Blame The Dead

'Have you eaten meat in Norway yet?' Mrs S-B asked.

Come to think of it – 'No.'

'So don't unless you're eating with me. Norwegian cows are half mountain goat and they've got short legs on one side from feeding on a slope. I get these steaks shipped from Scotland. Hope you like it medium rare.'

Luckily I did. She took a massive crunch at her own, dribbling watery blood on and around her plate.

I got my first mouthful down and asked, 'How big's the ADP line?'

'Nothing so much. This is the biggest, Skadi was the next, and the rest's just a couple of five-hundred-ton coasters. We're one of the few Norwegian lines that ever dock in Norway.'

'D'you come of a shipping family in America?'

'Sure. Our Smiths have been shipping out of New Bedford since you could bring Moby Dick home in a jelly jar.' She swallowed a lump of steak and you could watch the bulge go right down that long thin throat. She looked up and caught me watching. 'You want to hear any more about the Skadi business? Don't you like steak?'

'It's fine.' I took another bite and mumbled out past it, 'Who was to blame for all this?'

'We haven't got to court yet. Everybody's suing and counter-suing everybody else, but that's routine. You should have been a lawyer, Jim. That's where the money goes.'

'Too many ethics involved.'

'Hell, you really think so? '

'Mine, I mean.' She gave a bark of laughter and a few shreds of meat almost reached my side of the room. I went on, 'But it'll be another year or two before they come to trial on a case like this. Don't they have some sort of enquiry as well?'

'Sure. They had the Norwegian one in December, soon's my chief engineer was fit again. The British one'll be in a month or two.'

'What did they prove?'

'They didn'tprove a damn thing. But their report said we were just about totally to blame. If the captain and watch officer hadn't been dead, I guess they'd've been prosecuted. It can happen, under Norwegian law. Bugger it.'

'Will the British one make any difference?'

'Doesn't work quite the same way. Your boys are only interested if your officers have behaved like British officers, what ho?' She munched for a few moments. 'I guess if your Department of Trade and whatnot pulled the licence from under the Prometkeus's captain it wouldn't sound too good in court… but they won't.'

'It's beginning to sound as if your shipwas to blame. Was it?'

She put her half sandwich down on the plate and just gazed at me. 'Now how in hell would I know? Without seeing the log?'

Somewhere below us, somebody knocked over a few tons of cargo and the whole boat shuddered. She didn't notice. I put down my own sandwich – I'd had enough anyway; I was only trying to get one meal out of it – and said very carefully, 'But the log wouldn't show what happened at a collision. You don't stand on a burning bridge writing up the thing.'

'Oh, sure, it's likely twenty-four hours out of date. And I'm not saying it'll prove my boys were sugar-candy saints, God rest and rot 'em. It usually takes two fools to make one collision. But everybody on our bridge was killed: captain, watch officer, helmsman, and we don't even know who else. Just swept off with the first blast of fire. So we can't put up any witnesses to say what the Skadi was doing or their ship either.'

I thought I was getting the idea, now. 'So the court of enquiry had to believe what the Prometheus'sofficers said?'

'You're right, son. They put up the captain, another officer, and a helmsman to swear we were doing ten knots – full speed – through fog, when we hit her.'

She looked around, found her glass, and drained the last few drops. 'Son, the Skadi couldn't have been doing more than five knots if the whole crew had been facing forward and eating beans. Half our power had cracked up the day before andthat log'll prove it.', She leaned back and stared at me, chewing on thin old lips that looked permanently dry. 'But d'you see whatelse that proves? It proves three damn liars on the bridge of the Prometheus Sahara, that's what it proves. Collusion. Conspiracy – what you damn like. Prove that, and the case bursts wide open.'

After a while I cleared my throat of something that wasn't there and said, 'But didn't you argue this at the enquiry?'

'Oh sure: one old tramp-ship chief engineer up against three smooth young Limeys off – sorry, Jim, I was forgetting where you come from.'

'Scotland, mostly.'

'Well, then… Anyhow, that log'll prove it.'

Without really meaning to, I got up and walked over to the bucket and organised another Scotch for myself. The bump on the side of my head was throbbing gently but insistently. I sat down again.

'That means,' I said, 'that the other people interested in the log are the other line. Sahara Line, you said – right?'

'The way I see it, there's only two sides to this one.'

Plus Paul Mockby, of course, who'd be ready to make up a third on anybody's wedding night. But thinking about him had never helped my digestion yet.

I said, 'And they'd be happy to see it buried at sea again. Where it was supposed to be. You think they were after Fen-wick, then?'

'That's your end of the business, son. I want that log out in open court, that's all. You want some coffee? '

I nodded and she went across to the intercom and pushed various switches and yelled something aboutkaffe each time. The artillery calls it a 'barrage'.

She came back, looked at the rags of her steak sandwich -she'd eaten far more than I had, though where she put it in a figure shaped like a mainmast I couldn't tell-and pushed it aside. Then, 'Well, what d'you say?'

'This could make a big difference – financially – to you, the ADP line, if you could fight this case seriously?'

She shrugged. 'Not much, no.'

'No?'

'We were insured, we've been paid, they're building a new Skadi right now. Our next premiums'll cost more, of course, but that's all. The case is really between two lots of insurers; it'stheir money.'

It usually is, these days. I glanced at my watch: I could still catch the two-thirty plane. 'By the way, how did you know I was in Bergen?'

She cackled again. *You didn't exactly make the society column, son, but you sure got your name in the paper.'

I winced. Jack Morris wasn't likely to read Norwegian papers, but some Reuter's man might pick it up and… I'd know soon enough. 'Did you know this chap Steen?'

'The one who got himself murdered? Sure – I know everybody in the shipping biz here. Good surveyor.'

'Do you have any idea why he was killed?'

'There was a piece on the radio this morning: it said they'd got a confession from some local lad. Personal squabble.'

'I don't believe it. He w'as killed to stop him telling me something.'

She raised her eyebrows. 'That a fact? Have you told the police?'

'Oh, yes. But as you say – they've got a confession and a suicide. You don't argue with a jigsaw when all the pieces fit. I still don't believe it.' And neither did Vik, and he didn't even know about my Mauser being involved. Just then, the steward trundled in with a tray and two thick crock cups of coffee.

When he'd gone, I said, 'It still doesn't change the fact that Steenwas going to talk to me. But what was he going to tell me – about the log or the Skadi or something?'

She blew delicately across her coffee. 'Haven't a damn notion. Maybe how he found the log. Hedid find it, didn't he?'

'I imagine so. Though I don't see how, in a burnt-out wreck.'

'It could happen. These guys aresupposed to keep the thing in a fireproof box. But I never thought any of them did. God damn. If I'd known, I'd've had the thing in time for the enquiry.'

'When did Steen survey the wreck, then?'

'Just last month.'

'What? And the collision was last September?'

'Oh, she was surveyed before, all right – but it doesn't take ten minutes to see if a burnt-out hulk's irreparable. Steen was surveying her for scrap value: see if it's worth cutting her up, now they'll be getting some good weather. But that's Lloyd's business. It's their wreck now.'