LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER FOUR

      At least Otto wasn’t dead. Even above the sound of the wind and the sound of the sea, the creakings and groanings as the elderly trawler slammed her way into the Arctic gale, Otto’s voice could be distinctly heard at least a dozen feet from his cabin door. What he was saying, however, was far from distinct, the tearing gasps and agonized moans boded ill for what we would see when we opened the door.

      Otto Gerran looked as he sounded, not quite in extremis but rapidly heading that way. As Goin had said, he was indeed rolling about the floor, both hands clutching his throat as if he was trying to throttle himself: his normally puce complexion had deepened to a dark and dangerous-looking purple, his eyes were bloodshot and a purplish foam at his mouth had stained his lips to almost the same colour as his face: or maybe his lips were purplish anyway, like a man with cyanosis. As far as I could see he hadn’t a single symptom in common with Smithy and Oakley: so much for the toxicological experts and their learned textbooks.

      I said to Goin: ‘Let’s get him on his feet and along to the bathroom.’ As a statement of intent it was clear and simple enough, but its execution was far from simple: it was impossible. The task of hoisting 245 lbs of unco-operative jellyfish to the vertical proved to be quite beyond us. I was just about to abandon the attempt and administer what would certainly be a very messy first aid on the spot when Captain Imrie and Mr Stokes entered the cabin. My surprise at the remarkable promptness with which they had put in an appearance was as nothing compared to my initial astonishment at observing that both men were fully dressed: it was not until I noticed the horizontal creases in their trousers that I realized that they had gone to sleep with all their clothes on. I made a brief prayer for Smithy’s swift and complete recovery.

      ‘What in the name of God goes on?’ Whatever condition Captain Imrie had been in an hour or so ago, he was completely sober now. ‘Allison says that Italian fellow’s dead and—’ He stopped abruptly as Goin and I moved sufficiently apart to let him have his first glimpse of the prostrate, moaning Gerran. ‘Jesus wept!’ He moved forward and stared down. ‘What the devil—an epileptic fit?’

      ‘Poison. The same poison that killed Antonio and nearly killed the mate and Oakley. Come on, give us a hand to get him along to the bathroom.’

      ‘Poison!’ He looked at Mr Stokes as if to hear from him confirmation that it couldn’t possibly be poison, but Mr Stokes wasn’t in the mood for confirming anything, he just stared with a kind of numbed fascination at the writhing man on the floor. ‘Poison! On my ship. What poison? Where did they get it? Who gave it to them. Why should—’

      ‘I’m a doctor, not a detective. I don’t know anything about who, where, when, why, what. All I know is that a man’s dying while we’re talking.’

      It took the four of us less than thirty seconds to get Otto Gerran along to the bathroom. It was a pretty rough piece of manhandling but it was a fair assumption that he would rather be Otto Gerran, bruised but alive, than Otto Gerran, unmarked but dead. The emetic worked just as swiftly and effectively as it had with Smithy and Oakley and within three minutes we had him back in his bunk under a mound of blankets. He was still moaning incoherently and shivering so violently that his teeth chattered uncontrollably, but the deep purple had begun to recede from his cheeks and the foam had dried on his lips.

      ‘I think he’s OK now but please keep an eye on him, will you?’ I said to Goin. ‘I’ll be back in five minutes.’

      Captain Imrie stopped me at the door. ‘If you please, Dr Marlowe, a word with you.’

      ‘Later.’

      ‘Now. As master of this vessel—’ I put a hand on his shoulder and he became silent. I felt like saying that as master of this vessel he’d been awash in scotch and snoring in his bunk when people were all around dropping like flies but it would have been less than fair: I was irritable because unpleasant things were happening that should not have been happening and I didn’t know why, or who was responsible.

      ‘Otto Gerran will live,’ I said. ‘He’ll live because he was lucky enough to have Mr Goin here stop by his cabin. How many other people are lying on their cabin floors who haven’t been lucky enough to have someone stop by, people so far gone that they can’t even reach their doors? Four casualties so far: who’s to say there isn’t a dozen?’

      ‘A dozen? Aye. Aye, of course.’ If I was out of my depth, Captain Imrie was submerged. ‘We’ll come with you.’

      ‘I can manage.’

      ‘Like you managed with Mr Gerran here?’

      We made our way directly to the recreation room. There were ten people there, all men, mostly silent, mostly unhappy: it is not easy to be talkative and cheerful when you’re hanging on to your seat with one hand and your drink with the other. The Three Apostles, whether because of exhaustion or popular demand, had laid the tools of their trade aside and were having a drink with their boss Josh Hendriks, a small, thin, stern and middle-aged Anglo-Dutchman with a perpetual worried frown. Even when off-duty, he was festooned with a mass of strap-hung electronic and recording equipment: word had it that he slept so accoutred. Stryker, who appeared far from overcome by concern for his ailing wife, sat at a table in a corner, talking to Conrad and two other actors, Gunther Jungbeck and Jon Heyter. At a third table John Halliday, the stills photographer and Sandy, the props man, made up the company. No one, as far as I could judge, was suffering from anything that couldn’t be accounted for by the big dipper antics of the Morning Rose. One or two glances of mildly speculative curiosity came our way, but I volunteered no explanation for our unaccustomed visit there: explanations take time but the effects of aconitine, as was being relentlessly borne in

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