‘I’l do my best.’
HI
The next day seemed very long.
At breakfast Sigurlin read the paper and suddenly said, ‘Wel , wel !
Someone tied up the cable transport on the Tungnaa just the other side
of Hald. A party of tourists was stranded on the farther side for
several hours. I wonder who could have done that?’
‘It was al right when we came across,’ I said blandly. ‘What does it
say about the tourists? Anyone hurt?’
She looked at me speculatively across the breakfast table. ‘Why should
anyone be hurt? No, it says nothing about that.’
– I changed the subject quickly. ‘I’m surprised that Elin is stil asleep.’
Sigurlin smiled. ‘I’m not. She didn’t know it, but she had a sleeping
draught last night. She’l be drowsy when she wakes and she won’t want
to jump out of bed.’
That was one way of making sure of Elin. I said, ‘I noticed your garage
was empty – don’t you have a car?’
‘Yes. Gunnar left it at the stables.’
‘When wil he be back?’
‘In two days – providing the party doesn’t get saddle-sore.’
‘When I go to Geysir I’d just as soon not use the Land-Rover,’ I said.
‘You want the car? All right ? but I want it back in one piece.’ She
told me where to find it. ‘You’l find the key in the glove locker.’
After breakfast I regarded the telephone seriously and wondered whether
to ring Taggart. I had a lot to tel him but I thought it would be
better to let it go until I heard what Jack Case had to say. Instead I
went out to the Land-Rover and cleaned Fleet’s rifle.
It real y was a good tool. With its fancy hand-grip and free-style stock
it had obviously been tailor-made to suit Fleet, whom I suspected of
being an enthusiast. In every field of human endeavour there are those
who push perfection to its ultimate and absurd end. In hi-fi, for
example, there is the maniac who has seventeen loud-speakers and one
test record. In shooting there is the gun nut.
The gun nut believes that there is no standard, off-the-shelf weapon
that could be possibly good enough for him and so he adapts and chisels
until he final y achieves something that looks like one of the more
far-out works of modern sculpture. He also believes that the ammunition
manufacturers know damn-al about their job and so he loads his own
cases, careful y weighing each bullet and matching it with an amount of
powder calculated to one-tenth of a grain. Sometimes he shoots very wel .
I checked the ammunition from the opened box and, sure enough, found the
tel tale scratches from a crimping tool. Fleet was in the habit of
rolling his own, something I have never found necessary, but then my own
shooting has not been of the type necessary to get a perfect grouping at
x-hundred yards. It also explained why the box was unlabel ed.
I wondered why Fleet should have carried as many as fifty rounds; after
al , he was a good shot and had brought us to a standstil with one
squeeze of the trigger. He had loaded the rifle with ordinary hunting
ammunition, soft-nosed and designed to spread on impact. The closed box
contained twenty-five rounds of jacketed ammunition – the military load.
It’s always seemed odd to me that the bullet one shoots at an animal is
designed to kil as quickly and as merciful y as possible, whereas the
same bullet shot at a man is il egal under the Geneva Convention. Shoot
a hunting load at a man and you’re accused of using dum-dum bullets and
that’s against the rules. You can roast him to death with napalm,
disembowel him with a jump mine, but you can’t shoot him with the same
bullet you would use to kil a deer cleanly.
I looked at the cartridge in the palm of my hand and wished I had known
about it earlier. One of those going into the engine of Kennikin’s jeep
was likely to do a hel of a lot more damage than the soft-nosed bullet
I had used. While a .375 jacketed bullet with a magnum charge behind it
probably wouldn’t dril through a jeep from end to end at a range of a
hundred yards, I wouldn’t like to bet on it by standing behind the jeep.
I fil ed the magazine of the rifle with a mixed load, three soft-nosed
and two jacketed, laid alternately. Then I examined McCarthy’s Smith &
Wesson automatic pistol, a more prosaic piece of iron than Fleet’s
jazzed-up rifle. After checking that it was in order I put it into my
pocket, together with the spare clips. The electronic gadget I left
where it was under the front seat. I wasn’t taking it with me when I
went to see Jack Case, but I wasn’t going empty-handed either.
When I got back to the house Elin was awake. She looked at me drowsily,
and said, ‘I don’t know why I’m so tired.’
‘Wel ,’ I said judiciously. ‘You’ve been shot and you’ve been racketing
around the /Obyggdir/ for two days with not much sleep. I’m not
surprised you’re tired. I haven’t been too wide awake myself.’
Elin opened her eyes wide in alarm and glanced at Sigurlin who was
arranging flowers in a vase. I said, ‘Sigurlin knows you didn’t fall on
any rock. She knows you were shot, but now how or why ? and I don’t want
you to tel her. I don’t want you to discuss it with Sigurlin or anyone
else.’ I turned to Sigurlin. ‘You’l get the ful story at the right
time, but at the moment the knowledge would be dangerous.’
Sigurlin nodded in acceptance. Elin said, ‘I think I’l sleep al day.
I’m tired now, but I’l be ready by the time we have to leave for Geysir.’
Sigurlin crossed the room and began to plump up the pil ows behind
Elin’s head. The heartless professionalism spoke of the trained nurse.
‘You’re not leaving for anywhere,’ she said sharply. ‘Not for the next
two days at least.’
‘But I must,’ protested Elin.
‘But you must not. Your shoulder is bad enough.’ Her lips compressed
tightly as she looked down at Elin. ‘You should real y see a doctor.’
‘Oh, no!’ said Elin.
‘Wel , then, you’l do as I say.’
Elin looked at me appealingly. I said, ‘I’m only going to see a man. As
a matter of fact, Jack Case wouldn’t say a word in your presence, anyway
– you’re not a member of the club. I’m just going to Geysir, have a chat
with the man, and then come back here – and you might as wel keep your
turned-up nose out of it for once.’
Elin looked flinty, and Sigurlin said, ‘I’l leave you to whisper sweet
nothings into each other’s ear.’ She smiled. ‘You two are going to lead
interesting lives.’
She left the room, and I said gloomily, ‘That sounds like the Chinese
curse – “May you live in interesting times.'”
‘All right,’ said Elin in a tired voice. ‘I won’t give you any trouble.
You can go to Geysir alone.’
I sat on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s not a matter of you giving trouble;
I just want you out of this. You disturb my concentration, and if I run
into difficulties I don’t want to have to watch out for you as wel as
myself.’
‘Have I been a drag?’
I shook my head. ‘No, Elin; you haven’t. But the nature of the game may
change. I’ve been chased across Iceland and I’m pretty damn tired of it.
If the opportunity offers I’l turn around and do a bit of chasing myself.’
‘And I’d get in the way,’ she said flatly.
‘You’re a civilized person,’ I said. ‘Very law-abiding and ful of
scruples. I doubt if you’ve had as much as a parking ticket in your
life. I might manage to retain a few scruples while I’m being hunted;
not many, but some. But when I’m the hunter I can’t afford them. I think
you might be horrified at what I’d do.’
‘You’d kil ,’ she said. It was a statement.
‘I might do worse,’ I said grimly, and she shivered. ‘It’s not that I
want to – I’m no casual murderer; I don’t want to have any part of this
but I’ve been conscripted against my wil .’
‘You dress it in fine words,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to kil .’
‘No fine words,’ I said. ‘Just one – survival. A drafted American
col ege boy may be a pacifist, but when the Viet Cong shoot at him with
those Russian 7.62 mil imetre rifles he’l shoot right back, you may
depend on it. And when Kennikin comes after me he’l deserve al he runs
into. I didn’t ask him to shoot at me on the Tungnaa River – he didn’t