Crude Carrier

by Rex Burns

  “There’s not much to add. Mr. Wood told me that Pierce was home on leave and Mr. Braithwaite gave me his address. I wanted to ask him what he knew about Rossi’s death. You tell me he’s been killed.” Julie stuck to pertinent facts that left out a lot of things.

  Moore started to say something when his telephone rang and he answered it with his name. Face expressionless, he asked, “What time?” And then, “A signed chit? Very well.” He hung up and noted something on the same pad where he had copied information from Julie’s passport and jotted as she spoke. Then the flat eyes met hers. “You breakfasted at your hotel this morning, is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  The inspector nodded. “Your statement of your whereabouts seems to hold up, Miss Campbell.” He pushed her passport across the desk. “You may go.”

  “I take it Mr. Pierce was killed last night. Would you mind telling me how it happened?”

  He stood, brown suit wrinkled with long wear and, in the glare of the office’s fluorescent lights, showing a few stains on the lapels. He opened the door with its panel of frosted glass. “The sergeant will direct you out.”

  “Was it an accident? Murder? Suicide?”

  “Just accompany the sergeant, miss.”

  The sergeant, summoned by a button, took the cue. “Right this way, miss.”

  “I’m working on a case that might involve Pierce, Inspector. I’ve told you what I know. It might help me if I knew how and when he died.”

  The man’s anger surged again and he stared at Julie for a long moment. She wasn’t certain what the inspector was looking at, but the anger wasn’t personal, it was general. It was the broad disgust for humanity that often came when a cop had seen too much too recently. “He and his wife and his five-year-old daughter were shot to death. You will discover that much in the tabloids shortly, I expect. Any information beyond that is the Crown’s official business, for which you have no authorization. Sergeant!”

  “This way if you please, miss.”

  The sergeant escorted Julie along the clean-swept hallway to a bomb-proofed door with a small, reinforced peephole at eye level. “One block to your right, miss, and then another right will carry you to the train station. Good day, miss.”

  The thick door closed behind her, a heavy lock clicking firmly into place. So much for professional courtesy between the Kent County Constabulary and the private sector. In American movies, the police inspector was always willing to tell the PI details of a homicide, knowing that by the end of the film the PI would solve the crime for him. Unless the inspector turned out to be the bad guy, which gave a thrilling twist to what was labeled a realistic plot. Too bad it wasn’t that way in life. And too bad that without local contacts, Julie wasn’t going to find out any more than would be in the newspapers.

  But a couple of conclusions could be drawn: First, the deaths took place last night or more likely this morning. Her alibi, as far as Inspector Moore was concerned, was the two hours between her documented presence at a London hotel and her appearance at Pierce’s door. Second, a murder-suicide would not generate a need for suspects, so a fourth party must have killed the three members of the family.

  The police would find out soon enough if Pierce’s wife had a lover or if Pierce had an enemy or if some family dispute had boiled over into carnage. But the killer could also be a stranger who had a police record, and thus family members who might describe him had to be silenced. And the murders could be related to the death of Herberling. Maybe even to Rossi. But why? Why would Rossi’s death be so important that any witnesses to it would have to be silenced? As well as any insurance detective looking into it?

  Had someone been afraid that Julie would interview Pierce? That the ship’s officer might let something slip about Rossi’s death?

  Officially, Rossi died in a shipboard accident. Such deaths happened almost every day of the year, and the evidence had been disposed of by sea burial. No one could question the cause of Rossi’s death now. Even if Rossi had been murdered, there was no evidence to compel Pierce to admit to anything. Then why were he and his family killed?

  The train slowed as it neared Victoria Station. The trip back had passed quickly while Julie was deep in thought. The huge dead stacks of Battersea Power Station, a glimpse of the Chelsea Bridge and the almost empty Thames below, then the slowly lurching roadbed led through a narrowing web of tracks to the square concrete piers of the platform and the train’s final metallic squeal of dry brakes.

  If Pierce’s murder was related to Rossi, then Julie and her father were facing something much bigger than a cover-up of one sailor’s death. Something that made four lives—even that of a five-year-old child—expendable. If Julie was guessing right, money was why she was followed. Money could explain one killing in New York and three in England. No weapon had been found at the scene of Bert Herberling’s murder in New York, Percy had said. And she would bet none had been found here, either. But the same weapon would not be used for both killings. Each gun would have been permanently disposed of immediately after use. Wiped clean, dropped in a river, dumped into fresh concrete, buried. A professional killer would do that. A professional who charged professional fees. But if someone spent enough money to hire a killer—or was desperate enough to do it himself—that someone must have thought of the lives as an investment for a lot of profit. Because money had to be somewhere at the bottom of it. Look for the money: the First Commandment of detective work. There lay the highest probability of motive.

  Julie joined the hurrying mob of passengers leaving the train. She flashed her railroad pass at the exit inspectors and then headed past a police picket toward the now-crowded stairs leading to the Victoria Station Underground. If money was at the center, then it wasn’t Rossi but something he knew that had become a liability for someone. But what could the dead sailor tell anyone? As the escalator lowered her farther into the city’s bowels, Julie understood that a search into Rossi’s death was a profound threat to someone, and that now she and her father embodied that threat.

  XIV

  The vibration of its engines muted to almost nothing by the weight of its cargo, the Aurora Victorious followed the outbound sea-lanes toward the Indian Ocean. They passed through the busy Strait of Hormuz at night, blinking lights indicating the through-shipping lanes and the median between them, and the running lights of other ships gliding up-channel. Beyond those, just at the edge of vision, a series of flashing lights marked Quoin Island. Distant winks located headlands invisible in the black, and a faint city glow indicated the town of Bahka.

  When his alarm went off in the morning, Raiford crossed another day off his calendar, leaving a week and a half to go. A faintly light-headed feeling came and went in slow rhythm, and he realized that the carpet beneath his bare feet was gently lifting and falling. The vessel had shoved into the wider reaches of the Sea of Oman and was now answering to the fading surges of the Indian Ocean beyond.

  Even the air from the softly whistling vents felt different: fresher, lighter. It teased him from outside the shelter of the bridge, and apparently the rest of the crew shared the feeling. Breakfast was served even more briskly than usual, and the ongoing watch, eager to move into the routine of travel on the open sea, ate rapidly.

  For Raiford, the day’s schedule called for preventive maintenance on the radar equipment, inspecting the electrical connections from the scanner atop the mast to the plan position indicator on the navigation bridge. The idea, he was told by the third officer, was to do outside maintenance in calm seas and inboard work when they moved into the stormier seas below the equator. Raiford’s assistant was Sam who, a few days ago, had crouched over the spasmodic Charley, wailing something in Chinese. Now he showed a gold-toothed smile that said the crew was glad to be away from the sultry confines of the Gulf too.

  “Ready for work, Sam? How’s Charley doing?”

  “Charley fine. Back at
work now.”

  “Already? Pretty tough man, old Charley. Doesn’t he rate sick leave?”

  “No sick leave. Man want pay, man work. Man get sick, man sent home. Somebody else come to take job.”

  “What happens if a sailor gets hurt? Loses a hand or breaks an arm?”

  A shrug. “Sent ashore. Sometime no repat.”

  “No what?”

  “Repat.” Sam twisted his mouth around the awkward sounds. “Re-pat-la-tion.”

  “Repatriation?”

  “Yes—repat! Many time hurt man is sent ashore to go hospital. But no repat.”

  “They just leave him there?”

  A bob of the head. “No work, no pay, no repat. Must stay healthy, yes?”

  “What happens if he gets killed?”

  Another shrug and Sam’s thumb wagging toward the ship’s rail.

  “Over the side?”

  “Oh yes.” He grinned. “No repat then, too.” He led Raiford up the ladder rungs welded to the mast that capped the ship’s towering island. Twenty feet above the open bridge and level with the rim of the deeply humming smokestack, they paused on a platform that had just enough space for them and the vessel’s middle running light. A second, thinner mast rose another ten feet to a platform even smaller. Above that, at the vessel’s topmost point, rotated the fiberglass dish of the radar scanner.

  Raiford gazed aft across the stack. Beneath the thin brown smoke boiling out of the funnel, the wake foamed white and clean. Although the handrails, gritty with salt, were hot from the sun, the wind was cool and the ship’s roll, scarcely felt on the decks below, was stronger up here. Even the sea looked different, no longer the thin color of the Gulf but the rich blue of deep water. A few clouds made a smudge low in the west, and three lean, gray shapes rose up and dropped rapidly over the northern horizon: ships of the US Navy headed to stations near Iraq. Against the Aurora’s bow, long streaks of sun-glinted rollers exploded in surges of spume and created arcs of white froth like tattered lace along the ship’s flanks. The peacefulness of the scene contrasted sharply with the reason Raiford was aboard.

  “Is that what happened to Mr. Rossi? Over the side?”

  Sam’s black eyes blinked and the smile was gone. “Yes.”

  “How did he die, Sam?”

  Studying Raiford’s face, the man hesitated then, clapping his palms together, he shrugged. “Fall off. Down inside. Gone.”

  “He fell inside the ship’s storage tank?”

  “No, no. Fall outside ship. Into water—inside two ships.” His palms slapped together again. “Other ship, this ship. Mr. Rossi inside.”

  “There was another ship alongside and Rossi fell between them?”

  “Yes—between! Gone, like that.” His thumb wagged toward the blue-green swell of foaming wake.

  Raiford climbed up the smaller mast to the radar dish. He hooked up the bypasses, uncovered, sanded, and retaped electrical connections; tightened clamps, screws, and guides against the ship’s constant vibration; inspected the wires’ woven sheaths and repainted them with all-weather coating. Finally he unhooked the bypasses and lowered himself through the open hatch of the crow’s nest and down to the lower platform where Sam waited with tools and equipment.

  “Why was that other ship so close to this one, Sam?”

  “We off-load. Small tanker.”

  “You were transferring crude? At sea?”

  “Yes. Happens alla time. Small tanker carry oil into place we too big to go.”

  “I see.” Then, “Did you have a funeral for Mr. Rossi?”

  “Funeral?”

  “Ceremony—everybody get together on deck and say a few words about him.”

  “No. What for? Mr. Rossi, he gone.”

  It took until early afternoon to finish the radar circuit. Raiford traced the wires down their conduits, through the intricacies of the wave guide to the transmit/receive unit. There, capacitors had to be checked, connections cleaned and tightened, any vibration-frayed insulation taped or replaced and sealed. Then it was the turn of the radar unit’s voltage regulator and generator, and finally into the navigation bridge and the plan position indicator where the bright streak of the radar beam swung in fading circles around a screen.

  Raiford did not ask Sam more questions. And the sailor volunteered nothing more. In fact, the closer their work carried them to the navigation bridge and the officer and crewman on watch there, the smaller and quieter the sailor became. Ultimately, he was a voiceless satellite in Raiford’s broad shadow, handing a screwdriver or a pair of strippers, stepping back quickly when he thought he might be in the way.

  Mr. Pressler, rubber-soled shoes squeaking on the deck’s paint, strode from one wing of the bridge to the other, glancing at the Decca navigator, the automatic helmsman, the wind indicator, and aft at the trail of smoke from the stack. Then starting back across the bridge again.

  “Sam, hand me that coupler there, will you? That blue one.”

  Anxious in the presence of the first officer, the sailor darted across the bridge for the coupler just as Pressler, eyes on the horizon, turned to pace back. Unseeing, he bumped into the seaman and tripped against the control panel, his elbow banging loudly.

  “Goddamn!” Pressler’s thick fist clubbed down on Sam’s shoulders and knocked the smaller man flat. “You goddamned slope-headed mule! Get the hell out of my way!” The mate kicked savagely at the stunned man, his shoe thudding solidly into flesh. Raiford heard the wind burst out of Sam’s lungs. “Bloody clumsy barstid!”

  “Hold it—that’s enough!” Raiford pushed past the frozen duty watch to grab Pressler’s heavy arm. “It was an accident, Pressler.”

  Turning purple with rage, the first mate wheeled to yank his arm from Raiford’s fingers. “Take your hand off me, goddamn you to hell!”

  “Just lay off, Admiral. It wasn’t Sam’s fault. It was an accident.”

  “You—” Pressler’s mouth made stuttering noises. “I’ll—”

  Raiford ignored the first mate and hoisted the small sailor up by an arm. “Take off, Sam. Job’s done.”

  Eyes bulging with terror and body doubled with pain, Sam mumbled something squeaky and incomprehensible and lurched frantically through the doors to the stairway down.

  “I’ll—” Pressler’s meaty fist completed the strangled sentence with a hard swing. His knuckles banged solidly against Raiford’s head and stumbled the taller man into the bulkhead. Stumping forward on thick legs, Pressler swung again. “I’ll—”

  Raiford rolled off the echoing steel, elbow deflecting the grunted blow. He ducked under the mate’s arm and used both legs to drive his fist up and deep into the shorter man’s stomach. The stocky figure folded with a spew of breath. Raiford thudded the heel of his hand against Pressler’s forehead, snapping his skull back with a grinding, cracking sound. Pressler grunted and dropped to his knees, head shaking, and broad hands spread wide against the deck. Then he lurched upward, eyes bulging and shot red with rage.

  Raiford met the wild charge with a jab between the mate’s flailing arms. His knuckles, calloused from karate, split the flesh at the side of Pressler’s mouth with a spurt of bright blood. The mate reeled halfway back across the bridge but did not go down; he tucked his head between thick shoulders and, spitting blood, growled something primal and wordless and charged madly again.

  Raiford sidestepped to whistle the edge of his hand down and through the juncture of Pressler’s neck and shoulder. It chopped deeply, flipping the man’s head sideways in a blur. The mate’s eyes rolled back to show bright pink and his legs bent as if their cords had been cut. He hit the deck with the clang of falling bones and bounced heavily and lay still.

  The bug-eyed duty watch stared openmouthed at the fallen man and then at Raiford.

  “Looks like the first mate tripped, right?”

  The
man’s black eyes blinked, but his mouth remained soundless and open.

  “Call the captain to the bridge. You hear me?”

  Another blink and the open mouth closed. The sailor nodded.

  “Tell the captain that the mate tripped but you didn’t see it happen. Hear what I’m telling you? You did not see anything.”

  “Yessah.” The sailor, wearing dark blue coveralls and no undershirt, stared at Pressler. “He dead?”

  “Sleeping. Go on, call the captain.” Raiford gathered up the tool kit and pushed through the doors to the stairway as the seaman said into the intercom, “Sah? Captain sah? Bridge calling.”

  “Four stitches in his face and swollen like a blinking rugby ball! I could scarcely make out what he was saying. He’ll be eating soup through a straw for a few days, I tell you that!” The second officer of engineering, Henderson, picked at one of the pimples hidden in his curly, dark beard as he grinned and talked excitedly.

  By the evening meal, word of the first mate’s injury had spread through the ship. The empty chair where Pressler usually sat at mess drew glances from the diners. Henderson said he had been called to Pressler’s cabin during the second watch to report on the reading of an erratic temperature level in the propulsion gear. The mate’s first words were “What are you staring at, you bloody sod!” and the man’s demeanor declined from there.

  “Tommy had the duty watch and swears Pressler had a fall or some such. Didn’t see it, he claims. Pretty weak story and a damned strange fall, I think. But that’s what Tommy’s sticking to, and Pressler didn’t volunteer a word about it. Just told me to be damned quick on my report and to get the hell out of his quarters.”

  “Too damn bad he didn’t break his neck as well.” The first officer of engineering ripped a slice of bread in two and spread it thickly with butter. Then he wagged the floppy slice at the younger officer. “You be certain you make your reports to me as well as him, Mr. Henderson, you hear me? He may be first officer of the deck, but by God I am first officer of engineering. If something’s amiss with my turbines, I want to know about it immediately and not through the morning report. Do I make myself clear?”