Blame The Dead

Eighteen

It was getting dark by the time I reached the Norge again, and well into legal whisky time, so I found out why they don't serve the stuff until the end of the working day: because you need a whole day's pay to buy a single shot, that's why. I sat in the lounge bar on the balcony above the lobby and stretched a single Scotch into a slow-drinking record.

Maybe I chose that seat by instinct: at a low table right up against the glass front of the hotel, so that by looking down through the balcony railings and past a modern sunburst chandelier I had a perfect view of the lobby desk and the three lifts. I might have been thinking of getting early warning of Vik; as it was, I got early warning of Draper and Maggie Mack-wood.

She was wearing a thick green-blue tartan cloak and carrying a brown vanity case; he was lugging a soft tapestry bag that looked more hers than his. When they reached the desk, she was obviously the only one checking in. When she and a porter headed for the lift (she actually got her bags carried; my researches had suggested that only happened in Norway for the King, and then only when he'd got a bad back), Draper wandered off and sat down in one of the chairs scattered over the middle of the big lobby.

Well, well. There wasn't any problem to how she'd got here – given a bit of luck in the air schedules she could have been here this morning to meet me – but that didn't tell mewhy. Unless she was thinking of taking up tailing me where Draper had left off.

Then one of the lobby porters started calling my name. It took a few moments for it to sink into Draper and for him to start wriggling to peer all around him, so I had time to duck. But now he knew I was still around the hotel.

A couple of minutes later the message reached my bar and a waiter with a nice balletic style curvetted over with a folded message slip. It said just: With reference to HSC will you take a telephone call at 7 this night exactly?

No signature.

Nijinsky was still hanging around because I was still clinking coins in my pocket. I asked, 'Who took this?'

'The telephone lady, sir.'

Was it worth chasing her up? – asking what accent the caller had had? But they never remember. I nodded and dumped some coins – too much, by his expression and fast take-off – on the tray.

I suppose it was as good a way to do it as any. They'd be calling from a public phone so it didn't much matter if I had the cops listening in – and they knew I wouldn't have. But it didn't exactly help the naked feeling of wandering around without a gun. A quick trip back to the Fontenen? – but that area would still be under two thick coatings of coppers, and Vik would likely want to search me and mine if he came in tonight. The pistols would just have to stay there overnight and I hoped they would.

I had most of an hour before the phone call that would tell me something to my disadvantage, but the next drink was coming out of my own bottle. So I went upstairs, poured one, and tried putting a call through to Willie. I dug out Steen's last words and studied them while I was waiting. They went: CARD Gulbrandsens??

H amp; Thornton??

??

And a power of good that was to man, beast, or female.

The operator couldn't raise anybody on the syndicate's number at Lloyd's, which wasn't so surprising at that hour, so I told her to switch to Willie's Berkshire one. Then I copied out Steen's message and threw the original down the lavatory. At least, I suppose it was a message: a note of what hemight-as those question marks implied – have been going to tell me. H amp; Thornton didn't mean a thing except sounding English; Gulbrandsens just sounded like a name… well, that was easily settled: the telephone directory gave a choice of a dozen. Apart from anything else, it was a Bergen street name: Gulbrandsens Gate. But Steen hadn't lived there – that was the next thing I checked.

Then an elderly, well-bred female voice came through from darkest Berkshire to say Willie was expected back around nine and would I like to leave a message? I just gave my name and said I'd call back.

After that, I sat and stared at Steen's message until the phone rang – a couple of minutes after seven, by my watch.

A voice asked, 'James Card?'

'That's me. Who's that?'

'Never mind. Are you alone?'

'Yes.' I was trying to place the voice; it just might have been Norwegian – I'd learned that the time they spend not carrying your bags they use practising perfect English – but I didn't quite think so.

I said, 'So what d'you want?'

'I'm glad you asked that question. A certain book you have with you, I believe. It doesn't belong to you, so…'

'What book are you talking about?'

'Oh, for Chrissake!'A spurt of involuntary anger that just couldn't have been Norwegian. 'You know what I'm talking about. Now I'll tell you how to get it to us.'

I had to remember to sound unworried, not knowing he had anything on me. So, in a merry, insouciant voice: 'Up you, mate, and double upyour mate. I'm not a travelling library service. Any time you-'

He overrode me: 'Or we'll tell the local coppers to check with London on who owns that Mauser HSC they found in Steen's office.'

I counted a silent one-two-three to show implications sinking in, then said cautiously, 'I knew he was dead. I didn't know about the gun.'

He chuckled. 'That's right – yours. Remember the number?' He told me the number.

Another one-two-three to be appalled in. Then, quick and hopeful. 'They'd never believe I did it.'

'You might even be right. I'd say it was six to five on. But either way, you'll spend a nice long time here while they make up their minds. Now d'you feel any different about that book?"

Had I heard the voice before? I thought it was the one down in the underground car park while I was getting pumped full of Pentathol, but I could be just assuming the probable. Certainly that lot had latched on to my Mauser.

I asked, 'What guarantee do I get that you won't tell the cops about the Mauser anyway?'

He sighed, I think. 'Now, Major – you've been out of the Army long enough to know no blackmailer ever gives a real guarantee. He can't, can he? Whatever it is he knows, he can't just stop knowing it.'

'I'll give it you back in London,' I said.

'You'll give it tonight!'

Thank God he'd insisted.

He calmed down. 'Now. I'll tell you where. Are you listening?'

'I'm listening.'