The Grab: A Classic Crime Novel. Gordon Landsborough

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      He smiled. “That,” he said dryly, “won’t help us very much. I want you to give me your description of this girl.”

      I said: “Look, brother, why don’t you go down to Reception and ask that two-timing Benny something about his female guests in this hotel? He should know who’s in the hotel, and he should be able to say who’s missing now.”

      That young officer was watching me all the time I spoke. There was a thoughtful look in his calm, rather humorous-looking brown eyes. Then he said: “I’ve already spoken to the night receptionist.”

      “Yeah?”

      “The man you call Benny says he has been round the hotel and can account for all the female guests.”

      We looked at each other for a few seconds. And then I took a deep breath and I came out heavily with: “Benny’s in on this, whatever it is. He’s a slimy sonavobitch, and money will get him to do anything or say anything.”

      I looked at the police officer to see what he thought about my statement. But he was a police officer, and trained to be diplomatic. He merely nodded, and that could mean anything.

      I was raw inside about Benny’s statement, because it clashed with my own. In fact it made my story sound like the hotted-up imagination of an incipient D.T. And I hadn’t been drinking so far this evening.

      I started in to say: “Look, that girl was wearing pyjamas. Leastways, some of the pyjamas was still on her.” I was thinking of that glimpse of firm, rounded young breasts when the buttons came off her jacket in the struggle. “That girl must have been staying in this hotel to be dragged out in her pyjamas like that.”

      But even as I said that I saw the fallacy of the argument. Or at least I saw a possible explanation of it all, and I reckon that young officer saw it, too, but he didn’t say anything.

      It won’t be the first time that a husband and friends have surprised an unfaithful wife with some ardent lover in an hotel apartment. Maybe this was just such a case. Maybe those big, heavy-muscled men had been dragging home a naughty little wife.

      Maybe.

      But I didn’t think so. It just stuck in my craw, that theory. I mean, when things like that happen they’re not planned to include a cop standing guard to cover the proceedings—and a bribe sufficient to keep a man like Benny lying to the police.

      I didn’t feel she was any erring wife. I felt there was something infinitely more sinister behind this carefully laid scheme to snatch a girl out of her bedroom at night.

      The. young officer was very serious. He said: “The important part of your statement, so far as we are concerned, Mr. Heggy, is that you insist that one of our policemen was complicit in this affair. Now that’s a most serious statement to make.”

      I said: “Serious? Well, brother, I repeat it. There was a cop in on this snatch.”

      I heard the officer murmur: “I believe you, Mr. Heggy. Or at any rate, I believe that someone masqueraded as a policeman to help in this abduction “

      You know, at that I breathed a tremendous sigh of relief. I’d just got around to believing this cop when he said that the Istanbul police had nothing to do with that kidnapping, and now I was mighty glad to realize that this big officer believed my story. I mean, without any other witness, I had to admit that my story sounded thin. Okay, to have it believed, was quite a touch of flattery to the old Joe P. Heggy ego.

      He was looking thoughtfully at his big smooth hands—hands that hadn’t done much manual labour in their time. They were strong and well-cared for. Then his eyes lifted to mine and he said, very thoughtfully: “We don’t allow people to masquerade as police. We’re going to find out who these people are.”

      I said, heartily: “Good for you, brother. And at the same time find that gal.” I was also thinking. “And when you do, introduce me to her.” For she was quite a dish, that jane. And I’d seen more of her than most men, I suppose.

      The big young officer threw back his head and laughed, and for some reason it wasn’t a reassuring sound, though there was plenty of humour in it. So I looked at him, suspiciously, and growled: “Who’s the big laugh for, brother?”

      He was on his feet, pulling on his gloves. He looked at me, his brown eyes twinkling, and he said, so casually: “You’ll find them for us, unless I’m mistaken.”

      I looked at him. And then I went for another Scotch. I said, sourly: “What do you mean?”

      But I thought I knew what he meant, because I figured that he’d got the same sort of mind as I had. In other words, he was figuring that these boys might soon take a crack at me.

      He confirmed my theory by saying: “They seem a desperate lot of people, whoever they are, Mr. Heggy. I mean, there must be something pretty big behind it all for men to do a thing as daring as that—even to posing as a police officer. So, my guess is that when they hear you were a witness to their activities, they might try to eliminate you.” He seemed to pick that word eliminate, carefully, as if he wished to be tactful on an unpleasant subject

      I knocked back that Scotch and then I said: “Let ’em all come, brother. They’ll find Joe P. Heggy waiting.”

      I reckon that alcohol had something to do with my bravado, because I’m telling you I’m a nervous, sensitive man.

      The cop officer went out at that, and I was surprised to see that corridor empty, as if his monkeys had gone off to do some other work. He saw my questioning look, and said with a smile: “They’re checking on the clerk’s statement. They’ll be going to every room and questioning the people there.”

      I thought of B.G., and his palpitations when a Turkish policeman began to question him. It did me good to think of the fat slob palpitating, and I felt pleased for the first time about this affair in consequence.

      The cop went, and I realized that almost for the first time in his life, Joe P. Heggy was a friend of a policeman.

      I went back and finished my dressing. Then B.G. came barging in. He doesn’t knock, ever; he figures a boss has a right to walk in on a man even though he’d gripe if anyone did that to him. So I figured I could tell him what I thought of his manners and I did. And then I thought I’d put a scare on him.

      I said: “B.G., I’m a marked man. If you go with me, you run the risk of stopping a knife or some lead intended for Joe P. Heggy.”

      I watched his big, fat, pancake face while I said this, and I enjoyed the quavering fear that came up from his chicken heart at my statement.

      I said, hopefully: “Of course, you can always go out by yourself.”

      I didn’t like playing Nurse Nelly to this egghead, and I’d been looking for a way of ditching him so that I could enjoy my own company without thinking all the time of his inhibitions.

      But B.G. didn’t take the offer. He was dead scared of going out alone after dark in a foreign city. I reckon he was stuffed even fuller than I was with tales of thuggery in those primitive parts of the world outside law-abiding Detroit. He was torn between the devil and the deep blue sea, but the devil won, as he always does, in the end.

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