Danger Is My Line Read online

  “Dusty,” Freya said.

  I nodded, lighting a match. To left and right the dust coated the floorboards evenly, but ahead of me little dust-ridges formed interlocking ovals on the floor. Footprints overlaying each other.

  “Someone’s been here?” Freya said.

  “Lots of people. When, I don’t know.”

  We went up a steep staircase at the rear of the room. It had a dragon’s-head newel post. The stairs creaked. They went curving up to the second floor landing and then up again to the third. The second floor consisted of a half dozen bedrooms, three on either side of a long hallway. There was nobody there. The mattresses were bare. On the floor in the second room on the right I found a cigarette butt. I stooped and picked it up, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. The tobacco wasn’t moist enough so you’d enjoy smoking it, but it wasn’t dry as straw either.

  “Two or three days old,” I told Freya.

  “Then they were here?”

  “Someone was.”

  Freya nodded, and I dropped the butt. That was when we heard the noise.

  It was a rhythmic creaking, scraping sound repeated over and over. It came from somewhere upstairs and it became quickly fainter, as if whatever made it was running down in a hurry. Then it stopped. Then it started up again—three, four times, frantically—creak, scrape, creak, scrape. Then silence. Freya frowned. I looked over her shoulder at the bare bed. It had casters.

  Bedsprings and casters, I thought. The creak of bed-springs. The scrape of casters on a wood floor.

  “Someone’s up there,” I said. I started running.

  The room smelled.

  It was a small bedroom, in back, on the top floor of the town house. The low ceiling slanted under the angle of the eaves. The room was no bigger than a monk’s cell and furnished like one with a single bed and a small, unpainted chest. Feeble light came in through the small, yellow-tinted leaded-glass window.

  A man lay on his back, spread-eagled, wrists and ankles bound to the bed-posts. His body jerked convulsively as I came in, making the bedsprings creak and the casters scrape. The bed stood about a foot away from the rear wall and it moved another inch or so as the spread-eagled man strained against the heavy ropes that held him there. He made a subdued little whimpering sound which must have been a scream of terror to him. A wide strip of adhesive tape covered his mouth. Small and scrawny, he wore dark slacks and a filthy white shirt open at the collar.

  It was Ollie Meer.

  The right shoulder of the shirt was dark with blood. Meer’s efforts to make noise had opened the flesh wound in his shoulder. His eyes saw me, opening wide, then blinking rapidly. His features bunched and grimaced as if he was crying, but no tears came. Ollie Meer was too dehydrated for tears.

  I went over to him. He had wet and dirtied himself. A shudder passed through his body, and after that only his eyes moved, watching me. I heard Freya in the doorway behind me. Her breath caught.

  “Go see if you can find some water,” I said. “He’s probably been here like this for days.”

  I pulled the adhesive tape off Meer’s mouth. The flesh of his lips was puckered and dry. Dark red but bloodless cracks grooved it. Meer made a hoarse sound, and another. His voice was a rasping croak in his throat and he let his breath out, stiff dry lips parted, in a long quavering sigh: “Ahh-ahh-ahhhh …”

  “Take it easy,” I said while I unbound his hands. I heard Freya’s footsteps on the stairs. “Let’s get some water in you.”

  “Ahhh … Maja …” he croaked.

  Freya came in with a pot of water and a glass. I unbound Meer’s ankles. He reached one hand out for the glass but was too weak to make it. I propped ‘him up and held the glass to his lips. He swallowed convulsively, then choked and began to cough. He retched emptily.

  I eased him back down on the bed, dipped my handkerchief in the pot of water and held it dripping wet against’ Meer’s cracked lips. Water dribbled down his chin, but he swallowed some too.

  “The poor man,” Freya said. “How long has he been like this?”

  A stubble of beard darkened Meer’s gaunt cheeks. His right hand scrabbled over the mattress and up over his chest and jaw to the wet handkerchief on his lips. He pressed it there. His lower jaw moved.

  “Maja,” he said. “… pelago …”

  “Three, four days, from the look of him,” I told Freya. “Think you can find Heyst’s man outside?”

  “I can try.”

  “Tell him we need a doctor. Okay?”

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Got … Maja,” Meer croaked. “… chipelago …”

  “On the Archipelago?”

  His head moved a little, up and down.

  “The Schroeder beach house?”

  His head moved again.

  I wet the handkerchief again and placed it over his lips. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his scrawny throat in a swallowing motion.

  “Listen,” I said. “You’re going to be all right now. I sent the girl for a doctor.” I couldn’t hear Freya’s footsteps on the stairs any longer. “Can you answer some questions?”

  Meer nodded promptly.

  “Good. Nod if the answer’s yes. Shake your head if it’s no. Don’t do anything if you don’t know. All right?”

  Meer nodded again.

  “Was Laxness with them?”

  Meer shook his head.

  “How long have you been here?”

  He didn’t respond to that one.

  “Try to think. How many times did it get dark? Two—three—four?”

  I spaced the numbers a breath apart. Meer nodded at three. He had been here, on a bare bed, in a small room, without food and water and with the sounds of a large, busy city all around him, for three nights. Try to get the picture—voices and footsteps outside, shouts, laughter, shoe-leather on cobblestones, an occasional car,, the boathorns in the big canals, and Meer in here, bound hand and foot, gagged, unable to reach out for the help that was so close all around him.

  “They were drugging Maja,” I said. “You must have found out. Is that why they left you here?”

  Meer shook his head. “Medicine … I knew …”

  But there were easier, surer ways to kill a man. I had to assume they hadn’t merely left Ollie Meer here to die. I said, “They wanted you to be found, didn’t they?”

  Meer nodded.

  “Who by? Me?”

  Once more he nodded. “No cops,” he said. “Take you …”

  I propped his head up, and this time he was able to swallow a little water from the glass and keep it down.

  “They could have killed me in Akureyri,” I said. “I was out on my feet.”

  Meer shook his head. “Shots. Two … hikers came.”

  “They could have left a gunman here for me if they thought I’d come.”

  “… loose ends …” Meer croaked hoarsely.

  Then I got it, or thought I did. Except for what help Birger Heyst’s man could give us, Freya and I were in this alone. But they had no way of knowing that. Figure they wanted to take me out of the picture. Could they—would they—do it before finding out who was backing me up?

  But Dr. Kvaran had tried to kill me in Akureyri. Then why the change of heart? That was easy. When I’d pulled out of Iceland, the police had Kvaran, and he was singing like a bird—every third word Laxness.

  So, Laxness wanted me dead.

  And the Baroness or Kolding or both wanted information out of me first.

  Laxness hadn’t showed up here yet. The Baroness and Kolding were running the show. And part of it, the big act before the climax, was leaving Meer here where they could be pretty sure I would find him, pretty sure I would ask him a few questions and take off after them.

  Then I thought: how dumb can you get, Drum? If they did that, and if I wasn’t working alone, I could lead the cops to them. I scowled. Then I had another part of the answer.

  They didn’t have to worry about the cops. Maja was si
ck, her brother had brought her here to Sweden as the Baroness’ guest. So what? Heyst had given me the answer to that one. They were guilty of no crime in Sweden.

  But Meer …

  Meer could finger them for attempted murder. His own. That would give them a rap to face in Sweden, and I was right back where I started.

  I looked at Meer. My throat felt dry. I had another piece of the puzzle. Meer would be a one-shot Judas Ram. He had to be. He wasn’t supposed to leave this house alive, or sure as hell wasn’t supposed to reach the Schroeder beach place alive.

  But why Meer? A thug with a gun could have picked me up just as easily while I checked out the Baroness’ various addresses.

  Except that, with nothing to distract me, I might give a thug some trouble. Meer, half dead from thirst, would lower my guard. One Judas Ram named Meer and one sitting duck named Drum.

  “Have I got them worried?” I asked Meer. “They want to see who’s backing my play, is that it?”

  He nodded.

  And I heard footsteps on the stairs. Not just Freya. More than one person, coming up.

  22

  I WAS FLAT AGAINST THE WALL alongside the door when he came in. The first thing I saw was a heavy black automatic. An arm in a gray jacket sleeve, slightly bent at the elbow, followed it. Behind that, the expected shoulder and the head with blond hair, a big head for a big man, the eyes narrow and cautious. They saw Meer on the bed, started to turn toward me.

  Striking with Heyst’s Beretta, I hit the out-thrust arm at the wrist-bone. The heavy automatic thudded to the floor. I grabbed the sleeve, yanking its owner into the room, shoving him toward the bed.

  Then things happened fast. I saw Freya’s face in the dim doorway. I started toward the gunman with the Beretta pointed at his back. I saw Meer on the bed, his eyes wide, his lips moving. Freya started to say something but another voice, louder, cut her off.

  “Drop it.”

  A man’s voice, from the doorway.

  There had been two of them.

  “Drop it or I’ll shoot.”

  Freya said, “He has a gun, Chet.”

  I dropped the Beretta.

  The big blond guy turned around, stooped, retrieved it. He used his left hand. His right was out of action for a while, but the left was all he needed. Holding the Beretta flat on his palm, he slammed me across the cheek with it. The room liquified, spinning. I lurched against the window sill, saw that dark clouds had covered the blue sky.

  The man in the doorway said something in Swedish. The blond guy shrugged, thrusting the Beretta in his jacket pocket, massaging Ms hurt right wrist with the fingers of his left hand.

  I turned away from the window. Freya stood inside the doorway, her face drawn and pale. Next to her a dark, narrow-faced man pointed the muzzle of a .32 revolver at me. He moved the gun an inch and the big blond guy mugged me from behind, circling my throat with his left arm. He gave me a hard all-over frisk with his right hand. It was slow work because his hand hurt. He said one word in Swedish. The narrow-faced man nodded, and I could breathe again.

  Not mugging her, the blond guy gave Freya the same kind of all-over frisk. His big hand lingered at the roundness of breast and buttock. His eyes were moist white slits. Freya slapped him, her eyes coldly furious. He backhanded her, hard, and she stumbled against the wall and sat down at its base, her skirt up over her thighs, one leg stiffly out-thrust, one high-heeled pump off on its side on the floor.

  I looked down at her and did something foolish. I jumped the big blond guy. He met me halfway. He was glad to oblige. Two big men, driven by rage, we came together bone-jarringly. His arms locked behind my ribs. He brought a knee up and I turned my thigh to meet it. I clasped my fingers behind his upthrust knee, pulling forward and up. He began to fall, not letting go. I went down on top of him.

  His eyes bugged as I leaned my weight on my forearm and my forearm on his throat. Then the narrow-faced man crossed the room in front of us. Ollie Meer watched him. Something went out of Meer’s eyes. Frantically he tried to move, tried to roll off the bed. The narrow-faced man picked up the pillow and shoved his revolver into its softness. He stood over Meer that way. Looking at death, Meer’s jaw was slack.

  Even as I shifted my weight to my knees I knew I wouldn’t be in time to help Meer. The pillow jerked in the narrow-faced man’s hand. The hidden gun made a popping sound twice.

  A hole appeared in Ollie Meer’s forehead and another just below his left eye. His legs drummed on the bare mattress. Freya sobbed once. Then Meer’s body went as slack as a dummy stuffed with straw.

  “Now you can get up,” the narrow-faced man told me.

  I got up. Groaning, the blond guy caressed his throat with narcissistic self-pity.

  The narrow-faced man dropped the scorched pillow on Meer’s body. “I assume you realize he was slated for death,” he said with that astonishing detachment that characterizes the paid professional killer. His English was excellent, but from his tone he might have been discussing the Swedish krona’s exchange rate or the collection of knick-knacks on the ground floor of the Schroeder town house. “I also assume, Mr. Drum, that you realize any further attempt at violence on your part would be quite futile. Well, shall we go? They’re expecting us on the Archipelago.”

  The blond guy staggered to his feet, almost falling again when he bent for his automatic. He put that in his other jacket pocket. He glared at me. Narrow-face shot an order at him in Swedish. “Gently, Hans,” he added in English.

  And gently Hans helped Freya up.

  The acrid smell of gunpowder hung in the room like a memory of violent death. We left it there with Ollie Meer’s body and went downstairs, Hans first with Freya, then me, then narrow-face.

  A four-door Volvo Amazon was parked just outside the door. Behind it a little ways down the street was the maroon Saab. A man sat in it behind the wheel, his head slumped forward. Shouting, another man was just opening the door of the Saab. The man behind the wheel fell out and landed heavily in the street. The other man shouted again. Two chimney sweeps in sooty coveralls, their faces black, wire brooms on their shoulders, came running up. A woman wearing sunglasses and carrying a camera stopped to watch. They all gathered around Inspector Heyst’s plainclothesman.

  “In back,” narrow-face told me.

  I got in the back of the Volvo, Hans shoving in behind me. He held the Beretta in his right hand, its barrel resting on the crook of his bent left elbow and pointing at me. Freya went in front with narrow-face, who sat down behind the wheel and started the car.

  As we passed the maroon Saab, I saw the plainclothesman trying to get up. Probably he had been sapped. We drove out of Old City on Strom Bridge, past the opera and past the big theater on Nybroplan to Strandvagen.

  The Saab didn’t follow us, of course.

  We were on our own now.

  By the time we had driven through Nobel Park and pulled up at a jetty beyond it, slow fat raindrops had begun to fall from the black thunderheads that had piled up in the east and scudded overhead.

  “Everybody out,” narrow-face said, and then the rain really began to come down. It drummed the water beyond the jetty to froth and sent a few fishermen scurrying for cover under the trees in the park. Alone I might have made a break for it then. In the driving rain and the wind and the dim murky light the storm had brought to Stockholm, I’d have had a good chance. But Freya? I trotted obediently across the jetty to a cabin cruiser that was moored there. Freya stumbled once in her high heels on the wet planking. I caught her, and narrow-face’s gun was nudging my back when we straightened up.

  The cruiser’s powerful inboard engine was already idling when we boarded. A man on the small stern deck cast off the hawser. He was dripping wet, but remained where he was as we went past him. Lightning split the slatey sky, and then we were moving.

  I helped Freya down from the stern deck to the boat’s small cockpit. Hans jumped after us. But for a moment narrow-face remained on deck, silhouetted against t
he dark sky.

  At the head of the cockpit the cabin door opened. “Down,” Hans said suddenly. “Get down.”

  He shoved Freya against the starboard bulkhead and dropped down behind her. I saw the man who had cast off the hawser, who was still out on the stern deck with narrow-face, drop to hands and knees. The motion must have startled narrow-face. He turned half-way around.

  Just then Einar Laxness came out of the cabin.

  Thin and wiry in a brown suit, his long dark blond hair not parted but combed neatly back, the scar on his left cheek very white, he took just one step out into the rain. He held an automatic in his hand, and it was pointing at narrow-face. His own face, high-cheekboned and gaunt, the eyes all but shut, had no expression on it at all.

  Narrow-face pivoted toward the cockpit. He had a gun, but so did Laxness—and Laxness had already taken dead aim. He fired three times.

  With the first shot narrow-face jerked stiffly upright, with the second he dropped his own gun. The third drove him back across the deck, his arms gyrating grotesquely.

  The man who had cast off the hawser caught him before he could fall overboard. Hans joined them on deck, lugging the cabin cruiser’s anchor, its cable trailing behind him. In less than a minute they had bound narrow-face’s body with the anchor cable. They pushed toward the rear of the deck, the anchor scraping. A final shove and he went overboard. There was a great splash in the water behind us. The body went down like a stone. I never even got a glimpse of it in the water.

  They had gone about it so quickly—Laxness shooting narrow-face, Hans and the other man anchoring him and sinking him—that they might have got away with it at high noon in bright sunlight in the busiest harbor in the world. Now, heading out for the Stockholm Archipelago in a thunderstorm, they could have bungled and delayed and sent up flares without any danger of being observed.

  Figure narrow-face had worked for Gustaf Kolding and the Baroness. His job—to stake out the town house in Old City until I showed up, to kill Meer when I appeared, to take me to the Archipelago. He had made all the arrangements, even including the waiting cabin cruiser. But he couldn’t have handled it alone, of course—he had Hans, he had the guy who had cast off the hawser, he had whoever was inside the cabin at the wheel.