Blame The Dead

I could hear his laugh at that distance and through the snow. 'We've both been on those ones, eh, Major? Okay, get him started.'

I turned to the car. 'Get Nygaard out. Willie, stay there.' Without looking away, I reached back and pulled the seat-back forwards. Nygaard oozed uncertainly out behind me.

And Kari followed. 'I am going with him.'

Willie blew up. 'You'renot!'

'I came with him, I go with him.'

I said, 'She can try. They won't take her.'

She looked at me curiously, then started to help Nygaard across the patch of swirling whiteness towards the other cars.

He seemed suddenly subdued inside his greatcoat with its glistening epaulettes.

Ta

Ta

… give me a gun, a real gun like both of them have got in their pockets, not some two-shot popgun that couldn't win a prize at a village fairground, and things would be different…

Nygaard and Kari passed the Cortina and went on to the Saab. As they reached it, Mrs Smith-Bang stepped out and waved at me. 'Hi, Jim.'

I raised my left hand. 'Everybody's bloody cheery about it all,' I muttered.

David came disconsolately past me, his parka hood down and the snow flocking his limp hair. 'I'm terribly sorry, sir – getting caught like that and messing things up.' And he honestly looked it, too.

'God, that doesn't matter. Did they hurt you?'

'Oh, no. They didn't take much notice of me, really. But they know you.'

'Yes. Who's in which car?'

'When they caught me, it was that man Ta

Willie said impatiently, 'What the devil does that matter?'

'They spread the guns for the search, now they're grouping them. What do you think it matters? Get in, David.'

He climbed into the back. Nygaard was clambering painfully into the Saab – and Kari being turned away. It looked as if she were arguing it, but then Ta

The Saab suddenly bloomed white exhaust smoke and rushed away down the hill. Ta

'When we go, Willie,' I said quietly, 'Take theleft fork. But we don't move until after they do.'

Kari came up and I held the seat forward for her. 'Why did they not want me to go? '

'Get in.'

I gave Ta

When they were out of sight, I swung aboard and said, 'Now go, Willie. I mean go.'

He went, all right, but he argued. 'I don't see what's the hurry, now, for heaven's sake-'

'Because those two goons are going to ambush us.'

'Oh, really, old boy. I mean, they could have gone for us just now, if they wanted to.'

'Yes, but we'd've ended up with bullet holes in us. And some of them. This way, we can just drive neatly over a cliff and no questions asked.'

David said, 'But haven't they got what they want now?'

'The log-book and Nygaard? Yes, and four witnesses to the way they got them. They know perfectly well the police'll have Nygaard away from them five minutes after, we get down the hill. If we get down.'

Kari said, 'So that is why they did not want me.' She sounded more cheerful about it.

'That's right, love. They'd only have to have killed you separately, and this way it's easier. Wind it up, Willie.'

But he'd wound it up just about as far as it would go; the trouble was the road. It was weaving through some sharp uphill bends, and whatever there was under the new snow and old frozen stuff, it wasn't tarmac. The car bounded from rut to rut, the engine whining like a pe

'How much more of this?' Willie asked.

I looked at the map. 'About twenty miles, but it can't be all this bad.'

I was right, too. A few hundred yards later it got very much worse.

We came over a small rise and started downhill – and suddenly there was nothing on our right. Just nothing. The map said there was a big lake down there, but it could just as easily have been a city of ten million down under the void of swirling snow that started at the cliff edge. And on the left, a sheer rock wall that sometimes reached out to roof us in, the road cut through it like a one-sided tu

Willie dropped down a gear and his hands were white on the steering wheel.'What did you say about somebody pushing us off a cliff, old boy? There was nothing like this on the other road.'

'There're those two gunslingers.' I looked back, but they weren't behind us. Yet.

The windscreen wipers wish-washed back and forth, piling up snow at the corners of the screen. Ahead, the cliff faded out at maybe fifty yards, and if something was coming the other way, we were going to hit it solid; Willie was way over on the left-hand side – except it wasn't really wide enough to have two sides.

After a time, David said timidly, 'Did you find out what you wanted from Mr Nygaard?' And when nobody said anything, he added, 'Oh, sorry.'

'Hell, we should be apologising to you.'

Willie said, 'But there just wasn't anything in that log. Except the breakdown.'

David asked, 'Did he really escape from the burning ship, then?'

'Yes, but not from the engine-room. He was lying boozed on his bunk.'

'In his overcoat?' he asked.

Willie threw a quick glance at me and nearly lost the car.

I said slowly, 'How many overcoats would a chief engineer need?'

'Barely one. He wouldn't stand a bridge watch. He'd only need it when he went ashore.'

I nodded. 'He wasn't aboard. Not since Talli

You can't get bailed from them; they keep you twenty-four hours no matter what. And the captain rang Bergen and she said sail without him. And when he got out of the coop they'd fly him home to Norway – probably pla

'If you can prove it.'

'There must be some record in Talli

'No,' he said suddenly, remembering. 'Notand. Hucksversus Thornton. A case back in eighteen-fifteen. It decided a Lloyd's policy doesn't work if the ship isn't properly ma

Kari said coldly, 'If he was not on the burning boat, how did his hands become burnt?'

'Oh, blast,' Willie said sadly. 'Hemust have been aboard, after all.'

I said, 'I can think of other ways of getting burns on a man's hands. Ways that'd be a sight more likely to give him a screaming fear of fire – if he'd half woken up while they were doing it to him.'

'No!' she shouted. 'They could not do that!'

'Ttey can kill three men, shoot me full of drugs, and try to kill us now. Don't tell me what theycan't do.'

Willie said, 'But you can't just turn a blowtorch or something on a man, you might kill him, and then you'd need to give him medical attention…' His voice trailed off.