The man who sold death c-1

by James Munro

  He'd first met McLaren in a rest camp in Sicily in 19 The man was a Commando sergeant, long and lean as brown as an Arab, with the soft Highland voice I gave no hint of the speaker's strength and endurai McLaren had found a bottle of whisky. Found was word the army always used for things like whisky, and was willing to share it. Craig, who was then ninett did not dispute his choice of word. They put it dc drink for drink, and Leading Seaman Craig had the sense to see that Sergeant McLaren would disapprove of the usual violence or lust. Sergeant McLaren was a philosopher, whose release was in conversation. At twenty-five he was immeasurably older than Craig, and terribly aware of death. He had killed too many times to doubt that soon it would be his turn to die, and so he talked as they drank his whisky together. In the whole camp he had found Craig alone to be fit to share his bottle, and Craig was flattered. It never occurred to him that his ruthless efficiency at his craft was superior to the sergeant's own, which was why McLaren had chosen his company. Sadly, regretfully, as the Johnnie Walker disappeared, Sergeant McLaren had bidden farewell to civilization. The war, he was convinced, was the end of all that. No one would ever again feel the need to struggle for anything but his own survival, or, in exceptional cases, comfort. But these would be the rare and gifted ones; for the commonalty it would be enough simply to go on living. He tilted the bottle, and passed it over.

  When peace came, the men who would do best would be those who had deliberately allowed their personalities to be molded by war: the men who had learned to act, decisively and at once; the men who had learned, whatever happened, to survive; and the men who had learned to be gentlemen. "That's always what the English look for," he said. "Gentlemen. You must be a gentleman too."

  Craig considered his background; slum house, orphanage, and Devonport barracks. He found it inadequate.

  "I don't see how I can," he said.

  "Get a commission," said McLaren. "Royal Navy. Special Boat Service. You'll look well with a commission. Then get rid of your accent."

  "You didn't."

  "I'm not going to be a gentleman. I'm going to be a schoolmaster," McLaren said. "That's why I'm going back to Glasgow University-if I live that long. And anyway my' accent is socially acceptable. Yours isn't."

  "Why should I be a gentleman?" Craig asked with alcoholic earnestness, and McLaren beamed at him.

  "I like you," he said. "Always asking the right questions.

  Good for my Socratic method. Every philosopher should be issued with a leading seaman full of whisky. Basic equipment… You should be a gentleman because you're not fit to be anything else. It's either that or piracy. That's all you know. You get yourself a commission. It's safer."

  He took another pull at the bottle and gave Craig what was left, letting him finish it in silence.

  It was early May, and the almond blossom smelled sweet, the cicadas softly chirred. Like a backcloth, the ruins of a Greek temple groped for the moon that silvered and softened the brutal Sicilian landscape to a comic-opera prettiness. Craig finished the whisky.

  "Bastards," he said. "Bastard orphanage. Bastard pigs.* But wait till this lot's over. I'll show them."

  McLaren looked at him. Even half-drunk he was as alert as a hunting leopard, the ruthlessness burned into him, never to come out.

  "Aye," said McLaren. "You'll show 'em right enough."

  From the temple there came the sound of pipes, and McLaren scrambled to his feet.

  "That'll be the Jocks," he said.

  Craig hesitated. In the village there was a widow who slept with him, giving him pleasure, wine, and Italian lessons all for a few cigarettes. On the other hand, McLaren had given him ideas, and an aim in life, and he was grateful. It wouldn't hurt to look at a few Jocks. They walked through the camp to a flat patch of earth already baked hard by the sun. A crowd of Scottish soldiers sat around watching, drinking Sicilian wine, and in the middle a kilted piper played, and six kilted men gravely danced.

  The crowd didn't applaud; their emotional involvement was too deep. They simply sat and absorbed it all; the shrill sadness of the pipes, and the men dancing with a proud, masculine beauty. Someone produced two swords, and a boy of Craig's age did a sword dance on his own, a dance of such grace and power that McLaren sighed aloud.

  "All this'll go too," he said. "The fag end of a culture.

  * Lower deck slang for Naval Officer.

  This is maybe the last time you'll have the chance to see fighting men dance."

  "What for?" Craig asked. "What do they want to dance for?"

  "Because it's art," said McLaren. "Ach, they mightn't like the word, but that's what it is. Art. A part of their lives. Every man there is dancing."

  He looked at the lone, dancing man.

  "They've been fighting at Catania," he said. "They won, but they took a hiding doing it. This makes them feel better."

  The piper stopped, and the dancer picked up the swords.

  This time the watching men roared out their applause. Another dancer appeared, but the piper shook his head, his hand already clutched around a bottle of wine. McLaren stood up, and dragged Craig after him.

  "Come with me," he said. "I'll show you some more dying culture."

  He pushed his way through the lounging men, and spoke in Gaelic to the new dancer. The boy grinned, and nodded, and McLaren began to sing. It was a high-pitched, intricate song, the rhythm strongly stressed, and McLaren sang it without appearing to draw breath; the caelidh mouth music that can take the place of fiddler or piper as long as the singer has strength. Gravely the boy danced, and the crowd of men was silenced once more. This time Craig didn't have to ask why. When he was older, and more sophisticated in his approach to experience, he would realize how hackneyed the situation was; kilted Highlanders dancing, in the middle of a war, among the ruins of an ancient civilization. But it was also beautiful, with a beauty that made the heart ache to see it. When McLaren had finished, he was weeping.

  "Whisky and nostalgia," he said. "Nothing like it for a good cry."

  Craig nodded. He could share McLaren's enthusiasm, and his melancholy, though he didn't know what nostalgia meant.

  "Like before I went to the orphanage," he said at last. "Me da used to take me fishing sometimes. Seine-netter.

  The crew was all in it together. You know. They had an old feller there used to sing. Old songs. They made you feel good."

  McLaren said, "You ought to practice that story. It's the sort of thing gentlemen appreciate. They like to feel sentimental about the deserving poor."

  Craig wasn't listening.

  "When I was eleven, me mam ran off with a sailor. A steward on the King Line. The old man jumped off the pier, and I ended up in what they called a home. They didn't go fishing there. Mind you," he added, determined to be fair, "they taught you how to fight."

  He had left McLaren then, and gone to find his widow.

  He left the Gallery, and bought a paper. On the back page was a filler describing the death of a man called Altern in Geneva. Craig knew who Altern was. Rutter had been at that rest camp too. He had hoped with all his heart that they would not find out about Rutter. For a long time he stood by the Gallery steps, remembering Rutter as he had been in Greece, young and full of life, and dangerous with the need to prove how well a small man could do in a big man's world. He remembered a blazing E-boat and a nightmare chase in an olive grove. He remembered Rutter locked in combat with a blond, enormous, Panzer grenadier. Always Rutter had gone for the big ones, to show they weren't too big for him… He'd given up a P. amp; O. job to work for the Rose Line. Craig felt the salty sting of tears in his eyes, and shook his head angrily. Rutter had known what he was getting into. He'd known very well he might die. It would be nice to see McLaren again, Craig thought, and ask him if he'd done the right things with his life since the end of the war. Behind him the news vendor was speaking to him, asking him if he felt all right. Craig shook his head again and moved away, pushing into the crowd in Trafalgar Square, folding his paper neatly
, holding it under his arm. Soon he was inconspicuous again.

  He went back to his hotel, changed, and went out again. In his mood he knew that it was dangerous, that he should have stayed indoors, but his anger and grief were too strong for him. He had to go out. He drifted toward Soho, drinking steadily, until he reached an Italian restaurant in Greek Street. There he ate pasta as he and Rutter had enjoyed it, and drank a bottle of Orvieto. Then he wandered again, past the come-on girls in the clip joints, the barbecue grills and hamburger heavens, content to be forced along by the crowd, swerving from time to time into a pub.

  He'd reached one in the Tottenham Court Road when he met the Irishman, Diamond, who splashed him with stout, then hung on to him for the rest of the evening, relishing his taciturnity with a talker's avid greed. When the pubs shut, they went to a club Diamond belonged to, the Lucky Seven, because it wasn't far away and Diamond knew a girl who went there sometimes. Diamond was a bookie's clerk with a taste for the theater, and he settled down to spend the rest of the night telling Craig the plot of every play he had ever seen. Craig didn't mind. From time to time they bought each other whisky, and he could think about Rutter behind the smoke screen of Diamond's unending chatter. Then the girl appeared, Diamond fussed busily, finding her a chair, buying her a drink, introducing her to Craig, then taking up his monologue in mid-sentence.

  Her name was Tessa Harling, and Craig tried to remember what Diamond had told him about her. She'd started off as an actress and failed. Then she had married, and her husband had turned out to be a prime bastard, and the marriage had failed too. Now she lived on her alimony, and drifted around clubs like the Lucky Seven and drank Diamond's gin because he was gentle and undemanding. She spent her days alone, getting up late, Craig thought, coffee and aspirins for breakfast, and too many cigarettes, and sometimes perhaps a man she didn't want and found hard to get rid of because she was lonely. A born victim, like the girl in Lange's car.

  And like Lange's girl she was pretty. Twenty-eight or thereabouts, tall, full-bodied, her hair cut short and dyed so black that it looked blue in the lamplight, and grave brown eyes that had seen very little to laugh at for a long, long time; yet her mouth was wide and apt for laughter, twitching up at the corners at Diamond's heavy-handed jokes. She wore a red dress with no back to it, and neat, expensive, patent-leather shoes. No wedding ring. Face, figure, and clothes combined to make her by far the best-looking girl in the club, but she didn't let it bother her. She had come there to drink, and laugh with Michael Diamond. Craig liked her for that, and tore himself away from his memories for a brief while, and tried to be pleasant. She seemed to expect him to dance with her, and from time to time he did so. When they danced, Diamond talked to the waitress.

  There were three men at the next table. Two of them were young and big, and dressed to kill in dark Italian suits and Chelsea boots. The third was nearing thirty, with the build and aggression of a successful middleweight. He wanted to dance with Tessa. This seemed reasonable enough to Craig, since Tessa was attractive sexually and danced very well. But the middleweight had a mean mouth, and Diamond was a friend of hers and this man who called himself John Reynolds was attractive in a new and puzzling way she didn't understand. She preferred to stay where she was, soothed by Diamond's inexhaustible chatter and trying to prod his friend into an awareness of herself.

  Craig scarcely heard either of them. He had drunk a lot of wine and then, even by club standards, a lot of whisky. He was dimly aware that a pretty girl in a red dress with no back to it liked to dance with him and that a tireless Irishman kept yammering on about two old tramps who lived in garbage cans. The club itself was no more than a brightly lit bar, a jukebox, and slot machines, and for Craig they existed not at all. In his mind he was in Tangier, drinking Pernod with Rutter. It was 1955, and they were fighting their war all over again. They had met on vacation, and they were going to dine with two Spanish girls, and while they waited they talked, nostalgic for the triumphs they had known, and the risks without which triumph was impossible. Cautiously, Craig had worked the talk around to gun-running, and Rutter had almost wept, so grateful was he for the chance to be a hero again. He never knew that Craig had hunted him out, as he had himself been hunted, followed him to Tangier, then bumped into him in a hotel bar by a remarkable accident. But it didn't really matter. How could it? Rutter had known all the risks and clamored for his share, and more than his share. For Rutter life had been a task so irksome that he preferred to get it over with, to attack it all the time. It had been good in that bar, cool and dim, with Arab music playing very softly on tape.

  Tessa was saying, "Are you really an accountant?" "Yes," said Craig. "What do you do then?" "Account," he said.

  Rutter. Baumer. Charlie Green. And perhaps Alice too. One way and another, he had quite a bit of accounting to do.

  "Your life must be very dull sometimes," Tessa said. Craig smiled then.

  "No," he said. "Not dull. Busy."

  "Did you ever see the one about the two loonies?" asked Diamond.

  "No," said Tessa. Then to Craig, "Come and dance again."

  The middleweight came over and once more asked her to dance. She shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm with these two gentlemen."

  "Leave them," the middleweight said.

  "One of them's had electric-shock treatment," Diamond said. "He gets pally with a tramp." He looked at the middleweight. "Tessa's with us," he said. "She doesn't want to dance with you. She wants to dance with John." He turned away again. "These days there's a hell of a lot of tramps about in the theater. Not that I'm objecting, mind you. I don't say I could understand it, but it was all very dramatic."

  "My name's Eddy Lishman," said the middleweight.

  Craig looked at him in disgust. While he stood there arguing, he couldn't think about Rutter.

  Diamond said, "I don't care who you are. She doesn't want to dance."

  But his hand was shaking as he picked up his glass. "No. It's all right," said Tessa.

  She smiled at Craig and went to Lishman's arms. He danced with a cruel, aggressive skill, as if dancing were a prelude to rape.

  Craig watched him glumly. Lishman would make Diamond fight for his girl, and Diamond would lose. It was too bad. He liked Diamond.

  "Used to be a fighter," Diamond was saying. "Now he's in business. Betting shops mostly. Keeps a few girls too. Or so they say. He's a bad one, right enough. You'd better get off out of it, John."

  "Me?" said Craig. "It's got nothing to do with me. What about your girl? You should get her out of here."

  "She isn't my girl," said Diamond. "I wish she was- but I wouldn't dare take her away. Lishman knows where to find me."

  "We'd better have another drink," Craig said.

  He bought two more, and Lishman brought Tessa back to their table, and sat down with them. The two young men came over too, and Lishman bought everybody another drink. The talk turned at once to betting, and Craig audibly groaned. Lishman banged down his glass.

  "I've bought you a drink, haven't I?" he asked.

  "Yes," said Craig.

  "And I haven't bothered you, have I?"

  "No," said Craig.

  "What's the matter then?"

  "Gambling bores me," Craig said.

  The girl Tessa put her hand on his sleeve in warning.

  "Do you mean I'm boring you?" asked Lishman softly.

  "Yes," said Craig.

  The two young men looked at once to Lishman, and when he laughed they laughed too. Craig's madness was privileged; he was court jester.

  Carefully Craig got to his feet and went to the washroom. He spent a long time running cold water over his face, and cursing his foolishness. If Lishman hadn't laughed, he'd have had to fight him. It would have been very gratifying to fight with Lishman. It would also have been stupid. After a while he went back into the club, drank a cup of black coffee at the bar, and took another back to the table.

  "What's up with you now?" Lishman asked.


  "I think I've had too much to drink," Craig said, and the middleweight roared his delight.

  Craig said to Tessa, "I'd like to dance."

  She hesitated, but Lishman graciously waved his assent.

  Craig took her in his arms and she said at once, "You'd better go home. Now. Take Michael with you." "What about you?" Craig asked. "I'll go when I'm ready," she said. "Do you think he'll let you?"

  She shrugged. "Michael doesn't know this-but he's bothered me before."

  The hand that held his began to shake. "It doesn't do to turn him down too often. He's dangerous."

  "He looks as if he thinks he is," Craig said.

  "I mean it," said Tessa. "He's got a terrible temper. He nearly kills people if they cross him."

  "Is that a fact?"

  "Yes, it is," she said, and shook him with protective impatience. "He had a fight with a man called Harry Corner-anybody here will tell you. He put Harry in the hospital. And Harry's tough, believe me."

  "How disgusting," said Craig.

  "Oh my God, can't you sober up?'" she whispered. "He thinks you're funny now, but if you made him angry- you think it's just like the telly, I suppose? Something you sit down and watch then switch off when you've had enough? Well you can't, believe me you can't. Michael should never have brought you here. You'd better go- and take him with you. I'll try to keep him here till you've gone. If one of his boys follows you, you yell, darling. And keep on yelling. You might find a brave policeman."

  "All right," Craig said. "I'll go. But Diamond will have to make his own arrangements."

  The girl flinched from him then, but Craig shrugged off her disgust, scarcely aware that it existed. Two weak people were at the mercy of a strong one; it wasn't his

  business. That was to survive, and to achieve that end he did not dare get involved.

  The dance ended, and she led Craig back to the table.

  "Now do as I tell you," she whispered. "Finish your drink and go home."

  He sat down and sipped at another cup of scalding coffee. Lishman said, "Say something else. Make me laugh."