Blame The Dead

I'd've got less reaction from suggesting we stretch out on the cafeteria table and become just good friends. I said hastily, 'All right, all right – you just keep him clean and tidy. But whodoes buy his whisky and aquavit and so forth?'

Now she was just puzzled. 'Himself, of course. He goes out.'

'I mean who pays for it? I know Norwegian pensions are good, but to stay in his condition he's drinking nearly a bottle a day. Over a hundred kroner; maybe thirty quid a week before he's paid a penny for bed and breakfast.'

'Oh, no.'

'Oh, yes. That's what it costs.'

She looked puzzled. Like most teetotallers, she'd assumed that all it took to become an alcoholic was a couple of secretive gulps before noon. But you have to work at it, although it doesn't seem like work at the time.

She said slowly, 'Perhaps Herr Ruud would know…'

'You could ask. But he seems pretty protective about the old boy.'

']a. They were friends on the ship – how do you say that?'

'Shipmates.'

'In the war. When Herr Ruud lost the leg. And after that he could not be an officer, so…'

The loudspeaker crackled something that could be my flight. I stood up and held out my hand. It got a genuine warm shake, and I got a real smile. She said, 'I am sorry I was – too quick, hasty.'

'Never mind.' I gave her one of my cards – the one with my address and phone but not profession on. 'If he tells you anything about Steen – give me a ring, would you? I'll pay you back.'

She nodded.

I hurried out across the wet tarmac and when I looked back from the top of the plane's steps she was standing out in the drizzle herself, waving rather formally.

The best you could say of the trip home was that nobody found my pistols. I had a three-hour break for dinner in Oslo, then an hour's drinking at Gothenburg. I reached Heathrow just before two in the morning, and bed just after three. And stayed there until eleven the next morning.

Twenty-seven

I rang Harrow first, then tried for Willie. He rang me back before lunch. 'Can you make a board meeting before the end of the afternoon?'

'Er, I think so – d'you mean with young David, too? '

'That's the idea. He's free to go out to local cafés after four-fifteen. I fixed a date for four-thirty.'

'Rather. Jolly good. Would you like me to pick you up?'

'That's not a bad idea.' Then we could leave my car – which just might get recognised – out of it. 'But have you got anything less conspicuous than the Tiger Royal?' He chuckled. 'What about a red Mini-Cooper?' It would have to do. So I arranged to meet him outside the Swiss Cottage pub at four o'clock. Getting over there would give me space to lose an extra shadow I happened to be throwing.

But meantime, there was one extra piece of insurance I wanted to take out. I drove over to my rifle-and-pistol club and conned the resident watchdog into letting me use the pistol range; in winter, it doesn't usually open on weekdays. Then I put fifty rounds through the Mauser HSC and afterthat the rifling marks would be distinctly different from those on any bullet they dug out of Steen's head.

While I was there I also fired the derringer for the first time. The kick and bang were something very extra special – with a barrel that length the cartridge was practically exploding in the open air – but both the waterlogged rounds went off, although God knows where they went off to. I fired another six shots and it wasn't until I'd closed in to ten yards that I could even see where I was putting them: way high to the right. Don't shoot till you can smell the garlic on their breath.

I had a beer and a sandwich on the way home and got in just as the telephone started ringing.

'Major. Where the bloody hell haveyou been?'

Dave Tanner, of course. 'Sorry about that, Dave. Something -came up. I'm back now.'

'Yes?' he asked sourly. 'And for how long?'

'Can't see anything else coming up. Have you got anything for me?'

'I had it last Monday. I don't know if we've still got it. But I'll check and let you know.'

'Thanks, Dave.'

He rang off. I stood there with the phone in my hand, remembering I hadn't asked about Pat Kavanagh; Dave could likely have heard of him. But he didn't exactly owe me any favours and you don't want to build up too much of a debit. It could wait.

Willie was right on time. I folded myself up into the Mini-Cooper's front seat – why a man of his height and income chose that even as a second or third (or ninth, for all I knew) car, I just couldn't guess. We scuttled away up the Finchley Road.

Today he was the country squire: cavalry twill trousers, flared hacking jacket, thick, soft shirt with a faint check – just like the last three generations of Winslows except that he wore the silk neck-scarf flapping loose and theirs would have been tied like a riding stock. Wherever Willie put his immortal gift of originality, it wasn't into his wardrobe.

'Any news on H and Thornton? ' I asked.

'Sorry, old boy. They're not solicitors – I checked.'

'Something in shipping? A line?'

'Not a shipping line. But-'

'Marine surveyors? Or any other sort of subsidiary firm?'

'You mean chartering brokers or forwarding agents or ship-brokers or warehousing agents or a bunkering firm or perhaps just the two chaps who have the barnacle-scraping concession on Ilfracombe lifeboat?' He gave me a quick, dry sideways glance.

'All right,' I growled. 'So shipping's still bigger business than most people think. But-'

'But,' he said firmly, 'one chap I mentioned it to at Lloyd's said he thought he'd heard it before only it didn't sound quite right somehow, you know?'

'What sort of chap?'

'A solicitor.'

That didn't tell me anything, though. I gave up. 'How's the syndicate getting on?'

'Hardly at all, what? We'll probably merge with one of the bigger ones – best thing, I dare say. We only kept going as a small affair because of Martin,'

'Tell me: am I right in thinking he had only about the minimum deposit in Lloyd's – even for an underwriter?'

He took his time answering; hell, he took his time deciding whether or not to answer at all. He was driving a wide but busy road with a precise opportunism, keeping in a lower gear than most drivers would have done, and letting the engine work for its living. It didn't create any great hush, but it made for some natty wrong-side overtaking.

But finally he got caught at a traffic light. Willie took a long cigarette from a magnetic-based box clinging to the dashboard, lit it with a rolled-gold Dunhill, and said, 'You were almost asking that at the funeral, weren't you, old boy?'

'Almost.'

'You're sure it's really relevant?'

Just then we took off at the speed of scandal. I hauled my head back from the rear seat and said, 'It could be. But I'm not planning to put it in my best-selling memoirs anyway.'

He grinned quickly. 'Sorry, old boy. Yes – Martin only had about ten or eleven thousand in the kitty and you can't go much below that. I suppose with a place in the country and a flat in London and David going to Harrow… and then the bad years at Lloyd's, well – he just couldn't build it up.'

I could have told him a little more detail about Fenwick's income and outgo, but I didn't think he'd like the way I'd got it. The point was that he'd confirmed my basic thesis. Well, almost.

We swung left down Hendon Way and speeded up. After a time, Willie asked, is there anything more you want to check on before you see David?'

'Why? – are you worried I might have found out something about his father that you think he shouldn't know?'

'Yes.' From Willie, that was good blunt stuff. For a moment, it threw me. Then I managed to ask, 'Such as what?'