Blame The Dead

About then, we turned south-east, lit our lights again, and slowed down. They caught us just before eleven.

We had a little time to prepare for it. Probably there wasn't anything else they could do but rush about the bay in a big motor-cruiser, coming to a grinding halt beside each small boat still around and shining a small searchlight on it, but it didn't exactly make them invisible.

Willie said, 'What do we do now, then?'

Kari said hopefully, 'Shall we put out the lights again?'

'Christ, no. They'll have seen us already; that'd be as good as a signpost.' They were investigating a lobster-boat about a quarter of a mile back. 'No, we just keep going. And let David steer; they've seen all the rest of us.'

'For God's sake, old boy-'

'That or surrender.'

David said, 'I could steer this boat, all right.'

'But you can't answer questions in Norwegian,' Willie pointed out.

I said, 'Let Kari prompt him. They won't expect us to have a boy his age along, anyway, and they won't hear much of his accent above the engines.'

Willie raked a hand anxiously through his hair. 'But I say-'

'We don't really have a choice. There're some rough boys out in that boat and they won't observe the Geneva Convention if wedo surrender. Now let's get organised.'

He went into the cabin first, me next because I had a gun. Kari stayed at the half-open door with a bit of engine tarpaulin draped artistically over her. David was sitting across the tiller in the proper negligently professional style and – a last bright idea of his own – chewing a sandwich from our provisions. He reckoned it would help his Harrow accent along a bit and he was probably right.

We waited in the darkness that was as thick as fish soup, with Nygaard snoring and bubbling louder than the diesel, and Willie said, 'I really don't see why that doctor's chasing us at all – if all you said about his breaking the rules was true.'

'Not his decision any more. He sold out long ago,'

'To Mrs Smith-Bang?'

'Must be – God knows why. Maybe she owns his mortgage, maybe she caught him pushing drugs on the side – or maybe he just likes the crooked life. He's leading it now, anyway.'

The cracks in the bulkhead suddenly glowed with light. David called, 'They're coming.'

There were a couple of thick, dirty port-holes but angled forwards, and I couldn't hear the cruiser's engines over the racket of our own. But over Kari's shoulder I could see the searchlight's glow getting brighter and brighter, silhouetting David's slim figure. He turned and waved his sandwich angrily – a nice touch.

Then the light sparkled direct into my eyes and I yanked my head back. Through a crack in the bulkhead I could just see the white shape slide up alongside on our right and match speeds a few feet away.

The light raked the open deck of our boat and settled back on David. A voice yelled,'Hvilket skip?'

Kari's voice was half-whisper, half-shout,'Stavanger Smaragd!'

'Stavanger Smaragd/' David's shout was nicely scrambled by sandwich.

'Hvorskal De?'

'Idsal,'Kari called.

'Basali'

So far – I guessed – we'd had the name of the boat and where we were supposed to be heading. But now they called something Kari didn't catch. She hesitated. I pulled the derringer back to full cock – and then David took over. He simply held his sandwich up in an ear-cupping gesture, leant his head towards them, and yelled a completely international 'Ay?'

'Hvor er faren den?' the voice bellowed. Trond, I think.

'Hansover,'Kari answered.

'Han sover!'

Then she added,'Dra til helvete.'

'Dra til helvete!'

After that, nothing. I rammed my ear against the bulkhead -and got it filled with diesel vibrations. Had we missed something?

Then the light died; the big white boat swung away. From the port-hole I could see the white wake suddenly thicken in the starlight as she piled on speed.

After a few moments, I asked Kari, 'What did they say at the end?'

'They asked where is his father.'

'And you said?'

' "He sleeps." ' She paused and said hesitantly, 'And also – "Go to hell." I thought a fisherman's boy might say that, but do you think I should tell David what I made him say?'

Willie's warm chuckle of relief flowed over my right ear.

I said, 'I think maybe he's old enough to know.' I slipped the derringer's hammer off cock and put it back in the arm clip. Behind us, Nygaard snored on.

The lights of the towns and villages vanished behind us, switched off or blanked out by islands and headlands. Ahead, the land rose up above us; closed in around and finally behind us. We were a beetle of noise crawling along between silent black cliffs, the dim path of water ahead matching the narrow path of sky above. Maybe we threw an echo, 0r maybe it was the loneliness that made us sound so loud and feel so bright. When Willie snapped his lighter beside me, it was like a gunshot.

'What does this tell us about Ellie Smith-Bang?' he asked carefully.

'After you'd left the sanatorium, the bloke I shot at back there – and missed – is Pat Kavanagh. He killed Steen in Bergen; he's been working for Dave Tanner, the private detective in London who got the log off me. Between them, Kavanagh and Tanner sound like the two boys in Arras."

Willie turned quickly, making a hushing sound. But David was still back in the stern, still steering, but with Kari crouched beside him sipping coffee from a Thermos top.

'Sorry, old boy,' Willie said. Then, softly, 'So which one killed Martin?'

'In law, both of them are equally guilty.'

'Can you prove it against either of them?'

'I hadn't much thought about that, not yet.'

He breathed smoke and it whipped away ahead of him -though we were leaning on the cabin roof facing forwards. The wind was behind us, and coming up the funnel of the fjord it worked itself into a real cold temper.

Willie said, 'So you mean, if it was Tanner and Kavanagh from the beginning, it was Smith-Bang from the beginning.

She'd hired themto handle the blackmail and all – what?'

'Something like that.'

'If they killed Steen, just so he couldn't talk to you,' he said carefully, 'then why did they wait so long?'

'I'd guess-' Did the engine miss a beat, there? I glanced at Willie and he seemed to have sensed something, too. But now it was running smoothly enough. I went on, 'I'd guess because Smith-Bang didn't know he was involved, that he'd found the log, until after Martin was dead. Somebody burgled the London flat, you know, soon after Arras.'

'How doyou know?'

'I burgled it myself – or rather, David lent me a key.'

'Did you, by God?' A little more shocked than I'd expected. 'I don't suppose you reported that to the police, either? The amount youdon't tell the police forces of various countries would fill a whole book of reports, what? You were saying…?'

'Again I'm guessing, but the log-book must have had a covering letter, and Fenwick probably filed it in his flat. It wasn't there when I looked. So they'd know Steen was the middleman – but it would still take time to arrange his death.

You don't buy a killing off a stall in the Portobello Road – or the Bergen fish-market. Anyway, Smith-Bang already had killers on hire in London, so it was the economical thing to bring one of them over. By then I was going as well – dammit, I eventold Tanner I was going – so they worked it to blackmail me as a bonus.'

This time the diesel definitely stuttered. Willie said, 'I hope that damn thing isn't going to…" and he went on glaring at it – through a layer of tarpaulin, a layer of wood, and in midnight darkness anyhow.

Then, 'I still can't accept the idea of Ellie Smith-Bang hiring killers to… to…'

'To save the ADP Line and keep herself out of the poor-house? For a half-million insurance claim? People put their wives through the meat-mincer just for having a quick poke from the milkman which didn't cost them a penny. Probably got them cheap milk, if they'd sat down to work out the economics of it.'