by Peter Tonkin
Frances followed, calling, ‘What?’
‘Look,’ said Robin when they were both on the little foredeck. ‘The river has left watermarks all across the deck there. You see why?’
‘Well...’
‘Because the anchor is down.’
‘Ah. So?’
‘Don’t you see? No, I don’t suppose you do. Any more than the people the police sent down to look for him last year. It’s a sailor thing. He has land lines out. And they’re loose enough to let the vessel rise and fall. But the anchor’s down as well. And that is working against the land lines, pulling her head down under the water. No sailor in his right mind would do that.’
‘So. What? We pull the anchor up?’
‘We do. This is a hand winch here. We turn this handle here.’
And so they did. The ratchet clanked and the rope groaned. The sounds of a medieval rack echoed across to Stevens Eyot and back. The vessel shuddered and the women puffed. And little by little the rope came in. Surprisingly few turns sat dripping on the winch’s drum before the foot came through the surface, tangled in the rest.
A foot, and then a leg, dressed in the rotting remains of evening trousers.
‘That explains a lot,’ said Frances, grimly.
‘It explains all those letters from Moss Bros, at least,’ agreed Robin dryly.
Burgo-Blackstone looked up from his timetable as the pleas and directions hearing came to a close at last. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I believe, if I clear a case or two of the Hilary Session, I can make this court available by the early summer.’ He beamed at Carver Carpenter and glanced at Maggie DaSilva. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please have your cases prepared to present to me in three months’ time, shall we say, on the first Monday of July?’
Oh, wonderful, thought Richard. The twins are always complaining that they have nothing to do over the summer. Now they can come to the Old Bailey and watch Daddy go to trial.
He turned right round and looked up into the gallery for Robin. But there was no sign of her at all.
Chapter 21: Disclosure
‘July!’ cried Robin. She had recently returned from a lengthy interview with the police about the discovery of the late Edgar Smithers and she meant three more months of this - ’til the summer.
‘Yes,’ said Maggie. ‘July! Precious little time to get the final elements in place. And just look at what that bastard Carver Carpenter has added to the secondary disclosure list. I thought the disclosure list he gave us in the first place was bad enough, but just look at this! I mean I don’t know whether he’s playing head games with us and using this stuff to send us off on wild-goose chase after wild-goose chase - or whether he’s serious and expense really is no object.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Richard, who was sitting with his arm round Robin’s shoulder. He didn’t know whether he was more upset about her ordeal - or by the fact that the procedure after the court hearing had prevented him rushing to her aid.
‘Look at this witness list. We’ll likely have to check them all out! The time, the effort. The man-hours!’ She looked across at Jim Constable, who was looming protectively beside Frances Bacon. Frances was a computer expert. She was not supposed to deal with decomposing corpses, waterlogged or not, and the experience had left her, too, shaken.
‘Right, let’s start at the beginning. He’s got an open summons for Charles Lee, of course. And I assume he’ll have crossed off the summons for Edgar Smithers. But he’ll still have men out looking for Lee - especially as they have another potentially suspicious death on their hands.’ She paused, consulting the list given by the defence at the second time of asking. Then she continued, ‘He’s called Helen Levin back from Hollywood...’
‘But I hardly knew her!’ said Richard. ‘What on earth’s the point of that?’
‘Publicity. She’ll help it go world-wide.’
‘Oh wonderful!’
‘And Dr Walton of course. That just about does it for the board.’
‘Unless he’s sending a ghost-hunter after the late QC,’ said Robin. ‘Like Burgo-Blackstone suggested.’
‘Do not name that creature in front of me.’ Maggie made a cross out of her index fingers and nearly dropped her turquoise-coloured cigarette. ‘Even his jokes are cryptic. Get that? Crypt - ic. Oh please yourselves. Anyhow. The next few witnesses are the remaining officers from Goodman Richard and a selection of the cadets. A little more conservative and down to earth, thank God.’
‘Their testimony will be going towards state of hull, masts and cordage; safety procedures and such, I would guess,’ said Richard.
‘Indeed. But they haven’t got Paul Ho, he’s with us. And so is a posse of the brighter cadets, led by the considerable May Chung. And so is Goodman Richard’s radio operator.
‘Interestingly, as they don’t have him, they’ve called the radio operator of Hong Kong registered superfreighter Sanna Maru, a Mr Elroy Kim. That was the ship nearest to the incident, according to the coastguards, anyway. Oh. That’ll cost the CPS a tidy sum if he comes in. She’s docked in Brisbane as far as I can see. Or she was three days ago, according to this. She may be on her way to Perth by now. Fancy a trip to Perth to check him out, Jim? No? Thank God for that then.’
‘He’ll be someone Sparks got in contact with before he got through to us, I should say,’ said Richard. ‘One of those vessels like the supertankers that passed us that afternoon but didn’t dare risk slowing. Though what this testimony is really worth is beyond a guess...’
‘Nothing obvious. Nothing noted here at any rate, beyond the coastguard’s list of nearby vessels. But there’s been no response from anyone to do with her - not from Radio Officer Kim, his captain or the owners, as far as I can see. Though of course we’ll have to go through all this lot again with a fine-tooth comb and a microscope.
‘Then they’ve called the people you’d expect. Coastguards. RNLI people. Cox of the St Mary’s lifeboat, that sort of thing. Chopper pilots.’
‘What can they say? They couldn’t get through to Goodman Richard on the day! Why pull them all into it now?’ huffed Richard, mightily upset by the prospect of wasting the time of such vital people.
‘If they were my witnesses, they’d say that things were hairy and they were a bit stretched but it wasn’t that bad really,’ answered Maggie, a little brutally. ‘Certainly nothing to endanger a fully crewed, properly sailed, four-masted, iron-sided square-rigger nearly four hundred feet in length. Not if she was properly maintained, especially in terms of hull, masts and rigging...’
‘Oh. Yes, I see...’
‘That’s more or less what all these people are being brought in to say, Richard,’ Maggie continued more softly. ‘It’s not personal between them and you; it’s just that Quentin Carver Carpenter finds that their opinions - as far as they’ve expressed them so far - help support the case that the Crown Prosecution Service are paying him to make. And that’s the case that we are going to destroy. OK?
‘Yes.’ Richard’s tone was more positive; almost square-jawed.
‘Good. Finally, they have called several members of Lionheart’s crew - no doubt for the same reason; it was bad but not that bad. And because Lionheart’s crew will have witnessed the state of Goodman Richard as you found her. How she was when you boarded her. How long she survived when you got off her. And of course, how she appeared during the final break-up on Wolf Rock itself. Remember, they won’t be asked about your heroics - not by the prosecution anyway. Carver Carpenter will simply be trying to establish what a suspiciously total wreck she was. How rapidly she went from bad to worse. How amazingly completely she was smashed to pieces on the rocks. He’ll be trying to make a landlubber jury, without even a weekend sailor among them like as not, think that a sound ship should have held on longer. That she only came to pieces like she did because she was old, uncared-for, badly maintained and rotten to the core. And he’ll be trying to blame that all on you. Which, if he does so, will make you guilty in the eyes of the Ac
t - unless we can find a loophole in the wording somewhere. And, as you know, we are exploring that avenue too, even though it’s simply insurance.’
‘Remind me. Who are we calling?’ asked Richard, after a moment more of silence and a steady hug from Robin.
‘Well, we’ve had some pushing and shoving over their list to begin with,’ said Maggie. ‘Some of their witnesses are likely to give testimony that would sit better on our side. But if they open with them, I’ll try and get our version out under cross examination if not before.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and unconsciously rolled up the sleeves of her tiger-striped silk blouse at the thought.
‘As to the people we’ve called, there will be you, Richard, of course,’ she continued. ‘Calling the defendant as a defence witness is de rigueur - a simple necessity in a case like this. Then we have an embarrassingly full list of character witnesses to fall back on if we have to. Starting with an ex-Secretary General to the United Nations, who seems to owe you a favour ...
‘More directly, we have Doc Weary. He’ll be flying in soon anyway because the Fastnet Race is being sailed this year and he has every intention of going through all the qualifiers - and then winning it, I understand. Hardly surprising, after all the preparation he put in last summer when all of this really began. But he’ll take time out to come to the Old Bailey. Next, although the Lloyds’ syndicate that insured Goodman Richard has folded, they do seem to have been largely legitimate - to begin with at any rate. We have Mr Cornwall, the marine surveyor they employed to give Goodman Richard her last certificate of seaworthiness - and that was less than a year before she was lost. We have, as I said, Paul Ho, the cadets led by the considerable Miss Chung, Sparks. And of course we have the Radio Officer, the Captain and the Chief Engineer of the good ship Lionheart.’
‘Any lines of enquiry beyond that?’ asked Robin, stirring.
‘I’ve a contact in Rome who’ll keep an eye on Dr Walton,’ rumbled Jim Constable. ‘But other than that, it’ll just be the same old same old. Priority One is still trying to find Charles Lee.’
‘There might be something to help us here,’ said Frances Bacon, suddenly, pulling out of her bag the pile of correspondence that had lain on Edgar Smithers’s table aboard the apparently deserted Argo. ‘I wasn’t thinking quickly enough, though,’ admitted the investigator. ‘I should have taken the invitation too.’
‘This invitation?’ asked Robin, pulling the square of marbled pasteboard out of her own capacious bag. ‘The whole newspaper was far too big to take and anyway it didn’t seem even to have been opened. But I thought this might be useful too,’ she added, pulling out the supplement that had been aboard as well. ‘Given where it was, and the manner in which some people pass the time there and the fact that there was a pencil lying on top of it.’
‘You’ve heard the one about the constipated mathematician?’ asked Andrew irrepressibly. But his good lady beat him into silence with the witness list before he could proceed.
They opened each piece of mail, whether it was clearly junk mail or not, with perfectly forensic care. They put all the obviously unsolicited offers of loans, insurance, prize draws and so forth over in one gaudy pile, each flyer with its envelope carefully clipped to it. They opened the increasingly irate letters from Moss Formal Wear Hire of Teddington, who would clearly never get their dress suit back. Nor the shirt, nor the shoes. Not that they would want them if they could see the state of them in any case, Frances observed, shuddering. There were letters about arrears owed for the docking charges - and the riverine equivalent of an eviction notice. And yet his bank statement - from Barclays Bank in Hampton - showed his account healthily in the black - in spite of a range of payments out and in by cheque, and a range of standing orders, and by an active use of his debit card. ‘Frances, if you take a copy of those, I dare say you could check up on quite a wide range of financial contacts, couldn’t you?’
‘I may even be able to trace the owners of whatever accounts these cheques came from,’ she said. ‘Though none of them seem large enough to make it worth my while. There’s something funny here at once, though. Look at that pattern of withdrawals from a hole-in-the-wall in Kingston there. That’s not his bank is it?’
‘Could be anything,’ said Jim almost dismissively.
‘True, but it’s a start.’
But that was all there was in the mail. ‘A clean life,’ observed Andrew as though intoning an obituary, ‘unhampered with any relationships at all. None with people who could write, at any rate.’
‘Well, there’s the invitation to Charles Lee’s last ball,’ said Robin. ‘Someone wrote to him with that. Charles Lee himself, in fact.’ She held up the expensively printed invitation. On the top of it was written in florid script: ‘Dear Edgar, I do hope you can come. The first of many. My people will come for you at 7. Be ready. Charles.’
‘That’s a bit sinister isn’t it?’ said Andrew. ‘“My people will come for you at seven?” Given what must have happened at about seven?’
‘I agree, it could sound threatening in the context,’ said Jim slowly. ‘But surely, even if there was an unconscious threat there, only a fool would write it on an invitation like that and then send in a team of heavies to pitch him into the Thames?’
‘Or a desperate man who knew he was going to vanish within a day or two - and wanted to leave no loose ends behind?’ persisted Andrew. ‘Hence the tricky “First of many”, suggesting a relationship continuing into the future...’
‘I think you may have been reading too many detective stories, Mr Balfour,’ said Jim stolidly.
‘More importantly,’ interrupted Robin, ‘who are these people of Charles’s? Richard, have you any idea?’
Richard shook his head. ‘I must admit,’ he rumbled, ‘I’m surprised by how little I do know about Charles Lee, given how long he’s worked with us. But he’s always been all surface, all smoke and mirrors. A dark horse really.’
That only left the supplement that Robin had taken so speculatively from the floor of Argo’s tiny toilet. And as soon as they opened this they saw that, if Edgar Smithers had lived a small life, he seemed to have dreamed big dreams. The articles - food, fashion, home decorating - all seemed to be unread. There was a small society section - with some doodles in the margin showing that he had at least glanced through it. But between the regular features and the Readers’ Offer section at the end there were half a dozen adverts for travel to exotic locations. The Antarctic seemed to have taken his fancy somewhat. At first glance, at any rate. ‘I don’t know though,’ said Robin with ready insight, after a while. ‘It’s the stuff about the cruise liner he’s underlined and annotated. I suspect it’s the ship rather than the destination that’s caught him. Its facilities - dancing girls and three casinos. Mind you, what he has in the bank would only get him that cabin he’s marked for about two days.’
The same was true of the cruise around the eastern Mediterranean - though there were some sites in Egypt he had underlined. But the Far East seemed to have attracted him more than Egypt. ‘Dr Walton’s influence?’ wondered Richard. ‘I seem to remember them discussing Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore on at least two of the occasions I was there.’
‘Perhaps,’ temporized Jim. ‘But look. What he’s underlined most forcefully in all of the sections of the Far East tour is that stuff about the casinos.’
‘The Chinese are notorious gamblers,’ speculated Richard.
‘Edgar Smithers isn’t what you’d call a Chinese name,’ observed Maggie.
‘Even Englishmen have their weaknesses,’ said Andrew, piously.
‘Ha!’ exploded Maggie. ‘Birching and bug...’
‘You speak for yourself, my love,’ Andrew overrode her cheerfully. ‘And anyway that was just the Navy.’ He caught Richard’s eye. ‘The Royal Navy, I should say. Never the Merchant Marine. But look, even if Smithers was a gambler he was modest about that too, wasn’t he? I mean, his account was still in the black.’
And on t
hat thoughtful note, Robin turned to the last of the travel ads. It was a double-page spread for Australia and it was covered in notes, circles, highlightings and underlinings. The only section untouched was a photo of a string of pelicans flying past the Sydney Opera House. There were casinos fully annotated. There were stick-figures added to white yachts cruising the Great Barrier Reef. There were others along the sky-line of Ayers Rock. There were skimpily clad dancing girls outrageously enhanced. And in the topmost, right-hand corner, there was a lengthy series of numbers.
‘Now that,’ said Richard thoughtfully, ‘looks like a telephone number.’
Jim Constable nodded decisively. ‘Personal cellphone,’ he agreed. ‘What we need to do with that is copy it out carefully and take it down to my office in Fleet Street, switch on the recording equipment and dial it. Just to see if Mr Charles Lee answers it.’
Twenty minutes later they were all ready, grouped around the big plastic and steel slab of equipment, all digital readouts and back-lit sound graphs. Not one recordable minidisc but two - and an old-fashioned but still sensitive tape section - both cassette and reel-to-reel. All of it hummed nearly silently and glowed with ill-contained power. It reminded Andrew and Richard irresistibly of the Bentley Continental GT. Frances pressed a series of RECORD buttons and Jim punched the number into the telephone keypad.
There was a moment or two of agonizing suspense for all those present as the whispers and crackles of connection seemed to stretch out interminably. But then there came a ring-tone.
