Blame The Dead

by Gavin Lyall

Tanner raised a hand and David got out of the Saab and moved uncertainly towards us, a top-heavy figure in his thick parka jacket. He passed Nygaard and Kari about midway between us, glancing at them, and then coming on.

  Tanner and Kavanagh shifted out sideways to cover us…

  … give me a gun, a real gun like both of them have got in their pockets, not some two-shot popgun that couldn't win a prize at a village fairground, and things would be different…

  Nygaard and Kari passed the Cortina and went on to the Saab. As they reached it, Mrs Smith-Bang stepped out and waved at me. 'Hi, Jim.'

  I raised my left hand. 'Everybody's bloody cheery about it all,' I muttered.

  David came disconsolately past me, his parka hood down and the snow flocking his limp hair. 'I'm terribly sorry, sir – getting caught like that and messing things up.' And he honestly looked it, too.

  'God, that doesn't matter. Did they hurt you?'

  'Oh, no. They didn't take much notice of me, really. But they know you.'

  'Yes. Who's in which car?'

  'When they caught me, it was that man Tanner and Trond – is that his name? – in the Cortina, and then we met Mrs Smith-Bang and the other man, Kavanagh, in the Saab. But now Trond's driving the Saab and the two British men are in the Cortina."

  Willie said impatiently, 'What the devil does that matter?'

  'They spread the guns for the search, now they're grouping them. What do you think it matters? Get in, David.'

  He climbed into the back. Nygaard was clambering painfully into the Saab – and Kari being turned away. It looked as if she were arguing it, but then Tanner took her firmly by the shoulder and pushed her towards us. She walked sadly back.

  The Saab suddenly bloomed white exhaust smoke and rushed away down the hill. Tanner and Kavanagh closed slowly in on the Cortina, but in no hurry to get started.

  'When we go, Willie,' I said quietly, 'Take theleft fork. But we don't move until after they do.'

  Kari came up and I held the seat forward for her. 'Why did they not want me to go? '

  'Get in.'

  I gave Tanner a half-wave-half-salute and went on leaning on the Volkswagen's door. He waved back; then he and Kavanagh climbed into the Cortina. It crawled slowly off down the right fork, leaving a square black patch in the thin smooth snow.

  When they were out of sight, I swung aboard and said, 'Now go, Willie. I mean go.'

  He went, all right, but he argued. 'I don't see what's the hurry, now, for heaven's sake-'

  'Because those two goons are going to ambush us.'

  'Oh, really, old boy. I mean, they could have gone for us just now, if they wanted to.'

  'Yes, but we'd've ended up with bullet holes in us. And some of them. This way, we can just drive neatly over a cliff and no questions asked.'

  David said, 'But haven't they got what they want now?'

  'The log-book and Nygaard? Yes, and four witnesses to the way they got them. They know perfectly well the police'll have Nygaard away from them five minutes after, we get down the hill. If we get down.'

  Kari said, 'So that is why they did not want me.' She sounded more cheerful about it.

  'That's right, love. They'd only have to have killed you separately, and this way it's easier. Wind it up, Willie.'

  But he'd wound it up just about as far as it would go; the trouble was the road. It was weaving through some sharp uphill bends, and whatever there was under the new snow and old frozen stuff, it wasn't tarmac. The car bounded from rut to rut, the engine whining like a penned animal.

  'How much more of this?' Willie asked.

  I looked at the map. 'About twenty miles, but it can't be all this bad.'

  I was right, too. A few hundred yards later it got very much worse.

  We came over a small rise and started downhill – and suddenly there was nothing on our right. Just nothing. The map said there was a big lake down there, but it could just as easily have been a city of ten million down under the void of swirling snow that started at the cliff edge. And on the left, a sheer rock wall that sometimes reached out to roof us in, the road cut through it like a one-sided tunnel.

  Willie dropped down a gear and his hands were white on the steering wheel.'What did you say about somebody pushing us off a cliff, old boy? There was nothing like this on the other road.'

  'There're those two gunslingers.' I looked back, but they weren't behind us. Yet.

  The windscreen wipers wish-washed back and forth, piling up snow at the corners of the screen. Ahead, the cliff faded out at maybe fifty yards, and if something was coming the other way, we were going to hit it solid; Willie was way over on the left-hand side – except it wasn't really wide enough to have two sides.

  After a time, David said timidly, 'Did you find out what you wanted from Mr Nygaard?' And when nobody said anything, he added, 'Oh, sorry.'

  'Hell, we should be apologising to you.'

  Willie said, 'But there just wasn't anything in that log. Except the breakdown.'

  David asked, 'Did he really escape from the burning ship, then?'

  'Yes, but not from the engine-room. He was lying boozed on his bunk.'

  'In his overcoat?' he asked.

  Willie threw a quick glance at me and nearly lost the car.

  I said slowly, 'How many overcoats would a chief engineer need?'

  'Barely one. He wouldn't stand a bridge watch. He'd only need it when he went ashore.'

  I nodded. 'He wasn't aboard. Not since Tallinn. The cops picked him up drunk there and slung him in jail – no, in one of those drying-out centres the Russian cities have for drunks.

  You can't get bailed from them; they keep you twenty-four hours no matter what. And the captain rang Bergen and she said sail without him. And when he got out of the coop they'd fly him home to Norway – probably planned to put him back aboard at Krijtiansand, they'd got plenty of time for that, and you'd never have known. Exceptcrunch, the Skadi's burnt out and they have to stage a fake rescue instead. But no bloody wonder she wanted to see that log and make sure it didn't mention him being missing. I betthat invalidates your policy.'

  'If you can prove it.'

  'There must be some record in Tallinn. It'll take time to spring it loose, but what are lawyers for? Oh – he gave me the full name of the firm or whatever. At least I got that. Hucks and Thornton.'

  'No,' he said suddenly, remembering. 'Notand. Hucksversus Thornton. A case back in eighteen-fifteen. It decided a Lloyd's policy doesn't work if the ship isn't properly manned. Still – it proves Steen was thinking the same as you.'

  Kari said coldly, 'If he was not on the burning boat, how did his hands become burnt?'

  'Oh, blast,' Willie said sadly. 'Hemust have been aboard, after all.'

  I said, 'I can think of other ways of getting burns on a man's hands. Ways that'd be a sight more likely to give him a screaming fear of fire – if he'd half woken up while they were doing it to him.'

  'No!' she shouted. 'They could not do that!'

  'Ttey can kill three men, shoot me full of drugs, and try to kill us now. Don't tell me what theycan't do.'

  Willie said, 'But you can't just turn a blowtorch or something on a man, you might kill him, and then you'd need to give him medical attention…' His voice trailed off.

  'Useful chap, Doctor Rasmussen,' I said. 'Never know when you might have some specialised medical problem – burning, kidnapping, you know… but he'd be wearing a surgical mask, so Nygaard wouldn't- remember him.' After a moment, I added, 'So what's Mrs S-B's situation now?'

  'Broke,' he said quickly. Then, after more thought, 'Quite broke. We sue for what we paid out, she must be refused limitation if she sent out an undermanned ship, she'll owe something like ten million – and I doubt her Mutual Club'll be much help once they hear how it happened. She'll lose the AD P Line; probably she'll end up washing Nygaard's nightshirts.'

  'If we get down the hill alive.'

  David said, 'I think I saw a car behind us.'

&nbs
p; Forty-six

  Coming out of the next bend, we were sure of it. Two headlights showing briefly, maybe seventy yards back.

  'Wind it up, Willie.'

  'What the devil d'you think I'm doing?' He was doing fine, really, hanging the car on the very edge of control and keeping it there. But a Volkswagen isn't a Jaguar. It isn't even a Cortina, and theirs had been the GT with the wide radial tyres.

  On the next straight it simply walked up behind us – and its lights went off. An honest car would have put its lights on at that point.

  'How long does this sort of road go on?' Willie asked grimly.

  I looked at Kari. 'I do not know it so well – but I think until we go down to the lake.'

  'You aren't joking.' We were winding gently, very gently, downhill – but the void on our right could still have been a hole right through the world.

  Willie slowed into a left-hand turn with the centrifugal force shoving us out, out, out… And the Cortina nosed in to our left andclang.

  The Volks twitched and slid and the void rushed in beneath us – and then we were sliding the other way and scraping along the cliff itself.

  'Christ!' Willie fought the wheel steady. We straightened.

  The Cortina cruised around the bend fifteen yards behind us, David was braced against the rear corner, white-faced buttight-lipped. Kari's expression was sheer puzzlement. Peoplelike Tanner and Kavanagh just weren't in her book of rules.

  Willie said, 'For God's sake, man, if you're ever going to usea gun, why not now?' 'Yes.' But I only had six rounds left – and damn little good they'd be to me falling down, down, down into that swirlingemptiness a couple of feet to my right. I took the derringer from my sleeve, wound my window down. A cold hurricane rushed in.

  Maybe they should institute a new class for pistol competition: offhand from a moving vehicle at another movingvehicle, to be shot on winding mountain roads in a snowstorm. And from a right-hand seat which means you have to twist your body right round and lay your arm out along the car. Probably it would be won by the actors who play in FBI movies.

  Certainly not by me.

  I could fire only slightly right of straight backwards, so onlyon a right-hand curve – the inside bends where centrifugalforce shoved us safely towards the rock wall on our left.

  The moment I stretched out my arm, the Cortina checkedand dropped back. Tanner – it had to be him driving – knewexactly what I was doing, and he had a pretty good idea whatgun I was doing it with.

  I fired one, but God knows where to.

  Then we were slowing into another left-hander and the Cortina closing up and out of my line of fire. They touched usagain, but this time Willie accelerated into the curve on a prayer that it wouldn't go on too long. It didn't. Just as the front wheels started to go, he could flip the wheel across. We rocked but straightened. The Cortina came around muchslower and twenty yards back – but he could pick up thoseyards any time he wanted to.

  A straight bit„then a gentle right-hander, and I stretched myarm and fired again. But he was a good thirty yards behind. He didn't need to be close except on the left-hand bends where I couldn't shoot anyway.

  'Oh, hell,' I said. 'This is getting ridiculous. Drop me off around the next corner.'

  'Dowhat?'

  'Drop me off. We'll try a little justice instead of mere truth. But then go like buggerii.'

  He gave a faint brief smile and nodded. 'All right, old boy. After the next left-hander.'

  I reloaded the derringer and put it back in the arm clip. I might need both hands when I jumped.

  Then we were coming through a reverse S, from a right-hand curve to a sharp left under an overhang of solid rock.

  'Here?' Willie suggested.

  'It'll do.'

  'Of course,' he said thoughtfully,'they don't know this road any better than I do.'

  He handled it beautifully. The Cortina closed up as we came into the straight between the two bends of the S – and Willie rammed on the brakes, far earlier than Tanner could have expected. If he'd been telepathic, he could have shunted us straight ahead – and straight over the edge of the corner. But he wasn't planning that for another ten yards; now he instinctively stamped the brakes. The Cortina's nose dug in, wiggled, hit us – but by then we were accelerating away in first and he was sliding to a stop in third.

  We went around the corner with the engine screaming like a siren under Willie's foot. Then we were straight and he trod on the brake. I stepped out as gently as a commuter from the eight-fifteen.

  Maybe I had four seconds; they were long ones. I walked across to the cliff, leaned back against it, cocked the derringer, and held it at arm's length in both hands.

  The Cortina screeched around the corner, leaning angrily. Continental model, remember. Driver on the left. Take aim. At least he's got the sense to drive straight at me, trying to put me off…

  Fire one. Recock as the glass explodes around the windscreen pillar and the car veers slightly away, not head-on now… fire two… the car snatching towards you, a tearing slam across your thighs and the sky whirling beneath you and a clattering banging screeching silence.

  Reload, reload, reload.

  Flat on my face in the snow I scrabbled two more rounds into the gun, snapped it shut, held it out…

  Twenty yards along, the Cortina was leaning quietly against the cliff, exhaust steaming. Then the right-hand door opened in small, jerky movements and Kavanagh staggered out. The white bandage on one hand, but still the big black automatic in the other. I rammed my elbows on the road and aimed.

  'Drop it, Kavanagh!'

  He lifted his face and it was a bead curtain of blood. 'Sod you!' he screamed and the gun blasted – at somewhere. Blind, blind as a new kitten – but with at least six in that automatic.

  'Drop the gun!' I yelled.

  Instead, another shot that howled off the cliff above me.

  Maybe I was lucky, at twenty yards; maybe I was getting good with that silly little gun. But I think it was the first shot that killed him. Still, you always fire twice.

  I hobbled down the road – my version of running, since the front of my thighs felt like well-beaten steaks and there was a straight rip across both trouser legs. But almost no blood. Odd, that. I picked up Kavanagh's gun and leaned against the Cortina to look at the driver.

  "Dave? Are you alive?'

  He was bunched forward, face and both hands on the steering wheel. The windscreen just in front was a criss-crossed mess, centred on two small holes. Not bad.

  'Major?' he said thickly.

  I lifted the automatic – it was a Colt Commander, the lighter, shorter version of the old Army -45 – and aimed it near his right ear.

  'It's me, Dave.'

  'Bloody silly mess. You should've… been on our side.'

  'Did I hit you?'

  'In the throat… don't know what… but it feels bad. I mean, it… hardly feels at all. And that's bad… isn't it?'

  He tried to lift his face to look at me, and it was studded with tiny glittering arrowheads of glass. But the moment his head lifted, the blood spurted across the wheel. He made a gurgling sound and flopped again.

  'Damn silly,' he said.

  'You shouldn't have killed Fenwick.'

  'That's what's… so silly… Wasn't shooting… at him…'

  'Only me, huh?'

  'You knew… that?'

  'I worked it out, finally. Just one shot, at that range in that light – you couldn't be sure you'd killed anybody, just that you'd hit the wrong man. You were going to kill me, grab the book from him, and go.'

  'Didn't know… it would be… you, Major.'

  'No, but you shot too early because you recognised me. I frightened you.'

  'What… bodyguards… are for… ain't it?"

  Suddenly I leaned back against the door and laughed weakly. 'So I got Fenwick killed just because it'sme there to protect him and so somebody shoots too soon and kills him instead… Good Christ, Dave, it would be a great wo
rld without us.' But when I looked back in, it was already without him.

  Willie came trudging back up out of the snow just as I was dragging Kavanagh to the car.

  He looked at them expressionlessly. 'Both of them? Yes, I suppose it had to be. Are you hurt?'

  'Bruised. Help me get him in.'

  Instead, he glanced at the outside edge of the road. 'Don't you think they'll be found?'

  'The map says there's a lake down there. And I'll bet there's no official record of them even being in this country. And Mrs S-B isn't going to complain.'

  'I suppose not.' He helped me with Kavanagh, then bent to wash his hands in the snow. 'But we can't complain either, now. I mean, Ellie should be on her way to jail for – for blackmail, murder, kidnapping… and she would be, if we'd just called the police last night instead of grabbing Nygaard ourselves. Why the devil did I let you do it? '

  'Because you wanted to know what Nygaard knew. You wanted it both ways, and we got it. But there's a price.' My bruised ribs made my voice sound dry and harsh.

  Willie looked at me. 'Yes. Including making David and the girl sort of accessories to a sort of murder.'

  'Shut up and push.'

  He didn't. 'Had you thought if you're going to tell David -about his father?'

  'Yes. Everything. It won't kill him, but the blackmail's killed a lot of others up to now. That stops here.'

  'I suppose…' And finally he walked over behind the Cortina and started pushing.

  The wheels weren't badly bent; it rolled. It took a bit of the cliff edge with it, but that was ragged already.

  Willie straightened up and said, 'And if any of this side of itdoes come out – who'll take the blame? '

  Below, there was a long, heavy splash, dulled by the snowstorm. I said, 'The usual people, I expect,' and hobbled down the road to talk to the son of the late Martin Fenwick.

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  Document ID: fbd-aa352e-0c29-a04b-8d85-8708-102c-617ce2

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  Document creation date: 04.08.2008

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