`Would there be proof, if she had been there?' Ì cannot say.'
I walked back to the Scanda alone and deeply depressed. The streets were brightly lit and there were quite a lot of people about. I looked at them sourly. A few nights before, Alsa had been here, somewhere on these same streets. She'd been out three hours. Why? Not, apparently, for dinner. So what the hell had she been doing?
The door man at the Scanda opened the swing door with a flourish and I muttered my thanks, then stopped as a thought struck me.
`Were you,' I asked him, 'on duty the night Miss Hay disappeared?'
He looked at me carefully. Ì was. But you should, see the manag —'
Ì know,' I said. I gave him twenty kroner and he palmed
the money with a practised hand. 'Did you see her go out?' Ì open the door when she go and when she come back.'
He seemed almost proud of it; a big moment in his life. `Did she speak? To you or anybody else?'
`She ask about cinemas'
I blinked at him. Alsa didn't like cinemas much. `You're sure. Cinemas, not theatres?'
`Cinemas. I tell her.'
`Did you tell the police this?'
`No.'
`Why not?'
`They not ask me. Just when lie go out. When she come back'
Schmid and his bloody thoroughness! 'What did you tell her?'
The near one. This street. Three hundred metres.'
He was glancing round a bit guiltily. 'The manager has told you not to talk?'
He hesitated, then, 'Yes, sir.'
`Don't worry.' I gave him another twenty for encouragement. 'Did she go that way?
Towards the cinema?' `Yes, sir.'
`What was she wearing?'
`Sir?'
`Her clothes?'
Àh. A coat.'
`Colour?'
`White.'
I knew that white' coat.
`She have bag, and . . .' He mimed pulling on gloves. `Gloves?'
`Yes. Glove.'
`When she returned. What then?'
`The same. A pretty lady.'
`Very. You remember anything else?'
`She look . . . mmm-m . . . not happy.'
`When she went out, or when she came back?'
`Both times, sir.'
`Thanks.' I went out through the swing doors again and turned right, the way Alsa had gone, walking until I found the cinema. It was showing two Swedish films and I looked into the lighted foyer for a moment or two, feeling very puzzled. Alsa didn't enjoy the cinema much; I knew that. Theatres, yes, but she had an idiosyncratic dislike of films and TV. I like, she said often, to be entertained by live people, not manipulated images. She hardly ever went to the cinema and certainly wouldn't go alone, not in a strange city. In addition, this place was showing films of no great importance and in a language she didn'
t speak.
Everything about it was odd. I tried to think of some reason, any reason, why Alsa might have gone alone to the
cinema, but nothing suggested itself.
Finally I took Alsa's photograph out of my wallet and went in. Infuriatingly, the box office was closed. I swore to myself. There'd be a manager, but he wasn't likely to be much use; the girl at the box office would have seen all the people go in and out, would perhaps have remembered a striking redhead in stylish white. The manager would spend only part of his time in the foyer. All the same, I went to find him. He was bald, round-headed, wearing a worn dinner jacket and blinking owlishly. I said, '
I'm looking for —' `You are English?'
`Yes.'
`My English bad. Something .. . ah . . . lost? Lost things we keep.'
`Not things. A lady.'
I showed him Alsa's photograph and he frowned. 'Lady is lost? No. I not see.'
`You're sure?'
Ì not see.'
`Thanks anyway.' He was obviously telling the truth; he wasn't used to lost people, just lost property. But something struck me then; cinemas must have a system about lost property: all those gloves and umbrellas and handbags people left behind. I said, 'I understand she may have left something behind.'
`Ya. It was . . .?'
`Gloves,' I lied quickly. 'Brown gloves.
`Come please.'
We went into his little office, with its rolled posters in. one corner and film cans in another. He opened a cupboard and pulled out a cardboard box. In it lay a lot of gloves, a couple of purses tied round with string, a lighter, a copy of Strindberg. I turned them over, but everything was well-worn, lost-looking, rather forlorn. It had occurred to me that Alsa might have left something in the cinema deliberately, but all this stuff was ordinary, the litter of a passing trade.
Back at the hotel, there was a note asking me to telephone Marasov at the Hotel Nord. I went up to my room, thought about the telephone bug, and decided to ignore it. If Marasov wanted 'to say anything important, I'd ring off and phone from somewhere else. He didn't. He asked whether there was any news of Alsa, and when I said there wasn't he said he was sorry and hoped there'd be better news soon.
Ì hope so, too,' I said tersely. 'I'll let you —'
`My superiors,' Marasov said quickly, 'are anxious to know about the publication of Russian Life.',
`They what!' Suddenly I saw red. 'Well, you can bloody well tell them it can wait, as far as we're concerned, until —'
Ì am sorry,' he said quietly. 'We understand, naturally. I was simply instructed to ask you.'
`Well, you asked!' I slammed the phone down angrily. Sorry to hear she's disappeared, but would you mind getting back to more important matters! The bastards ! They could stuff their piddling magazine. So could Scown, sitting comfortably in his half-acre office, also with his mind on more important matters. Meanwhile, Alsa was God knew where, and anything could be happening to her. Schmid could play his verbal games, with hair-splitting answers and tricky questions, but he wasn't getting anywhere either. Marasov had triggered it, and now the fears, the frustrations and the depression of the last few days boiled together inside me. I was furiously angry, and determined, suddenly, to be put off no longer. There was one place where I felt sure I'd find some clue to what had happened, but I'd even been denied that!
Well, I'd be denied no longer. I went out of the room, on to the end of the corridor, summoned the lift and pressed the button for the sixth floor. When the gates opened I headed for the fire-exit door to the hotel roof.
The roof was flat. There was a big water tank and conduits of one kind and another, and a parapet waist high round the four sides. I went to the edge and looked over, but I was on the wrong side. Not for long though. A few
seconds later I'd found the right spot and was looking down on the concrete balconies of the floor below, calculating which belonged to Alsa's room. It would be the fifth one along. Fine. One, two, three, four, five. The drop was about twelve feet, but so be it; it was a direct drop, the balcony would stop me from falling out into space and I was in no mood to be put off, especially since by hanging by my hands, I could cut down the distance by more than half.
As I climbed over the parapet, though, my resolution was evaporating. It might be only a short drop to the balcony but it was a hell of a long one to the street below; not just long, fatal if I missed.
You'll just have to be bloody careful, I told myself savagely. Careful about the drop and careful, too, that I should' not be seen from the street below by some public-spirited Swede who'd howl police. Clinging to the parapet, I lowered one foot into space and reached down with my right hand for the edge of the roof. This was the moment, and I hesitated. Once my left hand left the security of the parapet, I would be committed, unable to climb back, because my other foot would be levered out into space; I forced myself to relax my fingers, and held on desperately as my whole weight swung downward, jerking brutally at my grip. Now there was no changing my mind. I could only go down. I turned my head to squint awkwardly down at the balcony, to be sure I was correctly positioned, then let go.