16
A persistent tapping disturbed him. Half asleep, he imagined someone was trying to get into his skull and rolled over to get away from them. He came up hard against the bulkhead and woke up. The tapping continued. It wasn’t in his skull. It was somewhere in the cabin. He opened his eyes and made out the pale outline of the porthole. The hollow thrum of the engine vibrated the ship. He fumbled for the electric light switch above the bunk.
The tapping was coming from the door.
He pushed the blanket aside and manoeuvred his legs over the edge of the bunk, remembering he was in the upper berth. Pinker, seasick, had taken his bunk. Paul felt for the ladder with bare toes and climbed down.
The tapping persisted.
‘Coming,’ Paul muttered.
Pinker had rolled over, showing his back.
Paul reached for the bolt but found the door already unbolted. Pinker, he assumed. Going to the lavatory and forgetting to lock the thing when he came back. Anyone could have got in.
Valentine stood in the corridor in his dressing gown, blond hair tousled.
‘I heard a noise.’
There’s a revelation, Paul said to himself. The damned ship was nothing but noise.
‘Didn’t you hear anything?’
‘I can’t hear anything through the racket Pinker’s making.’
‘What racket?’
Paul turned around. Pinker was silent.
‘Someone was in the corridor,’ Valentine said.
‘Go to bed for God’s sake.’
‘You didn’t hear anything?’
‘No. It was probably Pinker going to the lavatory. He’s sick.’
Valentine peered over Paul’s shoulder.
‘What’s he doing in your bunk?’
‘I found him there when I came to bed,’ Paul said. ‘Too sick to climb into the top one, I suppose. I didn’t want to wake him. What does it matter?’
What he’d really thought was that there’d be Pinker’s vomit on the sheets and he hadn’t fancied sleeping in it.
‘Go to bed,’ he said again and began to close the door. He stopped halfway. ‘How did you know it was my bunk?’
‘Pinker was talking about bunks at lunch, remember? He made a joke of being in the upper.’
‘No.’
Valentine pushed past him and started shaking Pinker’s shoulder. Paul slumped. He felt exhausted.
Pinker didn’t stir.
‘Leave him alone, for God’s sake,’ Paul said, shutting the door. ‘It’s the first time he’s been quiet all night.’
Valentine rolled Pinker onto his back. The handle of a knife protruded from his chest.
Paul jumped, suddenly wide awake. ‘Good God!’
Pinker’s face still looked pinched but now in effigy, eyebrows knotted and lips pursed as if he were considering some kind of choice. Whether to live or die? The matter seemed to have been taken out of his hands.
‘This was meant for you,’ Valentine said.
‘Me?’
‘It’s your bunk, isn’t it?’
If Valentine had heard a noise, why hadn’t he? He had been sleeping right above Pinker when it happened.
Valentine pulled Pinker’s wallet from beneath his pillow and started going through it.
‘He was from Northampton,’ Valentine said.
‘I told you that.’
Valentine stripped off the bedclothes. Pinker was still fully clothed, his shirt and waistcoat and the bed sheets stained with blood. Valentine began rolling him this way then that, as if looking to see what else he might find. Paul thought it was a disrespectful way to treat the little man. He’d seen a lot of corpses over the past couple of years and although many of them had necessarily received short shrift, one had tried to do one’s best for the poor fellows. He was about to say as much when Valentine said:
‘This is a bit sticky.’
‘It’s more than a bit sticky for poor old Pinker.’
‘What I mean is, whoever killed Pinker thinks they’ve killed you. As soon as they see they haven’t they’ll want to have another go.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Bound to.’
‘We’d better call the captain, then.’
Valentine gave him a withering look. ‘So the Danish police can detain us when we get to Copenhagen? You shared the cabin with him. If I know anything about the police they’ll assume you did it. Anything for an easy life.’
‘Why would I want to do it?’
‘I know that, old man,’ Valentine said with studied patience. ‘But how can we explain to them why someone else did? That they had meant to kill you because you’re on a secret mission to Russia? What do you think they’d say to that, pat you on the head and say, “That’s all right, Mr Filbert, go right ahead?”’
‘There’s no need for sarcasm.’
‘No point in not facing facts, either.’
‘Perhaps if we tell Nordvik about the mission he’ll keep it under his hat until we get to Helsingfors…?’
Valentine didn’t favour that with a response. Grunting instead, he pulled the knife out of Pinker’s chest, wiped it on the dead man’s clothes then drew the bedclothes back over him.
‘It’s a kitchen knife.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Look.’
Valentine handed it to him. Paul saw the handle of the knife was impressed with the design of the Finland Steamship Company. The same design was all over the ship.
‘From the galley,’ Valentine said.
They had been silent for a while. Valentine was smoking, sitting in the only chair and leaving Paul no option but to climb back into his bunk unless he was to sit on the dead Pinker. He was waiting for Valentine to speak, unwilling to interrupt the man’s thought process.
‘Whoever did it will be expecting Pinker to raise the alarm,’ Valentine said eventually. ‘They’ll assume he’ll find you in the morning with a knife in your chest and start crying blue murder.’
‘And when he doesn’t?’
Valentine didn’t seem to hear. ‘It seems to me,’ he went on, ‘that whoever did it wouldn’t have tried for you this early unless they’d planned to get off at Copenhagen.’ He pulled on his cigarette and exhaled a stream of smoke. ‘The logical thing to do would be to push you overboard rather than use a knife. That’s the puzzler.’ He peered at Pinker as if expecting the corpse to sit up and provide the answer.
‘Maybe they were afraid they wouldn’t get the opportunity,’ Paul said. ‘After all, if this weather keeps up it’s not likely I’d be found strolling around on deck. Perhaps they took the first chance that offered.’
‘There is that,’ Valentine accepted. ‘And we have to remember we’re dealing with revolutionary fanatics here, not logical thinkers like you and me.’
It occurred to Paul that since arriving at his club last Saturday morning, he hadn’t actually seen too much logic demonstrated by anyone.