Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

Well, well. There wasn't any problem to how she'd got here – given a bit of luck in the air schedules she could have been here this morning to meet me – but that didn't tell mewhy. Unless she was thinking of taking up tailing me where Draper had left off.

Then one of the lobby porters started calling my name. It took a few moments for it to sink into Draper and for him to start wriggling to peer all around him, so I had time to duck. But now he knew I was still around the hotel.

A couple of minutes later the message reached my bar and a waiter with a nice balletic style curvetted over with a folded message slip. It said just: With reference to HSC will you take a telephone call at 7 this night exactly?

No signature.

Nijinsky was still hanging around because I was still clinking coins in my pocket. I asked, 'Who took this?'

'The telephone lady, sir.'

Was it worth chasing her up? – asking what accent the caller had had? But they never remember. I nodded and dumped some coins – too much, by his expression and fast take-off – on the tray.

I suppose it was as good a way to do it as any. They'd be calling from a public phone so it didn't much matter if I had the cops listening in – and they knew I wouldn't have. But it didn't exactly help the naked feeling of wandering around without a gun. A quick trip back to the Fontenen? – but that area would still be under two thick coatings of coppers, and Vik would likely want to search me and mine if he came in tonight. The pistols would just have to stay there overnight and I hoped they would.

I had most of an hour before the phone call that would tell me something to my disadvantage, but the next drink was coming out of my own bottle. So I went upstairs, poured one, and tried putting a call through to Willie. I dug out Steen's last words and studied them while I was waiting. They went: CARD Gulbrandsens??

H amp; Thornton??

??

And a power of good that was to man, beast, or female.

The operator couldn't raise anybody on the syndicate's number at Lloyd's, which wasn't so surprising at that hour, so I told her to switch to Willie's Berkshire one. Then I copied out Steen's message and threw the original down the lavatory. At least, I suppose it was a message: a note of what hemight-as those question marks implied – have been going to tell me. H amp; Thornton didn't mean a thing except sounding English; Gulbrandsens just sounded like a name… well, that was easily settled: the telephone directory gave a choice of a dozen. Apart from anything else, it was a Bergen street name: Gulbrandsens Gate. But Steen hadn't lived there – that was the next thing I checked.

Then an elderly, well-bred female voice came through from darkest Berkshire to say Willie was expected back around nine and would I like to leave a message? I just gave my name and said I'd call back.

After that, I sat and stared at Steen's message until the phone rang – a couple of minutes after seven, by my watch.

A voice asked, 'James Card?'

'That's me. Who's that?'

'Never mind. Are you alone?'

'Yes.' I was trying to place the voice; it just might have been Norwegian – I'd learned that the time they spend not carrying your bags they use practising perfect English – but I didn't quite think so.

I said, 'So what d'you want?'

'I'm glad you asked that question. A certain book you have with you, I believe. It doesn't belong to you, so…'

'What book are you talking about?'

'Oh, for Chrissake!'A spurt of involuntary anger that just couldn't have been Norwegian. 'You know what I'm talking about. Now I'll tell you how to get it to us.'

I had to remember to sound unworried, not knowing he had anything on me. So, in a merry, insouciant voice: 'Up you, mate, and double upyour mate. I'm not a travelling library service. Any time you-'

He overrode me: 'Or we'll tell the local coppers to check with London on who owns that Mauser HSC they found in Steen's office.'

I counted a silent one-two-three to show implications sinking in, then said cautiously, 'I knew he was dead. I didn't know about the gun.'

He chuckled. 'That's right – yours. Remember the number?' He told me the number.

Another one-two-three to be appalled in. Then, quick and hopeful. 'They'd never believe I did it.'

'You might even be right. I'd say it was six to five on. But either way, you'll spend a nice long time here while they make up their minds. Now d'you feel any different about that book?"

Had I heard the voice before? I thought it was the one down in the underground car park while I was getting pumped full of Pentathol, but I could be just assuming the probable. Certainly that lot had latched on to my Mauser.

I asked, 'What guarantee do I get that you won't tell the cops about the Mauser anyway?'

He sighed, I think. 'Now, Major – you've been out of the Army long enough to know no blackmailer ever gives a real guarantee. He can't, can he? Whatever it is he knows, he can't just stop knowing it.'

'I'll give it you back in London,' I said.

'You'll give it tonight!'

Thank God he'd insisted.

He calmed down. 'Now. I'll tell you where. Are you listening?'

'I'm listening.'

I'd hardly got away from the phone when it went again. A voice that was soggy but sharp, like wet salt: 'Mr Card? I am Inspector (First Class) Vik. We met this afternoon.'

'Of course. Are you coming round?'

'If you please. Will you wait there? – I will be only a few minutes.'

He was less than one minute, so the bastard must have been ringing from the lobby. Maybe he'd hoped to catch me still swallowing the plans of the fort., He was wearing the same creased brown suit, and carrying an old overcoat in some loose-woven pale-green stuff with several strands sticking out and the lining hanging loose at the bottom. If you'd met that coat on the street you'd have given it five pence for a cup of coffee and kept at arm's length while doing so.

I held up the bottle of Teacher's. 'Does the superintendent let you drink on duty?'

He sniffed loudly. 'I can say it was medicine. No water, please.'

I passed him a good medicinal dose.'Skol.'

'Skol'He gulped. 'To be a superintendent in Norway you must have a degree in Law. I will never be asuperintendent. I had a war instead of a university course. Then…' He shrugged and looked at me with bleary thoughtfulness. It hadn't been self-pity: it was just a gentle, roundabout warning that he didn't believe in legal niceties.

Then he said, 'I have talked to your Scotland Yard…'

I nodded. That would be pure routine, of course; but their answer hadn't been.

He asked, 'Do you have a gun with you?'

'No.'

He emptied his glass, stood up. 'Do you object if I search? I have no… you call it a warrant.'

I shrugged and held my arms out ready.

He sat down again, satisfied. If I was ready to let him search then there wasn't anything to be found. It told me something about what the Yard had told him, but maybe even more about him.

He held up his glass and I poured him another and looked at the level in the bottle. 'I'll have to start travelling again soon.'

'Skol. But not too soon, please. Do you have a point-two-two-of-an-inch pistol?'

'I've got four – at home. Was that what shot him?'

He just nodded, then got outa handful of Kleenex and started excavations on his nose. 'Now – why did you come to see Steen?'

And so I gave him the story. About being with Fenwick when he got shot, about wanting to know why, about getting hired to find out, about Fenwick having visited Bergen before, about Steen's letter to Mrs Fenwick. All I left out was various guns, Mockby, Bertie Bear, truth-drugs, and Miss Mackwood having me tailed. Maybe it made it all a bit duller, but at least it came out shorter.