“That’s true,” Donald said.
“How did you follow the trail here?”
“His girlfriend contacted me.”
“Why?”
The bored eyes had come alive with a direct, probing intelligence. Donald was not going to tolerate being cross-examined.
“The question answers itself surely?” he said.
“Your visit is no surprise. What does surprise me is how long it has taken. Lawrence was fogged back in July.”
“You need not be concerned for your position,” Nightminster said.
“I’m not even slightly concerned for my position. What do you want?”
“Account-Captain Peterson-Veitch will attend a conference this afternoon. You can tell no one else, nor can he, not even his wife. His Decency insists on absolute discretion. Peterson-Veitch must be at Dunstaffnage Harbour at fifteen minutes after noon to board a motor yacht called Lydia. The purpose of the conference—”
Turner just pulled a wan grin and shook his head.
“I can guess.” He glared at Nightminster. “What are you, anyway? Some big-shot from the Ultra Guild? You have the air of those thugs, the flashy style… Swanky metal flying boat indeed! I’ll bet it cost the better side of fifty thousand ounces. Christ, to think TK is stooping to such people.”
He shook his head again, switching his hard eyes back to Donald.
“What do you know about Lawrence anyway?”
His tone was jeering. A smirk flickered about his mouth, as if amused by some private joke at Donald’s expense.
“Apparently he flourished in General Wardian—which amazes me. Lawrence railed against regulations,” Donald said.
Turner considered this, leaning back, staring over their heads.
“Actually, what distinguished him was just how faithfully he practised the regulations. That’s why he flourished.”
“He must have changed from the brat I knew.”
Turner smiled at that, rather smugly.
“He definitely did, Donald. He was a most useful officer for an organisation such as ours. Then again, times change; his sort of dedication is going out of fashion.”
“The case of Lawrence is one that will be dealt with quite separately,” Nightminster said. “Now that he is in the Night and Fog, any extrication will be a matter of negotiation.”
Turner shook his head, the smile cooling.
“It will be a matter of blackmail.”
Nightminster stood up.
“We are finished here now.” He laid a hand on Donald’s shoulder. “Let’s get some lunch. There’s quite a decent grill in town.”
“Just a minute, I want to know what Lawrence did here.”
Nightminster stepped back. An icy sweetness crept into his voice.
“I’m sure the account-captain can provide all the gory details.”
He sat down again well to the side, relishing some private joke of his own. Donald was perfectly aware they were both laughing at him. What he could not work out was whether they were laughing at the same joke.
“You need to understand he abandoned his family ten years ago. We know nothing at all of his life. I don’t even know how long he was stationed here.”
“Three and a half years,” Turner said.
“What did he do?”
“Customer liaison—he was my face at Oban Castle. He soothed all the whining officials and accounting fuck-ups, flew the flag at social functions, that kind of thing.”
“That does not sound very Lawrence. Did he like it?”
“No. Lawrence was no courtier. I think that was why he drifted into criminality.”
“If he hated it so much, why did he do it for three and a half years?”
“He only did it for three months, before that, he was a barge commander in my Oban Flotilla.”
“He was a barge commander for three years and a bit?” Donald was as much amazed as amused to think of brother Lawrence transformed into a hearty mariner.
“He was executive officer in the first year, then commander for two years.”
“What were his duties?”
“Patrolling the Irish Sea to prevent surplus flow.”
“What do you mean by ‘preventing’?”
“Stopping it,” Turner said.
A question hovered over Donald’s tongue. As a wave might knock a boat onto a new course, so his curiosity veered away from what he did not really need to know. Was he afraid of surplus knowledge? The brutal four barrels of the brass-munchers on the patrol barges came to mind. So did the crates of ammunition in Rackland’s warehouse. To know was to take responsibility. At that moment, he would not have admitted even to himself that in the hinterland of his mind a terrible suspicion had just begun to smoulder.
“Did he excel at this?”
“Absolutely! He would still be doing it, except that he was hell-bent on promotion to account-captain. You have to prove you can butter the client, so I put him in customer liaison to tick the box.”
“You’re saying he built up a grand scale of contraband trade in just three months?”
That shut Turner’s smug mouth.
“Thank you, account-captain. That was the fullest answer I could have asked for,” Donald said.
About two minutes later they were out on the promenade, walking back towards the town centre.
“Tell me, Donald, what do you think will happen this afternoon?”
“TK will fry those scoundrels alive. It won’t bring Lawrence back but it will be a delightful come-uppance. Am I right?”
“You’re getting warm, I’ll give you that.”
Chapter
12
They took off that afternoon at around one o’clock and flew along the north coast of the island of Mull towards the open Atlantic. Nightminster kept the flying boat low and slow, below the hill tops, the engines just cantering. Donald felt he was inside an enormous limousine. He asked Nightminster about the flying boat. It was not an heirloom of the Public Era, Nightminster had designed it and supervised its construction in a factory of the Battersea asylum, from where it had been man-hauled piece by piece to North Kensington basin for assembly. Finding the skills to work aluminium sheet had been the big problem. Every sheet had to be hand-rolled and beaten, since there were no longer rolling mills to supply sheet metal as there had been in the Public Era. Power came from four twelve-cylinder diesel engines, each boosted by a device called a turbocharger. Craftsmen working under Nightminster’s direction had created the turbochargers at a cost in excess of their weight in gold. They doubled the altitude the flying boat could reach, from
