Alistair MacLean - When Eight Bells Toll

"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?"

"What do you warn me to do, sir?" Colour was back in the brown cheeks again and the eyes were cold and hard and a little desperate.

"You and Calvert will take Hunslett ashore to your office. You will call in the doctor and ask for an official post-mortem — we must have an official cause of death. For the trial. The other dead men are probably beyond recovery. You will then row out to the Shangri-la and tell Imrie that we brought Hunslett and the other man — the Italian — to your office. You will tell them that you heard us say that we must go to the mainland for new depth-sounding equipment and for armed help and that we can't be back for two days at least. Do you know where the telephone lines are cut in the Sound?"

"Yes, sir. I cut them myself."

"When you get back from the Shangri-la get out there and fix them. Before dawn. Before dawn to-morrow you, your wife and son must disappear. For thirty-six hours. If you want to live. That is understood?"

"I understand what you want done. Not why you want it done."

"Just do it. One last thing. Hunslett has no relations — few of my men have — so he may as well be buried in Torbay. Knock up your local undertaker during the night and make arrangements for the funeral on Friday. Calvert and I would like to be there."

"But — but Friday? That's Just the day after to-morrow."

"The day after to-morrow. It will be all over then. You'll have your boys back home."

MacDonald looked at him in long silence, then said slowly: "How can you be sure?"

"I’m not sure at all." Uncle Arthur passed a weary hand across his face and looked at me. "Calvert is. It's a pity, Sergeant, that the Secrets Act will never permit you to tell your friends that you once knew Philip Calvert. If it can be done, Calvert can do it. I think he can. I certainly hope so."

"I certainly hope so, too," MacDonald said sombrely.

Me too, more than either of them, but there was already so much despondency around that it didn't seem right to deepen it, so I just put on my confident face and led MacDonald back down to the engine-room.

Three of them came to kill us, not at midnight as promised, but at 10.40 p.m. that night. Had they come five minutes earlier then they would have got us because five minutes earlier we were still tied up to the old stone pier. And had they come and got us that five minutes earlier, then the fault would have been mine for, after leaving Hunslett in the police station I had insisted that Sergeant MacDonald accompany me to use his authority in knocking up and obtaining service from the proprietor of the only chemist's shop in Torbay. Neither of them had been too keen on giving me the illegal help I wanted and it had taken me a full five minutes and the best part of my extensive repertoire of threats to extract from the very elderly chemist the minimum of reluctant service and a small green-ribbed bottle informatively labelled 'The Tablets.' But I was lucky and I was back aboard the Firecrest just after 10.30 p.m.

The west coast of Scotland doesn't go in much for golden Indian summers and that night was no exception. Apart from being cold and windy, which was standard, it was also black as sin and bucketing heavily, which if not quite standard was at least not so unusual as to excite comment. A minute after leaving the pier I had to switch on the searchlight mounted on the wheelhouse roof. The western entrance to the Sound from Torbay harbour, between Torbay and Garve Island, is a quarter of a mile wide and I could have found it easily on a compass course: but there were small yachts, I knew, between the pier and the entrance and if any of them was carrying a riding light it was invisible in that driving rain.

The searchlight control was on the wheelhouse deckhead. I moved it to point the beam down and ahead, then traversed it through a forty-degree arc on either side of the bows.

I picked up the first boat inside five seconds, not a yacht riding at its moorings but a rowing dinghy moving slowly through the water. It was fine on the port bow, maybe fifty yards away. I couldn't identify the man at the oars, the oars wrapped at their middle with some white cloth to muffle the sound of the rowlocks, because his back was towards me. A very broad back. Quinn. The man in the bows was sitting facing me. He wore oilskins and a dark beret and in his hand he held a gun. At fifty yards it's almost impossible to identify any weapon, but his looked like a German Schmeisser machine-pistol. Without a doubt Jacques, the machine-gun specialist. The man crouched low in the stern-sheets was quite unidentifiable, but I could see the gleam of a short gun in his hand. Messrs. Quinn, Jacques and Kramer coming to pay their respects as Charlotte Skouras had said they would. But much ahead of schedule.