Rum Affair (18 page)

He never did speak. Something thrust on my shoulder. Light gleamed on flesh, on a tall body, on a fist travelling with fourteen good stones of force full behind it. There was a clicking thud, a grunting explosion of breath, and McIver was falling, marvellously, inexplicably, like a kapok-filled corpse in a film, to lie prone on Portree pier.

“The devil! How much did he take from you? I’ll have the police on to this! Are you hurt, me dear?” asked Stanley Hennessy, panting, with every indication of acute concern. And as I looked despairingly down: “Don’t you worry your head about him. He’ll wake up in jail in the morning. He’s thoroughly out.”

He was. The
Willa Mavis
wasn’t taking me anywhere tonight. And tomorrow was Sunday.

There was only one thing for it. I stared at Stanley Hennessy, and my eyes filled with tears.

Half an hour later, I was on my way to South Rona on
Symphonetta.

First, I had to confess to Hennessy why Tom McIver had confronted me. I let it appear that in visiting my old engineer friend on South Rona, I was merely flouting authority, expressing my scorn of the security clampdown which had interfered with our meeting.

It was a hard sell, but I did it. And in the end, as he began to dwell on the personal perquisites, Hennessy became quite amazingly keen. He had had three hours or so to spend in Portree before catching the tide south. He had had already, due to his early arrival, at least some hours’ sleep. He was willing – in fact, he proposed it – to take me to South Rona, invite my friend on board for a chat and a drink, and bring me speedily back. That bit especially.

I did not mention, while expressing my thanks, that I had no intention of asking Kenneth on board, or that on the contrary this assignation would be strictly for two, and on shore. The way I expressed my thanks, he didn’t notice the omission. Then Rupert joined us, with the Buchanans and the two young men from the checkpoint, who were persuaded to allow Tom McIver to repose in the chip shop until he came to. We said he was drunk. The rolls of notes I left in his pocket.

There were, unfortunately, two built-in snags in this happy arrangement. One I was prepared to endure because of my late Wartski bracelet. The other was the fact that, for all I could prove, Hennessy might be the man who wished to have Kenneth murdered. In which case it was small wonder he was being so cooperative. And how shirty he would be to discover I’d used that same Wartski bracelet to buy Gold-tooth off.

Once aboard Hennessy’s
Symphonetta
and slipping gently out of Portree harbour, however, I found both problems solved themselves neatly at once. Innocent or guilty, Hennessy did not deviate from form. Outside on the heaving waters of Raasay Sound, while his three white oilskin-coated young men downed sail and put on the engine, Stanley pressed me together and led me masterfully below.

Back to square one. Old man Bizet and boozet again.

I was wrong. But it wasn’t Hennessy’s fault. He hadn’t got the length of nibbling my ear when we were interrupted by someone reporting a chart missing; and five minutes after that a second fellow arrived to ask advice about a slightly choked feed pump.

He had the look of a boy who hadn’t had a square meal for a week, and was out of cigarettes most likely as well. I smiled at him and, saying: “May I?” to Hennessy, offered him one of the silver cigarette boxes before he went. Aided by me, he took half a dozen. Mine I let go out in the ashtray at once. I don’t, of course, smoke.

It wasn’t coincidence. The next to tap on the door had an anxiety about the echo sounder. As Hennessy, cursing, ran up the companion, the lad turned round to me, and I gave him a wink.

He disappeared, a shiny smile covering his dripping face from ear to sou’westered ear. They were ready for mischief and mutiny – and good luck to them.
Symphonetta
had arrived first at Portree because Hennessy had driven his helpers like dogs.

It seemed a good idea to go up on deck too, before the ship fell nominally apart. I gathered my hair again under the black oiled silk turban, finished my drink, and, drawing my mackintosh close, clambered aloft.

In the cockpit, Hennessy was saying: “You damned, feckless set of nincompoops – if I thought this was deliberate . . .”

“Where is South Rona, Stanley?” I said. “Is that the chart? Do show me how you are sailing?”

The acolytes melted to their tasks, and Hennessy pored over the chart. I had a good look too, for very soon I was going to be alone on the land inside all those soundings, where Kenneth and I were to meet.

South Rona is a rocky slip of an island, less than five miles in length and not much more than a mile wide anywhere, with no inhabitants save the lighthouse keepers at the north end, and a small naval base not far from the lighthouse which is normally deserted, except when the
Lysander
or a sister submarine was on trial. The rest of the island is ridged with rocky spurs and steep valleys, with bog and lochans in most of them, and, to the south-west, a rock-ridden haven called Acarsaid Mor, which seems to mean, simply, Big Harbour.

Over the hill from Acarsaid Mor was another bay, long dried out, with above it the roofless ruins of the old village. So
Dolly’s
maps said, and all those of whom I had discreetly enquired. I was here now to prove how well I had studied my lesson.

Soon, through the murk and the rain, a blacker shape appeared on our right, and one of the boys slithered to the bows, while Hennessy cut our power down to a whisper. It was the entrance to the anchorage opening up to us, and the black shapes merging into the blue-black of the sky were the hills of South Rona. From one of these, or from the lighthouse itself, Kenneth would have seen
Dolly
pass after midnight, on her way south to Portree. I wondered if he had seen and recognised
Symphonetta,
and if Hennessy’s presence alarmed him. I wondered if he had turned back, or had been stopped by the security guards.

We were a long way from the base and the lighthouse, where his sleeping quarters must be. The other anchorage, at the north end of the island, was for lighthouse and naval use only. The pier there was for taking on stores, and for the
Willa Mavis
when she brought stocks for the lighthouse. Somewhere there, they had what remained of the
Lysander’s
wrecked special equipment, and their scientists would be working on it. Kenneth would not want a rendezvous there.

While I considered, we had crept to the head of the inlet and the boys had dropped anchor. Nothing stirred on the dark shore. Hennessy, out of temper already, looked through his binoculars and was inclined to be tart.

I have no patience with that kind of thing. While the boat was being lowered in a hurry to take me ashore, I looked at the chart once again. A mile of rough walking, it looked; with perhaps a stiff climb in the middle, and then I should be in the village. And I should know very soon after that what happened that night in a warm flat in Rose Street, Edinburgh, where there was a dead man about whom there had been no publicity at all.

Hennessy didn’t go ashore with me in that launch to meet Kenneth. It took me some time to argue him out of it, and all the time I was sure of only one thing. If he insisted on coming, then I should insist on all three of his young men coming with him. As it was, he gave in when he did because he thought I was bringing my friend back on board with me.

Life, however, does not always work out like that. Instead of Hennessy, two of his white-coated young men, Shaw and Roberts, were to take me ashore. By Hennessy’s orders. During the journey I took the chance to explain my dilemma, and to receive from Mr Shaw and Mr Roberts their most fervent assurances of help. I told them I wanted to keep this appointment in privacy. I could count, they said, on doing just that.

We landed. Shaw, who was going to be a doctor, and Roberts, who dreamed during law classes of being a front desk fiddle under von Karajan, helped me out of the boat and up the stony beach into the undergrowth, while I felt for my whistle, my torch and my compass. I waved them goodbye and watched them return to the launch.

They made no attempt to refloat it. They were going to sit there, oblivious to signals, and wait until I should come back. That left Stanley Hennessy marooned in the harbour on board
Symphonetta,
with a rowing boat his only means of conveyance. By the time he got that ashore, Kenneth and I should be quite hard to find. I waved my torch again and, turning, set off.

Once, in my years of sycophancy, I learned my way about the night sky. It is a useful trick, to steer by in the dark. That night, the stars were half-masked by the heavy, rain-sodden clouds, but it did not greatly matter. My way, from the very slope of the rock, was quite clear. And the darkness was welcome.

I told myself that
Vallida,
with Duke Buzzy and Gold-tooth, was by now safely in Stornoway, where Gold-tooth could catch a plane south with my diamond bracelet. I told myself that every boat on these shores would be checked by the lookout, and that there would be a cordon of some kind, whether of alarms or of men, through which Kenneth must come. That would be near the base. You cannot guard country like this. There are too many hiding places.

I picked my way over that ridge of bony, uneven ground, covered with tough grass and heather, until I heard the sea louder again on my left, and the broken shell of a path made itself felt, underfoot, winding uphill away from the sea, to the brow of a hill on my right.

Then I began to pick out, on either side of the path, dim against the black hillside, blurred by mosses and obscured by low clumps of dark trees, the squat shapes of houses, set here and there on the slopes. There were no roofs on these houses, no reflection in the empty windows of the thistles and bracken that waved in the wind outside. There, dim at my feet, they had a garden of club grass and buttercups, and the closed pink ragged robin, bent long-legged in the dark.

The village. I stood still and listened. The topmost house, Kenneth had said. The wind, rising to one of its gusts, suddenly spoke like an organ through the vents and crevices of each tumbling, derelict house; and the grass and leaves and bracken, bending about me, roared and fumed like a marshalling of ghost locomotives, hissing pressurised steam. A stone fell, sharply, and I drew breath, my right fist clenched hard in my pocket. There was a heavy movement, and then the vanishing, trotting bulk of a sheep.

From tree to tree and wall to wall, I made my way uphill. That would be the house, higher up than the rest, with its end oblique to the sea. Kenneth, are you watching me? Are you waiting at one of the empty windows, your breath coming as quickly as mine is, or are you resting inside, on some fallen block from the chimney, your shoulders against the green-padded wall, your thin American raincoat, that you bought in Nevada, slung about your shoulders over the stained sweater and the untidy slacks . . . ?

There was a doorway. Even its lintel had gone. I paused, and then walked slowly through.

“Hello,” said Johnson.

Once, at a very intimate party, I found myself introduced to my dentist. This was worse. Like a clenched hand opening, my diaphragm let fall all its breath. Then I clicked on the torch in my hand. It illuminated a square of unkempt, silky undergrowth, seeded with stones, and on one of the stones, as I had pictured, was seated a man.

Except that the two dazzling orbs, catlike, which watched me weren’t Kenneth’s: they were Johnson’s twin-arched bifocals. Of Kenneth there was no sign at all.

“How did you get here?” I said. And as an afterthought: “I hope you remembered your gun?”

In the light of my torch he looked unwontedly businesslike, in some sort of proofed jacket and trousers in a dark peaty brown, cut like a battledress. At his side lay a stick, and an ordinary haversack, dark with moisture. The rain, I realised, had for some time eased off. Always smiling, while I looked at him he unbuttoned one of the big battledress pockets.

The first thing he took out was his pipe, which he stuck in his mouth. The second was his gun. It lay there in his hand, the small nickel pistol I last saw on the rocks inside Staffa. “I’m glad you noticed it,” said Johnson comfortably, turning it in his artist’s pussyfoot hand, until he had it trained on my heart. “It comes in handy sometimes.” And he pressed the trigger, quickly and hard.

For singing, one must be in training. As his finger tightened, I dropped – but not before I had flung my torch as hard as I could straight for his head. As the bruising stones and nettles received me, I saw him incline gently, to allow the beam to arch hissing past him, while in his hand the trigger clicked fully home.

There was no report. Nor was there a bullet. Instead, a little flame minced up from the top of the gun and tilting it, Johnson puffed at his pipe.

It took some time to light, during which my torch lay shining green in the long grass at his back, while the little flame pulsed on his big brow and his flat glasses and his wet black hair, and his grin. Then the lighter flicked out, and there was nothing but the dull glow of the ash.

“You want to be careful,” he said mildly. “Full of nettles, just there. Actually, I thought I’d protect my investment. It’s going to be a good picture of you, Tina, this one. On reflection, I didn’t want you either drowned in one of South Rona’s lochans or chased by the security guards, who haven’t seen a white woman in weeks. I sobered up Tom McIver and got him to tell me the rendezvous.”

“Then where’s Kenneth?” I said. I limped round him, got my torch and limped back. I didn’t shout. My brain was too busy. I could feel him watching me, but he didn’t move. Grey in the darkness, his pipe smoke streamed out sideways in the wind, even in here.

“He couldn’t get here. He left a note. One of the lighthouse men must have brought it. The guards are all alerted at base, and he couldn’t get across the island in time. There’s a parked Land Rover below the lighthouse on the road. He says he’ll wait until dawn inside that.” In the light of my torch, which I had trained on him again, Johnson held out a white slip of paper. I could see the
Valentina
in Kenneth’s writing outside.