Алистер Маклин - When Eight Bells Toll

‘And of course, you weren’t to know that the telephone lines were out of order. It might have worked if you hadn’t called at the Firecrest in the rescue launch before you went to the Shangri-la. You weren’t to know that our friends who were locked in the after cabin when you went aboard would report back that they’d heard an R.A.F. rescue launch here at such and such a time. They might have seen it through a porthole, but even that wouldn’t be necessary, the engines are unmistakable. So now our friends know you’re lying like a trooper. The chances are that they’ve now a very shrewd idea as to who exactly you are. Congratulations, sir. You’ve now joined the category I’ve been in for years – no insurance company in the world would issue you a life policy even on a ninety-nine per cent premium.’

‘Our trip to the Shangri-la has removed your last doubts about our friends out there?’

‘Yes, sir. You saw the reaction of our belted broker. Lord Charnley. And him an aristocrat to boot!’

‘A small thing to base a big decision on, Calvert,’ Uncle Arthur said coldly.

‘Yes, sir.’ I fished my scuba suit from the after locker and led the way below. ‘I didn’t fall into the water by accident. By accident on purpose. I didn’t mention that when I was hanging on to the boat’s rudder off the reef this evening I cut a notch in it. A deep vee notch. The Shangri-la’s tender has a deep vee notch in it. Same notch, in fact. Same boat.’

‘I see. I see indeed.’ Uncle Arthur sat on the settee and gave me the combination of the cold blue eye and the monocle. ‘You forgot to give me advance notification of your intentions.’

‘I didn’t forget.’ I started to change out of my soaking clothes. ‘I’d no means of knowing how good an actor you are, sir.’

‘I’ll accept that. So that removed your last doubts.’

‘No, sir. Superfluous confirmation, really. I knew before then. Remember that swarthy character sitting beside Lavorski who asked me if Hunslett could swim. I’ll bet a fortune to a penny that he wasn’t at the Shangri-la’s dinner table earlier on.’

‘You would win. How do you know?’

‘Because he was in command of the crew of the boat who shot down the helicopter and killed Williams and hung around afterwards waiting to have a go at me. His name is Captain Imrie. He was the captain of the prize crew of the Nantesville.’

Uncle Arthur nodded, but his mind was on something else. It was on the scuba suit I was pulling on.

‘What the hell do you think you’re going to do with that thing?’ he demanded.

‘Advance notification of intentions, sir. Won’t be long. I’m taking a little trip to the Shangri-la. The Shangri-la’s tender, rather. With a little homing device and a bag of sugar. With your permission, sir.’

‘Something else you forgot to tell me, hey, Calvert? Like that breaking off the Shangri-la’s gangway light was no accident?’

‘I’d like to get there before they replace it, sir.’

‘I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it.’ Uncle Arthur shook his head. For a moment I thought he was referring to the dispatch with which I had made the uneventful return trip to the Shangri-la’s tender, but his next words showed that his mind was on higher and more important things. ‘That Tony Skouras should be up to his neck in this. There’s something far wrong. I just can’t believe it. Good God, do you know he was up for a peerage in the next List?’

‘So soon? He told me he was waiting for the price to come down.’

Uncle Arthur said nothing. Normally, he would have regarded such a statement as a mortal insult, as he himself automatically collected a life peerage on retirement. But nothing. He was as shaken as that.

‘I’d like nothing better than to arrest the lot of them,’ I said. ‘But our hands are tied. We’re helpless. But now that I know what we do know I wonder if you would do me a favour before we go ashore, sir. There are two things I want to know. One is whether Sir Anthony really was down at some Clyde shipyard a few days ago having stabilisers fitted – a big job few yards would tackle in a yacht that size. Should find out in a couple of hours. People tell silly and unnecessary lies. Also I’d like to find out if Lord Kirkside has taken the necessary steps to have his dead son’s title – he was Viscount somebody or other – transferred to his younger son.’

‘You get the set ready and I’ll ask them anything you like,’ Uncle Arthur said wearily. He wasn’t really listening to me, he was still contemplating with stunned disbelief the possibility that his future fellow peer was up to the neck in skullduggery on a vast scale. ‘And pass me that bottle before you go below.’

At the rate Uncle Arthur was going, I reflected, it was providential that the home of one of the most famous distilleries in the Highlands was less than half a mile from where we were anchored. I lowered the false head of the starboard diesel to the engineroom deck as if it weighed a ton. I straightened and stood there for a full minute, without moving. Then I went to the engine-room door.

‘Sir Arthur?’

‘Coming, coming.’ A few seconds and he was at the doorway, the glass of whisky in his hand.

‘All connected up?’

‘I’ve found Hunslett, sir.’

Uncle Arthur moved slowly forward like a man in a dream.

The transmitter was gone. All our explosives and listening devices and little portable transmitters were gone. That had left plenty of room. They’d had to double him up to get him in, his head was resting on his forearms and his arms on his knees, but there was plenty of room. I couldn’t see his face. I could see no marks of violence. Half-sitting, half-lying there he seemed curiously peaceful, a man drowsing away a summer afternoon by a sun-warmed wall. A long summer afternoon because for ever was a long time. That’s what I’d told him last night, he’d all the time in the world for sleep.

I touched his face. It wasn’t cold yet. He’d been dead two to three hours, no more. I turned his face to see if I could find how he had died. His head lolled to one side like that of a broken rag doll. I turned and looked at Sir Arthur. The dreamlike expression had gone, his eyes were cold and bitter and cruel. I thought vaguely of the tales I’d heard, and largely discounted, of Uncle Arthur’s total ruthlessness. I wasn’t so ready to discount them now. Uncle Arthur wasn’t where he was now because he’d answered an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph , he’d have been hand-picked by two or three very clever men who would have scoured the country to find the one man with the extraordinary qualifications they required. And they had picked Uncle Arthur, the man with the extraordinary qualifications, and total ruthlessness must have been one of the prime requisites. I’d never really thought of it before.

He said: ‘Murdered, of course.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How?’

‘His neck is broken, sir.’

‘His neck? A powerful man like Hunslett?’

‘I know a man who could do it with one twist of his hands. Quinn. The man who killed Baker and Delmont. The man who almost killed me.’

‘I see.’ He paused, then went on, almost absently: ‘You will, of course, seek out and destroy this man. By whatever means you choose. You can reconstruct this, Calvert?’

‘Yes, sir.’ When it came to reconstruction when it was too damn’ late, I stood alone. ‘Our friend or friends boarded the Firecrest very shortly after I had left this morning. That is, before daylight. They wouldn’t have dared try it after it was light. They overpowered Hunslett and kept him prisoner. Confirmation that he was held prisoner all day comes from the fart that he failed to meet the noonday schedule. They still held him prisoner when you came aboard. There was no reason why you should suspect that there was anyone aboard – the boat that put them aboard before dawn would have gone away at once. They couldn’t leave one of the Shangri-la’s boats lying alongside the Firecrest all day.’