Hopscotch (22 page)

Cutter was irritatingly natty in a dark blue suit, tie knotted properly; how much advance warning had he had? Or hadn't he been to bed yet? The lobby was empty except for the hall porter. Cutter said, “Car's picking us up,” and led the way out onto the curb of Park Lane. A few taxis whizzed by. A faint drizzle misted the air but there was no real fog. Ross buttoned up his topcoat against the chill and raked fingers through the mess of his hair. “What's happened?”

“He broke into Chartermain's house and the cops intercepted him.” Cutter laughed. “Think of that.”

“They've arrested him?”

“He was arrested. He made a break from the station house. He's on the loose again but they've
stripped him down to nothing. Here we go—this must be Chartermain.”

The chauffeured Humber slid in and the rear door popped open; Chartermain was leaning forward bulkily in the backseat. “Didn't expect to see you chaps again quite so soon.”

Cutter climbed across Chartermain's knees and Ross took the jump-seat and reached for the strap when the car lurched forward. “Flabbergasted me, truth to tell,” Chartermain said. “The cheek!”

“It's not far, is it?”

“Just round the park in Knightsbridge. Four minutes' drive this time of night. I say, I'm sorry to knock you out of bed at such a beastly hour.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Cutter said. Ross couldn't stifle a yawn.

Chartermain took an envelope from his pocket. He had a pair of tweezers; he extracted the envelope's contents with them. “Don't touch it—it hasn't been dusted yet. I never knew him to have such a sense of humor.”

Ross couldn't make it out. “What is it?”

Cutter was leafing through it with the point of his mechanical pencil. “Jules Parker's passport. I see he removed the photograph.”

Chartermain said, “Found it on my desk with a note. Dear William, I do hope you're enjoying the game—something like that. It's in here.” He tapped the envelope. “
Bloody
cheek.”

“Did he cop anything?”

“My passport. The police retrieved everything. They seem to think he took a great amount of money from the house but that couldn't have been mine. We don't keep loose money about.”

“Was it dollars or sterling?”

“Some of each. Total value near three thousand quid.”

“That'd be his own money,” Cutter said.

Chartermain was a short sandy man, square-faced and amiable in appearance; he was a little heavy but not grossly overweight. He had a false leg—the left one—but he didn't use a cane.

“Here we are.”

They went inside. There were only two policemen in the squad room. (Was it called a squad room over here?) A bulky man in shirt-sleeves hurried out of a doorway in a rear partition. “Captain Chartermain? I'm Sergeant Twomey.”

They went back into the partitioned office and Twomey made a gesture that encompassed the litter on his desk. “That's what he had on him.”

“And this is what he left in exchange.” Chartermain brought out the envelope. “I wonder if you'd be so kind as to have these things fingerprinted, Sergeant?”

Cutter was poking through the things on the desk. Ross watched him pick up a small plastic calendar. Cutter said, “Kingston Close Hotel,” in a musing voice.

The hall porter was sleepy but anxious to help. “Right, Sergeant, I'd say that's Mr. Davies right enough.”

He handed the IdentiKit composite back to Twomey and Twomey gave it back to Cutter but Cutter stayed his hand. “You'll want to keep that, I think. Scotland Yard will want to run off copies of it.”

Chartermain said to the hall porter, “You haven't seen Mr. Davies this evening, then.”

“I've been on duty since eight o'clock, sir. Haven't seen him tonight, no sir.”

Cutter said, “Then we'll want your passkey.”

Sergeant Twomey nodded to the hall porter and the key was produced. The four of them went up to the room and made the search. Ross said, “False bottom in this thing. But there's nothing in it.”

“For the manuscript,” Cutter said. “All right—so he's stashed it. Damn.”

They combed the room but Cutter was right; the manuscript wasn't there. Ross said, “No French passport either. Maybe he hid it with the manuscript?”

“Possibly,” Cutter said.

Ross said slowly, “Look Joe, he's got to retrieve that manuscript, right? It's only a suggestion but haven't they got things like bus-station lockers over here? Wouldn't it be a good idea to put surveillance on places like that?”

“It's a damned good idea,” Cutter said; and it galvanized Chartermain—the Englishman went directly to the phone. His limp was hardly perceptible.

Ross said, “He's had to abandon his clothes, even his razor and toothbrush. He hasn't got a dime on him. Joe, if he's ever going to need help from a friend it'll be now. Shouldn't we put coverage on every known contact of Kendig's in England?”

“It's worth a try.” Cutter smiled a little. “We might make a pro out of you yet, Ross.”

“Knock on wood but I think maybe there's a chance, Joe. We've got the London Police and half of Scotland Yard on it now and a lot of our own people and MI5—”

“And don't forget the Comrades,” Cutter said drily. “But hold onto that thought, Ross.”

Chartermain finished his call. “We'll have men on every rental locker in London within the hour. Good thinking, young man.” He turned to the police sergeant. “It would be best if you trotted straight over to the Yard with that composite drawing, Sergeant. This is an important manhunt—it's a matter of the highest security priority. I've impressed that on the Superintendent just now. I've told him to expect you. Our fugitive has been kind enough to commit a rather spectacular violation of the criminal laws and of course this places him within the Yard's jurisdiction. Now if you don't mind?”

“I'm on my way, Captain.” Twomey backed out of the room with the obsequiousness of a well-mannered bellhop.

“It looks as if our friend's making every possible effort to multiply the odds against him,” Chartermain said. “The man must be stark bonkers.”

“I don't think he counted on being arrested at your house,” Cutter said. “But he'll enjoy the additional challenge.”

“I don't have the foggiest understanding of the man's purpose. He's behaving quite irrationally. Do you still seriously maintain that he's got every last copy of that idiotic manuscript in one single parcel?”

“I suspect he has,” Cutter said. “He may have stashed the carbon copy somewhere but he'll be the only party who knows where it is.”

“A sensible man would have given instructions to have it opened in event of his death.”

“Not in this case.”

“I fail to understand that, Mr. Cutter.”

Ross watched for Cutter's reply but Cutter didn't make one; Ross stepped into it then because it occurred to him that Chartermain had to be given every chance to understand what they were dealing with. Ross said, “If he'd meant to make an exposure by publication he'd have written the whole book and mailed it out without telling us about it in advance. Kendig's playing a game, that's what we're involved in. Every game I know of is defined in terms of rules and the rules are always arbitrary. Kendig wants to prove his gamesmanship's better than ours. He defined the rules himself and he's playing strictly within them—they may be artificial and irrational as you say, but so are the rules of any game. Kendig wants to prove he can win without cheating. It's the only way to prove he's the best player. Does that make any sense?”

Chartermain nodded slowly, understanding what Ross had said but baffled nonetheless. But Cutter was looking at Ross with surprise and unconcealed admiration.

They ran a debriefing on the police sergeant and Chartermain's butler early in the morning and then Chartermain and Cutter called a joint evaluation meeting at nine o'clock; the fugitive was still at large. Ross had grabbed two hours of sleep which made him feel even groggier than before but at least he'd had a chance to shave and get into clean clothes. Riding up to Chartermain's floor in the lift he had Glenn Follett for company; he hadn't realized before how big Follett was but in the confined cage their eyes were on a level and Follett out-weighed
him by sixty pounds, his bulk emphasized by his camel's hair coat with its dark fur lapels. Follett's brown eyes looked excessively stupid in his sagging freckled face.

There were several maps on the walls of the conference room and each had its tray of colored pins—situation maps of the British Isles, London, Belfast, some of the other cities. There was no point trying to plot Kendig on a map like that, Ross thought; the man moved much too fast.

The room held a dozen people and a few more drifted in behind Ross and Follett—subordinates of Chartermain's and Follett's, a CID official representing the Scotland Yard Superintendent, two or three who were introduced to Ross by name only, no rank. One of them was American and had the rumpled look of a man who'd just stepped off a plane; it became clear in the milling confusion that the man was from some shadowy office in the White House.

There was a flurry of finding seats around the table. Follett sat down beside Ross and yawned in his face; Follett's breath made him turn away.

Cutter had been padding around the room like an intense hungry panther; he took the seat at Chartermain's right hand. Then someone's hard heels echoed on the floor outside and it was Myerson; he came in unsmiling, nodded to Cutter and Follett and Ross, shook hands with Chartermain, acknowledged the man from the White House, was introduced to the Britishers and took the chair that Cutter relinquished to him. Myerson looked dyspeptic as if he'd had too much cottage cheese and salad. He leaned over to say something to Cutter but Cutter didn't answer; he was chasing a line of thought.
Myerson tapped Cutter's arm and repeated the question and Ross heard the mutter of the reply but not its content.

Chartermain took the floor and brought things to order. “I think we all know the outlines of the situation. The fugitive is American of course but he's on British soil. It's equally imperative to both nations that this man be brought to earth in the shortest possible time. I've spoken with the Prime Minister and I must assure all of you quite bluntly that neither Downing Street nor the White House will tolerate the slightest foot-dragging or chauvinism in this matter. It demands a full and frank pooling of resources and I personally shall accept nothing less. No information is to be withheld by anyone for any reason. I trust I've made that quite clear. Now I'd like to call upon Chief Inspector Merritt to bring us up to date on Kendig's last known movements.”

Merritt was bald and had a thick brutal chin but his voice was pleasantly modulated and he didn't crutch himself on officialese. “Our man was last seen at approximately twenty past eleven last night, escaping west along Kensington Road in a car which was found this morning abandoned in a passage leading out of the Old Brompton Road. The car was dusted for fingerprints and then returned to its owner. The only prints we found were the owner's and a number of smudges. We've concentrated the foot-patrol search in the Chelsea area where the car was abandoned, but we're spreading the net wider as we go. And of course the composite photograph supplied by the Americans has been issued to every officer on duty in London and environs. Every man's been told it's a grave matter
and I can assure you gentlemen there's not a policeman in London who isn't comparing every passing face with the drawing in his hand.” Merritt's teeth clicked and he sat down as abruptly as he'd stood.

Chartermain reclaimed their attention. “I should remind all of you that the Soviets have a keen interest in finding our man. He possesses information they'd find quite useful. In concert with the Americans we've agreed to obstruct the Russians' efforts wherever possible. If any of them proves to be in your men's way, he should be arrested on the spot. We shall worry about the specific charges later as time permits; for the moment the purpose is to harass them and deny them whatever we can. The Soviet operation is being run personally by Mikhail Yaskov, who is a high senior member of KGB staff. The order to arrest Russian agents does not exclude Comrade Yaskov if he should happen to turn up. But let me emphasize that no effort is to be deleted from the hunt for Kendig for the purpose of throwing spanners in the Russian works. No one's to go out of his way in search of Communist spies.” He said the last with dry sarcasm, poked a stubby finger at Cutter and sat down.

Cutter didn't stand but he had enough magnetism to command undistracted attention from every pair of eyes in the room. “He won't make it easy for us. It'll be a fluke if he falls into our hands very fast. The purpose of this maximum effort is to wear him down, deny him escape routes, push him as inexorably as we can into a box. Every airport has to be under massive surveillance until further notice. The same for boat marinas, private airfields, shipping docks, boat-trains, ferry landings, helicopter
pads. Our first objective is to be certain we've got him bottled up on this island. It's a huge effort and a complicated one.” Cutter smiled coolly. “In any case our departments are obliged to spend their budget allocations before the end of the fiscal year because otherwise our budgets might be reduced next year. So never mind the expense. Pour everything into it. Don't let your people get discouraged when every gambit seems to lead into a cul-de-sac, And for God's sake make sure everybody tells us exactly what he knows, not what he thinks we want to hear.

“Now then,” Cutter continued, “we'll want special emphasis on the surveillance of rental lockers. We know Kendig didn't have his manuscript when he was arrested last night. It wasn't in his hotel room. It's hidden somewhere, and in due course he's going to have to collect it.”