‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee,’ I said. ‘All alone in wicked Amsterdam. Everything all right?’
‘No.’ There was a positive note in Belinda’s voice.
‘No?’ I let my surprise show.
She gestured to indicate room. ‘Well, I mean, look at it.’
I looked at it. ‘So?’
‘Would you live here?’
‘Well, frankly, no. But then five-star hotels are for managerial types like myself. For a couple of struggling typists these quarters are perfectly adequate. For a couple of young girls who are not the struggling typists they appear to be this provides about as complete a degree of anonymity of background as you can hope to achieve.’ I paused. ‘At least, I hope. I assume you’re both in the clear. Anyone on the plane you recognized?’
‘No.’ They spoke in unison with an identical shake of the head.
‘Anyone in Schiphol you recognized?’
‘No.’
‘Anyone take any particular interest in you at Schiphol?’
‘No.’
‘This room bugged?’
‘No.’
‘Been out?’
‘Yes.’
‘Been followed?’
‘No.’
‘Room searched in your absence?’
‘No.’
‘You look amused, Belinda,’ I said. She wasn’t exactly giggling but she was having a little difficulty with her facial muscles. ‘Do tell. I need cheering up.’
‘Well.’ She was suddenly thoughtful, perhaps recalling that she hardly knew me at all. ‘Nothing. I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry about what, Belinda?’ An avuncular and encouraging tone which had the odd effect of making her wriggle uncomfortably.
‘Well, all those cloak-and-dagger precautions for a couple of girls like us. I don’t see the need — ‘
‘Do be quiet, Belinda!’ That was Maggie, quicksilver as ever in the old man’s defence though God knew why. I’d had my professional successes that, considered by themselves, totted up to a pretty impressive list but a list that, compared to the quota of failures, paled into a best-forgotten insignificance. ‘Major Sherman,’ Maggie went on severely, ‘always knows what he is doing.’
‘Major Sherman,’ I said frankly, ‘would give his back teeth to believe in that.’ I looked at them speculatively. ‘I’m not changing the subject, but how about some of the old commiseration for the wounded master?’
‘We know our place,’ Maggie said primly. She rose, peered at my forehead and sat down again. ‘Mind you, it does seem a very small piece of sticking plaster for what seemed such a lot of blood.’
‘The managerial classes bleed easily, something to do with sensitive skins, I understand. You heard what happened?’
Maggie nodded. ‘This dreadful shooting, we heard you tried — ‘
‘To intervene. Tried, as you so rightly said.’ I looked at Belinda. ‘You must have found it terribly impressive, first time out with your new boss and he gets clobbered the moment he sets foot in a foreign country.’
She glanced involuntarily at Maggie, blushed — platinum blondes of the right sort blush very easily — and said defensively: ‘Well, he was too quick for you.’
‘He was all of that,’ I agreed. ‘He was also too quick for Jimmy Duclos.’
‘Jimmy Duclos?’ They had a gift for speaking in unison.
‘The dead man. One of our very best agents and a friend of mine for many years. He had urgent and, I assume, vital information that he wished to deliver to me in person in Schiphol. I was the only person in England who knew he would be there. But someone in this city knew. My rendezvous with Duclos was arranged through two completely unconnected channels, but someone not only knew I was coming but also knew the precise flight and time and so was conveniently on hand to get to Duclos before he could get to me. You will agree, Belinda, that I wasn’t changing the subject? You will agree that if they knew that much about me and one of my associates, they may be equally well informed about some other of my associates.’
They looked at each other for a few moments, then Belinda said in a low voice: ‘Duclos was one of us?’
‘Are you deaf?’ I said irritably.
‘And that we — Maggie and myself, that is — ‘
‘Precisely.’
They seemed to take the implied threats to their lives fairly calmly, but then they’d been trained to do a job and were here to do a job and not fall about in maidenly swoons. Maggie said: ‘I’m sorry about your friend.’
I nodded.
‘And I’m sorry if I was silly,’ Belinda said. She meant it too, all contrition, but it wouldn’t last. She wasn’t the type. She looked at me, extraordinary green eyes under dark eyebrows and said slowly: They’re on to you, aren’t they?’
That’s my girl,’ I said approvingly. ‘Worrying about her boss. On to me? Well, if they’re not they have half the staff at the Hotel Rembrandt keeping tabs on the wrong man. Even the side entrances are watched: I was tailed when I left tonight.’
‘He didn’t follow you far.’ Maggie’s loyalty could be positively embarrassing.
‘He was incompetent and obvious. So are the others there. People operating on the fringes of junky-land frequently are. On the other hand they may be deliberately trying to provoke a reaction. If that’s their intention, they’re going to be wildly successful.’
‘Provocation?’ Maggie sounded sad and resigned. Maggie knew me.
‘Endless. Walk, run, or stumble into everything. With both eyes tightly shut.*
This doesn’t seem a very clever or scientific way of investigation to me,’ Belinda said doubtfully. Her contrition was waning fast.
‘Jimmy Duclos was clever. The cleverest we had. And scientific. He’s in the city mortuary.’
Belinda looked at me oddly. ‘You will put your neck under the block?’
‘On the block, dear,’ Maggie said absently. ‘And don’t go on telling your new boss what he can and can’t do.’ But her heart wasn’t in her words for the worry was in her eyes.
‘It’s suicide,’ Belinda persisted.
‘So? Crossing the streets in Amsterdam is suicide — or looks like it. Tens of thousands of people do it every day.’ I didn’t tell them that I had reason to believe that my early demise did not head the list of the ungodly priorities, not because I wished to improve my heroic image, but because it would only lead to the making of more explanations which I did not at the moment wish to make.
‘You didn’t bring us here for nothing,’ Maggie said.
That’s so. But any toe-tramping is my job. You keep out of sight. Tonight, you’re free. Also tomorrow, except that I want Belinda to take a walk with me tomorrow evening. After that, if you’re both good girls, I’ll take you to a naughty night-club.’
‘I come all the way from Paris to go to a naughty night-club?’ Belinda was back at being amused again. ‘Why?’
‘I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you some things about nightclubs you don’t know. I’ll tell you why we’re here. In fact,’ I said expansively, ‘I’ll tell you everything.’ By ‘everything’ I meant everything I thought they needed to know, not everything there was to tell: the differences were considerable. Belinda looked at me with anticipation. Maggie with a wearily affectionate scepticism, but then Maggie knew me. ‘But first, some Scotch.’
‘We have no Scotch, Major.’ Maggie had a very puritanical side to her at times.
‘Not even au fait with the basic principles of intelligence. You must learn to read the right books.’ I nodded to Belinda. The phone. Get some. Even the managerial classes must relax occasionally.’
Belinda stood up, smoothing down her dark dress and looking at me with a sort of puzzled disfavour. She said slowly: ‘When you spoke about your friend in the mortuary I watched and you showed nothing. He’s still there and now you are — what is the word — flippant. Relaxing, you say. How can you do this?’
‘Practice. And a siphon of soda.’
CHAPTER THREE
It was classical night that night at the Hotel Rembrandt with the barrel-organ giving forth a rendition of an excerpt from Beethoven’s Fifth that would have had the old composer down on his knees giving eternal thanks for his almost total deafness. Even at fifty yards, the distance from which I was prudently observing through the now gently drizzling rain, the effect was appalling: it was an extraordinary tribute to the tolerance of the people of Amsterdam, city of music-lovers and home of the world-famous Concertgebouw, that they didn’t lure the elderly operator into a convenient tavern and, in his absence, trundle his organ into the nearest canal. The ancient was still rattling his can at the end of his stick, a purely reflex action for there was no one about that night, not even the doorman, who had either been driven inside by the rain or was a music-lover.
I turned down the side-street by the bar entrance. There was no figure lurking about adjacent doorways or in the entrance to the bar itself, nor had I expected to find any. I made my way round to the alley and the fire-escape, climbed up to the roof, crossed it and located the stretch of coaming that directly overhung my own balcony.