Rum Affair

by Dorothy Dunnett

  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.

  The Land Rover. And Kenneth.

  There was time to see as much before the lighthouse revolved, and we were plunged into darkness again, except for the little, lit city below.

  Then, with a silence and suddenness quite terrible, every other light we could see went instantly out, and the darkness was utter.

  In the sodden, alien wilderness, the shouts of alarm and enquiry reached us quite distinctly from below. We waited, breathing lightly, trying to smell from which side the danger might come. Then Johnson spoke abruptly into my ear.

  “Wait ten minutes, as near as you can judge, and then set off for K
enneth. I don’t think anyone is likely to be watching us, but Hennessy and I will go off now in the opposite direction, and that should draw them away . . . Have you the nerve to get to that Land Rover alone?”

  I answered, trying to sound bravely uncertain. All I asked in the world was a chance to get to that Land Rover alone.

  I felt Johnson rise; then Hennessy got to his feet with a grunt. He pulled his parka hood over his bandages, patted me briefly on one shoulder, and blended with Johnson into the dark.

  It was hard to believe that, after all his arduous journey, both Johnson and Hennessy were content to forego a meeting with Kenneth. It struck me that one or the other was far less interested in Kenneth Holmes than in the tumult now going on at the base. And that, distrusting each other as they did, neither man would move without the other.

  It suited me. Nothing could have suited me better. There was nothing now but this dark, rain-filled hillside between me and Kenneth. And this was what I had come a long, painful way to achieve.

  TWELVE

  The rain had stopped.

  On the steep road where the Land Rover was parked, it was dark and quiet under the overhanging hill, which masked even the revolving blaze of the lighthouse. Below, where the road joined the other paths to the base and the pier it was dark, but by no means as quiet. Men’s voices, shouting, came clearly up from the waterfront, and the flash of numerous torches, borne at a run. As I watched, the disturbance swung away from me, and uphill. Up at the base, a big battery lamp suddenly switched on, then another.

  But I was no longer looking or listening, for I had reached the Land Rover’s nose.

  If anyone had seen me approach, there was no sign within. The windscreen stared back at me emptily, and when, stepping lightly, I moved round behind, there was no sound or movement from the dark interior which the half-unrolled canvas concealed.

  There was no point in whispering names, or in thinking of personal safety now. I was committed. Placing my hands where, on shooting weekends, I had been taught, I pulled myself inside the hood and up to one of the two lining benches. I arrived there, and Kenneth’s voice, low and hoarse and quite unmistakable, said: “Valentina?” And Kenneth’s arms, like a bear’s in some huge, unyielding topcoat, closed hard around me. And we kissed.

  It was the same. I don’t know why, but there has never been anyone like him. I said, when I could pull my mouth away: “You made me come a long way to find you.”

  His lips in my hair, he didn’t want to speak. At length he said, in the same low voice: “I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have come.”

  “You need someone,” I said. He was shivering. “You forget, Kenneth. Almost nothing can hurt me. I’m armour plate all the way through. You shouldn’t have left me, in Rose Street, that night . . .”

  His breathing quickened. As I spoke his hands tightened and my own pulses were a good deal less than stagnant: the kiss went on and on. To break it would be agony, but it had to be done. Now, of all times, I had to be clear-sighted. So I raised my two hands and said: “Kenneth!”

  He did not obey me at once, and I said sharply: “Not now! Not now. The whole camp is awake.”

  He drew a long breath, in the dark. “I know,” he said. “They’re probably looking for me. I’m under suspicion.”

  It was no news. Why else was he stuck here? And Gold-tooth had been quite confident. Chigwell was a Government agent, he had said. And Dr Holmes had blown up the Lysander. Just like that I wasn’t taking the easy way. I said quietly: “Under suspicion of what? Causing the Lysander explosion?”

  He was grateful, clearly, not to have to tell me himself. Even so, there was a pause before he said: “Yes. And not without cause. I probably did.”

  This time I sat back, and no doubt my voice was impatient. “My dear Kenneth, you are neither an idiot nor a traitor. Also, you were in Rose Street, Edinburgh, so far as I know, when the damned boat set off on her trials. Do you want me to testify for you? I could swear to the messages you sent me. And other people apart from your friend Chigwell must have known you were there.”

  “Of course they do.” Now he was impatient. “But I couldn’t jeopardise your good name like that. In any case, that wasn’t the point. The way it was worked, I could have been in a Gemini rocket and still set the thing off.” He stopped and said, in an irritable double take: “Was that damned fool Chigwell still there when you came? I’m sorry, darling. He swore blind he’d pack and get out.”

  I said nothing. I was swallowing down my relief. Kenneth hadn’t killed Chigwell. I knew it now, for an absolute fact. I knew my Kenneth Holmes to the bone. He was the most transparently honest man I have ever encountered. He said now, spurred by my silence: “Don’t worry. Harry Chigwell won’t talk. He’s discretion itself.”

  “He certainly is,” I said. “He’s dead.”

  There was a silence. Then: “Oh, my God,” said Kenneth. “Tell me.” And I did. Or as much as I told Johnson, anyway. There was no word, for instance, of diamond bracelets buying off anyone. I had no desire to go into the matter of diamond bracelets, or indeed of Duke Buzzy. Instead I said: “Who was Chigwell?”

  He didn’t even hear me at first: he was too shocked, and too busy exclaiming over my unorthodox behaviour with a corpse. Then it dawned on him that my conduct was not quite so irrational when one considered that he, Kenneth, was the number one suspect. “I didn’t kill him,” he said then, blankly. I tried again. “Who was he, Kenneth?”

  It didn’t help. Chigwell had been nothing, it appeared, but an old school friend he had run into the previous year, who had offered the use of his flat should Kenneth ever require it. If Gold-tooth was right and Chigwell was a Government agent, then Kenneth clearly was ignorant of it. I said: “And why then did you leave?”

  He didn’t want to answer that. After a moment he said: “Because of you, Tina. There were microphones in the flat. I found one under the table, and broke it. Someone was watching us: would have followed us, too. They wanted to hear what we said when we met. I thought I’d deprive them of that pleasure.”

  “That sounds grim,” I said. I could hear my heart thudding. “But why, Kenneth? Blackmail? Or what? Why should anyone want to do that?”

  “That,” said Kenneth heavily, “brings me back to the Lysander. The bloody sub. Tina.”

  “Well?” I said. Sometimes he was so slow, one wanted to scream. But you forget that, most times, when you were with him. The wind, revived, sighed round the struts of the van and the canvas creaked and vibrated. The voices of men shouting could still be heard now and then, but comfortably in the distance. There was an immense sense of isolation, of space. Almost I had become reconciled to the darkness, to not being able to see more than the broad planes of his face. Kenneth’s hands over mine were warm and heavily-jointed, an artisan’s hands. The hands of a scientific engineer of superior calibre.

  He said: “I didn’t want you to know this; but your name and mine are already linked over Lysander. The defence people are curious. And that’s why I didn’t want you to come.”

  “You didn’t want me to come, and yet you told me where to find you?” I said and he must have heard the smile in my voice. But I wouldn’t let him kiss me again, not just then. “Tell me,” I said in my turn.

  And that was how I heard from Kenneth that he and I between us had caused the destruction and worse than destruction on board the submarine Lysander.

  It was simple enough. It concerned a new form of explosive, allied to a small electronic device sensitive to control by single or multiple sounds. He had been tinkering with it in the States, when we had been so much together, and I had given him one of my albums of records – Tina Rossi Sings, it was called. Original stuff.

  So, purely as an experiment and as an indication of his state at the time, Kenneth had keyed the bomb to a phrase sung by my voice.

  It was an experiment he had never concluded; and since he left Nevada the prototype and its plans and formulae had been left in a safe vault, inviolat
e. He would not say to me then, even there on South Rona, what form the device took, or even describe its outward appearance. But the device which exploded the Lysander was an exact copy of that very prototype. By some freak, parts of the bomb casing had been found. It was tiny, said Kenneth. Small enough to plant in a pocket, but powerful enough to wreck the immediate area where it exploded; and maybe even to sink the sub. if it hit the right place. That was all. Except that the bomb that killed three men on the Lysander had been set in the same way as his – for my voice.

  I said nothing. After a moment, Kenneth went on. “It was pretty clever, you see. They had the same album of songs in the submarine mess . . . everyone has it, I suppose. When the sub. was in harbour they all used the record player in the shore mess. It was only when they were submerged, on long trials, that the one in the mess was turned on, and when it reached that one note in your voice, it triggered the bomb. You must admit,” he added with an effort at lightness, “being a fan of Valentina Rossi’s has its drawbacks.”

  I wished he would keep to the point. I said: “So you’re under suspicion. Why? Do they think you copied the plans? Or showed them to someone in Nevada?”

  “They’ve not so far been very explicit,” said Kenneth. “But they’re asking a lot of interesting questions. Such as who had access to the lab, besides me.”

  “I did,” I said. “If you mean the lab in Nevada. And who else?”

  “No one,” said Kenneth, quite baldly.

  There was a long silence. Then I said: “If you are accusing me of stealing and selling your secrets, I can only deny it. I have no defence and no proof. Except that I’m here.”

  “I’m not accusing you, my darling,” said Kenneth. “I’m not. I’m not.” His arms, flung round me, suddenly tightened. His cheek, pressed against mine, was suddenly damp. “I haven’t even told them you were there. How could I, and keep your good name? It’s just that they may find out anyway, if they trace the letters . . .”