Night Of Error

by Desmond Bagley

  Jarvis looked at me from under bushy eyebrows. 'Wasn't he the chap working with your brother when he died?'

  That's the man.'

  He pondered, then shook his head. 'I haven't heard anything of him lately; he certainly hasn't published. But I'll make a few enquiries and put you in touch.'

  And that was that. I didn't know why I had taken the trouble to ask the Prof, about Norgaard unless it was still that uneasy itch at the back of my skull, the feeling that something was wrong somewhere. It probably didn't mean anything anyway, and I put it out of my mind as I walked back to my office.

  It was getting late and I was about ready to leave when Geordie returned and heaved a battered, ancient suitcase onto my desk. There it is,' he said. They made me open it – it was a wee bit difficult without a key, though.'

  'What did you do?'

  'Busted the lock,' he said cheerfully.

  I looked at the case warily. 'What's in it?'

  'Not much. Some clothes, a few books and a lot of pebbles. And there's a letter addressed to Mark's wife.' He untied the string holding the case together, skimmed the letter across the desk, and started to haul out the contents – a couple of tropical suits, not very clean; two shirts; three pairs of socks; three textbooks on oceanography – very up-to-date; a couple of notebooks in Mark's handwriting, and a miscellany of pens, toiletries and small odds and ends.

  I looked at the letter, addressed to Helen in a neat cursive hand. 'I'd better open this,' I said. 'We don't know what's in it and I don't want Helen to get too much of a shock.'

  Geordie nodded and I slit the envelope. The letter was short and rather abrupt:

  Dear Mrs Trevelyan, I am sorry to tell you that your husband, Mark, is dead, although you may know this already by the time you get this. Mark was a good friend to me and left some of his things in my care. I am sending them all to you as I know you would like to have them.

  Sincerely,

  P. Nelson

  I said, 'I thought this would be official, but it's not.'

  Geordie scanned the short note. 'Do you know this chap, Nelson?'

  'Never heard of him.'

  Geordie put the letter on the desk and tipped up the suitcase. 'Then there are these.' A dozen or so potato-like objects rolled onto the desk. Some of them rolled further and thumped onto the carpet, and Geordie stooped and picked them up. 'You'll probably make more sense of these than I can.'

  I turned one in my fingers. 'Manganese nodules,' I said. 'Very common in the Pacific.' '

  'Are they valuable?'

  I laughed. 'If you could get at them easily they might be -but you can't, so they aren't. They lie on the seabed at an average depth of about fourteen thousand feet.'

  He looked closely at one of the nodules. 'I wonder where he got these, then? It's a bit deep for skin-diving.'

  They're probably souvenirs of the IGY – the International Geophysical Year. Mark was a physical chemist on one of the ships in the Pacific.' I took one of the notebooks and flipped the pages at random. Most of it seemed to be mathematical, the equations close-packed in Mark's finicky hand.

  I tossed it into the open suitcase. 'Let's get this stuff packed away, then we'll go home.'

  So we put everything back, higgledy-piggledy, and carted the case down to the car. On the way home Geordie said, 'What about a show tonight?' On his rare visits to a city he had a soft spot for big gaudy musicals.

  'If you can get tickets,' I said. 'I don't feel like queueing.'

  'I'll get them,' he said confidently. 'I know someone who owes me a few favours. Look, drop me right here and I'll see you at the flat in half an hour, or maybe a bit longer.'

  I dropped him and when I got to where I lived I took Mark's suitcase first because it came handiest, then I went back to the car for Geordie's gear. For some time I pottered about estimating what I'd need for a trip away with him, but I had most of what I needed and the list of things I had to get was very short and didn't take long to figure out.

  After a while I found myself looking at the suitcase. I picked it up, put it on the bed and opened it and looked at the few remnants of Mark's life. I hoped that when I went I'd leave more than a few books, a few clothes and a doubtful reputation. The clothing was of no particular interest but, as I lifted up a jacket, a small leather-bound notebook fell out of the breast pocket.

  I picked it up and examined it. It had obviously been used as a diary but most of the entries were in shorthand, once Pitman's, but adapted in an idiosyncratic way so that they were incomprehensible to anyone but the writer – Mark.

  Occasionally there were lines of chemical and mathematical notation and every now and then there was a doodled drawing. I remembered that Mark had been a doodler even at school and had been ticked off often because of the state of his exercise books. There wasn't much sense to be made of any of it.

  I put the diary on my dressing table and turned to the larger notebooks. They were much more interesting although scarcely more comprehensible. Apparently, Mark was working on a theory of nodule formation that, to say the least of it, was hare-brained – certainly from the point of view of orthodox physical chemistry. The time scale he was using was fantastic, and even at a casual glance his qualitative analysis seemed out of line.

  Presently I heard Geordie come in. He popped his head round the door of the bedroom and said triumphantly, 'I've got the tickets. Let's have a slap-up dinner first and then go on to the theatre.'

  That's a damned good idea,' I said. I threw the notebooks and the clothing back into the case and relied the lid down.

  Geordie nodded at it. 'Find anything interesting?'

  I grinned. 'Nothing, except that Mark was going round the bend. He'd got hold of some damn fool idea about nodules and was going overboard about it.'

  I shoved the case under the bed and began to get dressed for dinner.* 3*

  It was a good dinner and a better show and we drove home replete with fine food and excellent entertainment. Geordie was in high spirits and sang in a cracked and tuneless voice one of the numbers from the show. We were both in a cheerful mood.

  I parked the car outside the block of flats and got out. There was still a thin drizzle of rain but I thought that by morning it would have cleared. That was good; I wanted fine weather for my leave. As I looked up at the sky I stiffened.

  'Geordie, there's someone in my flat.'

  He looked up at the third floor and saw what I had seen – a furtive, hunting light moving at one of the windows.

  That's a torch.' His teeth flashed as he grinned in the darkness. 'It's a long time since I've had a proper scrap.'

  I said, 'Come on,' and ran up into the foyer.

  Geordie caught my arm as I pressed for the lift. 'Hold on, let's do this properly,' he said. 'Wait one minute and then go up in the lift. I'll take the stairs – we should arrive on your floor at the same time. Covers both exits.'

  I grinned and saluted. 'Yes, sergeant.' You can't keep an old soldier down; Geordie was making a military operation out of catching a sneak thief – but I followed orders.

  I went up in the lift and stepped out into the lighted corridor. Geordie had made good time up the stairs and was breathing as easily as though he'd been strolling on the level. He motioned me to keep the lift door open and reached inside to press the button for the top floor. I closed the door and the lift went up.

  He grinned in his turn. 'Anyone leaving in a hurry must use the stairs now. Got your key?'

  I passed it to him and we walked to the door of my flat, treading softly. Through the uncurtained kitchen window I could see the flash of a torch. Geordie cautiously inserted the key into the lock. 'We'll go in sharpish,' he whispered, gave the key a twist, threw open the door and plunged into the flat like an angry bull.

  As I followed on his heel I heard a shout – 'Ojo!' – and the next thing I knew was a blinding flash in my eyes and I was grappling with someone at the kitchen door. Whoever it was hit me on the side of the head, it must have
been with the torch because the light went out. I felt dizzy for a moment but held on, thrusting forward and bringing my knee up sharply.

  I heard a gasp of pain and above it the roar of Geordie's voice from further in the flat – possibly the bedroom.

  I let go my grip and struck out with my fist, and yelled in pain as my knuckles hit the kitchen door. My opponent squirmed out from where I had him pinned and was gone through the open door of the flat. Things were happening too fast for me. I could hear Geordie swearing at the top of his voice and the crash of furniture. A light tenor voice called, 'Huid! Huid! No dispareis! Emplead cuchillos.' Then suddenly someone else banged into me in the darkness and I struck out again.

  I knew now that this assailant would certainly have a knife and possibly a gun and I think I went berserk – it's wonderful what the adrenal glands will do for a man in an emergency. In the light from the corridor I caught a glimpse of an upraised knife and I chopped viciously at the wrist. There was a howl of pain and the knife clattered to the floor. I aimed a punch at where I thought a stomach was – and missed.

  Something was swung at the side of my head again and I went down as a black figure jumped over me. If he hadn't stopped to kick at my head he would have got clean away, but I squirmed to avoid his boot and caught his leg, and he went sprawling into the corridor.

  I dived after him and got between him and the stairs, and he stood in a crouch looking at me, his eyes darting about, looking for escape. Then I saw what he must have swung at my head in the flat – it was Mark's suitcase.

  Suddenly he turned and ran, towards the blank end of the corridor. 'I've got him now,' I thought exultantly, and went after him at a dead run. But he had remembered what I'd forgotten – the fire escape.

  He might have got away then but once again I tackled him rugby-fashion so that I floored him just short of the fire escape. The fall knocked the breath out of me and he improved the shining hour by kicking me in the face. Then, as I was shaking my head in dizziness, he tossed Mark's case into the darkness.

  By the time I regained my feet I was between him and the metal staircase and he was facing me with his right hand, now unencumbered, darting to his pocket. I saw the gun as he drew it and knew the meaning of real fear. I jumped for him and he side-stepped frantically trying to clear the gun from his pocket – but the foresight must have caught on the lining.

  Then I hit him hard on the jaw and he teetered on the top step of the fire escape. I hit him again and slammed him against the railing and, to my horror, he jackknifed over. He didn't make a sound as he fell the three floors into the alley and it seemed a long time before I heard the dull thump as he hit the ground.

  I looked down into the darkness and saw nothing. I was conscious of the trembling of my hands as they gripped the steel rail. There was a scurry of footsteps and I turned to see Geordie darting down the stairs. 'Leave them,' I shouted. They're armed!'

  But he didn't stop and all I heard was the thud of his feet as he raced down the staircase.

  The tall thin man who lived in the next flat came out in a dressing gown. 'Now, what's all this?' he asked querulously. 'A chap can't listen to the radio with all this racket going on.'

  I said, 'Phone the police. There's been an attempted murder.'

  His face went white and he looked at my arm. I looked down and saw blood staining the edges of a slit in the sleeve of my jacket. I couldn't remember being knifed and I felt nothing.

  I looked back up at him. 'Well, hurry,' I yelled at him.

  A gunshot echoed up the stairwell and we both started.

  'Christ!'

  I clattered down the stairs at top speed, all three flights, and came across Geordie in the foyer. He was sitting on the floor staring at his fingers in amazement – they were red with welling blood.

  The bastard shot me!' he said incredulously.

  'Where are you hit, for God's sake?'

  'In the hand, I think. I don't feel anything anywhere else, and he only fired one shot.'

  I looked at his hand. Blood was spurting from the end of his little finger. I began to laugh, an hysterical sound not far from crying, and went on until Geordie slapped my face with his unwounded hand. 'Pull yourself together, Mike,' he said firmly. I became aware of doors slamming and voices upstairs but as yet nobody had ventured down into the foyer itself, and I sobered suddenly.

  'I think I killed one of them,' I said emptily.

  'Don't be daft. How could you kill a man with your fist?'

  'I knocked him off the fire escape. He fell from the third floor.'

  Geordie looked at me closely. 'We'd better go and have a look at that.'

  'Are you all right?' We were both bleeding freely now.

  He was wrapping his finger in a handkerchief which promptly turned bright red. 'I'm okay. You can't call this a mortal wound,' he said dryly. We went out into the street and walked quickly round to the alley into which the fire escape led. As we turned the corner there was a sudden glare of light and the roar of an engine, together with the slamming of a car door.

  'Look out!' yelled Geordie and flung himself sideways.

  I saw the two great eyes of headlamps rushing at me from the darkness of the alley and I frantically flattened myself against the wall. The car roared past and I felt the wind of it brush my trousers, and then with a squeal of hard-used tyres it turned the corner and was gone.

  I listened to the noise of the engine die away and eased myself from the wall, taking a deep shaky breath. In the light of the street lamp on the corner I saw Geordie pick himself up. 'Christ!' I said. 'You don't know what's going to happen next.'

  'This lot aren't ordinary burglars,' said Geordie, brushing himself down. They're too bloody persistent. Where's this fire escape?'

  'A bit further along,' I said.

  We walked slowly up the alley and Geordie fell over the man I had knocked over the edge. We bent down to examine him and, in the faint light, we could see his head. It was twisted at an impossible angle and there was a deep bloody depression in the skull.

  Geordie said, 'No need to look any further. He's dead.'

  'And you say they were speaking Spanish,' said the Inspector.

  I nodded wearily. 'As soon as we went into the flat someone shouted, "Look out!" and then I was in the middle of a fight. A bit later on another man shouted, "Get out of here; don't shoot – use your knives." I think it was the man I knocked off the fire escape.'

  The Inspector looked at me thoughtfully. 'But you say he was going to shoot you.'

  'He'd lost his knife by then, and I was going for him.'

  'How good is your Spanish, Mr Trevelyan?'

  'Pretty good,' I said. 'I did a lot of work off south-west Europe about four years ago and I was based in Spain. I took the trouble to learn the language – I have a flair for them.'

  The doctor tied a neat knot in the bandage round my arm and said, That'll hold it, but try not to use the arm for a while.' He packed his bag and went out.

  I sat up and looked about the flat – it was like a field dressing station in a blitzed area. I was stripped to the waist with a bandaged arm and Geordie sported a natty bandage on his little finger. He was drinking tea and he held out his finger like a charlady at a garden party.

  The flat was a wreck. What hadn't been broken by the burglars had been smashed during the fight. A chair with no legs lay in the corner and broken glass from the front of my bookcase littered the carpet. A couple of uniformed constables stood stolidly in the corners and a plain clothes man was blowing powder about the place with an insufflator.

  The Inspector said, 'Once again – how many of them were there?'

  Geordie said, 'I had two on my hands at one time.'

  'I had a go at two,' I said. 'But I think that one of them had a bash at Geordie first. It's difficult to say – it happened so fast.'

  This man you heard – did he say "knife" or "knives"?'

  I thought about that. 'He said "knives".'

  The Inspe
ctor said, Then there were more than two of them.'

  Geordie said unexpectedly, There were four.'

  The Inspector looked at him with raised eyebrows.

  'I saw three men in the car that passed us. One driving and two getting in in a hurry. With one dead in the alley – that makes four.'

  'Ah yes,' said the Inspector. 'They would have one man in the car. Tell me, how did you come to get shot?'

  A smile touched Geordie's lips. 'How does anyone get shot? With a gun.' The Inspector recognized a touch of over-excitement and said dryly, 'I mean, what were the circumstances?'

  'Well, I chased the little bastard down the stairs and damn nearly caught him in the foyer. He saw he was going to be copped so he turned and let me have it. I hadn't reached him yet. I was so surprised I sat down – then I saw all the blood.'

  'You say he was little?'

  That he was. A little squirt of not more than five foot four.'

  'So two men went down the stairs, there was one in the car -and one went over the fire escape,' the Inspector summarized.

  He had a blunt, square face with watchful grey eyes which he suddenly turned on me like gimlets. 'You say this man threw a suitcase into the alley.'

  That's right.'

  'We haven't found it, Mr Trevelyan.'

  I said, The others must have picked it up. That's when they nearly ran us down.'

  He said softly, 'How did they know it was there?'

  'I don't know. They may have seen it coming over. I guess the car was parked in the alley waiting for the others to come down that way.'

  He nodded. 'What was in the suitcase – do you know?'

  I glanced across at Geordie who looked back at me expressionlessly. I said, 'Some stuff belonging to my brother.'

  'What kind of-er-stuff?'

  'Clothing, books – geological samples.'

  The Inspector sighed. 'Anything important or valuable?'

  I shook my head. 'I doubt it.'

  'What about the samples?'

  I said, 'I only saw the specimens briefly. They appeared to be manganese nodules of the type which is often to be found on the ocean bed. They're very common, you know,'