“On dirait qu’un cylindre ne fonction pas. Deux, peut-etre.”
“Vous etes Anglais?”
“Irlandais!” O’Gilroy corrected sharply.
In the reflected glow of the torch, the man’s face creased into a smile. He eased himself up off the deck with slow, strong movements and apologised, then again for speaking only French. “You know about engines, then?”
“Something. I’ve been a chauffeur. What type is it?”
But the man didn’t even know that. “American, I think. It has just been put into the boat and this is the first time we have tried it on a long journey.”
“Ford, probably. Could be your sparking plugs. Does the engine go fast when you move?”
“It goes very slowly.”
Even unladen as it was, the barge would be quite a weight for a motor-car engine to push along. Now it sat high in the water, putting the deck at about chest height and, just below that, were two lit but misted-Over portholes. O’Gilroy could hear a mutter of conversation from inside, but couldn’t identify a woman’s voice. There were at least two people inside, along with the two men outside.
From along the towpath, beyond reach of the torchlight, Jay called: “Are you coming?”
“Jest a minute. Ye go on.” He switched back to French and asked the man how far to the next village with a cafe, then called: “Jest a coupla kilometres to Trilbardou. I’ll see ye in the cafe there.”
Jay waved and pedalled off.
“A friend of yours?” the man asked.
“We work at the same place in Paris.” The man waited for more, but O’Gilroy knew not to offer any: the innocent don’t explain themselves. “Do you want me to take a look at this engine?”
The man stretched an arm and gave O’Gilroy a powerful heave up. There was an oil lamp hung on the little three-sided structure which would have been a wheel-house if it had had a wheel, but was just to keep the rain off the man waggling the long tiller arm behind him and the engine lever sticking up from the floor. On one wall of the shelter there was a switch, like an ordinary light switch, and small levers that presumably controlled the throttle and spark advance/retard. That was all.
O’Gilroy grunted and looked at the man, who was studying him closely. He had a wrestler’s build, squat and strong, with a heavy moustache above full lips and deep pouches under his eyes; the rest of his face was pitted with little smallpox craters. He didn’t look very French, but La Villette couldn’t afford patriotic snobbery. If you asked if this was a man who could handle cafe customers from that area, the answer was Yes, so this was presumably Kaminsky.
“All right, let’s have a look then.” O’Gilroy reached for the switch. “Does this turn it off?”
“You have to crank it to start it again.” You have to; this was a man who told others what to do.
18
From the bridge uphill from Trilbardou village, Ranklin could see perhaps three hundred yards of the canal, though he only knew it was that distance because of the view when it was lighter. Now the trees on either side were near-black shapes and the water fuzzed with evening mist or rising dew, if they were different things. He puffed on his pipe and only when he heard someone move beside him and he whipped around did he realise he was far less calm than he was trying to look.
Rut it was Berenice Collomb. He thought she’d gone to the village with Corinna she’d become so much a silent fixture in that motor-car.
“Hello,” he said awkwardly. She didn’t belong in these proceedings; he wished they’d managed to dump her somewhere. It was a pity human beings couldn’t be switched off, like machines. “This is a bit prettier than la Villette. You come from . . . from Cherbourg, don’t you? Is it anything like the countryside around-?”
“Was Dr Gorkin really trying to have me killed?” She wasn’t interested in scenery.
Suddenly cautious, Ranklin said: “How can I know? The men who kept you prisoner, do you think they were doing it for themselves?”
“I thought you knew everything.” Truculently.
“Well, I don’t. I only know what people tell me, and half the time that’s lies. I just have to think what’s most likely to be true.”
There was a pause while she did this – or, more likely, realised that was just what she had been doing. “I think Dr Gorkin was making a plot . . . A true anarchist should not make a plot. Killing a king, or a president, that is honest. That is just helping history. History is on our side,” she assured him. “So one should not try to alter it, to manipulate people . . . one should not make plots. That is as bad as democracy.”
“Oh.” Ranklin reckoned this opened a topic a bit too big for casual conversation. But he certainly had no qualms about trying to alter history, at least the details that he could get hold of. Still, he just nodded and said: “And do you think he was trying to manipulate you?”
Annoyingly, she used his own trick of answering with a question: “What do you think?”
“Oh, you know me: I’m a monarchist and a soldier, and all sorts of things you don’t believe in.”
“Are you really a soldier?”
“By profession, yes.”
“Just a slave, then,” she said sympathetically (the damned little trollop). “But you aren’t a big strong man, not like a proper tyrant. You’re really just a tool of the tyrants.”
“Perhaps,” Ranklin said meekly, but on the clear understanding that this entitled him to inherit the earth in due course. “But we were talking about Dr Gorkin and what he’s been doing.”
There was a silence. The slight breeze had faded along with the light and the canal below was unruffled and glassy, reflecting the last light in the sky. Colour was draining away, too, leaving just tones of grey shading to black. Down in the village a cart rumbled along an unpaved road.
Then she said firmly: “Dr Gorkin is a traitor to the Cause.”
“What about the cafe proprietor, Kaminsky?”
This was obviously more complicated, but she reached a decision in the end. She wasn’t yet of an age not to reach decisions. “He is a tool of Dr Gorkin, he still believes Dr Gorkin is a great thinker. But you would say Kaminsky is just a criminal.”
“Would I? Why?”
“He arranges things. Robberies, but only of banks, for the Cause. Perhaps assassinations.”
“Setting fire to police stations?” Ranklin ventured.
Another long silence. “Perhaps. But he would do it because Dr Gorkin told him to . . . What are you going to do about Dr Gorkin?”
That was a question Ranklin really didn’t want to answer. He wasn’t in the business of justice, only manipulation. If he could prevent Gorkin publishing the King’s-bastard article, or at least prevent him backing it with Mrs Langhorn’s evidence, the rest was up to others.
“The police here regard him as an intellectuel,” he said. “If they can’t touch him . . . well, if we did anything to him, it would just make him a martyr.”
“Then you will not try to kill him?”
“We will not,” Ranklin promised virtuously. And when she said nothing, he went on: “When the barge arrives, will you promise to be quiet?”
“What are you going to do?”
“Rescue Mrs Langhorn, if she’s on board. And if she’s not . . . they can go about their business.”
“I told you: Kaminsky will shoot your silly heads off. He always has plenty of guns.”
“Let us worry about that. Will you promise to stay quiet?”
“She’s a stupid old cow, but if you want to try and rescue her, that’s your problem. Do you want me to swear by God? -I don’t believe in God.”
There was the growl of a big car in low gear from the direction of the village.
“No. Just promise as Berenice Collomb. That’ll do me.”
She may have been surprised at the idea, she may have shrugged, but she said: “I promise, then.”
Its electric headlights blazing, the tourer slid past them and Corinna started to turn it around just past the bridge. This took a lot of to-and-froing and clashing of gears, but she managed it and cut off the headlights before they could shine back down the hill into the village. She parked just past the bridge and got out waving something.