Puppet on a Chain (18 page)

'We waited half an hour.' Belinda was almost bitter about it. 'We thought you had gone.'

'I was tired. I had to lie down. Now that I've apologized, how did your morning go?'

'Well -- ' Maggie didn't seem very mollified -- 'we had no luck with Astrid -- '

'I know. The man at the desk gave me your message. We can quit worrying about Astrid. She's gone.'

'Gone?' they said.

'Skipped the country.'

'Skipped the country?'

'Athens.'

'Athens?'

'Look,' I said. 'Let's keep the vaudeville act for later. 'She and George left Schiphol this morning.'

'Why?' Belinda asked.

'Scared. The bad men were leaning on her from one side and the good guy -- me -- on the other. So she lit out.'

'How do you know she's gone?' Maggie enquired. ,

'A man at the Balinova told me.' I didn't elaborate, if they'd any illusions left about the nice boss they had I wanted them to keep them. 'And I checked with the airport.'

'Mm.' Maggie was unimpressed by my morning's work, she seemed to have the feeling that it was all my fault that Astrid had gone and as usual she was right. 'Well, Belinda or me first?'

'This first.' I handed her the paper with the figures 910020 written on it. 'What does it mean?'

Maggie looked at it, turned it upside down and looked at the back. 'Nothing,' she said.

'Let me see it,' Belinda said brightly. 'I'm good at anagrams and cross-words.' She was, too. Almost at once she said: 'Reverse it. 020019. Two a.m. on the 19th, which is tomorrow morning.'

'Not bad at all,' I said indulgently. It had taken me half an hour to work it out.

'What happens then?' Maggie asked suspiciously.

'Whoever wrote those figures forgot to explain that,' I said evasively, for I was getting tired of telling outright lies. 'Well, Maggie, you.'

'Well.' She sat down and smoothed out a lime-green cotton dress which looked as if it had shrunk an awful lot with repeated washing. 'I put on this new dress to the park because Trudi hadn't seen it before and the wind was blowing so I had a scarf over my head and -- '

'And you were wearing dark glasses.'

'Right.' Maggie wasn't an easy girl to throw off stride. 'I wandered around for half an hour, dodging pensioners and prams most of the time. Then I saw her -- or rather I saw this enormous fat old -- old -- '

'Beldam?'

'Beldam. Dressed like you said she would be. Then I saw Trudi. Long-sleeved white cotton dress, couldn't keep still, skipped about like a lamb.' Maggie paused and said reflectively : 'She really is a rather beautiful girl.'

'You have a generous soul, Magg
ie.
'

Maggie took the hint. 'By and by they sat down on a bench. I sat on another about thirty yards away, just looking over the top of a magazine. A Dutch magazine.'

'A nice touch,' I approved.

'Then Trudi started plaiting the hair of this puppet -- '

'What puppet?'

The puppet she was carrying,' Maggie said patiently. 'If you keep on interrupting I find it difficult to remember all the details. While she was doing this a man came up and sat beside them. A big man in a dark suit with a priest's collar, white moustache, marvellous white hair. He seemed a very nice man.'

'I'm sure he was,' I said mechanically. I could well imagine the Rev. Thaddeus Goodbody as a man of instant charm except, perhaps, at half-past three in the morning.

'Trudi seemed very fond of him. After a minute or two, she reached an arm round his neck and whispered something in his ear. He made a great play of being shocked but you could see he wasn't really, for he reached a hand into his pocket and pressed something into her hand. Money, I suppose.' I was on the point of asking if she was sure it wasn't a hypodermic syringe, but Maggie was far too nice for that. 'Then she rose, still clutching this puppet, and skipped across to an ice-cream van. She bought an ice-cream cornet -- and then she started walking straight towards me.'

'You left?'

'I held the magazine higher,' Maggie said with dignity. 'I needn't have bothered. She headed past me towards another open van about twenty feet away.'

'To admire the puppets?'

'How did you know?' Maggie sounded disappointed.

'Every second van in Amsterdam seems to sell puppets.'

That's what she did. Fingered them, stroked them. The old man in charge tried to look angry but who could be angry with a girl like that? She went right round the van, then went back to the bench. She kept on offering the cornet to the puppet.'

'And didn't seem upset when the puppet didn't want any. What were the old girl and the pastor doing the while?'

'Talking. They seemed to have a lot to talk about. Then Trudi got back and they all talked some more, then the pastor patted Trudi on the back, they all rose, he took his hat off to the old girl, as you call her, and they all went away.'

'An idyllic scene. They went away together?'

'No. The pastor went by himself.'

Try to follow any of them?'

'No.'

'Good girl. Were you followed?'

'I don't think so.'

'You don't think so?'

There was a whole crowd of people leaving at the same time as I did. Fifty, sixty, I don't know. It would be silly for me to say that I was sure nobody had an eye on me. But nobody followed me back here.'

'Belinda?'

There's a coffee-shop almost opposite the Hostel Paris. Lots of girls came and went from the hostel but I was on my fourth cup before I recognized one who'd been in the church last night. A tall girl with auburn hair, striking, I suppose you would call her -- '

'How do you know what I'd call her? She was dressed like a nun last night.'

'Yes.'

'Then you couldn't have seen that she had auburn hair.'

'She had a mole high up on her left cheekbone.'

'And black eyebrows?' Maggie put in.

'That's her,' Belinda agreed. I gave up. I believed them. When one good-looking girl examines another good-looking girl her eyes are turned into long-range telescopes. 'I followed her to the Kalverstraat,' Belinda continued. 'She went into a big store. She seemed to walk haphazardly through the ground floor but she wasn't being haphazard really for she fetched up pretty quickly at a counter marked "SOUVENIRS: EXPORT ONLY". The girl examined the souvenirs casually but I knew she was far more interested in the puppets than anything else.'

'Well, well, well,' I said. 'Puppets again. How did you know she was interested?'

'I just knew,' Belinda said in the tone of one trying to describe various colours to a person who has been blind from birth. 'Then after a while she started to examine a particular group of puppets very closely. After shilly-shallying for a while she made her choice, but I knew she wasn't shilly-shallying.' I kept prudent silence. 'She spoke to the assistant who wrote something on a piece of paper.'

'The time it would -- '

'The time it would take to write the average address.' She'd carried on blandly as if she hadn't heard me. 'Then the girl passed over money and left.'

'You followed her?'

'No. Am I a good girl too?'

'Yes.'

'And I wasn't followed.'

'Or watched? In the store, I mean. By, for instance, any big fat middle-aged man.'

Belinda giggled. 'Lots of big -- '

'All right, all right, so lots of big fat middle-aged men spend a lot of time watching you. And lots of young thin ones, too, I shouldn't wonder.' I paused consideringly. 'Tweedledum and Tweedledee, I love you both.'

They exchanged glances. 'Well,' Belinda said, 'that is nice.'

'Professionally speaking, dear girls, professionally speaking. Excellent reports from both, I must say. Belinda, you saw the puppet the girl chose?'

'I'm paid to see things,' she said primly.

I eyed her speculatively, but let it go. 'Quite. It was a Huyler costumed puppet. Like the one we saw in the warehouse.'

'How on earth did you know?'

'I could say I'm psychic. I could say "genius". The fact of the matter is that I have access to certain information that you two don't.'

'Well, then, share it with us.' Belinda, of course.

'No.'

'Why not?'

'Because there are men in Amsterdam who could take you and put you in a quiet dark room and make you talk.'

There was a long pause, then Belinda said: 'And you wouldn't?'

'I might at that,' I admitted. 'But they wouldn't find it so easy to get me into that quiet dark room in the first place.' I picked up a batch of the invoices. 'Either of you ever heard of the Kasteel Linden. No? Neither had I. It seems, however, that they supply our friends Morgenstern and Muggenthaler with a large proportion of pendulum clocks.'

'Why pendulum clocks?' Maggie asked.

'I don't know,' I lied frankly. 'There may be a connection. I'd asked Astrid to try to trace the source of a certain type of clock -- she had, you understand, a lot of underworld connections that she didn't want. But she's gone now. I'll look into it tomorrow.'

'We'll do it today,' Belinda said. 'We could go to this Kasteel place and -- *

'You do that and you're on the next plane back to England. Alternatively, I don't want to waste time dragging you up from the bottom of the moat that surrounds this castle. Clear?'

'Yes, sir,' they said meekly and in unison. It was becoming distressingly and increasingly plain that they didn't regard my bite as being anywhere near as bad as my bark.

I gathered the papers and rose. 'The rest of the day is yours. I'll see you tomorrow morning.'

Oddly, they didn't seem too happy about getting the rest of the day to themselves. Maggie said: 'And you?'

'A car trip to the country. To clear my head. Then sleep, then maybe a boat trip tonight.'

'One of those romantic night cruises on the canals?' Belinda tried to speak lightly but it didn't come off. She and Maggie appeared to be on to something I'd missed. 'You'll need someone to watch your back, won't you? I'll come.'

'Another time. But don't you two go out on the canals. Don't go near the canals. Don't go near the nightclubs. And, above all, don't go near the docks or that warehouse.'

'And don't you go out tonight either.' I stared at Magg
ie.
Never in five years had she spoken so vehemently, so fiercely even: and she's certainly never told me what to do. She caught my arm, another unheard-of thing. 'Please.'

'Maggie!'

'Do you have to take that boat trip tonight?'

'Now, Maggie -- •'

'At two o'clock in the morning?'

'What's wrong, Maggie? It's not like you to -- '

'I don't know. Yes, I do know. Somebody seems to be walking over my grave with hob-nailed boots.'

'Tell him to mind how he goes.'

Belinda took a step towards me. 'Maggie's right. You mustn't go out tonight.' Her face was tight with concern.

'You, too, Belinda?'

'Please.'

There was a strange tension in the room which I couldn't even begin to comprehend. Their faces were pleading, a curious near-desperation in their eyes, much as if I'd just announced that I was going to jump off a cliff.

Belinda said: 'What Maggie means is, don't leave us.' Maggie nodded. 'Don't go out tonight. Stay with us.' 'Oh, hell!' I said. 'Next time I need help abroad I'm going to bring a couple of big girls with me.' I made to move past them towards the door, but Maggie barred the way, reached up and kissed me. Only seconds later Belinda did the same.

'This is very bad for discipline,' I said. Sherman out of his depth. 'Very bad indeed.'

I opened the door and turned to see if they agreed with me. But they said nothing, just stood there looking curiously forlorn. I shook my head in irritation and left.

On the way back to the Rembrandt I bought brown paper and string. In the hotel room I used this to wrap up a complete kit of clothes that was now more or less recovered from the previous night's soaking, printed a fictitious name and address on it and took it down to the desk. The assistant manager was in position.

'Where's the nearest post office?' I asked.

'My dear Mr Sherman -- ' The punctiliously friendly greeting was automatic but he'd stopped smiling by this time -- 'we can attend to that for you.'

'Thank you, but I wish to register it personally.'

'Ah, I understand.' He didn't understand at all, which was that I didn't want brows raised or foreheads creased over the sight of Sherman leaving with a large brown parcel under his arm. He gave me the address I didn't want.

I put the parcel in the boot of the police car and drove through the city and the suburbs until I was out in the country, heading north. By and by I knew I was running alongside the waters of the Zuider Zee but I couldn't see them because of the high retaining dyke to the right of the road. There wasn't much to see on the left hand either: the Dutch countryside is not designed to send the tourist into raptures.

Presently I came to a signpost reading 'Huyler 5 km', and a few hundred yards further on turned left off the road and stopped the car soon after in the tiny square of a tiny picture-postcard village. The square had its post office and outside the post office was a public telephone-box. I locked the boot and doors of the car and left it there.

I made my way back to the main road, crossed it and climbed up the sloping grass-covered dyke until I could look out over the Zuider Zee. A fresh breeze sparkled the waters blue and white under the late afternoon sun, but, scenically, one couldn't say much more for that stretch of water, for the encompassing land was so low that it appeared, when it appeared at all, as no more than a flat dark bar on the horizon. The only distinctive feature anywhere to be seen was an island to the north-east, about a mile off-shore.

This was the island of Huyler and it wasn't even an island. It had been, but some engineers had built a causeway out to it from the mainland to expose the islanders more fully to the benefits of civilization and the tourist trade. Along the top of this causeway a tarmac highway had been laid.

Nor did the island itself even deserve the description of distinctive. It was so lowlying and flat that it seemed that a wave of any size must wash straight over it, but its flatness was relieved by scattered farm-houses, several big Dutch barns and, on the western shore of the island, facing towards the mainland, a village nestling round a tiny harbour. And, of course, it had its canals. That was all there was to be seen, so I left, regained the road, walked along till I came to a bus stop and caught the first bus back to Amsterdam.