Blame The Dead

by Gavin Lyall

  Willie turned quickly, making a hushing sound. But David was still back in the stern, still steering, but with Kari crouched beside him sipping coffee from a Thermos top.

  'Sorry, old boy,' Willie said. Then, softly, 'So which one killed Martin?'

  'In law, both of them are equally guilty.'

  'Can you prove it against either of them?'

  'I hadn't much thought about that, not yet.'

  He breathed smoke and it whipped away ahead of him -though we were leaning on the cabin roof facing forwards. The wind was behind us, and coming up the funnel of the fjord it worked itself into a real cold temper.

  Willie said, 'So you mean, if it was Tanner and Kavanagh from the beginning, it was Smith-Bang from the beginning.

  She'd hired themto handle the blackmail and all – what?'

  'Something like that.'

  'If they killed Steen, just so he couldn't talk to you,' he said carefully, 'then why did they wait so long?'

  'I'd guess-' Did the engine miss a beat, there? I glanced at Willie and he seemed to have sensed something, too. But now it was running smoothly enough. I went on, 'I'd guess because Smith-Bang didn't know he was involved, that he'd found the log, until after Martin was dead. Somebody burgled the London flat, you know, soon after Arras.'

  'How doyou know?'

  'I burgled it myself – or rather, David lent me a key.'

  'Did you, by God?' A little more shocked than I'd expected. 'I don't suppose you reported that to the police, either? The amount youdon't tell the police forces of various countries would fill a whole book of reports, what? You were saying…?'

  'Again I'm guessing, but the log-book must have had a covering letter, and Fenwick probably filed it in his flat. It wasn't there when I looked. So they'd know Steen was the middleman – but it would still take time to arrange his death.

  You don't buy a killing off a stall in the Portobello Road – or the Bergen fish-market. Anyway, Smith-Bang already had killers on hire in London, so it was the economical thing to bring one of them over. By then I was going as well – dammit, I eventold Tanner I was going – so they worked it to blackmail me as a bonus.'

  This time the diesel definitely stuttered. Willie said, 'I hope that damn thing isn't going to…" and he went on glaring at it – through a layer of tarpaulin, a layer of wood, and in midnight darkness anyhow.

  Then, 'I still can't accept the idea of Ellie Smith-Bang hiring killers to… to…'

  'To save the ADP Line and keep herself out of the poor-house? For a half-million insurance claim? People put their wives through the meat-mincer just for having a quick poke from the milkman which didn't cost them a penny. Probably got them cheap milk, if they'd sat down to work out the economics of it.'

  He glowered at the cabin top. 'Well, perhaps you're right… so now we're sure it's a business between her and… andus, at Lloyd's?' There was shock in his voice.

  I said, 'She was blackmailing her own insurer. Not the Sahara Line or anybody.'

  'But what about, what? Something in that log?'

  'That's what I'm asking Nygaard tomorrow. That's why we've got him, whatever we told Kari.'

  The diesel stopped.

  The black blank cliffs echoed back tut-tut-tut, beats of a heart that had died already. The water slapped gently against us as we slowed, each tiny sound getting louder and louder in the vast dark silence that seemed to expand around us.

  David creaked the tiller, coughed politely, and whispered, 'I haven't touched the throttle.'

  Beside him, Kari stood up. 'We have enough fuel, I know.' Her torch came on and she waggled it over the instrument board. 'But yes.'

  David said, 'Was it anything I did?'

  'God, no,' Willie said. 'Diesels either go or don't, what? Now all we have to do is find out why not.' He pulled off the tarpaulin and then the wooden lid, and flashed the torch down inside.

  Over his shoulder, all I could see was a dark, crusted, green-brown engine with a lot of thin metal pipes poking into it. Willie poked the starter button and there was a chuffle-chuffle-chuffle but nothing more.

  'What d'you think it is?' David asked.

  Willie grunted, 'Probably fuel trouble. It usually is.' Chuffle-chuffle-chuffle on the starter.

  'Injector pump?' I suggested, remembering the Skadi's log.

  He looked up quickly. 'My God, I hope not. If it is…' Chuffle-chuffle-chuffle. Only not quite as strong now.

  I said, 'Should we switch off the light to save the batteries?'

  Willie said, 'Oh, I don't think we need-'

  The cabin door banged open and Nygaard crawled out like a bear from hibernation. 'Why engine stop?'

  Five minutes later, the three of them were deep in the open engine, talking in grunts and mumbles, their faces shining in the light from a torch propped on the cabin top. Kari and I sat back beside the useless tiller, finishing off the sandwiches and talking in whispers. '

  'Why did he wake up?' she asked.

  'The engine stopping, I suppose. He's so used to being on a ship with the engines turning that the silence automatically wakes him.' And when I thought about it, a man who'd gone to sea at sixteen and retired at sixty could have spent more than half his whole life sleeping to the sound of engines.

  I glanced over the side at the black water. 'Are we going to run aground?"

  'I think not yet.' We were about two hundred yards from the nearest cliff.

  'We couldn't put down an anchor?'

  'It is perhaps two hundred metres deep, here.'

  I instinctively pulled back into the boat, with the sudden vertigo of a man sitting atop a black glass column. A quick shudder went from my shoulders to my knees. 'I see what you mean.' The longest piece of rope or chain in the boat wasn't over fifty feet.

  She said softly, 'He is a good boy, David. He tells me about his father being killed. I did not know about that. I see why you must ask Herr Nygaard questions, but…'

  'I'll be as gentle as I can.' Or make sure she was out of the way first.

  Then Nygaard stood upright with a grunt of triumph, holding up something like the Devil's heart: spongy, black, and dripping. He dumped it overside and crawled into the cabin again.

  'What on earth was that?' I asked Willie.

  'The paper fuel filter. Blocked solid. He's seeing if there's a spare. If not…" He looked up and down the fjord. Not a light showed anywhere, not the dim scratch of a road or the outline of a building. We could be a thousand miles or a million years from anything else man-made. 'If not, it'll be a long cold night.'

  Then Nygaard crawled out again, waving something pale, so maybe it wouldn't be so long and cold – though it hadn't been short or warm so far. A few minutes afterwards, the filter was back in place, and he motioned Willie to press on the starter. The chuffle-chuffle-chuffle was definitely slow and reluctant.

  Nygaard called, 'Stop!' and bent to go on reassembling the engine. Just pulling fuel through the pipe up to the filter itself, I suppose. But it was only a few more minutes until he stood up and wiped his hands with a definite There-you-are motion. Willie set the throttle.

  Chuffle-chuffle… chuffle…

  Now it was the sound of the king breathing his last in one of those television epics.

  Chuff… le… chufff… The king is dead, long live the king.

  'Stop!' Nygaard ordered.

  'Anybody for a long cold night?' I muttered. 'Told you we should have switched off that damn light.'

  Nygaard was asking Willie something; Kari went forward to help out. I caught the word 'Ether', I think, and definitely 'whisky'. Oh, hell; the old boy's asking for his reward, now. I stood up and joined in.

  Kari explained, sounding puzzled, 'He wants some whisky for the engine – but we must do it. He does not want to see.'

  Willie and I stared at each other, then David. I said, 'Okay. Try anything. Get out the whisky, Willie.'

  He unwrapped the carefully hidden bottle and Nygaard crawled away into the cabin. Kari hauled
the Primus stove out into the deck, lit it, and started heating a cupful of whisky in a pan.

  David asked quietly, 'Why doesn't he want to see?'

  'He's scared stiff of naked flame – since the Skadi burned.'

  The whisky hissed and bubbled. Willie took off the big round air filter, Kari sloshed hot whisky into the inlet manifold, and Willie snapped his lighter at it. Blue-yellow flames flared up.

  Willie said, 'God damn!' in a slightly charred tone, and stabbed the starter.

  Chuff… chuffff – the flames were sucked inside and the engine blasted to life.

  Kari took the tiller while Willie and David put the engine covers back on again. When Willie turned around, he was still shaking his head. 'I thought I knew something about diesels but that… I suppose a chief engineerought to know his stuff, still…' He stuck his burnt hand into his mouth and sucked.

  David said wonderingly, 'But do you really think he was drunk while he was doing all that? '

  'He seemed normal enough, didn't he?'

  'Well, yes. That's what I mean.'

  'So he must be drunk. If I had as much alcohol in me as he has, I'd be unconscious. You'd be dead.'

  After a few moments, he said, 'But you think of drunks as being, well, happy and wild, or just sick.'

  'They're amateurs. He's the real pro.'

  After another few minutes, he said, 'There was one funny thing. He hasn't asked what he's doing on this boat at all, has he? He just sort of… accepted it.'

  'He's ashamed to ask; he assumes he's already been told and he's forgotten. That happens, too.'

  He made a small shivery noise.

  Forty-one

  I'd told Willie to hire a Volkswagen as being nice and inconspicuous, but things aren't that easy with him; I should have guessed from that dolled-up Mini. This was the Volks 1600 fastback version, and a nice bright orange to contrast with the pale pastel cars the rest of Norway drives. But at least nobody had stolen it.

  The drive itself took just under an hour and we had the road all to ourselves – not that there was much room for a second car most of the time. Beyond the head of the fjord it ran fast and straight for about five miles of scattered farms and houses, then suddenly into a narrow gorge and a hundred yards of tunnel through rock that leaked water like a thunderstorm. The clatter on the roof almost woke the back-seat brigade: Kari, David, and Nygaard all jammed together and all asleep after the first mile.

  Beyond that, we reached the snow line. First just patches of it on the slope beside us, glowing briefly in the headlights, then places where we were driving between small walls of it, and finally, beyond the last crossroads and a handful of houses that felt important enough to call itself Byrkjedal, the road itself was rutted snow and ice, weaving uphill beside a slope that was solid white except where it was too steep for the snow to cling.

  The other side was a river except where it broadened into narrow black lakes, with an eighteen-inch wall doing its best to keep us on the road. The ragged gaps every few hundred yards gave me the idea its best wasn't always good enough.

  Willie asked, 'How far to go now?'

  I flashed a torch on the map. 'Ten kilometres, about. I'll wake Kari in a minute.'

  'No rush. Light me another cigarette, would you?'

  I took his packet, lit one, passed it over. He was driving with solid concentration, mostly third-gear work but never letting the engine get away from him.

  'You never smoked yourself? ' he asked.

  'Tried it as a boy, of course. But once I was in I Corps it didn't seem a good thing. An interrogator shouldn't have habits that give away his own mental state. He should try, anyway.'

  He gave me a snap glance and smiled. 'The compleat professional, what?' And then, more thoughtfully, 'But how did you get into the bodyguarding business, what? '

  'When I was with NATO Intelligence, they asked me to form a small section. I was already interested in pistols and stuff then, so…'

  'Did the Russians really try assassinations, then?'

  'Russians be damned, the worst times we had were when some clever German general wanted to go and revisit the scene of his nineteen-forty triumphs in France or Holland. In uniform, of course. Those lads really needed protection.'

  He chuckled gently to himself, and after a time said, 'I thought the old boy did rather well in the boat tonight.'

  'Was it difficult, that stuff with the engine? '

  'No, not really. But how quickly he decided it was the filter, the way he took it down and put it together, you know. Then that trick with the whisky…'

  'I'm glad he knows two tricks with whisky.'

  'Yees… But I never realised he was quite that scared of fire.'

  'I suppose it's natural – if you've seen your ship and most of its crew burnt up. And he's not kidding; he nearly went through the ceiling once when he thought I was going to light a cigarette.'

  'God, I must remember that.' He looked anxiously in the mirror.

  'Don't worry, he's asleep.'

  'The smell doesn't bother him?'

  'Doesn't seem to. But even your cigarettes don't smell like methane and burnt flesh.'

  'Thanks, old boy. Better wake Kari now, if you can.'

  It wasn't a village: the cabins were too standardised, too scattered, for that. More like a formalised gold-rush camp, each cabin standing on its own little claim across the shallow bowl in the hillside. Between them, the snowy ground was broken with boulders and small gulleys, bridged with single planks. Not a light showed anywhere.

  Willie pulled carefully off the road, skidded through a small snowdrift, and stopped just before a gulley. In the abrupt silence, you could hear the distant whispering roar of a waterfall that fell almost vertically down the slope across the river, glowing to itself in the starlight.

  'Which cabin?' Willie asked.

  She pointed to one about thirty yards up the slope, solidly roofed with snow and nicely decorated with icicles. A thick pile of snowed-up logs sat by the steps up to the door.

  The three of us got out and started organising, leaving David and Nygaard asleep for the moment. We certainly weren't the first up there this year: the snow was rutted and flattened in places, and some of the snow on the roofs was melted around the chimney-pots.

  'They come at the weekend to ski,' Kari explained.

  'Ski?' Willie said, shocked. 'Here?'

  I knew what he meant, although I didn't know anything else about skiing. The place looked like a piece of the moon: any slope less than vertical was spotted with boulders the size of rabies.

  'This is not Switzerland,' Kari said coldly. To ski we do not need a mountain four thousand metres high and a cocktail bar at the top.'

  Willie grinned and started unpacking the car.

  The cabin itself was a bit over twenty feet long by fifteen wide, split in two crossways and then one half split again; you ended up with one big room – well, say eleven by fifteen – and two small bedrooms. A small hutch beside the front steps hid (more or less) a proper flush toilet, except it couldn't be flushed. You just dumped buckets of water down it until Scandinavian standards had been restored. The water came from a communal tap down by the road, so it was cement-sandwich country as far as I was concerned.

  Inside, the furniture was a table, wooden chairs and benches, a few cupboards, and one big old stove in the middle, backing on to the dividing wall so that the bedrooms might get a bit of heat as well. Might. Right now the wind was whispering through the plank walls and the whole place was as cold as a penguin's kiss.

  'Welcome to the Arctic Hilton,' Willie said, and dumped an armful of sleeping bags and blankets on a bench. Kari lit a hurricane lamp, then started working on the stove.

  Five minutes later, by the time we'd hauled the rest of everything and everybody inside, the stove was crackling and spitting from the ice melting down inside the chimney, the hurricane lamp was hissing gently to itself, and the place was smelling of wood-smoke, paraffin – and even warmth. Nygaar
d had gone slap off to sleep on the bench, not noticing the stove.

  Kari dragged a Primus from under the table and asked un-hopefully, 'Do you want a hot drink now?'

  'No thanks,' Willie said quickly. 'I'll have whisky – now I've stopped driving." The Norwegian law on that had come as a bit of a shock to him; I wondered if he yet knew he wasn't supposed to smoke while driving through towns. Well, that couldn't be too serious.

  Kari looked at David, but he just smiled sleepily and shook his head. So she pushed the stove back again. 'I think if we stay, we will use the other rooms also. But perhaps tonight, for warmth, we should all sleep here?' She glanced anxiously at Willie to see if she'd offended the Code of the Winslows.

  He smiled and said, 'Fine, fine,' and poured me a Scotch in an enamel mug. 'Well, cheers.'

  'Cheers. You'd better hide that stuff before tomorrow.'

  'Oh, Lord, yes. Outside, I suppose? Whisky isn't supposed to freeze, is it?' He looked at Nygaard. 'I suppose we'd better get him to bed, too.'

  It took three of us five minutes to get his shoes and overcoat off, cram him into the sleeping bag, and zip it up. By then, David was in his own bag and asleep again. The girl went outside, presumably for a private leak.

  Willie looked thoughtfully down at Nygaard and whispered, 'It is going to be cosy in here, what? I mean, he does rather smell like a dead horse.'

  'Shut your nose and think of England. And if the cabin burns down, don't wake me till it's too late.' I wrapped myself firmly in three blankets, spread my sheepskin over my feet, and shut my eyes tight. A few minutes later, the lamp went out.

  Forty-two

  It was nine o'clock in the morning when I finally decided to admit I was awake and sit up. I wasn't too sure I'd ever been to sleep, except that I'd remembered waking up twice before: once when Kari got up to fill the stove again, and once when Nygaard's snoring almost unwrapped me from my blankets. And I remembered the stove glowing a dusky red and thinking of that first winter in the Army up at Catterick…