Horse Under Water Page 16

  * * *

  O/E Bernard Thomas Peterson

  Red-haired man. Complexion white freckles

  Eyes: light-blue. Height 5´ 9´´

  Weight: 9 stone 10 lb. Attentiveexcitable

  Birthmark: scar right ear-lobe. Intelligent.

  * * *

  This was Fernie Tomas. Jean’s search of the Spanish Civil War files at the Home Office had found a name curiously like Fernie Tomas – Bernie Thomas: otherwise Bernard Thomas Peterson.

  So Fernie was an expert frogman, a renegade R.N. officer. I remembered the two-stroke cycle that gave Giorgio a ride in the night, the capsizing of the boat ‘by a frogman’ and Giorgio’s voice as he told me that the stars were going out. And da Cunha had been a German naval officer; they made quite a pair.

  My hands were black with dust. I borrowed the soap from the bent tin and used the small stiff towel that was kept for visitors to the Admiralty Library.

  ‘Don’t forget your pass,’ someone called, ‘you’ll never get out of the building without it.’

  43 Friday on a Portuguese calendar

  To wake up in the sun in Albufeira is to be reborn. I lay in the no-man’s-land of half-asleep and hugged the crater of bedclothes, afraid to advance into the gunfire of wide-awake. The sound of the town dripped into my consciousness; the tinkle and clink of bell-laden bridles; the hoof taps, and the rumble of tall wheels over the cobblestones; the high note as trucks came up the hill in bottom gear; the crackle of water dropping from overflow pipes on to the beach below, and the squawk of cats exchanging blows and fur. I lit a Gauloise and eased my toes into the daylight beyond the blankets. From the beach came the rhythmic chanting of men heaving at the sardine net, and from the seagulls hoarse cries as they slid down the onshore wind to pounce upon discarded slivers of fish.

  I stepped on to the balcony. The stone floor was hot underfoot, and on the grey wooden chairs sat Buddha-like cats squinting into the sunlight. Charly was fixing coffee and toast in the kitchen, holding the front of her silk housecoat closed. I am pleased to tell you that a lot of the coffee-making was a two-handed job. She stood against the light of the window and I began to realize for the first time what every male in the region had known since she arrived; she was five feet ten inches tall and every inch was soft and delicious.

  The deaths of Joe and Giorgio had curtailed the diving operation. Each day Singleton went out to the sunken submarine and continued the search, but I had long since concluded that what I was looking for was on dry land.

  After lunch Singleton said that he must drive to Lisbon to recharge the air bottles. How long could he stay there, he said. I looked at Charly and she looked at me. ‘Have two or three days there,’ I said. Singleton was pleased.

  I walked along the beach trying to arrange the facts I had access to. As I look back on it I had enough information then to tell me what I wanted to know. But at that time I didn’t know what I wanted to know. I was just letting my sense of direction guide me through the maze of motives.

  It was clear to me that Smith was connected with this town in some way or other, legal or illegal. Fernie was a frogman and Giorgio had been killed under water. The canister from the U-boat had contained heroin and someone had emptied it recently (or how had the ballpoint writing got inside?). Smith had sent £7,100-worth of equipment to K (Kondit begins with a K, but so does the real name of da Cunha – Knobel).

  Did Smith have a say in Giorgio’s death or in Joe’s? Did da Cunha want Smith to have the sovereign die when he gave it to me, and why had he invented a mythical dead sailor and manufactured a grave?

  I met Charly in the main square.

  The scrawny old houses stared red-eyed into the sunset. Two or three cafés – houses with a public front room – opened their doors, pale-green colourwashed walls were punctuated with calendar art, and crippled chairs leaned against the walls for support. In the evening the young bloods came to operate the juke box. A small man in a suede jacket poured thimble-size drinks from large unlabelled medicine bottles under the counter. Behind him green bottles of ‘Gas-soda’ and ‘Fru-soda’ grew old and dusty.

  It grew darker and juke-box music scalded the soft night air. Between the strident rock vocals came the occasional fado. Brazilian jungle melodies, transposed for Lisbon slums, they sounded curiously right in a Moorish land. I sipped brandy and chewed the dried-cuttlefish appetizers – rubbery and strong-tasting.

  ‘Medronho,’ said the man behind the counter, pointing to my glass. It is made from the medronho berry from the mountains. ‘Good?’ he asked with his sole word of English.

  ‘Medonho,’ I said, and he laughed. I had made a Portuguese joke; ‘medonho’ means ‘frightful’. Above the noise Charly was saying, ‘You speak Portuguese?’

  ‘A little,’ I said.

  ‘You cunning old bastard,’ said Charly in her clear Girton voice, ‘you understood every word I’ve said for weeks.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I only have a smattering.’ But she wasn’t to be placated.

  We went to the Jul-Bar for dinner. The place was full of men doing Toto-Bola football pools and the seventeen-inch TV was cutting us in on the secrets of Tide and Alka-Seltzer. Our table was set with a tablecloth and cutlery and a flask of wine. The meal was simple and the drink relaxing, and by 11 p.m. I wanted to go to bed, but Charly suggested a swim.

  The water was cool and moonlight trickled across it like cream spilt on a black velvet dress. The night and the water reminded me of the night Giorgio died. Charly’s blonde hair shone in the light and her body was phosphorescent in the clear black water. She swam near to me and pretended to have cramp. I grabbed her as I was intended to do. Her skin was warm and her mouth was salty and the clear white brandy had done things to my better judgement.

  What a short journey it is to any bedroom. How difficult to remove a wet swimsuit. She was a considerate and inventive lover, and afterwards we talked with the soft, kind truth that only new lovers have.

  Her voice was low and close; she had discarded the banter with her clothes.

  ‘Women always want love affairs to go on for ever and ever,’ Charly said. ‘Why aren’t we clever enough just to enjoy it on a day-to-day basis?’

  ‘Love is just a state of mind,’ I said, using Dawlish’s slogan and grinning to myself in the darkness.

  There was a note of alarm in Charly’s voice. ‘It has to be more than that,’ she said.

  I held the cigarette against her lips. ‘A mortal’s attempt to define infinity,’ I said.

  She inhaled and the red glow lit her face for an instant. She said, ‘Sometimes two people see each other just for an instant, perhaps from a moving train and there’s a rapport. It’s not sex, it’s not love, it’s a sort of magical fourth dimension of living. You never saw him before, you’ll never see him again; you don’t even intend to try because it doesn’t matter. Everything that is wise, I mean, that is good, that is understanding and profound, in the two of you becomes real at that instant.’

  ‘My old man gave me two pieces of advice,’ I said, ‘don’t ride a hard-mouthed horse or go to bed with a woman who keeps a diary. You are beginning to make noises like a diary-keeper. It’s time I faded.’ But I made no move.

  ‘There’s one thing I’d like to know,’ said Charly.

  The church clock clanked one o’clock and there was a sudden scurry of cats across the balcony.

  ‘Why are you really so interested in this submarine?’ Charly asked. I suppose I must have snapped awake, for she added, ‘Don’t tell me if it’s a big man’s secret and I’m not allowed to know.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘What is it that you are trying to find out here? Why do you stay here after two men have died? You know as well as I do that there is nothing in the submarine. Who is it that you are so interested in? I would like to think it’s me, but I know it isn’t.’

  ‘You sound like you have a theory,’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I think you ar
e investigating yourself,’ she said.

  She waited for a comment, but I made none. ‘Are you?’ she said.

  I said, ‘There’s a law held inviolate by the people among whom I work: truth varies in inverse proportion to the influence of the person concerned. I’m going to break that law.’

  ‘Must you do it alone?’ Charly said.

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘everyone is alone, born alone, live alone, get sick alone, die alone, everything alone. Making love is a way for people to pretend they aren’t alone. But they are. And everyone in this business is even more so, alone and aching with a lot of untellable truths in his brain-box. You’re groping in the dark through the Hampton Court maze with a hundred people shouting different directions at you. So you grope on; striking matches, grabbing handfuls of privet and occasionally getting mud on your knees. You are alone and so am I. Just try getting used to it or you’ll wind up telling people that your husband doesn’t understand you.’

  ‘I’m still single,’ Charly said. ‘I’ll make a lot of men miserable on the day I get married.’

  ‘No kidding,’ I said. ‘How many men are you going to marry?’ She gave me a spiteful punch in the ribs and tried to make me jealous by talking about H.K.

  ‘Harry has a canning factory,’ Charly said; she lit two cigarettes and passed me one. ‘He’s very proud of it. Practically built it with his bare hands, according to him.’ I grunted. We smoked cigarettes and outside the sea that had caused it all kicked the shore in delinquent spite.

  ‘What does H.K. can at this canning factory?’ I asked.

  ‘Tuna in the season, sardines, pilchards. Anything that’s a good buy. All the canning factories mix their products. Harry does pickled things too, I think.’

  ‘Yes?’ I said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Charly, ‘as we drove past his laboratory tonight the smell of vinegar was as strong as anything. It almost choked me.’

  There is a tremendous amount of acetic acid to get rid of … Boardable … erection of chemical works …

  I thought about it all for a minute. Then I said, ‘Get dressed, Charly; let’s take a look at H.K.’s laboratory right now.’ She wasn’t keen to go but we went.

  44 W.H.O. is part of this not me

  We left the old Citroën down the road and walked the rest of the way. Our feet sank into the dry red earth as we moved around the rear of the low building. A light was on at the far end and the sound of water gulping down a drain was loud in the night. Above us hydrangea flowers walked along the walls, and from the lit window came the atonal, knife-edge sound of a fado. I raised my head slowly above the sill. I saw a grimy room with long lines of machinery teetering away into the darkness. A draught of hot air was coming from the heater fans. It seemed a strange luxury in this sub-tropical night. Nearer to me an electric vacuum pump was pounding gently. Harry Kondit walked across the room, his white T-shirt marked with bright yellow stains. The smell of vinegar was almost overwhelming. I felt Charly’s hand on my back as she looked over my shoulder and heard her swallow to avoid coughing on the acrid fumes. H.K. went across to the little electric pulverizer and pulled the switch. The sound of the motor almost obliterated the music from the gramophone, so H.K. turned up the volume and the fado added to the din.

  This was no ice-melting experiment, and this lab. hadn’t cost anything like seven thousand pounds. This was a small morphine-processing factory: pulverizer, vacuum pump, drying-room, everything to turn morphine into heroin before it was sealed into sardine-tins for export. Harry Kondit, I thought; Conduit – a channel or pipe through which supplies travel. I leaned through the open window, raised the pistol and aimed with care. The Smith & Wesson kicked in my hand and the sound thrashed around inside the walls. The gramophone record exploded into a thousand sharp black knives.

  ‘Switch off the pump and the pulverizer, Harry, or I will,’ I said. For a moment H.K. stared, then he did so and silence descended like a candle-snuffer.

  ‘Now walk slowly across to that door and open it.’

  ‘But I …’

  ‘And don’t say a word,’ I said. ‘I haven’t forgotten that you killed Joe with dynamite.’ H.K. turned to me to explain but decided not to. He went to the door and slipped the bolt. I gave Charly the pistol and she walked around the building to the door. While I was saying, ‘Just stay as you are, Harry, and I won’t blast any of the expensive machinery …’ H.K. was biding his time, waiting until I had to move away from the window, but when Charly put the barrel of the .38 against his belly-button he realized that he had been fooled. Charly moved H.K. back at a professional range. I joined her, closed the door behind me and bolted it again.

  The three of us stood there in silence until H.K. said, ‘Welcome to the dream factory, fans.’

  We said nothing.

  ‘So you were a cop after all,’ said H.K.

  ‘You mean you weren’t sure when you bombed my car and killed Giorgio out on the U-boat.’

  ‘You got it all wrong, Ace,’ said H.K. He was tanned darker than ever, and the skin where his watch had been was like a white bangle. His shallow forehead wrinkled like a washboard and he wet his lips with a large pink tongue. ‘It’s no use to explain,’ he continued, ‘I thought you were an O.K. guy. No hard feelings. When winter comes you know which trees are the evergreens.’

  ‘It’s going to be a long, hard winter, Harry,’ I said. He looked at me and gave a rueful smile.

  He said, ‘You’re using a thirty-foot voice for an eighteen-inch conversation.’ He was as calm as the Serpentine in June.

  ‘How did you get into this racket?’ I asked him quietly.

  ‘Can I sit down?’ he asked.

  I nodded, but took my pistol from Charly and kept it handy.

  ‘We all got problems, Ace,’ said H.K. as he sat down heavily, ‘and problems obey the laws of perspective; they look big close-to.’ I threw him a cigarette and a box of matches. He took his time lighting up.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about telling me more than I know, Harry. I know a lot,’ I said.

  ‘F’r instance?’

  ‘I know that I’ve been given the run-around by the phoniest set-up this side of Disneyland. I traced a red-haired Englishman who fought in the Spanish Civil War (we have files on all of them) and I find he’s a black-haired man who stays out of the sun for fear of getting some English-style freckles.’ I paused before adding, ‘Fernie Tomas was in a good position to know things about sunken U-boats; like that a certain one would be full of heroin.’

  ‘Yeah, full of horse, you are right,’ said H.K. reflectively, and he nodded and suddenly began to talk.

  ‘That green canister was just crammed with old heroin that some Nazi was scramming with. Fernie Tomas brought it to me and said did I know anyone who would handle it. I suppose you could say that neither of us was very keen about it, but that canister was worth a lot of dough. I couldn’t afford to pass it up. My pal Harry Williams-Cohen was on a tax rap at the time and it looked like he was going up the river for a telephone number.* We got enough on that horse to pay off his tax and penalties. Then Fernie and I decided to plough our money into this factory which was just going to close.’

  ‘Brooklyn boy saves Portuguese fish factory,’ I said, ‘with U.S. know-how and a couple of kilos of diacetyl-morphine.’

  ‘Be smart,’ H.K. pleaded, ‘go home and see what someone paid into your bank account.’

  ‘Thanks, Harry,’ I said, ‘but no.’ H.K. drew on the cigarette I had given him and waved it gently in the air. His initial burst of nervous talking had passed and now his speech was slower and more cautious. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘In another five years the government are going to legalize the import of reefers. I know for sure. Then the big business boys will take over; there’ll be tastefully designed packs, and colour ads in Life magazine with two ritzy models saying, “I never knew smoking could be FUN until I got hooked”.’

  I said, ‘But this is now, Harry, and people who break the law and make
money out of it are often misunderstood.’

  ‘You’re such a wise guy,’ Harry said. ‘O.K. So I did it for money and as I got it so I spent it. You know how money is.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I said. ‘How is it?’

  ‘It’s as tricky as uranium but ten times more dangerous. It disappears like youth or multiplies like enemies.’

  ‘You have a fair share of those,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, it took me a lot of time and talent to make those enemies.’

  ‘And Fernie Tomas is one of them?’

  Harry grinned. ‘I know him too well to be a friend,’ he said.

  I waited while he fooled with his cigarette. I knew he’d have something to say about Tomas.

  ‘You think Fernie’s a really subtle character-study, don’t you? Young naval officer hero goes over to the enemy – all that stuff. You can’t figure out anything like that, you government men. Real puzzling it must be.’

  He threw the cigarettes back for me to catch. But you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I kept the .38 aimed at H.K.’s T-shirt, the cigarettes fell against the pistol and splayed across the floor. H.K. made a move towards my feet to pick them up, but seeing the gun-barrel move a fraction of an inch he thought better of it and sank back into his chair. We looked at each other; I shook my head, and H.K. smiled.

  ‘No hits, no runs, no errors,’ he said.

  ‘Just tell me how us government men can stop being puzzled about Tomas,’ I said.

  ‘He’s a malcontent,’ said H.K. ‘“Whatever it is, I’m against it” is Fernie’s motto. The only reason we didn’t come to a knock-down, drag-out fight once a week was because I’m such an easy-going sort of slob. He plants an old twenty-dollar bill into the green canister just so that if anyone steps out of line he can put one from the same batch where it can do the most damage. He’s a nut.’

  I nodded. I thought that the twenty in H.K.’s shirt was too convenient to be true. I said, ‘Everyone’s against you, Harry, and yet you are such a nice guy at heart,’ and I smiled. I was thinking of Joe, but I smiled at H.K.