Night Of Error

'Goddam sonsa-biches,' he said indistinctly. 'Why d'you quit, Mike?'

'Hadley had Clare,' I said briefly.

'Haaaah,' he sighed, and sagged back on the settee. 'I shoulda lef her behind,' he muttered. 'Never lissen to a woman, Mike.' He closed his eyes and turned his head away, and Clare and I exchanged worried looks across his head.

'It's my fault,' Geordie burst out. 'I should have kept the lads up to scratch. We should have kept watch. We shouldn't have been surprised like that.'

'Shut up, Geordie,' I said. 'That won't get us anywhere. There's no blame – not on us. We weren't looking for trouble.'

'Aye,' said Ian softly. 'Yon Ramirez has a lot to answer for.'

Presently there was a rattle at the door and one of the guards opened it. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Taffy slide into a corner, half-hidden behind the settee, and then Ramirez came in, as elegant as ever. 'I trust you are comfortable,' he said solicitously.

'Let's not have any blarney,' I said bluntly. 'What's the next move, Ramirez?'

He smiled, and seemed to be enjoying a huge joke.

'Why, I have to introduce you to someone,' he said.

He leaned out of the door and beckoned to someone in the passage. He turned back to me and said, 'I told you once that you shouldn't make libellous statements that you couldn't substantiate.'

The man who came into the saloon was about my size, dark and heavily bearded. He carried my laboratory notebook in one hand.

Ramirez said, 'An old friend for you. I think you all know Mr Mark Trevelyan.'* 2*

As I looked into Mark's eyes I think my heart seemed to miss three full beats and I felt the hairs bristle on the nape of my neck. It isn't often that one is confronted by a dead man -especially a dead brother.

There was a sound as of a long-pent breath being released throughout the saloon and then the silence was total. Ian was the first to stir. 'That's the mannie I found…'

His voice tailed off as Mark switched his eyes to him. 'Ah, Ian Lewis. So it was you who clobbered me, was it?' he said pleasantly, and then his voice hardened. 'You'd have done better to stay in your Highland hovel, you Scots peasant.'

The whole pattern of events of the last few months had suddenly been shuffled like the pieces in a kaleidoscope, to present an entirely new picture. It was no wonder that Ian hadn't recognised the bearded man he found on our raid on Sirena; he had last seen Mark as a boy. I might have recognised him, but I hadn't taken the trouble to look. We weren't looking for a dead man that night in Nuku'alofa.

I looked round at the others. Their expressions were a mixture of amazement and slowly dawning comprehension. Clare gave Mark one long, measured look, then made a small contemptuous sound and turned back to her father. Campbell took her by the wrist protectively, never taking his eyes off Mark. He said nothing.

Ian was furious and showed it, while Geordie merely stared speculatively at Mark under lowered brows. Paula had made a sudden move as if to go to him, but she shrank back and hid in the shadows at Geordie's back. Taffy didn't show himself at all.

Of them all, Mark was watching me. 'Hello, Mike,' he said soberly.

I said, 'Mark, for God's sake – I'

He was urbane where I was dumbfounded. He lifted the notebook and some papers in his hand. 'I've been rooting about in your laboratory. So kind of you to have done the preliminary survey for me. I couldn't have done it better myself.'

He dropped the papers on the table.

Ian looked at him with black anger in his eyes. 'I wish that I'd hit you a bit harder,' he said harshly.

Mark smiled at him but said nothing. He picked up my notebook again and flicked the pages with one hand. 'We seem to have struck it rich, Mike. There may be billions in all this, don't you agree? A pity you wasted your time but never mind, you saved me a bit of work.'

I spoke through a dry throat. 'You're a bastard, Mark.'

'Oh, come on, Mike. Aren't you maligning mother?'

He looked around. 'And who else have we? Yes, Wilkins, isn't it? What's it like on Tyneside these days, Geordie?'

Geordie showed his disgust. 'A bit cleaner than this saloon.'

'We will have our little jokes,' said Mark lightly. 'And my dear old boss, Mr Campbell, the fallen warrior – and Clare. I'm sorry you had to be here, Clare.'

She refused to look at him and said nothing. It irked Mark and he shrugged petulantly, turned away and peered behind Geordie. 'And who's the young lady sitting in the shadow?' he asked. 'I didn't know you were such a one for the ladies, Mike.'

He moved round the table and stopped suddenly. His face went very pale. 'Paula!' he whispered. He turned his head quickly to Ramirez. 'You didn't tell me she was aboard.'

Ramirez shrugged. 'Just another woman,' he said casually. For an instant they glared at one another and I had an insight into their relationship.

Paula stood up. 'Mark – oh Mark! I thought you were dead. Why didn't you come to me, Mark? Why didn't you trust me?'

Ramirez laughed softly.

Mark actually looked troubled. 'I'm truly sorry,' he said. 'Sorry you had to be on this ship.' He made a curious gesture as though wiping her away, and a prickle ran up my spine. In that one sudden movement he had rejected us all – wiped us out of his world.

Paula took a step forward. 'But Mark, I…'

Ramirez snapped out a curt phrase in Spanish and one of the guards lifted his rifle. The meaning was unmistakable.

Paula stopped dead and looked at Mark with the comprehension of horror. His eyes flickered and he looked away from her and she slowly fell back into a chair and buried her face in her hands. I heard the racking sobs that shook her, and saw Clare move to put her arms round her shoulders.

I had to force myself to speak calmly. 'We all thought you were dead. Why did you do it?'

' I had to die,' he said. He perked up – the change of subject took his mind off Paula. 'The police were after me and getting a little too close, so I conveniently killed myself.'

I suddenly knew another black truth. 'You did kill Sven Norgaard, didn't you.'

He turned on me. 'What else could I do?' he said defensively. 'The bloody fool wanted to publish. Him and his bloody scientific integrity – he wanted to give it all away, billions of dollars that belonged to me – to me, do you hear that? I made the discovery, didn't I?' His voice tailed off, and then he added softly, 'I had to kill him.'

The silence was murderous and we all stared at the ego-maniacal horror that was my brother. He straightened up and said, 'And then I killed myself. The police would never look for a dead murderer. Wasn't that pretty clever of me, Mike?'

'It was stupid,' I said flatly. 'But then you always were a stupid man.'

His hand crashed on the table and we all jerked at the sudden violence. Only Ramirez watched him unmoved and dispassionate. 'It wasn't stupid!' he yelled. 'It was a damn good idea! But I'm surrounded by bungling idiots.'

'Like Kane and Hadley,' I said.

That's right, them,' he agreed, suddenly calm again. 'Those damn fools gave me appendicitis, of all things. I could have killed that madman, Hadley – there was no need to invent extra details.'

'I'm sure you could,' I said. 'But it was you who bungled it. You should have told them precisely what to say.'

He betrayed for the first time his lack of authority. 'It had nothing to do with me,' he said sullenly. 'Ernesto fixed it.'

I shot a sidelong glance at Ramirez. 'So he's a bungler too?'

Ramirez smiled sardonically and Mark said nothing. I went on, 'You bungled again when Hadley let your papers and the nodules go. You should have taken them with you – that was bad planning.'

'They got them back though.'

'Not quite, Mark. I had a nodule still – and I had your diary.'

He reacted to that with white-faced fury, then subsided and nodded thoughtfully. 'You were lucky. You read it?'