It seemed to Nigel that the end of the world had come. The sense of defeat and futility was as awful as the black moment in London when they realised that they had been watching the wrong house for a week.
But Sandro’s voice, in the cockpit, was quite bland. ‘You take my pawn, Mr Body. I take your king. You will add a hole to the existing holes you have in your ridiculous little head.’
The big muzzle of the gun in the dark man’s hand pointed unwaveringly at Nigel’s navel. This was a new experience for him and he disliked it. He did not think Sandro would let him be killed. But he knew that if it came to a choice between Jenny and him Sandro would sacrifice him. He did not disagree with this arrangement of values: but it saddened him to think that Nicola, now safe and his and needing him, would only have his corpse.
Jenny was presumably below, either trussed up or doped.
‘The very best thing that can happen to you,’ said Mr Body, ‘is that I shall not kill or mutilate Lady Jennifer. I emphasise, the very best. The worst things that can happen are the things I shall cause to be done to her if you try my patience for many more seconds.’
A pale figure appeared behind the man with the gun, in the door of the saloon.
‘If you shoot me your boss gets it,’ said Nigel.
‘Like we said. Stalemate.’
It was necessary to keep the gunman’s whole attention. Nigel gabbled on: ‘If my boss shoots your boss you shoot me, but then you won’t have a boss and then my boss might shoot you—’
Jenny brought a full bottle of Gordon’s Export gin down on the head of the skipper. He went straight down in a heap, landing hard.
‘Stalemate broken,’ called Jenny. ‘How are you, fatty?’
‘Fine, carissima.’
‘And good for you, Nigel darling. Quite a new role. What would they say in the ad game?’
Nigel grinned. He and Jenny embraced, laughed with relief. Jenny picked up the skipper’s gun and handed it to Nigel.
‘Watch him for an instant, will you, pet, while I see what Sandro’s at.’
Sandro was covering Mr Body with a harpoon-pistol and Nigel’s victim with an automatic.
‘What is so convenient about yachts is that there is always much rope,’ he said. ‘How are you truly, Jenny?’
‘Full of beans. Now you can teach me sailor’s knots.’
They started tying up Mr Body. He suddenly began to struggle like a maniac. Sandro knocked him out with the butt of his pistol.
They extracted the needle from Ricky’s thigh, cleaned and dressed the small puncture, and told him cheerfully that wounds never heal in the tropics. He was also bound.
Jenny relieved Nigel in case Chuck woke up, while Nigel and Sandro carried the first two into the saloon. Then they tied up Chuck.
‘Very tidy,’ said Sandro. ‘We must now sail two hundred miles as quickly as we can. We can tell stories as we go.’
Hubris sailed by, three fathoms away. Bill Foss hailed them.
‘Hey! You forgot your wine!’
‘So we did. Listen, Bill,’ shouted Sandro, ‘we’re staying aboard. We’ll send you the money.’
‘What do I do with this wine?’
‘Drink it!’
Bill Foss waved and sailed on. He had only known Sandro two days, but he knew he would get his money.
Very soon after he was out of sight Sandalshoon’s anchor was up and she was thudding south under power and sail.
‘How did you come up from below?’ Nigel asked Jenny.
‘On my pins. Left foot right foot. It’s funny what loopholes people leave. It’s always the way. You only win because other people make bloomers. They just didn’t take quite enough trouble to make sure I was getting their drugs. Which meant I missed quite a bit of nourishing scoff. I could hardly lift that gin bottle.’
‘Food at once, Nigel,’ said Sandro.
‘Oh yes, please,’ said Jenny. She then fainted.
Sandro gave Nigel the wheel and a compass-course. He put Jenny to bed. Later they fed her on soup and she was able to laugh at herself and come up on deck.
‘What will you do for a job?’ Jenny asked Nigel.
‘Colly says he can fix me up with something out here, if we like. Property or yacht-broking or a pub or something. I’ll see what Nicola thinks.’
‘I’m so glad about her, love.’
‘Yes. Colly can have my guts.’
‘You’ve got some too, darling.’
‘This is piracy,’ said Mr Henry Body. ‘You are in very serious legal trouble.’
‘I am quite prepared to add murder to the list of my crimes,’ said Sandro. ‘Please be quiet while I use your excellent radio.’
A prearranged message went quickly, by a complicated route. It went to English Harbour, then to St John’s, then by Telex to the Galactic Studios’ London office, then by an uncomprehending and contemptuous Flavia May to Miss Olivia Winstanley.
The message seemed frivolous gibberish. ‘That Sandro,’ said Flavia May. ‘That slob.’
But it sent Miss Winstanley to Scotland Yard and an interview in a depressing office. Some men in felt hats then arrested a big dark man, a shiny gingery man, a sad little man in a woolly-muffler and a pasty-faced man with black paint under his fingernails. The charges included armed assault, attempted murder, actual bodily harm, abduction, defrauding H.M. Customs and Excise, and unauthorised possession of various proscribed drugs. All four were remanded in custody until certain key witnesses, thought to be abroad, should become available.
Other messages, worded by Colly, went to New York and the New Jersey and Florida police.
Mr Body’s description meant nothing to anyone.
Ricky de Malahide, in some pain from his wounded thigh, said that he had been hired by the Red Indian skipper and vetted by Mr Body, whom he had not previously met. He had been a male model in London and New York, had drifted south to the sun, and had made a modest living as a waiter and then as a steward and deck-hand in various yachts. Any views he might have formed about the set-up in Sandalshoon were pure speculation. He knew they were picking up a cook in a day or two, he thought an Italian. He had heard that this Italian was a good photographer, which interested him because of his own professional background.
Chuck Running Deer, in some pain from the blow on his head, said he had been hired by the skipper of Mr Body’s other yacht and vetted by Mr Body, whom he had not previously met. He had grown up in California, in San Diego, and had never been interested in anything except the sea. He had served in merchant ships and cruise ships and held a second mate’s certificate.
He clearly knew rather more than his English crewman, but Sandro guessed that his pain threshold would be high and that he would give nothing away.
Mr Henry Body laughed in their faces. He challenged them to prove anything against him, to link him with any blackmailing, any suicides, the deaths of any policemen. He challenged them even to find out who he was. Looking at the back of his tiny skull Jenny wanted to smash it. Sandro shared this feeling but said that they should wait.
They flew south in front of the trade-wind and Sandro decided to sail all night, motoring when the wind dropped in the evening.
Nigel’s heart yearned southward ahead of Sandalshoon’s hurrying bows, to Nicola, who had said on the crackling and buzzing radio that she loved him and would marry him.
Campanida made ninety miles the second day, and on the third came in the evening, in a dying wind, to the rendezvous.
This was a small island, twenty miles north-west of St Lucia – dry, uninhabited, useless, flat and dull.
Another yacht was already there, anchored thirty yards off the inhospitable shore. A small figure waved madly from the foredeck. Colly recognised Jenny and gave a shout of joy and greeting.
Colly anchored and they started to lower the sails. Jenny came across in Sandalshoon’s tender. She and Colly embraced warmly. She kissed Nicola, who wept.
‘I thought you’d rather meet Nigel in our house, love.’
‘Yes,’ said Nicola.
Nigel appeared on Sandalshoon’s deck, looking red-brown and different and grown-up. He helped Nicola aboard and she clung to him and would not thereafter let go of his hand.
Sandro went across to Campanula. He helped Colly with his sails and his prisoners. He heard Colly’s report, and brought him up to date with what they had learnt.
‘It comes to this,’ said Colly finally. ‘We don’t know if the thing can continue to run on its own momentum. He may have the blackmail end set up so that his clients have to go on paying, even though he’s at the bottom of this ocean.’
‘I think he must be there. He was going to New York for a few days, for business. We believe for some pay-offs. I think the money comes to him quickly and he takes charge of it and turns it into yachts and property and investments, whatever he buys. The sums are exceedingly large, yes?’
‘Matt’s were.’
‘There is a second thing we don’t know,’ said Sandro. ‘Who is Mr Henry Body?’
‘Huh?’
‘A most civilised man, a man of culture, widely travelled, who does not exist.’
‘Take it slow, Sandro. I’m tired.’
‘I have been busy with Sandalshoon’s very superior radio. Mr Body is legal owner of this and that and he has a passport. I repeat that he does not exist. He has no money, he lives nowhere, he exists only when he is here.’
‘For God’s sake, all you’re saying is that he uses a different name in New York.’
‘He is another person in New York, it is clear. Rich, well-known, with many connections. But we do not know who.’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Molto. This half man can hardly be arrested. If he is tried it will be for nothing. We shall not know the full story, the operation. Jenny will not be safe, nor any of us.’
‘They’ll take him to New York. Somebody will recognise him.’
‘No. This man is full of confidence.’
‘Let me go look at him.’
‘Please do. I will stay here.’
Mr Henry Body looked back at Colly with arrogance.
‘I may possibly be held to have committed a small number of minor technical offences. Who hasn’t? To give you a representative example, I may unwittingly have travelled with a girl with a false name in her passport. That is the level we are discussing. A far cry from piracy.’
‘What did George do with those other girls?’
‘Since I understand that George was drowned his evidence in the matter will not be available to you.’
‘What about the drugs in Campanula?’
‘What drugs in Campanula? I guess we shall never know how George got them or why.’
‘What about the drugs on board here?’
‘You will find British prescriptions.’
‘Abduction,’ said Colly.
‘Whom did I abduct?’
‘Miss Nicola Bland.’
‘I? From London? You will find from my passport that I have never even been to Britain.’
‘We know beyond any doubt that you were in Britain.’
‘My passport will conclusively prove different. You will discover, if you wish to take the trouble, that my legal domicile is in the British West Indies and that I have not been home to the United States for eight years.’
‘You murdered six cops and a sucker at Rillington Beach, New Jersey.’
Henry Body laughed. ‘My passport will conclusively prove different.’
Colly could make nothing of his face at all. But that head would be unforgettable. If pictures were circulated someone would remember.
Colly instructed his imagination to invest Henry Body with a head of hair. Various heads of hair. It meant nothing. And it was still a tiny head.
‘I expect he has some sort of stuffed wig,’ said Nicola, her voice muffled against Nigel’s shoulder. ‘To make his head bigger.’
Nigel exclaimed sharply: ‘Sandro!’
‘Yes? Dinner is nearly ready.’
‘In New York he has a large head! An exceptionally big head . . . ’
‘Clever Nicola,’ said Sandro.
When they knew what they were looking for they found it quite easily, though it was ingeniously camouflaged.
It was neatly packed in a leather zip-bag. This bore, in letters of gold, the words: ‘Laplanders. Travelling slippers by Keppels of Boston. Imported.’ Inside the bag were what seemed to be a pair of shaggy folding slippers. One of these unfolded into a sort of flexible crash-helmet, covered with thick grey hair.
Sandro, searching earlier, had wondered momentarily at this cold-weather item amidst Henry Body’s elegant tropical kit.
Sandro came into the saloon carrying the false head. A look of death came into Henry Body’s face when he saw it. He struggled like a madman when they put it on him. Nicola came in, and saw it, and looked about for Henry Body. It was as though he had been given an entirely new head, a personality entirely remote.
Joins were faintly visible between eyebrows and ears. Glasses would exactly cover these. Sandro found the glasses, heavy-framed tortoiseshell of an intellectual kind, in a drawer. He put them on Henry Body’s nose.
Colly came aboard to look.
‘My God,’ he said at the third attempt. He turned to Sandro. ‘You were right, chum. The culture and all that. Remember Sotheby’s?’
‘Yes,’ said Sandro. ‘The purchaser of the large Matisse, property of the late Matt Warren.’
‘Now that,’ said Jenny, ‘I call slick. Not just bleeding the poor bleeder to death, but publicly snapping up his household Gods.’
‘Yeah,’ said Colly. ‘Goddam psychopath.’
‘I wonder if that explains his taste in girls?’
‘Revenge for being laughed at by a British chick the year of Roosevelt’s second term? But he’s awful smart for a nut, darling.’
‘No wonder,’ said Nigel, ‘they made such a fuss about the slipper in the car.’
‘I think you were in a hurry that evening, Mr Body,’ said Sandro. ‘I think you changed your identity at short notice, perhaps in the car, when your friends spotted Miss Bland.’
‘Wait,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s two men, is it? Two quite different men. Tiny-head mucks about down here. Then a chum of his who’s been staying with him flies to America and smooths about New York.’
‘A man with a big head. Right. Tiny-head never goes near New York. And big-head,’ said Colly, ‘big-head, with a different passport, flies to Europe and buys pictures at Sotheby’s.’
‘But when he’s talking to his London pals he’s a man with a tiny head.’
‘Yep. A man who never even entered the country. A man who can’t be linked to anything.’
‘And when,’ said Nigel, ‘he’s roasting policemen—’
‘He has a tiny head. A guy who never entered the United States, who never left Antigua. While the big-headed party has never been seen in New Jersey.’
‘How mixed I’m getting,’ said Jenny.
‘That is the beauty,’ said Sandro. ‘Mr Body, by himself, as he has so often pointed out, has done very little that is criminal. Since he has been neither to Europe nor to the United States. And the gentleman with the large head even less. Only when you add them together . . . ’
‘Man,’ said Colly, ‘a change of heads is certainly convenient.’
The man with the large head, the thatch of grey hair, the neat features, and the great wealth stared at Jenny, at Sandro, at Colly, at Nigel and Nicola as though at the face of his personal damnation.
‘How did we get here?’ asked Nicola suddenly.
‘You seem to have come as a naked Negress, darling,’ said Nigel.
‘Oh,’ she seemed taken aback. ‘How sweet.’
They decided to assemble everybody in Sandalshoon, where there was plenty of room. Lyn and Albie the photographer were ferried across. Chuck, Ricky, Lyn and Albie were tied up in the forecastle. Colly brought a few of his own things across. He and Sandro would sleep on Sandalshoon’s deck.
Mr Henry Body watched these dispositions in silence, his eyes flickering from left to right as he saw friends and enemies finally assembled in one hull.
‘How dramatically correct,’ he said at last. ‘Stars and full company for the finale.’ A note of exultation entered his voice as he said: ‘It will not in the event be of any use to you, but it is an indulgence which, like Siegfried, I cannot deny myself.’
‘What’s that?’ said Colly shortly.
‘You postulated a British girl rejecting me. You were grotesquely short of the truth. I went to school in England. At the deplorable whim of my mother I was sent to a bad and minor boarding-school in the English Midlands. I was not happy there.’
Jenny imagined it: a clever and arrogant outsider with an unattractive deformity, among the oafish sons of builders and seed-merchants. He must have had a beastly time.
‘I spent vacations with English families,’ Mr Body went on softly. ‘Families who were paid to take me, so that my mother could drink and drug and copulate in New York without interference. I was attracted to the English girls, the sisters of my schoolmates. They treated me with disgust and derision. On one occasion I was defiled. Stripped and defiled, by a group of girls. They laughed when I cried with shame and disgust. One of the girls was the daughter of a Minister of the Established Church. She was evil and obscene. She had an educated voice. I made a vow.’
‘You kept it,’ said Jenny.
There was still a note of exultation in Henry Body’s soft and cultured voice as he went on: ‘When I came home I found my mother had been ruined. In health and in spirit and financially, by the men who had used her. Hard, uncaring, selfish men, gentlemen, the Eastern Establishment, men who laughed at me when they were drunk in their clubs, for deformity and for poverty and for being the son of my mother. I made another vow.’
‘You kept it,’ said Colly.
‘I wanted three things. My brilliance and my good fortune were that I killed all my birds with the same bright stone. I became richer than those men, my enemies. I reduced girls like the girls who had humiliated me to a degradation lower than a West Side hooker, lower than a Bowery bum, lower than my mother. I destroyed men like the men who had ruined my mother. Drove them to despair and to suicide, as she was driven. Yes, I kept my vows. I succeeded. Nobody can take it away from me.’
He was almost singing. His voice rose in a mad and priestlike incantation.
‘You cannot undo what I have done. You cannot recall those men back to life and happiness, those girls back to decency. I have kept my vows. I have won.’
‘Not this round,’ said Colly. ‘Let’s get him somewhere we don’t have to look at him.’
‘You know,’ said Jenny quietly to Sandro and Colly, after dinner, on Sandalshoon’s afterdeck, ‘I think it would be very nice and tactful for us three to go back to Campanula.’
‘Aha, oho,’ said Colly.
‘Why not?’ said Sandro. ‘Mr Body is safe in the galley, the rest forward. Why not?’
Quietly they rowed across the strip of water between the yachts. When Nigel and Nicola came up on deck from the saloon they could see the tender at Campanula’s stern; they could see Jenny wave from the bows.
Except for a living cargo who were not in a position to interrupt them, they were alone.
The wind had dropped and the sea was quiet. Nigel led Nicola below to the after cabin. He locked the door, pointlessly. Moonlight flooded in through the porthole.
They kissed with wide-open mouths. Nigel gently unbuttoned Nicola’s shirt, and then pulled off his own. Body met body. Nicola squirmed with joy and strained towards Nigel. They lowered themselves slowly on to the moonlit double bunk. They undressed each other and explored each other’s bodies. They made love in the moonlight.
Nicola slept for a little in Nigel’s arms. She woke and said she wanted to swim.
He laughed and kissed her. They went up on deck as they were. Nicola climbed down the ladder into the sea. Nigel dived from the deck. They kissed again in the water, body to body. They wondered if they could make love while they were swimming. They let themselves drift a little way from the yacht. This saved their lives.