Gavin Lyall - Blame The Dead

He told me one name and it didn't mean a thing. Then, 'The one in Gulbrandsens Gate.'

'Thanks.'

I went back to staring out through the steady drizzle. The big suburban houses were thinning out, getting wider-spaced. With a sudden blare a twin-engined jet charged overhead and vanished down behind a hill. I was a couple of hours from home.

Oh hell.

'Turn around,' I said wearily. 'Back to the railway station. I forgot something.'

Gulbrandsen's Seamen's Home was over by the south harbour, by the shipbuilding yards, as it turned out. You climbed a street borrowed from San Francisco – so steep that a big house could lose a whole floor in its own length, over through the mixed old and new buildings of the university at the top, and started down the other side – and suddenly you were on the wrong side of town.

Every town has it. The dull, shabby streets walled with drab apartments and windows like rheumy old eyes. Quiet and still, because noise and movement cost money, and without laughter or anger because those cost something, too. The part that now can't even remember when it did anything but wait in front of a cold stove for it to be time to climb into bed and lie without real sleep, waiting for it to be time to be not really awake again. Every town has it; even Bergen.

The Home itself was on the corner of Gulbrandsens Gate; a four-storey Victorian building in faded yellow stucco with small tight-lipped windows, barred on ¡the ground floor. I leaned my thumb on the old saucer-shaped bellpush and waited.

After a long time, footsteps shuffled up inside and the door groaned open a crack and a face looked out at me. It must have been in its late fifties, a sandpaper skin stretched tight over the sharp bones but bunching under the faded blue eyes and hanging loose at the throat. He didn't say anything.

Td like to see Chief Engineer Nygaard, please,' I said cheerily. The door started to swing shut, but my foot got there first.

'Hold on, now. At least we could ask the gent if he wants to see me, couldn't we?'

'He does not want you.' And he leaned all of his weight on the door. I leaned back.

'You don't even know who I am! I've brought him. a present!' And I waved the half-bottle of Scotch I'd picked up at the Vinmonopolet – the state booze shop – on the way over. If Captain Jensen had been right, that should be the passport.

The faded blue eyes just looked impassive. 'He does not want visitors.'

'Just ask him!' I gave the door an exasperated shove and it ripped out of his hands, throwing him off against the wall, scrabbling for support.

I looked down and he had on one carpet slipper, one stiff shiny boot. So he'd lost a leg sometime. Well… he ought to have enough sense not to get into fights, then.

He looked at me with pure, patient hatred.

I said, 'Is Nygaard at home? '

'Room 14.' A dull, flat tone.

'Thank you, Herr…?'

'Ruud. Superintendent Ruud.'

I shut the door and walked down the gloomy hallway, over lino that was uneven and gritty under my feet. And up the uncarpeted stairs. At the turn, I looked back. Ruud was still leaning against the wall, still staring after me. I went on up.

Room 14 was on the second floor, down a narrow corridor that was dark and had that indefinable but unmistakable smell of old people. Small private noises leaked out around me; somebody coughed rackingly, a lavatory flushed at the third pull, a plate clattered. I knocked on the door.

At the second knock, a bed creaked and a bleared voice mumbled something, and footsteps moved reluctantly towards the door.

Maybe he was sixty, maybe more, but it wasn't his age you saw first, it was his defeat. He'd quit, switched off, surrendered. His face was puffy, making his red-rimmed eyes look too small, his stomach bulged out over trousers unbuttoned at the top – but for a big man, the way he peered out was small and furtive. And his breath was a meal in itself, only a week late.

'Ja? Hva onsker De?'

I held my ground and tried not to breathe in. 'Chief Engineer Nygaard? I'm James Card from London. I brought you a…' and I showed him the bottle.

'Oh, ja!'He took it, held it up to stare at it closely – and then I saw his hands. The backs, from where they stuck out of the frayed old sweater, were a mass of crumpled blue-white scar tissues right to the ends of his fingers. The fingernails, the three or four still there, were thick, dirty little wedges. But from the way he handled the bottle the fingers weren't locked: they could move from about half clenched to almost wide open.

Fire. Only fire does that.

Then he tried to square his shoulders against the pull of his gut, threw the door wide, and said cheerfully, 'Come in, my friend, come in. I was having a little – you say, snooze.'

I went in. I could guess what the room would be like – but I was wrong. It was surprisingly clean, bright, and almost tidy. Not that there was much to get in a mess, but the bed was made, if rumpled, and the table, chest of drawers, and shelves had been freshly painted white. There were even a couple of flowers in the glass on the narrow tiled window-sill.

Nygaard half opened a drawer, changed his mind, and left the bottle in plain view. Then picked up an electric kettle and shook it. 'Would you want some coffee, ja?'

'If you're making it anyway.' I perched myself on the arm of a middle-aged armchair that was wearing an old but recently cleaned cover.

He got the kettle switched on, found a jar of instant coffee and a couple of mugs and a bag of sugar, and even that effort made him wheeze a bit. 'Are you a sailor man, Mr – er-?'

'Card. No.'

'So why do you visit an old man like me, hey?'

'I'm doing some work for somebody in Lloyd's of London.' Well, there was a reasonable percentage of truth in that. 'I understand you were in the Skadi when she…'

He turned his back and the big shoulders trembled. 'No. I do not talk about that.'

'Sorry.' I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. 'But you're going to have to talk about it to the court if the case ever comes to trial. Why not to me?'

'Always lawyers, questions, why this and that, all the time. No. Why cannot an old man die by himself, with his own people?' He still had his back to me.

'You're not dying, come off it.' He didn't answer. 'All right, don't talk about the collision, then. Did you ever meet a man called Steen?'

He turned around and seemed calmer.'Ja, I meet him, once, twice.'

'Recently?'

'A month, I think. Ja.'

'What did he ask you about?'

He flapped his arms like stiff wings. 'Always the same, Skadi, Skadi, Skadi.' Then the kettle hissed and he turned away to make the coffee.

I asked, 'Did you read this morning's papers?'

'I don't read newspapers. Only the shipping magazine.'

'Steen got himself killed yesterday. Murdered.'

He shook his head. 'I did not like him.'

'Why not?' Though I could see why a neat, fastidious man like Steen – to judge from his clothes and office – wouldn't get on too well with Nygaard.

He turned round with a couple of steaming mugs. 'Just always questions. Skadi, Skadi, Skadi.'

His hand trembled as he held out the mug, and just the touch of warmth from it reminded me how cold the room was; I still had my sheepskin coat on. There was a serious-looking electric fan heater in the corner, but Nygaard obviously preferred to use his spare cash for other things.

For a while we just sipped, and probably he was wondering why I was there as much as I was myself. Then I managed to slop some coffee down my coat collar, and reached for my handkerchief.

He jerked like a shot puppet. 'No, no! You must not smoke! No light, no!' One crumpled, shivering hand was stretched out towards me.