David Oldman - Dusk at Dawn

The steward stared at Paul.

‘The door.’

The man shut the door.

Paul climbed out of his berth. ‘I’ve been a bit seasick,’ he said.

‘Yes sir.’ The man peered morosely around, his eyes falling on the empty bunk.

‘Mr Pinker, too,’ Paul explained. ‘He had a bad night. He must have gone up to get some air.

‘Taken his bedding, has he?’

Paul looked at the stripped bunk.

‘He was sick on it. Perhaps he’s taken it to the laundry.’

‘Should have given it to me.’

‘Yes. But let’s not worry about it now.’ He caught sight of the mess in the basin and Valentine’s cigarette butts.

‘Leave the bunks but you can clean that out if you would.’

The cabin steward looked at the basin and sighed. He changed the jug, kicked his buckets under it the basin and tipped its disagreeable contents into it, running his mop around the floor. He poured some fresh water into the basin, gave it a cursory wipe with a cloth then tipped that out, too.

Paul took a florin from his jacket pocket hanging at the end of the bunk.

‘I won’t be going in for breakfast.’

‘You’re too late anyhow,’ the cabin steward said.

The thought of missing breakfast made Paul realise how hungry he was. He hadn’t been able to manage much of the previous evening’s mutton stew.

‘Perhaps you could leave a tray out for me? Could you do that?’ he asked, giving the steward the florin.

The man pocketed the coin.

‘And can you take this?’ Paul passed him his bundle of laundry. ‘Leave everything else till later.’

‘As you like, sir.’

‘Did Mr Pinker’s have breakfast?’ Paul thought to ask, laying down an alibi for himself.

‘Don’t know, sir. Haven’t seen him.’

‘What about the other passengers?’

‘I done their cabins, sir. You’re the last.’

‘Right,’ said Paul. ‘Don’t forget the tray, will you?’

He closed and locked the door behind the steward, looking at his watch. It was gone eleven. He had slept for six hours but didn’t feel rested. Unable to risk using the bathroom along the corridor, he stripped off his shirt, cleaned his teeth and washed as best he could at the gimballed basin. Drying himself, he looked round for a clean shirt but his only other one was now in the laundry. He went through Pinker’s bag and found a freshly laundered one. Trying it on, he found it frayed at the collar and too tight to button. He took it off again and picked up the dirty one he’d just discarded.

Then he sat in the chair for a while, wishing he could tell the absent Pinker how sorry he was for the way things had turned out. Getting up again he went back to rummaging through Pinker’s luggage. The man had brought several changes of clothing but all were rather shoddy and none likely to fit Paul. There were some trade journals and a Baedeker for Norway, Sweden and Denmark that he thought might prove useful. He put it on one side. He found some invoice books and other company papers but no photographs or anything else of a personal nature that might have given a clue to Pinker’s family.

His sense of relief was quickly followed by pangs of guilt; he had felt relieved, Paul realised, not because the unfortunate man had left no family but because, if he had, Paul knew they would have been on his conscious too.

He came to this conclusion while staring at a pair of Pinker’s socks. He stuffed the things back into the bag and followed them with everything else of Pinker’s he could find spread around the cabin.

Last were the boots. They really did look good, he found himself thinking as he sorted through the samples. Finding a pair his own size, he tried them on, pacing up and down the cabin. They were comfortable and would probably be of more use than his own Oxford brogues. He took the boots off again and stuffed them into his own bag, stubbing his fingers as he did so against his service revolver. He pulled it out, spun the Webley's chamber and pulled back the hammer. He gently dropped the hammer back then pushed the revolver under the pillow on the upper bunk.

A knock at the door made him jump.

‘Yes?’ he called, affecting an indeterminate tone of voice.

‘A tray, sir, as you asked.’

‘Just leave it there, will you?’

He listened to the footsteps recede along the corridor then opened the door and pulled the tray inside. There was a pot of tea and four small quartered sandwiches. Even assuming a lack of appetite from seasickness it seemed hardly adequate. He poured the tea, wondering if he could get another tray at lunch, and had just picked up one of the sandwiches when there was another knock a the door.

‘It’s Darling,’ Valentine hissed.

Paul opened it and Valentine slipped inside. Seeing the tray he picked up a sandwich.

‘Egg,’ he said. ‘My favourite.’

‘They all turned up for breakfast,’ Valentine told him, dribbling crumbs of hard boiled egg down his vest front. ‘Except for Pater. I left him in bed.’

Paul had eaten his sandwich as quickly as he could and grabbed a second. But he still wasn’t quick enough to prevent Valentine from bagging the last.

Paul watched Valentine brush the vestiges away with the back of his hand.

‘Your absence was noted. I said you looked pretty iffy after dinner and everyone saw Pinker was sick last night. The trouble is the sea’s so much calmer that either one of you would have to be more or less comatose not to notice that the other’s dead.’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘Play it by ear,’ Valentine replied vaguely. ‘I’ll not be far away so there’s no need to worry on that score.’

Paul didn’t find the thought particularly reassuring.

‘I asked the cabin steward if Pinker had been at breakfast. If he doesn’t turn up for lunch, won’t they get suspicious?’

Valentine ran a hand through his hair.

‘Why don’t you turn up and pretend to be surprised that Pinker isn’t there? Can you manage that?’

‘Feign surprise? I don’t see why not.’

‘Don’t get there early,’ Valentine warned. ‘You might run into whoever killed Pinker before the rest of us turn up. Although it would certainly flush him out.’

Less than comfortable with the idea of being bait, Paul changed the subject.

‘My cousin,’ he said, ‘do you think he’s still in Petrograd?’

Cumming had repeatedly told him that Valentine — Hart — would fill him on the details. So far Valentine had hardly said a word on the subject.

‘Wouldn’t know, old man. We didn’t exactly move in the same circles in Petrograd. Mind you, if he had any sense he’d have got out after the Kornilov fiasco. Now the Bolsheviks are running the show he’ll be a marked man.’ He smiled coldly at Paul. ‘But that’s why we’ve got you, isn’t it? To find Mikhail?’

‘What about my uncle, Ivan Nikolayevich? Do you know how he died or what’s happened to my aunt? Or their daughter, Sofya?’

‘Not the foggiest. Your uncle was shot after the Bolshevik coup. There was a lot of trouble on the streets then, although they’re playing the fact down now. Things were still sticky when I left in January and they pulled the ambassador out.’

‘When Lockhart arrived? He’s in Moscow, isn’t he? C told me I wasn’t to contact him.’

‘That’s right, old man. Even I can’t directly. The problem is he’s too well-known to the Bolsheviks. They watch him like a hawk. Knowing Lenin and Trotsky as he does actually ties his hands.’

‘What’s he like?’

‘Never met the fellow,’ Valentine admitted. ‘Sound man, by all accounts but a bit of an individualist. Something of a ladies’ man, I hear. Bit of a track record in that department. He was recalled the first time for getting too close to some fellow’s wife. Now the rumour is Lockhart’s got a yen for Moura Budberg.’