Puppet On A Chain Part 7

'At least there's no mystery about that. Herta takes her there often -- to the church, I mean. All the Huyler people in Amsterdam go there. It's a Huguenot church -- there's one in Huyler as well, well, not so much a church, some sort of business premises they use on Sundays as a place of worship. Herta takes her there too -- the two of them go out to the island often. The churches and the Vondel Park -- those are the only outings the child has.'

Herta waddled into the room and van Gelder looked at her anxiously. Herta, with what might conceivably have pa.s.sed for an expression of satisfaction on her leathery features, shook her head and waddled out again.

'Well, thank G.o.d for that.' Van Gelder drained his gla.s.s. 'No injections.'

'Not this time.' I drained my gla.s.s in turn, said goodbye and left.

I paid off the taxi in the Marnixstraat. Van Gelder had phoned ahead to say I was coming and Colonel de Graaf was waiting for me. If he was busy, he showed no signs of it. He was engaged in his usual occupation of overflowing the chair he was sitting in, the desk in front of him was bare, his fingers were steepled under his chin and as I entered he brought his eyes down from a leisured contemplation of infinity.

'One a.s.sumes you make progress?' he greeted me.

'One a.s.sumes wrongly, I'm afraid.'

'What? No vistas of broad highways leading to the final solution?'

'Cul-de-sacs only.'

'Something about a car, I understand from the Inspector.'

'Please.'

'May one enquire why you wish this vehicle?' 'To drive up the cul-de-sacs. But that's not really what I came to ask you about.'

'I hardly thought it was.'

'I'd like a search warrant.'

'What for?'

'To make a search,' I said patiently. 'Accompanied by a senior officer or officers, of course, to make it legal.'

'Who? Where?'

'Morgenstern and Muggenthaler. Souvenir warehouse. Down by the docks -- I don't know the address.'

'I've heard of them.' De Graaf nodded, 'I know nothing against them. Do you?'

'No.'

'So what makes you so curious about them?'

'I honest to G.o.d don't know. I want to find out why I am so curious. I was in their place tonight -- '

'They're closed at night-time, surely.'

I dangled a set of skeleton keys in front of his eyes.

'You know it's a felony to be in possession of such instruments,' de Graaf said severely.

I put the keys back in my pocket. 'What instruments?'

'A pa.s.sing hallucination,' de Graaf said agreeably.

'I'm curious about why they have a time-lock on the steel door leading to their office. I'm curious about the large stocks of Bibles carried on their premises. 'I didn't mention the smell of cannabis or the lad lurking behind the puppets. 'But what I'm really interested in getting hold of is their list of suppliers.'

'A search warrant we can arrange on any pretext,' de Graaf said. I'll accompany you myself. Doubtless you'll explain your interest in greater detail in the morning. Now about this car. Van Gelder has an excellent suggestion. A specially-engined police car, complete with everything from two-way radio to handcuffs, but to all appearance a taxi, will be here in two minutes. Driving a taxi, you understand, poses certain problems.'

'I'll try not to make too much on the side. Have you anything else for me?'

'Also in two minutes. Your car is bringing some information from the Records Office.'

Two minutes it was and a folder was delivered to de Graaf's desk. He looked through some papers.

'Astrid Lemay. Her real name, perhaps oddly enough. Dutch father, Grecian mother. He was a vice-consul in Athens, now deceased. Whereabouts of mother unknown. Twenty-four. Nothing known against her -- nothing much known for her, either. Must say the background is a bit vague. Works as a hostess in the Balinova nightclub, lives in a small flat near-by. Has one known relative, brother George, aged twenty. Ah! This may interest you. George, apparently, has spent six months as Her Majesty's guest.'

'Drugs?'

'a.s.sault and attempted robbery, very amateurish effort, it seems. He made the mistake of a.s.saulting a plain-clothes detective. Suspected of being an addict -- probably trying to get money to buy more. All we have.' He turned to another paper. 'This MOO 144 number you gave me is the radio call-sign for a Belgian coaster, the Marianne, due in from Bordeaux tomorrow. I have a pretty efficient staff, no?'

'Yes.'

'When does it arrive?'

'Noon. We search it ?'

'You wouldn't find anything. But please don't go near it. Any ideas on the other two numbers?'

'Nothing, I'm afraid on 910020. Or on 2797.' He paused reflectively. 'Or could that be 797 twice -- you know. 797797?'

'Could be anything.'

De Graaf took a telephone directory from a drawer, put it away again, picked up a phone. 'A telephone number,' he said. '797797. Find out who's listed under that number. At once, please.'

We sat in silence till the phone rang. De Graaf listened briefly, replaced the receiver.

'The Balinova nightclub,' he said.

'The efficient staff has a clairvoyant boss.'

'And where does this clairvoyance lead you to?'

'The Balinova nightclub.' I stood up. 'I have a rather readily identifiable face, wouldn't you say, Colonel?'

'It's not a face people forget. And those white scars. I don't think your plastic surgeon was really trying.'

'He was trying all right. To conceal his almost total ignorance of plastic surgery. Have you any brown stain in this HQ?'

'Brown stain?' He blinked at me, then smiled widely. 'Oh no, Major Sherman! Disguise! In this day and age? Sherlock Holmes has been dead these many years.'

'If I'd half the brains Sherlock had,' I said heavily. 'I wouldn't be needing any disguise.'

CHAPTER SIX.

The yellow and red taxi they'd given me appeared, from the outside, to be a perfectly normal Opel, but they seemed to have managed to put an extra engine into it. They'd put a lot of extra work into it too. It had a pop-up siren, a pop-up police light and a panel at the back which fell down to illuminate a 'Stop' sign. Under the front pa.s.senger seats were ropes and first-aid kits and tear-gas canisters: in the door pockets were handcuffs with keys attached. G.o.d alone knew what they had in the boot. Nor did I care. All I wanted was a fast car, and I had one.

I pulled up in a prohibited parking area outside the Balinova nightclub, right opposite where a uniformed and be-holstered policeman was standing. He nodded almost imperceptibly and walked away with measured stride. He knew a police taxi when he saw one and had no wish to explain to the indignant populace why a taxi could get away with an offence that would have automatically got them a ticket.

I got out, locked the door, and crossed the pavement to the entrance of the nightclub which had above it the flickering neon sign 'Balinova' and the outlined neon figures of two hula-hula dancers, although I failed to grasp the connection between Hawaii and Indonesia. Perhaps they were meant to be Balinese dancers, but if that were so they had the wrong kind of clothes on -- or off. Two large windows were set one on either side of the entrance, and these were given up to an art exhibition of sorts which gave more than a delicate indication of the nature of the cultural delights and more esoteric scholarly pursuits that were to be found within. The occasional young lady depicted as wearing earrings and bangles and nothing else seemed almost indecently over-dressed. Of even greater interest, however, was the coffee-colourd countenance that looked back at me from the reflection in the gla.s.s: if I hadn't known who I was, I wouldn't have recognized myself. I went inside.

The Balinova, in the best time-honoured tradition, was small, stuffy, smoky and full of some indescribable incense, the main ingredient of which seemed to be burnt rubber, which was probably designed to induce in the customers the right frame of mind for the maximum enjoyment of the entertainment being presented to them but which had, in fact, the effect of producing olfactory paralysis in the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds. Even without the a.s.sistance of the drifting clouds of smoke the place was deliberately ill-lit, except for the garish spot-light on the stage which, as was again fairly standard, was no stage at all but merely a tiny circular dance floor in the centre of the room.

The audience was almost exclusively male, running the gamut of ages from goggle-eyed teen-agers to sprightly and beady-eyed octogenarians whose visual acuity appeared to have remained undimmed with the pa.s.sing of the years. Almost all of them were well-dressed, for the better-cla.s.s Amsterdam nightclubs -- those which still manage to cater devotedly to the refined palates of the jaded connoisseurs of certain of the plastic arts -- are not for those who are on relief. They are, in a word, not cheap and the Balinova was very, very expensive, one of the extremely few clip joints in the city. There were a few women present, but only a few. To my complete lack of surprise, Maggie and Belinda were seated at a table near the door, with some sickly-coloured drinks before them. Both of them wore aloof expressions, although Maggie's was unquestionably the more aloof of the two.

My disguise, at the moment, seemed completely superfluous. n.o.body looked at me as I entered and it was quite clear that n.o.body even wanted to look at me, which was understandable, perhaps, in the circ.u.mstances, as the audience were almost splitting their pebble gla.s.ses in their eagerness to miss none of the aesthetic nuances or symbolic significances of the original and thought-compelling ballet performance taking place before their enraptured eyes, in which a shapely young harridan in a bubble-bath, to the accompaniment of the discordant thumpings and asthmatic wheezings of an excruciating band that would not otherwise have been tolerated in a boiler factory, endeavoured to stretch out for a bath-towel that had been craftily placed about a yard beyond her reach. The air was electric with tension as the audience tried to figure out the very limited number of alternatives that were open to the unfortunate girl. I sat down at the table beside Belinda and gave her what, in the light of my new complexion, must have been a pretty dazzling smile. Belinda moved a rapid six inches away from me, lifting her nose a couple of inches higher in the air.

'Hoity-toity,' I said. Both girls turned to stare at me and I nodded towards the stage. 'Why doesn't one of you go and help her?'

There was a long pause, then Maggie said with great restraint: 'What on earth has happened to you?'

'I am in disguise. Keep your voice down.'

'But -- but I phoned the hotel only two or three minutes ago,' Belinda said.

'And don't whisper either. Colonel de Graaf put me on to this place. She came straight back here?'

They nodded.

'And hasn't gone out again?'

'Not by the front door,' Maggie said.

'You tried to memorize the faces of the nuns as they came out? As I told you to?'

'We tried,' Maggie said.

'Notice anything odd, peculiar, out of the ordinary about any of them?'

'No, nothing. Except,' Belinda added brightly, 'that they seem to have very good-looking nuns in Amsterdam.'

'So Maggie has already told me. And that's all?'

They looked at each other, hesitating, then Maggie said: 'There was something funny. We seemed to see a lot more people going into that church than came out.'

'There were a lot more people in that church than came out,' Belinda said. 'I was there, you know.'

'I know,' I said patiently. 'What do you mean by "a lot"?'

'Well,' Belinda said defensively, 'a good few.'

'Ha! So now we're down to a good few. You both checked, of course, that the church was empty?'

It was Maggie's turn to be defensive. 'You told us to follow Astrid Lemay. We couldn't wait.'

'Has it occurred to you that some may have remained behind for private devotions? Or that maybe you're not very good counters?'

Belinda's mouth tightened angrily but Maggie put a hand on hers.

That's not fair, Major Sherman.' And this was Maggie talking. 'We may make mistakes, but that's not fair.' When Maggie talked like that, I listened.

'I'm sorry, Maggie. I'm sorry, Belinda. When cowards like me get worried they take it out on people who can't hit back.' They both at once gave me that sweetly sympathetic smile that would normally have had me climbing the walls, but which I found curiously affecting at that moment, maybe that brown stain had done something to my nervous system. 'G.o.d only knows I make more mistakes than you do.' I did, and I was making one of my biggest then: I should have listened more closely to what the girls were saying. I'm sorry, Belinda. When cowards like me get worried they take it out on people who can't hit back.' They both at once gave me that sweetly sympathetic smile that would normally have had me climbing the walls, but which I found curiously affecting at that moment, maybe that brown stain had done something to my nervous system. 'G.o.d only knows I make more mistakes than you do.' I did, and I was making one of my biggest then: I should have listened more closely to what the girls were saying.

'And now?' Maggie asked.

'Yes, what do we do now?' Belinda said.

I was clearly forgiven. 'Circulate around the nightclubs hereabouts. Heaven knows there's no shortage of them. See if you can recognize anyone there -- performer, staff, maybe even a member of the audience -- who looks like anyone you saw in the church tonight.'

Belinda stared at me in disbelief. 'Nuns in a nightclub?'

'Why not? Bishops go to garden parties, don't they?'

'It's not the same thing -- '

'Entertainment is entertainment the world over,' I said pontifically. 'Especially check for those who are wearing long-sleeved dresses or those fancy elbow-length gloves.'

'Why those?' Belinda asked.

'Use your head. See -- if you do find anyone -- if you can find out where they live. Be back in your hotel by one o'clock. I'll see you there.'

'And what are you going to do?' Maggie asked.

I looked leisurely around the club. 'I've got a lot of research to do here yet.'

'I'll bet you have,' Belinda said.

Maggie opened her mouth to speak but Belinda was saved the inevitable lecture by the reverential 'oohs' and 'aahs' and gasps of unstinted admiration, freely given, that suddenly echoed round the club. The audience were almost out of their seats. The distressed artiste had resolved her dreadful dilemma by the simple but ingenious and highly effective expedient of tipping the tin bath over and using it, tortoise-sh.e.l.l fashion, to conceal her maidenly blushes as she covered the negligible distance towards the salvation of the towel. She stood up, swathed in her towel, Venus arising from the depths, and bowed with regal graciousness towards the audience, Madame Melba taking her final farewell of Covent Garden. The ecstatic audience whistled and called for more, none more so than the octogenarians, but in vain: her repertoire exhausted, she shook her head prettily and minced off the stage, trailing clouds of soap-bubbles behind her.

'Well, I never!' I said admiringly. 'I'll bet neither of you two would have thought of that.'

'Come, Belinda,' Maggie said. 'This is no place for us.'

They rose and left. As Belinda pa.s.sed she gave a twitch of her eyebrows which looked suspiciously like a wink, smiled sweetly, said, 'I rather like you like that,' and left me pondering suspiciously as to the meaning of her remark. I followed their progess to the exit to see if anyone followed them, and followed they were, first of all by a very fat, very heavily built character with enormous jowls and an air of benevolence, but this was hardly of any significance as he was immediately followed by several dozen others. The highlight of the evening was over, great moments like those came but seldom and the summits were to be rarely scaled again -- except three times a night, seven nights a week -- and they were off to greener pastures where hooch could be purchased at a quarter of the price.