“Help. Please!” Peel whimpered.
I unshackled the pulley from the lifting derrick. “Hold on to that,” I told him.
He grasped the pulley’s hook with his right hand. I took the tackle’s strain, inching him up the transom. Mist-Spinner was thumping and lurching in the broken water. I couldn’t see any of the hidden rocks, but I knew where they were because their presence was betrayed by a swirling turmoil of water not far from the port bow. The water seemed to be sucked down towards the rock pinnacles, then to shatter upwards in a white misting spray. “Come on, you bastard!” I shouted at Peel, urging him to use some of his great strength to help himself. He must have sensed the danger, for he gave a great heave just as a surge of the swell tipped up the stern so that he fell, gasping and exhausted, into the boat.
I could hear the suck and rebound of the water about the rocks. We were close to the rock pinnacles, too close, and the suction of the white water was drawing us closer. I staggered forward, started the engine, and pushed the gear lever forward. For a second the engine faltered and I thought for a terrible second that I hadn’t cleared the propeller blades properly and that we would be drawn crashingly down into the rocks. I rammed the throttle forward, prayed, and somehow the engine recovered. The rocks were perilously close now, just off the port beam. We tipped towards them and I thought we were doomed to slide sideways down the smooth face of the indrawn water to hammer our gunwales on the black rock. I gave Mist-Spinner full rudder and raced the engine. A wave shattered to port, spewing water high over Mist-Spinner’s aerials. The propeller seemed to be spinning uselessly in the broken water, I felt a sideways lurch, then the blades bit the sea and the boat began to fight her way free. A rebound of water shoved us on our way. I spun the wheel amidships to lessen the resistance to the propeller’s thrust and, inch by inch, then foot by foot, Mist-Spinner gained speed. I turned her to starboard again, and this time there was no resistance and she went sweetly away towards safety. I said a prayer of thanks, pulled back the throttle, then turned to watch the broken sea recede.
Peel had not moved. Perhaps he had been too scared to move, or perhaps he had been too weakened by his long immersion. He just watched me. Beyond him was the rock-shattered swell, and beyond that, somehow safe in the turmoil, was Marianne. She had drifted north of the rising pinnacle. She was pitching and rolling, and I supposed she would drift onwards to be tumbled ashore on a French beach. Then the fog and the night hid her from me and I turned Mist-Spinner westwards.
I’d found four spare shotgun cartridges when I’d searched for the knife to free Mist-Spinner’s propellers. Now I took them from the cave-locker and let Peel watch me as I loaded the shotgun. He didn’t move, not even when I put the gun down while I checked the fuel. She had two extra tanks in side-lockers, plenty enough for whatever else this night might bring.
Peel watched me go back to the wheelhouse. “Where’s Mr Garrard?” he asked nervously.
“On the foredeck. He hasn’t got a head any more. If you move, you won’t have one either.” I lifted the shotgun on to my lap as I accelerated Mist-Spinner into the shredding fog. I saw the flash of the cardinal buoy, went past it, and only then did I let Mist-Spinner drift.
Because it was time to find my way out of the electronic maze.
The Decca had two waypoints only. We were already at the first so the mystery’s end must lie at the second. I summoned that second waypoint to the screen. It lay at fifty degrees, twelve minutes and forty seconds of arc north, by zero three degrees, forty-six minutes and sixty seconds of arc west. It was 87.2 miles away at a course of 311. So very precise, I thought, so very well planned.
“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?” I didn’t turn round to ask the question. That wasn’t insouciance or bravery because I could see his reflection in the windscreen and he wasn’t moving.
He did not answer.
“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?” I asked again.
He still did not answer so I whipped round on the helmsman’s chair and fired the right barrel two feet above his head. The pellets probably grazed his bald head, for he whimpered.
“How were you supposed to kill me, Peel?”
“We was just supposed to drown you,” he almost whispered in reply, “then sink the little boat. To make it look like you’d drowned and the money had sunk.”
“To make it look as if I’d stolen the money? As well as the painting?”
“Yes, guv.”
“Thank you, Peel,” I said very politely, then turned away from him. I found some old stained charts in a drawer, but I. didn’t really need them. I knew where fifty twelve zero three forty-six was. I could probably have got there blindfold, but I spread a passage chart out all the same, then reloaded the gun’s right barrel. “Did you turn the gas on in my boat, Peel?” I asked it very casually.
“No, guv, honest.”
“Did Mr Garrard?”
“No.” In the glass I could see he was shivering. A big shivering musclebound man. “Honest,” he added pathetically. He was trying to help me now.
I turned again and fired. The gun hammered at the night and Peel cowered and shivered.
I lowered the gun so that it was pointing into his face. “Did you or Mr Garrard turn the gas on in my boat, Peel?”
“No, guv, we didn’t. As God is my witness, we didn’t. I don’t know nothing about any gas! We’ve been in France, Mr Garrard and me, we ain’t been anywhere near your boat! Not since that night he tipped it over, and he wasn’t even supposed to do that! We weren’t even supposed to kill you that time, guv. We was only scaring you!” He was staring at me with doggish devotion now; I was his master and he would please me. “We was just supposed to scare you! And that first time, Mr Garrard was only going to talk to you, but he found the girl on your boat and he thought you was double-crossing us!” He was staring into the twin black holes of the gun barrels. “Honest, guv.” He paused, evidently remembering who I was. “Honest, my lord.”
I turned away from him. I reloaded the gun with the last cartridge, then laid the weapon down. The VHF was screwed to the wheelhouse roof and tuned to Channel 37; the private marina channel. That was the channel on which my instructions had been relayed, and presumably the channel on which my enemies were even now listening. They had to be close, within thirty or forty miles, which meant France or the islands. I thought France the likeliest answer. Perhaps it was Elizabeth keeping a radio watch, wondering what was happening out in the fog-shrouded waters, and it was time to put my sister out of her apprehensive misery. I unhooked the microphone, held it a little too far from my mouth, and said the single word. “Fingers.” I paused, then repeated the word before hanging up the microphone. There was no acknowledgement, but I’d expected none. This night’s trickery had been designed to keep the radio traffic to a minimum to avoid detection. It had all been so very clever.
And nothing, I thought, was cleverer than the way Elizabeth had used the Decca navigation system, for only a Decca set could have sent two landlubbers safely across the Channel. I doubted whether Garrard could have navigated his way through the shoals, tides and rocks of the Channel Islands, but any fool could read the little arrows on the Decca which told him to go left or right, forwards or backwards. Cleverest of all, I thought, was the selection of Les Trois Grunes; the only cardinal buoy in the islands which offered a straight course back to the second waypoint; a course that went arrow straight between the rocks of the Casquets and the northern reefs of Guernsey. No need to dog-leg, no need to read a chart, all that was required was to follow the little arrows. They had been clever, so very clever. Had Peter, in one of his soberer moments, told Elizabeth about the Decca? Or about the gas bottle she would find on any deep-sea yacht?
I turned. “Right, Peel!” I said enthusiastically. “On your feet and into the cuddy.”
“The what?”
“The cabin. There.” I pointed under the foredeck where a tiny space afforded two bunks and a galley. “Dry you
rself off and make us some tea or coffee. No sugar for me, just milk. And hurry!”
He hurried. He saw his partner’s blood smeared across the windscreen as he passed me, but he didn’t react. I must have looked fearsome, half-naked and bloody, so he just ducked down and scuttled gratefully into the cuddy. “Throw me up a towel!” I shouted after him. “And any spare clothes down there.”
I pushed the throttle forward and felt the stern dig down into the water. Eighty-seven miles to go, then the last confrontation. And all for one picture.
Peel made tea. Mist-Spinner thumped happily through the waves. I had dried myself, wrapped the towel about the cut at my waist, then pulled on a thick sweater which Peel had brought up from the cuddy. He was eager for my approval now. “Good cup of tea?” he asked me.
“What you’re going to do now” – I ignored his friendliness – “is clear up the boat. You see that boxlike thing on the front?”
“Yes, guv. My lord.”
“It’s called a forehatch. Open it, then tip Garrard inside.”
“Tip…”
“Do it!”
He did it. Once I’d heard Garrard’s corpse thump down into the cuddy, I gave Peel a bucket and mop. “Now clean off the blood.”
He started work. I pulled the case of bearer bonds on to the chart table and left it there. The engine ran happily. I was making ten knots, a good enough speed.
The fog cleared when we were north of the Casquets. I turned off all the wheelhouse lights so I could see better. We were about to cross the traffic separation zones where the big tankers thumped oblivious in and out of the Atlantic. Mist-Spinner left a clean clear wake on the dark swell. Peel, his job done, crouched at the far side of the wheelhouse and stared in awe at the giant ships.
“What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Peel.”
“Your first name, you idiot.”
“Ronny.”
I rewarded him with a smile. “Got any cigarettes, Ronny?”
“Don’t smoke, guv.”
“Garrard did, didn’t he?”
“He did, yes.”
“Any in his pockets, do you think?”
He stared in horror at me. “You want me to…” Then he realised that was precisely what I wanted him to do, so he opened the cuddy door, took a breath, and climbed down. I could hear his noises of disgust, but after a few minutes he reappeared with a half-empty packet and a lighter.
“Thank you, Ronny.”
He was pathetically grateful for a kind word. I lit a cigarette and dragged the smoke into my lungs.
“Am I in trouble?” Peel asked after a while.
“A lot.” I throttled back to let a bulk carrier slide a half-mile ahead of me. The beam from the Channel Light Vessel was reflected from the long waves to starboard.
“I only did what Mr Garrard told me to do,” Peel pleaded.
“And what else did Mr Garrard tell you, Ronny? Did he tell you about my sister?”
He nodded. “She was going to get the painting when you was dead, see? And then she was going to sell it, and she was going to give Mr Garrard his share of the money. Because he bought it, you see.”
“I don’t see, no.”
“Right back at the beginning. When he met your sister at the races. She asked him to help her find it, and she gave him money for the expenses, like, and he did find it, and he bought a third share off the bloke, because the bloke was short of readies and couldn’t find a proper buyer. It’s too hot, you see. Mr Garrard said you couldn’t sell really famous paintings, only the rubbish.”
I was staring ahead at the empty sea. Peel was worried by my silence, but for a long time I just steered the compass course and ignored him.
“A third share?” I asked him at last.
“That’s right. One for Mr Garrard, one for your sister, though of course she didn’t have to pay anything ’cos she was going to sell it, like, and the other third –”
“Shut up, Ronny.”
“But…”
“I said shut up!” Because I think I’d known ever since I’d keyed Mist-Spinner’s Decca. Only I didn’t believe it.
Dear God, I thought, but let me be wrong. I unhooked the microphone. I knew my enemies would be listening to Channel 37 and they would probably be monitoring Channel 16 as well, but unless they had two radios, each with a dual-watch capability, they could only monitor the two VHF channels. So I switched to 67, the coastguard’s working channel. I broke all the rules: I didn’t identify myself, I just broadcast a cryptic message to the whole English Channel. “This is a message for Inspector Abbott,” I said, “of the Devon and Cornwall Police. Fifty Twelve Forty North, Zero Three Forty-six Sixty West. I say again. For Harry Abbott, Devon and Cornwall Police, Fifty Twelve Forty North, Zero Three Forty-six Sixty West.”
The coastguards were on to me like a ton of bricks. Who was transmitting? Why? Would I identify myself? I told them to get off the air and pass on the message and to do it fast. “But listen for further transmissions on this channel,” I added before switching the radio off.
The first light was gilding the wavetops. “Fancy another cup of tea, Ronny?”
“Not really, guv.” He didn’t want to go below with the corpse.
“I do.” I really wanted to be alone for a few minutes. “So get it.”
An hour later I saw the English coast. I switched off the Decca because I didn’t need it any longer. I hadn’t really needed it at all, not once I’d known the final rendezvous, because these were my home waters, and here, in the dawn, was my last waypoint.
We came home in a lovely sunrise. It was all so ordinary, all so very ordinary.
The waypoint was outside the harbour, but even a helmsman as inexperienced as Garrard would have been able to negotiate the entrance: just keep well to the left-hand side of the channel, steer due north, and don’t try it in southern gales.
There was a slight swell on the bar, then Mist-Spinner moved smoothly into the outer channel. We turned northeast and I let her idle through the moored yachts. It promised to be a warm day. Some yachts had already left the moorings while others were shaking out their sails. There had been a mist earlier, but it was gone, all but from the deepest creeks where the trees grew so close above the water. Gulls screamed and wheeled, while far to the north a helicopter chopped the air.
I had found some rusting binoculars in a cave-locker and I used them to search the anchorages. I knew what I was looking for, but somehow hoped not to see it.
Then I did. A man and a woman standing together on the flying bridge of a big motor cruiser. They were waving. Behind them, far off beyond the fields, I could see Charlie’s house. The kids would be going off to nursery school and Yvonne would be wondering where Charlie was.
The man and woman waved again. They looked so happy together, like lovers at dream’s fulfilment. Their boat gleamed white in the rising sun; the same sun that was reflecting off Mist-Spinner’s windscreen, so the couple could not see me behind the gold-glossed glass. They only saw their fortune coming, their damned great fortune, brought from the Channel Islands to Salcombe by the magic of a Decca set.
“That’s them,” Peel said helpfully, but I didn’t respond. There was nothing to say.
I waited till we were fifty yards from the waiting boat then turned on the VHF and unhooked the microphone. “Harry Abbott?”
He answered immediately. “Is that you, Johnny?”
“I’m off Frogmore Creek, Harry. My boat’s called Mist-Spinner, and the bastards you want are on a gin-palace called Barratry. Come and get them.”
I killed Mist-Spinner’s engine and I ran her gently down the side of my best friend’s boat. Charlie waited on Barratry’s afterdeck, boathook in hand. He hooked our pulpit rail. “Well done!” he called, “I told you it would be easy…” then his voice faded away as I stepped out from under the wheelhouse roof. I carried the shotgun and the attaché case.
“Hello, Charlie,” I said.
Elizabeth scr
eamed. She was still on Barratry’s flying bridge. I looked up at her; then, with the shotgun in my right hand and the money in my left, I stepped over on to Barratry’s stern.
“Johnny!” Charlie was staring in shock, but still trying to smile as if this was a fortuitous meeting of friends.
“Shut up, Charlie,” I said; then, with a foul anger, “for Christ’s sake, shut up!” I looked up at Elizabeth. “Come down!” She climbed slowly down the chrome ladder. She was dressed in a silk bathrobe as though she had only just got up from the big bed in Barratry’s stateroom. I wondered how long they had been lovers. “You bastards,” I said.
Mist-Spinner and Peel drifted slowly away. Charlie and Elizabeth looked at the blood on my legs and at the gun in my hand and said nothing.
“Why?” I asked Charlie.
He didn’t answer, but I suddenly saw how it must seem to him to be the lover of Lordy’s daughter. That was the ultimate revenge, the sweetest revenge of all: when the despised labourer’s son makes the Earl’s daughter moan in his bed.
“And it was you,” I said to Charlie, “who nicked the bloody picture.”
He hesitated, then smiled. “It was just a joke, Johnny.” He waited, but for what, I couldn’t tell. For me to smile? To laugh? “It was only a joke!” he protested. “I did it for you!”
“For me, Charlie?”
“I did it for you! I thought that if your mother sold the painting then you’d never go back to sea! You’d become like your father! You’d have hated that, Johnny, because you never belonged in the big house. You belonged at sea, Johnny, at sea!” He paused again, but I said nothing, and Charlie made an expansive gesture as if to suggest that, with a little humour and understanding, the whole mess could be resolved. “It was only a joke,” he said again, but weakly.
And I wasn’t laughing.
I looked at Elizabeth. It’s hard to see your own sister as beautiful, but she looked beautiful that morning; beautiful and hurt. I think she was ashamed, not about the painting, but because I had found her with Charlie. That was a game she had played in secret, and now I had discovered her. “You knew,” I accused her. “You knew I didn’t steal it! You must have known that as soon as Garrard found Charlie!”