Then in spite of my raging headache, my brain became more active. In two hours’ time, I was due to play golf with Brannigan, and while we played, I had to ask him to extend our credit. That was out. I had to telephone him and cancel our game. That was the first thing I must do. Then Glenda... but Brannigan first.
I drove away from Ferris Point. There was a café-bar at the top of the sand road and I slowed, then again looking at myself in the driving mirror, I realized I would cause a sensation if I went in there to use their telephone, so I drove on.
I was lucky with the traffic which was light at this time. My head screamed at me, my face continued to swell. If a traffic cop had spotted me during the four miles back to my apartment, he would have stopped me, but no traffic cop appeared.
I scarcely knew what I was doing by the time I drove into the underground garage. I staggered out of my car, and looked at the bay where Glenda kept her car. It was empty.
Five minutes later, I was somehow talking to Brannigan. I caught him as he was leaving for Sharnville. I told him I had had a car accident and would he excuse me?
‘Are you hurt, son?’ he asked, concern in his voice.
‘My face and my windshield had an argument. I’m all right. I just have to nurse my bruises.’
‘What happened?’
‘Some lunatic. I took evasive action and banged my face.’
‘That’s too bad. Anything I can do?’
‘Thanks, no. I’ll be all right. Sorry about die game.’
‘We’ll set up another date. Take it easy, son,’ and he hung up.
My head still raging, I crossed the corridor and rang Glenda’s bell.
‘She’s gone, Mr. Lucas.’
I turned slowly. The old black cleaning woman was at the end of the corridor with her mop and her bucket.
‘Gone?’
‘Sure, Mr. Lucas. She left around seven this morning. She seemed in an awful hurry, carrying her bags. I offered to help her, but she walked through me as if I wasn’t there.’ She gaped at me. ‘Your poor face, Mr. Lucas!’
‘I had a car accident,’ I said and returned to my apartment.
I dropped on my bed and held my aching head in my hands. What was happening? What the hell was happening?
Forcing myself upright, I went into the kitchen and got ice from the refrigerator. I wrapped ice cubes in a towel and held the towel to the back of my head. Moving slowly, I returned to the living-room, holding the ice bag against my head. It helped a lot. Then after some minutes, I transferred the ice bag to my swollen face. That also helped. The raging pain began to diminish.
Then die telephone bell rang.
Glenda?
I snatched up the receiver.
‘Mr. Lucas?’ A brisk male voice.
‘Who is this?’ I managed to mumble, shifting the ice bag to the back of my head.
‘The name is Edwin Klaus.’ He spelt out. ‘K-l-a-u-s.’ A pause, then he went on, ‘We have business together. I’ll be with you in ten minutes, Mr. Lucas, but first do me a favour. Take a look in your car trunk. I am sure you have a headache, but make the effort. Take a look,’ and he hung up.
A hoax call? A nut?
I sat still. No, not a hoax call. A cold chill swept over me. I dragged myself upright and walked slowly to the elevator. I rode down to the garage. I reached my car and unlocked the trunk. I swung up the lid.
Curled up, like an obscene foetus, blood on his crumpled white suit, his beard matted with blood, was the squat man.
His blank eyes gazed up at me as only dead eyes can gaze,
Chapter Three
As I opened the door of my apartment and walked unsteadily into my living-room, I saw him, sitting in my favourite armchair, his legs crossed, his hands resting in his lap, relaxed and at ease.
He could have been anything from fifty-five to sixty-five years of age. His thick, snow-white hair was immaculate. Everything about him was immaculate: his charcoal-grey suit, his white silk shirt, the Pierre Cardin tie and the glistening black shoes. His face could have been chiselled out of teak: nut brown, a thin beaky nose, a slit for a mouth, big slate-grey eyes and flat pointed ears.
The shock of finding the squat man dead in my trunk had stunned me. I felt as if I were experiencing a horrible nightmare, and in a few moments, I would wake up and find, to my utter relief, all this had never happened, and it was just another Sunday morning.
This man, sitting facing me, was just an addition to this nightmare. I closed the door and leaned against it and stared at him.
‘I found your door open,’ he said. ‘Excuse me for taking the liberty. The name is Edwin Klaus: K-l-a-u-s.’
I felt a trickle of sweat run down my aching cheek. This was no nightmare: this was for real.
‘What do you want?’
His slate-grey eyes, as expressionless as blobs of ice, regarded me.
‘I want to help you.’ He waved to a chair. ‘I can see you are suffering. I told Benny to be careful.’ He lifted small, brown hands in a gesture of resignation. ‘He doesn’t know his own strength. Do sit down, Mr. Lucas.’
Because my head began to ache again, and my legs felt shaky, I moved to the chair and sat down.
‘You have a problem, Mr. Lucas. It would seem you too don’t know your own strength,’ Klaus said, in his soft, gentle voice. ‘But your problem can be arranged if you care to accept my help.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked, staring at him.
‘We won’t go into that for the moment. The problem is Alex Marsh, whom you murdered. What are you going to do about the body, Mr. Lucas?’
I closed my eyes. The scene came back to me. I had wanted to kill him. I remembered smashing my fists down on his up-turned face. I was lifting my fists to hit him again when I received a blow on my head. I had hurt him: probably broken his nose, but I was sure I hadn’t killed him. If only this pain in my head would go away so I could think clearly!
‘I didn’t kill him,’ I said, meeting Edwin Klaus’s slate-grey eyes.
‘That is for die judge and jury to decide, isn’t it, Mr. Lucas?’
I got to my feet and, moving unsteadily, I went into the bathroom and swallowed four Aspro tablets. I ran the water, then picking up a sponge, I bathed my face. I was now beginning to think more clearly.
I didn’t know who this immaculately dressed man was, but my instincts told me he was a blackmailer. I put my hands on the toilet basin and forced myself to stand upright. I stared at my reflection in the mirror above the toilet basin. I stared at a stranger: someone remotely resembling myself, but with a puffy bruised cheek and wild, frightened eyes. I remained staring for some five minutes, and then the pills began to work, and the pain in my head began to recede to a dull throb.
Alex Marsh! So the squat man had been Glenda’s husband!
Who was this man, sitting in my living-room so quiet, so relaxed, offering to help me?
I waited, still holding on to the toilet basin, still staring at myself in the mirror until the throb in my head became bearable. He had asked me what I was going to do with the body in the trunk of my car.
What was I going to do?
My immediate thought was to call Sheriff Thomson and let him handle the whole thing. If I did, would he, would anyone, believe my story? Suppose, by the merest chance, I was believed, I knew I would be finished in Sharnville. I would have to admit I had been making love to a married woman when her husband surprised us. Would they believe someone — who? — had hit me over the head while her husband and I were fighting?
I thought of the body, screwed up in the trunk of my car. For a moment I had the wild idea of driving the car to some isolated spot, dragging the body out and burying it. A wild idea! This, I knew, I couldn’t do.