A Time to Kill (14 page)

The terrace or platform at the mouth of the gallery ran out for some ten feet. I could see the two lines hanging down from the winch into space. Fallot’s body lay crouched on its side in an unnatural position that a touch would disturb. I stretched out my left hand and pulled his boot. The body collapsed, and I made another foot under cover of the noise. Yegor Ivanovitch paid no attention.

Both Fallot’s boots were now within my reach. Indeed, they blocked my view and obtruded themselves upon my consciousness. I was peremptorily reminded of a detestable occasion in the war when a pair of apparently dead boots in front of me began to drum upon the ground.

It was safe to assume that Ivanovitch had done a bit of execution before – for all I know, his branch of the Russian police may have to do a two weeks’ course of it for promotion – yet he couldn’t be wholly sure that Fallot was stone dead. True, he had fired at a yard’s range, but the man had been in movement and the bullet was light.

I twitched the two boots in a gruesome imitation of Fallot’s last expiring kicks. Ivanovitch hissed some curse under his breath, and made no move. He thought he knew what it was. I had not misjudged him.

Fallot’s kicks gave me the last couple of feet that I dared take. I could now jump clear into the open round the end of the stone; but then to turn behind it and get at Ivanovitch was asking for trouble. It was a risk that I should have possibly have taken in war. Now, however, with the certainty that my children would be lost for ever to Cecily if I failed, I wanted something better.

Pink fired another shot for luck. After that the silence was complete. My back felt very naked. To see it, Ivanovitch had only to move to what I may call the neutral corner of the stone. I tried to convince myself that he wouldn’t, for he must surely think that if he stood full in the mouth of the gallery, he would be outlined against the night sky behind. In fact, the night was too dark for any clear outlining, but that he could not know.

I decided to have a go at Fallot’s boots again; if Yegor Ivanovitch’s nerves weren’t any better than my own, the delicate, intolerable sound might exasperate him into coming within reach. I was right. He could stand the twitching no longer. Perhaps he never took that two weeks’ course after all. He crawled on hands and knees along his side of the block, and reached forth a hand to draw Fallot into cover, where he could deal with him.

As soon as his head was fairly out, I gave him Pink’s knife between the shoulder blades. It wasn’t quite enough. I am now ashamed that I was glad it wasn’t enough. I turned him over and allowed him to see who I was, and to watch the steel as I drove it into his throat.

I shouted to Pink to come up, and crawled to the edge of the cliff. It overhung the sea. Almost directly below me was the dark arrow of
Fiammetta
’s bows. She was held by two stern anchors. A bosun’s chair was just over the edge of the platform, ready for Ivanovitch. The line passed round the drum of the winch and down to the deck, so that he had only to step into the chair to be lowered. There was no sign of the children, and not a hope of getting down to the ship. In an access of fury I wrenched Ivanovitch’s pistol out of his hand, and gave his body a heave and dropped it on two men who were standing by the lower end of the line. Unfortunately they looked up and saw it coming. The body landed on the forecastle hatch, and smashed it in.

This savagery did not pay.
Fiammetta
went astern, and Ritter’s mate could be heard shouting orders to his passengers. There was an angry argument, dominated and finished by a voice which commanded the mate to get out of there and leave the traitor Ritter behind.

‘Quick!’ Pink exclaimed. ‘Quick – for God’s sake!’

I slipped on my shoes and grabbed my clothes. We dashed back up the gallery and into the main workings, where we had a horrible minute trying to find the right way out. Then we stumbled through the narrow connecting shaft, out into the lower quarry and so to Fallot’s house. It took nearly a quarter of an hour.

Pink panted that we shouldn’t lose hope, that Ritter’s mate wasn’t going to leave his anchors behind, that he couldn’t be at both wheel and capstan himself, that his passengers were sure to make a mess of the tricky moorings; and he would idle as much as he dared in the hope of hearing a hail from the missing dinghy at the last minute.

We raced through the house and down the ravine to the ledge. Pink hurled the pram through the water, manhandled her into the well and on deck, buoyed and slipped his cable; and in twenty-five minutes from the time we left the quarry mouth
Olwen
was sliding through the calm sea on the improbable quest of intercepting
Fiammetta
somewhere to the south.

Pink, however, refused to call it improbable. If
Fiammetta
was bound down Channel, her course was known, for she had to go south in order to pass clear of Portland and the race; if up Channel, he reckoned that she would still hold a southerly course to reach the safety of the three-mile limit before turning east.

‘He’ll show his lights some time,’ Pink insisted – though I could tell by his voice that it was more a hope than a sure opinion. ‘Why shouldn’t he? He’s clear of the land, and he’s no reason to expect anything on his tail. Damn it – he isn’t Ritter! He’ll be fussing over his charts in the wheelhouse, and he’ll have to see to read ’em.’

He kept on mumbling to himself and peering into the utter blackness.
Olwen
was showing no lights at all.

Fiammetta
, as our captured seaman had told us, came over from Le Havre, but there was no ground for assuming she would return there. She might be bound for any port in Belgium or France where there was a strong communist organization capable of receiving Yegor Ivanovitch’s special mission, and speeding it on its way to the east. And I think they all would have reached those friendly hands – minus Ivanovitch, that is – if a streak of complex illumination had not come tearing up Channel from Portland on His Majesty’s business. She crossed our bows a mile or two ahead, and Pink muttered that if
Fiammetta
wasn’t showing her navigation lights, that cruiser would have put the fear of God into the poor bastard at the wheel.

It did. On the starboard bow, at a distance I wouldn’t attempt to estimate, we saw the red and white of a small craft. Both Pink and I were sure that only darkness had been there before the passage of the cruiser; so the presumption that these were
Fiammetta
’s lights was strong.

‘Hell!’ said Pink. ‘Stern chase! And that man in the glory-hole told me she could do sixteen knots.’

‘And
Olwen
?’

‘About eleven. But
Fiammetta
won’t do more if she hasn’t got to, Roger. She can’t have too much fuel, and her present course looks like Ushant.’

We sped steadily on over the quiet sea, and the limit of our world was the white water creaming away from the bows. I listened to the heartening beat of the Diesel, and prayed that it would not stop. The lights came nearer and nearer, and after half an hour we had them on the beam and, as it seemed to me, close to – though Pink said it was all of a mile.

‘Now get this clear, Roger,’ he warned me. ‘If the hand in command of
Fiammetta
spots that we’re after him, it’s the last we’ll ever see of her. I can’t ram her because your children are below, and we mightn’t get them out in time. The only mortal way I see of stopping her is to board her. Take the wheel while I interview our friend below.’

Pink came back in a few minutes with full details of
Fiammetta
’s plan. He could get anything he wanted out of a fellow seaman. When he had water all round him he was a far simpler and more gallant character – nearer to his true self – than the erratic, disappointed creature of the land.

Fiammetta
was built as a pleasure cruiser. She had an all-enclosed wheelhouse amidships, with the saloon and galley forward, and the owner’s cabin and bathroom aft. There was a roomy forecastle with two bunks in it, which was entered through the forehatch which Ivanovitch’s body had splintered.

‘Could be worse,’ said Pink, ‘but it’s like trying to board a bloody greenhouse. How much ammo have we got?’

‘Five in the Luger, and four in Ivanovitch’s popgun.’

‘What is it?’

‘Eight millimetre, I think.’

‘It’s mine,’ said Pink, grabbing it. ‘And I’ve got a spare magazine. More than you deserve, my lad, after pinching my gun that night in Bournemouth!’

Then he wanted to know what sort of a shot I was with a pistol. I could tell him honestly that at close range house-to-house stuff I used to be pretty efficient.

‘If they take a look at you,’ he said, ‘they won’t wait for you to use a gun at all.’

I hadn’t considered my appearance. I had washed my hands overboard when we rowed out to
Olwen
in the pram, but that was all.

‘Your face is as black as a nigger’s,’ Pink told me, ‘but it’s going to show nice and crimson when there’s some light. Now, what I’m going to do is this: I’m going straight for them, and I shall blind the helmsman with the Aldis lamp. That’s your moment – and you won’t have more than five seconds before they’re into us or past us. You’d better take my gun because we have enough ammo for it, and you may have to shoot away the glass before you can bag the helmsman. What will happen then, I don’t know. But I’ll try to tie the two ships up without doing too much damage. Objective is to take the wheelhouse and keep anybody below from coming up top. We ought to get two of them before they start shooting, and then it’s only three against two. OK? And now lash the sculls into that pram!’

Fiammetta
was now on the starboard quarter, and her green was at last visible as well as the red. Pink closed and closed, and for an interminable time we didn’t seem to be able to force ourselves far enough ahead of her. At last he ordered me to lie down on the deck and get ready.
Olwen
heeled over in a tight semi-circle and we foamed towards the lights. Pink switched on the Aldis lamp, and I saw
Fiametta
racing towards us not more than two hundred yards away.

What happened then was all so quick that I have little idea of the sequence. I remember
Fiammetta
altering course to starboard, and Pink going to port. I smashed the glass of the wheelhouse and saw the helmsman raise his hands to his eyes. Then, or before, Pink roared, and there was a crash that nearly flung me overboard. I concentrated on my part of the job, shot the helmsman dead, and changed the magazine.

‘Board, you …!’ yelled Pink.

It was nearly too late.
Fiammetta
had cut right into our bows, and
Olwen
was down by the head and seemed to be slipping off into the sea. Pink leapt over me and jumped for
Fiammetta
’s fore deck. I followed him and missed my footing, but got a good half of me on board. By the time I had picked myself up, Pink’s assault on the wheelhouse had failed.

The lights were on in the saloon, and illuminating the wheelhouse from below. The four men had tumbled up in a hurry, and slammed the door which Pink was rushing. He dropped to the deck just in time to avoid a regular curtain of fire. I fell back on sound infantry tactics and took cover behind the fore hatch and Ivanovitch’s body, which no one had bothered to clear away. Maybe it wouldn’t move in one piece; maybe they had been arguing whether the State would approve of them chucking it overboard. The party in the wheelhouse put a few more shots into Ivanovitch, but they were lit up and I was not, and I got two of them. The third made a dash for the door, and Pink slugged him with his iron bar as he dived out. Number Four dropped into the saloon to put out those murderous lights, and stayed there. That looked very nasty for the moment, since anyone who entered the wheel-house or tried to winkle him out was at his mercy. He had forgotten, however, the two forward ports of the saloon. Once those were smashed in, he had to watch them as well as the wheelhouse. And so at last we had the ship to ourselves.

The owner’s cabin was locked. Yegor Ivanovitch, like a good civil servant, had reserved the best accommodation for himself and his personal affairs. We broke down the door. There on the bed were my two boys, asleep and lightly drugged. I thanked God for it. None of that horrible work nor the appearance of their father need ever remain in their memory.

On the table was the vasculum. Pink examined the contents at much greater length than was necessary. He could, as I’ve said before, be tactful as a woman in the face of another man’s extreme emotion.

‘Shall we take them to
Olwen
?’ I asked him.

‘Well, Roger, you certainly go all out for the business in hand,’ he said. ‘There ain’t been no
Olwen
for the last ten minutes.’

‘And Losch and that seaman?’

‘Pretty clean sweep, isn’t it?’

His fingers were playing drum-taps on the lid of the vasculum in the most exasperating manner. I took stock of myself. I had to admit that my violent trembling wasn’t due to cold, as I had thought. I asked Pink if Ritter would have whisky on board.

‘A vat, if I know him,’ Pink answered.

I said I would look for it. I didn’t want Pink to go through that wheelhouse and saloon again till he had to. My own share in that mess was justified. I hadn’t a doubt of it. But Pink – I could see that, for the moment, he might find it difficult to call up a clear-cut motive; they were too many and too obscure. He had served himself, but even for him – especially for him, as I now knew him – that was no excuse for piracy and murder. He had served his country, but his country had not asked for his devotion and did not want it. He had served his friend, but it was he himself who had landed that friend in disaster and violence. As I picked my way towards the whisky, I swore that I would allow Roland no rest until Pink had been given back a right to be of use, free of fear and free of disgrace.

When I had the bottle – and another for emergencies – I removed the four corpses from the wheelhouse down to the saloon, and shut the door on them. Then we had a stiff drink apiece, and I tried to say how sorry I was for the loss of
Olwen
.