Blame The Dead

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.

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.