Doubled in Diamonds, page 17
I went on deck and Grognon called some greeting as he sluiced a bucket of water down the catwalk. I went ashore and walked up the canal.
The girl in the cabin was Lian – and clearly the switch had been made while I was having my chat with Aristide and Bertina had retired to her cabin. What were the two girls playing at? Whatever it was, they had slipped up over the cigarette holders. Anyway, what was the purpose of doing a switch and clearly intending to keep it from me? I didn’t like that, and I began to feel angry. I went back aboard and sat down at the main cabin table. As soon as Lian came out I was going to tackle her. A few seconds later I was glad that I hadn’t gone in to Lian demanding an explanation. A yard from me, almost hidden in the gap between a seat and a back cushion of the bench on which I sat, I saw a thin gleam of gold. I reached out for it. It was Suma’s gold holder.
It was then that I felt really worried. When I’d gone out to see Aristide, I’d left Suma sitting at the table smoking. The holder I’d found was a good two yards from where she had been. Cigarette holders won’t roll that far unless there is something to knock them pretty violently from a hand or a mouth.
Violently, that was the word. And it brought a lot of fresh ideas into my mind. I went on deck to sort them out and found myself helping Grognon to cast off and get going.
Only one thing was clear to me. If Lian had given herself away to me, I didn’t mean to give myself away to her. And if I wanted to get any kind of truth, it was clear that I had to play this day through just the same as any other day on the barge. The one thing I wanted to do now was impossible until the evening.
It was a long day, and one of the longest performances I had ever given of a man with nothing in particular on his mind.
That evening – the next day we were due at Saint-Saveur – we pulled into the barge port at Courchamp. There was no other barge there. A small dirt road ran down from the side of the bridge to the off-loading quay. The village was two or three hundred yards away. After we had tied up the usual routine took place. Grognon wandered off to the village to get himself a drink and to buy some cigarettes, and have a chat with old acquaintances.
I went into the main cabin. I had slipped a torch and my automatic into my pocket. Both the girls were in the cabin and we sat having a drink and chatting. I knew then what it was to itch with impatience.
Finally, I said I was going on deck for a breath of fresh air before dinner.
Apart from the long run of deck hatch covers which had to be removed for unloading, there were two entrances to the hold. There was a small hatch immediately below Grognon’s wheel room, and another right up forward. It was just getting dark and a few bats were out, cutting the air into jigsaw patterns, and the odd cottage light was beginning to show through the trees from the village.
I drew the bolt on the flap of the forward hatch, lifted it, had a quick look around in case Grognon might be on his way back, and then slipped through it and dropped the flap above me.
I switched the torch on and began to make my way aft. There was no headroom and I had to crouch all the way along the small path that had been left between the stacked bags of cement.
I reached the after end. A space was clear of cement, against the bulkheads. A loose pile of tarpaulins had been dumped there. I flashed the torch around. For a moment I felt a sense of relief – then, from under the top tarpaulin I saw a foot protruding. I pulled away the loose canvas. Suma was lying there, on her side, and one arm was thrown up and her cheek rested on it. She was naked except for a pair of brief pants. There was a gag around her mouth and, if for nothing else, I was glad of that for it wiped from my mind any fleeting thought that Bertina could be involved in this. Suma had been silenced quickly to stop Bertina hearing anything in her sleeping quarters.
As the torch light held her, I could have thought that she was sleeping, except that her eyes were wide open, the torchlight reflected dully in them. There was a knife deep in her back.
Chapter Eleven
One Damned Thing after Another
I went down into the main cabin. Lian had changed into a Chinese gown. It had a tight little black collar at the neck, and a green background with a great spray of cherry blossom running across her breasts. She was sitting on the corner of the cabin table, legs crossed, showing a lot of thigh through the slit at the side of the gown, and in her hand she was holding what I knew would be a glass of champagne and vodka.
She looked up at me and the cabin lights ran across her dark hair. She said, ‘Ready for another drink?’
I nodded and she smiled. It ought to have been Suma, and it wasn’t. She put a cigarette in her ivory holder and waited for me to come round and light it. I did. And I was thinking hard.
I said, ‘Where’s Bertina?’
She said, ‘She was tired and said she’d have a little sleep before dinner.’
‘Tired?’
She nodded.
I went through to the cabins. I wasn’t now in a mood to take her word for anything. I opened Bertina’s door and looked in. She was lying on the bed, her back to me and snoring very gently. It was a pretty snore. It had to be. She was a pretty girl.
I went back to the main cabin and made myself a whiskey and water.
Lian said, ‘You are very fond of her?’
‘She’s a nice girl,’ I said. ‘Pity she ever got mixed up in all this.’
She smiled. ‘You like her very much. I can tell. But she is not really your kind. She is too soft. Not clever enough. When you marry it must be someone very special.’ She slid off the table and sat down.
‘When I collect my money from this deal,’ I said, ‘I’m thinking of advertising. Exceptional woman wanted for a very ordinary man.’
She giggled, and it could have been Suma. Only Suma was dead in the hold, a knife in her back. And no matter what Suma had been, no matter how much drug-traffic was a filthy business, dead was dead.
I sat down on the bunk seat and I pulled the automatic from my pocket and put it on the edge of the table, close to me and well away from her.
She looked at the automatic and then at me, and there was no change on her face. The inscrutable oriental. Watch yourself, Carver, I told myself, because she will have more tricks than a circus full of Chinese conjurers.
‘So she was tired,’ I said.
‘Bertina?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, yes. Very.’
‘What did you give her?’ I asked. ‘A quick shot with a hypo, or a glass of drugged gin?’
Her face showed nothing for a moment and then the tiniest hint of a smile flickered about her mouth.
‘Lemonade,’ she said. ‘When you went out. You were very quick to notice.’
‘I’ve heard drugged people snore before. When did you plan to fix me up?’
She gave another of her little giggles and it wasn’t nice to hear.
‘When you had your second drink. I was going to make it for you.’
I was committed now. If I didn’t come out on the credit side I knew that Sutcliffe would kill me for it. I’d let myself get emotional and acted on it. That was right against the book. But the book could go to hell.
I said, ‘You’re a first-class bitch.’
Her face hardened at that. No smile. Her eyes narrowed a little.
‘I do not like those words,’ she said.
‘I didn’t mean you to. I’ve been down in the hold.’
Calmly she said, ‘I knew you had. There’s cement dust on your back. How did you guess?’
‘You missed one trick,’ I said. I took the gold cigarette holder from my pocket and slid it across to her. She picked it up and gave it the briefest of glances, her fingers rolling it absently to and fro. ‘I bought this holder for Suma. Since then she’s always used it.’
She was completely with it now, knowing exactly where she stood, no doubt thinking fast, wondering what line to take.
She shrugged her shoulders and jerked the holder back hard at me. I made no attempt to retrieve it because I could see her eyes on the automatic. The holder slid off the table to the floor.
I said, ‘She was your sister. And you got rid of her just like that.’ It didn’t sound like my voice. It was coming up from fathoms deep, from some cold, arctic chasm.
‘I hated her.’
I nodded. ‘I think she guessed it, too. That’s why she had me aboard. She felt you might pull something. What is it? You and the Billings crowd? You all walk off now with diamonds and drugs? Nice haul. But you had to kill her first.’
‘Yes, I killed her!’ Her voice rose suddenly in pitch. ‘She was so damned clever, so right. Suma with the brains. Suma always the one with the secret instructions.’
‘Who put you up to it? Fairlawn? Did he sell it to you and then to Billings? Sounds like his idea of a good business deal. The bastard.’
‘No. It is my idea. Mine. Now, for the first time in my life, I fall in love with someone. I want to live like an ordinary human being—’
‘So you start by killing your sister. You think your government will ever let you get away with this?’
‘To hell with my government! Long ago, when I am a young girl, they cheat me. They make me what I am. Now I cheat them. Now I go away and have a real life with the man I love.’
‘So Suma had to die.’
She gave a thin laugh. ‘Suma. Always everyone think of Suma. She was a devil, I tell you. You think she liked you? You think you do something special to her? You are a fool. You, she was using too. Why you think at Divonne she make me arrange that business on the golf course?’
I put my hand on the automatic. I wasn’t trusting her an inch. She could talk fast – and she could act fast. The talk might be lies. But any action would be dead earnest truth.
‘You arranged the golf thing,’ I said.
She shook her head.
‘Suma make me arrange it because she wanted a final check on you. “Put him in danger,” she said, “and then if some other side is guarding him, they will do something to save him.” And somebody did. But you were clever about it – so she could not be absolutely sure. But she is always careful. Since then she consider always that you might be working for the police.’
‘Good try,’ I said. ‘So Suma thought I might want to spoil this exchange – and she keeps me working with her all along. What for? So that I’ll have the information about the exchange taking place at Saint-Saveur to pass on to my people?’
She was easy now. I could see it and I didn’t like it. And no matter what I told myself, there was an edge of doubt in my mind.
She said, ‘Whatever Suma was, she was no fool. Oh, no – she was so clever that sometimes I could have killed her before this. But always her cleverness works – until this time when it is I who want something to be different. You think it was difficult for me to arrange things with Grognon? For money, he does anything – that is his life. You know what Suma says about you?’
‘Make it good,’ I said, ‘I’ve been having bad character references lately.’
‘Suma admits it is possible that you work for the police. To her that is no problem. We have met this before. So we bring you in to work for us. It is safer that way. But if you tell your people that it is Saint-Saveur where the exchange takes place – that is what we want you to tell them. We use you. Suma arrange it. But, in fact, the exchange takes place here at Courchamp. At this place, here, tonight. You look surprised.’ She laughed. ‘Suma herself say that you are not so clever to think of anything like that yourself. You are a nice man, doing too difficult a job for your brains – so you are easy to handle. All this Suma say about you and we have good laugh over—’
‘Shut up,’ I said brutally.
She shrugged her shoulders. ‘You say shut up and I shut up. But one thing first. You should be glad Suma is dead. What I do for her, she planned for you this very night – once you had helped her to see the exchange goes right.’
I didn’t say anything. Every word she said might be true. Suma was no fool. I hadn’t thought of the Saint-Saveur trick. She was dead right. The job was too difficult for my brains. If I wanted to get out of it everything would have to be fast. But, no matter how fast I acted or thought, one thing was certain, this neat scooping into the net of diamonds, drugs and the people involved, which Sutcliffe was relying on, would never come off. All I could do was to save something from the mess – and the only thing I could save was the cargo stored in the hold. At any moment now a lorry might come down the dirt track to the quay with Billings’s boys. If I kept the drugs from them it would be the one good mark amongst the dozen black ones I’d run up against my name.
I stood up slowly, watching her all the time, and I held the automatic on her.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘maybe I’m all you’ve said, doubled. But one thing is for sure. You’re not taking off with Fairlawn to some luxurious hide-out. Now – just turn round and walk into the sleeping cabin. There’s a good lock on the door and you’re staying there while I go for Grognon and make him cast off.’
She didn’t argue. She just turned and began to walk out of the cabin, through the little galley space, past the shower niche and offices, and into her sleeping cabin and I walked behind her. From the doorway I saw her right into the cabin where she stopped and turned to me. She was smiling, and it was a big, friendly smile, the kind I had seen a hundred times on Suma’s face, and she said, ‘You are very stupid.’
And then it happened. He came out of the shower compartment. I caught the sound of the plastic curtain swinging, so that I had time to turn just enough to see Hasler’s face as he smashed me across the side of the neck.
I went over sideways, my automatic flying from my hand, and I landed with my head and shoulders lying partly in the main cabin.
I opened my eyes from the shock of falling and the first thing I saw was Fairlawn come down the cabin steps fast and over to me, a big smile on his face as though I were the one man in all the world he wanted to meet.
I twisted and started to get up and Hasler slammed me again from behind, I collapsed at Fairlawn’s feet.
‘Tough titty, old man,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you putting up such a good show. A complete bloody waste of time, of course.’
It was habit not commonsense that made me try again. But I didn’t get farther than my knees. Hasler, who couldn’t have been putting out full power before, slammed home an ace and I went out into darkness.
* * *
Somebody had his hand over my mouth and was making it difficult for me to breathe. I shook my head but the hand still stayed clamped to me. There was a noise, too, like the sound of some gigantic bath running out, gurgling and swishing.
I opened my eyes. Somewhere behind me was a faint light. My head swam and I had to close my eyes, but as I did so I realised that it was not a hand clamped across my mouth. I had been gagged, and my ankles bound. My wrists were tied together behind my back.
The giddiness went from my head and I opened my eyes again. This time they stayed open, and this time I got the whole picture, not too well illuminated, but clear enough to jerk me sharply back to reality.
I was in the hold of La Fauvette. The light came from a small, naked bulb. I was about twenty feet from the after end in a small gap between the piled cement sacks. Lapping at the upper edges of the sacks on which I rested was water. It was moving, scummed with a dry film of loose cement that moved and twisted away in crazy arabesques.
I got it then. I was sitting here with the cocks of the hold opened and the barge fast filling with water. Outside it was dark and La Fauvette was settling quietly into the deep water at the quayside. She was full loaded, with no more than a foot of freeboard. In the darkness she would settle quietly, no one noticing – and that would be that. It would be a couple of days before anyone could raise her and find what was left of me.
I struggled to a sitting position and one of the sacks under me slipped. I rolled off into the water and went under up to my thighs. There was a good two feet of water in her already.
I hoisted myself back out of the water, but by now it was already lapping over my sacks. As I did so, I saw Bertina.
She was lying on her side, a couple of yards from me, on a pile of sacks a little higher than mine. She was bound and gagged, too, her wrists tied behind her like mine.
Her eyes were open and she was watching me. Just a pair of eyes watching me, frightened eyes.
Anger came into my throat. They’d got it all nicely worked out. Two birds with one stone. When the money is big enough, you’ve got to protect yourself. Don’t be embarrassed by uncertain elements. Just get rid of them. And that was what was going to happen in an hour from now… unless Carver did something.
I rolled closer to Bertina and she struggled to a sitting position. We looked at one another, a couple of mutes, and I gave her a nod which was meant to be reassuring. No need to worry. Carver had it in hand. But the trouble was that Carver had nothing in hand.
I edged close to her. She let her shoulders fall against me and I could feel the involuntary shake of her body. Her face, close to me, was streaked with wet cement marks, her hair was loose, and the water in the hold was already lapping around her skirt.
Come on, Carver, I said to myself. Come on. There’s got to be something. There had to be something – unless we were just going to sit here while La Fauvette quietly went under.
At that moment, the barge lurched a little as it settled, and a few yards away some sacks slid from their pile and splashed into the rising water. At that moment, too, something lurched in my mind.
Would they, I thought? Would they have been so bloody efficient? But even as I was thinking it I was easing myself off the sacks, away from Bertina.
I dropped into the water, away from the sacks, in the clear runway along the side of the cargo. The water came well above my chest now. I looked back, saw Bertina’s eyes on me, gave her a nod, and then I began to work my way on my bottom, legs in front of me, towards the after end of the hold.
As I moved towards the place where I had last seen Suma, I came under the light and could see more clearly. Working through the water, like some clumsy crab, slipping sideways at times because the cement dust on the boards had turned to mud beneath me, I prayed that Fairlawn had made one mistake.
