A Time to Kill (9 page)

‘Not for more than ten minutes, sir,’ I answered, ‘and then we will run you back.’

He hesitated a moment and agreed to come at once. I suppose he thought that no harm whatever could come to him if he visited a police station in a taxi chosen by himself.

I came out of the box soaked in sweat from collar to socks.

‘For the Lord’s sake tell me what he looks like,’ I said to Pink, for I had only seen Losch with his back to a lit room.

‘Oh, you can’t mistake him. Medium all over. Medium fair. Medium tall. Medium solid. Fleshy mouth, and wears glasses. Looks like any other middle-class German.’

It wasn’t much of a description, but, after all, it was unlikely that more than one person answering it would drive up to Poole police station in a taxi at nine in the morning. I went into the station and hung about at the entrance, explaining that I was waiting for my brother who wanted to report the loss of a watch before going down to his office. I stood there, sweat drying, and shivering with cold, though it wasn’t cold at all. The wind had gone down, and blue sky was spreading from the west – a reminder that by nightfall both sea and air would be calm for travellers, and that I had only the rest of the day in which to find Ivanovitch and my children.

Losch drove up a little after nine. He was indeed a colourless, obstinate medium; but I had no doubt that he was my man, for he was more than mediumly nervous. I let him pay his taxi and come half-way up the steps of the station. The driver, thank heaven, didn’t hang about.

I greeted Losch briskly, and carried him along with me down the steps. When we were out of earshot of the doorway, I introduced myself as Sergeant Rogers of the C.I.D., and began a stolid, long-winded apology for a change of plans. We had had great difficulty, I said, in collecting a few men with beards to line up with our suspect. Parkstone station had now rounded up half a dozen, and, as it was easier to take the prisoner over there than to transport all the other beards to Poole, I would, if he didn’t mind, take him to Parkstone.

I kept pouring forth explanations, with the reasonable deference of an efficient policeman to a member of the public, until we turned two corners into a lane behind the station where I had parked my car. Pink was in the driving seat reading a newspaper, his recognizable nose turned away from the pavement.

I opened the door and allowed Losch to enter. Then I snapped:

‘Constable, you are on duty!’ as if to rebuke my driver for his sloppiness in not at once relinquishing his paper.

‘Sorry, sergeant! Thought I’d found a winner for Ascot!’

Pink came to attention in his seat with a stiffness that kept his nose firmly out of sight of our passenger.

I don’t think Losch was quite happy. One plainclothes policeman might pass, but he must have expected the driver, at least, to be in uniform. As we threaded our way through the traffic, I kept talking cheerfully about the burglary – trying to reassure him by my exact knowledge of times and places – and told him about the fight our man had put up before he was arrested. I described a wholly imaginary boat that he lived on, and said casually that he appeared to be a gentleman and had come from Tangier.

That had Losch thoroughly worried.

‘I don’t think the man I saw could be described as a gentleman, sergeant,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ve got the right one.’

It was sticking out a mile that he didn’t know whether he ought to recognize Pink or not. That was hopeful, for it meant he hadn’t had any instructions before coming down to the police, and therefore that neither Ivanovitch nor any of his men were within easy reach.

I had him so worried that he didn’t remark on the roundabout but just possible route to Parkstone which we were taking. When, however, Pink turned away down the main road to Dorchester and the west, Losch took notice.

‘This is not the way to Parkstone,’ he said sharply.

‘Damn, I wasn’t looking!’ I exclaimed. ‘Still dreaming of Ascot, constable?’

That was the signal for Pink to choose the nearest place where we could have a moment’s privacy, even the open road if it were clear. He apologized, went on a hundred yards and turned into a narrow lane which led to a boatyard.

As soon as the car stopped, Pink and I jumped out and changed places. He plunged through the open door and took Losch by the throat before the man had time to yell. Then he crashed down beside him, and rammed an open Norwegian knife against Losch’s ribs.

‘Put your hands in your pockets, and keep ’em there,’ he ordered. ‘And stay in your corner or this goes in.’

The car lurched as I reversed out of the lane. I heard Losch give a stifled cry.

‘I told you to keep in your corner,’ said Pink. ‘Goes in easy, doesn’t it? Now, Losch, no bluff! We know quite well that if you’re found dead it will be put down to your Russian friends, not us.’

‘Who are you?’ Losch asked.

‘Police, my lad. But not the kind of police you thought. And we don’t want an inquest any more than you do.’

Losch began to bluster.

‘Come off it!’ Pink ordered. ‘You’ve burned up your cattle ticks, so we can’t bring you to court. But we’re quite happy to deport you – or bump you off if you prefer it.’

That was the end of the first act, which, Pink had insisted, was his sort of business; and indeed I was far more ready to trust him than myself. The mention of cattle ticks had reduced Losch to a medium jelly. It was now my turn to join in with an air of authority. I stopped the car, and turned round to address him

‘Dr Losch, you will understand that it is not convenient for the government to have any knowledge of your existence, so my orders are to deport you privately. If you come quietly, you will be landed on the coast of France and left to get in touch with your friends as best you can. If you do not come quietly, the port police’ – the idea of port police at West Bay was laughable, but he didn’t know where he was going – ‘have orders to detain us all and afterwards to hand you over to me. In that case I shall have no alternative but to take you away and dispose secretly of your body. Is that clear?’

‘Hypocrites! Blasted hypocrites!’ Losch screamed. ‘I knew. I always knew. And you had the impudence to talk of Hitler’s atrocities!’

‘Hands in your pockets,’ Pink reminded him.

I drove now with a good deal more confidence. One likes to keep the speed under forty when one isn’t quite sure what may happen on the back seat. In order to avoid Dorchester, I went through Weymouth, where a last squall of thundery rain was driving the holiday-makers off the front and tying up the traffic, and then out on to the Bridport road where at last I could race that falling tide to my satisfaction.

Between Bridport and West Bay, with the sky clear, Pink saw a constable standing by his bicycle and taking off his wet cape.

‘Stop, sir!’ he said to me. ‘There’s our man!’

That was a typical bit of Pink’s daring. I sweated at what might happen, but I stopped.

‘What’s the weather in West Bay, constable?’ he asked mysteriously.

‘Sea’s going down fast, but no day for a swim yet,’ the policeman answered, grinning.

‘All laid on, eh? That’s splendid!’ said Pink.

I drove on before he had a chance to embroider further. His move was terrifying, but a beauty – for it was absolutely essential that Losch should give us no trouble on the quayside.

He did not. We had him out of the car, into the pram and on board in two minutes. Then I drove my car to the hotel garage where I had left it the previous night, and came back to find the anchor dripping black mud over the bows, and mud instead of water shining beneath the quay walls, and Pink dancing with impatience.

It was only half-past ten, but the swell from the bay was dropping
Olwen
a foot nearer the bottom than she should have been in its silky and hardly perceptible troughs; they were perceptible enough to Pink, and his softly steaming language left no doubt of it, especially when someone on the quay called him a damned fool who oughtn’t to be in charge of a boat. Once we touched, and the water around us was suddenly thick with mud. Then
Olwen
cleared the breakwater and pounded her bows into a genuine green sea, and Pink cursed more happily.

The powerful Diesel drummed softly as we rolled southwards. The long line of the Chesil Beach opened up behind us, a deadly, desert shore ending in the savage cliffs of Portland.
Olwen
wallowed as confidently as a cheerful porpoise, and Losch began to look a bit green. We took him out of the cabin into the fresh air of the well.

‘It’s probably a more comfortable crossing than you would have tonight, Dr Losch,’ I said.

‘About the same, I should think,’ he answered.

That was so promising a reply that I made the mistake of instantly slamming in a direct question.

‘Where were you starting from?’

He looked me up and down with a faintly impertinent curiosity. It was the first time since he was kidnapped that he had regarded me as if I were a human being like himself, and not a mysterious creature of unknown powers.

‘I do not know.’

‘What were your orders from Yegor Ivanovitch?’

‘To stay at home.’

‘Why didn’t you escape?’

‘Where to? To you? Thank you, I would prefer to obey.’

‘You are a member of the communist party?’

‘Of the German communist party,’ he corrected me.

‘But you take no part in political activities?’

If he had been an open communist, the Dorchester inspector would certainly have mentioned it.

‘I do not.’

‘Are there many agents like you?’

‘You ought to know,’ he replied insolently.

He was winning all along the line. He must have assumed at first that we had rounded up Yegor Ivanovitch and his whole crew. My questions had now shown him that we had not.

‘From whom do you normally take your orders?’

‘From my superiors in East Germany,’ he answered emphatically.

Ivanovitch had evidently impressed on him that, whatever happened, he was to tell the truth on that point.

‘It was they who told you to establish those cattle ticks in England?’

‘I know nothing of any cattle ticks,’ he said.

‘This man at the wheel – didn’t he get some out of your house the night before last?’

‘This man at the wheel,’ he replied with a growing lack of respect for me, ‘remarked earlier that he could not bring me to court.’

So he was certain that the vasculum and its contents had been recovered. I tried another tack.

‘Was it Yegor Ivanovitch whom you were expecting this morning?’

‘It was.’

‘He telephoned you? A trunk call?’

I cursed the fact that I had been a plain infantry officer with no experience of interrogation. Losch was my master, he had probably been through several really efficient interrogations in his life before. I was sure that Yegor Ivanovitch had called from somewhere in Dorset – and therefore on the Bournemouth Exchange – and that Losch could never have had any impression that it was a trunk call.

‘What were your orders for tonight?’ I asked.

‘I might be able to tell you that,’ he sneered, ‘if you had sent for me to the police station an hour later than you did.’

‘Oh, to hell with him!’ said Pink, exasperated. ‘Take the wheel, Roger, while I go and heat a few things on the galley!’

He seized Losch by the back of the collar, propelled him down the companion and through the cabin, then hurled him into the glory-hole in the bows and locked the door.

I would not like to say whether Pink, when it came to the point, would have been capable of carrying out his threat. As for me, if ever I wanted to torture anyone, it was Losch – both for the crime he was ready to commit against my country, and the contempt with which he had regarded me, lounging, positively lounging, on his seat. Now that we had arrived at the decision, however, I found that the brute’s flesh was sacred to me. I can’t think of another word. My whole ethical training, my system of taboos and religion and chivalry, vague as most men’s though they were, forbade torture even for the sake of my children. At the time I was ashamed of this weakness. I put the matter to Pink in quite another light.

‘If we ever have to hand him over,’ I said, ‘he mustn’t be marked. And I’m not sure that it’s safe to drop him overboard till we know the police have not traced him.’

‘Got to break him down somehow,’ Pink insisted. ‘What made him turn nasty?’

I answered that I supposed it was good communist morale in the face of obviously unskilled interrogation.

‘I can deal with that communist morale,’ said Pink, ‘if only you can hang on to your own.’

He turned east. With the sea behind her,
Olwen
’s motion eased. When Portland Bill lay on the beam and about four miles distant, I saw white water ahead and asked Pink whether the wind was getting up again.

‘That,’ said Pink, ‘is Portland race. Now, don’t be alarmed. This is all for Losch’s benefit.’

Alarmed! I should have been in a complete panic if Pink had not looked so mischievously calm. The seas had no shape or regular movement at all. They charged each other, and the white-topped, green columns spouted into the air, as if the shock of wave against wave was unyielding as that of wave against cliff.

‘My God!’ I shouted. ‘Will she do it?’

‘Oh, she’ll do all right,’ Pink answered, ‘so long as the engine doesn’t stop. I’m only playing about on the edge. If anyone has got his glasses on us, he’s going to think I’m an escaped lunatic.’

He played about on the edge, as he called it – though I could see neither edge nor end myself – for twenty minutes.

‘Have a look at Losch now,’ he said.

I staggered through the main cabin, hanging on to the table, and opened the door of the glory-hole. It was a small forecastle, of about four feet by seven, set between the cabin and the chain locker, and occupying half the width of the ship. The outer side of the one bunk had been built up to hold light but bulky stores. On the floor were coils of rope, fenders, paint-pots and floats for moorings. The glory-hole may have smelt like home to a seaman, but to a landsman’s nostrils it had that faint, sour stench of any poorly ventilated compartment in the recesses of a ship.