Honourable Intentions

19

The first instinct of any self-respecting Ford T engine is to break the elbow of the man cranking it, but O’Gilroy knew all about that and caught it in the aftermath when it was so surprised that it fired up. It didn’t run exactly smoothly: its condition and the sort of petrol sold in La Villette saw to that, but it ran. After a few moments, O’Gilroy climbed the ladder and, leaving the hatch open, adjusted the timing and throttle levers to the best sound he could find.

“Il marche,” he announced to Kaminsky.

“You are very kind, M’sieu. Would you like us to carry you – and your bicycle – to Trilbardou?”

Probably Kaminsky wanted him to stay until the engine had proved itself more than he wanted to be rid of a stranger, but anyway, O’Gilroy accepted. He lifted his bicycle on to the foredeck, the second man untied the mooring-ropes and Kaminsky rammed home the gear-lever without the engine stalling. It did indeed run far too slow under load, and O’Gilroy juggled the levers again to make it sound as happy as it could. Then he asked: “Do you have soap and water for my hands?”

Kaminsky hesitated about that, but had to see the obvious need. “Leon will show you where in the cabin. One of the ladies there is a bit sick in the head. Don’t mind her.”

There was a sliding hatch just ahead of the steering shelter and a companion-way – really a ladder, but wider and less steep than the one to the engine – down into a warm yellow fog. Gradually O’Gilroy’s senses subdivided this into lamplight, tobacco smoke, cooking smells and a coke stove. And four people, two men and two women.

One man was the cheap swell who had been tailing the fake Mrs Langhorn that morning; seen front on, he had a thin, mournful face with big eyes. The other might have been one of the toughs he’d brought from the cafe, but O’Gilroy hadn’t been watching them closely. The fake Mrs Langhorn herself was sitting by the stove watching a small saucepan of something. That meant the other woman, lying on a bunk against the hull, had to be the real article.

She was staring at the underside of the bunk above her and took no notice of O’Gilroy, so all he got was a glance of a perky young face, younger than he’d expected, above a full figure wrapped in a blanket. He made it a slightly frightened but intrigued glance, such as people give to the head-sick.

Was she really the cause of all this? A part of him said Of course she must be: the discarded mistress of a prince, now wrapped in a tattered, dirty blanket and staring meaninglessly at rough boards a few inches above. While all Paris decorates itself to welcome her one-time lover, now King, in the spring sunshine . . .

Then his sense of romantic injustice was quelled by the voice of experience reminding him that life was a damn sight more complicated than that, and he looked around for soap and water.

Jay had been sent along the far bank with the rope to find a suitable tree nearly opposite the little lane up from the village. At this point, the motor-car could be brought up – really up: the canal was higher than the village – to the towpath itself. They didn’t do that, partly because the sight of a big motor sitting on the canal bank would be very suspicious, and partly because of a cottage beside the towpath.

This was probably where goods were landed for the village, though it didn’t look much used now, and the cottage had probably been built for the village harbour-master or whatever. It was silent and unlit, but that didn’t have to mean much: countryfolk were more likely to save lamp-oil than read. Anyway, they weren’t going to bang on the door and ask. They just left the motor-car fifty yards down the lane, facing the village, then whispered and tiptoed their way back along the towpath. As Corinna had pointed out, the barge wouldn’t stop immediately even if the engine did: momentum would drift it on for several yards. During which time (they hoped) the steersman would bring it alongside the landing-place to find out what was wrong.

It was all a bit chancy, but at least it meant they wouldn’t be climbing the bank at the bridge, perhaps dragging a reluctant Mrs Langhorn under fire.

Surprisingly, Jay hadn’t got any cowboy skills when it came to hurling the free end of the rope across the canal, but he finally got it over tied to a piece of branch. By the time Ranklin pulled it in, the rope was soaked, cold and heavy. He tied it loosely to a bush and called in a hoarse whisper: “You get back to the bridge and wait for O’Gilroy, then join us here.”

The dark figure waved and vanished.

“And when O’Gilroy gets here,” Ranklin told Corinna, “you get back to the motor-car and be ready for a quick getaway.”

The engine, or rather the sparking-plugs, held up for most of the two kilometres to Trilbardou bridge, but by then there was an occasional missed beat that O’Gilroy hoped only he himself noticed. The penknife scraping hadn’t made the plugs like new, and Kaminsky would be stranded in the agricultural wilds well before Meaux. But his ears, luckily, were tuned to other troubles.

“What will you and your friend do in Trilbardou?” he asked.

“Have a drink, something to eat, and find a bed for the night. There’s always somewhere.”

“On holiday?”

“Just a few days.”

“Where do you work?”

“In the export department of Renault. It’s big business and could be bigger if we could get places like London to take up our taxis. Ask yourself this: how much does the average taxi-driver know about his vehicle? How much does he want to know? Now think of how many problems you get with a chain drive and remember that we’ve been using Cardan shafts since before . . .”

The innocent may not need to explain themselves, but this has never stopped them boring their listeners to death.

On Trilbardou bridge, Jay heard the barge long before it came into sight as a dark shape moving, very slowly, on to a patch of sky-reflecting water. So why the devil hadn’t O’Gilroy got here already? He could pedal three or four times faster than that tub. Oh God! – had they identified him? and killed him? or made him prisoner?

He moved into the shadow of a bush at the edge of the bridge, laying the damned bicycle on the verge beside him. He had half hoped that some enterprising villager would have stolen it when he got back from tramping across farmland to rig the rope, but no such luck. And he still needed it to circle back through the village and come up to where the barge would be ambushed; he and O’Gilroy daren’t be seen overtaking it along the tow-path.

Then he just waited impatiently as the barge puttered nearer at a pace that would have sent a snail to sleep. Unconsciously, his more mechanically sensitive ear picked up the occasional hiccups in the engine note, showing that O’Gilroy had fixed but not cured it. Then, consciously, he chided himself for being pleased about that; he might be thinking of a man already dead.

Or one who had simply accepted a ride on the barge, he thought. That sounded more like O’Gilroy’s opportunism: get to know the barge and its inhabitants better. In which case his bicycle should be on the deck somewhere, so Jay peered for it. And saw it glitter among the dull, matt tones of the barge and its rusted gear. That was better; if they’d killed him, they’d surely have thrown the bicycle into the canal after him.

Then he realised the barge wasn’t stopping. It crept up to and then under the bridge, staying several feet out in the channel, its slogging engine note unchanged. Stooping, Jay hurried to the other side of the bridge and thought he saw O’Gilroy’s tweed suit and flat cap standing beside a wider figure in the faint lamplight of the steering shelter, but couldn’t be sure. He thought for a moment, then grabbed up the hated bicycle and charged downhill into Trilbardou village.

The simple fact was that O’Gilroy didn’t know Trilbardou bridge from any other bridge they had passed under. It didn’t obviously belong to a village, which was to one side and downhill, behind a high bank. Kaminsky had mentioned – once O’Gilroy had stopped extolling the position of Renault’s radiators – putting him off at the village’s landing-place. Which sounded reasonable: such a place must be obvious to Jay and Ranklin as well.

So they passed beneath the bridge and Jay, with Kaminsky explaining that he did indeed come of a canal-barge family, but had worked ashore for the past twenty years. Handling canal-borne goods to start with, expanding to other items . . . a “man of affairs”, as he called himself. Lies, but Kaminsky seemed to enjoy lying. Most crooks did; some wrecked themselves by enjoying it too much and lying about unnecessary and easily checked things.

The canal curved gently to the right and then ran straight past the landing-place and the dim blur of the tow-path cottage.

“That’s the place,” Kaminsky said. “Where that house is. Leon!” And after a moment Leon climbed the ladder from the cabin to take the bow mooring rope.

From the undergrowth beside the tow-path Jay and Ranklin saw him walk forward along the barge in the faint starlight.

“They’re stopping,” Jay panted. “Two of them have to come ashore to moor the thing. Then . . . then what do we do?” He had arrived just two minutes before, throwing the bicycle into the undergrowth and gasping out his tale.

“We wait,” Ranklin said firmly. “We wait until O’Gilroy’s ashore and clear before we do anything.” Certain that the barge was stopping, he let the now-pointless clothes line slip into the water and took out his revolver. “Then we tell those ashore to surrender, and threaten to . . . to throw burning petrol down over those left inside if they don’t give up, too. We don’t mean it, but we threaten it. Unless O’Gilroy’s got any better ideas,” he added.

The engine beat faster as Kaminsky yanked the lever out of gear and angled the gliding barge towards the landing-place. Liar or not, he knew how to handle the thing, barely grazing the bank as it drifted to a stop. Leon scrambled down, carrying a thick rope and tied it to a mooring post.

And then O’Gilroy jumped down, himself carrying a rope: with Kaminsky around, others did the work. He wrapped it around another post, just behind the barge’s stern, bringing himself within a few yards of Ranklin and Jay.

From the darkness Ranklin hissed: “When you’ve got the bicycle, bugger off!”

O’Gilroy nodded to show he’d heard, and finished his knot.

“Not too tight,” Kaminsky called. “Leon will pass down your bicycle.” Already Leon was climbing back on board.

“Oh, shit!” Ranklin groaned. Now neither of the barge crew was ashore.

“Shoot the buggers,” Jay muttered. He had a gun in each hand, O’Gilroy’s in his left.

“Wait.”

O’Gilroy moved forward to take the bicycle, promptly got on it, shouted: “Bon soir, M’sieu,” and shot off down the little lane.

Kaminsky stepped to the side of the barge, staring and then exploding into language that should have boiled the canal dry. The Irlandais was supposed to cast off for them, the ungrateful, lazy, dog-begotten, whore-born . . . and quite forgetting in his anger that Leon could do it just as well, Kaminsky jumped heavily down.

“Get him,” Ranklin ordered.

Kaminsky found O’Gilroy’s idea of a mooring knot and a new fund of language immediately after; you could say this for the man, he wasn’t repetitive. Then he saw the movement beyond and looked up.

“M’sieu Kaminsky, je crois?” Ranklin guessed and then, because they were too far away to grab him and he wasn’t sure Kaminsky could see the guns pointing at him, fired past him into the canal.

Kaminsky straightened up carefully.

“The other one’s gone to ground,” jay warned. “Still on the boat.”

“Only to be expected. Venez ici, M’sieu.”

Kaminsky lumbered towards them, breathing heavily. Ranklin put his revolver against his chest and ran his hand across the man’s pockets, finding only a modestly small pistol. However, doubtless the barge was crammed with bigger, more powerful weapons; a certain breed of anarchist never seemed to leave home without an arsenal. He stepped back out of range of Kaminsky’s breath.

“I think you have to speak some English, but so that I’m sure you understand me, I’ll stick to French. Now, I won’t introduce ourselves, just bear in mind our pistols. I have a simple proposition: we’ll exchange you for Mrs Langhorn. The real Mrs Langhorn this time, if it pleases you.”

Kaminsky absorbed this. “Why should I trust you?”

“Why do people say things like that?” Ranklin sighed. “I’m sorry, but whether you trust us or not is not important. Only, if we don’t get Mrs Langhorn we’ll all just wait until the Surete arrive.”

“Why should they come?”

“Hmm. No, probably just one shot is not sufficient. Fire three more, Mr Jay.”

Jay loosed off the automatic into the air.

In the ringing silence, there was a scrabbling in the bushes behind them and O’Gilroy saying: “Hey, that’s my gun yer emptying.”

And he stumbled out on to the tow-path to take the pistol from Jay’s hand. Kaminsky peered through the gloom. “You? You perfidious maggoty turd-”

“Sure, sure,” O’Gilroy said. “But we’re all in plain sight from the barge – or would be saving the dark. Would anybody mind stepping into cover?”

So they retreated a few yards to a stand of trees and got, more or less, behind them. O’Gilroy explained about the others left on the barge, and then Ranklin suddenly remembered Corinna, waiting in the motor-car with Berenice and wondering what the hell those gunshots meant. And also with nothing and nobody but fifty yards of the lane between them and the barge.

“Jay, double back and tell Mrs Finn we’re all right. And then stand guard there. We’ll be along in a minute.” And when Jay had moved off through the bushes back the way O’Gilroy had come, he changed to French for Kaminsky. “Now, call to your friends on the barge and tell them you’ll be set free when we’ve got the real Mrs Langhorn.”

“No, you will let me go at the same moment they let her go and-”

“Please just say what I said.”

There was a pause filled with more heavy breathing. Perhaps Mrs Langhorn was Kaminsky’s ace, his one hope of salving something from what, for him, was becoming a costly mess. Or perhaps she was just an insurance, a bargaining counter. Either way, he wouldn’t have guessed what she might be used to bargain for: himself, his own freedom, possibly his life. So in the end, Ranklin was pretty sure he would do what he’d been told; it was the sensible thing. But his pride required this pause, and Ranklin was willing to allow him that. Wipe your feet on a man’s pride and he might do something not sensible at all.

Then Kaminsky pulled himself up straight and shouted in French, just what Ranklin had told him. After a moment, a voice shouted back in another language – it sounded Slavic, but Ranklin didn’t know it – and Kaminsky began to reply in the same before Ranklin rammed his pistol against the man’s back. “Speak French!”

“Go on,” Kaminsky called. “Send her out.”

There was a muffled shout from the barge about Mrs Langhorn needing to get some clothes on. So they’d have to wait.

Kaminsky asked: “Can I smoke?”

“Sorry but no lights, please.” And then, mainly to get Kaminsky thinking about something other than trickery, he asked: “How did a man like you get mixed up with Gorkin’s schemes? You aren’t an anarchist, are you?” He had had to stop himself saying something like “You’re an honest, straightforward criminal, aren’t you?”

Kaminsky snorted. “Anarchism, anarchism – it’s an affair for dreamers who’ve got nothing. Or everything. For those who’ve got time to dream. What I am, the good God knows – if He exists. On Sundays I’m a late sleeper, that’s all.”

“Are you saying this was all Dr Gorkin’s plot?”

Kaminsky paused, probably wondering how much Ranklin knew. Then: “Him. If Gorkin doesn’t believe in God, it’s because he doesn’t need to: he thinks he is God. A Messiah for himself. Do what I tell you of your own free will – that sort of anarchist. I just wanted to put some sense into their schemes, stop them plotting themselves up their own arse-holes.” His bitterness sounded sincere, perhaps because it also sounded fresh. He could hardly have felt that way about Gorkin when the scheme was hatched.

Or had he joined in because he liked to think of the thugs who sat around his cafe as his followers, and Gorkin the Messiah looked like walking off with them?

“But a man like you must have seen a profit in it.”

He had the feeling that, in the darkness, Kaminsky was staring at him as if he were the dunce of the class. “Well of course I saw a profit it in. A woman who knows the King’s darkest secret – there must be a few jewelled goblets in that, mustn’t there? Or hefty payments from the Paris newspapers, the world’s newspapers. What do you want her for?”

“Not for profit,” Ranklin said instinctively. But then he thought of his own standing within the Bureau, and of the Bureau’s standing with the Palace in its perennial battle with the Foreign Office . . . But not profit. You couldn’t call it profit.

Kaminsky gave a disbelieving snort. Then there was a shout from the barge: “She’s coming.”

Ranklin leant out from behind his tree and peered. The barge was just a black shape against the blackness of the trees beyond, centred on the dim oil-lamp in the steering shelter. Movement interrupted the lamp, there was a thump and a shape on the slightly lighter background of the tow-path. And another. Then one shape seemed to be moving towards them.

“Are you going to do the honourable thing?” Kaminsky asked. So he had learnt, or guessed, a certain something about Ranklin.

“When I’m sure it’s Mrs Langhorn.” He added: “And then we won’t stop you unhitching the barge and moving on.” In fact, we’d be very happy if you’d lead the Surete away from here and us.

“Run the engine up to full power a few moments to clear the plugs first,” O’Gilroy advised.

Reminded, Kaminsky began: “And you, you puppy of diseased bollocks-”

“Shut up.” Ranklin stepped forward to meet the approaching figure which moved cautiously along the uneven dark tow-path. They stopped and looked into each other’s faces, just a few inches apart. She was, he realised, barely shorter than he, but was certainly the woman he’d met at the Portsmouth hotel.

“I remember you,” she said. Her voice sounded slow and thick, as if she’d just been woken. “You work for Mr Quinton.”

For a moment Ranklin was baffled, the London lawyer seemed so far away, then he remembered. “In a way, yes. Have we rescued you or did you come just because you were told to?”

“I . . . I don’t know. Have you?”

“Let’s assume that we have.” He took her arm and steered her back behind Kaminsky. “All right, you can go.”

Without another word, Kaminsky strode off towards the barge.

“By my reckoning, they’re jest about all-” O’Gilroy began.

“Get her under cover and lead her back to the motor-car. And warn Jay you’re coming,” Ranklin ordered. He himself stayed half in cover of the trees, watching Kaminsky’s retreating back. He heard O’Gilroy and Mrs Langhorn blundering through the undergrowth, then O’Gilroy calling to Jay.

The copse or wood or whatever – anyway, a tangle of trees, bushes and long grass – lay on the corner of the little lane from the village and the tow-path, opposite the dark cottage (which hadn’t come to life at the sound of shooting, so must be empty. Or inhabited by somebody with extraordinary good sense.). Anybody going through the copse cut across the corner and was in complete cover from view, and pretty good cover from fire: you could shoot a machine-gun into that tangle of trees and bushes without being sure you’d hit anybody. Equally, of course, it meant that O’Gilroy couldn’t see or shoot out of it. For the moment, they were down to two guns; two divided guns, and Ranklin felt a twang of unease . . .

Kaminsky’s shape blended into the bigger shape beside the barge. Considerably bigger: had O’Gilroy been about to tell him that everybody seemed to be coming ashore? Ranklin was taking an instinctive step forward when the whole shape charged into the lane. In the moment before he was unsighted by the trees, Ranklin fired twice. And he’d been right about the arsenal on the barge: his shots touched off a blizzard of gunfire.

Jay had placed himself on the lane-side between the motor-car, fifty yards down, and the cottage and barge at the canal. He could hear O’Gilroy and Mrs Langhorn crackling through the bushes on his left, the throb and occasional hiccup of the barge’s engine, could see the dark knot of people on the tow-path. A funny thing, darkness: you could see something but couldn’t be sure you could see it until it moved suddenly.

And then it was moving suddenly. Along with the gallop of feet, a shout and then a burst of shots and flashes. Jay knelt and steadied the heavy revolver with both hands, feeling how familiar it all was. Just like all those pictures from his childhood: the young officer facing the charging tribesmen. And now it was him in the picture.

Remember to aim low. He fired once, recocked, fired again. Bullets snapped past. He heard the clatter of the motor’s self-starter and the roar of the engine. How very sensible. He fired and a dark figure tumbled, then he felt a punch in the chest. No pain, but it had knocked his aim off. He tried to steady the gun but found instead that he was toppling forward. No matter; on the ground I’ll be steadier, I’ll re-aim from there . . . But when he hit the ground he found he couldn’t; it no longer seemed to matter.