Blame The Dead

By sundown, we were ready. By nine o'clock, we were on our way.

The night was clear, starry and cold – and you never remember how cold it becomes the instant you get in a boat. This boat particularly.

It was a wooden job, broad and shallow and smelling like the cat's supper. Maybe a bit over twenty feet long, with the front third decked over to give a cabin that was honestly no more than three feet high but had a Calor gas stove, two bunks, a cupboard, a wood-burning stove in the bows sticking its chimney up like a flagpole through the deck, and a row of dangling pans that clattered in tune with the chug of the diesel.

Behind us, the lights of Stavanger didn't fade away, they just ruddy stayed there.

'How fast are we going?' I called to Kari.

'Five knots, I think.' She was just a bulky shape against the stars, hands in anorak pockets, woolly ski cap on top, riding the tiller and steering it with her thighs.

'How fastcould we go?"

'Seven, perhaps eight. Shall I show you?'

Willie said, 'No thank you.' He and David and the engine itself were in the middle of the boat, both of them studying it by thin torchlight. I was hunched on the deck, in among a clutter of rusty chains, ends of rope, and plastic buckets.

'What the hell do you know or care about diesels, Willie?' I asked grumpily. The cold was beginning to bite.

He said evenly, 'They occasionally cropped up in my end of the Army, old boy.'

'Sorry. I'd forgotten the cavalry hadn't invented the high-compression horse.'

'You wouldn't say that if you'd ever been rolled on by one.'

I grinned unwillingly in the darkness. 'And around us, the busy evening went on, down, maybe, but busy enough: ferries that were just bright strips of light, fishing-boats that were patterns of coloured light, motorboats that sparkled white and roared and changed direction every five seconds; Piccadilly Circus on water. Kari just chugged us through it, confident of a small tricoloured light slung to our stumpy mast and steering by occasional glances at a small tourist map of the bay and fjords; not even a compass. You find more charts, books, depth-sounders, and stuff on a weekender's dinghy than you do in a serious fishing-boat.

Willie stuck the cover back on the engine, lit a cigarette, and came and crouched beside me on the deck. He was wearing a thick, double-breasted fawn overcoat – like the old Army 'British Warm' – and the first thing he said was, 'Doesn't feel quite like D-Day must have done.'

'What d'you want? Couple of airborne divisions and battleship bombardment?'

'Something more than that little two-shot peashooter of yours, anyway, what? Seems to me it's just big enough to be illegal and nothing more.'

'It was never meant to be a first gun. But I don't expect any rough stuff.'

'How are we going to tackle it, then? '

'David stays in the boat. The rest of us just tag along, knock on the door, see what happens next.'

He grunted. 'Must say I'd rather we were doing it in a more military way.'

'If we're doing it the military way, we start with you standing up straight and calling me "sir" – lieutenant.'

For a moment I think he was really offended. Then he chuckled.

'In the Lancers we never called anybody "sir" except our wine merchants.'

Thirty-nine

It took us just over an hour, including a dog-leg around another small island, so probably Kari was right about that five knots. As we came up to Saevarstad itself, she asked, 'Where do we land now?'

'There's a small harbour just south of the house itself. Quiet the engine and go for that.'

'You chose this place already, then?'

'Let's say it had crossed my mind. Will Rasmussen or the sanatorium own a boat?'

'They are sure to, yes. It is like a car for those on an island.'

That's what I'd thought.

The sanatorium was easy enough to identify; it was the only three-storey house in sight and the only one I remembered seeing on the island anyway. But a hundred yards out from the land, the little inlet still hadn't showed itself clear. And there were sharp black rocks silhouetted against the starlight glitter of the water.

Kari said doubtfully, 'I do not think I can-'

'We need a light,' Willie snapped.

David said, 'There's a big signalling lamp in the cabin.'

'Get it, please."

He dived inside and came out again with an aged Aldis lamp on a long tarry flex. Willie took it, looked at the plug, said, 'God knows what this does to the batteries, but…" He plugged it into a socket on the little instrument board beside the engine, and pulled the trigger.

A solid beam of light snapped out across the water and splashed silently on a small concrete quay dead ahead.

Kari kicked the throttle forward and we surged in, Willie standing up by the mast and fanning the light gently from side to side to show up any rocks.

David whispered, 'D'you think they'll see the light, sir?'

'Why should they be looking?' The big house was almost out of sight behind a hump of land. 'And why are you whispering?'

In the glow of reflected light, I caught his sudden grin and nod.

There were a couple of other boats tied up there, but one was a fishing-boat and the other just an open lifeboat with an engine stuck in the middle and smelling of fertiliser. Nothing to belong to a posh boozing-home; they'd keep their boat down at the main harbour, as I'd hoped.

David objected at being left with the boat – and out of what he hoped would be action – until Willie gave him a genuine military snarl, and he sat down abruptly on the cabin top. The three of us walked up a short wide path to the coast road, and the sanatorium was about two hundred yards ahead.

Kari asked, 'What are you going to do now?'

'Ask a few questions, maybe tell a few little lies. Be careful how you get in front of me, as well.'

'There is another car now.'

A white old-model Cortina stood alongside the Saab and the Microbus ambulance. I tried the door and it opened, but the key wasn't in. House rule, I expect, about not leaving keys in cars, just in case somebody tried to break for it. I looked up at the house, but nobody had heard us yet, and the ground-floor rooms were all heavily curtained.

I bent and unscrewed one of the tyre valves. 'You fix the Saab,' I said to Willie.

He just nodded and didn't ask why. Probably he'd been quite a good soldier.

We walked quietly up on to the porch and rang the bell.

After a while there was the same clicking and clacking of locks and bolts and a light directly overhead flared on just as the door opened and Rasmussen himself frowned out at us.

No white coat this time, just a natty dove-grey suit stretched tight across his barrel chest, a white shirt, and a club tie. Or medical society.

'You?' he asked incredulously.

'Us,' I agreed and held up a hand against his tendency to push the door shut in our faces. 'Couple of things I didn't quite get clear. You did say that you'd started treatment on Herr Nygaard?'

'Two days since. Now-'

'But you didn't say whether he'd signed an agreement to treatment.'

He frowned heavily, but the bright brown eyes weren't quite steady beneath it. 'I told you there was no commitment-'

'No, so there has to be an agreement giving you the right to keep him here for up to a year. The State doesn't want patients changing their minds and going back on the sauce halfway through. And every admission has to be registered with the national Director for Treatment of Alcoholics."

'You have been reading a book again,' he said contemptuously.

'No, I just asked a good doctor. You could always do the same if you're in any doubt.'

He flushed, glanced quickly at the girl and Willie. 'Well, what do you want?'

'I want to see the paperwork that proves Nygaard's here legally – or Nygaard himself.'

'Tonight it is impossible.'