Nothing But the Night

by John Blackburn

  ‘Seven pounds was what we agreed on, Mr McAdam.’ Kirk hated slow driving and he brought out his wallet with a show of ill-humour. ‘And that was to include your tip, I remember.’ He handed over the notes reluctantly and then swung round as a great flabby hand touched his arm.

  ‘What a pleasant surprise! General Kirk of Foreign Office Intelligence in person, and Sir Marcus Levin, our most recent Nobel prize-winner.’ John Forest beamed as if they were old, much loved friends whom he had missed badly.

  ‘The plot thickens.’ Forest turned to a foxy-faced youth at his side. ‘While I’m talking to these good gentlemen, Alfie, please nip over to the Clarion and see if the office has sent any message for us.

  ‘Now, may I ask what brings you to these distant shores, gentlemen?’

  ‘You may ask, Mr Forest, but our business is purely personal and I have no intention of telling you what it is.’ Kirk had drawn back hurriedly because John Forest repelled him in the way many people are revolted by certain animals or insects.

  ‘Don’t be like that, General.’ Forest shrugged his fat shoulders and tapped a copy of the Glasgow Herald. ‘What about you, Sir Marcus? Are you here on another errand of mercy perhaps? A further gallant attempt to defend your protégée, Mary Valley? Have you seen the publicity I’ve been giving her, by the way? My articles are being syndi­cated all over the world and have already brought in a good deal of money for yours truly.’

  ‘One could hardly miss them, Mr Forest.’ Marcus did not share Kirk’s horror of the man, but there was no doubt that he was a public nuisance and it was largely his efforts that had kept the story alive. Forest had at first recounted the lurid details of Anna Harb’s background and then hurried north to create the necessary atmosphere. A warm, friendly house full of laughing children, but one child who did not laugh any more because she was waiting. A little fair-haired girl who kept looking towards the doors and the windows, staring out at the dark glens and the mountains because she knew they were the hiding places of the woman who had sworn to kill her. Forest had aired much super­ficial knowledge of telepathy and extra-sensory perception and quoted cases of other children who had been linked to their parents by closer ties than blood. Mary Valley must know that her mother was on the island and her recurring nightmares were most probably of something that had happened to Harb herself long ago.

  ‘I wondered why they allowed you to publish such sensational rubbish, Mr Forest.’ Kirk had gone over to the ticket office and Marcus waited impatiently for his return. ‘Is there any truth in your claim that the woman is on Bala?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea, Sir Marcus.’ The fat man’s chins joggled as he spoke. ‘But I should say it’s highly unlikely. Bala is a wild, deserted island with plenty of cover, but the arrival of the ferry at Lochern usually attracts sightseers and I should have thought a woman of Anna’s distinctive appearance would have been noticed.

  ‘By the way did you hear the latest news? It appears that Ivor Mudd lost his temper at a Press Conference and blurted out that Connor and Joyce were as tight as ticks and couldn’t possibly have recognized anybody on the boat. A political clanger by Mr Mudd, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t correct.’ Forest nodded towards a public house just visible behind the canning factory. ‘According to a most reliable source of information, the lads spent three happy hours in the Cameron of Lochiel over there and knocked back at least eighteen pints of warm, gassy beer before the boat sailed.

  ‘No, I shouldn’t think Madame Harb is anywhere near Bala, but will be hiding out in some rat hole in London. All the same I’ll always be grateful to her and her daughter for the story. An unpleasant child Mary, Sir Marcus. I watched her at the anniversary party they had at the orphanage and I’ve never seen such a smug, self-satisfied little brat. Whatever your pal, the late lamented Peter Haynes might have thought, I wouldn’t have said there was a scrap of neurosis in her.’

  ‘The party was yesterday?’ Kirk had returned with the tickets and he raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought tomorrow was the date.’

  ‘It was to have been, General, but they put it forward a couple of days. L’Eclus told me that some of them had business appointments which couldn’t wait. What a bore that man is! It was open house for everybody and he gave a long, pompous speech to children, fellow guardians and visitors and then followed it up with conjuring tricks. One thing I can tell you: the Van Traylen people themselves have no fears of the sinister Anna making a further attack on their unpleasant charge.

  ‘Private business, eh, gentlemen?’ From the end of the quay the steamer gave a long mournful whistle and Forest smiled at their suitcases. ‘I thought the story was dead, but now two distinguished personages arrive on the scene and I begin to wonder.’ His eyes flickered from the boat to the car park of the Lochiel.

  ‘Should I go back to civilization as I intended, or is there further work for me on Bala? Let us see what the Fates suggest.’ He rummaged in his pocket for a coin and then frowned as his assistant came running along the jetty towards them.

  ‘What zeal, Alfie,’ he said. ‘I never thought you could move so fast. Well, what is it boy? Has Mafeking been relieved? Has war broken out? Has the Almighty sent us a personal message of congratulation?’

  ‘No, sir. There was no message from the office.’ Alfie was obviously badly out of training and the words came gasping out as if he had been strangled. ‘But it is true, Mr Forest. Every word you wrote is true.’ There was adoration in the little foxy face. ‘The Courier’s correspondent at Lochern just telephoned through to them. The police have been examin­ing an abandoned car; a Dormobile and . . .’

  ‘Guess whom it belonged to, gentlemen?’ Forest had grabbed a scrap of paper out of his henchman’s hand and he beamed triumphantly at Kirk and Marcus. ‘Well, well, how very extraordinary. Those two Irishmen were telling the truth after all and it seems certain that Anna Harb really is on that island. I never really believed Connor or Joyce for a moment and merely had a hunch. Perhaps Harb is not the only one with second sight.

  ‘Your admiration does you credit, my boy, but there is work to be done.’ He nodded at Alfie, who was staring up at him as if he had just witnessed a miracle. ‘The fleshpots of London are not for us, so go and recover our dunnage.

  ‘Sir Marcus . . . General Kirk, perhaps I might have the pleasure of buying you a drink on board.’ He gave them both a sweeping bow and moved off towards the ticket office.

  ‘I agree, Charles, a horrible fellow, but a competent one. You have to grant him that.’ Forest had gone straight down to the bar and Marcus and Kirk stood on the boat deck as the ferry rounded the headland and met the first swells of Bala Sound. In the gathering twilight, the Cuillin range still dominated the horizon, though its peaks no longer looked beautiful, but black and threatening like jagged teeth grinning above the layers of mist.

  ‘I suppose he’s competent enough.’ Kirk was standing with his back against the funnel cowling which was pleasantly warm. ‘Do you agree that we were right to come now, Mark?’

  ‘Quite the opposite. We know that the woman is on the island; a single maniac who will be hunted down like a wild animal. The government are bound to send police re­inforcements and troops now and all we shall see is a witch hunt; men and dogs and machines against a single, insane woman. I know it is necessary, but I don’t want to be part of it.’ Marcus steadied himself as the little ship rolled on the swell. ‘Do you remember Gustav Holzach?’

  ‘Naturally. He was an S.S. war criminal whom they arrested in Munich five years ago. Weren’t you at the trial, Mark?’

  ‘I was. They made me give evidence against him.’ Marcus was staring aft at the boiling wake. ‘Holzach was in charge of a transit camp for slave labourers in the Ruhr and I was one of its inmates for a time. When they arrested him he was living in a Bavarian village, the headmaster of the local school, universally liked and respected with a wife and three young children. I had seen Holzach in action, Charles; felt his whip, watched hi
m beat a woman to death with a pick handle, heard him laugh while he did it and I was delighted to testify against him. Yet, when he was brought up into the dock, so much older than when I had last seen him, so changed and so very very frightened, my only emotion was extreme pity.’

  ‘Which does you great credit, my friend, but is hardly appropriate to this case.’ A sailor had emptied a bucket of galley waste overboard and Kirk raised his voice against the screams of the gulls. ‘We now know that Anna Harb is on the island and the chances are that she will soon be found and made to talk. When she has talked, I think that even you will be convinced that she is not merely a solitary lunatic but the pawn of some organization which is working against the Van Traylen Fellowship as a whole.’

  ‘It is not I, but the Van Traylen people you need to convince, Charles.’ Marcus felt both irritation and deep anxiety. Kirk really did appear to be growing senile, he thought. He himself had seen Anna Harb, he knew she was insane, but his old friend had spent most of the journey from London discussing a dozen theories, each more untenable than its predecessor.

  ‘I must convince them, Mark.’ The general was rubbing his torn hand up and down against the cowling. ‘As you know I have spoken to three of them already; to Fawnlee, to the Rheinhart woman, to George L’Eclus, the racehorse owner. They all sneered at my warnings, but I could sense that each one of them was hiding something and was very frightened indeed. Yes, maybe it was blind instinct, Mark, but I am certain they know that those deaths were not simple coincidence, but for some reason refuse to admit it.’

  ‘And you think that if you get them together in a body you might be able to persuade them to take your warnings seriously?’ A sudden picture of Kirk standing before the assembled guardians like a schoolmaster before his class flashed through Marcus’s head. The old boy really was losing his grip. According to Forest, these people had no anxieties and they were all rich and powerful with years of authority behind them. Short shrift was the expression to describe the hearing he would probably get.

  ‘I don’t think, Mark. I hope. But if I can get them together, I believe I may be able to break through the barrier. You are still comparatively young, you see. You can’t appreciate the inevitability of death.’

  ‘Can’t I, indeed.’ Marcus raised an eyebrow. ‘I am a doctor of medicine, remember, and I survived both the Warsaw Ghetto and Belsen. I also watched my first wife die of yellow fever.’

  ‘I’m not denying that you’ve seen more death than most men, Mark. But there was always hope, wasn’t there? A hope that the Red Army might advance on Warsaw; that you might survive Belsen, as indeed you did; that Rachel would throw off the fever. You can never have experienced the feeling of complete impotence and utter inevitability which one gets at my age. The certain knowledge that one’s organs are running down and degenerating and nothing can stop the process; lungs, liver, kidneys, and the heart. The only merciful thing is that the brain cells are decaying too and weariness helps one to accept the approach of the last enemy.’

  ‘And so?’ Another island, Raasay, was in view beyond Skye, and to the north of Raasay, Marcus could see a line of white which was the beaches of Bala.

  ‘So, one does not fear death for oneself, Mark, one accepts and may very often welcome it. All the same, old people search for immortality. A religious faith is probably the best way and after that come children. As you know, I had two kids once; a boy and a girl. They died during the war and, until recently, I imagined I had got over it. Now, as the years go by, I find myself thinking about them more and more.’ Kirk was staring straight out over the bows. Beyond Raasay and Bala lay the Atlantic; empty water all the way to the Nantucket light. Marcus knew that Kirk’s son was somewhere beneath that ocean; a cinder in the boiler room of a torpedoed cruiser.

  ‘What you are saying is that these people are too old to take much interest in protecting their own lives but seek a sort of vicarious immortality from the children in their care. If you can persuade them that the children are also in danger; that the little boy was not swept out to sea acciden­tally, that Anna Harb was deliberately provoked into attacking her daughter, then they may pay attention to your warnings.’

  ‘I said I hope that they will. From the talk I had with Fawnlee, it seemed clear that those children provide their main purpose in living and . . .’ Kirk broke off and swung round scowling. Like many stout men, John Forest could move like a cat and the gulls and the beat of the engines had screened his almost silent approach from behind the funnel.

  ‘You have been eavesdropping?’

  ‘You might call it that, General Kirk, though the term is not very appropriate at sea, I would have thought.’ Forest leaned comfortably back against a life belt and beamed at them.

  ‘May I ask the nature of this sinister organization which threatens the Van Traylen Fellowship, gentlemen? This appears to be my lucky day. Anna Harb made a good story, but your notion is far more exciting, General. Like Saul I went to look for asses and may have stumbled on a kingdom.

  ‘Please do not throw the Official Secrets Act at me, General.’ Forest shook his head gently. ‘You are here as a private individual and you can’t use that against me.’

  ‘No, not the Official Secrets Act, Mr Forest.’ Kirk’s face was flushed. ‘All the same, I have many good friends in Fleet Street and Lord Dillmayne, the proprietor of your paper, is a member of my club. If you publish one word of our conversation I think I can make things very hot for you.’

  ‘I’m quite sure you could, sir.’ The fat man still smiled but his voice was suddenly serious.

  ‘But why should you want to stop me publishing your suspicions, General? If some force really is at work against these people, surely the facts should be made public?’ He raised a fin-like hand and pointed up the channel. Lochern, the tiny capital of Bala, was in plain sight and, to the right of it, a fishing boat or a big cabin cruiser was coming towards them, her bow wave just visible in the falling dusk.

  ‘If you had taken me into your confidence earlier, gentlemen, I could have saved you a lot of trouble. You want to talk to the Van Traylen guardians in a body, but you are too late. The anniversary party is over, General. Inver House has its own private jetty and that launch, the Niobe, goes with it. Our friends appreciate privacy and obviously consider the ferry is for the herd. I could have shown you a convoy of Rolls Royces waiting in the car park to meet her.’

  ‘All the guardians are on board that boat?’ Kirk stared at the launch and he felt a sudden sense of defeat. Was Marcus right and they had come on a wild goose chase after all? He had been certain that the computer’s verdict was correct and something was planned to happen on Bala. But there were the intended victims returning peacefully to the mainland to carry on their normal affairs. The Ides of March appeared to have gone and his fears might well be groundless.

  ‘I’ve no idea how many of them are on board, General. All I know is that that’s the orphanage launch and several large cars are waiting for her at Torar.’ Forest was watching the boat with unconcealed envy. It was approaching fast, but hardly rolling at all on the wide swell.

  ‘A very nice job, isn’t she? Twin Thorneycroft diesels, I’ve heard, which give her over thirty knots. Stabilizers, radar, lounge, sleeping accommodation, the lot. All fitted out by Walkers of Poole. No expense spared by our friends of the Fellowship.’

  ‘But they are not making for the mainland.’ Marcus could see that the bows were pointing straight towards the ferry and the launch was obviously heading towards Raasay on her starboard quarter.

  ‘They must be, Sir Marcus. This channel is a maze of navigational hazards: snags, half-concealed rocks, freak currents. Her skipper is merely avoiding one of them.’

  ‘Like hell he is.’ Marcus’s words were drowned by a bellow from the ferry’s whistle and the deck lurched under his feet.

  ‘It looks to me as if she’s trying to come alongside.’ The launch was very close now, still heading straight towards the steamer, and Marcus cou
ld see a Royal Yacht Club burgee stiff at her mast head and hear the roar of the diesels on the following breeze. He reached out to help Kirk steady himself as the ship’s engines shuddered into reverse and she swung hard over to port.

  ‘Charles, I think you may be right after all. That boat is in trouble and they’re coming to us for help.’ Again the whistle bellowed in protest, but the launch did not slacken speed or course. ‘Either the controls have jammed or she’s sinking.’

  ‘No, she’s not sinking, Mark.’ Kirk’s hand was stretched against the cowling like the claw of a bird. ‘Look at the smoke, though.’ Less than thirty yards separated the two vessels and he could see that the grey plume he had thought to be exhaust was not coming from the funnel.

  ‘Get down while you can. Those poor devils have had it.’ He grabbed Marcus and Forest by the arms and flung himself forward. As their bodies touched the deck the sky flashed bright orange.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘You gave us a straight tip, the clearest possible warn­ing, General Kirk, and we refused to take it.’ Captain Archibald Miles Sinclair Cameron, Earl of the Inner Isles, Hereditary Lord and Chief Constable of Bala, Keeper of the Silver Cross of Saint Columba, R.N. Retd., brought a gnarled fist crashing down on his desk. He was a thickset, leathery man with a face that was tanned more by spirits than sun and wind, and his heavy-lidded eyes glowered across the charge room of the Lochern police station which was packed far above its comfortable capacity. A uniformed inspector stood by the door, Kirk and Marcus and a young naval lieutenant were squeezed on to a narrow bench and the only other chair was occupied by Eric Yeats, who sat hunched far forward with his eyes riveted to the floor like a man in a state of extreme shock.

  ‘You warned us, General. You telephoned Inspector Grant and you wrote to me personally. You told us that some event might take place and we paid not the slightest attention to you. Because of that six people have died; the worst single tragedy this island has suffered since the ’45.’ His bloodhound eyes stared out of the window opposite the desk. The little square outside was largely composed of churches—Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and Free Church of Scotland. Next to the Anglican establishment stood a crumbling, seventeenth-century building, gay with fuchsias at its base, grim with barred windows; the old jail house from which his ancestors, the fit and the wounded, lord and retainers alike, had been marched out and publicly hanged by Butcher Cumberland’s troopers over two hundred years ago. On the hillside beyond the buildings, tents and prefabricated huts were being busily erected. The evidence of the Dormobile and the anorak had forced Ivor Mudd’s hand and soon soldiers would move in from the main­land.