The Crystal World. Robert MacFarlane
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along the handrails as they swerved after each other like shuttles.
Sanders moved to the edge of the water. Then he saw Ventress’s small white figure darting about in the centre of the chase, like a spider trapped in a collapsing web. Ventress shouted to the youth carrying his suitcase along the catwalk ten yards in front of him. A tall crop-haired mulatto in a khaki bush-shirt was swarming towards them, a length of weighted hose-pipe in his scarred hand. Behind Ventress the second youth had been beaten to the floor of the catwalk by two men in dark sweatshirts. Knives flashed in their hands, and the youth kicked at them and leapt sideways through the catwalk like a fish about to be gutted. He landed on a boat below, a long gash torn down the side of his denims. Holding the blood against his leg with one hand, he scrambled across the next boat to the pier, then ran off among the bales of cocoa meal.
On the catwalk above Ventress shouted again, and the youth carrying the suitcase lifted the bag and feinted with it as the mulatto swung the hose-pipe at his head. Tossing the suitcase through the air in front of him, the youth slid below the rail and vaulted down on to the second rank of boats moored against the pier, crashing the rattan roof as he landed. The hovel collapsed in a mêlée of blankets and upturned petrol cans. There was a vivid glimmer as a cache of crystalline jewellery was exposed to the fires in the other boats.
Watching the brilliant jewels reflected in the broken water of the harbour as the lines of boats slipped from their moorings, Sanders heard the hard detonation of a gun-shot sound out above the noise. The automatic pistol in his hand, Ventress crouched down on the catwalk. He fired again at the mulatto with the truncheon. As the mulatto backed up a gangway to the wharf Ventress glanced over his shoulder at the two men behind him, both now motionless against the handrail, their dark bodies almost invisible. Holstering the pistol, Ventress lowered himself off the edge of the catwalk and leapt down on to the deck of the boat below.
Ignoring the boat’s owner, a small grey-haired African trying to gather together the harvest of jewelled leaves scattered around him in the well of the boat, Ventress upended the trestle roof covered by a blanket. His two assistants had vanished among the boats between the next two piers, but Ventress seemed intent only on finding the suitcase. One by one he moved along the boats, kicking back the calico awnings, his pistol holding off the owners. As he stepped from one boat to the next a jewelled wake lay behind him. The three men on the catwalk above were reflected in the flaring light.
Giving up the hunt for his suitcase, Ventress pushed through the stall-holders. He climbed up on to the pier. At its far end a small motor-boat lay moored by a single line to a sawn-off pile. Ventress reached the end of the pier, cast off the line and climbed into the boat. For a moment he worked at the controls, and the starting motor whined above the noise. A second later there was a jolting explosion from the bow locker of the boat, and a vivid geyser of flame lifted into the dark air. Knocked back against the tiller, Ventress looked up at the flames burning across the deck panels in front of the shattered windscreen. As the boat drifted back across the pier he managed to pull himself together and jumped up on to the floating box frame that served as a gangway.
Pushing past the few Africans watching from the shore, Sanders climbed on to the pier and ran towards Ventress. Hurt by the explosion, the white-suited man had not seen the pale outline of a large motor cruiser waiting out on the river some twenty yards from the end of the pier. Standing at the helm on the bridge, from where he had watched the pursuit across the catwalks, was a tall broad-shouldered man in a dark suit, his long face partly hidden behind the white shaft of the radio mast. On the deck below him was what appeared to be a yacht club starting cannon, its squat barrel gleaming in the light. As the burning motor-boat drifted past the end of the pier the flames subsided, and the cruiser and its owner sank into the darkness.
Half-way along the pier Sanders saw the crop-headed mulatto swing down from the catwalk in front of him. He had thrown away the truncheon, and a thin silver blade flickered in his huge hand. He crept up behind Ventress, who sat on the edge of the pier, watching the burning motor-boat move into the shallows.
‘Ventress!’ Running hard, Sanders caught up with the mulatto, and in his rush knocked the man off balance. Recovering with the speed of a snake, the mulatto lunged round and drove his shaved head at Sanders, hitting him in the chest. He bent down to retrieve his knife, white eyes swinging from Ventress to the doctor and back again.
A hundred yards along the shore a signal flare rose into the air over the harbour. Its muffled light burned with a dull glow. A siren began to wail, its noise mounting over the warehouses. A police truck stopped at the foot of the next pier, and its headlights illuminated the last of the crystalline jewels now being hidden away beneath the awnings. The burning motor-boat had drifted against one of the catwalk supports, and the tar-streaked wood had caught fire, the flames flaring along the dry timbers.
Sanders lunged with one foot at the mulatto, then wrenched at a half-loose timber sticking from the pier. The mulatto peered at the police truck. He seized the knife, then ran straight past Sanders along the pier and dived down among the boats on the far side.
‘Ventress …?’ Sanders knelt beside him, and brushed at the cinders that had burned themselves into the fabric of the man’s suit. ‘Can you walk? The police are here.’
Ventress stood up, his eyes clearing. Behind the beard, his small face seemed completely closed. He appeared to have no idea what had happened, and held on to Sanders’s arm like an old man.
Behind them, out on the river, there was a muted roar, and white water broke behind the stern of the waiting cruiser. As it moved away Ventress came to life. Still holding Sanders’s arm, but this time guiding him, he began to run along the pier.
‘Head down, Doctor! We can’t wait here!’
His head swivelled from left to right as he watched the burning catwalk, now dividing itself as it collapsed into the water. When they reached the bank and moved behind the small crowd standing on the slope he turned to Sanders: ‘My thanks, Doctor. I was almost out of time myself there.’
Before Sanders could reply, Ventress darted off among the stacks of gasoline drums in the entrance to one of the warehouses. Sanders followed him, and saw Ventress disappear behind the abandoned motor-car.
In the harbour the fires had burned themselves out. The charred sections of the catwalk steamed and spat in the dark air. The police moved along the other catwalks with their machetes, cutting them one by one into the water, the stallholders below shouting as they paddled their boats out of the way.
Sanders walked back to his hotel, avoiding the arcades. Disturbed from their sleep, the mendicants sat up in their cardboard wrappings and wheedled at him as he went past, their eyes shining from the dark columns.
Louise had returned to her room. Switching off the light, Sanders sat down in the chair by the window. The last traces of Louise’s scent dissolved in the air as he watched the dawn lift over the distant hills of Mont Royal, illuminating the serpentine course of the river as if revealing a secret pathway.
THE next morning the body of a drowned man was taken from the river at Port Matarre. Shortly after ten o’clock Dr. Sanders and Louise Peret walked down to the harbour by the native market in the hope of hiring one of the boatmen to take them up-river to Mont Royal. The harbour was almost empty, and most of the boats had moved across the river to the settlements on the far bank. The wrecked catwalks lay in the water like the skeletons of half-drowned lizards, one or two of the fishermen poking among them.
The market was quiet, either as a result of the incident the previous night or because Father Balthus’s scene with the jewelled cross had dissuaded the owners of the curio stalls from putting in an appearance.
Despite the compacted glitter of the forest during the night, by day the jungle