Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

I was out on the street just before eleven. Last night's snow hadn't settled, and for the moment it wasn't even raining, so the town was just damp, not really wet. I drifted towards the north harbour, looking in shop windows until I was certainÌwas alone. Then straight to the Fontenen.

The guns were still safe in the cistern. I dried them as much as I could on the toilet paper but I wasn't going to risk wearing one-or, by implication, firing it – until I'd had a chance to strip them properly. So I just finished my beer and headed back to the Norge. And there was a telephone message waiting: please ring Mrs Smith-Bang at a given number.

'Smith-Bang?'

The desk clerk smiled briefly and nodded. 'Bang is a usual Norwegian name, sir. Some time a Bang married a Smith, I think.'

'Ah, but did Smith bang Bang or Bang bang Smith?' After a single beer? 'I'm sorry. You wouldn't happen to have heard of the lady, would you?'

He'd gone a little stiff and puzzled. But he reached for the message and looked at it – at the telephone number, I suppose, then said, 'Excuse me' and went away and came back with a telephone directory. 'Yes, it is the Mrs Smith Bang who is a -you say "widow", I think, who owns the ship line.'

'Which one?' Not that I'd know it anyway.

'The ADP line, sir.'

'Thanks. I'll call her back.'

But the first thing I did upstairs was to field-strip the Mauser and derringer, wipe them down with more toilet paper, and spread the bits over the radiator to dry. The ammunition should be all right – modern stuff should survive a few hours in water – but how d'you know until you're wrong? So I planned to wear the derringer: if the first one didn't go bang, thumb-cocking was easier than working the slide of the Mauser. And that reminded me.

A man's voice answered the phone – in Norwegian.

I said carefully, 'My name's James Card: I think Mrs Smith-Bang wanted me to call her.'

'Oh, yes, sir. She is out, I am afraid, but I have a message. She asks if youwill please go to have a drink at the Hringhorni.'

'The what?'

'The ship, sir, Hringhorni.'

'Ummm…' How d'you explain that you've learnt to be cagey about accepting invitations in this town and will the lady please swear her intentions are honourable or at least nonviolent? '… well, where is it?'

He told me the berth number. 'Near to the Bergen Line.'

Oh, well, it was a fairly public invitation. 'Okay, but I don't want to make it a long one -1 want to catch the half-past-two. plane.'

So I accepted for twelve noon.

By then I'd packed up, paid my bill, been told insincerely that the Norge could hardly wait to see me back again (you could read in the clerk's eyes what he thought of guests who get called on by police Inspectors [First Class]), carried my own luggage out of the door as usual, and got myself taxied down to the docks.

The Hringhorni was a smallish, old-fashioned cargo boat with her superstructure stuck in the middle instead of right aft like a lot of modern jobs you see nowadays. The hull was a light grey-green where it wasn't long smears of rust, and the funnel was painted black with a white band that broadened into a stylized snowflake with the letters ADP in red.

The derricks around the foremast (or whatever) were hauling crates into the hold, but when I'd climbed the shaky metal-and-rope gangway there wasn't anybody around. Still, that was normal; every time I've gone aboard a ship in harbour I could have stolen the propellers, the skipper's pyjamas, and half the cargo before anybody noticed I was there. I chose the nearest doorway and ducked in out of the wind.

There wasn't anybody there, either, only a faint buzz of chat from a stairway leading upwards. I followed it up, along a stretch of metal corridor, through an open door and a heavy green curtain – and I was home. Maybe it had been an initiative test.

The inhabitants were a middle-aged square man with four stripes on his uniform sleeve and a big brier pipe – and Mrs Smith-Bang, I presume. She took a couple of long strides and held out a bony brown hand.

'You're Jim Card, are you? Well, hi there. What're you drinking? Scotch suit you? Great. Meet Captain Jensen. Now sid-down, siddown. How d'you like this Bergen weather? This is the only place in the world they talk about the climate more than you English. Now you know why, ha? '

I shook hands, a little dazed, and sat in an armchair with a very loose cover in a coarse floral fabric. The Captain went over to a large enamel kitchen bucket in the corner, full of bottles and ice, and started organising my drink.

Mrs Smith-Bang waved her own glass – it looked like a dry martini – and said, 'Cheers. Nice of you to drop around. Sorry it couldn't be my house, but this tub's supposed to be sailing at four o'clock and I have to make sure everybody's aboard and half sober. Maybe you're wondering who in hell I am?'

'You're the boss of the ADP line.' Just as if I'd always known.

The boss of the ADP line nodded and looked pleased. She must have been at least sixty-plus, but she had the long-lasting sharp lines of a Boston clipper along with the genuine Yankee accent. Her hair was a frizzy cloud of tobacco-stained grey, her face long and grained like sea-worn wood, her eyes very bright grey pebbles. She wore a raw-silk blouse, a soft tabby-coloured tweed skirt, anda. matching coat slung around her shoulders.

'That's righty,' she said. 'I've run the thing since my last husband went to glory or wherever they put my husbands. He was Bang, I was Smith, and damn if I wanted to see a good New England name like that get lost just because I needed a third husband in a hurry.' And she cackled like a slatting mainsail.

I sipped – no, gulped – and looked carefully around. With the cheap wood panelling and the worn red carpet the cabin could have been a small-time city office – except that it all hummed and trembled faintly from some power source. That and the rust bubbles in the white-gloss ceiling and the rows of thick, round-cornered windows looking out into the wavering tree of derricks.

Mrs Smith-Bang was watching me. 'Who're you working for, son? Lloyd's or Lois?'

Lois? Lois? – oh, Mrs Fenwick, of course. I just shrugged and looked inscrutable.

She sighed. 'Yeah, I heard you'd been in the spy business. You'd be good at it, with that face. Okay, son, I'll level with you. I think you've got something from Martin Fenwick that belongs to me. I'll buy it off you if you like, but I'm betting you're more interested in finding out why he got himself killed – right?'

'Could be. You knew Fenwick?'

'Martin? – sure. He's been taking a first line on my fleet for years now. Hell, he's had more hot dinners in my house than I've had nights with my knees up, and I wasn't a late starter, son.' And she laughed again. Captain Jensen stiffened, blushed, and made burbling noises through his pipe.

I nodded – meaninglessly – and said, 'What d'you think I've got, then?'

'The log of the Skadi.'

So now I knew. It was as easy as that.

So now I knewwhat? I kept the last dregs of inscrutability on my face and asked, 'It belongs to you, does it?"

'The Skadi did, the log must. Any log belongs to the owners.'

Wasn't that what Steen had said: 'It belongs to the owners'? And I hadn't had thenous to see that he meant 'shipowners'.

Captain Jensen gave me a severe red-faced look and nodded ponderously, backing her up.

I tried the casual touch. 'Why d'you think I've got it?'

'You think I don't keep in touch with my insurance on a thing like this?' Well, it was no secret around Lloyd's that I'd got away with a certain package Fenwick had been carrying.

'How did you know Fenwick had got it?'

'He told me, of course.'