The Golden Rendezvous (16 page)

"if the captain notices the smell afterwards you can claim it was that careless devil louis that spilt it over you. I'm taking a walk now, archie. If everything's o.k., i'll be back in five minutes."

"And if not? if you're wrong?"

"Heaven help me. The old man will feed me to the sharks." I made my way out from behind the bar and sauntered slowly towards the door.

I

saw bullen trying to catch my eye but I ignored him; he was the world's worst actor. I smiled at susan beresford and tony carreras, nodded civilly enough to old cerdan, bowed slightly to the two nurses the thin one, I noticed, had returned to her knitting and she seemed to me to be doing all right and reached the doorway.

once outside, I dropped all pretence at sauntering. I reached the entrance to the passengers' accommodation on "a" deck in ten seconds.

Halfway down the long central passageway white was sitting in his cubicle. I walked quickly down there, lifted the lid of his desk, and took out the four items lying inside: colt revolver, torch, screw driver, and master key. I stuffed the colt into my belt, the torch in one pocket, the screw driver in the other. I looked at white, but he didn't look at me. He was staring down into one corner of his cubicle as if I didn't exist. He had his hands clasped tightly together, like one in prayer. I hoped he was praying for me. Even with his hands locked he couldn't stop them from shaking uncontrollably. I left him without a word and ten seconds later was inside cerdan's suite with the door locked behind me. On a sudden instinct I switched on my torch and played the beam round the edges of the door. The door was pale blue against a pale-blue bulkhead. Hanging from the top of the bulkhead, dangling down for a couple of inches over the top of the door, was a pale-blue thread. A broken pale-blue thread: to the people who had put it there, an unmistakable calling card that visitors had been there. I wasn't worried about that, but I was worried by the fact that it showed that someone was suspicious, very, very suspicious. This might make things very awkward indeed. Maybe we should have announced dexter's death.

I passed straight through the nurses' cabin and the lounge into cerdan's cabin. The curtains were drawn, but I left the lights off: light could show through curtains, and if they were as suspicious as I thought, someone might have wondered why I had left so suddenly and taken a walk outside. I hooded the torch to a small pencil beam and played it over the deck head. The cold-air trunking ran fore and aft, and the first louvre was directly above cerdan's bed. I didn't even need the screw driver. I shone the torch through the louvre opening and saw, inside the trunking, something gleaming metallically in the bright spot of light. I reached up two fingers and slowly worked that something metallic down through the louvre. A pair of earphones. I peered into the louvre again. The earphones lead had a plug on the end of it and the plug was fitted into a socket that had been screwed on to the upper wall of the trunking. And the radio office was directly above. I pulled out the plug, rolled the lead round the headphones, and switched off my torch.

white was exactly as I had left him, still vibrating away like a tuning fork. I opened his desk, returned key, screw driver, and torch.

The earphones I kept. And the gun.

they were into their third cocktails by the time I returned to the drawing room. I didn't need to count empty bottles to guess that; the laughter, the animated conversation, the increase in the decibel ratio was proof enough. Captain bullen was still chatting away to cerdan. The tall nurse was still knitting. Tommy wilson was over by the bar. I rubbed my cheek and he crushed out the cigarette he was holding. I saw him say something to miguel and tony carreras at twenty feet, in that racket, it was impossible to hear a word he said -saw tony carreras lift a half-amused, half-questioning eyebrow, then all three of them moved towards the bar.

I joined captain bullen and cerdan. Long speeches weren't going to help me here, and only a fool would throw away his life by tipping off people like those. "Good evening, mr. cerdan," I said. I pulled my left hand out from under my jacket and tossed the earphones onto his rug-covered lap. "Recognise them?"

cerdan's eyes stared wide, then he flung himself forwards and sideways as if to clear his encumbering wheel chair, but old bullen had been waiting for it and was too quick for him. He hit cerdan with all the pent-up worry and fury of the past twenty-four hours behind the blow, and cerdan toppled over the side of his chair and crashed heavily to the carpet.

I didn't see him fall; I only heard the sound of it. I was too busy looking out for myself. The nurse with the sherry glass in her hand, quick as a cat, flung the contents in my face at the same instant as bullen hit cerdan. I flung myself sideways to avoid being blinded, and as I fell I saw the tall, thin nurse flinging her knitting to one side and thrusting her hand deep into the string knitting bag.

with my right hand I managed to tug the colt clear of my belt before I hit the ground and squeezed the trigger twice. It was my right shoulder that hit the carpet first, just as I fired, and I didn't really know where the bullets went, nor, for that one nearly blinding instant of agony as the shock of falling was transmitted to my injured neck, did I care; then my head cleared and I saw that the tall nurse was on her feet. Not only on her feet but raised high on her toes, head and shoulders arched sharply forwards, ivory-knuckled hands pressed deep into her midriff; then she swayed forward, in macabre slow-motion action, and crumpled over the fallen cerdan. The other nurse hadn't moved from her seat: with captain bullen's colt only six inches from her face, and his finger pretty white on the trigger, she wasn't likely to, either.

the reverberations of my heavy colt, painful and deafening in their intensity in that confined metal-walled space, faded away into a silence that was deathly in more ways than one, and through that silence came a soft highland voice saying gently: "if either of you move I will kill you."

carreras senior and junior, who must have had their backs to the bar, were now turned round halfway towards it, staring at the gun in macdonald's hand. Miguel carreras' face was unrecognisable, his expression changed from that of a smooth, urbane, and highly prosperous businessman into something very ugly indeed. His right hand, as he had whirled round, had come to rest on the bar near a cut-glass decanter.

Archie macdonald wasn't wearing any of his medals that night, and carreras had no means of knowing the long and bloodstained record the bo'sun had behind him, or he would never have tried to hurl that decanter at macdonald's head. Carreras' reactions were so fast, the movement so unexpected, that against another man he might have made it;

against macdonald he didn't even manage to get the decanter off the counter and a split second later was left staring down at the shattered bloody mess that had been his hand.

for the second time in a few seconds the crashing roar of a heavy gun, this time intermingled with the tinkle of smashed and flying glass, died away and again macdonald's voice came, almost regretfully: "i should have killed you, but I like reading about those murder trials.

We're saving you for the hangman, mr. carreras."

I was climbing back to my feet when someone screamed, a harsh, ugly sound that drilled piercingly through the room. Another woman took it up, a sustained shriek like an express, whistle wide open, heading for a level crossing, and the stage seemed all set for mass hysteria.

"Stop that damned screaming," I snarled. "Do you hear? stop it at once. It's all over now."

the screaming stopped. Silence again, a weird, unnatural silence that was almost as bad as the racket that had gone before. And then beresford was coming towards me, a bit unsteadily, his lips forming words that didn't come, his face white. I couldn't blame him; in his well-ordered and wealth cushioned world the entertainments offered his guests couldn't often have ended up with bodies strewn all over the floor.

"You've killed her, carter," he said at length. His voice was harsh and strained. "You've killed her. I saw it; we all saw it. Aba defenceless woman." he stared at me, and if he had any thought of offering me a job again I couldn't see it in his face. "You murdered her."

"Woman my foot!" I said savagely. I bent down, yanked off the nurse's hat, then ruthlessly ripped away a glued wig to show a black close-cropped crew cut. "Attractive, isn't it? the very latest from paris. And defenceless!" I grabbed her bag, turned it upside down, emptied the contents on the carpet, stooped, and came up with what had originally been a full-length double-barrelled shotgun: the barrels had been sawn off until there was no more than six inches of them left, the wooden stock removed and a roughly made pistol-type grip fitted in its place. "Ever seen one of those before, mr. beresford? native product of your own country, I believe. A whippet or some such name. Fires lead shot, and from the range our nurse friend here intended to use it, it would have blown a hole clear through my middle. Defenceless!" I turned to where bullen was standing, his gun still trained on the other nurse. "Is that character armed, sir?"

"We'll soon find out," bullen said grimly. "You carrying a gun, my friend?"

the "nurse" swore at him, two words in basic anglosaxon, in a low, snarling voice. Bullen gave him no warning; he swept up the colt and struck the barrel heavily across the man's face and temple. He staggered and swayed, out on his feet. I caught him, held him with one hand, while with the other I ripped the dress down the front, pulled out a snub-nosed automatic from a felt holster under the left arm, then let him go. He swayed some more, collapsed on the settee, then rolled to the floor.

"Is's all this necessary?" beresford's voice was still hoarse and strained.

"Stand back, everyone," bullen said authoritatively. "Keep well over to the windows and clear of these two men, our two carreras friends. They are highly dangerous and might try to jump in among you for cover. Macdonald, that was splendidly done. But next time shoot to kill. That's an order. I accept full responsibility. Dr. Marston, bring the necessary equipment, please, and attend to carreras' hand."

he waited till marston had left, then turned to beresford with a wry smile. "Sorry to ruin your party, mr. beresford. And all this, I assure you, is highly necessary."

"But-but the violence, the-the killing "they murdered three of my men in twenty-four hours."

"They what?"

"Benson, brownell, and fourth officer dexter. Murdered them.

Brownell was strangled; benson was strangled or shot; dexter's lying dead in the wireless office with three bullets in his stomach, and god knows how many more men would have died if chief officer carter hadn't got on to them."

I looked round the white, strained, still unbelieving faces; there was no real understanding yet of what the captain was saying; the shock, the fear, the near hysteria left no room for thought in their minds. Of them all, I had to admit that old beresford had taken it best, to adjust himself to what must have been the incredible spectacle of seeing fellow passengers suddenly gunned down by officers of the campari, to fight his way out of this fog of crazy bewilderment. "But I mean, captain, what part can an old cripple like mr. cerdan have in all this?"

"According to mr. carter, cerdan isn't old at all-he's just made up to look old. And also, according to mr. carter, if cerdan is a cripple, paralysed from the waist down as he is supposed to be, then you're going to witness a modern miracle of healing just as soon as he recovers consciousness. For all we know, cerdan is very probably the leader of this bunch of murderers. We don't know."

"But what in god's name is behind it all?" beresford demanded.

"That's just what we are about to find out," bullen said tightly.

He glanced at carreras, father and son. "Come here, you two."

they came, macdonald and tommy wilson following. Carreras senior had a handkerchief wrapped round his shattered hand, trying, not very successfully, to stem the flow of blood, and the eyes that caught mine were wicked with hate; tony carreras, on the other hand, seemed calmly unconcerned, even slightly amused. I made a mental note to keep a very close eye indeed on tony carreras. He was too calm and relaxed by half.

they halted a few feet away. Bullen said, "mr. wilson?"

"Sir?"

"That sawn-off shotgun belonging to our late friend here. Pick it up."

wilson picked it up.

"Do you think you could use it? and don't point the damned thing at me," he added hastily.

"I think so, sir."

"Cerdan and the so-called nurse. A sharp eye on them.

if they come to and try anything..." bullen left the sentence unfinished. "Mr. carter, carreras and his son may be armed."

"Yes, sir." I moved round behind tony carreras, careful to keep out of the line of fire of both bullen and macdonald, caught his jacket by the collar, and jerked it savagely down over shoulders and arms till it reached the level of his elbows.

"You seem to have done this sort of thing before, mr. carter," tony carreras said easily. He was a cool customer all right, too damned cool for my liking. "Television," I explained. He was carrying a gun under the left shoulder. He was wearing a specially made shirt with a couple of hemmed slits front and back on the left-hand side so that the chest strap for the holster was concealed under the shirt. Tony carreras was very thorough in his preparations.

I went over his clothes, but he'd only the one gun. I went through the same routine with miguel carreras, who wasn't anywhere near as affable as his son, but maybe his hand was hurting him. He wasn't carrying any gun. And maybe that made miguel carreras the boss: maybe he didn't have to carry any gun; maybe he was in a position to order other people to do his killing for him.

"Thank you," captain bullen said. "Mr. carreras, we will be in nassau in a few hours' time. The police will be aboard by midnight. Do you wish to make a statement now or would you rather make it to the police?"

"My hand is broken." miguel carreras' voice was a harsh whisper.