‘Empty, sir,’ he said. ‘We’ve even been up the belfry.’ De Graaf turned away and looked at the blue van.
‘If Sergeant Gropius says there’s no one there, then there’s no one there.’ He paused, then said slowly: ‘Van Gelder’s a brilliant man. We know that now. He’s not in the church. He’s not in Goodbody’s house. My men have both sides of the canal and the street sealed off. So, he’s not here. He’s elsewhere.’
‘He’s elsewhere, but he’s here,’ I said. ‘If we don’t find him, how long will you keep the cordon in position?’
‘Till we’ve searched and then double-checked every house in the street. Two hours, maybe three.’
‘And then he could walk away?’
‘He could. If he was here.’
‘He’s here,’ I said with certainty. ‘It’s Saturday evening. Do the building workers turn out on Sundays?’
‘No.’
‘So that gives him thirty-six hours. Tonight, even tomorrow night, he comes down and walks away.’
‘My head.’ Again de Graaf dabbed at his wound. ‘Van Gelder’s gun butt was very hard. I’m afraid — ‘
‘He’s not down here,’ I said patiently. ‘Searching the house is a waste of time. And I’m damned certain he’s not at the bottom of the canal holding his breath all the time. So where can he be?’
I looked speculatively up into the dark and wind-torn sky. De Graaf followed my line of sight. The shadowy outline of the towering crane seemed to reach up almost to the clouds, the tip of its massive horizontal boom lost in the surrounding darkness. The great crane had always struck me as having a weirdly menacing atmosphere about it: tonight — probably because of what I had in mind — it looked awesome and forbidding and sinister to a degree.
‘Of course,’ de Graaf whispered. ‘Of course.’
I said: ‘Well, then, I’d better be going.’
‘Madness! Madness! Look at you, look at your face. You’re not well.’
‘I’m well enough.’
‘Then I’m coming with you,’ de Graaf said determinedly.
‘No.’
‘I have young, fit police officers — ‘
‘You haven’t the moral right to ask any of your men, young and fit or not, to do this. Don’t argue. I refuse. Besides, this is no case for a frontal assault. Secrecy, stealth — or nothing.’
‘He’s bound to see you.’ Unwillingly or not, de Graaf was coming round to my point of view.
‘Not bound to. From his point of view everything below must be in darkness.’
‘We can wait,’ he urged. ‘He’s bound to come down. Some time before Monday morning he’s bound to come down.’
‘Van Gelder takes no delight in death. That we know. But he’s totally indifferent to death. That we know also. Lives — other people’s lives — mean nothing to him.’ ‘So?’
‘Van Gelder is not down here. But neither is Belinda. So she’s up there with him — and when he does come down he’ll bring his living shield with him. I won’t be long.’
He made no further effort to restrain me. I left him by the church door, crossed into the building lot, reached the body of the crane and began to climb the endless series of diagonally placed ladders located within the lattice framework of the crane. It was a long climb and one that, in my present physical condition, I could well have done without, but there was nothing particularly exhausting or dangerous about it. Just a long and very tiring climb: the dangerous bit still lay ahead. About three quarters of the way up I paused to catch my breath and looked down.
There was no particular impression of height for the darkness was too complete, the faint street lamps along the canal were only pinpoints of light and the canal itself but a dully gleaming ribbon. It all seemed so remote, so unreal. I couldn’t make out the shape of any of the individual houses: all I could discern was the weathercock on the tip of the church steeple and even that was a hundred feet beneath me.
I looked up. The control cabin of the crane was still fifty feet above me, a vaguely seen rectangular darkness against a sky almost as dark. I started to climb again.
Ten feet only separated me from the trapdoor inset in the floor of the cabin when a gap appeared in the clouds and a low moon shone through, a half-moon only, but the contrasting brightness bathed the yellow-painted crane and its massive boom in an oddly garish flood of light that highlit every girder and cross-member of the structures. It also highlit me and had the peculiar effect of making me feel as aircraft pilots feel when caught up in a search-light, of being pinned to a wall. I looked up again and could see every rivet-head in the trapdoor and the thought occurred to me that if I could see so well upwards anyone inside could see just as well downwards, and as the more time spent in that exposed position increased the chances of discovery I took my gun from its holster and crept silently up the last few steps of the ladder. I was less than four feet away when the trapdoor lifted a little and a long and very ugly-looking gun barrel protruded through the crack. I should, I know, have felt the chagrin and sickness which comes with the despair of the knowledge of ultimate defeat, but I’d been through too much that day, I’d used up all my emotions, and I accepted the inevitable with a fatalism that surprised even myself. It wasn’t any question of willing submission, give me half a chance and I’d have shot it out with him. But I had no chance at all and I just accepted that.
‘This is a twenty-four-shot riot gun,’ van Gelder said. His voice had a metallically cavernous ring to it with sepulchral overtones that didn’t seem at all out of place. ‘You know what that means?’ ‘I know what that means.’ ‘Let me have your gun, butt first.’
I handed over my gun with the good grace and expertise that came from long experience of handing over guns. ‘Now that little gun in your sock.’
I handed over the little gun in my sock. The trapdoor opened and I could see van Gelder quite clearly in the moonlight shining through the cabin windows. ‘Come in,’ he said. ‘There’s plenty of room.’ I clambered up into the cabin. As van Gelder had said, there was plenty of room, the cabin could have accommodated a dozen people at a pinch. Van Gelder, his usual calm and unruffled self, carried a shoulder-slung and very unpleasant-looking automatic gun. Belinda sat on the floor in a corner, pale-faced and exhausted, with a large Huyler puppet lying beside her. Belinda tried to smile at me but her heart wasn’t in it: she had that defenceless and forlorn air about her that near as a toucher had me at van Gelder’s throat, gun or no gun, but sanity and a swift estimate of the distance involved made me settle for lowering the trapdoor gently and straightening up in an equally circumspect manner. I looked at the gun.
‘I suppose you got that from the police car?’ I said.
‘You suppose right.’
‘I should have checked on that.’
‘You should.’ Van Gelder sighed. ‘I knew you would come, but you’ve come a long way for nothing. Turn round.’
I turned round. The blow that struck the back of my head was delivered with nothing like the vigour and the pride in his handiwork that Marcel had displayed, but it was still enough to stun me for a moment and bring me to my knees. I was vaguely conscious of something cold and metallic encircling my left wrist and when I began to take an active interest in what was going on around me again I found that I was sitting almost shoulder to shoulder with Belinda, handcuffed to her right wrist and with the chain passing through the metal hand grip above the trapdoor. I rubbed the back of my head tenderly: what with the combined efforts of Marcel and Goodbody and now van Gelder, it had had a rough passage that day and ached abominably just about wherever a head could ache.
‘Sorry about the head,’ van Gelder said. ‘But I’d as soon have put handcuffs on a conscious tiger. Well, the moon’s almost obscured. One minute and I’ll be gone. Three minutes and I’ll be on terra firma.’
I stared at him in disbelief. ‘You’re going down?’
‘What else? But not quite in the way you imagine. I’ve seen the police cordon getting in position — but no one seems to have caught on to the fact that the tip of the crane extends over the canal and at least sixty feet beyond the cordon. I have already lowered the hook to ground level.’
My head hurt too much for me to come up with a suitable comment: in the circumstances, there probably was none. Van Gelder slung his gun crosswise over one shoulder and secured the puppet with cord over his other shoulder. Then he said softly: ‘Ah, the moon is gone.’