I was down inside the hull of the mock-up sub and had rejoined Conrad inside two minutes. He said: ‘No trouble?’
‘None. The two paints don’t quite match. But you’d never notice it unless you were looking for it.’
We were not greeted like returning heroes. It would not be true to say that our return, or our early return, was greeted with anything like disappointment, but there was definitely an anticlimactic air to it; maybe they had already expended all their sympathies on Heissman, Jungbeck and Goin, who had claimed, predictably enough, that their engine had broken down in the late afternoon. Heissman thanked us properly enough but there was a faint trace of amused condescension to his thanks that would normally have aroused a degree of antagonism in me were it not for the fact that my antagonism towards Heissman was already so total that any deepening of it would have been quite impossible. So Conrad and I contented ourselves with making a show of expressing our relief to find the three voyagers alive while not troubling very much to conceal our chagrin. Conrad especially, was splendid at this: clearly, he had a considerable future as an actor.
The atmosphere in the cabin was almost unbearably funereal. I would have thought that the safe return of five of their company might have been cause for some subdued degree of rejoicing, but it may well have been that the very fact of our being alive only heightened the collective awareness of the dead woman lying in her cubicle. Heissman tried to tell us about the marvellous backgrounds he had found that day and I couldn’t help reflecting that he was going to have a most hellishly difficult job in setting up camera and sound crews within the extraordinarily restrictive confines of the Perleporten tunnel: Heissman desisted when it became clear that no one was listening to him. Otto made a half-hearted attempt to establish some kind of working relationship with me and even went to the length of pressing some scotch upon me, which I accepted without thanks but drank nevertheless. He tried to make some feebly jocular remark about open pores and it being obvious that I didn’t intend venturing forth again that night, and I didn’t tell him, not just yet, that I did indeed intend to venture forth again that night but that as my proposed walk would take me no farther than the jetty it was unlikely that all the open pores in the world would incapacitate me.
I looked at my watch. Another ten minutes, no more. Then we would all go for that little walk, the four directors of Olympus Productions, Lonnie and myself. Just the six of us, no more. The four directors were already there and, given the time Lonnie normally took to regain contact with reality after a prolonged session with the only company left in the world that gave him any solace, it was time that he was here also. I went down the passage and into his cabin.
It was bitterly cold in there because the window was wide open, and it was wide open because that was the way that Lonnie had elected to leave his cubicle, which was quite empty. I picked up a torch that was lying by the rumpled cot and peered out of the window. The snow was still falling and steadily but not so heavily as to obscure the tracks that led away from the window. There were two sets of tracks. Lonnie had been persuaded to leave: not that he would have required much persuasion.
I ignored the curious looks that came my way as I went quickly through the main cabin and headed for the provisions hut. Its door was open but Lonnie was not there either. The only sure sign that he had been there was a half-full bottle of scotch with its screw-top off. So much for Lonnie and his mighty oath taken with his hand on a vat of the choicest malt.
The tracks outside the hut were numerous and confused: it was clear that my chances of isolating and following any particular set of those was minimal. I returned to the cabin and there was no lack of immediate volunteers for the search: Lonnie had never made an unwitting enemy in his life.
It was the Count who found him, inside a minute, face down in a deep drift behind the generator shed. He was already shrouded in white, so he must have been lying there for some time. He was clad in only shirt, pullover, trousers and what appeared to be a pair of ancient carpet slippers. The snow beside his head was stained yellow where the contents—or part of the contents—of yet another bottle, still clutched in his right hand, had been spilt.
We turned him over. If ever a man looked like a dead man it was Lonnie. His skin was ice-cold to the touch, his face the colour of old ivory, his glazed unmoving eyes were open to the falling snow, and there was no rise and fall to his chest, but on the off-chance that there might just be some substance in the old saw that a special providence looks after little children and drunks, I put my ear to his chest and thought I detected a faint and far- off murmur.
We carried him inside and laid him out on his cot. While oil heaters, hot-water bags and heated blankets were being brought in or prepared—apart from the general esteem in which Lonnie was held, everyone seemed almost pathetically eager to contribute to something constructive—I used my stethoscope and established that he did indeed have a heart-beat if such a term could be applied to something as weak and as fluttering as the wings of a wounded captive bird. I thought briefly of a heart stimulant and brandy and dismissed both ideas, both, in his touch-and-go condition, were as likely to kill him off as to have any good effect. So we just concentrated on heating up the frozen and lifeless-seeming body as quickly as possible, while four people continuously massaged ominously white feet and hands to try to restore some measure of circulation.
Fifteen minutes after we’d first found him he was perceptibly breathing again, a shallow and gasping fight for air, but breathing nevertheless. He was now as warm as artificial aids could make him, so I thanked the others and told them they could go: I asked the two Marys to stay behind as nurses, because I couldn’t stay myself: by my watch, I was already ten minutes late.
Lonnie’s eyes moved. No other part of him did, but his eyes moved. After a few moments they focused blearily on me: he was as conscious as he was likely to be for a long time.
‘You bloody old fool!’ I said. It was no way to talk to a man with one foot still halfway through death’s door, but it was the way I felt. ‘Why did you do it?’
‘Aha!’ His voice was a far-off whisper.
‘Who took you out of here? Who gave you the drink?’ I was aware that the two Marys had at first stared at me, then at each other, but the time was gone when it mattered what anyone thought.
Lonnie’s lips moved soundlessly a few times. Then his eyes flickered shiftily and he gave a drunken cackle, no more than a faint rasping sound deep in his throat. ‘A kind man,’ he whispered weakly. ‘Very kind man.’
I would have shaken him except for the fact that I would certainly have shaken the life out of him. I restrained myself with a considerable effort and said: ‘What kind man, Lonnie?’
‘Kind man,’ he muttered. ‘Kind man.’ He lifted one thin wrist and beckoned. I bent towards him. ‘Know something?’ His voice was a fading murmur.
‘Tell me, Lonnie.’
‘In the end—’ His voice trailed away.
‘Yes, Lonnie?’
He made a great effort. ‘In the end—’ there was a long pause, I had to put my ear to his mouth—‘in the end, there’s only kindness.’ He lowered his waxen eyelids.
I swore and I kept on swearing until I realized that both girls were staring at me with shocked eyes, they must have thought that I was swearing at Lonnie. I said to Mary Stuart: ‘Go to Conrad—Charles. Tell him to tell the Count to come to my cubicle. Now. Conrad will know how to do it.’
She left without a question. Mary Darling said to me: ‘Will Lonnie live, Dr Marlowe?’
‘I don’t know, Mary.’
‘But—but he’s quite warm now—’
‘It won’t be exposure that will kill him, if that’s what you mean.’
She looked at me, the eyes behind the hornrims at once earnest and scared. ‘You mean—you mean he might go from alcoholic poisoning?’
‘He might. I don’t know.’
She said, with a flash of that almost touching asperity that could be so c
haracteristic of her: ‘You don’t really care, do you, Dr Marlowe?’
‘No, I don’t.’ She looked at me, the pinched face shocked, and I put my arm round the thin shoulders. ‘I don’t care, Mary, because he doesn’t care. Lonnie’s been dead a long time now.’
I went back to my cubicle, found the Count there and wasted no words. I said: ‘Are you aware that that was a deliberate attempt on Lonnie’s life?’
‘No. But I wondered.’ The Count’s customary cloak of badinage had fallen away completely.
‘Do you know that Judith Haynes was murdered?’
‘Murdered!’ The Count was badly shaken and there was no pretence about it either.
‘Somebody injected her with a lethal dose of morphine. Just for good measure, it was my hypodermic, my morphine.’ He said nothing. ‘So your rather illegal bullion hunt has turned out to be something more than fun and games.’
‘Indeed it has.’
‘You know you have been consorting with murderers?’
‘I know now.’
‘You know now. You know what interpretation the law will put on that?’
‘I know that too.’
‘You have your gun?’ He nodded. ‘You can use it?’
‘I am a Polish count, sir.’ A touch of the old Tadeusz.
‘And very impressive a Polish count should look in a witness-box too,’ I said. ‘You are aware, of course, that your only hope is to turn Queen’s Evidence?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know that too.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
‘Mr Gerran,’ I said, ‘I’d be grateful if you, Mr Heissman, Mr Goin and Tadeusz here would step outside with me for a moment.’
‘Step outside?’ Otto looked at his watch, his three fellow directors, his watch again and me in that order. ‘On a night like this and at an hour like this? Whatever for?’
‘Please.’ I looked at the others in the cabin. ‘I’d also be grateful if the rest of you remained here, in this room, till I return. I hope I won’t be too long. You don’t have to do as I ask and I’m certainly in no position to enforce my request, but I suggest it would be in your own best interests to do so. I know now, I’ve known since this morning, who the killer amongst us is. But before I put a name to this man I think it is only fair and right that I should first discuss the matter with Mr Gerran and his fellow directors.’
This brief address was received, not unsurprisingly, in total silence. Otto, predictably, was the one to break the silence: he cleared his throat and said carefully: ‘You claim to know this man’s identity?’
‘I do.’
‘You can substantiate this claim?’
‘Prove it, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Ah!’ Otto said significantly. He looked around the company and said: ‘You’re taking rather much upon yourself, are you not?’
‘In what way?’
‘This rather dictatorial attitude you’ve been increasingly adopting. Good God, man, if you’ve found, or think you’ve found our man, for God’s sake tell us and don’t make this big production out of it. It ill becomes any man to play God, Dr Marlowe, I would remind you that you’re but one of a group, an employee, if you like, of Olympus Productions, just like—’
‘I am not an employee of Olympus Productions. I am an employee of the British Treasury who has been sent to investigate certain aspects of Olympus Productions Ltd. Those investigations are now completed.’
Otto over-reacted to the extent that he let his jaw drop. Goin didn’t react much but his smooth and habitually bland face took on a wary expression that was quite foreign to it. Heissman said incredulously: ‘A Government agent! A secret service—’
‘You’ve got your countries mixed up. Government agents work for the US Treasury, not the British one. I’m just a civil servant and I’ve never fired a pistol in my life, far less carried one. I have as much official power as a postman or a Whitehall clerk. No more. That’s why I’m asking for cooperation.’ I looked at Otto. ‘That’s why I’m offering you what I regard as the courtesy of a prior consultation.’
‘Investigations?’ Clearly, I’d lost Otto at least half a minute previously. ‘What kind of investigations? And how does it come that a man hired as doctor—’ Otto broke off, shaking his head in the classic manner of one baffled beyond all hope of illumination.
‘How do you think it came that none of the seven other applicants for the post of medical officer turned up for an interview? They don’t teach us much about manners in medical school but we’re not as rude as that. Shall we go?’
Goin said calmly: ‘I think, Otto, that we should hear what he has to say.’
‘I think I’d like to hear what you have to say too,’ Conrad said. He was one of the very few in the cabin who wasn’t looking at me as if I were some creature from outer space.
‘I’m sure you would. However, I’m afraid you’ll have to remain. But I would like a private word with you, if I may.’ I turned without waiting for an answer and made for my cubicle. Otto barred my way.
‘There’s nothing you can have to say to Charles that you can’t say to all of us.’
‘How do you know?’ I brushed roughly by him and closed the door when Conrad entered the cubicle. I said: ‘I don’t want you to come for two reasons. If our friends arrive, they may miss me down at the jetty and come straight here—I’d like you in that case to tell them where I am. More importantly, I’d like you to keep an eye on Jungbeck. If he tries to leave, try to reason with him. If he won’t listen to reason, let him go—about three feet. If you can just kind of naturally happen to have a full bottle of scotch or suchlike in your hand at the time, then clobber him with all you have. Not on the head—that would kill him. On the shoulder, close in to the neck. You’ll probably break the odd bone: in any event it will surely incapacitate him.’
Conrad didn’t as much as raise an eyebrow. He said: ‘I can see why you don’t bother with guns.’
‘Socially and otherwise,’ I said, ‘a bottle of scotch is a great leveller.’
I’d taken a Coleman storm lantern along with me and now hung it on a rung of the vertical iron ladder leading down from the conning-tower to the interior of the submarine mock-up: its harsh glare threw that icily dank metallic tomb into a weirdly heterogeneous mélange of dazzling white and inkily black geometrical patterns. While the others watched me in a far from friendly silence, I unscrewed one of the wooden floor battens, lifted and placed a ballast bar on top of the compressor and scraped at the surface with the blade of my knife.
‘You will observe,’ I said to Otto, ‘that I am not making a production of this. Prologues dispensed with, we arrive at the point without waste of time.’ I closed my knife and inspected the handiwork it had wrought. ‘All that glitters is not gold. But does this look like toffee to you?’
I looked at them each in turn. Clearly, it didn’t look like toffee to any of them.
‘A total lack of reaction, a total lack of surprise.’ I put my knife back in my pocket and smiled at the stiffening attitudes of three out of the four of them. ‘Scout’s honour, we civil servants never carry guns. And why should there be surprise even at the fact of my knowledge—all four of you have been perfectly well aware for some time that I am not what I was engaged to be. And why should any of you express surprise at the sight of this gold—after all, that was the only reason for your coming to Bear Island in the first place.’
They said nothing. Curiously enough, they weren’t even looking at me, they were all looking at the gold ingot as if it were vastly more important than I was, which, from their point of view, was probably a perfectly understandable priority preference.
‘Dear me, dear me,’ I said. ‘Where are all the instant denials, the holier-than-thou clutching of the hearts, the outraged cries of “What in God’s name are you talking about?”. I would think, wouldn’t you, that the unbiased observer would find this negative reaction every bit as incriminati
ng as a written confession?’ I looked at them with what might have been interpreted as an encouraging expression, but again—apart from Heissman’s apparently finding it necessary to lubricate his lower lip with the tip of his tongue—I elicited no response, so I went on: ‘It was, as even your defending counsel will have to admit in court, a clever and well thought-out scheme. Would any of you care to tell me what the scheme was?’
‘It is my opinion, Dr Marlowe,’ Otto said magisterially, ‘that the strain of the past few days has made you mentally unbalanced.’
‘Not a bad reaction at all,’ I said approvingly. ‘Unfortunately, you’re about two minutes too late in coming up with it. No volunteers to set the scene, then? Do we suffer from an excess of modesty or just a lack of co-operation? Wouldn’t you, for instance, Mr Goin, care to say a few words? After all, you are in my debt. Without me, without our dramatic little confrontation, you’d have been dead before the week was out.’
‘I think Mr Gerran is right,’ Goin said in that measured voice he knew so well how to use. ‘Me? About to die?’ He shook his head. ‘The strain for you must have been intolerable. Under such circumstances, as a medical man, you should know that a person’s imagination can easily—’
‘Imagination? Am I imagining this forty-pound gold ingot?’ I pointed to the ballast bars below the battens. ‘Am I imagining those other fifteen ingots there? Am I imagining the hundred-odd ingots piled on a rock shelf inside the Perleporten? Am I imagining the fact that your total lack of reaction to the word Perleporten demonstrates beyond question that you all know what Perleporten is, where it is and what its significance is? Am I imagining the scores of other lead-sheathed ingots still under water in the Perleporten? Let’s stop playing silly little games for your own game is up. As I say, quite a clever little game while it lasted. What better cover for a bullion-recovery trip to the Arctic than a film unit—after all, film people are widely regarded as being eccentric to the extent of being lunatic so that even their most ludicrous behaviour is accepted as being normal within its own abnormal context? What better time to set out to achieve the recovery of this bullion than when there are only a few hours’ daylight so that the recovery operation can be carried out through the long hours of darkness? What better way of bringing the bullion back to Britain than by switching it with this vessel’s ballast so that it can be slipped into the country under the eyes of the Customs authorities?’ I surveyed the ballast. ‘Four tons, according to this splendid brochure that Mr Heissman wrote. I’d put it nearer five. Say ten million dollars. Justifies a trip to even an out-of-the-way resort like Bear Island, I’d say. Wouldn’t you?’
Bear Island Page 32