The Last Lighthouse Keeper

by Alan Titchmarsh

  Will’s eyes were used to the darkness, but he could see nothing other than the hump of Bill’s Island rising out of the water, the glint of the moon on the rippling tide and the wavelets breaking on the island’s shoals. The regular flash of the lighthouse added its own intermittent brilliance.

  For fully twenty minutes they stood there, and just as Will was about to suggest there were better ways of spending the early hours, his eyes focused on a small inflatable dinghy making its way back from Bill’s Island.

  “Night fishing?”

  “In one of those?”

  There was only one alternative. “Smuggling?”

  Ted nodded.

  “How do you know?” He kept his voice low.

  “Been watching regular.”

  “How long?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Why?”

  “Dunno. Had a feeling, that’s all. Pissed off about Ernie.”

  “You’ve been out here every night?”

  “Mostly.”

  The two men watched as the dinghy made its way towards the shingle bank – not to the boatyard or the adjacent hard. Ted spoke again softly. “Seems to happen on Thursday nights, about this time. Not always, but twice before. The other night there was too much wind. Sea was too rough.”

  “Fancy going out in a boat that small. Any kind of sea and it would be over. Must be mad.”

  “Desperate, more like.”

  “Why haven’t you been to the police? Come to think of it, why haven’t the police spotted it?”

  Ted ignored the second question and answered the first. “Didn’t want to get involved. Anyway, there never seems to be anything in the boat. No fish. Nothing. But they must be up to something.”

  “Why have you got me out here?”

  Ted shrugged.

  “What happens now?”

  “Watch and you’ll see.”

  As the boat approached the bank of pebbles the rower shipped the oars and stepped out before pulling it clear of the tide. He bent to pick something from the bottom of the dinghy. Will could not make out what it was.

  “That’s a first,” said Ted, a note of surprise in his voice. The oarsman deflated the tiny vessel, folded it and stuffed it into a large holdall. The night was calm and silent, apart from the sucking of the tide on the shingle, but all the while the figure looked about nervously, clearly waiting for something or someone.

  Ted nudged Will’s arm and nodded in the direction of the cliff path. Will screwed up his eyes and could just make out another figure descending towards the beach. The first figure had also seen the newcomer, but made no move to depart. The newcomer walked down the shingle bank and picked up the object that had been removed from the boat, put it into a bag, then took the handle at one side of the holdall that now contained the dinghy. The figures then set off with their two pieces of baggage towards the cliff path.

  For a moment, Will and Ted looked at one another, unsure of their next move. Then Will cocked an eyebrow, Ted nodded, and they walked silently across the narrow lane to climb a small, steep path that would join the one that ran along the top of the cliff. In the space of two minutes they would be able to intercept the oarsman, his companion and their cargo.

  The suddenness of it all took them both by surprise. As they breasted the grassy knoll before them, two large figures blocked their path.

  Both Will and Ted stopped in their tracks, straining hard to make out the features on the faces that confronted them. With the moonlight behind them it was difficult, but Will thought he recognized one of the men as the policeman who had driven him back to the station in St Petroc. The other looked vaguely familiar but Will could not place him.

  “Stop there, please,” commanded the second figure, quietly but firmly. Will and Ted did as they were told. His companion, the young policeman, looked back over his shoulder towards the path where the oarsman and his companion must have been climbing. Will could see nothing over the knoll.

  The four stood silently for what seemed like an age, until the young policeman said, “That’s it. They’re in the bag,” in his voice a mixture of relief and triumph.

  “Right,” said his companion. “Down there, please.” He pointed to the path they had just climbed, signalling them both to make their way down. Silently they descended, looking neither right nor left, until they reached the lane. A police car purred silently into view and Ted and Will were motioned into the back seat by the second policeman, who then climbed into the front. No siren sounded, and no words were spoken during the short, speedy journey to St Petroc at half past three on a Friday morning.

  ♦

  Will knew what would happen when they arrived at the station. He could hear the voice of the detective sergeant now, could see the expression on his face.

  Who could blame him for the conclusions he would draw?

  On arrival at the police station they were split up and shown into separate interview rooms. Will sat alone for twenty minutes before the sergeant arrived with the young constable in tow, switched on a machine, gave time and date details and uttered the words that previously Will had heard only on television: “You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention, when questioned, something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.”

  Will felt a cold sweat break out on his brow.

  “I think you need to explain a few things to me, don’t you?”

  Will recounted the events of the night – Ted’s message, how he had accompanied him to the coast road and watched the boat bringing back its cargo.

  The detective sergeant looked grim. He listened attentively, asking questions that showed clearly he had already talked to Ted. For the best part of an hour the interrogation was relentless, the sergeant’s manner intimidating. Then he sighed and got up. “You’re lucky, aren’t you?”

  “Sorry?”

  “Lucky I believe you. And at least your stories tie up.”

  Will could think of nothing to say.

  “I know you were drawn into this by a series of events, sir, but you’d have helped more if you’d just stood back and left us to get on with it.”

  “I thought I had.”

  “Until tonight.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  Will was unsure where the conversation was leading, but relieved that the sergeant was not treating him as a suspect. His curiosity got the better of him.

  “Did you get them? The two on the cliff path?”

  “Yes, sir. We did. No thanks to you. A couple of minutes more and you’d have blown it. Do you know how long we’ve been watching them?”

  Will shook his head apologetically.

  “Four weeks. Every night for four weeks. Along with your friend next door. Well, actually, we’ve been at it eight days longer than him.”

  Will looked at the sergeant enquiringly. “Ted?”

  “He didn’t do anything, only watched, so we thought we’d leave him alone. Just keep an eye, you know.”

  “He wasn’t…?”

  “No. He wasn’t. From the start we were fairly sure he wasn’t, but we didn’t want him to do anything that might prejudice the outcome, so we decided to leave him be, provided he didn’t overstep the mark. Only this was the first night they actually came away with anything. You can’t arrest people for rowing around in a rubber dinghy late at night. You might want to arrest them for stupidity but we chose not to. Waited until we had something a bit more serious to go on.”

  “Did they pick it up, then?”

  “I can’t really say any more, sir.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I’d be grateful if you’d keep tonight’s events to yourself. It will be public knowledge soon enough, but I’d like to be in charge of the timings myself, if that’s all right with you?”

  Will was conscious of the sergeant’s sarcasm.

  The policeman moved towards the door. “Wait here for a few minutes and I’ll arran
ge for someone to drive you back.” He left the room, along with the young constable, and Will stared unseeingly at a poster advising against drink-driving. It was then that he remembered where he had seen the other police constable before, not the one who had just left the room but the one who had stood beside him on the cliff path. He was the surly youth who had arrived on pontoon number one in the battered day-boat. He must have been watching Will, Gryler and the boatyard ever since. Will shuddered, remembering how close he had come to revisiting the lobster pots.

  The door reopened and the boating police constable gestured to Will to follow him, his face expressionless. Ted was waiting outside, looking as though he had only just survived an attack by a Rottweiler. As they walked down the corridor together they passed another interview room. The door was in the process of being closed, but as they walked past, Will saw the two figures sitting at a table.

  The door slammed shut but the vision of Hugo and Isobel Morgan-Giles remained imprinted in his mind.

  ♦

  The sergeant was careful never to let his personal life spill over into his work. He had endeavoured, over the last few years particularly, to keep the two separate. Whenever they looked as though they might conflict, he made sure that someone else took the reins. His colleagues knew this, and knew, too, that he never let his own experiences colour his judgement.

  He questioned Hugo Morgan-Giles calmly and thoroughly, with little display of emotion. “You do know what was in the packages?”

  Hugo considered. “I’m not sure.”

  “Do you know what they were worth?”

  “No.”

  “Around fifty thousand pounds each, street value. That’s a quarter of a million pounds.”

  Isobel Morgan-Giles shot at her husband a glance laden with reproach.

  Hugo’s head jerked up. “I’d no idea!”

  “How much were you getting?”

  He hesitated. “Five thousand.”

  “Each?”

  Hugo looked crestfallen. He shook his head.

  “Where from?”

  Hugo turned to his wife, who stared at him with disgust. He realized he was now on his own. “A few years ago, when we were still living at Benbecula, we encountered financial difficulties.” He looked almost embarrassed to admit to it. “We lost a lot of money. Lloyds. I was a Name. We found ourselves heavily in debt. We struggled to keep the big house going for a long time but in the end we only just managed to hang on to what we used to call the Dower House – the Moorings – and we moved in there and sold Benbecula to…other people.” He said it politely, without any hint of recrimination. His wife let out a suppressed but scornful snort.

  “I tried to find a couple of consultancies in the City, but I failed, and I realized that very shortly I would have to declare myself bankrupt, which would mean losing everything, even the Moorings. I was desperate to find a way of just hanging on in there, I think you’d call it. The children are both at private schools and that was the one thing I was determined they should continue to have – at any cost. Benbecula had been in the family for three generations. I’d already let them down enough.

  “I tried everything I could think of. Went to see old friends, almost begged for work, but nothing was forthcoming. You’re not equipped for much when you’ve been retired from the Army for ten years. Except for being chairman of the village-hall committee. I just didn’t know where to look. People were very sympathetic but…nothing.” He spoke calmly, almost relieved to get it all off his chest.

  “So you found an easier way to make money?”

  “I’d never done anything illegal in my life. I haven’t even had a parking ticket. It wasn’t easy. I didn’t do it without a lot of soul-searching. But in the end I couldn’t afford self-respect. Too much pride for that, I suppose. Too much family pride. If you see what I mean.” He didn’t wait for an opinion, but continued, “Just over a year ago I caught the two boys up in the attic smoking pot.”

  The sergeant raised his head. “The two boys? I thought you only had one son.”

  “He had a friend. A lad from the village. Used to muck around together. I gave them a hell of a tongue-lashing, bawled them out. Told them if I found them at it again I’d give them what for. Tim – my boy – went back to school and I thought that was that. It was about a week later when the lad came to see me at the house. I wanted nothing to do with him. Told him not to come back, and not to see Tim again either. He left, shouting something abusive about money. About how I was wasting an opportunity.”

  “Who was the lad?” asked the sergeant.

  Hugo spoke very quietly. “Christopher Applebee.”

  “Go on.”

  “I never thought much about it. Then this man turned up at the house the following week. Said he was from the Inland Revenue. I invited him in, thinking that this would be the end of things, that we’d lose what little we’d managed to save. I took him into my study. He said that I owed more money than their calculations had at first shown, and what was I going to do about it? I thought I’d reached rock bottom. Then he smiled. Said he wasn’t really from the tax office but now I knew how I’d feel when they really did come.

  “I didn’t understand what was going on. I asked him what he was doing, who he was, why he thought he could come into my house and talk to me like this. I asked him to leave. Then he said he was a friend of the lad’s and that he’d heard I needed money. I told him I wasn’t interested, that I wouldn’t do anything underhand or illegal. He said what he was suggesting was quite safe. He explained that I could earn money by joining his import-export business.”

  The sergeant rested his chin in his hands and sighed.

  “Yes. Deep down I knew what was going on, but it was the first offer anyone had made to me.”

  “And you took it?”

  “Not at first. He was very persuasive. Said that he had plenty of people who could collect things for him. What he needed was someone reliable – senior management sort of thing – who could make sure that goods were delivered to a prearranged address at weekly or monthly intervals. That was all. There was no need for me to know what was in the packages. All I had to do was make sure they were delivered. That was all.”

  “So you said yes.” The sergeant’s voice was devoid of emotion.

  “Eventually,” Hugo agreed wearily. “You’ve probably never been there, but it’s amazing what you can make yourself do when there’s nowhere else to go. When you’ve explored every conceivable avenue and found no way out. I even managed to convince myself that the packages contained nothing illegal. Stupid, isn’t it?”

  Still no reaction.

  “And so it started. Christopher would collect the parcels from the lobster pots and bring them to me.”

  “Always on a Thursday?”

  “Yes.”

  “But not every Thursday?”

  “No. We weren’t told when they were coming. The man said that’s the way it would be.”

  “Were there always five parcels?”

  “No. Sometimes fewer.”

  “And did you meet the man again?”

  “He said there would be no need.”

  “So where did you take the parcels?”

  “To a waste skip behind a hotel near Green Park, in London.”

  “And where did you get your money?”

  “By post. In a padded envelope.”

  “And Applebee?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you always got five thousand pounds?”

  “Always.”

  “Not a lot, considering the value of what you were delivering.”

  “But I didn’t know that.” Hugo realized as he said it that his claim of ignorance would count for little.

  The sergeant persisted with his questioning until he was satisfied that there was little more to be gained by continuing at this hour of the morning.

  As the sergeant stood up to go, Hugo said, “I do just want to say one thing. My wife has had nothing to do with
this. It was entirely my doing.”

  The sergeant looked balefully at his interviewee. “Until Christopher Applebee was drowned trying to pick up the packages and you had to start collecting the stuff yourself. Then, of course, you needed someone to help you carry the dinghy up to the house.”

  Hugo gazed at the floor.

  “The firebomb at the lighthouse?” The sergeant asked the question as though he were asking the time of day. “Your idea or Applebee’s?”

  Hugo answered, without hesitation, “Mine. Applebee knew that the lighthouse keeper’s diaries were there. Heard about them in the pub. Said we ought to steal them. I thought a firebomb would be quicker. Neater.”

  “And who threw it?”

  “I did.”

  “Noble of you to admit it,” the sergeant said flatly, “but the stuff we found in Christopher Applebee’s flat tells us otherwise.”

  The Morgan-Gileses were detained for further questioning. The sergeant returned briefly to his desk before going home to snatch some sleep. He picked up his car keys from the desk drawer, then looked at the framed photo that stood next to an overflowing in-tray. It was a picture of his daughter. She had been only fifteen when the picture was taken. She had died four years ago now, after taking a single Ecstasy tablet at a disco in Penzance.

  Twenty-Six

  Nash

  Amy rose early. She had become accustomed to lying awake from around six o’clock and had decided after several days of moping until eight that the only way ahead was to work. The bank holiday weekend had gone well, and she needed more stock. She contacted the jewellery maker, the patchwork stitcher and the rest of her suppliers to make sure she had enough for what she hoped would be a good season ahead.

  Her three new paintings were finished, but she was not sure she liked them. They were bright enough, but lacked sparkle. She hung them where they would catch the eye of a prospective purchaser as soon as the studio door opened. She took a shower and sat down to orange juice, bran flakes and slices of banana.

  Just occasionally it was impossible not to think of him. Just occasionally, several times a minute. She pushed back her chair and crossed to the sink with the glass, the bowl and the spoon, slamming them into the washing-up bowl with unwise ferocity. The glass broke. “Shit!” She clutched at the rim of the sink and closed her eyes to prevent the tears spilling over. “Oh, shit!” A wave of sorrow engulfed her and her body contracted in wild sobs.