A Fine Night for Dying. Jack Higgins

he had finished, he poured himself a very large whisky, which he drank slowly.

      When he went out, the rain was falling more heavily, drifting down through the yellow quarterlights in a silver spray. He moved along the deck to the girl’s cabin, knocked and went in.

      She turned from the bunk to face him, looking strangely alien in a blue sweater and pleated grey skirt. There was something close to alarm on her face, but she made a visible effort and smiled.

      ‘Captain Skiros. It is time, then?’

      ‘Most certainly it is,’ Skiros said and, moving with astonishing speed, he pushed her back across the bunk and flung himself on top of her, a hand across her mouth to stifle any sound.

      Melos and the deckhand, Andrew, hurried along the dock and paused by the iron gates to listen. There was no sound, and Melos frowned.

      ‘What’s happened to him?’

      He took a single anxious step forward and Chavasse moved out of the shadows, turned him round and raised a knee into his groin. Melos sagged to the wet cobbles and Chavasse grinned across the writhing body at Andrew.

      ‘What kept you?’

      Andrew moved in fast, the knife in his right hand glinting in the rain. His feet were kicked expertly from beneath him and he hit the cobbles. He started to get up and Chavasse seized his right wrist, then twisted the arm around and up in a direction it was never intended to go. Andrew screamed as a muscle ripped in his shoulder, and Chavasse ran him headfirst into the railings of the gate.

      Melos had managed to regain his feet and was being very sick. Chavasse stepped over Andrew and grabbed him by the shirt. ‘Was I really being met at that station bookstall in Paris?’

      Melos shook his head.

      ‘And the Indian girl? What’s Skiros playing at there?’

      Melos didn’t answer. Chavasse pushed him away in disgust, turned and ran back towards the ship.

      The girl’s teeth fastened on the edge of the captain’s hand, biting clean to the bone. He gave a grunt of pain and slapped her across the face.

      ‘By God, I’ll teach you,’ he said. ‘You’ll crawl before I’m through with you.’

      As he advanced, face contorted, the door swung open and Chavasse stepped in. He held the Smith & Wesson negligently in one hand, but the eyes were very dark in the white devil’s face. Skiros swung round and Chavasse shook his head.

      ‘You really are a bastard, aren’t you, Skiros?’

      Skiros took a step forward and Chavasse slashed him across the face with the barrel of the gun, drawing blood. Skiros fell back across the bunk and the girl ran to Chavasse, who put an arm around her.

      ‘Don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re trying to get to England, but they won’t give you a visa.’

      ‘That’s right,’ she said in astonishment.

      ‘We’re in the same boat, then. How much did he charge you?’

      ‘He took all my money in Naples. He said he would keep it safe for me.’

      ‘Did he, now?’ Chavasse pulled Skiros up and shoved him towards the door. ‘Get your case and wait for me at the gangway. The good captain and I have things to discuss.’

      When he pushed Skiros through the door of his own cabin, the captain turned angrily, blood on his face. ‘You won’t get away with this.’

      Chavasse hit him across the face with the gun twice, knocking him to the floor. He squatted beside him and said pleasantly, ‘Get the girl’s money, I haven’t got much time.’

      Skiros produced a key from his trouser pocket, dragged himself to a small safe beside his bunk and opened it. He took out a bundle of notes and tossed them across.

      ‘You can do better than that.’

      Chavasse pushed him to one side, reached into the safe and picked up a black cashbox. He turned it upside-down and three bundles of notes flopped to the floor. He stuffed them into his pocket and grinned.

      ‘There’s a lesson in this for you somewhere, Skiros, and worth every penny.’ He tapped him on the forehead with the barrel of the Smith & Wesson. ‘And now the address – the real address where we can catch a boat for the Channel crossing.’

      ‘Go to Ste-Denise on the Brittany coast near the Golfe de St-Malo,’ Skiros croaked. ‘St-Brieuc is the nearest big town. There’s an inn called the Running Man. Ask for Jacaud.’

      ‘If you’re lying, I’ll be back,’ Chavasse said.

      Skiros could barely whisper. ‘It’s the truth, and you can do what the hell you like. I’ll have my day.’

      Chavasse pushed him back against the wall, stood up and went out. The girl was waiting anxiously at the head of the gangway. She had a scarf around her head and wore a plastic mac.

      ‘I was beginning to get worried,’ she said in her soft, slightly sing-song voice.

      ‘No need.’ He handed her the bundle of notes he had taken from Skiros. ‘Yours, I think.’

      She looked up at him in a kind of wonder. ‘Who are you?’

      ‘A friend,’ he said gently, and picked up her suitcase. ‘Now let’s get moving. I think it would be healthier in the long run.’

      He took her arm and they went down the gangway together.

FRANCE

       4

      They caught the night express to Brest with only ten minutes to spare. It wasn’t particularly crowded. Chavasse managed to find them an empty second-class compartment near the rear, left the girl in charge and ran to the station buffet. He returned with coffee, sandwiches and half-a-dozen oranges.

      The girl drank some of the coffee gratefully, but shook her head when he offered her a sandwich ‘I couldn’t eat a thing.’

      ‘It’s going to be a long night,’ he said. ‘I’ll save you some for later.’

      The train started to move and she stood up and went into the corridor, looking out over the lights of Marseille. When she finally turned and came back into the compartment, a lot of the strain seemed to have left her face.

      ‘Feeling better now?’ he asked.

      ‘I felt sure that something would go wrong; that Captain Skiros might reappear.’

      ‘A bad dream,’ he said. ‘You can forget it now.’

      ‘Life seems to have been all bad dreams for some time.’

      ‘Why not tell me about it?’

      She seemed strangely shy, and when she spoke, it was hesitantly at first. Her name was Famia Nadeem and he had been wrong about her age. She was nineteen, and had been born in Bombay. Her mother had died in childbirth and her father had emigrated to England, leaving her in the care of her grandmother. Things had gone well for him, for he now owned a thriving Indian restaurant in Manchester and had sent for her to join him three months earlier after the death of the old woman.

      But there had been snags of a kind with which Chavasse was only too familiar. Under the terms of the Immigration Act, only genuine family dependants of Commonwealth citizens already in residence in Britain could be admitted without a work permit. In Famia’s case, there was no formal birth certificate to prove her identity conclusively. Unfortunately, there had been a great many false claims and the authorities were now sticking rigorously to the letter of the law. No absolute proof of the claimed relationship meant no entry, and Famia had been sent back to India on the next flight.

      But her father