Rum Affair (19 page)

“I don’t need to read it now, do I?” I said. Pointedly.

“Maybe you don’t, but I’d still like to know if that’s your gentleman friend’s handwriting,” said Johnson. “I’d feel a bit of a twit walking four miles cross country on a dirty, wet night to have my virtue threatened by three lighthouse men in a Land Rover.” And as I hesitated still: “Come on. Be fair. If he had written you a resounding farewell, I should have gone straight back and finished my night’s sleep all cosy on
Dolly.
I nearly did, anyway. Who likes walking?”

“Who asked you to walk?” I remarked.

“Who asked me to hide a corpse in a cupboard?” he shot back. “I thought something like this might happen – and I know this island while you don’t. I can take you to that Land Rover. I’m as curious about Chigwell as you are. And a good deal better at fighting off autograph hunters. Unless you think I want to kill Kenneth Holmes, too.”

I stared at those glistening circles. “Perhaps,” I said. “But then, why wait for me? And where are the others? And Michael?” Especially Michael.

Johnson looked grave. “Michael? We put him ashore to spend a few hours on dry land. He didn’t complain. There’s quite a swell running, you know . . . What he thought when he saw
Dolly
sailing out later is something I’m glad I don’t know . . . Rupert dropped me off here at the beach: he and Lenny will be at anchor in Acarsaid Mor beside
Symphonetta
by now . . . That, by the way, was my other reason for following you. It seemed a pity – it really seemed quite a pity to see you fall into the satin boudoir of Stanley. We had a vote on it, and Rupert agreed.”

“I’m sure he did, Johnson,” a voice said interferingly. A damned, fruity, short-tempered voice, aimed from outside one of the windows. “But then, your young friend is expert at shouldering women like a meat market bummaree out of gentlemen’s rooms.”

Stanley Hennessy. I had underrated his rowing.

He continued, swinging himself dimly into the ruin beside us, in his neat blue parka and trousers, with his white polo jersey impeccable underneath. He addressed Johnson. “Not a fault of your own. I need no reassuring. If ever I saw a bloody pansy from the neck down and a Friendship Club ponce from the neck up, that’s you. What do those big, handsome boys pay you in, Johnson, for the introductions?” He had a gun, too, in his hand. I felt like a hen stalked by two foxes.

“Lessons,” said Johnson. He didn’t move much, but Stanley Hennessy suddenly slid very fast across my line of vision, from right to left, and sat down. So did Johnson, but more deliberately, with Hennessy’s gun twirling over his fingers.

“ . . . In wrestling, actually. Not that I’m in favour of force as an argument. You hit me, and I hit you; and where does that get us? Now, if you admitted you were worried about Madame Rossi, and were hoping to locate and then dismiss her engineer friend; and I replied that I had exactly the same idea and am prepared to cooperate fully and most altruistically to bring this about, would we not be behaving like adults? And if I said further that Dr Holmes has sent a message arranging to meet Madame Rossi on the lighthouse road in a Land Rover and that I am prepared to share with you the task of taking her safely there and bringing her back again, would you have any grounds for objection?”

“Yes, plenty,” said Hennessy. “You’re mad. This place is full of security people. If he can’t meet her this end of the island, then let’s give the whole idea up and get back. I want some sleep if you don’t. I don’t like you or your associates,” he added. He had got up, and of course was feeling very sore. Those nettles would drive anyone crazy. And he was thinking, of course, of all that Blue Grass and the diamonds.

“You don’t have to,” said Johnson, getting up too. “But I’m the guy with the map and the torch and the Batmobile car. Madame Rossi wishes to go – so she goes. If you want to play, you’ll have to be nice.”

“He’ll be nice,” I said, and linked my arm into Hennessy’s elbow. For a moment he resisted, and then his hand closed on mine. I didn’t want either Johnson or Hennessy with me. But I saw I should take far too long to find my way over this rotten island in the dark on my own. And if these two didn’t stop fighting, I should never get there.

The next hour was something I shall never forget.

To begin with, the rain came on full pelt again. Through it, we scrambled out of the ruin and uphill among the fallen stones and the weeds and the clumps of low trees, until we had reached a soft, reedy meadow where the moss gave under my booted feet. Here there was a broken wall to be climbed, and then we were on a rough path, avenued on either side with thorn bushes and juniper: the old hill pass out of the village. We crossed it – and that was the beginning.

I never knew exactly what terrain we traversed that night, but it seemed to be a chain of small glens, each blocked by a low, uneven hill and filled with bog or water. The men walked mostly in silence. It was not surprising, since Hennessy had just accused Johnson of selling his clients to Rupert, and Johnson had just knocked Hennessy flat. Johnson, leading, took us straight to the west, where a sunken path under a bluff guided us past a sea of brilliant green iris sheaths, high as a man. That was the first glen.

By now, our eyes were used to the dark and Johnson used his torch very little; but with his free hand he kept a firm grasp, behind him, of mine. Behind me, Hennessy walked like a shadow, coming to heel if I stumbled, his grip on my arm. A hen between two foxes. And at the end . . . what?

The third glen had a little lake in it, choked with lilypads, and an eerie sighing like surf came through the rain from its grassing of reeds. Climbing the hill at its end, Johnson’s torch threw back a flare of magenta. We were standing knee-deep in bell heather, with all those silly fat bells. It was a riot. Give me a tarmacadam road, any day. But preferably now.

Beyond the brow of the hill, black against the dark blue of the night sky, was a tumble of rocky hills. I distinguished them, straining; and then suddenly their outline was as brilliant as if some theatrical switchboard had made an appalling mistake. It lasted only a second; then all was pitch black again. There was a pause, ten . . . twelve seconds? And then the night sky was pale lit again. “Johnson?”

In the dark, as he turned, I could almost see the bland flash of his glasses. “The lighthouse. We haven’t so far to go now. How are you doing?”

Hell, how was I doing? Walking between two guns at night on a wild Scottish island. “All right,” I said.

I suppose the last bit was the worst. Here there were no tracks in the valleys, only rocky bluffs to be climbed, padded with heather; and when one came to an end of these, flat bogs sunk with fat, soggy cushions, lit by the torch into hummocks of coral and green, with black peat pools between them, encrusted with scum. We could not trust our feet in the wet dark to these.

Johnson’s light flickered on, tracing our steps in the mosses, showing a foothold on the grey-white rocks, seamed and patched with pale butcher’s pink. He cursed mildly, once; and I thought he had bumped or grazed something, until I realised that if we were near the lighthouse, we must be near the road, and also the base, and Johnson did not relish having to show so much light. It was worse too, now that the twelve second flash of the lighthouse dazzled the sky. In the blackness that fell on our eyes afterwards, our feet were invisible, and so was the bog.

It was, in fact, during one of those spells of reflected white light that the burst of gunfire came out of the dark, and Stanley Hennessy screamed.

We were standing on rock. While the shots were still echoing, Johnson’s hands thrust me down, lying flat on the hillside. “Stay there!” and then I heard the pad of his rubber-soled shoes as he jumped from boulder to boulder, away from me, to be lost in the sound of the rain. I strained my eyes after him. I peered through the darkness behind, where Hennessy had shouted, and where there was now no sound at all, and then jerked my head back. Thin and muffled by rain, a voice in the distance said: “Got you!” and somebody squealed.

A moment later, a man’s voice shouted in anger; there was another volley of shots, running footsteps, and then someone in blundering haste came downhill out of the rain towards me, from the direction in which Johnson had vanished.

It was not Johnson. As I lay still, the rainwater streaming down my neck and my whole body shivering, a hurrying figure loomed out of the dark, grazed one wet canvas toe on my ribs, and fell helplessly over me.

The shape was small, round and compact. The voice, crying miserably and despairingly: “Oh! My! My pinkie’s staved!” was the voice of Nancy Buchanan. She had just time, rolling over, to add in tones of soprano surprise: “It’s somebody! It’s you! What’s wrong? Are you hurt, Madame Rossi?” when Johnson swooped out of the dark, picked her up like an old cigarette packet, pointed her north and, smacking her bottom, said: “Run like hell.”

She did. Straining my ears, I heard the small sound of her feet disappear. The trampling and bustling of a moment before had stopped also, and there was no more firing. For a long moment we both listened, Johnson and I, but wind and rain were all we could hear. “What was she doing? Who was firing? Where’s Hennessy?” I said. The loudest noise on South Rona was my heart.

“The security guards were after her. God knows what she’s doing, but she and Bob were coming straight over here, so I headed them off. It was a fairly near thing, because we were all in the line of fire for a moment. In fact, I think Hennessy may have caught it . . . Look. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I said, although I had to exert my singing muscles to say it quite steadily.

Above me, Johnson’s shadow paused, was illuminated by the lighthouse, and then was invisible again. “You’re a hell of a woman,” his voice said; and continued immediately. “I’m going to find him. Stay here. If you need me, blow your whistle.”

“Right,” I said shortly, but I was pleased. There is no particular credit in being born with courage. But it does come in useful. I could hear the admiration, despite himself, in his voice.

He had barely gone when I also heard something else. A groan, coming from below me, out of the bog. Since the whistle was for emergency only, and groans might easily turn to inconvenient, delirious shouts, I gritted my costly capped teeth, and slithered downhill towards it.

In the darkness, certainly, something was moving.

A man, a big man in what looked like a parka – only there was no longer a white polo necked jersey underneath. It was black, and all the face and head and wetly waving fair hair above it was black, black and fresh, welling blood.

Very small, very short, I blew a toot on the whistle for Johnson. He was correct. Stanley Hennessy had been in the line of firing all right. The only question was, who had fired?

In the end, I held the torch while Johnson got a polythene bag full of bogwater and poured it over Hennessy’s head. Features appeared. Brow, nose, cheeks were in order. His eyes, still closed, seemed to have suffered no harm. Chin and mouth were intact. Johnson got more water and ran it over the thick hair and neck, when all became plain. He had had one ear shot partly through. “Eureka! Jenkins!” said Johnson; and Hennessy abruptly woke up.

No one could have called him a coward. He opened his mouth to yell, and closed it when Johnson reminded him where we all were, and why. He opened his mouth again to express his feelings as Johnson, talking, began to dress his ear from the inexhaustible haversack; and shut it again when he saw me. He produced a large, resigned grimace; and when Johnson helped him to his feet he was able, without too much trouble, to walk.

It was I who told him about the Buchanans, and then Hennessy really did swear, and without apology. “That prune-faced little couple of mantelshelf ornaments, dipping their ensign like maniacs to the Meals on Wheels van in Kilcreggan. My God, no wonder they seemed too stupid to be true. It was a cover-up. A cover-up for spying . . .
And you let her go, Johnson, you fool!”

And that was true, too. It was then that I began to feel rather cold.

It was Johnson, too, who persuaded Hennessy it would be unfair to me to cast ourselves yet on the mercy of the guards. It wasn’t hard. Hennessy didn’t relish, clearly, the explanations that would follow, even though he was unwilling (he said) for me to run any more risks. I replied that having come so far, I was damned well going to see Kenneth, and he could go home if he liked. Thanks to the Buchanans, we were probably through the defence cordon anyway, and if the Buchanans were going to blow up the whole of the island, then good luck to them, I said.

I was perhaps a little hard on a man who had come all this way for my protection, and had been shot for his pains. If, that is, he
had
come all this way for my protection.

We were still arguing when we got to the next rise and looked over. Then Johnson suddenly said: “Down!” and, trained in an hour like privates in the Borneo jungle, we dropped.

Not a second too soon. At last, we were in the full reflected glare of the lighthouse. And as, lying flat in the heather, the whole world about us was lit, for a pale space, by its backwash, we saw where we had come. Ahead and to the right, the lighthouse stood on its hill. From there, the road unreeled to our left, running west and downhill towards the long pier and the little harbour where the
Willa
Mavis
normally tied up, and where now a smallish yacht rode darkly at anchor.

All the way up from the jetty, a single-track road was lit by tall, concrete street lights, which bestowed pools of light on the crane and the hundreds of oil drums lying stacked at the top of the pier. Above it was a big aluminium hut with double louvered doors which Johnson said housed the generator. From there, and the black water tank beside it, the path struck up the low hillside beyond to a cluster of huts: the base. We could see the grooved aluminium walls on their brick batter, the windows carefully shuttered, and the floodlights manning the roof.

There were the laboratories, the mess room, the dormitories used by the scientists and the naval personnel testing the new equipment on
Lysander.
There Kenneth was living, while the investigation into the submarine explosion continued. And there, high up on the winding, rutted road to the lighthouse which was the only paved way on the island, was a solitary vehicle, standing lightless and dark, parked waiting, next to the moor.