Алистер Маклин - Bear Island

‘Yes, thank you.’ They weren’t in time to save Antonio and Halliday, the two stewards, Judith Haynes and her husband. But that was entirely my fault. ‘You were very prompt indeed.’

‘We’ve been here for some time. We actually saw you go below. We came ashore by rubber dinghy from the outside, north of Makehl. Captain Imrie didn’t much fancy coming up the Sor-hamna at night. I don’t think he sees too well.’

‘But I do.’ The harsh voice came from above. ‘Drop that gun! Drop it or I’ll kill you.’ Heyter’s voice carried utter conviction. There was only one person carrying a gun, the soldier who had shot Otto, and he dropped it without hesitation at a sharp word from the Norwegian inspector. Heyter climbed down into the hull, his eyes watchful, his gun moving in a slight arc.

‘Well done, Heyter, well done.’ Otto moaned from the pain of his shattered hand.

‘Well done?’ I said. ‘You want to be responsible for another death? You want this to be the last thing Heyter ever does, well or not?’

‘Too late for words.’ Otto’s puce face had turned grey, the blood was dripping steadily on to the gold. ‘Too late.’

‘Too late? You fool, I knew that Heyter was mobile. You’d forgotten I was a doctor, even if not much of a one. He’d a badly cut ankle inside a thick leather boot. That could only have been caused by a compound fracture. There was no such fracture. A sprained ankle doesn’t cut the skin open. A self-inflicted injury. As in killing Stryker, so in killing Smith – a crude and total lack of imagination. You did kill him, didn’t you, Heyter?’

‘Yes.’ He turned his gun on me. ‘I like killing people.’

‘Put that gun down or you’re a dead man.’

He swore at me, viciously and in contempt, and was still swearing when the red rose bloomed in the centre of his forehead. The Count lowered his Beretta, dark smoke still wisping from its muzzle, and said apologetically, ‘Well, I was a Polish count. But we do get out of practice, you know.’

‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘A rotten shot but I guess it’s worth a royal pardon at that.’

On the jetty, the police inspectors insisted on handcuffing Goin, Heissman and even the wounded Otto. I persuaded them that the Count was not a danger and further persuaded them to let me have a word with Heissman while they made their way up to the cabin. When we were alone I said: ‘The water in the harbour there is below the normally accepted freezing point. With those heavy clothes and your wrists handcuffed behind your back you’ll be dead in thirty seconds. That’s the advantage of being a doctor, one can be fairly definite about those things.’ I took him by the arm and pushed him towards the edge of the jetty.

He said in a high-strained voice: ‘You had Heyter deliberately killed, didn’t you?’

‘Of course. Didn’t you know – there’s no death penalty in England now. Up here, there’s no problem. Goodbye, Heissman.’

‘I swear it! I swear it!’ His voice was now close to a scream. ‘I’ll have Mary Stuart’s parents released and safely reunited. I swear it! I swear it!’

‘It’s your life, Heissman.’

‘Yes.’ He shivered violently and it wasn’t because of the bitter wind. ‘Yes, I know that.’

The atmosphere in the cabin was extraordinarily quiet and subdued. It stemmed, I suppose, from that reaction which is the inevitable concomitant of profound and still as yet unbelieving relief. Matthewson, clearly, had been explaining things.

Jungbeck was lying on the floor, his right hand clutching his left shoulder and moaning as if in great pain. I looked at Conrad, who looked at the fallen man and then pointed to the broken shards of glass on the floor.

‘I did as you asked,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid the bottle broke.’

‘I’m sorry about that,’ I said. ‘The scotch, I mean.’ I looked at Mary Darling, who was sobbing bitterly, and at Mary Stuart who was trying to comfort her and looked only fractionally less unhappy. I said reprovingly: ‘Tears, idle tears, my two Marys. It’s all over now.’

‘Lonnie’s dead.’ Big blurred eyes staring miserably from behind huge glasses. ‘Five minutes ago. He just died.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘But no tears for Lonnie. His words, not mine. “He hates him who would on the rack of this rough world stretch him out longer.” ’

She looked at me uncomprehendingly. ‘Did he say that?’

‘No. Chap called Kent.’

‘He said something else,’ Mary Stuart said. ‘He said we were to tell the kindly healer – I suppose he meant you – to bring his penny to toss for the first round of drinks in some bar. I didn’t understand. A four-ale bar.’

‘It wouldn’t have been in purgatory?’

‘Purgatory? Oh, I don’t know. It didn’t make any sense to me.’

‘It makes sense to me,’ I said. ‘I won’t forget my penny.’

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was born in 1922 and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 at the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Navy; two-and-a-half years spent aboard a cruiser was later to give him the background for HMS Ulysses , his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war, he gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a school master. In 1983 he was awarded a D.Litt from the same university.

By the early 1970s he was one of the top 10 bestselling authors in the world, and the biggest-selling Briton. He wrote twenty-nine worldwide bestsellers that have sold more than 30 million copies, and many of which have been filmed, including The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key and Ice Station Zebra . He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century. Alistair MacLean died in 1987 at his home in Switzerland.