The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel

by Gordon Landsborough

  So we helped him. When he touched down at the airport he wanted to know what the Turkish equivalent was for “Thank you.” We tried to help him.

  After that he kept using the word and the Turks looked surprised but would politely take him and leave him outside the door in question. This happened about six times before he rumbled it. He didn’t accept our explanation easily, either—that we’d made some awful mistake and instead of giving him the word for “thank you” we’d given the word which is seen mostly on that door where the ladies go in to powder their noses.

  Call it rude humour if you like, but when the boys get together, that’s how they behave.

  So we were all in the doghouse, and, as I say, I didn’t even know whether I was on his payroll after that incident, or available to look for another job.

  I thumped on the door. To hell with B.G.; he’s only the boss, anyway.

  I heard the rattle of metal inside, and pricked up my ears. It sounded like—chains.

  And then I heard B.G. call out to me: “Who’s there?” and I had a feeling he was in trouble even as he called out.

  I shouted back: “The hell, it’s Heggy. What’ve you got in there—a dame at last?” And that was sarcasm, because B.G.’s got more inhibitions concerning the female sex than any man I’ve ever met.

  He didn’t rise to it this time, but his voice took on a note of quick concern, and he shouted: “For God’s sake, get the pass key and come in to me. My God, Heggy, I need you right now!”

  So I found the floor servant with his tarbosh and I got him to open up. He wanted to come in and there was a big grin on that Turk’s brown face, but I didn’t see that it was any business of his, so I politely kept him out in the corridor.

  I went into B.G.’s bedroom and B.G. was there.

  He was lying on his back, spread-eagled, and fastened by wrists and ankles with shining chains to the four corner-posts of his bed.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE POLICE

  I was so startled I had to sit down on the edge of his bed and smoke a Camel. I looked at him, the big slob.

  He was wearing little trunks and a singlet such as athletes wear. Only, no athlete ever tried to shove a stomach as big as his into such a vest. He was without his glasses, but he could see me all right. Sometimes I used to think he didn’t need glasses at all, but wore them to impress people. There was a lot of chicken around the heart of that big man.

  B.G. got mad. That’s what I wanted. I like to get him mad. It’s a hobby of mine, getting bosses mad, and I’m expert at it, and perhaps that’s why I’ve had more bosses than most men.

  He shouted for me to get him out of those things, but I just looked dumb and went on smoking.

  I could see what it was. There were springs round those chains and it was one of these physical culture fads that grip men at times. That big stomach of B.G. had got him physical-culture conscious, and it seemed I had discovered his secret. He did exercises to reduce it, here in his bedroom.

  The idea was that you slipped your hands through a kind of handcuff, which was attached by springs and little chains round your bedposts. Your feet were thrust through similar footcuffs. And then you did exercises, like trying to sit up against the tension of those springs and trying to draw your knees up against the even more powerful springs, which fixed your ankles to those bedposts.

  Me, I don’t see any use in this sort of nonsense. Keep-fit is a pastime for adolescents. I stopped being an adolescent quite a few years back, and I just enjoy feeling out of condition. Maybe I’m not much out of condition, at that, and I don’t have any bothers about a belly like the boss.

  I looked at him coldly when he shouted at me, and in time he got around to it that I didn’t like being shouted at. So he became persuasive, and I like bosses better that way,

  After a time I said: “How do you get out of those things?”

  He was exasperated but tried not to show it. He had also a confession to make, and he didn’t like making it and he mumbled over it. He was a man, in any event, feeling the indignity of his position. It seemed that you simply slid your hands through the cuffs but B.G. had thick wrists and big fleshy paws, and the exercising had caused them to swell and he couldn’t get the cuffs over his hand. I felt inclined to leave the slob there, but that isn’t the Heggy way. Joe P. Heggy is always a guy to give a man a hand in trouble, even if it is the boss.

  Anyway, this was a good time to make profit out of the situation.

  I said to him quite nicely: “I don’t know whether I can help you. I mean, I’m not working for you any longer, why should I dig you out of those damn bracelets?”

  B.G. spoke earnestly. He said: “Joe, what are you talking about? Who says you’re not working for me? You get this into your mind, Joe, that you’ll always be working for me. Only, doggone it, dig me out of these bracelets, can’t you!”

  Well, that was good enough for me. I was still on the payroll. I dug him out. It took a lot of hair oil over his fat wrists, and he lost some of the skin in the process, but I didn’t feel it, and I didn’t smell like a nice boy afterwards.

  He was ashamed of himself, as fat men always are ashamed when they’ve been caught out. I said: “It’s a good thing I came when I did.”

  He stopped washing himself under a tap labelled: ‘Chaud’ but it wasn’t. Like the elevator, the hot water system never worked in this hotel, either. He looked at me and said, suspiciously: “What did you want of me at this time of night, anyway?”

  I said: “If anything happens to me, B.G., I want you to remember what I’m telling you now.”

  I saw that big, flat pancake face come round quickly, apprehensively, the electric light reflecting greasily upon his featureless face. That B.G. got in a panic quicker than any man I’ve ever known, and him with all his millions.

  “What d’you mean, Joe? Don’t tell me you’ve got into more trouble?”

  Now, that’s good, coming from the man who employs me. Back in the States my job was trouble-buster. If there was trouble anywhere within the Gissenheim empire, I was the boy who was sent down to eliminate it. You know what sort of trouble you can get—rival firms sabotaging your supply trucks; trouble among two-timing salesmen who are selling out to rivals; and some labour disputes, though I don’t like them. I even had to go and take part in a revolution once, in the Central Americas, when a lot of Gissenheim property was at stake.

  Well, here I’m employed as a trouble-buster, and the man who employs me suddenly turns round and asks sharply if I’ve been getting into trouble! I shut him up with a flip of my paw. You could always shut up that big fat slob if you knew how to flip confidently and contemptuously enough. You should try it on the boss someday. You’ll probably be surprised at the result.

  I said: “Listen.” And then I told him what I had seen out in the alley, and then what had happened down at the police station—though, come to think of it, just nothing had happened there.

  “But I want you to know this, B.G.—there’s something very deep and very nasty afoot, and I’ve got myself mixed up in it.” I lifted my hand when I saw his fat mush splitting to make some heavy statement. “And you can forget what you were just about to say. Any time I see a girl in trouble like that, I feel I’ve just got to jump in with both feet.”

  “But now you’re in with both feet—?”

  “Things might happen to me.” I brooded over my Camel. I’d got a hunch that things were going to happen to me, and B.G. was something in the nature of an insurance policy. I looked at him. He was scared. He didn’t like foreign parts, because he was far out of his depth in dealing with people beyond his own family circle. That’s how I always looked at it, anyway.

  “I’ve got a hunch that I might get slung into a sedan like that dame. Okay, B.G., if you don’t see me around for a while, you go down to the American Embassy and bellyache to high heaven about me. Get the dragnet out and find me. I’ll be somewhere around, though my guess is I won’t be wanting to be where I am.”
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br />   That was a good sentence, and it made B.G. think a bit. It made me think a bit, too. I didn’t want to be where I didn’t want to be. B.G. wasn’t much of an insurance policy, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do right then. I tell you, I’m a timid kind of guy, always running away from trouble. But I can take care of myself if trouble comes running after me.

  B.G. put his glasses on, as if that helped him to think better. His thinking didn’t seem to do him any good because he finally took them off and went in for a shower without saying so much as a word to me. Perhaps he would have liked to have made cutting comments, but he must have been remembering the undignified position I’d found him in a few moments ago. And he knew by now that Joe P. Heggy could hold his own when it came to making cutting remarks.

  He closed the door of his bathroom, and locked it. That’s the kind of sap B.G. is. He doesn’t like to be seen, not even by his own sex, when he’s in the nude. I don’t go that way myself at all, but that’s the way some men are built, I guess.

  So I shouted through the keyhole. “Hey, are you plannin’ to go out?”

  Because one of my jobs was to keep the boss’s son out of trouble. He was such a sap that his father knew he needed a nursemaid, and so he’d picked on me.

  B.G. yelped back: “I think I’ll go to the Gazino for supper.”

  I shrugged. That meant I had to go, too. So I went back to my room to get changed. Anyway, there was nothing for me to hang around this hotel for, and the Gazino was a pleasant place for supper, anyway.

  It was only when my hand was feeling for the door key that I remembered that body in the bathroom. I felt sick inside. I just naturally hated what I’d just done.

  But there was nothing else for it. I had to go in and face it.

  And then I found I had no key.

  And then I found Benny standing by my side and he had a key in his hand. Benny had anticipated this moment and had come up the stairs or the elevator to help me in distress.

  He spoke quickly. “I guessed you’d have locked yourself out.” My key was inside my room. He was a good guesser.

  I took the key and looked hard at Benny. I thought: “You slimy so-and-so, you’re trying to get around me, aren’t you?”

  But I didn’t say anything aloud to Benny; I just let him read what I was thinking in my face. Benny mustn’t have liked what he read there, and he quit trying to be nice. He went away, and I heard him say something that sounded suspiciously like: “The hell, you can get yourself out of trouble in future.”

  I didn’t beef after him. I don’t give a damn if hotel servants do stand on a level with their patrons. After all, aren’t we supposed to be democratic?

  I went into my apartment. I turned to go into the bathroom, because there was something I had to get over. I’d got to dispose of that body.

  There was something moving on the floor, just inside. I reckon it was its mate. It was about four inches long, and brick red, and it ran around in quick frantic circles when I switched the light on. A kind of cockroach, you’d say, only the granddaddy of all cockroaches if it was. Anyway, I don’t know if cockroaches ever go brick red, as these Turkish crawlers do. I jumped on it. That made two bodies to dispose of. And, boy, how my stomach turned as I felt my heel go crashing through that shelly body. That’s the worst of some of these Middle East hotels. You’ve got to share your room with things which shouldn’t be there.

  I scooped up the remains and put them in the marble pan which had been made in Victoria’s time by some firm at Gateshead, England. Then I flushed them away.

  I’d just finished my shower and was climbing into my natty white suiting, when there was a polite tap on the door.

  I went across, fastening my shirt. When I opened the door I saw the corridor was filled with uniforms.

  That’s how it looked to me, anyway. There was a big guy, some sort of officer I guessed, in the Istanbul police. He was built on mighty lines, though young, A really powerful man, smooth-shaven, red-faced, rather good-looking, but tough, boy. Mighty tough.

  Back of him I saw several other cops. Maybe there were only two or three, but right then my mind kind of exaggerated everything. That corridor looked lousy with police.

  I said, firmly: “I don’t want to buy anything,” and tried to shut the door.

  One of the cops had his foot against it, and it didn’t move. So I looked sourly at that big, young officer and said: “I’ve got my passport. It’s in order. The best in the world. American.” I wanted him to know what he was up against if he was looking for trouble...Uncle Sam.

  For I was expecting trouble. I’d got this hunch in my mind that trouble was going to come dropping down on me because I’d seen something I wasn’t supposed to see...and kicked up a fuss about it afterwards. Now it looked as though that hunch was correct. Cops don’t fill a corridor for nothing.

  He gave a little deprecating wave of his gloved hand, and said: “I’m quite sure your passport is in order, Mr. Heggy.” He said it politely, too, and that added to the surprises of the night.

  He spoke with an American accent that was assured and told of residence in the States rather than tuition in our language at the American College along the Bosphorus. Clearly he had received his education in America.

  I looked at him suspiciously, all the same. I just didn’t trust these monkeys at all.

  He went on to say, still so politely: “Your visit to the police station was reported to me. I thought that I would like to speak to you on the subject personally, Mr. Heggy. Please accept my apologies, but your statements, you see, do demand police investigation.”

  I said: “The hell, what is there for you to investigate?” That girl, I was still sure, had been whipped away by Turkish police, and I wasn’t to be kidded by this big, well-spoken, calm-looking young man.

  But he was shaking his head. “Mr. Heggy,” he said, and his voice was very firm, “we can’t allow girls to be abducted forcibly from hotels in this city. You may have imagined what you say you saw—”

  “Brother, I never imagined what I saw,” I rapped with equal firmness.

  “Then you see, Mr. Heggy, we’ve got to enquire into these statements you have made.”

  He was so calm, so polite, but so firm with it. I kept looking at him, trying to read what was behind that big, brown-red healthy face of this young police officer. And my eyes sometimes flickered beyond him, to those monkeys of his in the passage. They were all such big men, filling their uniforms with solid muscle, and I couldn’t help feeling that if it came to a shindig I was going to get the worst of it.

  And Joe P. Heggy just naturally hates to get the worst of any fight.

  The officer said: “Perhaps you would like to discuss this matter further inside your room, Mr. Heggy.” He looked significantly down the corridor, where a few guests, heading for the elevator or stairs, were caught in that irresolute pose of people wanting to do two things at once—and one of them was to gawk at a man in trouble with the police.

  I thought there wasn’t anything else I could do about it. I had a feeling that if I said: “No, to hell with it, you stay out in the corridor,” these monkeys would just force their way into my room.

  I stood by grudgingly, and I felt like giving them Lincoln’s Address at Gettysburg. I was fully determined to kick up the goddamnedest row ever heard in Istanbul if they tried any police tricks on me.

  Brother, I was in for yet another surprise! The police officer stepped into my apartment, and closed the door after him upon his men.

  I said rather suspiciously: “Don’t you want your strong-arm boys in with you?”

  He laughed and took off his gloves. I had a feeling he was laughing at me. He said, tolerantly: “No, Mr. Heggy, I don’t think we need any witnesses to our conversation. This is a friendly call, as I’m sure you’ll appreciate, and I’m out to help you.”

  Suspiciously—“Help me? Now why in hell’s name should I need helping?”

  His eyes widened in surprise, and y
et I was sure he was mocking me. He said: “But you told them at the station that this girl who was carried away was a friend of yours?”

  I swallowed. That comes of telling lies. One was coming home to me now. I thought George Washington had something, right then, and I made a lot of vows for the future. One of them was to keep my big nose out of other people’s affairs.

  The officer said, patiently: “Now, Mr. Heggy, will you please tell me in your own words exactly what you saw? Please tell me absolutely everything, and don’t omit any detail.”

  I found myself telling him the tale. I started by thinking it was a waste of breath, that this guy must have known the full story better than I, but I ended up feeling entirely different.

  He knew I had changed towards him, because when I had finished, he said, quietly: “This has nothing to do with the police. I think now you are believing me, aren’t you, Mr. Heggy?”

  I was grouchy in my admission of the rightness of his statement. The hell, a man doesn’t like to admit he’s been a bit of a fool. It made me feel like some kid stuffed with fantastic novelettish or filmic notions. But I was convinced, and Joe P. Heggy at times can do the big thing.

  I growled: “Yeah, I’ve got to change my mind, I reckon.” I changed it so much I went over to a sideboard and dug out a bottle of best Scotch. I said: “I’ll make amends with a drop of good liquor.”

  The young police officer laughed. He said: “That’s unnecessary, Mr. Heggy. We’re rather used to other nationals getting curious ideas about our police forces.” He shrugged. “You’ve got to remember, though, that we’re not an advanced country such as your own.”

  He didn’t continue, and maybe he was wise, because there was no sense in taking up time arguing about degrees of democracy—or totalitarianism.

  Instead he said: “What you have told us sounds very serious. We’ve got to find out who has kidnapped this girl. You think she was Turkish?”