The Corpse Without a Country

by Louis Trimble

I hunched over the wheel and shivered. Ilona rummaged around in a locker and came up with two slickers, one of which she gave me. That made it a little easier to stand the chill, but my teeth kept on chattering.

  Ilona went away and rummaged some more. I heard a pleased exclamation in Danish. She came back, holding up triumphantly a bottle of Arne’s special holiday aquavit.

  She opened the bottle and handed it to me. I took a good, deep drink. I felt as if someone had aimed a blowtorch at my tonsils, and as if someone else had set off a heat bomb in my stomach. I pushed the bottle back at Ilona and blinked the tears from my eyes so I could see where I was going.

  She took a long pull at the bottle and didn’t even blink. But then almost any Dane could have done the same. I have the firm belief that most of them are weened on the stuff.

  She said, “Ah, I am somewhat less cold now.” She took another drink. “That was very clever of you tonight, diverting Fuller. Otherwise he would most certainly have shot Arne. He and Mr. Ghatt were not very subtle in their method of coming into the bay.”

  I said, “No one ever accused Arne Rasmussen of being subtle. But he gets results.”

  Ilona offered me another drink. I waved it aside, figuring that I was pretty well thawed. Anyway, from here on in I needed a clear head.

  She took back the bottle and had a third nip. I said, “If you aren’t warm yet, you’re a very chilly dame.”

  She said, “Chilly dame? That I do not understand. Am I so different from other women?”

  I said, “Not in many ways. In fact, there are places where you’re an improvement. But sometimes …” I paused and sorted out all the questions I had to ask her.

  “Just why did you chase me all over Puget City?”

  She didn’t answer. I glanced at her. She was sitting huddled by my leg, as much out of the wind as possible, and there was a foolish smile on her face. I repeated my question and she lifted her head. I looked into those beautiful eyes and realized that, despite her training, the aquavit had caught up with her. Since she probably hadn’t eaten much more than I had lately, and since she was indulging in her first chance at relaxation for some time, I could understand that distilled atom juice taking effect.

  To put it bluntly, she was half potted.

  She said, “I chased you because I thought you were working with them. I am sorry.”

  “Because you saw me with Tom Harbin there on the Island?”

  “Yes, that and so many little things. And then you took Miss Calvin to the Pad, and you had that report that you would not give to me….”

  She moved closer and rubbed her shoulder against my leg. I didn’t mind. I said, “What could possibly have been in that report that made you go after it like that?”

  “There was nothing,” she admitted. “But we did not know this until we stole it from Reese Fuller’s office.”

  “Then you were the ones who wrecked his place?”

  “I am sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” I said. “I enjoyed looking at the results.” I stopped and thought over what she’d said. “So Reese got the report. But that doesn’t explain why you kept taking my clothes apart at the seams.”

  She reached up her free hand—the other one had a death grip on the bottle—and ran her fingertips down my cheek. That was quite a sensation. It upset my concentration and I carefully put her hand back where it belonged.

  She said, “But I thought that you had the wire recording of Tom Harbin’s final report concealed on your person. That is a favorite trick of spies, hiding wire-recorded information in the seams of their suits.”

  I said, “You mean that you knew Emily had taped the message and not destroyed it as she claimed to the boss?”

  “I suspected,” Ilona said. “You see, for some time I was able to make myself accepted at the Pad; that was a kind of headquarters for gathering and dispensing information.”

  I had figured out that much. I wondered how deep Willie was in this. I said, “So you figured that I had taken the wire-recorded message and was trying to smuggle it to Reese in my clothing?”

  “I suspected,” she said again.

  I grinned. “You give me too much credit. I’m not a trained espionage agent.”

  “I am glad. But do you forgive me?”

  What else could I do? “Sure,” I said.

  She reached up and threw a pair of beautiful arms around my neck. I thought for a minute we were going to have our third wrestling match and, since I needed both hands for the wheel, I ducked away.

  “There are times and places for wrestling,” I said. “This isn’t one of them.”

  She backed away. “I was showing my pleasure at our newly formed friendship,” she informed me stiffly.

  To take her mind off my ungentlemanly behavior—and my mind off her—I said, “See if you can find a chart somewhere, will you? I want to know if we can go between those islands dead ahead.”

  Both Boundary and Corning were behind us now. In the distance, showing light from a light station, was our destination. Between us and it were dozens of smaller islands. If I could go between instead of around some, I could save considerable time.

  Ilona rooted in the locker and came up with a chart and a storm lantern. This she managed to get lighted by crouching down beneath me. I couldn’t see her but I could hear her spreading out the chart and Swearing and, I think, hiccoughing in Danish.

  She said, “There is a narrow channel of ten fathoms between the two. But you must stay in the center. It looks very bad otherwise.”

  “Can do,” I said.

  She rattled the chart some more. Suddenly she giggled. I said, “You also have a strange sense of humor as well as being a strange dame. What’s funny about a nautical chart?”

  “I am thinking of the international complications,” she said. “I have told you that I am an expert on international matters?”

  I said, “Like international wrestling?”

  She wasn’t having any such banter; her mind was on something else. She said with slightly squiffed dignity, “I am serious. Have you ever noticed that the international boundary crosses the middle of Boundary Rock?”

  “Sure,” I said, “that’s how Arne and his skippers know when they’ve hit home waters again.”

  “And did you notice the position of Emily Calvin’s body?”

  I said, “She was sitting.”

  “No. I mean where on the Rock she was placed.”

  I closed my eyes and visualized the scene. And then I knew what Ilona meant by international complications. Because Emily had been sitting dead center on the Rock.

  So who tried her murderer, Canada or the United States?

  I said, “That’s one thing I’m not going to worry about.”

  “I do not believe that you have the proper sympathy for the poor girl. She is a corpus delicti without a country.”

  The term wasn’t quite accurate, but I didn’t argue. I said, “You’re a ghoul.”

  “I am drunk,” she said as if she were correcting me. I heard the chart rustle and I looked down and she was lying on it, quietly asleep.

  Drunk or sober, she was quite an operator, I thought. I put my eyes back on the islands looming up ahead.

  The hands of the chronometer had begun to move with terrifying swiftness. The launch boiled up a terrific wake and threw white water up from the bow in a fine spray that drenched my head and face and ran off the slicker I wore like a pounding rain. Yet we seemed to be almost standing still. Endless time passed as one small island after another rose out of the moonlit sea and slid along our rail and then fell astern. Ages passed before the guiding light on the big island grew to more than a pinpoint.

  And we seemed to have the water to ourselves. Now and then I could see the running lights of distant ships—freighters, large fishboats—but none were close enough to make more than dots of light against the sky. If Ridley’s fishboat was still plowing along, it was running dark. I saw no sign of it.

  Over in the east I
saw the first hint of dawn. I looked at the island ahead and at all the water lying between us and it and I began to pray.

  The chronometer gave me a maximum of ten minutes. It wasn’t very much time.

  But the launch kept pounding away at distance, boiling up its frothy wake, gulping in the miles, and when I swung toward the dock that lay a block from the hospital, I still had two minutes of my seventy remaining.

  I cut the throttle and slid toward the dock. Lieutenant Maslin was trotting toward me through the ugly, early morning light. He grabbed the line I threw out and tied me up. I didn’t bother to waken Ilona; I jumped ashore before the launch stopped bumping.

  I said, “Where’s the boss?”

  Maslin jerked a thumb at the hospital. “We got a call,” he said. “Tom Harbin’s come around. I’m waiting for the Coast Guard.”

  I looked toward open water and saw the white Coast Guard vessel coming. I looked across the harbor at the dock on the other side and saw Ridley’s fìshboat riding at anchor.

  I started to run.

  XXIV

  THIS WAS THE DEAD HOUR OF THE MORNING. The staff was still at a minimum, with only the private nurses, such as Tom’s, stirring.

  I went by the half asleep lobby attendant and down the corridor. I went around a bend and there was the boss with two of the men he had hired for guards standing beside him. He looked haggard, but when he saw me he managed a big grin.

  “Tom’s going to be okay,” he said.

  “Why aren’t you in there?”

  “I’m waiting for the nurses to get him awake and cleaned up.”

  I yelled, “Nurses?” and grabbed for the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn. The door was locked. I yelled louder, “Kick the damn thing down!”

  This was one time the boss didn’t want to argue with me. He lunged at the door panel. The pair with him followed suit. I was already at work. The lock gave. I tumbled into the room and tripped over something. It was Tom’s regular private nurse, stretched out cold.

  Tom was in bed, still asleep, and Jodi was reaching for him, getting ready to break his neck with one of her cute judo tricks.

  I dove for the bed and caught her a swipe in the ribs that sent her sideways against the night stand. Medicine spilled to the floor and she followed it.

  She came to her feet in one quick movement. Her pixielike features were twisted with pain and shock and desperation. I could tell by the way she looked at me that for the first time she was seeing me as a formidable antagonist instead of a bumbler. For the first time she wanted to kill me.

  I could hear her voice saying, “I guess when they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to protect their good names.”

  She hadn’t been talking about Reese or Arne when she said that; she’d been talking about herself and what she had to do.

  She had to kill Tom Harbin. But now she had to kill me first. With the guards and the boss in the room, she didn’t have a chance, but she was past realizing that. She had started killing and now she couldn’t stop. She had to keep on killing to nurse the tiny hope that she might yet win out.

  And she damn near got me. When I stepped forward to take her, she grabbed my wrist and tried to roll me down and over her. I could feel the leverage taking effect, and I remembered Mike Fenny’s broken neck and Emily’s broken neck, and I remembered Emily flying through the air and smashing a table flat.

  I stopped trying to fight Jodi and let myself go. When she tried to flip me, I shifted position and she had my weight and no leverage to move it with.

  Her arm snapped.

  I let loose. She was tough right to the end. She spun away from me and went feet first through the open window. I could hear her crashing through bushes.

  Someone yelled, “Stop there, you!”

  There was a shot, then two more. A man’s voice said, “Jesus, a woman.”

  In a way I was glad. It was better for her like this. And it was better for Arne.

  • • •

  Arne said, “Yah, I was buying off Mike Fenney. He came to me with a story about finding Reese up to something. He offered to investigate for me. It was a kind of blackmail, maybe, but I was willing to pay in case what he found out was bad for the company.”

  “He told you about Jodi being mixed up in the deal?” I asked.

  “I found that out for myself,” Arne said. “That’s when I agreed to help the fine blonde lady here.”

  The fine blonde lady was sitting with a cup of coffee in her hand and a hangover expression on her beautiful face. We were all around Tom’s bed, including a trio of very interested government men. One of them was holding the money belt Arne had taken from the stowaway. That belt held one hundred thousand dollars in American bills. I kept looking at it respectfully: I wished I could touch it—just once.

  Tom Harbin gave me his old, mocking grin. “You were pretty slow.”

  I said, “If I’d known that the report you phoned in for Emily to swipe told how you’d found the remaining Zwahili notes hidden at Jodi’s place on Corning Island, I might have been a little faster.”

  There were government men after those notes right now. Once I learned what Tom’s message had contained, the whole pattern of Jodi’s actions fell into place. Her killing started with Tom. She found him snooping and hit him with a gun barrel; then, when Reese arrived at Corning Island, she got him to help her put Tom in his boat and head it out the bay. She thought the boat would crash on Boundary Island and Tom would drown. Only the boat ran out of gas and he revived enough to swim into Boundary bay.

  After Tom, killing Mike Fenney was fairly easy; and to her, it was necessary. Fenney had found out the whole deal and was asking for blackmail.

  Maslin asked me, “Just when did you dope it out, Durham?”

  I said, “When I learned who Ilona really was. Then I realized that Jodi had played me for a sucker. She hung around me to find out just what the opposition was doing. She even gave me a few clues, but they led to Reese. I think she had the idea that I’d pin everything on him and that somehow she could get him killed. Then she’d be in the clear and have all the loot for herself.”

  Maslin said, “She played you for a sucker, all right. When she figured you were getting hot, she maneuvered you into that second trip to the Pad. According to what we got out of Willie, Jodi called before you got there and arranged to have you carted away.”

  I said, “One reason I didn’t suspect her is that I thought she had plenty of money from her art work.”

  Ilona came up from her hangover long enough to say, “But that is not true. Remember that she told everyone her success was in England. And it is six thousand miles from here. The truth is that she failed in England, and to make money she mixed herself up with certain men. It is they who gave her the idea of the robbery. And when Reese Fuller arrived to work for the Zwahili government, she made use of him.”

  I said, “So you came here because you had a direct lead on her?”

  “That is right.”

  I looked at Maslin. “And you knew all the time that Ilona and Ghatt were here making an investigation.”

  “But I didn’t know who they were investigating,” he said. “They were too cagey a pair to give out with anything until they had some real evidence.”

  Arne said softly, tiredly, “So greedy, that kid. Even when she was a little girl, she was greedy. You remember, Durham?”

  I said, “I remember.” And that ended the conversation.

  Later, after Reese and his playmates—especially Ridley—talked, and after the government men finished their part of the investigation, we learned the rest of the story. We got the names of the men who had come and gone, taking their shares of the Zwahili notes. We heard how Mr. Ghatt got to work on long distance lines to various countries. And for all that he didn’t talk much, he said enough to have every man picked up before he could dump the notes on the free money markets.

  And we learned that Reese was just a pawn in Jodi’s game. The idea and the execution had
been hers and her friends’ in London. With that way she had with men, Jodi’d wrapped Reese up tight with her body. By the time he woke up to what was happening, he was too far in. And like her, he could only think of killing his way out.

  And like her, he hadn’t quite made the grade.

  • • •

  When I left for Puget City, Ilona went along—to help me shop for new clothes, she said. And she did, too. We spent a whole day at the job, staggering back to my apartment, loaded with packages.

  I went into the bedroom to change. Ilona headed for the liquor cabinet. I was showered and shaved and in my shorts when she came into the bedroom with a drink for me. She set the drink down on the dresser and then parked herself on the bed as if she had a half interest in the place.

  I watched her down her drink. The beautiful, foolish smile she had worn on Arne’s launch was back on her face.

  I said, “You aren’t a lush, by any chance?”

  She said with tipsy dignity. “I am relaxing. After every case, I relax completely.”

  “I’m ready for a little relaxation myself,” I assured her.

  “I did not come here to defend myself, either my character or my honor,” she informed me. “I came to discuss business. I wish to know if I might work for your company. I am experienced and I very much like this part of your United States. It is so pretty, all green and with water like Denmark and …”

  I said, “All our work is marine insurance.”

  “I am very good with marines.” She stopped and thought that one over. “With marine things,” she amended. “Boats … and marine insurance men … and—”

  I said, “I’ll ask the boss. We should have an international expert on the staff.”

  She stood up and, since the business part of the discussion was concluded, her whole demeanor changed. She swayed up to me with a terrific smile on her face and a more terrific gleam in her eyes.

  “Is this the time and place to wrestle, Peter?”

  I said, “Yes,” and kissed her. I kissed her again. Somewhere along the line she had forgotten how to wrestle—at least defensively.

  • • •

  I said, “We should eat something. It’s after midnight.”