Blame The Dead

'Which did you usually use?'

'The stairs. But in summer, the good weather, we open the hatch also.'

'Where was the hatch? Ahead of the bridge or aft of it?'

'In front.'

I didn't need to ask how the other engineers had died. Fire flooding – just that – in from the bows, sweeping the deck, cracking the hatch, sucked down inside into the lungs of the ship by that hungry-breathing diesel. Or diesels.

I didn'thave, to ask how they died, down there. But I asked anyway.

He looked up quickly, shook his head, gave another brief shudder.

'What happened?' I said again.

'Just – the fire.' He flapped his crumpled hands in a downwards motion.

'When did your hands get burned?'

He stared at the floor. 'On the ladder… I reach up… ah!'

'On theladder?'

'No, I mean the stair. I open the door at the top…'

'You'd better remember which when it comes to court.'

' But I already knewhe'd been in his cabin at the time, anyway.

Then David knocked and came in carrying two mugs of coffee. He looked pale and tense.

'Thanks.' I took both, put one on the floor beside Nygaard's feet.

David said, 'I think, sir… I think I'd like to go for a walk.'

I didn't blame him. 'Okay. But keep off the road and if you hear a car, any car, get under cover. All right?'

'Yes, sir.' He gave me one quick glance and went out.

After a minute or two, Nygaard bent down with a grunt, picked up the mug, slopped a lot of it out, but drank the rest.

I said, 'Did you know we'd found the log, the deck log?'

'Ja?'Question or answer? – or a man who can't remember whether he remembers or not?

I took the copies from my jacket pocket. 'Do you remember when Steen came to see you? Man called Jonas Steen?'

He looked up with a flabby sneer, then leaned over and patted his backside. 'You call him man? I think in England you say fairy mostly.'

I frowned. Nygaard went on leering. 'You like him?'

'Shut up.' So how could I tell? – I'd only met him dead. Women say to you, 'But I thought men couldalways tell,' just like I can always tell they're not cheating on me and who's going to win the Third World War.

Wait a moment. 'How doyou know?' Steen might have been Tinkerbell Mark One, but he'd never have waggled at this broken-down old barrel.

'Everybody know.' He threw the question away with a flap of his right claw. And hadn't Mrs Smith-Bang asked if I'd met this man alive? – before she'd had him killed.

So now I knew what was in Henrick Lie's suicide note. A 'personal affair', wasn't it? That's what that bastard Inspector (First Class) Vik had been hiding; an unrequited-love story. Had Lie really been homosexual as well, or had Kavanagh invented it for the occasion?

Never mind. I said, 'it doesn't matter what Steen was. But who's H and Thornton?'

'I do not-'

'Oh yes you do, mate. Who are they?'

'No.'

I took a box of Kari's matches out of my pocket and shook it once and laid it down. He stared at it as if it was a tarantula. Probably he'd have preferred the spider.

I said, 'Well?'

'Hucks and Thornton,' he said hoarsely.

'Good. And who arethey?'

'I… they…' His eyes were still on the matchbox. I picked it up, slowly, very slowly, and pressed it gently open… and he watched all the time. Sweat flooded his face.

Then I said, 'Oh, bugger it. No.' And I pulled open the door and threw the matchbox the length of the main room.

A car rushed past. Not a Volkswagen, but I was too late at the window to catch it on the only piece of road I could see. But going uphill fairly fast.

Wasn't the road blocked above here?

By the time I was out of the door and with a view of the full stretch of road, it was out of sight. I ran back and emptied half a bucket of water into the stove – and nearly blew the cabin down. For a moment, smoke and steam filled the room and the hot metal fizzed like a snake-pit. But it faded quickly. There'd be no sign of life when the car came back.

But it didn't come back. Not right away and then not just after that and…

… and David?

I'd told him to stay off the road and out of sight. He could hear a car as well as I could; I'd just be giving away my own position by stepping out and yelling at him.

I moved from one window to another and to the front door, open a crack and bleeding cold air in on us. Behind me, Nygaard said, 'Please shut the door.' I didn't.

Then a figure moved across a gap between two cabins up the road. A figure like – no, I didn't know what it was like. Not just on one glimpse. But the next time it moved, it was Trond. You can't make a mistake about that frog shape, not twice.

Nygaard said, 'What is happening? It smells burning.'

'I doused the fire. Now shutup.'

Trond was moving from cabin to cabin, checking each one and pretending he was an infantryman under fire but forgetting an infantryman has a firm sense of direction. Wrong, maybe, but firm. Trond was hidden from our direction for one moment, then running up and planting his backside to me, peek-a-booing around a corner back the way he'd come.

When he was within thirty yards, I took out the derringer and cocked it. He checked one last cabin and started for ours. I let him come to fifteen yards… ten – and he stopped. He'd seen the door wasn't quite closed.

I opened it and stepped out, holding the gun pointed. I wasn't going to shoot at that range, but I wanted him to decide whether he came any closer.

'Hello, Trond.'

The wide fleshy face creased into a grin and he stepped forward. Then two shots sounded, back up the valley, and he stopped, head cocked. A distant voice shouted, 'Trond!'

Then he scuttled away around a cabin and out of sight. I waited. Nothing. I dropped down the steps, derringer in hand -and the car rushed past down the road. A white Cortina, old model, that could be the one we'd seen in Rasmussen's drive, or maybe not.

I shouted, 'David?' The far slope bounced back a sloppy echo. But I was still prowling and shouting when Willie and Kari got back, half an hour afterwards.

Forty-four

He bounced out of the Volkswagen almost before it had stopped, screaming. 'You bloody idiot! They've got David!' I just nodded. By then I was sitting perched on the parapet at the side of the road and feeling rather tired, plus other things.

'How do you know?' I asked dully.

'They stopped us on the road!' Kari was out now, staring white-faced at me. Willie went on, 'I saw him!'

'And who else?'

'What does that…? Well, there were three of them, men. Two British, I think. The other was Trond.'

'One of them with a bandage on his hand?'

'I didn't see. They said-'

'White Cortina, was it?'

'Yes. Do you want to know what they said?'

'I can guess, but go on.'

'They'll swap him for Nygaard.'

Kari said, 'We cannot do this.'

I said, 'I guessed that, too. Why not?'

'He is a person! Not a slave! You do not give him away -even for an English schoolboy.'

I looked at Willie. 'Did they say when and where?'

'At the crossroads at Byrkjedal, at four.' He looked at his watch. 'Fifty minutes/ 'So there's no rush.' I looked at Kari. 'I don't think Nygaard's in any danger, you know. He's still a key witness in a big case. Once we're down the hill, we can report him to the police and have them pick him up as an alcoholic. Get him properly committed to somewhere. We can do that, too, under Norwegian law. No problem. Now start packing him up.'

I led the way confidently towards the cabin. That's what majors are for, isn't it? -to show confidence?

Ten minutes later we were all packed – well, the Volkswagen was – and three of us standing around sipping a last cup of coffee while Nygaard sat in his uniform greatcoat on the bench and shivered at other things beside the cold.

Willie murmured, 'Did you solve the mystery of the Marie Celeste?'