Body Line dibs-13

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  The Windhover was tied up to one of the narrow wooden jetties that stuck out from the wall. This one had missing planks, a chain handrail on one side only, and, since the tide was down, a long drop to the grey, sucking water. Against the dilapidation, the boat rode the ebb-tide serenely, glowing with an almost feral beauty, though her dodgers, indeed, proclaimed to the world that she was called Windover.

  Atherton had stopped dead, as though struck by lightning. He was not a yachting man, but he knew a classy item when he saw one. It was big, sleek, sexy, white and powerful, bristling with antennae for every navigational aide and electronic entertainment known to man. ‘That,’ he said in a reverent whisper, ‘is the dog’s bollocks. That is the veritable reproductive organs of the absolute canine. What would you call that? You can’t just call it a boat.’

  ‘A power yacht, I suppose,’ Slider said, admiring the rake of the superstructure, the fluid lines, the thrust and pointiness of the pointed end. ‘Sixty foot, I’d say,’ he remarked. ‘Twin engines. She looks fast.’

  ‘She looks like the rich man’s ultimate wet dream,’ Atherton said. ‘We no longer have to wonder why David Rogers had a boat. It’s an answer in itself.’

  ‘Night fishing, though,’ Slider said. ‘I suppose it was an excuse of sorts. Shall we have a look inside?’

  Helen Aldous had provided them with a key. Inside it was immaculate, still smelling new. It was fitted out with tasteful luxury – wood panelling, leather upholstery, brass lamps with acid-embossed glass shades, varnished wooden decks and thick carpet in the staterooms. It was not huge inside, but so well laid-out that it felt roomy. But the beds were not made up and there were no personal belongings stowed anywhere. The cupboards were empty, and apart from soap and toilet paper in the heads, and a tin of biscuits and a bottle of brandy in the galley, it might just have come from the showroom.

  ‘I suppose he brought everything with him, trip by trip,’ Slider said. ‘She said he went out on Wednesday night and came back Thursday morning, so he didn’t sleep on-board. The galley looks as if it’s never been cooked in.’

  ‘What a waste,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s hard to believe a man who frequents strip clubs and picks up pole dancers wasn’t having tacky booze-fuelled parties and bonking cruises at every opportunity.’

  The only thing of interest was found on the floor on the bridge: an enormous refrigerated cold box of white-painted aluminium, its plug lying next to the socket that would power it. ‘You could get a lot of champagne in that,’ Atherton said. But it was, in fact, empty as well as unplugged. ‘He must have been having parties,’ he complained. ‘Why else all the chiller capacity?’

  ‘To hold the fish he caught on his night fishing trips,’ Slider said.

  ‘Yeah, fish.’ They exchanged a look. ‘What contraband needs to be kept cold?’ Atherton mused. ‘Maybe he was smuggling caviar.’

  There was nothing else to be gleaned from this ultimate empty vessel, which was sadly making no noise at all that might help them, just a gentle slapping of water against the hull and creaking of rope as she worked her moorings.

  They teetered off the end of the rickety jetty on to solid land again, and turned for one last, baffled look at Rogers’s prize. And as if by magic a man materialized beside them: a short, squat man whose weather-pulverized face made it impossible to tell his age. He might have been sixty or eighty or anything in-between. He was hunched into a black donkey-jacket, his hands stuffed in the pockets; a battered and greasy black fisherman’s cap was pulled down hard on his head, and a cigarette drooped from his lip, making him screw up his eyes against the rising smoke. With native politeness he did not meet their eyes, looking instead, with an air of indifference, at the Windhover.

  ‘Thinking o’ buying her?’ he enquired.

  SIXTEEN

  Jewel Carriageway

  ‘Is she for sale?’ Slider asked neutrally.

  ‘Wouldn’t wonder,’ the man commented, the cigarette wagging with his words. He unpeeled it from his lip and spat politely sideways away from them into the water.

  Atherton was about to speak, and Slider froze him with a lightning glance and a hidden elbow nudge. Keeping silence invited confidences. In the absence of questions, a man eager to impart had to make his own timing. Eventually the man had to speak. A casual glance behind him showed Slider that there were others of the local fishing community, messing about by their huts or laying out fish on their stalls, equally uninterested in Slider, Atherton, Windhover and their new friend. You could tell they weren’t interested by the way they were pointedly not looking at them, while their attention was out on stalks. It was the country way, as Slider, a country boy, knew well.

  ‘Ent bin down this week, th’ole doc. Never misses.’

  After a pause to show lack of interest, Slider said, ‘She’s a nice-looking craft.’

  The man grunted agreement, and then became positively loquacious. ‘Fairline Milennium Seahawk, Mark II. Special job. Marine allyminimum hull. Twin three thousand ’orsepower diesels plus a gas turban. She’ll do sixty knots in any sea. Carries more’n seven thousand gallons o’ fuel. Range like that, she’ll take you to Norway an’ back on one tank. Lovely ole gal, th’ole Wendover.’

  He pronounced it like the Buckinghamshire town. Slider reckoned he probably would have pronounced the right name the same way, and wondered whether the makers of the dodgers had realized that and taken the line of least resistance.

  ‘She’s a lady, all right,’ he said.

  ‘That is,’ the man agreed.

  ‘So you think she might be for sale?’ Slider said.

  The man looked sidelong at him, and snorted with faint amusement. ‘Coppers, ent yer.’ It was not really a question.

  Slider shrugged non-committally. He wasn’t giving the farm away. He looked to the left, towards the river mouth, and said, ‘Tide’s turning.’

  ‘Slack water,’ the man said, and the agreement seemed to create a bond between them. He took a last drag on his cigarette, threw it down and ground it out, shoved his hands back in his pockets and said, ‘Knew he’d be in trouble sooner or later, that ole doc.’

  ‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ Slider said.

  The man nodded as if he’d expected that. ‘Never missed. Went out Wensdy night, come in early hours Thursdy mornin’. Sport fishin’,’ he concluded derisively.

  ‘Just an excuse?’ Slider hazarded.

  ‘Man like that, boat like that, don’t go fishin’ alone! Never had no parties in ’er. No drink, no girls.’

  ‘So what did he do?’

  He watched a burgee fill and crack straight in a brief, sudden air. ‘Sometimes he’d go out same time as us. Set off ’ell for leather. Never see where he fished. Sometimes he’d come in same time as us. Come off with a big ole cool box o’ fish every week. “Had a bit o’ luck,” he’d say. “Got some big ones,” he’d say.’ He snorted. ‘Any fish he had, I reckon he bought at Macfisheries.’ He seemed amused at his own wit.

  ‘Did he ever show you his catch?’

  ‘Never showed no one. Never saw what he ’ad in that box. “Got some beauties,” he’d say. That went straight in ’is car, and off away, out o’ town, quick as you like.’

  Slider was having trouble with the cool box – that thing wasn’t designed to be portable. ‘That refrigerated box in the cockpit—’

  ‘Not that one. Portable job. Kept th’electric one on-board.’

  Slider had an image of Rogers coming in, tying up, emerging with his cool box on to an apparently indifferent harbourside, blissfully unaware of the dozens of eyes clocking his every movement. But if no one ever said anything, what harm?

  ‘Dead, eh?’ the old man mused at last, staring at the swirl of slack-tide on the brown-grey water.

  ‘He was up to something,’ Slider said indifferently to a passing seagull.

  ‘Free trade, thass what we call it,’ the old man said at the conclusion of some thought process. ‘Suppose to be in th’ole Europeen Uni
on, ent we? Suppose to be free movement o’ goods. So how come a man can’t bring in a foo bits an’ bobs for hisself an’ his mates without th’ole Customs and Excise persecootin’ him?’

  ‘Beats me,’ Slider said. ‘That’s not my department.’

  ‘Huh!’ the man snorted, but it was aimed at the Customs and Excise, not Slider, who was still, as a man who could tell when the tide was turning, the acceptable face of the law.

  ‘So the doctor was a free-trader,’ Slider mused, not making it a question.

  ‘He weren’t sport fishin’, thass for sure,’ his new friend agreed, and then, as a final, huge concession, actually looked at Slider and said, ‘Coastguard bin watchin’ him. You go and talk to coastguard.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Slider said. After a suitable pause, he nodded farewell and he and Atherton moved nonchalantly away. The old man remained where he was, staring up the river, to show he hadn’t been talking to them at all.

  The coastguard on duty, Steve Wilderspin, was a fatherly-looking middle-aged man whose firm face suggested a core of steel and whose level, noticing eyes wouldn’t have been out of place on a policeman. He reminded Slider of Dave Bright. He examined Slider’s and Atherton’s warrant cards with professional swiftness, and showed no surprise when Slider asked him about the Windhover.

  ‘We’ve been watching her for a while,’ he said. ‘We thought it was a bit odd the doc berthed her here, instead of the marina at Lowestoft. Nothing strange about a rich London consultant wanting a place in Southwold,’ he was quick to add. ‘We’ve got a few of that sort, I can tell you. Barristers, hedge fund managers, all sorts of top people. It’s that kind of place. But Windhover’s a showy craft, the sort people like to show off when they’ve sunk that much money into it. And Doc Rogers wasn’t showing her off to anyone. No parties, no pals down from London for weekend cruises. He didn’t even join the Yacht Club. A man doesn’t buy a super speed cruiser like that and then not talk to anyone about it.’ His eyes crinkled with amusement at the thought. ‘There was only half a dozen Mark IIs ever made, and four of them are in the States. Who ever heard of an owner not wanting to boast about that sort of thing?’

  ‘You’re right,’ Slider said.

  ‘And she’s fast,’ Wilderspin went on, ‘and built for the open seas. What was he doing poodling about coastal waters with his once-a-week fishing trips? But on the other hand, a man can spend his money on anything he likes. It’s a free country. If he wants to waste a power-craft like that, it’s his business.’ He looked at Slider. ‘There’s plenty of rich people with Maseratis and nowhere to let ’em out, am I right? And driving bloody great off-roaders around Kensington and Chelsea.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Slider.

  ‘So we just kept an eye on him. And we’ve never seen him bringing anything bulky off the Windhover. So unless he was smuggling diamonds—’ He shrugged.

  ‘You didn’t ever try to inspect his luggage?’

  Wilderspin’s sea-faded eyes opened a fraction. ‘Can’t do that. Especially not to a respectable Southwold resident. No evidence against him.’

  ‘What if you knew he was meeting another craft out at sea?’

  ‘Ah,’ Wilderspin said with satisfaction. ‘That’d be different. Have you got something?’

  Slider said, ‘The one time he took someone with him he had a close encounter with a boat called Havik.’ He spelled it. ‘From a Dutch port beginning with “I”.’

  ‘IJmuiden,’ Wilderspin said at once. ‘Lay you any money. IJmuiden port and marina – practically the first place you come to if you sail straight from Southwold to Holland.’ He rubbed his hands together. ‘That gives us something to work with. It could be diamonds, in that case. IJmuiden’s only a stone’s throw from Amsterdam, which is the biggest centre for diamond distribution on the continent.’ He looked consideringly at Slider and Atherton. ‘To find out anything more, I’m going to have to refer this upwards, to get co-operation with the Dutch coastguards. Is that going to mess up your case?’

  ‘Can you hold off for a bit?’ Slider said. ‘I’m going to have to refer upwards as well. And if there is a big operation going on, we don’t want to spook them before we’ve laid our hands on the murderer.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Wilderspin said. ‘Can’t have people murdering our citizens with impunity.’

  ‘Funny thing is,’ Atherton said when they left, ‘I’m pretty sure he meant Southwold citizens, not British citizens.’

  ‘Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,’ said Slider from the depth of furious thinking.

  Mackay was duty officer, and Hollis was there, doing a bit of office-managering on his own account, because he wasn’t getting on with his second wife and liked to get out of the house when he could. Porson had arrived by the time Slider and Atherton got back, and they all gathered round him in the CID room, as he sat on the edge of Atherton’s desk (always the tidiest) and fiddled with a biro, clicking the end in and out like Edmundo Ros on speed.

  ‘Smuggling, eh?’ he said thoughtfully, when they had told the whole story of the boat.

  ‘Windhover being the name of the organization that was paying his salary, unless Rogers was just being clever about it, it’s tempting to think they also bought him the boat, or owned it and lent it to him for the purpose,’ Slider said.

  ‘That would make it a criminal organization,’ Hollis said. ‘A diamond smuggling ring. They paid him a retainer through his bank and then a cash bonus on top whenever he did a job.’

  ‘That works all right,’ Mackay said. ‘Explains why he had all the cash, and not too much on his credit card. But who were the jokers he was wining and dining?’

  ‘Customers for the diamonds,’ Hollis said. ‘Rich Arabs and Indians and suchlike – the kind of people that do buy diamonds.’

  ‘It explains Southwold and it explains the secrecy,’ Atherton said. ‘He’s not going to tell his female conquests that he’s a smuggler. Important secret work sounds much better for wifey, and consultant will do for anyone he’s not going to know for long.’

  ‘Talking of consultants, why did Sir Bernard Webber say he hadn’t seen Rogers in years?’ Slider said. ‘Helen Aldous says Rogers dropped in from time to time at Cloisterwood to see Webber.’

  Porson said, ‘Aldous left Cloisterwood in – what was it, ’04? You don’t know that Rogers went there after that. That’s years.’

  ‘True,’ Slider said. ‘It’s just that Webber seemed keen to dissociate himself.’

  ‘If he thought Rogers was a bad hat,’ Hollis said, ‘that’s not surprising, is it, guv? He’d want to keep the reputation of his hospital spotless. And he did get him a job.’

  ‘And he got one for Aldous,’ Porson remarked. ‘Bit of a night of shining ardour, if you ask me.’

  ‘The consultant with the heart of gold. Can’t be many of them around,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Don’t be cynical,’ Slider berated him.

  ‘I wasn’t really,’ Atherton said. ‘But what with Aldous saying Rogers was a fluffy white bunny rabbit, I’m just longing for a real baddy to turn up.’

  ‘Sturgess,’ Mackay said. ‘Pin your hopes on her, Jimbo.’

  ‘Ah yes, the Rosa Klebb of our story. But how do we tie her in with diamond smuggling? Can you see her as the Moriarty, squatting at the centre of a vast criminal web?’

  ‘Not exactly living in the lap, is she?’ Porson said.

  ‘We do know she lied to us, that she had recent contact with Rogers,’ Slider said. ‘And that she had more money than we can account for – investing in the stables and the agency. And just because she isn’t smothered in furs, it doesn’t mean she’s not spending. She could be using it for the benefit of others.’

  ‘Giving it all to charity?’ Porson barked, as though it was a ludicrous idea. Then he modified it. ‘Well, maybe. Alterism can turn into an obsession. Doesn’t do to misunderestimate these do-gooders.’

  ‘The Bob Geldof syndrome,’ Atherton said.

  Porson nodded. ‘They can
be as capacious as anyone spending it on themselves.’ He lapsed into thought, bending the biro now between his large, strong hands.

  ‘Just have to wait and see what Norma comes up with,’ Hollis said.

  ‘Angela Fraser did say Sturgess is out networking all the time,’ Atherton remembered. ‘Supposed to be fund-raising, but who knows? Could be fund-spending. Or Moriartying.’

  ‘Smuggling,’ Porson pondered again, staring at nothing. The biro gave up and snapped in two with a sharp sound. He put the pieces down absently and said, looking at Slider, ‘Diamonds are all very well, diamonds makes sense up to a point, but week in week out, year after year? That sounds more like something perishable. Something that gets used up so you need more of it. Get me?’

  Slider nodded. ‘I did wonder about that. There is something else Holland is famous for.’

  ‘Drugs.’ Mackay got there. ‘And he worked for a drug company, didn’t he?’

  ‘Not the same kind of drugs,’ Atherton said, as to an idiot.

  Mackay looked indignant. ‘I know that, but pharmaceutical drugs can get smuggled as well, can’t they, new ones, or expensive ones not available on the NHS?’

  ‘Recreational drugs make more sense,’ Atherton said.

  ‘Well,’ Porson said, apparently coming to a decision and climbing off the desk, ‘there’s nothing more for you lot to do until I’ve spoken to Mr Wetherspoon and we’ve had a chat with the Excise boys. Their counterpoints in Holland might have something on this Havik boat. If they don’t, we’ll have to think again. Because –’ with a sharp look at Slider – ‘you only know Rogers met it once, and that was supposed to be an accident, which it could well have been. There’s been a lot of leaping to conclusions going on, when for all you or I or the man on the Clapham omnibus knows, Rogers could have been out sport fishing after all.’

  Slider’s unhappy look said he knew that.

  Atherton felt compelled to rescue his boss. ‘Except that he was murdered, sir,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Yes, well,’ Porson allowed graciously, ‘except for that.’