San Andreas Part 25

'There are times, Second, when I wish you would keep your thoughts to yourself. You do have half an eye, I take it.'

True, true. Delicacy? A water buffalo could have done it better.'

THIRTEEN.

Patterson finished speaking - by this time he was getting quite professional at reading burial services - planks tilted and the shrouded forms of Curran and Ferguson slid down into the icy wastes of the Norwegian Sea. It was then that the engine-room noise faded away and the San Andreas began to slow.

Nearly all the crew were on deck - the dead men had been an amiable enough couple and well liked. The cooks and stewards were below, as were the nursing staff and three stokers. Trent and Jones were on the bridge.

Jamieson was the first to move. 'It looks,' he said, 'as if we have made a mistake.' He walked away, not quickly, with the air of a man who knew that this was not a moment that called for any particular urgency.

Patterson and McKinnon followed more slowly. Patterson said: 'What did he mean by that? That we've made a mistake, I mean?'

'He was being kind, sir. What he meant was that the all-wise bo'sun has made another blunder. Who was on watch down below?'

'Just young Stephen. You know, the Polish boy.'

'Let's hope he's not the next to go over the side.'

Patterson stopped and caught McKinnon by the arm. 'What do you mean by that? And what do you mean -"blunder"?'

'The one thing ties up with the other.' McKinnon's voice sounded dull. 'Maybe I'm tired. Maybe I'm not thinking too well. Did you notice who wasn't at the funeral, sir?' ; Patterson looked at him for a few silent moments, then said: 'The nursing staff. Kitchen staff. Stewards. Men on the bridge.' His grip tightened on the Bo'sun's arm. 'And McCrimmon.'

'Indeed. And whose brilliant idea was it to let McCrimmon roam around on the loose?'

'It just worked out the wrong way. You can't think of everything. No man can. He's a slippery customer, this McCrimmon. Do you think we'll be able to pin anything on him?'

'I'm certain we won't. Nevertheless, sir, I'd like your permission to lock him up.' McKinnon shook his head, his face bitter. 'There's nothing like locking the door when the horse has bolted.'

Stephen was lying on the steel plates, covered with oil still gushing from a severed fuel line. There was a rapidly forming bruise, bleeding slightly, behind his right ear. Sinclair finished examining his head and straightened.

'I'll have him taken to hospital. X-ray, but I don't think it necessary. I should think he'll waken up with nothing more than a sore head.' He looked at the two steel objects lying on the deck-plates beside Stephen. 'You know who did this, Bo'sun?'

'Yes.'

'The Stilson wrench that laid him out and the fire-axe that slashed the fuel line. There could be fingerprints.'

'No.' With his toe McKinnon touched a clump of engine-room waste. 'He used that and there'll be no prints on that. He looked at Patterson. 'This line can be replaced, sir?'

'It can. How long, Second?'

'Couple of hours,' Jamieson said. 'Give or take.'

McKinnon said: 'Would you come along with me, Mr Patterson?'

'It will be a pleasure, Bo'sun.'

'You could have killed him, you know,' McKinnon said conversationally.

From his bench seat in the mess-deck McCrimmon looked up with an insolent stare.

'What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l are you talking about?'

'Stephen.'

'Stephen? What about Stephen?'

'His broken head.'

'I still don't know what you're talking about. Broken head? How did he get a broken head?'

'Because you went down to the engine-room and did it. And cut open a fuel line.'

' 'You're crazy. I haven't left this seat in the past quarter of an hour.'

'Then you must have seen whoever went down to the engine-room. You're a stoker, McCrimmon. An engine stops and you don't go down to investigate?'

McCrimmon chewed some gum. 'This is a frame-up. What proof do you have?'

'Enough,' Patterson said. 'I am putting you under arrest, McCrimmon, and in close confinement. When we get back to Britain, you'll be tried for murder, high treason, convicted and certainly shot.'

'This is absolute rubbish.' He prefaced the word 'rubbish' with a few choice but unprintable adjectives. 'I've done nothing and you can't prove a thing.' But his normally pasty face had gone even pastier.

'We don't have to,' McKinnon said. 'Your friend Simons or Braun or whatever his name is - has been, well, as the Americans say, been singing like a canary. He's willing to turn King's evidence on you in the hope of getting less than life.'

'The b.a.s.t.a.r.d!' McCrimmon was on his feet, lips drawn back over his teeth, his right hand reaching under his overalls.

'Don't,' Patterson said. 'Whatever it is, don't touch it. You've got no place to run, McCrimmon - and the Bo'sun could kill you with one hand.'

'Let me have it,' McKinnon said. He stretched out his hand and McCrimmon, very slowly, very carefully, placed the knife, hilt first, in the Bo'sun's palm.

'You haven't won.' His face was both scared and vicious at the same time. 'It's the person who laughs last that wins.'

'Could be.' McKinnon looked at him consideringly. 'You know something that we don't?'

'As you say, could be.'

'Such as the existence of a transmitting bug concealed in the wireless office?'

McCrimmon leapt forward and screamed, briefly, before collapsing to the deck. His nose had broken against the Bo'sun's fist.

Patterson looked down at the unconscious man and then at McKinnon. 'That give you a certain kind of satisfaction?'

'I suppose I shouldn't have done it but - well, yes, it did give a certain kind of satisfaction.'

'Me, too,' Patterson said.

What seemed, but wasn't, a long day wore on into the evening and then darkness, and still the Germans stayed away. The San Andreas, under power again, was still on a direct course to Aberdeen. Stephen had regained consciousness and, as Dr Sinclair had predicted, was suffering from no more than a moderate headache. Sinclair had carried out what were no better than temporary repairs to McCrimmon's broken face but it was really a job for a plastic surgeon and Sinclair was no plastic surgeon.

Lieutenant Ulbricht, a chart spread out on the table before him, rubbed his chin thoughtfully and looked at McKinnon who was seated opposite him in the Captain's cabin.

'We've been lucky so far. Lucky? Never thought I'd say that aboard a British ship. Why are we being left alone?'

'Because we're just that. Lucky. They didn't have a spare U-boat around and our friend who's trailing us wasn't going to try it on his own again. Also, we're still on a direct course to Aberdeen. They know where we are and have no reason to believe that we still aren't going where we're supposed to be going. They have no means of knowing what's happened aboard this ship.'

'Reasonable, I suppose.' Ulbricht looked at the chart and tapped his teeth. 'If something doesn't happen to us during the night something is going to happen to us tomorrow. That's what I think. At least, that's what I feel.'

'I know.'

'What do you know?'

'Tomorrow. Your countrymen aren't clowns. We'll be pa.s.sing very close to the Shetlands tomorrow. They'll suspect that there is a possibility that we might make a break for Lerwick or some such place and will act on that possibility.'

'Planes? Condors?'

'It's possible.'

'Does the RAF have fighters there?'

'I should imagine so. But I don't know. Haven't been there for years.'

'The Luftwaffe will know. If there are Hurricanes or Spitfires there, the Luftwaffe would never risk a Condor against them.'

'They could send some long-range Messerschmitts as escort.'

'If not, it could be a torpedo?'

'That's not something I care to think about.'

'Nor me. There's something very final about a torpedo. You know, it's not necessary to sail south round Bressay and turn round Bard Head. We could use the north channel. Maryfield is the name of the village, isn't it?'

'I was born there.'

'That was stupid. Stupid of me, I mean. We make a sharp turn for the north channel and it's a torpedo for sure?'

'Yes.'

'And if we steam steadily south past Bressay they may well think that we're keeping on course to Aberdeen?'

'We can only hope, Lieutenant. A guarantee is out of the question. There's nothing else we can do.'

'Nothing?'

'Well, there's something. We can go down below and have dinner.'

'Our last, perhaps?'

McKinnon crossed his ringers, smiled and said nothing.

Dinner; understandably, was a rather solemn affair. Patterson was in a particularly pensive mood.

'Has it ever occurred to you, Bo'sun, that we might outrun this U-boat? Without bursting a few steam valves, we could get two or three knots more out of this tub.'

'Yes, sir. I'm sure we could.' The tension in the air was almost palpable. 'I'm also sure that the U-boat would pick up the increased revolutions immediately. He would know that we were on to him, know that we know that he's following us. He would just surface - that would increase his speed - and finish us off. He's probably carrying a dozen torpedoes. How many do you think would miss us?'

'The first one would be enough.' Patterson sighed. 'Rather desperate men make rather desperate suggestions. You could sound more encouraging, Bo'sun.'

'Rest after toil,' Jamieson said. Ton after stormy seas. There's going to be no rest for us, Bo'sun. No safe harbour. Is that it?'

'Has to be, sir.' He pointed at Janet Magnusson. 'You heard me promise to take this lady back home.'

Janet smiled at him. 'You're very kind, Archie McKinnon. Also, you're lying in your teeth.'

McKinnon smiled back at her. 'Ye of little faith.'

Ulbricht was the first to sense a change in the atmosphere. 'Something has occurred to you, Mr McKinnon?'

'Yes. At least, I hope it has.' He looked at Margaret Morrison. 'I wonder if you would be so kind as to ask Captain Bowen to come to the lounge?'

'Another secret conference? I thought there were no more spies or criminals or traitors left aboard.'

'I don't think so. But no chances.' He looked around the table. 'I would like it if you all joined us.'

Just after dawn the next morning - still a very late dawn in those lat.i.tudes - Lieutenant Ulbricht gazed out through the starboard wing doorway at lowlying land that could be intermittently seen through squalls of sleety snow.

'So that's Unst, is it?'

'That's Unst.' Although McKinnon had been up most of the night he seemed fresh, relaxed and almost cheerful.

'And that - that is what you Shetlanders break your hearts over?*

'Yes, indeed.'

'I don't want to give any offence, Mr McKinnon, but that's probably the most bare, bleak, barren and inhospitable island I've ever had the misfortune to clap my eyes on.'

'Home sweet home,' McKinnon said placidly. 'Beauty, Lieutenant, is in the eye of the beholder. Besides, no place would look its sparkling best in weather conditions like this.'

'And that's another thing. Is the Shetland weather always as awful as this?'

McKinnon regarded the slate-grey seas, the heavy cloud and the falling snow with considerable satisfaction. 'I think the weather is just lovely.'

'As you say, the eye of the beholder. I doubt whether a Condor pilot would share your point of view.'