Hammond Innes
The Killer Mine
CHAPTER ONE
The 'Arisaig' Reaches Cornwall
The fo'c'sle was hot with the heat of the engines. Yet I shivered as I set down my glass and reached for the bottle. The glare of the naked light hurt my eyes. I filled my glass again. The liquor spilled fire down my throat as I drank, but it did not warm me. I was cold through to my very spine. Boots rang on the steel deck above our heads. A body stirred in its hammock, snorted, rolled over and then settled itself again. The hammock swayed like a bundle of straw to the roll of the boat. The sour odour of human bodies mingled with the fumes of the cognac and the blue fog of tobacco smoke made my eyes smart.
'What's the time?' I asked. My mouth was dry — a dusty cavity in which my tongue moved like a rubber pad. The words came harsh and unnatural as I put the question.
'You speak me what is the time two minutes ago?'
'Well, I'm asking you again,' I said harshly. Damn all Italians to hell! Why did I have to sit drinking with an Italian? Must Mulligan have Italians in his crew? But the British wouldn't drink with me, blast 'em. The Egg was only drinking with me because he was drunk and would drink with anybody. Or was it because he enjoyed watching the fear that welled up from the chilled hollow of my bowels? He was laughing at me. I could see it in his dark eyes. 'What's the time, damn you?' I shouted at him..
He pulled a large silver watch out of his breast pocket and turned the ornate gilt face towards me. A quarter past three. If Mulligan was right in his reckonings we should be in sight of the English coast. We had passed the Bishop Light well to starboard at dusk.
The Egg put the watch back in his pocket and picked up his glass. He drank with a noisy, sucking sound. His thick lips shone wet in the swinging light. They smiled and his eyes watched me.
What was he thinking? What went on under that bald skull of his? The lips were cruel, the eyes — brown like a dog's, dark like a passionate girl's — were cold. 'God damn it,' I cried. 'What are you smiling at?' I felt anger surge up in my body drowning the chill of fear so that my body seemed to swell out until the cramped fo'c'sle was too small to hold it. His sallow eyelids flickered and when I looked into his eyes again they were wide so that I could look through to the rotten core of him. He did not speak. He just gazed at me with those wide-open, cruel eyes.
The anger left me and I felt cold again. 'God damn all Italians,' I heard myself mutter. How long had I been drinking? What did it matter? What did anything matter? I was clear of Italy. England lay ahead, out there in the darkness beyond the steel bulkhead.
The man who had stirred in his hammock rolled over on to his back, stretched his arms and then sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. 'Wot, drinking again, Emilio?' he said to the Italian. 'Gawd! don't yer never stop drinkin'?' He peered down at the bottle. 'Cognac, eh? Where did you get that? Bet yer've ripped open one of them cases.'
The Italian smiled. 'You like a drink, Ruppy?'
'Don't mind if I do,' the bos'n grinned. 'But Gawd 'elp yer if the skipper finds yer bin at the cargo. Mulligan ain't pertic'lar wot 'e does ter blokes that get in 'is 'air. All right. I know you're pretty quick with that knife o' yours. But 'e got a gun, ain't 'e?'
The Italian's bald skull cracked in a grin that showed the white gleam of his perfect teeth. 'Signer Mulligan, he is on deck, yes? He not come down here. The stink, it is too much for him.' And he laughed silently.
'Well, it's your funeral, mate.' Ruppy swung his legs out of the hammock and slid to the floor. He buttoned his jersey into his trousers and pressed both hands into his belly as though thrusting his guts into place. He suffered from hernia — that was why he was called Ruppy. He was thin and scrawny with the face of a turtle and an Adam's apple that moved up and down in his scraggy neck as he swallowed. A two days' growth of sparse, grey stubble grew out of the seamed dirt of chin and neck. He brought out an enamel mug and filled it half full from the bottle. 'Well, 'ere's to the bleedin' perisher wot pays through the nose fer short measure on them cases.' He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his jersey and looked down at me, swaying gently to the motion of the ship. 'S'ppose you're trying to get up enough courage ter go ashore, eh?' The sneer was unconcealed. 'Why the hell didn't yer stay in Italy? That's where your sort belong. All right. I know why yer shipped a't o' Naples. You had ter, that's why. Soon as there weren't no British Army, the Ities got nasty an' turned on yer. Don't blame 'em, niever. Runnin' away — reckon that's all you ever done.'
Anger surged up in me again, drumming at my temples. I banged my glass down and jumped to my feet. He was such an insignificant, wizened little object. What right had he to sneer at me? I felt my hand clench. With one blow I could smash him against the steel of the bulkhead.
That's right — go on, 'it me.' His watery eyes peered up at me. 'Go on,' he cried again, "it me, why don't yer? Ain't yer even got the guts ter do that?' he sneered as I lowered my fist. 'No — afraid of Mulligan. That's what it is. You've always bin afraid o' something, ain't yer?'
'What do you know about what makes men afraid?' I cried.
'As much as most men,' he snapped back. 'I did me time in the Army, didn't I? Three years before the war and then Dunkirk and fru the desert to Alamein. Wasn't my fault, was it, that I got a rupture an' they slung me out?'
'Sure you done your time,' I said.
'Sawd me country through like any decent man, that's wot I done. Rank o' corporal I 'ad when me belly went back on me.'
'All right,' I said, 'So you saw your country through. But look at you now — a rotten little scab running liquor for a crook that got his dough in and out of North African ports whilst you were sweating in the desert.'
'Well, a bloke's got to live, ain't he?' He gulped at the cognac, rinsing it round his mouth like a mouth-wash. His Adam's apple jerked as he swallowed the liquor and breathed out fiercely. 'Ain't that so, Emilio?' he asked, turning to the Egg. 'A bloke's got to live. Wot d'yer fink the ruddy Ministry o' Labour offered me when I got discharged as unfit fer dooty? — a job da'n the mines! An' me wiv a rupture the size of a barn door got in the defence o' me country. Liftin' the barrel of a bleedin' ack-ack gun, that's 'ow I got it. Now I ast yer — do I look like a Bevin boy? I got me rights, same as anybody else. So I sez to meself, Charlie, I sez, you fer a job wot's easy on the belly, and wot pays fer the time yer servin' your country.' He thrust his face suddenly close to mine. 'You comin' the 'igh an' mighty! Blimey, who d'yer fink you are ter be tellin' me I'm a scab and a racketeer? Wot yer goin' ter do when yer get ashore, anyway — you just tell me that?'
'I got a friend in Penzance,' I said, stung by his sneering face. 'Sent me word he could get me a job.'
'An' told yer Tom Mulligan would give yer passage to England, eh?'
'How did you know?'
"Ow did I know? 'Cos yer ain't the first we brought back from It'ly, that's why? If your pal put you in touch wiv the skipper, then the job he got fer yer ain't no better than wot we're doin' on board the Arisaig. Gawd strewf, 'ow the 'ell d'yer fink the likes of you live in England? You ain't got no hidentity card, no ration book — in the eyes of the officials yer don't exist. Yer a floatin' population of scum wot lives off the Black Market. An' if yer want my advice, yer'll make straight fer London when we've landed yer. That's the safest place for your sort. Join the spivs and petty twisters wot 'ang ara'nd the race courses and the dawgs. Yer'll be safe wiv them — fer a bit.' He belched and heaved at his stomach.
I sat down again. God, how I hated myself! I felt the tears burning in my eyes and put my head in my hands to hide my sense of loneliness. A hand suddenly rested on my shoulder and Ruppy's voice with all the habitual harshness gone out of it, said, 'Come on, chum. Don't take no notice o' me. Yer'll feel better when yer seen yer fam'ly.'