Bloodthirst Read online

  It was then that Peter lost control. His throat seemed to open of its own will and he heard his continuous scream fill the room.

  ‘Please, doctor, I have not touched you yet,’ chided Stromberg, switching off his drill. ‘You must appreciate that such a noise could upset my concentration at a delicate moment. Perhaps I should inject some nova into your throat muscles to ensure your silence.’

  Tears rolled from Peter’s eyes and he could not control his sobbing. Detailed knowledge of what was to come robbed him of all dignity and fortitude. He felt warmth round his loins as the fear gripping his nervous system caused micturition.

  Uselessly he turned his head from side to side, then heard Stromberg giving directions to his guards for putting a head clamp in place. The urine dripping from the table caused them to joke in Haitian-French patois.

  ‘Time to wash up now,’ said Stromberg, and disappeared from Peter’s vision. The Tontons followed, and he was left alone with the stink of his sweat.

  A minute passed — the longest minute in Peter’s life. Somewhere an alarm bell clattered. It was followed by shouts echoing down the corridor — harsh sounds of command and obedience. Then there was a long silence during which Peter struggled to master the terror which had robbed him of reason.

  Where was Anne-Marie? he wondered. What would Bruno do when the scheduled transmissions did not come through?

  From a long way off came the rumble of engines breaking into life, followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. Peter had no idea what was happening, but found himself laughing with hysterical relief as he realized that, for the moment at least, Stromberg’s glittering instruments would not slide into the soft centre of his being.

  He was still chuckling when Bruno ran through the door and cursed in shrill Italian at the sight of his friend with the front of his head shaved like a clown.

  ‘I came with the Lapps,’ muttered Bruno in explanation as he fumbled with the straps holding Peter to the examination table. ‘Stromberg and his gang have taken off in the Vlad, and they’ve got Holly and Anne-Marie with them. Come on, doctor, get up and say something to me.’

  ‘I’ve wet myself,’ confessed Peter, sitting up shakily and rubbing the newly bald part of his skull. Tears of relief ran down his face and Bruno, with great gentleness, wiped them away with a stained handkerchief.

  ‘Never mind that, we must get out of here,’ he said. ‘Uutsi and his boys are going to level this place.’

  Peter stood up.

  ‘I’m all right now,’ he said though he still trembled. As Bruno helped him out of the room and down die corridor, he asked what had happened.

  Tersely Bruno explained how Uutsi’s raiding party had come in three Lapp boats. At the approach of the armed men Stromberg had boarded the Vlad, his Tontons bringing the two prisoners. Saturday was at the wheel as the cruiser raced from the island.

  ‘I can’t believe he’ll abandon his chapel,’ Peter said as they came out of the windowless block. ‘It’s his spiritual home.’

  Outside he saw the three Lapp boats, like scaled-down Viking ships with heavy outboards at their stems, beached in the bay opposite the annexe. A group of blue-costumed men clustered round the big fuel tank, while on rocks overlooking the bay a man in a leather jacket stood watching the Fjord standing to at a safe distance.

  Bruno took Peter over to Uutsi.

  ‘This is my friend,’ he said. ‘He will tell you even thing your wisemen have said about Stromberg is true. He has not a man’s spirit.’

  Uutsi nodded, then pointed to the Vlad. Its engines suddenly roared at full throttle and two high crests of foam surged from its bows as it headed straight for the island. Crouching at the pulpit rail the Tonton called Henri held a Thompson submachine gun.

  As the cruiser raced towards the bay, the muzzle of the gun began to flash and a swathe of bullets swept the shore. A Lapp gave a cry and fell as his companions dived for cover behind granite rocks. Ricocheting bullets whined over Peter’s head as he flattened himself behind the trunk of a dead tree.

  ‘No wonder he took to his boat when he had a machine gun aboard,’ cried Bruno beside him. Seizing his.22, he began firing with the Lapps at the speeding craft.

  The Vlad continued to bear down on the bay as though it was going to smash itself against the rocks. At the last moment Saturday spun the wheel and reversed the port engine. The craft made a turn so tight its wake crashed against the shore like a miniature tidal wave and set the Lapp boats bucking wildly.

  For the few seconds the Vlad was broadside on the second Tonton opened up with another machine gun. Chips of wood flew high in the air above Peter’s bulwark. At the water’s edge one of the Lapp boats was practically cut in two with the relentless stream of nickel-plated lead. Then the cruiser sped away with a zig-zagging course to avoid the Lapps’ bullets.

  Peter shouted: ‘Stop firing! They’ve got hostages aboard!’ Uutsi heard him and gave a command in his own language. Reluctantly the rifle fire died.

  Peering over the bullet-scarred trunk, Peter saw Anne-Marie crouching in the stern of the Vlad. Stromberg, a pistol in his hand, stood beside Saturday on the helmsman’s platform. The two Haitians fitted new drums, each containing fifty rounds, to their Tommy guns ready for the next attack.

  Suddenly Anne-Marie straightened up and dived into the foaming wake of the cruiser.

  ‘Oh God,’ moaned Peter. ‘They’ll pick her off in the water.’

  Next instant he saw the reason for her action. Flames fountained skywards from the cockpit. Stromberg and Saturday turned and gazed in horror at the inferno, then they vanished as jerrycans of petrol burst and enveloped the whole craft in a blinding sheet of white fire.

  Bruno cried out as a figure was briefly silhouetted against the blazing curtain before it fell like a burning doll into the steaming water. With the twin Volvos making thunder, the Vlad left a trail of flame and black smoke as it careered in a crazy circle before the main fuel tanks exploded. It disintegrated in a blast which echoed across the face of Lake Inari. Seconds later all that was left were blazing fragments floating lazily through the smoky air.

  A couple of Lapps started an outboard and, after Bruno and Peter leapt aboard, headed at full speed to where Anne-Marie could be seen swimming strongly towards the island. Soon Peter was helping her over the side. Her chest heaved as she fought to regain her breath.

  ‘It was Holly,’ she gasped. ‘When the shooting started they were too busy to notice what she was doing. She unscrewed the cap from an extra can so petrol poured into the cockpit. When I saw her take out her lighter I knew what was coming and went over the stem.’

  With the outboard at half-speed the Lapps circled until one called out. The motor was cut and the boat drifted alongside a floating body. It was Holly, a long piece of chain still fastened to her wrist.

  Tenderly Bruno lifted her aboard, and Peter said: ‘I’m afraid she’s dead, Bruno.’ The Italian nodded, took off his bush jacket and laid it over the face of the woman he had loved so briefly. As the boat sped back to the island, he spoke quietly to Peter and after a minute Peter nodded slowly.

  Uutsi came forward as the Lapp boat ran its high prow on to the pebbled beach.

  ‘This is a hell business,’ he cried. ‘One man dead and three wounded. Doctor, will you have a look at them, then be ready to leave. We will run fuel oil into the cellar and leave a fuse to set ablaze. When the authorities investigate they’ll think it was an accident and the boat caught fire at the same time.’

  ‘In that case you’d better get your men to pick up their used cartridge cases,’ said Peter. Bruno carried Holly’s body into the small building where the diesel generator was still supplying power to illuminate Stromberg’s chapel. With Anne-Marie helping him with makeshift bandages, Peter began his first aid work.

  ‘Now we know the truth about Stromberg I must do something about the children Britt attacked when I get back to England,’ Peter muttered as he bent over a Lapp whose groans were checked by fi
ercely gritted teeth. ‘Somehow I must get them segregated … Oh God, even with Stromberg truly dead at last, Britt can pass on the curse.’

  ‘Britt is dead, too,’ Anne-Marie said. ‘When I was taken aboard the boat I saw her in the cabin, lying on one of the bunks. Perhaps Stromberg had been afraid to leave her alone with the staff. She would not have felt anything, she was in her trance.’

  When Peter had done what he could for the wounded, Uutsi said: ‘We must go quickly. We will take you to Bruno’s camp, then we will head north. For the next few weeks we will be in Finnmark on a big reindeer drive. We will be most surprised when the news of this disaster reaches us!’

  ‘Give me a few minutes. There is something I have to do,’ Peter said.

  He ran into the main building where a flexible fuel pipe was flooding the crypt with oil. In the room where so shortly before he had met and succumbed to fear he wrenched open a sterile cabinet, snatching a scalpel and a surgical saw.

  Outside again, he strode to the generator room where, beside the vibrating machinery, the body of Holly was laid on the cement floor. He pulled Bruno’s jacket from the distorted face and knelt down.

  Afterwards he sometimes wondered if the greenish eyes had opened fractionally as he began the dissection.

  They were exhausted when they reached the camouflaged Citroen. Anne-Marie, who had changed into some of Bruno’s spare clothes when the Lapps landed them near his camp, sank into the back seat with a moan of weariness.

  Peter, with his face unnaturally strained, helped Bruno pull away the pine branches which covered the car. A dry stick tore the skin above his elbow but in his haste the pain was unnoticed.

  Bruno was silent. He frequently glanced at his watch, waiting for Uutsi’s primitive fuse to ignite the oil which by now filled the crypt. Suddenly the wind brought the thud of a detonation. The Lapland sun was almost touching the horizon, and they saw a pillar of smoke soar against the crimson backdrop.

  ‘We must get away quickly,’ said Bruno, sliding behind the wheel. Through the trees came a distant howling — a lament from the wolves who had been congregating in the Inari forest. Peter climbed in the back beside a quiet Anne-Marie.

  Bruno started the engine, the Citroen rose on its hydraulic suspension and reversed over the soft forest floor to the road which curved away to the south.

  ‘It’s all over,’ Peter said. ‘But at the moment I cannot take in what’s happened.’

  ‘Yes, everything’s over,’ Bruno agreed automatically. Peter turned to the girl with the pale gold hair beside him.

  ‘We’ll forget this together,’ he murmured. ‘When will you be free to marry me, Anne-Marie?’

  But she was not listening to him. Her violet eyes were hypnotized by the thick trickle of blood which welled from the cut on his arm.

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