Isvik (41 page)

I stared at him, a thought crossing my mind, so that I felt suddenly as though I was caught up in a nightmare. ‘Fitting?' My voice sounded hoarse, little more than a whisper.

‘Aye. What would ye dae? Ye've seen the crime that's been committed.'

But my mind had gone off on a tangent, to the fact that the man was armed and we were standing here in the open on the gun-deck, our bodies, in silhouette against the light from the open gun ports, a perfect target. But when I suggested that we were in danger of getting killed, he just laughed at me and shook his head. ‘He won't be troubling us, not just yet.' And he added, ‘What will be worrying him right now is that there is a man who's been on board here ever since the ship struck, a man who knows the answer to what happened, how all those bodies were done to death. One of the rifles is missing so he knows the man is armed. If he fires at us, then he reveals his position. He needs to get his bullet in first.' He turned then, muttering something in French. ‘
Incroyable!
' Catching his repetition of the word, I thought he was referring to the scene in that frozen hold. Then, as he headed aft, he said quite distinctly, ‘She couldn't have known, surely.' He was talking to himself, not to me. And he added, his accent broadening, his voice barely audible, ‘What the hell state o' mind will the poor bugger be in?'

He didn't bother to soften the sound of his footsteps, but when he reached the door he kicked it wide open, his gun ready in his left hand. As I followed him in, the thought uppermost in my mind was that phrase he had used before. He had been referring to that cargo of Disappeareds, not to Carlos. How the hell did he know Ángel was responsible for that ghastly hold full of refrigerated bodies? But when I put the question to him, all he said was, ‘Ye'll see. Ah'll be proved right.' He looked round at me, smiling. ‘Want to bet on it?'

That sudden glimpse of callousness shocked me. ‘You can't be certain of that. Not until you know what they died of.'

‘Don't worry about Ángel now. Concentrate yer wee mind on the person who's been livin' on board this antique hulk fur the last couple of years or more. Who is he, d'ye reck'n? And what's happened to his mates? They won't have sailed with the hold half full of political prisoners without some sort of a guard. Who disposed of them, eh?' He reached for the catch of a door just beyond the stove, motioned me aside and yanked it open. A pantry, the shelves almost empty, but still a sack with some flour in it, a collection of rusty tins, some sugar in the bottom of a deep jar, and strips of meat hanging from hooks in the beams above. ‘Olive oil.' Iain was shaking a can marked
aceite
. ‘Strips of smokey seal meat, homemade bread, an occasional delicacy from out of one of the tins, with a wee bit of mutton now and then. Reck'n ye can exist on that fur quite a time. But no green stuff. Nothin' to keep the scurvy at bay.' He put his hand into an open cardboard case. ‘Ugh! Look. It's crawlin'.' He held out his hand to me, biscuits all crumbled and full of weevils. ‘This is the sort of diet they used to live on in the old days, and fur months at a time, the whole ship's company dyin' of lethargy with ulcered gums and their teeth droppin' out.'

He stepped back, closing the pantry door as though to keep the maggots from invading the big cabin. ‘Take that safety catch off,' he said, pointing to the Uzi I had placed on the table. He showed me how to work it and told me to hold it ready. ‘An' don't shoot me in the back if Ah'm lucky enough to flush somebody out.' He then kicked open the doors of the four smaller cabins, one by one, his gun ready and probing with his torch.

But they were all empty, the heads, too, and the little cubbyhole of a galley with its simple paraffin stove where the officers' food had been prepared. The main galley, he said, was up for'ard, also the main storeroom, where the fresh food had been kept. ‘But that's empty now. Rats have been at it, and what they haven't taken he's moved here.' He motioned me back into the main cabin, shut the door and pulled up a chair facing it, but a little to one side, the gun on his knees. ‘It's just a matter of waitin' now.' His haversack was on the table and he pulled it across, rummaging inside. ‘Here yer are.' He produced a slab of chocolate, broke it in half and tossed one half across to me.

It was nut chocolate with raisins, and as I bit into it I suddenly realised how hungry I was. ‘We'll have a brew-up later. Could be a long wait.'

‘You think he'll come – here?'

‘Och aye, of coarse he'll come. He'll want some food, same as us. And he'll be curious, wonderin' whether he's got to shoot us, or if this is the moment he's been prayin' fur all these years, the moment of release. How many years is it, Ah wonder, since he was a free man – five, six? D'ye remember when it was Iris said her brother disappeared?'

I shook my head. ‘Do you think it's him – out there? Is that what you mean?

He didn't say anything for a moment, chewing ruminantly on his chocolate. Finally he said, ‘Ye're sort of a scientist, aren't ye? Ye've spent all yer life since leavin' school playin' around with chemicals and such deadly liquids and powders that kill pests, woodworm, deathwatch beetle, and that worm ye find in tropical waters, what's it called?'

‘Teredo.'

‘Aye, that's it.' He fell silent then, staring at me, as though wondering whether to continue, and I sat there, just across the cabin from him, waiting, until finally he laid his gun on the table, leaning forward. ‘Does Porton Down mean anythin' to ye?'

‘What's Porton Down got to do with it?' And then I remembered his telling me Iris's brother had been there. Or had Iris told me herself? I couldn't remember. It seemed so long ago, another world. ‘You're not suggesting the men in the hold here were killed by poison gas, are you? Porton Down is a government research station specialising in chemical warfare. A poison gas in the confines of a ship would make the air so toxic –'

‘Not if the killers had masks.'

‘I haven't seen any gas masks.'

‘No. They would have got rid of them, thrown them overboard. But Ah wasn't thinkin' of anythin' toxic like poison gas.'

He was silent then, his eyes turned towards the stern windows. The sun had set a little while back, the polar twilight darkening the cabin. He got slowly to his feet, went to the door and opened it ‘Thought so. Could do with some oil. Thought Ah remembered the hinges creakin' when Ah first opened it.' He pushed it to again and went through into the pantry. ‘What would ye like? Some bully beef? There's two very rusty tins of it left. He's probably savin' them fur Easter. He'll be a Catholic, so he's sure to starve himself over Lent. Not that he would have had much choice. There's water here and some oats. The oats look all right, so we could cook up a mess of porridge, or we could cut a piece off a strip of the seal meat. What can Ah get ye?'

‘You said there was some tea there? Is there a tin opener?'

‘Tea we have, but we're fresh out of milk, and there's no lemon or sugar. There's coffee, just a dreg that looks more like a dark brown paste at the bottom of the jar.'

‘What about a tin opener?' I heard him pulling drawers open and got up and joined him. He had a cupboard door open and was bent over an olive-green haversack full of stones. ‘Tea,' I said.

He didn't seem to hear for a moment, staring intently at the whitish fragment he held in his hand. ‘Aye, tea.' He nodded and replaced the stones in the haversack. ‘Or would ye care for some coffee?' He dumped the haversack back in the cupboard, closed the door and straightened up.

‘It doesn't look very appetising, the coffee, I mean.' I was wondering what the stones were doing there.

‘No, it doesn't. And we don't want to upset our stomachs, do we?' He grinned and held up a bent and very rusty tin opener. ‘
Voilà. Thé au naturel
and
bully beef à la Frégate Ancienne
. How's that suit ye,
mon ami
?' His humour sounded a little macabre in the circumstances, but perhaps it was an attempt to conceal what he really felt.

‘You were talking about Porton Down …' I had sat again, conscious now that I was very tired.

‘Aye.' He was sawing away at the rusty can of bully. ‘But not over such a gourmet meal. Wait until we've finished.'

But by then, of course, I was virtually asleep, my eyes leaden, my nerves dulled, no longer seeming to care who came in at that door, what he did, or whether I would even wake in time to know. I heard his voice as though from a great way away, heard him say something about an island. ‘Gruinard.' He repeated the name several times, leaning forward and tapping my knee. ‘Haven't ye ever heard of it?'

‘Yes,' I murmured. ‘I think so.' But I couldn't remember in what connection, or even where it was. ‘What about it?'

‘Wake up, man, ye're half asleep and Ah want to talk to ye.' His voice was sharp, a note of impatience.

I opened my eyes, but it was so dark he was no more than a dim shape in the gloom. ‘Is there any more tea?' I asked him. Tea might revive me.

‘Christ almighty! Ye want tea and ye've let the mug Ah brewed ye go ice cold.'

‘It's cold in here and I'm feeling sleepy.'

‘Ye've been asleep fur the last tae hours and more. It's after one in the mornin'.'

‘The witching hour,' I mumbled.

‘Aye, the witching hour, and any moment he'll be here.'

I sat up then, the whole ghastly situation flooding back into my memory. ‘What makes you so sure?'

He laughed. ‘So that got through to ye. Any moment now.' And when I repeated my question, he shrugged and muttered something about his water. ‘A gut feelin' in other words.'

‘You mentioned an island.'

‘Ah was just talkin' to myself.'

‘You were talking to me.' I could feel my temper rising. ‘You were talking to me.' What the hell was the man on about? ‘Gruinard. That's what you said. You asked me whether I'd ever heard of it.' And then, suddenly, it dawned on me. ‘That island! In the Inner Hebrides. The one nobody has been allowed to set foot on since World War II.' I couldn't remember why. ‘Some poison, wasn't it?'

But he was silent now.

‘Porton Down,' I said. ‘You were talking about Porton Down. That wasn't only chemical warfare, was it? They were into biological warfare …' There was a sudden percussion sound, not loud, more muffled – a shot? I couldn't be sure. It reminded me of the sound I had thought was the cracking of an ice floe when Iain had gone on ahead of me to the ship.

I started to get to my feet. But he told me to sit down. ‘Wait!' And as he said it, there came a fusillade of shots. No doubt about that, it was an automatic. ‘AK47,' he whispered. Then came a single shot, followed by a cry of pain.

Silence after that. A long silence. The shots had come from the fore part of the ship. I could see the door now, my eyes having accustomed themselves to the gloom. It was slightly ajar as Iain had left it. Any moment now, he had said. The sound of voices, very faint. Like ghosts, they seemed to echo through the timbers of the ship. A sudden scream that went on and on, then was cut off short, very abruptly. But almost immediately it started up again, muffled now and a different sound, a cry for help rather than a scream of pain. It rose and fell on a pleading note. A thud, like the sound of timber falling on timber, and after that no sound at all, just silence.

‘What was it?' The silence was more frightening than the shots and screams. My eyes, fastening on the dim-seen edge of the door, felt unnaturally wide. But it wasn't the door I saw, it was that section of the gun-deck up for'ard. A trap door. That's what I had thought it looked like, and Iain saying it had been hauled up into the vertical since he had come on board. The door of a trap. And that thud. The silence. ‘Jesus Christ!' I murmured, and if I had been of the old faith I would have crossed myself. I was thinking of the man down there amongst those frozen bodies, an abominable, unholy incarceration. ‘We've got to do something.' I was on my feet.

‘Sit down!'

‘No. You listen to me. You've got to –'

‘Sit down, damn ye, and shut up!' His voice was very quiet, very compelling. ‘Just think of all the poor devils who died down there. Ah just hope to God it's the right man who's gone down to join them.' Almost against my will I found myself seated again as he added, his voice fallen to a whisper, ‘Now wait. And not another word.'

So we waited, and the wait seemed endless. My eyes, accustomed now to the dark, could see the shape of his head outlined against the faint luminosity from the stern windows, the metal of the gun barrel gleaming faintly. He had it resting on his knees ready for instant use. In front of him, on the table, he had placed that indecent little pottery votive offering given him by the Indian we had released on the Pan-Am Highway north of Lima. He kept fingering it, his touch almost a caress, as though the wretched figures were good luck talismans.

I thought his dummy hand would make it difficult for him to use his automatic pistol effectively. I stretched out my hand for the gun he had given me lying there on the table within my reach. ‘Let it be. And sit tight.' His voice was a fiercely breathed whisper, tense in the stillness.

All very well to sit tight, but what if it wasn't the man we were expecting? What if it turned out to be Ángel? An AK47, he had said. Did the Kalashnikov have a distinguishable firing sound? And if it did, how did he come to be able to recognise it? Which brought me back to the same old question – who was he, what was he doing here, who had sent him? Questions, questions, questions, my mind running round in circles. And then the hinges of that door creaked.

I turned my head. The edge of the door was shifting, the crack widening. Suddenly Iain's voice, very quiet, very restrained: ‘
Tengo un mensaje de tu hermana, Eduardo. Ella esta abordo del
Isvik,
un pequeño barco expedicionario mandado para rescatarte
.' Then, switching to English, he went on quickly: ‘My name is Iain Ward. Also in the cabin here is Peter Kettil, a specialist in the preservation of old ships.' He paused there, waiting for a reply. But there was silence, the door quite still now, no creak of the hinges, only the distant sound of ice falling from a rotten berg.