Blame The Dead

'Get stuffed.'

'You're in no position to say things like that, mate. It's a big jungle and you took a wrong turning. Now…?'

'You think I'm going to tell you?' He was getting back a bit of confidence; his hands were almost still.

'Oh, yes.' I stood up.

'You won't use that gun.'

'Probably not.' I went over to my suitcase and kicked open the lid and scooped some clothes out on to the floor.

'You can't exactly torture me.' But he sounded puzzled.

'Nope.' I opened the drawers in the little dressing-table.

'So why should I tell you? '

I ripped open my bed and tossed the Bertie Bear book over by the suitcase. 'Because if you don't you're going slam into a Norwegian jail for breaking and entering on the high seas and carrying a gun. Look at the mess you've made of this cabin.'

He went flat pale again. 'I haven't got a gun.'

'You will have, friend. It isn't licenced to me, and youare in my cabin, and youdid search it, and you're a private eye who might have romantic ideas about carting a gun around. It just fits – it sounds right. And it gets you off my back. What do I lose?'

I propped myself on the wall by the steward's call button and held up my wristwatch and stared at it: He lasted fourteen more seconds.

'Miss Mackwood.'

I met him again next morning, in the cafeteria. I'd got up too late for the real breakfast, but I obviously hadn't missed much else: that particular piece of North Sea was cold, misty, and wet. Above the surface as well, I mean.

I was sitting over my third cup of coffee and trying not to hear the ballet troupe telling itself how much it had drunk last night and who'd spent how long in whose cabin when Draper dumped himself down opposite. He looked pink and cheery, although he hadn't changed his shirt, and was smoking a long thin cigar that smelt like diesel fumes. Unless it was his shirt.

'I've been thinking,' he told me. 'Right now you can't do a thing to me. I'm not in your cabin, you can't plant a gun on me – I'm fireproof. But you're not.'

'You've been thinking,' I said sourly. 'You want to lay off that stuff. Stunts your growth.'

'All right, Mister Big Time. All I have to do is call an officer and tell him you're wearing a gun. Him or the Customs when we get ashore. So why don't I do it?'

He looked as if he really wanted to know. I said, 'Because it's outside your brief and because all I have to do is tell Herb Harris how much you've told me and you're an unemployment statistic by return of post.'

He took a bite of smoke the wrong way and choked privately for a little while. When he'd finished, I said, 'I'll be staying at the Norge, if I can get a room, so there's no reason to tread on my heels. I'll spend the afternoon talking to people or perhaps something else. Come see me this evening and I'll tell you what I've done, or perhaps I won't.'

He glowered at me, his eyes thick with tears. But he was screwed and he knew it; there was no way in the world for him to follow me if I didn't want to be followed, so he might as well save his time and money.

'And give my love to Miss Mackwood,' I added.

Sixteen

We arrived in Bergen by the servants' entrance. Probably I'd expected to come up some great sheer-sided fjord out of a Daumier engraving, but I must have been thinking of a different season or place or something. What I got was twenty miles of low, humpy green islands on one side and low, humpy green land on the other, dotted with houses and oil tanks, then a right turn and into Bergen harbour itself.

Also, it was raining. Not just casually, as if it were something it did every second day there – which is what the guide-book says – but as if this were the first and last time in years and it was going to get it right.

We docked just after midday, and I hung back, hoping the rain would get tired. It didn't. So at about half past I was out through the terminal and last in line for a taxi. But at least there wasn't any trouble getting a room at the Norge when I finally arrived. It was a modern building, seven or eight storeys high, with the town's air terminal occupying one corner at street level and a vast lobby occupying most of the rest – in contradiction to Hilton's First Law: keep the lobby small so anybody waiting gets squeezed out into the nice big cocktail bar and has to spend money.

It was also pricy, but a good hotel's an investment, I always tell my clients. They don't lose your mail or forget telephone messages, they fix your tickets in a hurry, they don't care what hours you keep.

Upstairs, I changed most of my clothes, hung my sheepskin on the radiator, took a duty-fret swig from the bottle I'd bought on the Jupiter, and rang Jonas Steen. I wasn't worried about him being out to lunch: according to the guide-book, Norwegians eat sandwiches at their desks but then knock off for the day at four or earlier. Anyhow, whatever he was or wasn't eating, Steen was still at his desk.

'James Card again,' I said cheerily. 'I rang you on Saturday, remember? Now I've come over to see you; just got off the boat. How're you keeping?'

'I do not want to see you. I told you that.'

'I know, but I didn't think you sounded totally sincere. Can I come round now?'

'No, of course you cannot. You cannot come ever.'

'Ah, I bet you say that to everybody. Snap out of it, get sociable. Just think of the trouble I've taken merely to get here: d'you really think I'm going to turn around and go home, just like that? No, of course not. I'm going to stick around and stir up a fuss. Talk to people about Fenwick, and books you sent him and things…'

'I did not.'

'No?'

I waited. Then, suddenly sounding weary about it, he said, 'Oh, so all right.'

'When? -now?'

'No – do not come to the office. I will finish at half past three today. There is a café, the Fontenen, by the office. I will see you there.'

'Half past three, Fontenen – right.' He rang off.

Nice hours they work; wonder if I could get Britain to take them up? Though, come to think of it, most places in the City already have.

By then I reckoned it was a bit late for my own lunch -though I found out later I was wrong – and tried the sandwiches-at-the-desk routine by having Room Service send up one of their specials: smoked salmon and scrambled egg, which was a new experience. After that I felt dry enough to go exploring; it was still raining outside, so I just changed some more money, pinpointed various restaurants and bars – 'I'm sorry, sir, but nobody in Norway is permitted to serve spirits before three in the afternoon' (which may account for the size of that lobby) – and got hold of a town map.

Still no sign of Draper, not since breakfast.

When it came time to go, the rain had eased up, fooling me into trying to walk it: according to the map, Steen's office and the Fontenen were only about eight blocks away. The centre of the town, the business area, seemed to be built over a short steep peninsula – and I mean steep – that separated two harbours. By now a lot of it had been rebuilt in that glass-and-concrete style that doesn't tell if you're in Tallahassee or Tashkent, but the dockside of the north harbour was a row of solid, high-peaked old warehouses, somehow bare-looking without the forest of sailing-ship masts in front of them. And behind, a steep wooded slope with crooked shelves of modern houses stepped up and up into the cloud that spilled over the mountain top.

A clean-looking, fresh-painted town, even in that weather, or maybe because of it. All the cars seemed to be white or pastel colours, every building – offices included – had the windows jammed with indoor plants. So then it had to start raining again and I made the last quarter mile to the Fontenen dodging the citizens playing at overhead fencing-matches with umbrellas across the narrow pavements.

The caféwas low-ceilinged, smoky, dark-panelled, and as clearly Men Only as a nudie magazine. And they didn't serve whisky at all, ever or any time. I ordered beer and waited.