When Eight Bells Toll. Alistair MacLean

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СКАЧАТЬ should have remembered that. No wonder my neck was twitching when Durran was around. How did you cut yourself?’

      ‘I didn’t cut myself.’

      ‘I know. But there’s a smear of blood on your palm. He’s been taking lessons from Peter Sellers, I shouldn’t wonder. Standard southern English on the Nantesville, northern Irish on the Firecrest. I wonder how many other accents he has up his sleeve – behind his larynx, I should say. And I thought he was running to a little fat. He’s running to a great deal of muscle. You noticed he never took his gloves off, even when he had that drink?’

      ‘I’m the best noticer you ever saw. Beat me over the head with a club and I’ll notice anything.’ He sounded bitter. ‘Why didn’t they clobber us? You, anyway? The star witness?’

      ‘Maybe we have moved out of our class. Two reasons. They couldn’t do anything with the cops there, genuine cops as we’ve both agreed, not unless they attended to the cops too. Only a madman would deliberately kill a cop and whatever those boys may lack it isn’t sanity.’

      ‘But why cops in the first place?’

      ‘Aura of respectability. Cops are above suspicion. When a uniformed policeman shoves his uniformed cap above your gunwale in the dark watches of the night, you don’t whack him over the head with a marline-spike. You invite him aboard. All others you might whack, especially if we had the bad consciences we might have been supposed to have.’

      ‘Maybe. It’s arguable. And the second point?’

      ‘They took a big chance, a desperate chance, almost, with Durran. He was thrown to the wolves to see what the reaction would be, whether either of us recognised him.’

      ‘Why Durran?’

      ‘I didn’t tell you. I shone a torch in his face. The face didn’t register, just a white blur with screwed-up eyes half-hidden behind an upflung hand. I was really looking lower down, picking the right spot to kick him. But they weren’t to know that. They wanted to find out if we would recognise him. We didn’t. If we had done we’d either have started throwing the crockery at him or yelped for the cops to arrest them – if we’re against them then we’re with the cops. But we didn’t. Not a flicker of recognition. Nobody’s as good as that. I defy any man in the world to meet up again in the same night with a man who has murdered two other people and nearly murdered himself without at least twitching an eyebrow. So the immediate heat is off, the urgent necessity to do us in has become less urgent. It’s a safe bet that if we didn’t recognise Durran, then we recognised nobody on the Nantesville and so we won’t be burning up the lines to Interpol.’

      ‘We’re in the dear?’

      ‘I wish to God we were. They’re on to us.’

      ‘But you said -’

      ‘I don’t know how I know,’ I said irritably. ‘I know. They went through the after end of the Firecrest like a Treble Chance winner hunting for the coupon he’s afraid he’s forgotten to post. Then half-way through the engine-room search – click! – just like that and they weren’t interested any more. At least Thomas wasn’t. He’d found out something. You saw him afterwards in the saloon, the fore cabins and the upper deck. He couldn’t have cared less.’

      ‘The batteries?’

      ‘No. He was satisfied with my explanation. I could tell. I don’t know why, I only know I’m sure.’

      ‘So they’ll be back.’

      ‘They’ll be back.’

      ‘I get the guns out now?’

      ‘There’s no hurry. Our friends will be sure we can’t communicate with anyone. The mainland boat calls here only twice a week. It came to-day and won’t be back for four days. The lines to the mainland are down and if I thought for a moment they would stay down I should be back in kindergarten. Our transmitter is out. Assuming there are no carrier pigeons in Torbay, what’s the only remaining means of communication with the mainland?’

      ‘There’s the Shangri-la.’ The Shangri-la, the nearest craft to ours, was white, gleaming, a hundred and twenty feet long and wouldn’t have left her owner a handful of change from a quarter of a million pounds when he’d bought her. ‘She’ll have a couple of thousand quids’ worth of radio equipment aboard. Then there are two, maybe three yachts big enough to carry transmitters. The rest will carry only receivers, if that.’

      ‘And how many transmitters in Torbay harbour will still be in operating condition to-morrow?’

      ‘One.’

      ‘One. Our friends will attend to the rest. They’ll have to. We can’t warn anyone. We can’t give ourselves away.’

      ‘The insurance companies can stand it.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘This would be a nice time to wake up Uncle Arthur.’

      ‘I can’t put it off any longer.’ I wasn’t looking forward to talking to Uncle Arthur.

      Hunslett reached for a heavy coat, pulled it on, made for the door and stopped. ‘I thought I’d take a walk on the upper deck. While you’re talking. Just in case. A second thought – I’d better have that gun now. Thomas said they’d already checked three boats in the harbour. MacDonald didn’t contradict him, so it was probably true. Maybe there are no serviceable transmitters left in Torbay now. Maybe our friends just dumped the cops ashore and are coming straight back for us.’

      ‘Maybe. But those yachts are smaller than the Firecrest. Apart from us, there’s only one with a separate wheelhouse. The others will carry transmitters in the saloon cabin. Lots of them sleep in their saloon cabins. The owners would have to be banged on the head first before the radios could be attended to. They couldn’t do that with MacDonald around.’

      ‘You’d bet your pension on that? Maybe MacDonald didn’t always go aboard.’

      ‘I’ll never live to collect my pension. But maybe you’d better have that gun.’

      The Firecrest was just over three years old. The Southampton boatyard and marine-radio firm that had combined to build her had done so under conditions of sworn secrecy to a design provided by Uncle Arthur. Uncle Arthur had not designed her himself although he had never said so to the few people who knew of the existence of the boat. He’d pinched the idea from a Japanese-designed Indonesian-owned fishing craft that had been picked up with engine failure off the Malaysian coast. Only one engine had failed though two were installed, but still she had been not under command, an odd circumstance that had led the alert Engineer Lieutenant on the frigate that had picked her up to look pretty closely at her: the net result of his investigation, apart from giving this splendid inspiration to Uncle Arthur, was that the crew still languished in a Singapore prisoner of war camp.

      The Firecrest’s career had been chequered and inglorious. She had cruised around the Eastern Baltic for some time, without achieving anything, until the authorities in Memel and Leningrad, getting tired of the sight of her, had declared the Firecrest persona non grata and sent her back to England. Uncle Arthur had been furious, especially as he had to account to a parsimonious Under-Secretary for the considerable expense involved. The Waterguard had tried their hand with it at catching smugglers and returned it without thanks. No smugglers. Now for the first time ever it was going to justify its existence and in other СКАЧАТЬ