A Time to Kill (4 page)

Almost at once Holberg himself opened the door. The man was quite fearless, Pink said. It may, of course, have been the wine, but the general impression Holberg made on him – and he had seen him sober – was couldn’t-care-less-if-I-die-tomorrow. Pink apologized for disturbing him, saying that he had been ringing for some time and had not been able to make anyone hear. He explained the need to catch the tide. Holberg blasted the tide, and laid it down that his guest was going to stay the night. Pink made himself as pleasant as possible, for he wanted to be invited in for a drink, and said that of course the tide didn’t matter if Holberg could ensure the passenger coming on board without being seen by any curious eyes.

Pink must have been at the top of his form during this doorstep interview, and really exercising self-control. Holberg gave him a drink, using another room, and there the Spaniard found him, jabbering away on excellent terms with Holberg and the passenger. They weren’t in any state to distinguish one half hour from another, and Pink was perfectly safe unless the Spaniard exchanged exact information with the Berber servant – which, naturally, he did not.

The passenger came on board in the early afternoon, and slept till dusk, when they were swooping over the long swell to Portugal. He joined Pink in the wheelhouse, and began to question him about the appearance of southern England, which he had never seen – but evidently knew well from books and maps.

‘Not much forest?’ he asked. ‘Not as we know forest in Germany?’

Pink agreed.

‘And the New Forest. It is nearly all cut – no?’

Pink told him that in these days there was more heath than woodland, but still a good many miles of trees. The conversation was beginning to interest him. To hide his excitement he played the conscientious man at the wheel, and kept staring north-west into the night.

The passenger wanted to know what was the town most handy to the New Forest, and Pink said it was Southampton.

‘Not Bournemouth?’

‘Well, Bournemouth would do as well.’

‘And the downs? How do they look, the downs? Is there nothing but grass?’

Pink told him of the hanging woods, the bracken and the furze.

‘Oak, ash and thorn, eh?’ said the passenger with a slight sneer.

I don’t suppose he was ever nearer to death than at that moment. Pink was sentimental as any other exile, and he was boiling with anger and suspicion. But he would have had to put the Spaniard overboard, too; and he couldn’t bear the thought of his only comrade – spy though he might be – shouting in the creamy wash until he was hidden by the night.

‘Hawthorn and blackthorn,’ he answered deliberately. ‘Brakes of them and thick hedges of them.’

‘And Bournemouth is near this downland, too?’

‘Good enough,’ said Pink.

The passenger seemed content. He chattered away patronizingly through most of the night until they landed him at the rendezvous east of Faro, but didn’t say another word that was any use to Pink.

‘Now that’s all I have,’ Pink admitted to me very honestly. ‘But, by God, isn’t it enough?’

I put on a decent semblance of interest, but I couldn’t agree for a moment that it was enough. What did it all boil down to? That an unreliable, unbalanced semi-gangster had, or said he had, overheard the alcoholic extravagances of two German biologists. Pink was too anxious to rehabilitate himself – and the very type to read into anything he heard just what he wanted to hear.

If I were to stretch a point in his favour, and believe that his report was accurate, I might assume that one of these days we should learn that there wasn’t any more foot-and-mouth disease behind the Iron Curtain, and that proletarian science had scored another triumph; but the evidence of any plot to use the disease as a cold war weapon was of the slimmest.

Still, I hadn’t heard the whole story yet; and as the rest of it came hesitatingly from his bearded mouth, I couldn’t help being impressed by the fact that he had gone nap on his so-called information. He was risking his liberty and probably his life because he believed in the truth of his own deductions.

Between voyages Pink had been left pretty much to himself, for it was essential that he should keep up the appearance of a harmless idler. He was even permitted to take short cruises on his own, so long as he let the Spaniard know where he was going and what his ports of call would be. So, after their last job, Pink told him that he thought of running down the Moroccan coast to Mogador.

As soon as the Spaniard had left, Pink filled the cabin with cans of petrol, and deliberately put out from Tangier into a threat of foul weather blowing up from the west. He was told from right and left that it was folly, and that he would never be seen again. That was what he wanted to be told, as publicly as possible.

Once clear of the land, he turned north and ran six hundred miles to Vigo, where he took on more fuel. He didn’t tell me much about that voyage except to say that it was odd how a man could fight for his life when he didn’t care whether he died or not.

He cleared out of Vigo, with the weather moderating, and steered north-west across the Bay of Biscay. The Bay was in a kindly mood, and he let his boat drift, he said, and slept for twelve hours. He meant to pick up the Brittany coast at night, sink his ship and get ashore without being seen; it would then be assumed that he was, as he deserved to be, at the bottom of the Atlantic. He didn’t think that his call at Vigo was likely to be traced. Vigo was far outside the normal range of his craft, and he had been alongside the fuelling wharf and out again in one dull and menacing evening without ever passing through customs or harbour office.

Disappearance, however, wasn’t so easy, for his dinghy had been smashed by the gale beyond repair. He had no means of getting ashore. He solved the problem by lashing together a raft of empty petrol cans and gratings, upon which he paddled himself and two suitcases into the Bay of Morbihan. He walked through the night to Vannes, took an early west-bound train, and by the afternoon was nothing but a casual Englishman enjoying a holiday in Brittany.

In a little Breton port he bought the sardine boat that was now
Olwen
. He had her converted by a local yard, and put in a powerful Diesel and extra tanks. I gathered that for six weeks, while his beard grew and his hands were busy with plane and chisel, he was further from romantic impatience than he had ever been.

‘I’d like to go shares in a little yard,’ he said, ‘if ever … You don’t know a country where there’s no extradition, do you?’

In
Olwen
, still nameless, he disappeared again, carrying gallons of paint as cargo, and didn’t touch land until he was safe in the Essex marshes. There, next morning, he was a normal unit of the local population – a casual and seemingly ignorant yachtsman, who had just brought his boat round from London and was painting her up ready for the season on a remote hard.

‘Then I went to see Roland,’ he said. ‘I knew of him from People’s Union days. I’d always heard he was a nasty piece of work, and he is. I see his position, of course – still, he might have had common courtesy. He just said my information was unconvincing. It probably was. I didn’t get a chance to spread myself. You can’t tell a piece of your life to a bastard who’s plain hostile. God, he made a favour of not handing me over to the police! I told him he could go to hell if he’d just answer one question – how was a chap to set about it, if he wanted to find out who were the authorities on insects in a given town? He dealt with that one quick as a flash. I should go to the Public Library and get out all the books on local bugs and look puzzled; as soon as the librarian was interested, I was to tell him I’d found a blue centipede or something and couldn’t identify it, and he’d be sure to put me in touch with the blokes who could.’

‘And it worked?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes, it worked. I tucked myself away in this anchorage, and through the Bournemouth librarian I got hold of an old codger in a backstreet, with drawers full of dusty beetles, who was secretary of the local bug-hunting society. I couldn’t talk his patter, but I saw from a notice on his desk that he was secretary of the local spiritualists too. Well, my mother was always turning tables and that sort of thing, so I was on a good wicket. I came away with a load of happy pamphlets and a short list of people who might identify my centipede. Schoolteachers, retired Indian Army, and so forth. You could rule ’em all out straight away – except one, a Dr Losch, who used to address the society from time to time. Refugee from Nazi Germany Aryan. The usual thing. In 1940 we ran him in, and in 1942 we let him out again with apologies. Well, that’s the man.’

‘Damn it, Pink,’ I said, ‘how in the world do you know he is?’

‘Watched him. Climbed a pine-tree with some sandwiches and spent a whole day watching him. And what’s more, I’m not the only person watching him. There’s a kind of writer chap, typing away in a window opposite Losch’s drive, where he can keep an eye on all his visitors.’

‘Couldn’t he be just staring out of the window?’ I asked.

‘What for? And I found out that Losch has got a laboratory on the second floor. I could see a bit of white tile when the door was opened, and he was hopping in and out with glass measures and things.’

‘One would expect him to have a bathroom,’ I suggested mildly.

‘Oh, to hell with you! One can tell the difference. I tell you he’s the sort of man Holberg and my passenger would know. He’s a competent bug-hunter. And he lives in Bournemouth. What more do you want?’

‘It’s his house you intend to burgle?’

‘Yes. And I’m going to find ticks.’

‘But if you do, they aren’t evidence of anything.’

‘No? If I shove ’em on a cow, and the wretched cow keels over a week later, and if somebody then raids Holberg, isn’t that evidence?’

Well, I could see that there was nothing for it but burglary, from Pink’s point of view, if he cared to take the risk. Roland couldn’t go breaking into private houses. As for the police, they would be delighted if Pink called on them, and would advise him, with that grim kindliness of theirs, not to stick to so preposterous a story before the judge. I mentally damned Pink, Bournemouth and myself – for being a fool – but I did feel that I should have an uneasy conscience if I refused to be drawn in.

‘Look here!’ said Pink, seeing that I was wavering. ‘I heard the voices of those two swine and you didn’t, so I don’t blame you for doubting. But do this much for me. Hang about while I bust in. Just pretend you’re waiting for your girl or something – you’re a respectable citizen, and you’ll get away with it. And it’s all as easy as kiss-my-hand. I know the cop’s beat, and I’ve found a way in through the coal cellar.’

We fixed up the rough details for an attempt the following night, which was Thursday. When Pink rowed me ashore for the second time, I felt towards him – well, not yet liking, but at least a godfatherly, colonelish interest in his well-hidden virtues.

Before going home, I drove into the outskirts of Bournemouth and through the streets around Losch’s house. The district was pleasantly laid out in curving, leafy roads, with small patches of natural woodland; and the houses must have been built in the early twentieth century when even a retired shopkeeper could afford to cut himself off from neighbours by a considerable extent of garden. Thus there was no lack of cover, and I felt sure that I could come and go undetected.

I had no intention of being more than an observer. I was prepared to hold a watching brief for Roland – without, of course, compromising him by a single word – and to be a witness, if a witness were ever necessary, to the fact that Pink had really entered the house he claimed to have entered. It was understood, however, that Pink and I in the presence of any third person simply didn’t know each other.

I explained this to Cecily, emphasizing that I ran no risk whatever. She wasn’t impressed. She didn’t like the entanglement at all.

‘But you do see I couldn’t refuse?’ I insisted. ‘Pink behaved very well, and it wasn’t much to ask.’

‘Roland hadn’t any right to bring you in,’ she said.

She ignored Pink altogether. She loathed the thought of him, of course. I knew, however, that my account of him must have aroused all her ready pity, though she was determined to give no sign of it.

I answered weakly that I liked the tradition of voluntary service.

‘What about all the time you put in lecturing to Women’s Institutes?’ I asked.

‘It isn’t the same,’ she said. ‘All Roland’s work should be done by people who are paid by the government.’

‘With pensions for the widows?’

That was self-defence. My conscience was uneasy, for I suspected that she was just right, and I wasn’t admitting it. But I should have been just as discontented with myself if I had refused to help Pink.

‘I hate it when you say things like that,’ she cried, as if I had deliberately hurt her. ‘Why
must
you do it?’

This was a conversation which we should have laughed over afterwards. Mere differences of words, of opinions, never bothered us for long; for, in the end, the underlying cause always turned out to be a clash between two different aspects of our love for each other. But, on this occasion, the atmosphere was just perceptibly cool when I left for the office in the morning. We never had time to make it clear that neither of us was saying what was meant; and so, later, we wildly exaggerated the incident until each of us was obstinately believing things which had never been said at all.

I dined in Bournemouth and went to a movie, and at eleven met Pink in the pine trees opposite Losch’s house. He looked a villainous figure in dark-blue blouse and trousers, with black canvas shoes and thin black gloves. Slung over his shoulder was one of those black-japanned metal cases used by collectors of plants – a vasculum, I believe it is called. The handle of a saw was sticking out of one of his blouse pockets, and he was bulging all over with odd tools and a couple of torches. There was also a familiar-shaped bulge at his hip. We had a bitter argument about it in low voices. Eventually I got the gun off him.

He told me that he had taken
Olwen
out into the harbour, and that she now lay at anchor off The Haven. The pram, in which he had come ashore, was on a bit of beach not far from the old flying-boat station. If he had to run for it, he intended to go straight for the pram and return on board. If he got clear away, with or without results, he would meet me at my car which was parked in another quiet road half a mile away.