A Fine Night for Dying

CHAPTER 1

English Channel 1969

There were times when Jean Mercier wondered what life was all about and this was very definitely one of them. Somewhere beyond the boat in the darkness was a shoreline that he could not see, hazards at which he could only guess, and the lack of navigation lights wasn’t helping.

A wind that came all the way from the Urals spilled out across the Gulf of St. Malo, driving the waves into whitecaps, scattering spray against the windscreen of the launch. Mercier throttled back the engine and adjusted his steering slightly, straining his eyes into the darkness, waiting for a light like some sign from heaven.

He rolled a cigarette awkwardly with one hand, aware of a trembling in the fingers that would not be stilled. He was cold and tired and very scared, but the money was good, cash on the barrel and tax-free-more than he could earn from three months of fishing. With an ailing wife on his hands, a man had to take what came and be thankful.

A light flashed three times, and then was gone so quickly that for a moment he wondered whether he had imagined it. He ran a hand wearily across his eyes and it flickered again. He watched through a third repetition, mesmerized, then pulled himself together and stamped on the floor of the wheelhouse. There were steps on the companionway, and Jacaud appeared.

He had been drinking again, and the smell, sourly sharp on the clean salt air, made Mercier slightly sick. Jacaud shoved him to one side and took the wheel.

“Where is it?” he growled.

The light answered him, ahead and slightly to port. He nodded, pushed up speed and turned the wheel. As the launch rushed into the darkness, he took a half-bottle of rum from his pocket, swallowed what was left and tossed the empty bottle through the open door. In the light from the binnacle, he seemed disembodied, a head that floated in the darkness, a macabre joke. It was the face of an animal, a brute that walked on two legs with small pig eyes, flattened nose and features coarsened by years of drink and disease.

Mercier shuddered involuntarily, as he had done many times before, and Jacaud grinned. “Frightened, aren’t you, little man?” Mercier didn’t reply, and Jacaud grabbed him by the hair, one hand still on the wheel and pulled him close. Mercier cried out in pain and Jacaud laughed again. “Stay frightened. That’s how I like it. Now go and get the dinghy ready.”

With a heave, he sent him out through the open door and Mercier grabbed at the rail to save himself. There were tears of rage and frustration in his eyes as he felt his way along the deck in the darkness and dropped to one knee beside the rubber dinghy. He took a spring knife from one pocket, feeling for the line that lashed the dinghy into place. He sawed it through, then touched the razor edge of the blade to his thumb, thinking of Jacaud. One good thrust was all it would take, but even at the thought his bowels contracted in a spasm of fear, and he hastily closed the knife, got to his feet and waited at the rail.

The launch rushed into the darkness and the light flashed again. As Jacaud cut the engine, they slowed and started to drift broadside onto the beach marked by the phosphorescence of the surf a hundred yards away. Mercier got the anchor over as Jacaud joined him. The big man heaved the dinghy into the water on his own and pulled it in by handline.

“Off with you,” he said impatiently. “I want to get out of here.”

Water slopped in the bottom of the dinghy, cold and uncomfortable, as Mercier mounted the two wooden oars and pulled away. He was afraid again, as he always was these days, for the beach was unknown territory in spite of the fact that he had visited it in identical circumstances at least half a dozen times before. But there was always the feeling that, this time, things might be different-that the police could be waiting. That he might be drifting into a five-year jail sentence.

The dinghy was suddenly lifted on a wave, poised for a moment, then dropped in across a line of creamy surf, sliding to a halt as she touched shingle. Mercier shipped his oars, slipped out and pulled her round, prow facing out to sea. As he straightened, a light pierced the darkness dazzling him momentarily.

He raised a hand defensively, the light was extinguished, and a calm voice said, in French, “You’re late. Let’s get moving.”

It was the Englishman, Rossiter, again. Mercier could tell by the accent, although his French was almost perfect. The only man he had ever known Jacaud to touch his cap to. In the darkness he was only a shadow, and so was the man with him. They spoke together briefly in English, a language Mercier did not understand, then the other man got into the dinghy and crouched in the prow. Mercier followed him, unshipping the oars, and Rossiter pushed the dinghy out over the first wave and scrambled across the bow.

Jacaud was waiting at the stern rail when they reached the launch, his cigar glowing faintly in the darkness. The passenger went up first and Rossiter followed with his suitcase. By the time Mercier had reached the deck, the Englishman and the passenger had gone below. Jacaud helped him to get the dinghy over the side, left him to lash it to the deck and went into the wheelhouse. A moment later, the engines rumbled softly and they moved out to sea.

Mercier finished his task and went forward to make sure that all was secure. Rossiter had joined Jacaud in the wheelhouse and they stood together at the wheel, the Englishman’s thin, aesthetic face contrasting strongly with Jacaud’s-opposite sides of the coin. One an animal, the other a gentleman, and yet they seemed to get on with each other so well, something Mercier could never understand.

As he moved past the wheelhouse, Jacaud spoke in a low voice and they both burst into laughter. Even in that, they were different, the Englishman’s gay chuckle mingling strangely with Jacaud’s throaty growl, and yet somehow they complemented each other.

Mercier shuddered and went below to the galley.

FOR most of the way, the passage was surprisingly smooth considering what the Channel could be like at times, but toward dawn it started to rain. Mercier was at the wheel, and as they started the run in to the English coast, fog rolled to meet them in a solid wall. He stamped on the deck, and after a while Jacaud appeared. He looked terrible, eyes swollen and bloodshot from lack of sleep, face gray and spongy.

“Now what?”

Mercier nodded toward the fog. “It doesn’t look too good.”

“How far out are we?”

“Six or seven miles.”

Jacaud nodded and pulled him out of the way. “Okay-leave it to me.”

Rossiter appeared in the doorway. “Trouble?”

Jacaud shook his head. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

Rossiter went to the rail. He stood there, face expressionless, and yet a small muscle twitched in his right cheek, a sure sign of stress. He turned and, brushing past Mercier, went below.

Mercier pulled up the collar of his reefer jacket, thrust his hands into his pockets and stood in the prow. In the gray light of early dawn, the launch looked even more decrepit than usual and exactly what it was supposed to be-a poor man’s fishing boat, lobster pots piled untidily in the stern beside the rubber dinghy, nets draped across the engine-room housing. Moisture beaded everything in the light rain and then they were enveloped by the fog, gray tendrils brushing against Mercier’s face, cold and clammy, unclean, like the touch of the dead.

And the fear was there again, so much so that his limbs trembled and his stomach contracted painfully. He wiped his mouth with the back of one hand and started to roll a cigarette, fighting to keep his fingers still.

The launch slipped through a gray curtain into clear water, and the cigarette paper fluttered to the deck as Mercier leaned forward, clutching at the rail. Two hundred yards away, through the cold morning, a sleek gray shape moved to cut across their course.

Jacaud was already reducing speed as Rossiter appeared on deck. He ran to the rail and stood there, one hand shielding his eyes from the rain. A signal flashed through the gray morning and he turned, face grim.

“They’re saying: ‘Heave to, I wish to board you.’ It’s a Royal Navy MTB. Let’s get out of here.”

Mercier clutched at his sleeve, panic rising to choke him. “Those things can do thirty-five knots, monsieur. We don’t stand a chance.”

Rossiter grabbed him by the throat. “Seven years, that’s what you’ll get if they catch us with him onboard. Now get out of my way.”

He nodded to Jacaud, ran along the deck and disappeared below. The engines roared as Jacaud gave them full throttle, spinning the wheel at the same time, and the launch heeled over onto one side, almost coming to a dead stop, then surged forward into the fog.

The gray walls moved in, hiding them from sight, and the door to the companionway banged open and Rossiter appeared with the passenger. He was a black man of middle years, tall and handsome, and he wore a heavy overcoat with a fur collar. He looked around in bewilderment and Rossiter spoke to him in English. The man nodded and moved forward to the rail, and Rossiter pulled out an automatic and struck him a heavy blow at the base of the skull. The man lurched to one side and fell to the deck without a cry.

What happened next was like something out of a nightmare. The Englishman moved with incredible speed and energy. He grabbed a heavy chain from the stern deck and wound it around the man’s body several times. He gave it a final turn about the neck and hooked the two loose ends together with a spring link.

He turned and shouted to Mercier above the roaring of the engine, “Okay, grab his feet and over with him.”

Mercier stood there as if turned to stone. Without hesitation, Rossiter dropped to one knee and heaved the man into a sitting position. The man raised his head painfully, the eyelids flickered, then opened. He glared at Mercier, not in supplication, but in hate; his lips parted and he cried out in English. Rossiter stooped and had him across the shoulders. The Englishman straightened and the man went over the rail, headfirst into the sea, and disappeared instantly.

Rossiter turned and struck Mercier heavily in the face, sending him sprawling to the deck. “Now pick yourself up and get to work on those nets or I’ll send you after him.”

He went into the wheelhouse. Mercier lay there for a moment, then got to his feet and stumbled along to the stern. It couldn’t have happened. Oh, God, but it couldn’t have happened. The deck slanted suddenly as Jacaud spun the wheel again, and Mercier fell on his face in the pile of stinking nets and started to be sick.

IT was the fog that saved them, spreading out halfway across the Channel, shrouding them from view on the run back to the French coast.

In the wheelhouse, Jacaud swallowed rum from a bottle and chuckled harshly. “We’ve lost them.”

“Your luck is good,” Rossiter said. “You must live right.”

“Pity about the package.”

“That’s life.” Rossiter seemed completely unconcerned and nodded to where Mercier crouched by the nets, head in hands. “What about him?”

“A worm,” Jacaud said. “No backbone. Maybe he should go for a swim, too.”

“And what would you tell them in Saint Denise?” Rossiter shook his head. “Leave it to me.”

He went along the deck and stood over Mercier with the rum bottle. “You’d better have a drink.”

Mercier raised his head slowly. His skin was like the belly of a fish, the eyes full of pain. “He was still alive, monsieur. Still alive when you put him into the water.”

Rossiter’s pale flaxen hair glinted in the early morning sun, making him look strangely ageless. He stared down at Mercier, his gentle, aesthetic face full of concern. He sighed heavily, crouched and produced an exquisite Madonna from one of his pockets. It was perhaps eight inches long and obviously extremely old, carved by some master in ivory, the color of his hair chased with silver. When he pressed her feet with his thumb, six inches of blue steel appeared as if by magic, sharp as a razor on both edges, honed with loving care.

Rossiter kissed the Madonna reverently, and without even a trace of mockery, then stroked the blade against his right cheek.

“You have a wife, Mercier,” he said gently, and his face never lost its peculiarly saintly expression for a moment. “An invalid, I understand?”

“Monsieur?” Mercier said in a whisper, and the heart seemed to stop inside him.

“One word, Mercier, the slightest whisper and I cut her throat. You follow me?”

Mercier turned away, stomach heaving and started to be sick again. Rossiter stood up and walked along the deck and stood in the entrance of the wheelhouse.

“All right?” Jacaud demanded.

“Naturally.” Rossiter took a deep breath of fresh salt air and smiled. “A fine morning, Jacaud, a beautiful morning. And to think one could still be in bed and missing all this.”