Blame The Dead

'Just can't say, old boy, and this sort of log doesn't give enough detail. It only says things like-' he picked up a piece of paper ' "still at half speed, engineers working on injection pump" at the end of each watch. Mind you, they'd had pump trouble a few weeks before. Once it took a couple of watches to fix it – about eight hours – once around twelve hours. Sounds as if they needed a new one, you know? This time it could have broken for ever – but Nygaard should be able to say. Pity the engine log wasn't 'the one to survive, really.'

'What about invalidation?'

'Eh? What? Oh – what Paul was going on about.'

'What Fenwick wassupposed to have told him.'

'Yes.' He peered at his fingernails and looked as if he were deciding whether to Tell Tales about the school bully. Finally he cleared his throat and said formally, 'There's nothing in here that suggests it might invalidate the policy at all. And it takes an awful lot to invalidate a Lloyd's policy, you know. That's one reason people insure with us -what?'

I nodded moodily. 'Well – now what, then? '

He began unrolling his shirt sleeves, slow and thoughtful. 'Legally, it must belong to the owners. ADP, I mean. The whole point of a log's to allow the owners to check up on what actually happened on a voyage – you know? So I suppose-'

Then the phone rang. I picked it up. 'Yes?'

Either it was an electric storm calling or one was bugging the line. A tinny, distant shout came through: 'Mister Card?'

'That's me,' I shouted back.

'It is Kari Skagen.'

'Hello. How're things?"

'Chief Engineer Nygaard is gone.'

'Gone? You mean dead?' Behind me, I heard Willie jerk to Action Stations.

'No, I think. He has gone away. From the Home. I do not know where.'

'Well… what about Ruud?'

'He does not know where.'

'Christ Almighty.'

'Pardon?' she shouted.

'Never mind. But… Can you ask anybody else? At the Home and so on? And ring me again?'

'Very well.'

'Is there a number where I can get you?'

She gave one. 'It is a university lodging house, so please leave a message if I am not there.'

Til do that. See you – probably soon.'

When I turned around, Willie was still standing tensed, wound up, and if I'd said 'Fly' he'd have grown feathers.

He asked, 'Did somebody else get killed?'

'No – well, I don't really know. But ADP's lost their witness.'

A little while later I was nibbling on a Scotch – and the hell with it being just after four in the afternoon – and sitting in the one comfortable chair. Willie was still at the table, sipping coffee.

'But when you come right down to it,' I said, 'there's no reason why he shouldn't have gone walkies just by himself. He's past the age of consent, and that place wasn't a prison or a mental bin. He can walk out any time he likes and go anywhere he chooses.'

'Didn't you say he was short of money?' Willie asked.

'I thought he probably was, but he could have a few quid hidden away – enough to go out on a private honk and now he's lying under some bush in the park dead of pneumonia.'

He nodded. 'I suppose that is more likely. than anything sinister. So you're not going to rush back across there?'

'Not yet, anyway. Kari can do more than I could. I'll wait to hear from her.' I splashed more Scotch into my glass.

Willie raised an eyebrow and bounced the book in his hand with a weighing motion. 'You know, old boy, we're the only two people alive who've actually read this thing. The last few pages, anyway. Steen and Martin are dead and so are all the people who'd seen it on the ship itself. The deck-hands certainly wouldn't and there's no reason why the chief engineer should see a deck log – you know what I mean?'

'Are you thinking it's the idol's eye or the moonstone and we're all doomed?'

'Well, you seem to have been, rather.' He smiled wryly. 'But no – I mean nobody else actually knows what's written here. They're just guessing or assuming.'

I eased my back and winced. 'They assume bloody hard, then.'

'Oh, quite so. But the chief officer could have left these pages blank or filled them with rude rhymes – and you'd've had exactly the same troubles you've had these past couple of weeks. Funny.'

'Hilarious.' I reached for the Scotch again.

This time, Willie said, 'I say, old boy, isn't that stuff supposed to inflame a wound, you know?'

'Let it try.'

'I say, are you planning on getting smashed, old boy? '

'Something along those lines. It's a Saturday night and the upper and lower classes traditionally get spiffled on Saturdays. The middle class just look on with jealous disapproval.'

'That isn't the reason.'

'No, that isn't the reason, Willie.'

'Ah. That rather answers a question I was going to…'

'No you weren't, Willie. Not you. You're far too much of a gentleman to ask it. Now get out and leave me to it.'

Thirty-three

I woke slowly and immediately tried to get back to sleep again. Awake hurt too much. And for a time I just lay there, trying to dream of the calm, innocent golden days of childhood, with the gentle warm breezes through the tall summer pines, and- Christ, my childhood hadn't been anything likethat! I slammed my feet on the floor and got myself mostly on top of them and worked my way towards the kitchenette. My head felt soft and bloated and my hands were waving like flags; give me a gun and I couldn't have hit William Tell Junior, let alone the apple on top.

But the water in the tap ran hot and there was some instant coffee in a jar and I could just remember how to put the two together. After that, I propped my bottom against the sink and stared at the message I'd pencilled on the opposite walclass="underline" buy eggs. It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

After twenty minutes, give or take half an hour, I could remember the secret formula for making the coffee percolator work. While it did, I washed and shaved fairly close to my face, and put on some clothes. The suitcase I'd taken to Bergen was still sitting there only half unpacked. Today I'd really have to do something about it, or at any rate maybe. By then it was past eleven.

I'd just finished my second cup of real coffee and was thinking of reapplying for associate membership in mankind when the phone went. It was Jack Morris, from the Ministry. On a Sunday?

'How're you doing buster?"

'Staggering along. What are you doing awake on a Sunday?'

'Just keeping in touch. Hold on…" The phone went quiet. I rammed it against my ear, trying to pick out barking dogs, squawling children, birdsongs. Very faintly, in the distance. I heard another phone buzz.

Jack came back on. 'We had a little talk about getting your name in the papers, remember?'

'I remember.'

'I understand you've been making guest appearances in the Norwegian press.'

I carried the phone across to the window. The sky beyond the church was the colour of a coalminer's bath water and not much drier. The street shone dully, empty except for parked cars.

'Didn't know you read Norwegian,' I said. 'Anyway, I only found a dead man over there. Could happen to anybody.'

A blue Triumph 1500 turned in from Haverstock Hill and drifted casually towards my block.

'I've had a busy twenty-four hours, buster. The Kent bobbies were on to me about this time yesterday and they donot love you. They have the wild idea that you don't only carry guns and take shots at people but then you tip other people off about what's happened and get them sending sharp solicitors down to play habeas corpus. They wanted to know if that counts the same as raping the royal family and burning a naval dockyard. I said yes.'