The Danger of Life

by Ken Lussey

‘As long as it takes to find a few crew, get up steam and load provisions for the trip,’ said the harbourmaster. ‘A couple of hours at most.’

  ‘Which means that they are unlikely to show any signs of life until much later tonight?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said John MacLean.

  ‘Hang on,’ said Michael. ‘Wouldn’t the troops have been guarding the harbour at the time? They seemed very efficient today. Surely they’d have stopped three men wandering along with a trolley in the middle of the night?’

  ‘You’d have thought so,’ said Bob. ‘But we know they’ve not been caught, so we have to assume they found a way of evading or fooling the patrols.’

  As he looked along the length of the pier, Bob reflected that there were times, though only a very few times, when the blackout was a blessing rather than a curse. It was very dark now, the only illumination coming from the occasional flicker of torchlight over on the Railway Pier as the boats there continued their preparations to sail.

  It was a few minutes before 9 p.m., and as far as Bob could tell through the windscreen of the civilian fish lorry, the storm was finally easing off. The rain was no longer hammering against the side of the lorry quite so hard, and the noise of the wind had eased noticeably in the last hour.

  Lieutenant Darlington had assembled twenty commandos for the operation to board the Silver Darling and, hopefully, capture Mallory and Quinlan. Some were from his original patrol, but others he had selected from among the larger number of men who had arrived in Mallaig late that afternoon, on foot from the east. Commandos were also forming a discreet but very tight cordon around the harbour, while others were enjoying the hospitality of the MacLeod sisters’ guest house after spending eighteen hours or more out in the storm.

  John MacLean had been happy to draw diagrams of the layout of the Silver Darling on a borrowed blackboard in the guest house earlier. Bob had taken a discreet look at the vessel before it had got dark. As MacLean had said, she was 80ft long. There were two masts, one towards the front of the boat and one near the rear. There was a bridge, which looked like a broad telephone box, located a little more than halfway back along the length of the boat. This was accessed internally by a ladder up from the deckhouse, which was partly set down within the hull of the boat. A door at deck level at the rear of the deckhouse gave access to steps down into it. From here it was a few steps forward into the area used for crew accommodation and meals, with the galley and the head, or toilet, behind. The engine room was below the bridge and came complete with a tall funnel which projected upwards immediately behind the bridge. MacLean was sure they would find anyone who was on board in the crew accommodation area of the deckhouse, which he described as having bunks on both sides and a fixed table and benches in the middle.

  Bob’s discussion with Lieutenant Darlington and Lieutenant Dixon had arrived at a plan which would see ten of the men board the Silver Darling from the fishing boat moored beside it, further out from the pier. Three men would meanwhile be shining lights down onto the boat from the pier above, and half a dozen more, led by Lieutenant Darlington, would board the rear of the vessel by climbing from a small boat onto its stern, which was at the end of the pier furthest from the shore. As soon as the boat was secured, Bob and Lieutenant Dixon would climb down onto it from the pier.

  The storm might have been easing, thought Bob, but it was still fierce enough to help mask any noise made by the men as they moved into position. At exactly 9 p.m. Lieutenant Darlington blew a whistle and the operation began, in complete silence apart from the hammer of boots on the wooden decking, which could be heard above the wind even from where Bob stood on the pier.

  Bob saw Darlington and his men enter the door at the rear of the deckhouse, but then, where there should have been shouts to indicate that the fugitives had been captured, there was simply silence. The men still on the deck looked up at Bob, who led the lieutenant down ten feet or so of steel ladder set into the side of the pier.

  There was still no noise from inside the deckhouse when Bob reached the door at its rear. He looked at Lieutenant Dixon in the glare of the light being shone down from above. Then he shrugged and dived into the doorway, holding his Sten gun, cocked and ready to fire, in front of him. The steps beyond the doorway were steeper than he had expected, and he landed heavily on the deck at the foot of them, stumbling forwards as he did so. Thankfully he’d kept his finger clear of the trigger or his Sten gun would have gone off accidentally. He heard Lieutenant Dixon land equally heavily behind him.

  The crew accommodation was lit by a single fitting set into the cabin ceiling. It wasn’t the brightest light Bob had ever seen, but it was sufficient for him to realise that he had dropped into what at first glimpse looked like a frozen tableau from a waxworks museum. Lieutenant Darlington was standing just ahead of him and to his right. The lieutenant’s men were standing off to the left of the table. Bob could also see a man in one of the bunks, on the right-hand side of the cabin as he looked along it. But all attention was focused on a man wearing a black fisherman’s jumper who stood at the far end of the cabin, near the ladder leading up to the bridge and the lower level doorway to the engine room. He held one arm in the air, and in that hand he held a hand grenade. From the dark hair and straight nose, Bob took this to be Patrick Quinlan.

  ‘Welcome, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘As I’ve just been saying to your friends, please keep very still. The pin is removed from this grenade, so if I drop it we all die.’ Quinlan caught Bob’s eye, then turned white, as if he’d seen a ghost. ‘You! But you’re dead!’

  Quinlan’s arm wavered and he took a step backwards. Lieutenant Darlington responded by taking a step forwards, raising his Thompson submachine gun as he did so.

  Quinlan dropped the grenade and was instantly shot by, it seemed to Bob, at least three of the commandos in the cabin. As Quinlan collapsed backwards into the doorway leading to the engine room, Lieutenant Darlington took another step forward and kicked the hand grenade past him. ‘Take cover!’

  Bob instinctively ducked and turned away towards the rear of the vessel. In the confined space of the engine room the blast would have been catastrophic, but Quinlan’s collapsing body seemed to shield those in the deckhouse from the worst of the effects. It was Lieutenant Dixon who shouted. ‘Everyone out, she’s sinking!’

  Bob felt the Silver Darling lurch beneath him and having seen Lieutenant Darlington and one of his men pull Sergeant Mallory off the bunk, hurried back up the steps and out onto the rear deck.

  By the time Bob was back on the pier, it was clear that the Silver Darling was indeed sinking. The ropes tying her to the pier were cut, and the fishing boat that had been moored next to her was moved around to nestle next to another vessel. Within five minutes nothing could be seen except for the two masts, the roof of the bridge and the top half of the funnel. The Silver Darling had obviously settled on the bottom of the harbour.

  Bob was happy to see in the torchlight that Lieutenant Darlington still had Sergeant Mallory under close guard. The lieutenant looked at him. ‘I’m not quite sure what happened there, sir.’

  ‘Quinlan shot me yesterday. I think he was a little surprised to find I was still in the land of the living.’

  ‘It’s just as well you provided a distraction, sir. I wasn’t certain how that was going to end.’

  ‘Nor me, Lieutenant Darlington. Do you know if the police office has an interview room? I would very much like to have a chat with Sergeant Mallory while things are still fresh in his mind.’

  Bob turned to find Lieutenant Dixon and Petty Officer MacDonald standing close by.

  ‘Michael, I’d be grateful if you could join me in the interview with Sergeant Mallory and take notes. And Andrew, could you have another word with our friends at HMS St Christopher in Fort William, please? I think we have need of their divers again, both to recover Sergeant Quinlan’s body and to retrieve the gold. If they coul
d be here at first light tomorrow, I’d be very grateful. And could you find Sergeant Potter and ask him and Private Jenkins to go and pick up Alasdair Gunn, please? I’d like to talk to him later. Can we also ensure that the Silver Darling is kept under guard until we can get divers aboard?’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It turned out that the Mallaig police office stretched to a small and rather grimy interview room, as well as a cell in which they could hold Alasdair Gunn until Bob had finished with Sergeant Mallory.

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess, isn’t it, Sergeant?’ asked Bob, thinking that Mallory was also a bit of a mess. He hadn’t shaved and his eyes, which looked anywhere but at Bob or Michael, were red-rimmed as if he’d been crying. His hands were clasped tightly together, almost below the edge of the table, but Bob could see that despite the sergeant’s apparent efforts to still them, they were shaking violently.

  ‘Yes, sir. Do you mind if I smoke, sir?’

  Bob did mind, very much, but judged that he might get more out of Mallory if the man was able to settle his nerves a little. The shaking proved so bad that Lieutenant Dixon had to light a cigarette and pass it across the table. Even then, Mallory dropped it and took two attempts to pick it up. Bob decided that no-one would notice one more cigarette burn on an already badly scarred table.

  Bob leaned forward. ‘You’re not going to feel any better until you’ve got everything off your chest, Sergeant. You know that, don’t you?’

  There was a long pause. Then Mallory drew deeply on his cigarette, exhaled, and finally looked up at Bob. ‘Yes, sir. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Let’s start with the gold,’ said Bob. ‘It would be nice to keep things in something like chronological order, and I’m guessing that the gold came first. Am I right?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was at the end of last month, sir. We had over 600 US rangers training at Achnacarry. Towards the end of a course we often send the trainees off to fend for themselves for 36 hours. That’s what happened then. They were divided into three groups and each went off into the mountains. One group was scheduled to make a night march from the north shore of Loch Arkaig and over the higher ground to the north. The planned route took them up a steep-sided and wooded valley above a place called Murlaggan. Sergeant Quinlan and I were tasked with simulating an ambush. We set up an explosive charge under the roots of a tree that had been hit by lightning, to bring down the trunk in front of them, and then we fired live ammunition above their heads. It worked well, Next day we went back to the site to ensure the explosives had all detonated, and under the stump of the tree we found some rotted old sacks. When we poked at one, it simply fell to pieces, revealing a load of gold coins.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Bob.

  ‘We covered the place up with stones and dirt, but we both agreed that without the protection of the tree, any heavy rain could expose the gold again. We therefore found a reason to head out along the loch a few days later. We went back up to the valley, transferred the gold from the rotten sacks to two army issue canvas packs we’d brought along, which we thought should be enough to hold what we’d found, and hid those under part of an old stone wall close to the shore of the loch near Murlaggan. The packs were large enough, but the weight of the coins was enough to make us think we were going to break the webbing straps.’

  Lieutenant Dixon asked, ‘How many sacks did you find under the tree?’

  ‘It was difficult to tell, sir, as they had rotted away. Perhaps six or eight small sacks, and the gold coins were just sitting inside them.’

  Bob leaned forward. ‘What was the plan at that point?’

  ‘The idea was to hide the gold until after the war. We weren’t sure how good the old wall would be as long-term storage, because the level of the loch does rise and fall a little depending on the weather. Sergeant Quinlan and I therefore talked about the possibility of finding a better hiding place. I was also very nervous. Sergeant Quinlan is, was, I should say, a bit of a nutcase.’

  Mallory subsided into silence. He was still shaking, and the mention of Quinlan’s name seemed to have made things worse.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Bob.

  ‘Well, he was utterly ruthless, and as far as I could see completely without morals. So long as he and I were the only people who knew where the gold was hidden, I felt my life was in real danger. If he killed me, he’d end up with twice as much.’

  ‘That’s a little rich, coming from someone who killed a woman in a bar for a few bottles of wine and then tried to kill her son.’

  Mallory’s head slumped forward and Bob bit his tongue. He knew that hadn’t been the right thing to say. If he’d caused Mallory to retreat into himself, then the moment might pass, and they’d never get the full story out of him.

  Then Mallory lifted his head and looked at Bob again. ‘Yes,’ he said, very softly, ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you want to tell us about that?’ asked Bob.

  ‘When I saw that Belgian boy last Wednesday, it was like a complete bolt from the blue. I knew I recognised him from somewhere and it was obvious that he also recognised me. It was only a little later that I remembered what had happened in Belgium. You must believe me when I say that, until that moment, I had never had any recollection of going into that bar that night. It was as if it had never happened. But as I thought about the boy’s face, it all suddenly came back to me. I remembered going into the bar, I remembered shooting the woman, and then I remembered shooting the boy. It was like waking up from a nightmare, only to find that the nightmare was real.’

  ‘I’m guessing you then told Quinlan?’ said Bob.

  ‘Yes, I did, and the nightmare got worse. Sergeant Quinlan was insistent that the only way to avoid my being exposed as a m-m-murderer was to silence the Belgian boy.’

  ‘You mean, to murder him as well?’

  ‘Y-y-yes, sir. We saw him going into the big hut during the milling and I let him see me there. When he approached me, Patrick stabbed him in the back.’

  ‘How did that affect your plans for the gold?’

  ‘Patrick felt we had to move the gold to somewhere with better long-term security as quickly as possible, sir. I wasn’t in a position to disagree. On the Friday afternoon we took the boat we’d used previously up to Murlaggan and removed the gold from the wall. To spread the weight, we took along two full sets of 1937 pattern webbing, with the large front ammunition pouches. We kept one coin each as souvenirs, but divided the rest of the gold between the two packs and the four pouches, and while it still weighed just as much, it was less difficult to carry. We then reburied it in what we agreed was a good spot, not far from the old ruined building up beyond the head of the loch, just far enough away to make sure no-one would ever go looking there. We simply lined the hole with a groundsheet, and placed the packs, webbing and pouches inside it. With rocks laid on top, there was no sign of anything having happened there. On the way back, we stopped at the small island near the Achnacarry end of the loch and hid the tools and spare fuel for the boat there. Then we returned to the pier.’

  ‘And that was where you found Captain Bell?’ asked Bob.

  ‘Yes, sir. When we got back to the pier, there was an army captain I didn’t know there. He helped us tie up and then asked what we had been doing on the island. He had a pair of binoculars and had obviously been watching us. Sergeant Quinlan said something as he climbed up the steps to the pier, I didn’t catch what. Then he flipped his gold coin in the air towards the captain and as the captain reached out to catch it, Quinlan stabbed him in the stomach. As the captain bent forwards to hold himself, Quinlan stabbed him again, this time in the chest. The coin bounced off the officer and went into the loch. Quinlan pushed the captain’s body into the loch and then we went back to the island, to make sure we had left no fingerprints on anything we’d hidden there. When we got back to the pier we did the same for the boat, collected the lorry we’d moved
the tools up from the camp in, and that was that.’

  ‘If Quinlan lost his gold coin attacking Captain Bell, how was it we found one hidden amongst his property after he had left the camp?’

  ‘He made me give him mine, sir,’ said Mallory. ‘He said it was my fault that our plans were in a mess, so it was me that should do without the coin.’

  Bob felt a profound sense of relief. The most important part of the interview was behind them and Mallory was talking more freely. Bob looked at Michael, who lit another cigarette for the sergeant.

  ‘What happened on the Sunday?’ Bob asked. ‘At the parade?’

  ‘We were all told we had to assemble on the parade ground, sir, and it was obvious that something was up. Then I saw Quinlan and he told me the parade was to look for me, sir, or at least for someone whose description that I matched, with a broken nose. We agreed I had to leave and that I’d cut across country. He would pick me up in a lorry beside the road later. That’s what we did, though it was only early the next morning that he was able to get away. Then, after we got to Banavie, we argued about what to do, sir. We eventually agreed that we should try to get to Ireland, where Sergeant Quinlan had family. Quinlan said he knew a man in Mallaig with a fishing boat that had enough range and wouldn’t attract attention. But he said that the only way we could pay the man was by digging up the gold coins and offering him some of them for the passage. If I’m honest, I thought it was better to get the gold, too. That way I wouldn’t need to spend the next few years wondering when Patrick was going to try to kill me to double his share. We left the lorry at Banavie to throw anyone off the scent. Then we doubled back and took an overland route over the high ground south of Loch Arkaig. It’s difficult country and we could only travel slowly because we were concerned about being seen by any of the patrols we expected to be looking for us by then.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘The only people we saw were you and the lieutenant, sir, and the petty officer. We spotted your boat some way off, so stopped digging and hid on the slope above the track near the ruined building. Quinlan was all for killing both of you immediately when you came along the track. I persuaded him that it was safer simply to let you pass by, in the hope you’d then return to the boat, none the wiser, and leave. That worked until you walked out beyond the ruin and it was obvious you’d seen where we were digging. At that point the gold was still in the ground. Quinlan shot you. I thought he’d killed you. I persuaded him not to kill the lieutenant and the petty officer, and we tied them up in the building.’