Terror's Cradle

Elliot nodded slowly, then said, 'Yeah. We'll see her. I'll have your things brought in.'

I had a bad moment of waiting. I wasn't absolutely certain, couldn't quite remember, whether I'd changed all my things from one set of clothes to the other aboard Catriona. I was relying on the fact I usually do, out of habit. Whenever I change my clothes, my wallet goes first.

The copper brought in a miscellaneous collection of small change, keys, a soaked passport and a wetter handkerchief. And the wallet. I opened it and looked among the soggy money and indestructible credit cards for the picture. It was there. Water doesn't damage photographic prints unless they dry out and stick to something.

`Got it?' Elliot asked.

I nodded.

Òkay. Let's go!'

I slipped the wallet into my back trouser pocket and said, `There's one more thing.'

`What's that?'

`Nature calls.'

`Jesus!'

Àbsolutely imperative,' I said.

So off I went to the lavatory. There's paper in lavatories, and for anyone who wonders, some British police stations haven't introduced the soft stuff yet. Not, at any rate, for prisoners. The stock in there was lethally harsh, but plenty strong enough for writing, and my wallet held, as always, a little ball-point pen of the kind they put in the spines of diaries. I carry it because my first boss said a reporter should never be without one in reserve and the habit stuck.

I wrote my message quickly, put the pen away, folded the paper small and went out to join the other two. 'Shall we go?'

When we got to the neat little cottage, Miss Petrie took one look at Elliot and said, 'I told you. I don't know where he is!' Having told him, she noticed me. 'I told you too.'

I said, 'Miss Petrie, I'd like to show you something. May we come in?'

Ì see no need —'

Ìt's important. It really is important, Miss Petrie. Please! May we come in?' She didn't want us in. She hadn't lived a life of trickery and deception and clearly felt safer with the more obvious practitioners of the arts in the street. But her manners won. She stepped back reluctantly and allowed us into her spotless little sitting room.

`Well, young man?'

I pulled my wallet out, removed the photograph and handed it to her. Alsa and I had sat side by side at somebody's retirement dinner and I'd trimmed the rest of the print away to leave just the two of us. Romantic. A little pathetic. I handed the picture to her and said, '

Alison Hay.'

Miss Petrie looked at it closely, then at me, even more closely. I said, 'I've never met James Anderson. But Alsa is an old friend. So was her father.'

She looked hesitant, unsure how to play it. I said, The picture was taken at a dinner. We work for the same newspaper. My name is John Sellers. I was hoping that at some time, Alsa might have mentioned my name.' But there was no reaction. Ì see. And these gentlemen? Are they her friends, too?' `No, Miss Petrie, they're not.'

Elliot said quickly, 'Just a minute, Sellers!'

Ìt's okay,' I said. 'They don't know her, but they are involved in this.'

`Hmm.' The bright, alert eyes looked me over again. I was no beauty in those dried and creased clothes. I hadn't shaved. Miss Petrie wasn't convinced and I could do nothing more to convince her. Or could I? I said, 'She told me about Aggie-Waggie.' It was true in a way.

Àggie-Waggie?'

I smiled. 'Three jolly workmen.'

She said, 'It's only called Aggie-Waggie in Shetland.' Ì know. Alsa told me.'

Elliot said, 'What the . . . What's Aggie-Waggie?'

À children's game,' .1 told him. 'They play it in the school yard, don't they, Miss Petrie?'

Ìn the street too.'

I said, 'Miss Petrie, I can't offer you more than that in the way of bona fides. I can only say I'm on Anderson's side.' Àre you? You've never met him. Why should you be?' `Because I'm on Alsa's.' Then I added quickly, and flatly so it wouldn't hurt so much: 'I wanted Alsa to marry me Miss Petrie.'

She glanced from my face to the photograph and back again and for a moment it seemed to me that the frost in her eyes just might have held something else, perhaps sympathy. `

You're generous, Mr — ?'

`Sellers. Miss Petrie, I don't know whether you can get a message to Tames Anderson.'

She opened her mouth to speak, but I ploughed on. 'I

don't expect you to tell me whether you can or not. But

I suspect you can. And if you can, I'd like you to do so.' She didn't answer, just stood waiting.

Ìt would be better if we could actually meet him, but we must at least speak to him. He can name the time and place and the circumstances, but it should happen as soon as possible.'

She thought about it for a moment, looking for the deceptions, finding none because there were none to find. Not yet. At length she said, 'I don't know if .. Ìf you can, Miss Petrie.'

She glanced at me once more, then opened the door. I wanted Elliot and Willingham to precede me, but, naturally they didn't so I had to force it a bit. I had the little message held between my fingers and I offered my hand for her to shake. She took it immediately and palmed the little folded paper as though she'd been doing it all her life. I smiled, thinking she'd probably watched it all her life : classroom notes slipped from inky fingers to grubby paws. I said, 'We can be reached by telephone, at the police station.'

She closed the door behind us and Elliot sighed. 'Will she do it?'

I shrugged. I didn't know either. I thought I might have convinced her, but my note could just as easily undo it all again. The note was a real piece of duplicity.

`We'll have to wait,' I said, 'And hope.'

CHAPTER NINETEEN,

We went back to the police station to do our waiting. There was nothing else to be done. The police were still continuing to search for Anderson, but Sergeant McAllister's occasional reports on lack of progress had a hopeless air. He knew as well as we did that if Anderson didn't want to be-found, there was no way on earth of finding him. We did a few desultory, time-passing things. I had some breakfast and later another and longer bath in the hope of easing away some of the embedded stiffness and soreness from my body. It helped a bit, but not much. Elliot went into purdah to telephone London and emerged looking as though parts of him had been gnawed. Willingham conceived the bright idea that all Russian vessels should be ordered from Shetland waters forthwith and tried to convince Wemyss in London that it was a wise and far-seeing strategy. After listening to Wemyss for a moment, he asked McAllister whether Polish and East German boats came into Lerwick too, reluctantly agreed with Wemyss that it was the same difference, and abandoned the idea. McAllister added his jot to the general uncertainty by telling us that a squad of Russians was actually marching in the Up-Helly-Aa procession that evening. A few weeks earlier, some Russian fishermen had proved that professional comradeship overrides the ideological variety by performing a particularly heroic rescue of a dozen fishermen from a local boat wrecked off the Shetlands, and the invitation was the island's way of saying thanks. In Lerwick, at this moment, the Russians were clearly fireproof. Noon came and went. Time drifted by. Not much talking was done. Willingham unearthed another bright idea. Now he wanted to pressure Miss Petrie really hard. 'In circum-' stances like these, any means are justified,' he urged Elliot doggedly. I wondered for the hundredth time what this psychopathic idiot was doing in intelligence at all. Elliot simply said she didn't look the kind who bullied easy and forget it. We stared at the phones and waited for them to ring.

It was a long wait, and its end merely signalled the start of another. The phone rang at three-thirty. Elliot answered it, handed it to me, and picked up another linked phone so he could listen, too.