Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

After half an hour my new friend came in and bought a beer and I started my Bertie Bear act. It involved just leaving the envelope where somebody like the barman would need to move it, then snatching it away before he could lay a finger on it. I did this twice, then felt I was risking overplaying the scene, so I just hugged it to me like an autographed copy of the Bible.

I played the same game at dinner, but after that the timing got tricky. On the boat, he didn't have to follow me around; in fact, he could have stayed in his cabin the whole voyage and not lost me – if that was all he wanted. I hoped he wanted a little more by now, but I couldn't always tell just where he was. Anyhow, after dinner I spent half an hour in my cabin, then went along to another, smaller, bar by the swimming pool just at the end of my corridor. Bertie stayed under my pillow.

I nibbled my way through two Scotches and was ordering the third when he caught up with me again. He paused, smiled at the barman, gave the place a careful look – just as if he were merely exploring – and headed down my corridor.

I let him have a minute and a half.

The cabin doors don't lock except from the inside. I tried mine – gently, gently – and it was locked. I waited; he daren't stay long. And I prayed the corridor would be empty when he came up for air.

It was. He was back inside against the far wall and with the door locked again before he could say a word, though maybe that was because he had the derringer's two barrels up against his teeth.

I held him pinned there for a moment, then counted, 'And one, and two, and three…' and pulled back the hammer. His face went dead white and he started to shiver. I reached into his inside pocket and started tossing stuff down on to the bed.

'Who are you working for?' I asked pleasantly.

'I got to sit down,' he croaked.

'Who are you working for? '

'I shall be sick.'

'Be sick. Who are you working for?'

By now I had all the paperwork from all his pockets. He wasn't armed, unless you count a small penknife, and he wasn't going to kick or swing at me. His arms and legs were quite busy enough just trembling.

'Who are you working for?'

"Herb Harris.'

'Ah. And who'she working for?'

He just folded up. On the way down he grabbed a chair and got most of himself into it, then hung there, panting.

I backed off and sorted through his belongings. His name was Arthur Draper and his passport just said 'salesman', but he had calling cards and a phone-credit card for the Harris Enquiry Agency. He hadn't stolen anything of mine, not that I could find.

Me and the gun sat and watched him. Gradually his breathing slowed down, he got a bit of colour back, and his trembling faded into nervous fiddling movements with his hands. The moment had gone, now – the loss of identity and will that goes with capture and makes it the best time for interrogation. If I reached him now, it would have to be another way.

'Where did you park the green thirteen hundred?' I asked.

He just looked at me emptily, and his hands plucked at his jacket.

'Should take more care of a hired car,' I told him. 'Herb won't like it. Who are you working for, by the way?'

'Get stuffed.'

'You're in no position to say things like that, mate. It's a big jungle and you took a wrong turning. Now…?'

'You think I'm going to tell you?' He was getting back a bit of confidence; his hands were almost still.

'Oh, yes.' I stood up.

'You won't use that gun.'

'Probably not.' I went over to my suitcase and kicked open the lid and scooped some clothes out on to the floor.

'You can't exactly torture me.' But he sounded puzzled.

'Nope.' I opened the drawers in the little dressing-table.

'So why should I tell you? '

I ripped open my bed and tossed the Bertie Bear book over by the suitcase. 'Because if you don't you're going slam into a Norwegian jail for breaking and entering on the high seas and carrying a gun. Look at the mess you've made of this cabin.'

He went flat pale again. 'I haven't got a gun.'

'You will have, friend. It isn't licenced to me, and youare in my cabin, and youdid search it, and you're a private eye who might have romantic ideas about carting a gun around. It just fits – it sounds right. And it gets you off my back. What do I lose?'

I propped myself on the wall by the steward's call button and held up my wristwatch and stared at it: He lasted fourteen more seconds.

'Miss Mackwood.'

I met him again next morning, in the cafeteria. I'd got up too late for the real breakfast, but I obviously hadn't missed much else: that particular piece of North Sea was cold, misty, and wet. Above the surface as well, I mean.

I was sitting over my third cup of coffee and trying not to hear the ballet troupe telling itself how much it had drunk last night and who'd spent how long in whose cabin when Draper dumped himself down opposite. He looked pink and cheery, although he hadn't changed his shirt, and was smoking a long thin cigar that smelt like diesel fumes. Unless it was his shirt.

'I've been thinking,' he told me. 'Right now you can't do a thing to me. I'm not in your cabin, you can't plant a gun on me – I'm fireproof. But you're not.'

'You've been thinking,' I said sourly. 'You want to lay off that stuff. Stunts your growth.'

'All right, Mister Big Time. All I have to do is call an officer and tell him you're wearing a gun. Him or the Customs when we get ashore. So why don't I do it?'

He looked as if he really wanted to know. I said, 'Because it's outside your brief and because all I have to do is tell Herb Harris how much you've told me and you're an unemployment statistic by return of post.'

He took a bite of smoke the wrong way and choked privately for a little while. When he'd finished, I said, 'I'll be staying at the Norge, if I can get a room, so there's no reason to tread on my heels. I'll spend the afternoon talking to people or perhaps something else. Come see me this evening and I'll tell you what I've done, or perhaps I won't.'

He glowered at me, his eyes thick with tears. But he was screwed and he knew it; there was no way in the world for him to follow me if I didn't want to be followed, so he might as well save his time and money.

'And give my love to Miss Mackwood,' I added.

We arrived in Bergen by the servants' entrance. Probably I'd expected to come up some great sheer-sided fjord out of a Daumier engraving, but I must have been thinking of a different season or place or something. What I got was twenty miles of low, humpy green islands on one side and low, humpy green land on the other, dotted with houses and oil tanks, then a right turn and into Bergen harbour itself.

Also, it was raining. Not just casually, as if it were something it did every second day there – which is what the guide-book says – but as if this were the first and last time in years and it was going to get it right.

We docked just after midday, and I hung back, hoping the rain would get tired. It didn't. So at about half past I was out through the terminal and last in line for a taxi. But at least there wasn't any trouble getting a room at the Norge when I finally arrived. It was a modern building, seven or eight storeys high, with the town's air terminal occupying one corner at street level and a vast lobby occupying most of the rest – in contradiction to Hilton's First Law: keep the lobby small so anybody waiting gets squeezed out into the nice big cocktail bar and has to spend money.

It was also pricy, but a good hotel's an investment, I always tell my clients. They don't lose your mail or forget telephone messages, they fix your tickets in a hurry, they don't care what hours you keep.