Blame The Dead

'Was that why he sent the log to Fenwick and not you?'

She looked at me a little warily, then shrugged. 'Could be. You didn't ever meet this Steen?'

'Not alive.'

'Of course. Well… good surveyor.'

Time was running out. I gulped my coffee and stood up.

She bounced to her own feet, held out her hand. 'Thanks for dropping in, son. Hope you'll come back with that log.'

I made noncommittal agreeing noises, turned for the door, and then turned back. 'But if it's really just an insurance case now, why are you so concerned?'

Her eyes were bright and level. 'Most of my crew died, son. Nothing I can do for them now except pay up on their pensions -and see they don't get more blame than they're entitled to. It's always the easiest way out, to blame the dead.'

I nodded, didn't say anything, and went on out.

The gangway was blocked by a line of dockers or somebody carrying up cardboard boxes and crates of beer. Captain Jensen was leaning over the rail with a clipboard checking each box aboard. I waited beside him; he looked at me, grunted, and nodded.

'Did you know the crew of the Sfeadt?" I asked sociably.

'I know. Small line, you know everybody. Good men.'

'The chief engineer still with the line?'

'Nygaard? He retire. Much worried. Very bad. Hurt the hands.' He held up his own hands in stiff, clawlike positions -and nearly dropped the clipboard. 'I go see him sometimes. At the – how you say? Sjomannshjem. Home of seamen. Take little whisky.' He broke off to yell something at the foreman on the dockside below.

The gangway was clear. I nodded goodbye, hurried down, and started hunting for a taxi.

I was in good time; it wasn't half past one when we picked up my luggage (I was going to chance the guns; with the Mauser still in pieces and planted all over my big case it wouldn't look sinister to any metal detector. And the derringer was going to be tucked into my crotch: they're wary about shovelling radiations at you down there, in these gene-conscious days). We zoomed across a high bridge over the south harbour, then through a long tunnel through the mountainside, heading for the airport.

So that had been Bergen, the economy twenty-four-hour tour. In that you only get one murder, a single beating-up, and just a touch of blackmail; what did you expect, you cheapskate – the St Valentine's Day Massacre?

I studied the back of the driver's neck – wide and thick and red – and didn't know whether to feel a louse or a small-time gambler trying to ride out a high-stakes game on a small pair. I could tell David that at least I knew what we were looking for now – but not that we were closer to finding it. But what more could I have done? I'd talked to everybody involved, hadn't I? Well, hadn't I?

I leaned forward. 'Do you know any retired seamen's homes? I think you call it Sjomannshjem.'

The question surprised him; he wriggled his wide shoulders and said, 'I know one, and I think two more.'

'What are they called? Their names?'

He told me one name and it didn't mean a thing. Then, 'The one in Gulbrandsens Gate.'

'Thanks.'

I went back to staring out through the steady drizzle. The big suburban houses were thinning out, getting wider-spaced. With a sudden blare a twin-engined jet charged overhead and vanished down behind a hill. I was a couple of hours from home.

Oh hell.

'Turn around,' I said wearily. 'Back to the railway station. I forgot something.'

Twenty-five

Gulbrandsen's Seamen's Home was over by the south harbour, by the shipbuilding yards, as it turned out. You climbed a street borrowed from San Francisco – so steep that a big house could lose a whole floor in its own length, over through the mixed old and new buildings of the university at the top, and started down the other side – and suddenly you were on the wrong side of town.

Every town has it. The dull, shabby streets walled with drab apartments and windows like rheumy old eyes. Quiet and still, because noise and movement cost money, and without laughter or anger because those cost something, too. The part that now can't even remember when it did anything but wait in front of a cold stove for it to be time to climb into bed and lie without real sleep, waiting for it to be time to be not really awake again. Every town has it; even Bergen.

The Home itself was on the corner of Gulbrandsens Gate; a four-storey Victorian building in faded yellow stucco with small tight-lipped windows, barred on ¡the ground floor. I leaned my thumb on the old saucer-shaped bellpush and waited.

After a long time, footsteps shuffled up inside and the door groaned open a crack and a face looked out at me. It must have been in its late fifties, a sandpaper skin stretched tight over the sharp bones but bunching under the faded blue eyes and hanging loose at the throat. He didn't say anything.

Td like to see Chief Engineer Nygaard, please,' I said cheerily. The door started to swing shut, but my foot got there first.

'Hold on, now. At least we could ask the gent if he wants to see me, couldn't we?'

'He does not want you.' And he leaned all of his weight on the door. I leaned back.

'You don't even know who I am! I've brought him. a present!' And I waved the half-bottle of Scotch I'd picked up at the Vinmonopolet – the state booze shop – on the way over. If Captain Jensen had been right, that should be the passport.

The faded blue eyes just looked impassive. 'He does not want visitors.'

'Just ask him!' I gave the door an exasperated shove and it ripped out of his hands, throwing him off against the wall, scrabbling for support.

I looked down and he had on one carpet slipper, one stiff shiny boot. So he'd lost a leg sometime. Well… he ought to have enough sense not to get into fights, then.

He looked at me with pure, patient hatred.

I said, 'Is Nygaard at home? '

'Room 14.' A dull, flat tone.

'Thank you, Herr…?'

'Ruud. Superintendent Ruud.'

I shut the door and walked down the gloomy hallway, over lino that was uneven and gritty under my feet. And up the uncarpeted stairs. At the turn, I looked back. Ruud was still leaning against the wall, still staring after me. I went on up.

Room 14 was on the second floor, down a narrow corridor that was dark and had that indefinable but unmistakable smell of old people. Small private noises leaked out around me; somebody coughed rackingly, a lavatory flushed at the third pull, a plate clattered. I knocked on the door.

At the second knock, a bed creaked and a bleared voice mumbled something, and footsteps moved reluctantly towards the door.

Maybe he was sixty, maybe more, but it wasn't his age you saw first, it was his defeat. He'd quit, switched off, surrendered. His face was puffy, making his red-rimmed eyes look too small, his stomach bulged out over trousers unbuttoned at the top – but for a big man, the way he peered out was small and furtive. And his breath was a meal in itself, only a week late.

'Ja? Hva onsker De?'

I held my ground and tried not to breathe in. 'Chief Engineer Nygaard? I'm James Card from London. I brought you a…' and I showed him the bottle.

'Oh, ja!'He took it, held it up to stare at it closely – and then I saw his hands. The backs, from where they stuck out of the frayed old sweater, were a mass of crumpled blue-white scar tissues right to the ends of his fingers. The fingernails, the three or four still there, were thick, dirty little wedges. But from the way he handled the bottle the fingers weren't locked: they could move from about half clenched to almost wide open.

Fire. Only fire does that.

Then he tried to square his shoulders against the pull of his gut, threw the door wide, and said cheerfully, 'Come in, my friend, come in. I was having a little – you say, snooze.'

I went in. I could guess what the room would be like – but I was wrong. It was surprisingly clean, bright, and almost tidy. Not that there was much to get in a mess, but the bed was made, if rumpled, and the table, chest of drawers, and shelves had been freshly painted white. There were even a couple of flowers in the glass on the narrow tiled window-sill.