Sea Lord

by Bernard Cornwell

  Two caravans stood on the concrete foundation slabs of the old huts. Around the slabs the undergrowth had been cleared away with a harrow, leaving scarred raw earth in which the first nettles were already growing. The caravans were quite large, but clearly second-hand. Both were locked. The stand-pipe was between them. Their windows were obscured by net curtains.

  Two caravans. One for Georgina, and the other for whom? Girls from the west of Ireland, perhaps, inveigled by an advertisement in a Catholic newspaper? Such girls came cheap. My mother had used them as servants and I imagined Elizabeth would do the same. She would pretend that Primrose Cottage was to be Georgina’s home, and doubtless it would be for a few months, and doubtless the Cheltenham agency would provide the nursing care, but after a while it would all quietly change and Georgina would be shuttled up the hill to this dank tomb of a wood, and Primrose Cottage could be profitably let to appreciative holiday-makers. And all of it would be done with Georgina’s money.

  “Bugger!” I shouted the curse aloud and thumped an impotent fist against the metal skin of the nearest caravan.

  There was to be no freedom after all, but only duty, because it was time to catch a thief.

  * * *

  I went back to Devon that night, retrieved my oars, rowed myself out to Sunflower, and poured myself the dregs of my last bottle of whiskey. I felt an insidious temptation to let the ebbing tide take me to sea, but instead I slept and, in the morning, went ashore and found a public phone.

  The bullet had to be bitten. Charlie must know that I was back in England and that all his generosity had not bought me the freedom he so envied. I phoned his yard, but he wasn’t in his office, so I called Yvonne. She sounded surprised to hear my voice, but did not ask where I was or what I wanted. She said Charlie was away from home.

  “In Hertfordshire again?”

  “Scotland, I think.” She didn’t sound as if it mattered very much. “He’s sub-contracting on a road-widening scheme.”

  “Tell him I’m back, Yvonne. I’m moored in the Exe at the moment, but I don’t know how long I’ll stay here, but he can always try the Channel radio stations.”

  She did not sound very pleased, but promised to tell Charlie when he called home. Perhaps she thought I’d come to take more money off him. I said goodbye to her, then called Directory Enquiries to find the number of the Buzzacott Museum Gallery. This was a harder bullet to bite, but it had to be done. I asked for Jennifer Pallavicini, but the man who answered the phone in her office said she was in New York. She was expected back soon, but, in the meantime, was there any message?

  “Tell her that John Rossendale called and that I’m back in England. Tell her she can probably reach me by radio.” I gave him a list of coast radio stations and Sunflower’s call sign. The man was clearly bemused, but docilely took down the information. Then, because I had nothing better to do, I took Sunflower to sea.

  I knocked about the Channel for a few days. I was tempted to visit Jersey, but I did not know what good it would do. Georgina might be pleased to see me, but I could offer her no reassurances, so I chickened out. I visited a friend in Lèzardrieux, and tried to persuade myself I was in love with a waitress in his riverfront cafe. Jacques drove me to the casino at Dinard where, despite my avowal that I couldn’t afford to gamble, I won three thousand francs. When the francs didn’t change the waitress’s mind I went downstream and anchored off the Ile Bréhat, where I stayed for two days. I listened to the traffic lists on the VHF, but neither Sunflower’s name nor her call sign were ever mentioned. I made one link call to the Buzzacott Museum Gallery, charging the cost to Elizabeth’s home number, but Jennifer Pallavicini had still not returned.

  After two days I decided to sail to the Scilly Isles, which I’d never visited. The forecast had promised a southeast wind, but three hours off the Breton coast the wind veered round the compass which meant that I was faced by a devil of a windward flog. I held to it, lured by the unknown Scillies, which I reached just after dusk the next day. I anchored in Porth Cressa and spent a miserable night heaving and sheering in strong seas driven by a rising west wind. The morning was filthy with rain and blowing half a gale, so, without going ashore, I hauled up the anchor, let the foresails turn Sunflower, and took myself off. The wind was gusting to force eight, and the seas were heaping into thumping great monsters. White crests cascaded down the wave faces. Another yacht, a big Moody, left the Scillies at the same time, but by midday I had lost her in the misting squalls which were slithering up towards Cornwall. I was enjoying myself. Sunflower was running well, hard before the wind and rolling her boom under every few minutes. In the early afternoon I caught a glimpse of the Lizard, black in the grey murk, but then a rainstorm blotted it out. I heard thunder to the north, and saw one stabbing crack of lightning pierce the gloom. Sunflower slammed her stem into a wave, scattered white water twelve feet high, then dipped her nose as a following sea swept under her counter. This was Channel sailing at its best; hard, fast, wet and exhilarating.

  Next morning, in Dartmouth, I rowed to the marina where Sunflower had been relaunched, but there was no sign of Barratry. I had not really expected to see her, so I went ashore, found a telephone, but could get no answer from Charlie’s house. I tried the yard, but he wasn’t there either. I called Jennifer Pallavicini, but she was evidently not back from America, for there was no answer from her office.

  To hell with it, I thought. To hell with it. I walked in a gusting breeze among the tourists on the quayside and I wished I was far away. Except that two caravans in a corner of Elizabeth’s farm were holding me home. I needed to solve that problem, and I was achieving nothing by knocking about the Channel and brooding. I went back to the telephone box. Jennifer Pallavicini had told me in Horta that Harry Abbott was the policeman in charge of discovering the mutilated Van Gogh. Harry was a bastard, but he was a bastard who could be reached by telephone, so I called him.

  He wasn’t in his Exeter office, but I held on while he was tracked down. He couldn’t come to the phone, but passed on a message that I should meet him next morning in the café on Dartmouth’s quay.

  I spent the day drying out the boat and washing the salt out of my hair and clothes. Next morning I rowed ashore early and ordered a double helping of bacon, egg, sausages and chips. I had bought a tabloid and was amusing myself by reading about the vicar who’d run off with the organist’s husband when a hand tapped my shoulder.

  I turned. Harry Abbott’s lugubrious and unhealthy face gazed solemnly down into mine. The face smiled, revealing long yellow teeth. “Oh, God,” I said.

  “I haven’t been promoted that high yet. I’m only a Detective Inspector, but that is very close to being God.” He reached over my shoulder and stole one of my chips. “I like chips for breakfast.”

  “If you want some chips, order your own.”

  He stole another. “I’ve already had a plateful. Very nice they were, too, with a spot of vinegar.” He sat opposite me and sprinkled vinegar on his stolen chip. “You’re looking very well, Johnny,” he said. “If I’d had my way, you’d still be in prison now.”

  “So you failed.”

  “Justice is like the pox,” he said, “in the end it gets everyone.”

  “Very funny, Harry.”

  He ordered himself a coffee and spooned sugar into the cup. He then lit a cigarette and blew smoke at me. “Did you know Jimmy Nicholls?”

  “No.”

  “He died of smoking, just like your mother. Were you upset by her death, Johnny?”

  “Piss off, Harry.”

  Detective Inspector Harry Abbott looks like a joke. He’s cadaverous, tall, grey, and apparently always at death’s door, but he’s a cunning sod. When he had interrogated me about the stolen Van Gogh he had come foully close to persuading me to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. I’d been innocent, but Harry had been relentless, almost persuading me that I had to be guilty. He is not a man to underestimate.

  “How do you feel about some
nasty-minded bleeder taking the kitchen scissors to your mum’s painting?” he asked.

  “It pisses me off.”

  “You always did like the painting, didn’t you? You pretended not to, but I knew you liked it. Me, now, I don’t understand it. I like a proper painting.”

  “Tits and bums?”

  He ignored that. “It occurred to me once that you might have nicked it because you liked it so much. Oddly enough I’m not so very sure that you did nick it now, in fact I’d even go so far as to say that I believe in your innocence, Johnny. Perhaps I’m getting soft in my old age, or perhaps I’ve caught a nasty case of food poisoning from the milk of human kindness, but I really do believe that I did you an injustice all those years ago.”

  “Then say you’re sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, Johnny.” He bared his horse’s teeth at me. “So tell me, you bastard, why didn’t you report an attempt on your life? I know it’s a miserable life, and probably not worth preserving, but we are mildly interested in murder attempts.”

  I abandoned the rest of my breakfast. “Who told you about that?”

  “Who the hell do you think told me?” Harry took the last sausage from my plate. “The Contessa, of course.”

  “The Contessa?” The only Contessa I could think of was a make of boat. A very nice make of boat. I’d nearly bought a Contessa 32 once.

  Harry shook his head in grief for my sanity. “The Contessa Pallavicini. Who else?”

  “Jennifer Pallavicini?”

  “Oh, of course, I keep forgetting. You’re a nob as well. You probably don’t use titles amongst yourselves. I suppose you call her Jenny-baby or Passion-knickers. Yes, Johnny. I mean Jennifer Pallavicini.”

  “Bloody hell fire,” I said softly. I had thought I was the one earning pennies from heaven by not using my title, and all the time Jennifer Pallavicini was hiding her own? I felt stupid and astonished. “I didn’t know she was a Contessa,” I said limply.

  “Her mother married the title, but she’s Lady Buzzacott now, so the daughter uses the handle. Mind you, those Italians seem to give away titles with their cornflakes, so perhaps it doesn’t mean anything.”

  I gaped at him. “She’s Buzzacott’s stepdaughter?”

  “You didn’t know that either?”

  “No.”

  Abbott was pleased with himself. He leaned back in his chair. “Surprised you, did I?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.”

  “Well you can stop fancying her, you evil-minded bastard. She’s engaged to some Swiss businessman.”

  “She doesn’t wear a ring,” I protested a little too hastily.

  “That’s the modern way, isn’t it? Equality and all that rubbish. Or else she keeps the ring in a bank vault. The Swiss bloke must be a zillionaire.” He looked at me closely, then gave an evil grin. “You do fancy her, don’t you?”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Then it’s your lucky day, Johnny, because she wants to see you.”

  “I thought she was in New York?”

  Abbott rolled his bloodshot eyes. “Not everyone crosses the ocean by hanging rags on sticks. She flew back yesterday in Concorde. We’re going to meet the family, you and I. It’ll be very la-di-da. Are you sure you don’t want to put on a suit?”

  “I’m sure.” I hated the thought of meeting the Buzzacott family, for I was in no mood for social politeness, but, by phoning Harry Abbott, I had condemned myself to whatever inconvenience followed. For Georgina’s sake.

  Harry swallowed the rest of his coffee and snapped his fingers for the waitress to bring the bill. “It’s nice to be back on crime again,” he said happily.

  “They took you off it? What are you now? In charge of school crossings?”

  “I’m just a dogsbody,” he said mysteriously. “They just gave me this case for old times’ sake, and to save some other poor sod from looking up the files. So shall we go, Johnny boy? I’ve got a car outside. But pay the bill first.”

  I paid, then joined Harry in a clapped-out Rover that he proudly claimed as his own car. We drove north and I wondered about a Contessa and whether she knew that the Swiss are rotten sailors. They’re good at making cuckoo-clocks, and presumably they can ski, but they’re sod all use at anything else. Except making money. And that was a depressing thought, so I tried to forget Jennifer Pallavicini. Instead, at Harry’s insistence, I told him all about Garrard and Peel, and how Charlie had saved me in the nick of time, and then, when Harry had sucked all the juice out of that, he told me golf stories all the way to Wiltshire.

  We parked on the airport-sized forecourt of Comerton Castle. Two footmen ran down the steps to open the car doors. Harry smirked, and said he could get used to this style of life. We were ceremoniously conducted to the entrance hall where a pin-striped butler waited to greet us. He already knew Harry, but didn’t bat an eyelid at my dirty jeans and crumpled shirt. “Welcome to Comerton Castle, your lordship. If you would care to follow me?”

  We did so care, following his silent footfalls through rooms big enough to hold fully rigged schooners. The ceilings were painted with riotous gods and the walls fluted with marble columns. The furniture was worth a small fortune, while the pictures on the walls would not have disgraced any gallery, though clearly Sir Leon did not consider them worthy of his own. Harry Abbott wet his fingertips and tried to smear back his thinning grey hair. “Not a bad pad, is it?” he confided in me, then jerked at his jacket and straightened his tie.

  “Uncomfortable, Harry?” I asked.

  “Christ, no. We coppers are always slumming with the nobs.”

  The nobs were waiting in a glazed terrace filled with potted palms and comfortable sofas. Sir Leon and Lady Buzzacott smiled a gracious welcome. There was no sign of Jennifer. I made polite small talk. I agreed it was a lovely day, and such a change after the recent stormy weather. Yes, I had been to Sir Leon’s gallery, and had been very impressed.

  “My daughter told me she’d met you at the gallery,” Lady Buzzacott said very blandly, which suggested that her daughter had also told her that she had put the boot in as well. “I do wish she’d brought you to the house that day and introduced you.”

  “That would have been very pleasant,” I said with insincere gallantry. I was being polite for Georgina’s sake, but I was feeling increasingly resentful. It was not that I felt out of place, for I didn’t, but I did feel patronised. Two days ago I had been racing a gale, and now I had to tiptoe through the conversational tulips.

  “Jenny also told us about her visit to the Azores,” Lady Buzzacott went on. “She said you hit a veritable giant?”

  “Only twice, Lady Buzzacott.”

  “You must call me Helen, and I shall call you John. Leon, I think John could do with a drink. And I know Harry wants one. I suppose the loveliest thing about being a policeman is that you can drink and drive as much as you like?”

  “Quite right, your ladyship.” Harry was being very obsequious, and I realised that he probably fancied Lady Buzzacott, which wasn’t surprising, for she was a beautiful woman. The beauty was genuine, not purchased in spas and health farms or on some surgeon’s operating table. Her hair, like her daughter’s, was dark, but just beginning to show grey, and clearly Lady Buzzacott had no intention of hiding the grey.

  If she impressed me, her husband rather surprised me. Sir Leon was very small, very rotund, and seemingly rather timid. I had expected to meet a frightening tycoon, but instead he seemed very eager to please. He ordered drinks, then took Harry Abbott off to see some orchids.

  “They’ll talk golf,” Lady Buzzacott said despairingly, and I began to like her.

  “I’ve had little else but golf all the way from Devon.”

  “You poor man. No wonder you need that drink.” I had just been served a very large whisky. “I must say I’m delighted to meet you,” she continued, “because I’ve heard a great deal about you. You’re probably a throwback, aren’t you?”

  “Am I?”

  �
��Of course you are. I’ve no doubt your ancestors went swanning off across the seas to find giant Swedes they could hit, but you’re not really supposed to do it nowadays. We’re all meant to be dull, like Hans.”

  “Hans?”

  “Jennifer’s intended. I’m afraid he’s having lunch with us. He does something in cheese, or I think he does, but he’s so crushingly tedious that I’ve never really listened.”

  I was beginning to like Lady Buzzacott very much. “And you?” I asked. “How do you stave off dullness?”

  “I watch Leon at work. It’s fascinating.”

  “Is it?” I must have sounded dubious because I could not understand what the attractive Lady Buzzacott saw in the diminutive and myopic Sir Leon. Except that he was coining the loot like a bandit.

  “A lot of people underestimate Leon,” she said with just a touch of warning in her voice. “He’s a pirate. I know he doesn’t look like one, but he is. He started in property, of course, most of the new money did. He still has some property interests, but mostly he deals in companies now. That’s how we met Hans. He owns some food conglomerate and Leon couldn’t take it over because the Swiss government is very protective of their firms, so now we’re all a big happy partnership. Hans plays golf, too.” She shuddered. “Is there anything more boring than golf? Now, come and sit down, and tell me why you’re so wretchedly unhelpful about recovering your own picture?”

  I sat down. At the far end of the terrace Sir Leon was demonstrating a golf swing with a long-stemmed watering can.

  “Well?” Lady Buzzacott prompted me.

  “I’m still not at all sure it is my picture.”