for a moment, uncertain of how to put to her what was in his mind. He decided to come right out and say it.
'Come with me, Anne. I'd be glad if you would. Apart from which if I show any signs of becoming over-obsessed by Drexel you can pull me out of it. How about it?'
This time the pause came from the other end of the line..
Then Anne broke her silence. 'You seem very sure of yourself.'
