Blame The Dead

After a while, he nodded.

Forty-five

In an odd way, it was a cheerful ride down the hill. The whisky bottle was empty and Nygaard was full, for the moment, and telling Kari a few things she'd rather not have known about the night life in Pernambuco. Or so my limited grasp of Norwegian plus Kari's expression led me to believe. But I spent most of my time studying the road map. And outside, the snow thickened in the air swirling about us.

The Byrkjedal crossroads wasn't exactly quite that; more a couple of road forks, with the few houses in between. The last fork gave us a choice of last night's route back into Stavanger, or a half-made road around various lakes that fed out on to the main road to Sandnes and Stavanger, except another twenty kilometres south.

'You've never taken the left fork at Byrkjedal, have you?' I asked Willie.

'What? – no.' He was driving with tight-lipped concentration.

'Apart from Trond and the bloke whose right hand youdidn't notice, did the other chap have a boxer's face?'

He flipped me a quick glance. 'You might say, yes.'

'Or like a military policeman?'

'Something like it.'

We reached Byrkjedal just before the hour, with the snow swirling with real confidence, and visibility down to about a hundred yards. We passed the first fork, a handful of houses, and coming up to the second fork – there were two cars parked on the right.

'Stopbehind them!' I snapped. Willie pulled in about ten yards back.

Closest was the white Cortina, beyond that the Saab 99. Two men climbed out of the Cortina and stood carefully spaced across the road. Tanner and Kavanagh, of course.

Willie said, 'Were you expecting a second car, then?'

'More or less.' I pushed open my door and got out into the whirling snow, but keeping the door in front of me and the derringer in my hand below its window level. Ahead of me, neither Tanner nor Kavanagh was showing a gun, but they weren't showing any hands, either. Just dark figures against a white kaleidoscope of snow.

Tanner called, 'Afternoon, Major. Things seem to have got a bit complicated.'

'All in the day's work,' I called back. 'By the way – was there really a security job for me if I'd stayed around in London?'

'Of course, Major. All fixed. You should have taken it.'

'I'm beginning to agree with you.'

'So no hard feelings?' he called – but not getting any closer. 'The lady just wants her witness back, and that's that, okay?'

'Fine. He's all yours. How do we do it – like the agents across the border bit?'

I could hear his laugh at that distance and through the snow. 'We've both been on those ones, eh, Major? Okay, get him started.'

I turned to the car. 'Get Nygaard out. Willie, stay there.' Without looking away, I reached back and pulled the seat-back forwards. Nygaard oozed uncertainly out behind me.

And Kari followed. 'I am going with him.'

Willie blew up. 'You'renot!'

'I came with him, I go with him.'

I said, 'She can try. They won't take her.'

She looked at me curiously, then started to help Nygaard across the patch of swirling whiteness towards the other cars.

He seemed suddenly subdued inside his greatcoat with its glistening epaulettes.

Tanner raised a hand and David got out of the Saab and moved uncertainly towards us, a top-heavy figure in his thick parka jacket. He passed Nygaard and Kari about midway between us, glancing at them, and then coming on.

Tanner and Kavanagh shifted out sideways to cover us…

… give me a gun, a real gun like both of them have got in their pockets, not some two-shot popgun that couldn't win a prize at a village fairground, and things would be different…

Nygaard and Kari passed the Cortina and went on to the Saab. As they reached it, Mrs Smith-Bang stepped out and waved at me. 'Hi, Jim.'

I raised my left hand. 'Everybody's bloody cheery about it all,' I muttered.

David came disconsolately past me, his parka hood down and the snow flocking his limp hair. 'I'm terribly sorry, sir – getting caught like that and messing things up.' And he honestly looked it, too.

'God, that doesn't matter. Did they hurt you?'

'Oh, no. They didn't take much notice of me, really. But they know you.'

'Yes. Who's in which car?'

'When they caught me, it was that man Tanner and Trond – is that his name? – in the Cortina, and then we met Mrs Smith-Bang and the other man, Kavanagh, in the Saab. But now Trond's driving the Saab and the two British men are in the Cortina."

Willie said impatiently, 'What the devil does that matter?'

'They spread the guns for the search, now they're grouping them. What do you think it matters? Get in, David.'

He climbed into the back. Nygaard was clambering painfully into the Saab – and Kari being turned away. It looked as if she were arguing it, but then Tanner took her firmly by the shoulder and pushed her towards us. She walked sadly back.

The Saab suddenly bloomed white exhaust smoke and rushed away down the hill. Tanner and Kavanagh closed slowly in on the Cortina, but in no hurry to get started.

'When we go, Willie,' I said quietly, 'Take theleft fork. But we don't move until after they do.'

Kari came up and I held the seat forward for her. 'Why did they not want me to go? '

'Get in.'

I gave Tanner a half-wave-half-salute and went on leaning on the Volkswagen's door. He waved back; then he and Kavanagh climbed into the Cortina. It crawled slowly off down the right fork, leaving a square black patch in the thin smooth snow.

When they were out of sight, I swung aboard and said, 'Now go, Willie. I mean go.'

He went, all right, but he argued. 'I don't see what's the hurry, now, for heaven's sake-'

'Because those two goons are going to ambush us.'

'Oh, really, old boy. I mean, they could have gone for us just now, if they wanted to.'

'Yes, but we'd've ended up with bullet holes in us. And some of them. This way, we can just drive neatly over a cliff and no questions asked.'

David said, 'But haven't they got what they want now?'

'The log-book and Nygaard? Yes, and four witnesses to the way they got them. They know perfectly well the police'll have Nygaard away from them five minutes after, we get down the hill. If we get down.'

Kari said, 'So that is why they did not want me.' She sounded more cheerful about it.

'That's right, love. They'd only have to have killed you separately, and this way it's easier. Wind it up, Willie.'

But he'd wound it up just about as far as it would go; the trouble was the road. It was weaving through some sharp uphill bends, and whatever there was under the new snow and old frozen stuff, it wasn't tarmac. The car bounded from rut to rut, the engine whining like a penned animal.

'How much more of this?' Willie asked.

I looked at the map. 'About twenty miles, but it can't be all this bad.'

I was right, too. A few hundred yards later it got very much worse.

We came over a small rise and started downhill – and suddenly there was nothing on our right. Just nothing. The map said there was a big lake down there, but it could just as easily have been a city of ten million down under the void of swirling snow that started at the cliff edge. And on the left, a sheer rock wall that sometimes reached out to roof us in, the road cut through it like a one-sided tunnel.

Willie dropped down a gear and his hands were white on the steering wheel.'What did you say about somebody pushing us off a cliff, old boy? There was nothing like this on the other road.'

'There're those two gunslingers.' I looked back, but they weren't behind us. Yet.

The windscreen wipers wish-washed back and forth, piling up snow at the corners of the screen. Ahead, the cliff faded out at maybe fifty yards, and if something was coming the other way, we were going to hit it solid; Willie was way over on the left-hand side – except it wasn't really wide enough to have two sides.