Rum Affair

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Back to square one. Old man Bizet and boozet again.

  I was wrong. But it wasn’t Hennessy’s fault. He hadn’t got the length of nibbling my ear when we were interrupted by someone reporting a chart missing; and five minutes after that a second fellow arrived to ask advice about a slightly choked feed pump.

  He had the look of a boy who hadn’t had a square meal for a week, and was out of cigarettes most likely as well. I smiled at him and, saying: “May I?” to Hennessy, offered him one of the silver cigarette boxes before he went. Aided by me, he took half a dozen. Mine I let go out in the ashtray at once. I don’t, of course, smoke.

  It wasn’t coincidence. The next to tap on the door had an anxiety about the echo sounder. As Hennessy, cursing, ran up the companion, the lad turned round to me, and I gave him a wink.

  He disappeared, a shiny smile covering his dripping face from ear to sou’westered ear. They were ready for mischief and mutiny – and good luck to them. Symphonetta had arrived first at Portree because Hennessy had driven his helpers like dogs.

  It seemed a good idea to go up on deck too, before the ship fell nominally apart. I gathered my hair again under the black oiled silk turban, finished my drink, and, drawing my mackintosh close, clambered aloft.

  In the cockpit, Hennessy was saying: “You damned, feckless set of nincompoops – if I thought this was deliberate . . .”

  “Where is South Rona, Stanley?” I said. “Is that the chart? Do show me how you are sailing?”

  The acolytes melted to their tasks, and Hennessy pored over the chart. I had a good look too, for very soon I was going to be alone on the land inside all those soundings, where Kenneth and I were to meet.

  South Rona is a rocky slip of an island, less than five miles in length and not much more than a mile wide anywhere, with no inhabitants save the lighthouse keepers at the north end, and a small naval base not far from the lighthouse which is normally deserted, except when the Lysander or a sister submarine was on trial. The rest of the island is ridged with rocky spurs and steep valleys, with bog and lochans in most of them, and, to the south-west, a rock-ridden haven called Acarsaid Mor, which seems to mean, simply, Big Harbour.

  Over the hill from Acarsaid Mor was another bay, long dried out, with above it the roofless ruins of the old village. So Dolly’s maps said, and all those of whom I had discreetly enquired. I was here now to prove how well I had studied my lesson.

  Soon, through the murk and the rain, a blacker shape appeared on our right, and one of the boys slithered to the bows, while Hennessy cut our power down to a whisper. It was the entrance to the anchorage opening up to us, and the black shapes merging into the blue-black of the sky were the hills of South Rona. From one of these, or from the lighthouse itself, Kenneth would have seen Dolly pass after midnight, on her way south to Portree. I wondered if he had seen and recognised Symphonetta, and if Hennessy’s presence alarmed him. I wondered if he had turned back, or had been stopped by the security guards.

  We were a long way from the base and the lighthouse, where his sleeping quarters must be. The other anchorage, at the north end of the island, was for lighthouse and naval use only. The pier there was for taking on stores, and for the Willa Mavis when she brought stocks for the lighthouse. Somewhere there, they had what remained of the Lysander’s wrecked special equipment, and their scientists would be working on it. Kenneth would not want a rendezvous there.

  While I considered, we had crept to the head of the inlet and the boys had dropped anchor. Nothing stirred on the dark shore. Hennessy, out of temper already, looked through his binoculars and was inclined to be tart.

  I have no patience with that kind of thing. While the boat was being lowered in a hurry to take me ashore, I looked at the chart once again. A mile of rough walking, it looked; with perhaps a stiff climb in the middle, and then I should be in the village. And I should know very soon after that what happened that night in a warm flat in Rose Street, Edinburgh, where there was a dead man about whom there had been no publicity at all.

  ELEVEN

  Hennessy didn’t go ashore with me in that launch to meet Kenneth. It took me some time to argue him out of it, and all the time I was sure of only one thing. If he insisted on coming, then I should insist on all three of his young men coming with him. As it was, he gave in when he did because he thought I was bringing my friend back on board with me.

  Life, however, does not always work out like that. Instead of Hennessy, two of his white-coated young men, Shaw and Roberts, were to take me ashore. By Hennessy’s orders. During the journey I took the chance to explain my dilemma, and to receive from Mr Shaw and Mr Roberts their most fervent assurances of help. I told them I wanted to keep this appointment in privacy. I could count, they said, on doing just that.

  We landed. Shaw, who was going to be a doctor, and Roberts, who dreamed during law classes of being a front desk fiddle under von Karajan, helped me out of the boat and up the stony beach into the undergrowth, while I felt for my whistle, my torch and my compass. I waved them goodbye and watched them return to the launch.

  They made no attempt to refloat it. They were going to sit there, oblivious to signals, and wait until I should come back. That left Stanley Hennessy marooned in the harbour on board Symphonetta, with a rowing boat his only means of conveyance. By the time he got that ashore, Kenneth and I should be quite hard to find. I waved my torch again and, turning, set off.

  Once, in my years of sycophancy, I learned my way about the night sky. It is a useful trick, to steer by in the dark. That night, the stars were half-masked by the heavy, rain-sodden clouds, but it did not greatly matter. My way, from the very slope of the rock, was quite clear. And the darkness was welcome.

  I told myself that Vallida, with Duke Buzzy and Gold-tooth, was by now safely in Stornoway, where Gold-tooth could catch a plane south with my diamond bracelet. I told myself that every boat on these shores would be checked by the lookout, and that there would be a cordon of some kind, whether of alarms or of men, through which Kenneth must come. That would be near the base. You cannot guard country like this. There are too many hiding places.

  I picked my way over that ridge of bony, uneven ground, covered with tough grass and heather, until I heard the sea louder again on my left, and the broken shell of a path made itself felt, underfoot, winding uphill away from the sea, to the brow of a hill on my right.

  Then I began to pick out, on either side of the path, dim against the black hillside, blurred by mosses and obscured by low clumps of dark trees, the squat shapes of houses, set here and there on the slopes. There were no roofs on these houses, no reflection in the empty windows of the thistles and bracken that waved in the wind outside. There, dim at my feet, they had a garden of club grass and buttercups, and the closed pink ragged robin, bent long-legged in the dark.

  The village. I stood still and listened. The topmost house, Kenneth had said. The wind, rising to one of its gusts, suddenly spoke like an organ through the vents and crevices of each tumbling, derelict house; and the grass and leaves and bracken, bending about me, roared and fumed like a marshalling of ghost locomotives, hissing pressurised steam. A stone fell, sharply, and I drew breath, my right fist clenched hard in my pocket. There was a heavy movement, and then the vanishing, trotting bulk of a sheep.

  From tree to tree and wall to wall, I made my way uphill. That would be the house, higher up than the rest, with its end oblique to the sea. Kenneth, are you watching me? Are you waiting at one of the empty windows, your breath coming as quickly as mine is, or are you resting inside, on some fallen block from the chimney, your shoulders against the green-padded wall, your thin American raincoat, that you bought in Nevada, slung about your shoulders over the stained sweater and the untidy slacks . . . ?

  There was a doorway. Even its lintel had gone. I paused, and then walked slowly through.

  “Hello,” said Johnson.

  Once, at a very intimate party, I found myself introduced to my dentist. This was wor
se. Like a clenched hand opening, my diaphragm let fall all its breath. Then I clicked on the torch in my hand. It illuminated a square of unkempt, silky undergrowth, seeded with stones, and on one of the stones, as I had pictured, was seated a man.

  Except that the two dazzling orbs, catlike, which watched me weren’t Kenneth’s: they were Johnson’s twin-arched bifocals. Of Kenneth there was no sign at all.

  “How did you get here?” I said. And as an afterthought: “I hope you remembered your gun?”

  In the light of my torch he looked unwontedly businesslike, in some sort of proofed jacket and trousers in a dark peaty brown, cut like a battledress. At his side lay a stick, and an ordinary haversack, dark with moisture. The rain, I realised, had for some time eased off. Always smiling, while I looked at him he unbuttoned one of the big battledress pockets.

  The first thing he took out was his pipe, which he stuck in his mouth. The second was his gun. It lay there in his hand, the small nickel pistol I last saw on the rocks inside Staffa. “I’m glad you noticed it,” said Johnson comfortably, turning it in his artist’s pussyfoot hand, until he had it trained on my heart. “It comes in handy sometimes.” And he pressed the trigger, quickly and hard.

  For singing, one must be in training. As his finger tightened, I dropped – but not before I had flung my torch as hard as I could straight for his head. As the bruising stones and nettles received me, I saw him incline gently, to allow the beam to arch hissing past him, while in his hand the trigger clicked fully home.

  There was no report. Nor was there a bullet. Instead, a little flame minced up from the top of the gun and tilting it, Johnson puffed at his pipe.

  It took some time to light, during which my torch lay shining green in the long grass at his back, while the little flame pulsed on his big brow and his flat glasses and his wet black hair, and his grin. Then the lighter flicked out, and there was nothing but the dull glow of the ash.

  “You want to be careful,” he said mildly. “Full of nettles, just there. Actually, I thought I’d protect my investment. It’s going to be a good picture of you, Tina, this one. On reflection, I didn’t want you either drowned in one of South Rona’s lochans or chased by the security guards, who haven’t seen a white woman in weeks. I sobered up Tom McIver and got him to tell me the rendezvous.”

  “Then where’s Kenneth?” I said. I limped round him, got my torch and limped back. I didn’t shout. My brain was too busy. I could feel him watching me, but he didn’t move. Grey in the darkness, his pipe smoke streamed out sideways in the wind, even in here.

  “He couldn’t get here. He left a note. One of the lighthouse men must have brought it. The guards are all alerted at base, and he couldn’t get across the island in time. There’s a parked Land Rover below the lighthouse on the road. He says he’ll wait until dawn inside that.” In the light of my torch, which I had trained on him again, Johnson held out a white slip of paper. I could see the Valentina in Kenneth’s writing outside.

  “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.