The Sinful Stones Read online

  “That’s another reason why he had to escape,” said Pibble.

  “I don’t see it.”

  “They’d never have printed that sort of stuff once he was dead.”

  “Why did he choose you?”

  “He saw my name in a newspaper cutting. My father worked for him before the First World War.”

  “That’s a funny reason for trusting you. Frank doesn’t usually trust anybody.”

  “He didn’t trust me. He sent Providence a sealed envelope—you gave it back to me—in case I tried to exploit him in some way. Providence must have opened the seal, because he accused me of rushing up here to make a mysterious claim on Sir Francis’s estate, and Sir Francis himself asked me whether my father ever said anything about the fact that he ought to have been damned rich. There was a legend in my family that Sir Francis had stolen something from my father, but not money, just an idea.”

  “That’s bloody peculiar,” said Dorothy. “I’ve known him a long time. First he was just himself, working like a digger in a mine disaster. Sometimes he’d surface for a few days of crazy fun, like a sailor on leave from the North Sea convoys, but mostly he wouldn’t say a word for weeks on end, not even a thank you, not even in bed. He’d just hurtle on. I knew him then, of course, but I didn’t know much about him. After the war—he loved the war—he, got older and slower. That’s when he started to talk so much—it’s a defence against having to listen at all to the rest of us idiots. And it was mostly me he talked to, because he hadn’t any real work. He’d still a lot of work in him, but he couldn’t find a set-up that would have him because everyone knew what a bastard he was to have about the place. Even Berkeley wouldn’t find a job for him.”

  “Wasn’t he rich enough to set up his own establishment?” said Pibble, switching the saucepan to his left hand and hunkering round to a new pose. Perhaps the water-level was half an inch lower.

  “Christ!” said Dorothy. “You don’t know what Frank’s sort of toy costs these days. You make a vacuum, you start a sort of atomic explosion in it, and you try to control it with magnetic fields. It’s mostly maths, but then you’ve got to build the bloody thing and see if it works. They haven’t so far, and of course Frank says that because they wouldn’t ask him. But supposing some maniac stood him the equipment, even then he could only just afford the running costs, and he was a millionaire twice over. That was what I was coming to. He talked a lot, and he didn’t repeat himself as much as old men usually do, but I don’t think he ever said anything about where the first big dollop of money came from. I know he was poor at Cambridge and rich after the war, and I remember a Buckingham Palace Garden Party where he teased a nice old general by telling him that he’d had the sense to be a war profiteer while the stupid ones were dying in the mud— What’s up?”

  “I’m going to be sick,” said Pibble, and was, so far as his stomach would supply him with vomit.

  “Nothing you can do about it,” said Dorothy, with neither pity nor contempt when at last he pushed himself up, icy with feverish sweat, from the wet gunwale and the black-green, puckered, bubbling, backward-streaming sea.

  “By the time I knew him,” she said, “he had his money tied up in a tangle of radio patents and directorships of radio companies. He made a packet out of the second war, too. Christ, I won’t be sorry if I never see that place again.”

  She nodded towards the west, up the hill of the leaning boat. Pibble knelt on the netting and looked; they were now re-passing the shambling wedge of Clumsey Island, with the buildings projecting towards the thinner end. The imprecision of the verticals combined with the lumpiness of the design to make the place look like an unnatural growth up-thrusting from the sour earth, all scaly where the light gleamed from the slates. Pibble stared at the place, unable even to summon up the aesthetic energy to dismiss it as ugly.

  From the growth an insect rose and hung, a spiky black blob, to the left of the tower. Pibble’s instant panic lasted only its instant. Hope must be flying the helicopter, perhaps taking Tolerance to the mainland for hospital treatment. Providence would be with him, certainly. They would go to Oban, rout the authorities out, tell them—holy and solemn—that a demented policeman had invaded the island, kidnapped the great Sir Francis and two nuns, had also caused Grievous Bodily Harm to one inoffensive anchorite, beside extensive damage to property.

  Would it work? The GBH was nasty; Pibble’s mythical claim on the old man’s estate might be worked up into madman’s motive; Rita and Dorrie were useless witnesses, for either side. But Sir Francis, when compos, should be a match for the lot of them. Suppose, though, that the boat came to Oban in one of his senile patches. . .then they’d try to toddle the old man off and keep him out of the way of help until the lack of cortisone had crumbled his mind. But once Pibble could reach a policeman, a telephone, his own context, he’d be able to … But Providence would realise that. They’d try to stop him getting there; hire a launch in Oban, board the boat in the dark. That could work, but …

  “They can’t get at us here, can they?” said Dorothy.

  “I don’t think they want to,” said Pibble. “They’re making for Oban.”

  “You can’t tell what the bastards want,” she said.

  The drub of rotors reached him down the wind. The helicopter was going to pass very near—it could fly straight to Oban while the boat had to take the long dog-leg round Dubh Artach lighthouse. Ironic if it passed straight over them—no, it would come about fifty yards behind. He could see the two cowled heads, dim behind the crazed perspex of the cabin-bubble, but couldn’t distinguish which Virtues they belonged to. One was moving about, tugging at something—the door!

  A new panic sluiced through him as the ugly machine, erratic in the wind, swung round over the equally erratic wake which Dorothy had steered. It thudded towards them. Hope would hand over the controls, slide like a gymnast down a rope, prance onto the deck and break him apart, sad but ruthless.

  “Can you go more downwind?” he shouted.

  The boat lurched round. Even Pibble knew (from a dismal three days spent raking Cobham Moor for a vanished school-girl, himself directing the soaked lines of searchers from on high by walkie-talkie) that it is hard for a helicopter to hover downwind. Either they hadn’t brought Tolerance or he’d fainted, for he’d have told them that.

  “Get a knife!” screamed Dorothy. “There’s one in the gunwale!”

  He ran to where the second gutting-knife projected from the scarred wood. The only chance was to catch the ruffian saint at the one vulnerable moment when he landed. He climbed up to the foredeck, so as to have the upper ground. Dorothy shouted something, but her voice was drowned by the drubbing rotors. The sail flapped and loosened in the downdraft, and the boat suddenly lost way. The machine was beyond the mast and rocking as though its crew were wrestling together.

  One of them had fallen out!

  The black mass, too small and compact for a tumbling body, hurtled down to vanish in a waterspout ten feet beyond the bows. Only as the splash resettled did Pibble see, on his retina’s memory, what had actually fallen. A boulder. Two hundredweight of murderous rock. A stone bomb. The Community was going to solve the Pibble question after the fashion of the Eternal City.

  He watched dully as the helicopter circled to line itself up again. This time they would have had some target-practice. They would drop their stone bomb sooner.

  “What happened?” yelled Dorothy.

  “They tried to drop a rock on us, but the downdraft from the rotors slowed us down and they overshot. They’re going to try again.”

  Dorothy began to curse. Though her words were an ordinary string of ordinary foulnesses she spoke them like a hag calling powers from the pit.

  “Can you try and dodge?” he said.

  The boat, hitherto a tiny fleck on the enormous sea, refocused under the lens of terror to a spreading, unmissable target.<
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  “Or if there’s a way of stopping the boat before they reach the sail,” he said, “they might overshoot again.”

  “Oh Christ!” she said. “You can try it. Get the pawl off ratchet and hold it with the handle. The gaff will bring the sail down when you let go, and we’ll stop pretty near dead.”

  Pibble ran to the winch, wrenched the handle round so that he could flick the pawl out of the cogs, and knelt to watch the enemy. This time the helicopter seemed to be coming slower; now he was sure that the one at the controls was Hope. A pale round bulge protruded at the side of the bubble, Providence’s head; beyond it beard flapped like a college scarf. When the helicopter was six feet astern he shouted to Dorothy. She put the tiller over.

  Too soon. The machine overshot as the boat swung soggily left, but didn’t drop its missile. It came round in a tight circle and was six feet behind again. He shouted again; a splodge of wave-top caught the back of his neck as the boat plunged right and the sail rattled loose. Dorothy hauled it in, but this time Hope hadn’t needed to circle but had followed them round. The roaring contraption wobbled as Providence tussled with another boulder. Only seconds to go now. Pibble saw its jagged side, shouted, and jerked the handle off the winch.

  The sail knocked him flat beneath its banging folds. He felt the boat plunge and wallow, a toy of the sea. He got his head out from the canvas and saw the helicopter, toy of the wind, flick forward. The boulder was over the sill; a hand was clawing at it, trying to haul it back; if that hand had shoved, it would have fallen on the bows; but the hand was not strong enough; the stone edged outwards, slow as molasses beginning to drip from the edge of a spoon; now it was falling like the first.

  The waterspout was nearer this time. Because the boat was no longer moving with the wind he could see, as he struggled to his feet, the circular swirl where the stone had fallen heave up by the bows and then vanish as the next wave tilted the wallowing vessel back.

  “Get the bloody sail up!” shouted Dorothy.

  He kicked and hustled the canvas clear of the winch, found the handle and started to wind, battered by the iron-hard folds, which flapped back and forth. When it was taut he ran aft to where Dorothy was trying to hold the sail-foot out to her left with one hand and control the tiller with the other.

  “I’ll do the sail,” he gasped, took the corner of canvas from her and leaned as far out as he dared. A hand grabbed at his waistband and hard knuckles dug into his spine. He leaned further, and the canvas hardened to a curve—on the wrong side of the boat. Ah, yes, that was the only way to pull the bows round, out of the wind. He leaned and strained. A wave creamed along the gunwale and slopped into the well.

  “Right,” said Dorothy.

  He let the sail go. It smacked to its proper place. The boat was moving properly through the water again.

  He looked wildly round for the helicopter. It was going away, back to Clumsey Island.

  “Think the bastards will try again?” said Dorothy.

  “They’ll have to, now,” said Pibble, watching the spindly blob diminish, low over the waves.

  “What the bloody hell do they think they’re up to?” said Dorothy.

  “They want Sir Francis dead, and me too. They don’t think you and Rita matter, either way. I’ll try to rig some nets. There might be a signal rocket. If we can get near enough to the lighthouse for the crew to see us, they won’t risk dropping rocks on us.”

  “Bloody sea,” said Dorothy. “Bloody boats. I always hated them, but Frank made me learn. We won’t be anywhere near the lighthouse before they get back. Isn’t there a lifeboat in this stinking tub?”

  “It burst on a rock,” said Pibble. “What do you think about rigging nets?”

  “You’d never get the bloody things up in time. What’s that?”

  Pibble knelt among the nets and scrabbled at a bundle half-buried beneath them. “INFLATE” said the stencilled letters. He hauled out an awkward; rubbery parcel and found it was another Air-Sea Rescue dinghy—some fishing crony must have unloaded a batch of Government Surplus stores on the innocent Macdonalds. He tumbled it back against the bulwarks and turned for the cabin.

  “Blow the bloody thing up!” shouted Dorothy behind him, her voice teetering above the cliffs of hysteria. He knelt, unlashed the fastenings, removed a yellow metal cylinder two feet long, and began to work the little hand-bellows. The dinghy puffed up a treat—why, if he could heave it about the boat fast enough it might cushion the first impact of a falling rock enough to save the underlying timbers. In that case he didn’t want it blown up tight. As he puffed his eyes looked uncomprehendingly at the picture on the yellow cylinder, which showed a pilot sitting snugly in his dinghy and fiddling with a contraption of cloth and struts. There were instructions above the picture, but the curve of the cylinder only allowed him to read the last one:

  6. TO HAUL IN KITE AFTER USE. WIND IN LINE AROUND THE CONTAINER TO PREVENT TANGLING.

  He looked towards the island. It was small already. Soon it would be no more than a grey hummock. The sky above it was bare.

  “Kite,” nudged the erratic remembrancer in the court of his skull. Yes, a pilot in a dinghy would fly one to attract attention. It would be bright-coloured, and far more visible than an object at sea-level. Perhaps the lighthouse crew might spot it—if he could get it to fly. Kites don’t for Pibbles.

  Inside the lid of the cylinder was a little yellow cardboard box, octagonal in section, containing (the instructions said) 33 yards of flying line. He tipped it out and peered at the besom-like cluster of aluminium twigs below. He could pull them as far as the end of the cylinder, where they jammed under the incurled rim. When he freed one, another jammed on the far side. With dismal patience he fiddled each twig free and withdrew the whole besom, whose further end was lapped in yellow cloth.

  2. REMOVE RUBBER BANDS FROM FABRIC, ASSEMBLE THE FOUR MAIN LONGERONS BY INSERTING THE TUBE ENDS INTO THEIR CORRESPONDING HALVES.

  Now the toy was three feet long, four flimsy struts swathed at either end in yellow cloth whose flappings concealed another mess of metal twigs.

  3. SHAKE KITE PARTIALLY OPEN. PRESS OUTWARDS ON THE SPIDERS AT EACH END UNTIL THE SPREADING MEMBERS SEAT IN THEIR OUTWARD POSITION. (see illustration)

  And the thing was alive in his hands, nuzzling at the wind as a lapdog strains the entrance to the Park.

  5. SHOULD THE WIND SPEED BE LESS THAN 20MPH, THE FLYING LINE SNAP HOOK SHOULD BE LOWERED TO THE “BOTTOM” BRIDLE POINT ON THE KITE–This Is Important.

  On the straining cloth the same peremptory slugs of jargon were printed, with further diagrams. Even damned fool like your dad could fly this kite, provided he’d brought his anemometer along.

  “How fast is the wind?” he yelled.

  “Twenty knots, I’d say. What the hell are you playing at?”

  “If I get this up the lighthouse might see it.”

  “Not a hope. The cord might bother the bastards, like barrage balloon.”

  Um. Surely even Tolerance’s dicey rotors would slice through that. It’d take wire …

  He took the toy up to the foredeck, clipped the “safety-pin-like” shackle on the end of the flying line through the “20 mph” loop, held the kite high and let go. It dithered for an instant in the lee of the sail; he gave it more line and it ducked, then soared. It went almost straight up as he let the cord gent out, but when he tried to hurry it by giving it slack it began to tumble like a shot pheasant Two tugs and it was climbing again. He knotted the end of the cord to the bow stay wire and ran back to the well to search for something tough enough to smash a rotor. Or perhaps he could find a signal rocket to shoot at them, though it would need a fluke on the verge of fantasy to hit such a target.

  There was nothing useful among the netting, so he ducked into the cabin. Rita was asleep now, her head on the old man’s shoulder and her long locks coiling among the bristli
ng whiskers like clematis in a dead apple-tree. Sir Francis blinked at the swaying light and mumbled to himself. The water on the floor was almost gone, so his baling had had some effect. He hunted among the lockers.

  There had been a signal-rocket, once, but something heavy and sharp had been dumped on it and now it gaped like a gutted fish; its powdery innards mottled the locker floor. Another locker held fishing-reels, weights and bait-tins; the next a tangle of blocks and cords, but nothing thin enough to fly a kite from. The boat gave a wild lurch and he stumbled to the floor. He snatched a coil of stay wire from the locker and crawled out to see what had happened.

  Dorothy was back at the tiller, but she must have left it for now she had the bottle to her lips, tilted like a trumpet. Pibble staggered across the netting and snatched it away, making a spout of pale amber spurt across her cheek. She grabbed at his arm but he held the bottle over the bulwark.

  “I’ll drop it,” he said.

  She nodded, scooped her hand across her cheek and licked at her whisky-flavoured palm. Pibble found the cork at her feet, stoppered the bottle and put it under his arm. Far over Clumsey Island he could see a dark spot rising. The lighthouse seemed not an inch nearer than before.

  “You’re just as bloody a bastard as the rest of them,” she said thickly. “If I’m going to die, why can’t I die happy?”

  The hair-of-the-dog sour reasonableness which her first swigs had given her was gone. Now she’d be drunk again. Already she was steering the boat with broad gestures which made it swoop and stumble.