Алистер Маклин - When Eight Bells Toll

‘Where are you going, then? Do tell. Fishing? Kind of forgotten your tackle, haven’t you?’

‘And how would you like to mind your own damn’ business?’ MacDonald said heavily.

‘That’s what I’m doing. Come off it, Sergeant. Think I give a damn about our Italian pal? You can charge him with playing tiddleywinks in the High Street for all I care. I just threw him at you, together with a hint that you yourself were up to no good, to see what the reaction would be, to remove the last doubts in my mind. You reacted beautifully.’

‘I’m maybe not the cleverest, Mr Petersen,’ he said with dignity. ‘Neither am I a complete idiot. I thought you were one of them or after the same thing as them.’ He paused. ‘You’re not. You’re a Government agent.’

‘I’m a civil servant.’ I nodded to where the Firecrest lay not twenty yards away. ‘You’d better come to meet my boss.’

‘I don’t take orders from Civil Servants.’

‘Suit yourself,’ I said indifferently, turned away and looked out over the sea-wall. ‘About your two sons, Sergeant MacDonald. The sixteen-year-old twins who, I’m told, died in the Cairngorms some time back.’

‘What about my sons?’ he said tonelessly.

‘Just that I’m not looking forward to telling them that their own father wouldn’t lift a finger to bring them back to life again.’

He just stood there in the darkness, quite still, saying nothing. He offered no resistance when I took his arm and led him towards the Firecrest.

Uncle Arthur was at his most intimidating and Uncle Arthur in full intimidating cry was a sight to behold. He’d made no move to rise when I’d brought MacDonald into the saloon and he hadn’t ask him to sit. The blue basilisk stare, channelled and magnified by the glittering monocle, transfixed the unfortunate sergeant like a laser beam.

‘So your foot slipped, Sergeant,’ Uncle Arthur said without preamble. He was using his cold, flat, quite uninflected voice, the one that curled your hair. ‘The fact that you stand here now indicates that. Mr Calvert went ashore with a prisoner and enough rope for you to hang yourself and you seized it with both hands. Not very clever of you. Sergeant. You should not have tried to contact your friends.’

‘They are no friends of mine, sir,’ MacDonald said bitterly.

‘I’m going to tell you as much as you need to know about Calvert – Petersen was a pseudonym – and myself and what we are doing.’ Uncle Arthur hadn’t heard him. ‘If you ever repeat any part of what I say to anyone, it will cost you your job, your pension, any hope that you will ever again, in whatever capacity, get another job in Britain and several years in prison for contravention of the Official Secrets Act. I myself will personally formulate the charges.’ He paused then added in a masterpiece of superfluity: ‘Do I make myself clear?’

‘You make yourself very clear,’ MacDonald said grimly.

So Uncle Arthur told him all he thought MacDonald needed to know, which wasn’t much, and finished by saying: ‘I am sure we can now count on your hundred per cent co-operation, Sergeant.’

‘Calvert is just guessing at my part in this,’ he said dully.

‘For God’s sake!’ I said. ‘You knew those customs officers were bogus. You knew they had no photocopier with them. You knew their only object in coming aboard was to locate and smash that set – and locate any other we might have. You knew they couldn’t have gone back to the mainland in that launch – it was too rough. The launch, was, in fact, the Shangri-la’s tender – which is why you left without lights – and no launch left the harbour after your departure. We’d have heard it. The only life we saw after that was when they switched on their lights in the Shangri-la’s wheelhouse to smash up their own radio – one of their own radios, I should have said. And how did you know the telephone lines were down in the Sound? You knew they were down, but why did you say the Sound? Because you knew they had been cut there. Then, yesterday morning, when I asked you if there was any hope of the lines being repaired, you said no. Odd. One would have thought that you would have told the customs boys going back to the mainland to contact the G.P.O. at once. But you knew they weren’t going back there. And your two sons, Sergeant, the boys supposed to be dead, you forgot to close their accounts. Because you knew they weren’t dead.’

‘I forgot about the accounts,’ MacDonald said slowly. ‘And all the other points – I’m afraid I’m not good at this sort of thing.’ He looked at Uncle Arthur. ‘I know this is the end of the road for me. They said they would kill my boys, sir.’

‘If you will extend us your full co-operation,’ Uncle Arthur said precisely, ‘I will personally see to it that you remain the Torbay police sergeant until you’re falling over your beard. Who are “they”?’

‘The only men I’ve seen is a fellow called Captain Imrie and the two customs men – Durran and Thomas. Durran’s real name is Quinn. I don’t know the others’ names. I usually met them in my house, after dark. I’ve been out to the Shangri-la only twice. To see Imrie.’

‘And Sir Anthony Skouras?’

‘I don’t know.’ MacDonald shrugged helplessly. ‘He’s a good man, sir, he really is. Or I thought so. Maybe he is mixed up in this. Anyone can fall into bad company. It’s very strange, sir.’

‘Isn’t it? And what’s been your part in this?’

‘There’s been funny things happening in this area in the past months. Boats have vanished. People have vanished. Fishermen have had their nets torn, in harbour, and yacht engines have been mysteriously damaged, also in harbour. This is when Captain Imrie wants to prevent certain boats from going certain places at the wrong time.’

‘And your part is to investigate with great diligence and a total lack of success,’ Uncle Arthur nodded. ‘You must be invaluable to them. Sergeant. A man with your record and character is above suspicion. Tell me. Sergeant, what are they up to?’

‘Before God, sir, I have no idea.’

‘You’re totally in the dark?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I don’t doubt it. This is the way the very top men operate. And you will have no idea where your boys are being held?’

‘No, sir.’

‘How do you know they’re alive?’

‘I was taken out to the Shangri-la three weeks ago. My sons had been brought there from God only knows where. They were well.’

‘And are you really so naive as to believe that your sons will be well and will be returned alive when all this is over? Even although your boys will be bound to know who their captors are and would be available for testimony and identification if the time came for that?’

‘Captain Imrie said they would come to no harm. If I co-operated. He said that only fools ever used unnecessary violence.’

‘You are convinced, then, they wouldn’t go to the length of murder?’

‘Murder! What are you talking about, sir?’

‘Calvert?’

‘Sir?’

‘A large whisky for the sergeant.’

‘Yes, sir.’ When it came to lashing out with my private supplies Uncle Arthur was generous to a fault. Uncle Arthur paid no entertainment allowance. So I poured the sergeant a large whisky and, seeing that bankruptcy was inevitable anyway, did the same for myself. Ten seconds later the sergeant’s glass was empty. I took his arm and led him to the engine-room. When we came back to the saloon in a minute’s time the sergeant needed no persuading to accept another glass. His face was pale.

‘I told you that Calvert carried out a helicopter reconnaissance to-day,’ Uncle Arthur said conversationally. ‘What I didn’t tell you was that his pilot was murdered this evening. I didn’t tell you that two other of my best agents have been killed in the last sixty hours. And now, as you’ve just seen, Hunslett. Do you still believe. Sergeant, that we are dealing with a bunch of gentlemanly lawbreakers to whom human life is sacrosanct?’