‘No. I’d come fer a breaver an’ a pipe. I’d still got me things on. I was just takin’ a little rest.’
‘And what happened? You pulled him on board. But what made you up anchor and clear out so quickly? You must have known the catcher would be searching for the man.’
‘Well, we knew all aba’t ‘im, see. So as soon as ‘e says-’ And then he stopped.
‘How do you mean, you knew all about him?’ I asked.
‘Ere you’ll be gettin’ me sayin’ things.’ He got to his feet again. ‘Lumme, give a bloke a chance, can’t yer? Oi’m fagged a’t an’ that’s the truth.’
I said, ‘Sit down.’
‘But look ‘ere, guvner — just let me-’
‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘And listen to me. I want to know where this man Schreuder is. Miss Somers wants to know because she was a friend of Bernt Olsen, otherwise Farnell. She wants to know what happened up there on the Jostedal glacier. And I want to know — for other reasons. What’s more, Sunde, I intend to find out.’
‘Well, yer won’t find out from me,’ he answered sullenly.
‘Look,’ I said angrily, ‘who got you away from Lovaas, eh?’
‘You did,’ he responded. ‘Oi already said ‘ow grateful-’
‘I don’t want your thanks,’ I interrupted him. ‘I want information. Can’t you see we’re your friends? We’re not going to hurt Schreuder. We just want to know what happened, that’s all.’
Curtis poked his head round the galley door and said, ‘Soup up.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s have it. Maybe it’ll help him to talk.’
But it didn’t. For two solid hours I sat there like an intelligence officer examining an enemy prisoner. I tried every approach I knew short of hitting him — and I almost did that once I got so exasperated. But it had no effect. Every time I came up against a brick wall of — ‘You ask my partner.’
At last I said, ‘Well, where is your partner?’
He gave a wan smile. ‘If I tol’ yer that, yer’d know where the other fellow was nan, wouldn’t yer?’
‘Then what’s the use of telling me to ask your partner?’ I demanded irritably.
‘Tell yer what Oi’ll do,’ he said suddenly. ‘Next place we touch at, you put me ashore an’ Oi’ll telephone a message ter Peer ter meet you some place. Where you makin’ fer?’
‘Fjaerland,’ I said.
‘In Sognefjord?’
I nodded.
‘That’s easy then,’ he said. ‘You’ll be off Leirvik in the morning. Put me ashore there an’ Oi’ll phone me partner an’
‘e can meet yer at Fjaerland on ‘is way back.’
‘Back from where?’ I asked.
But he smiled and shook his head. ‘Yer won’t catch me like that, Mr Gansert. Back from where ‘e’s been, that’s where.’
‘He’s taken Schreuder right up to Sognefjord, has he?’
‘Yes. No ‘arm in yer knowing that. You put me ashore at Leirvik an’ Oi’ll phone Peer to meet yer at Fjaerland.’
‘And you’ll come on to Fjaerland with us?’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Then me an’ me outfit can come back together.’
With that I had to be content. At least I had some idea where Schreuder had gone. I let him go to his bunk. He had all the obstinacy of the Cockney driven into a corner. Maybe we could have handled him better. Perhaps if I’d left it to Jill. ‘There can’t be so many places right up the Sognefjord,’ I said to her. ‘If this damned partner of his doesn’t turn up, we’ll make inquiries at every quay in the fjord.’
‘That’ll take us some time,’ she said.
‘Anyway, they probably didn’t touch at any of the landing stages,’ Curtis said. ‘They probably slipped him in at night on a deserted stretch of the shore.’
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘If only we could make the little diver fellow tell us what he knows.’
Jill pressed my hand. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘I’ll have another session with him in the morning.’
Curtis got to his feet and stretched. ‘By God, I’m sleepy,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Think I’ll make some coffee.’
At that moment Dick’s voice hailed us. ‘There’s a breeze springing up, skipper,’ he called down. ‘What about setting some sail?’
I remembered then that I had forgotten all about relieving him. ‘Coming,’ I called back. ‘Curtis. Give Wilson a shout, will you. We’ll be getting sail on her.’
Jill caught my arm as I turned towards the companionway. ‘Thanks for what you did to-day,’ she said. She was smiling. Her lips were very red against the pallor of her skin. ‘It made me feel I wasn’t alone any more — that I had good friends.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said and turned away from her quickly. But as I climbed the ladder to the deck I realised again how much more important this was to her than to me — how much more important emotion was than the hard financial gain of the thing.
I felt the breeze as soon as I poked my head out through the hatch. It was icy cold and refreshing. ‘Sorry, Dick,’ I said. ‘Losing my grip. Completely forgot you hadn’t been relieved.’
‘It’s all right,’ he answered. The moon had disappeared behind cloud and he was just a dark bundle of duffle coat humped over the wheel and outlined against the slight phosphorescence of our wake. ‘I came to remind you once, but I could hear you grilling the poor devil, so I left you to it. What luck?’
