Free 1958 - Not Safe to be Free by James Hadley Chase Page B

for his poor showing when he had questioned him.
    “See you in the morning.”
    “Good night, Jay,” Sophia said and she looked directly at him.
    “Good night,” Jay said.
    He tried to read a message in her eyes without success. He stood back and let them go on ahead. Then, crossing the promenade, he paused for a moment to look back at the dense crowd, standing behind the crush barriers erected outside the hotel. He watched his father and Sophia walk up the drive and heard the buzz of voices start up as the crowd, intent on spotting the Stars, identified Sophia.
    He turned away and began to walk slowly along the promenade towards the Casino. He made a lonely figure walking on his own away from the centre of activity, moving against the stream of people who were heading towards the Plaza.
    Because he was wearing a tuxedo, the Star-spotters stared inquisitively at him, making sure they weren’t passing a celebrity whom they could pester for an autograph. Jay was too preoccupied by his thoughts to notice how he was being stared at. He was beginning to wonder if perhaps this idea of his mightn’t have misfired. Now the first excitement had passed, it wasn’t as tense or as thrilling as he imagined it would be.
    It was the waiting that spoilt the tension.
    If he could have moved the girl’s body now; if the body could have been discovered a few minutes later and if the police could have arrived immediately and begun their investigation, the rhythm of the excitement would have been maintained. But when he realized that her body might not be discovered for another five hours the long wait for further action depressed him.
    The crowd moving towards the Plaza hotel was thinning out now. He passed the Casino, and, as he moved towards Quai St. Pierre that ran alongside the harbour where the yachts and motorboats were moored, he heard a street clock strike one.
    The quay was deserted and he walked slowly, looking at the yachts and the motorboats, lit up by the moon. Reaching the end of the harbour, he sat on a bollard and lit a cigarette.
    He sat there for maybe twenty minutes, smoking and staring emptily across the oily moonlit water in the harbour; then he heard the sound of someone approaching, and, frowning, he turned his head to his left.
    A girl had just got off a bicycle and she was pushing the machine as she walked to the edge of the quay. She stood in the full moonlight as she propped the cycle against a coil of rope. She was wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, a white sleeveless singlet and a pair of heelless slippers. She looked about his age: possibly a little younger, which would make her nineteen or twenty. She was blonde. Her hair that reached her shoulders hung free. She was pretty without being beautiful and her figure was charming without being sexually blatant. Wondering what she could be doing on the deserted quay at this hour, Jay watched her.
    The girl glanced at him as she paused at the edge of the quay, then squatting down, she took hold of a mooring rope and began to draw an open boat, equipped with an outboard motor, close to the quay. Seeing she intended to get into the boat, Jay got to his feet and walked over to where she was squatting.
    “May I help you, mademoiselle?” he asked, pausing beside the girl.
    She looked up. The moonlight fell directly on her face.
    He was struck by the clearness and brightness of her eyes. She gave him a half smile, shaking her head.
    “I can manage, monsieur, thank you.”
    There was a trace of the Midi accent in her voice.
    He reached down and took hold of the rope.
    “I’ll hold it steady,” he said.
    “Thank you.”
    She slid down into the boat.
    He watched her as she took the waterproof hood off the outboard engine.
    “Are you going out at this hour?” he asked.
    “Yes. In a quarter of an hour the tide will be just right.”
    “For what?”
    “For fishing, of course.”
    “You are going fishing alone?”
    “Of course.”
    He was struck by her