When we were clear of the harbour I told her to swing south and keep following the shoreline – trying to keep us out of sight of the house and the road between it and the main harbour. About then, I remembered to switch off the navigation lights, and that bothered her more than anything else that evening. A bit of kidnapping, a few gunshots, yes, but driving a boat without lights…!
The lights stayed off until we were a good mile from the island and ready to swing round on a new course. This ran about directly south-west into the mouth of the Hogsfjorden and then fifteen miles or more up it to where the car was parked at a small quay where they loaded gravel from a quarry. Nothing else happened there, so past midnight there wouldn't be anybody to ask what we were doing, humping Nygaard ashore.
And it looked as if we were going to be humping him. He'd spent the first busy five minutes lolling about on the deck beside the engine, more than half asleep again already. Then Willie and I had forced him into a pair of socks and put a sweater on under his overcoat – they'd got his trousers on over his pyjamas, back at the sanatorium – and suggested he try the bunk in the cabin. Me, I'd've rather lain down in a bucket of fish heads, which was what it smelt like, but he took it calmly enough. Just patted the diesel's wooden box, grunted, 'Not very good,' and crawled away out of sight.
About then, we turned south-east, lit our lights again, and slowed down. They caught us just before eleven.
We had a little time to prepare for it. Probably there wasn't anything else they could do but rush about the bay in a big motor-cruiser, coming to a grinding halt beside each small boat still around and shining a small searchlight on it, but it didn't exactly make them invisible.
Willie said, 'What do we do now, then?'
Kari said hopefully, 'Shall we put out the lights again?'
'Christ, no. They'll have seen us already; that'd be as good as a signpost.' They were investigating a lobster-boat about a quarter of a mile back. 'No, we just keep going. And let David steer; they've seen all the rest of us.'
'For God's sake, old boy-'
'That or surrender.'
David said, 'I could steer this boat, all right.'
'But you can't answer questions in Norwegian,' Willie pointed out.
I said, 'Let Kari prompt him. They won't expect us to have a boy his age along, anyway, and they won't hear much of his accent above the engines.'
Willie raked a hand anxiously through his hair. 'But I say-'
'We don't really have a choice. There're some rough boys out in that boat and they won't observe the Geneva Convention if wedo surrender. Now let's get organised.'
He went into the cabin first, me next because I had a gun. Kari stayed at the half-open door with a bit of engine tarpaulin draped artistically over her. David was sitting across the tiller in the proper negligently professional style and – a last bright idea of his own – chewing a sandwich from our provisions. He reckoned it would help his Harrow accent along a bit and he was probably right.
We waited in the darkness that was as thick as fish soup, with Nygaard snoring and bubbling louder than the diesel, and Willie said, 'I really don't see why that doctor's chasing us at all – if all you said about his breaking the rules was true.'
'Not his decision any more. He sold out long ago,'
'To Mrs Smith-Bang?'
'Must be – God knows why. Maybe she owns his mortgage, maybe she caught him pushing drugs on the side – or maybe he just likes the crooked life. He's leading it now, anyway.'
The cracks in the bulkhead suddenly glowed with light. David called, 'They're coming.'
There were a couple of thick, dirty port-holes but angled forwards, and I couldn't hear the cruiser's engines over the racket of our own. But over Kari's shoulder I could see the searchlight's glow getting brighter and brighter, silhouetting David's slim figure. He turned and waved his sandwich angrily – a nice touch.
Then the light sparkled direct into my eyes and I yanked my head back. Through a crack in the bulkhead I could just see the white shape slide up alongside on our right and match speeds a few feet away.
The light raked the open deck of our boat and settled back on David. A voice yelled,'Hvilket skip?'
Kari's voice was half-whisper, half-shout,'Stavanger Smaragd!'
'Stavanger Smaragd/' David's shout was nicely scrambled by sandwich.
'Hvorskal De?'
'Idsal,'Kari called.
'Basali'
So far – I guessed – we'd had the name of the boat and where we were supposed to be heading. But now they called something Kari didn't catch. She hesitated. I pulled the derringer back to full cock – and then David took over. He simply held his sandwich up in an ear-cupping gesture, leant his head towards them, and yelled a completely international 'Ay?'
'Hvor er faren den?' the voice bellowed. Trond, I think.
'Hansover,'Kari answered.
'Han sover!'
Then she added,'Dra til helvete.'
'Dra til helvete!'
After that, nothing. I rammed my ear against the bulkhead -and got it filled with diesel vibrations. Had we missed something?
Then the light died; the big white boat swung away. From the port-hole I could see the white wake suddenly thicken in the starlight as she piled on speed.
After a few moments, I asked Kari, 'What did they say at the end?'
'They asked where is his father.'
'And you said?'
' "He sleeps." ' She paused and said hesitantly, 'And also – "Go to hell." I thought a fisherman's boy might say that, but do you think I should tell David what I made him say?'
Willie's warm chuckle of relief flowed over my right ear.
I said, 'I think maybe he's old enough to know.' I slipped the derringer's hammer off cock and put it back in the arm clip. Behind us, Nygaard snored on.
The lights of the towns and villages vanished behind us, switched off or blanked out by islands and headlands. Ahead, the land rose up above us; closed in around and finally behind us. We were a beetle of noise crawling along between silent black cliffs, the dim path of water ahead matching the narrow path of sky above. Maybe we threw an echo, 0r maybe it was the loneliness that made us sound so loud and feel so bright. When Willie snapped his lighter beside me, it was like a gunshot.
'What does this tell us about Ellie Smith-Bang?' he asked carefully.
'After you'd left the sanatorium, the bloke I shot at back there – and missed – is Pat Kavanagh. He killed Steen in Bergen; he's been working for Dave Tanner, the private detective in London who got the log off me. Between them, Kavanagh and Tanner sound like the two boys in Arras."
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.