Perhaps Cross simply hadn’t found anybody to do it before he died: he had everything else worked out but not that. Does that mean we’ve got to scour the city for a volunteer traitor? Not double-bloody likely.
It wasn’t the way they had been taught to work, anyway. You found out where the information you wanted was, then investigated those who had access to it. Did one of them have money problems? Woman problems? Little boy problems? – anything that marked the soul “For Sale” to those trained to read souls.
But he couldn’t see himself going up to an angler on the Canal bank to ask: “Excuse me, mein Herr, but are you an expert on German warships who seduces choirboys?” There had to be an easier way.
Only he couldn’t find it. Did it lead somehow through Dragan who cast a remarkably wide shadow for a man who was invisible? Or through the bearer bond issued by the suicided company promoter? What was his name? He was about to take out the bond and consult it when a blue blazer loomed up in front and asked if he were Mr James Spencer.
Mr Kay was a pleasant young man whom Ranklin came to believe had no ambition except to sail boats until he became a pleasant old man. He apologised, pleasantly, for the absence of Mr Younger. They had dismasted their own small yacht and he was over at Laboe seeing it repaired before … Ranklin didn’t really listen, just waited until Cross’s name came up.
“Are you sort of … well, actually … investigating how Cross got killed?”
“His father asked me to do that, and the local police are being, well, sympathetic …” Would Lenz recognise that description of himself? “… but I’m really a duffer at that sort of thing.”
“Yes, I suppose you would be,” the young man said seriously.
Ranklin, who was prepared to be modest but not to welcome any help at it, clenched his teeth. “I just wonder if you could run through that evening for me?”
“Of course. We started off with a few jars at the Club here, then we said we’d like to try the dinner at the Ratsweinkeller, and Cross said he’d change and meet us there only he didn’t. Change, I mean. It seemed the laundry hadn’t brought back his dress shirts, so he was still wearing the Leander blazer. I must say it made him stand out rather, and the head waiter got a bit stuffy about it being an insult to the Kaiser – who wasn’t even in Kiel that night, as Cross told him – and wouldn’t have gone to that sort of place anyway; it had some jolly weird pictures on the walls. It was all a bit of a laugh. Anyway, we had a jolly good dinner and then – it was about eleven o’clock – Cross went off to the lavatory and didn’t come back. That was all, really.”
“Did you look for him?”
“Oh, yes. We thought he might have gone dizzy from the grape-juice so we went looking, but not a sign. So we toddled off, too, and next day we heard he’d been found dead, poor chap, so we steamed round to the Polizei and told them – well, what I’ve just told you.”
“Who did you speak to there?”
“A chappie called Lenz. Looks a bit of a bruiser, but almost a gentleman. I’ve seen him around the Club a couple of times.”
Lenz was getting very favourable reviews that evening. “Did Cross say anything about what else he might do that night? Mention anybody, anywhere?”
“Well – ” Kay hesitated. “I don’t know if we should have said this to the Polizei, but with Cross dead and it might not be an accident, you know, we told Lenz about a chap Cross had talked about at dinner. Dragan the Viper.”
Ranklin opened and then closed his mouth, and then said: “El Vipero?”
“That’s the chap. Sounds frightfully wicked, doesn’t he?”
“Did Cross say he’d met him?”
“Er, no, I don’t think so. Only that he was around, I think.”
“Did he tell you anything about this Dragan?”
“Just that he was all sorts of a bad hat. An assassin and so on.”
What the devil had Cross been up to? “And how did the police react?”
“Oh, absolutely fascinated. Lenz wrote down everything we said.”
Not in the report Ranklin had seen, he hadn’t. But perhaps it’s wiser not to mention villains you haven’t managed to catch.
“Did he mention the name Anya die Ringfrau as well?”
To Ranklin’s astonishment, Kay went a deep red. “No, no, I don’t suppose he knew anything about her. No reason at all.”
“Well, hold on, I don’t know anything, either – except the name.”
“Neither do I. I wouldn’t … it’s not … It was just something I heard.”
“What?”
Kay went on looking as if he were trapped in a steam bath. “She runs a house,” he muttered.
“A house? … Oh, of ill-fame. A brothel.”
“In Hamburg. Usually. A chap said.”
“She brings the circus to town for Kiel Week?” How very logical. Of course Kiel’s resident girls couldn’t cope with the influx of young yachtsmen and their healthy appetites. Whores from Hamburg were as inevitable as champagne salesmen from Reims. Indeed, interdependent.
“High-class girls?” he asked.
Kay barely nodded, being deeply fascinated by his own shoelaces. Ranklin tried to keep his round face straight. It was rare to find a young man embarrassed about visits to such houses; for subalterns in Army messes, it was just part of a night on the town. But Kay had the faintest trace of a Cornish accent; perhaps they were stricter – or less well provided for – down there. He changed the subject: “Did you mention Dragan to anybody else?”
Kay brightened. “I think so. I mean, he sounds a bit of a card, doesn’t he?”
After Kay had gone, Ranklin just sat. Homing yachtsmen clumped past him in seaboots, carrying bundies of clothing and picnic baskets and chattering loudly, but he just sat, drained. It wasn’t the effort of talking, he reckoned; he could make conversation all day and night. But then you didn’t care if you were listening to a liar, even a murderer, as long as the conversation flowed. It was the effort of weighing every word, even the feather-light ones of young Kay, for Real Truth, that wore you down. How on earth did Great Detectives keep it up? By keeping it fictional, he supposed sourly, and leaving fact to the Lenzes who could find all the Real Truth they wanted with one swift kick in the kidneys.
He yawned, then made a last effort and hauled himself across the road to find a motorboat out to Kachina. Already half the people waiting there were in evening dress and diamonds; the yachts were moored but the social race had barely begun.
Ushered into his cabin one deck below the dining room and Sherring’s suite, Ranklin found his bags already unpacked and his clothes hung in the closet. But he gave himself the luxury – and a luxury it was, after the hasty packing in Brussels and the very temporary night at the Club – of rearranging everything just so. He liked a clean, settled room, and could live as long as necessary in a dirty battlefield tent, but it was the in-between half-dirty half-tidy life that unsettled him.
Then he had a bath – in fresh water, he found, an exceptional luxury on a ship – wrapped himself in a dressing gown, rang for a steward and asked for “Gorman” to be sent up.
The steward said: “He’s taken a beating. Can’t you dress yourself for once?”
It was as if a gun had said: “No, thank you, I don’t want to be loaded and fired today.” Ranklin gaped, wondering if this were Bloody Mutiny or just the American way of doing things. He was, after all, on American “territory”.
“I can tie my own necktie,” he said coldly, “but I want to see how he is.”
“That’s okay then,” the steward said cheerfully. “Anything else you want?”
“Yes: two whisky-and-sodas, please.”
“Coming right up.”
O’Gilroy came in walking stiffly and lowered himself carefully into an upright chair. “I had a bath and it brought out all the bruises in me. But the doctor says it’s nothing more.”