Blame The Dead

After a time, David said timidly, 'Did you find out what you wanted from Mr Nygaard?' And when nobody said anything, he added, 'Oh, sorry.'

'Hell, we should be apologising to you.'

Willie said, 'But there just wasn't anything in that log. Except the breakdown.'

David asked, 'Did he really escape from the burning ship, then?'

'Yes, but not from the engine-room. He was lying boozed on his bunk.'

'In his overcoat?' he asked.

Willie threw a quick glance at me and nearly lost the car.

I said slowly, 'How many overcoats would a chief engineer need?'

'Barely one. He wouldn't stand a bridge watch. He'd only need it when he went ashore.'

I nodded. 'He wasn't aboard. Not since Tallinn. The cops picked him up drunk there and slung him in jail – no, in one of those drying-out centres the Russian cities have for drunks.

You can't get bailed from them; they keep you twenty-four hours no matter what. And the captain rang Bergen and she said sail without him. And when he got out of the coop they'd fly him home to Norway – probably planned to put him back aboard at Krijtiansand, they'd got plenty of time for that, and you'd never have known. Exceptcrunch, the Skadi's burnt out and they have to stage a fake rescue instead. But no bloody wonder she wanted to see that log and make sure it didn't mention him being missing. I betthat invalidates your policy.'

'If you can prove it.'

'There must be some record in Tallinn. It'll take time to spring it loose, but what are lawyers for? Oh – he gave me the full name of the firm or whatever. At least I got that. Hucks and Thornton.'

'No,' he said suddenly, remembering. 'Notand. Hucksversus Thornton. A case back in eighteen-fifteen. It decided a Lloyd's policy doesn't work if the ship isn't properly manned. Still – it proves Steen was thinking the same as you.'

Kari said coldly, 'If he was not on the burning boat, how did his hands become burnt?'

'Oh, blast,' Willie said sadly. 'Hemust have been aboard, after all.'

I said, 'I can think of other ways of getting burns on a man's hands. Ways that'd be a sight more likely to give him a screaming fear of fire – if he'd half woken up while they were doing it to him.'

'No!' she shouted. 'They could not do that!'

'Ttey can kill three men, shoot me full of drugs, and try to kill us now. Don't tell me what theycan't do.'

Willie said, 'But you can't just turn a blowtorch or something on a man, you might kill him, and then you'd need to give him medical attention…' His voice trailed off.

'Useful chap, Doctor Rasmussen,' I said. 'Never know when you might have some specialised medical problem – burning, kidnapping, you know… but he'd be wearing a surgical mask, so Nygaard wouldn't- remember him.' After a moment, I added, 'So what's Mrs S-B's situation now?'

'Broke,' he said quickly. Then, after more thought, 'Quite broke. We sue for what we paid out, she must be refused limitation if she sent out an undermanned ship, she'll owe something like ten million – and I doubt her Mutual Club'll be much help once they hear how it happened. She'll lose the AD P Line; probably she'll end up washing Nygaard's nightshirts.'

'If we get down the hill alive.'

David said, 'I think I saw a car behind us.'

Forty-six

Coming out of the next bend, we were sure of it. Two headlights showing briefly, maybe seventy yards back.

'Wind it up, Willie.'

'What the devil d'you think I'm doing?' He was doing fine, really, hanging the car on the very edge of control and keeping it there. But a Volkswagen isn't a Jaguar. It isn't even a Cortina, and theirs had been the GT with the wide radial tyres.

On the next straight it simply walked up behind us – and its lights went off. An honest car would have put its lights on at that point.

'How long does this sort of road go on?' Willie asked grimly.

I looked at Kari. 'I do not know it so well – but I think until we go down to the lake.'

'You aren't joking.' We were winding gently, very gently, downhill – but the void on our right could still have been a hole right through the world.

Willie slowed into a left-hand turn with the centrifugal force shoving us out, out, out… And the Cortina nosed in to our left andclang.

The Volks twitched and slid and the void rushed in beneath us – and then we were sliding the other way and scraping along the cliff itself.

'Christ!' Willie fought the wheel steady. We straightened.

The Cortina cruised around the bend fifteen yards behind us, David was braced against the rear corner, white-faced buttight-lipped. Kari's expression was sheer puzzlement. Peoplelike Tanner and Kavanagh just weren't in her book of rules.

Willie said, 'For God's sake, man, if you're ever going to usea gun, why not now?' 'Yes.' But I only had six rounds left – and damn little good they'd be to me falling down, down, down into that swirlingemptiness a couple of feet to my right. I took the derringer from my sleeve, wound my window down. A cold hurricane rushed in.

Maybe they should institute a new class for pistol competition: offhand from a moving vehicle at another movingvehicle, to be shot on winding mountain roads in a snowstorm. And from a right-hand seat which means you have to twist your body right round and lay your arm out along the car. Probably it would be won by the actors who play in FBI movies.

Certainly not by me.

I could fire only slightly right of straight backwards, so onlyon a right-hand curve – the inside bends where centrifugalforce shoved us safely towards the rock wall on our left.

The moment I stretched out my arm, the Cortina checkedand dropped back. Tanner – it had to be him driving – knewexactly what I was doing, and he had a pretty good idea whatgun I was doing it with.

I fired one, but God knows where to.

Then we were slowing into another left-hander and the Cortina closing up and out of my line of fire. They touched usagain, but this time Willie accelerated into the curve on a prayer that it wouldn't go on too long. It didn't. Just as the front wheels started to go, he could flip the wheel across. We rocked but straightened. The Cortina came around muchslower and twenty yards back – but he could pick up thoseyards any time he wanted to.

A straight bit„then a gentle right-hander, and I stretched myarm and fired again. But he was a good thirty yards behind. He didn't need to be close except on the left-hand bends where I couldn't shoot anyway.

'Oh, hell,' I said. 'This is getting ridiculous. Drop me off around the next corner.'

'Dowhat?'

'Drop me off. We'll try a little justice instead of mere truth. But then go like buggerii.'

He gave a faint brief smile and nodded. 'All right, old boy. After the next left-hander.'

I reloaded the derringer and put it back in the arm clip. I might need both hands when I jumped.

Then we were coming through a reverse S, from a right-hand curve to a sharp left under an overhang of solid rock.

'Here?' Willie suggested.

'It'll do.'

'Of course,' he said thoughtfully,'they don't know this road any better than I do.'

He handled it beautifully. The Cortina closed up as we came into the straight between the two bends of the S – and Willie rammed on the brakes, far earlier than Tanner could have expected. If he'd been telepathic, he could have shunted us straight ahead – and straight over the edge of the corner. But he wasn't planning that for another ten yards; now he instinctively stamped the brakes. The Cortina's nose dug in, wiggled, hit us – but by then we were accelerating away in first and he was sliding to a stop in third.

We went around the corner with the engine screaming like a siren under Willie's foot. Then we were straight and he trod on the brake. I stepped out as gently as a commuter from the eight-fifteen.

Maybe I had four seconds; they were long ones. I walked across to the cliff, leaned back against it, cocked the derringer, and held it at arm's length in both hands.