Alistair MacLean - Bear Island

"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 big-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 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 much that would upon the rack of this tough 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."

A film to be made on location high above the Arctic Circle and a movie company with an international cast which included...

OTTO GERRAN: his ruthless determination had made him a famous but hated director CHARLES CONRAD: ruggedly handsome, the male lead in the film MARY STUART: a quiet, beautiful blonde surrounded by mystery JUDITH HAYNES: a venomous woman devoted only to herself COUNT TADEUSZ LESZCZYNSKI: with the lean and aquiline face, the black pencil moustache ... and evil intentions MICHAEL STRYKER: tall and handsome, cynical and immoral, he was held to his wife only by blackmail DR. MARLOWE: the company's doctor who knew from the outset that something was amiss, but had no idea how to deal with it And terror and death, accompanied them on the journey to ...