The Fish Kisser

by James Hawkins

  Mrs. Merryweather’s Alsatian jumping out of the next-door upstairs window onto the greenhouse roof was a recurring vision. As a twelve-year-old, he’d been the first on the scene searching frantically amid the debris of glass, geraniums, and pulped tomatoes, trying to find the marrow-bone he’d tossed from his bedroom window moments earlier. The big dog bled to death in minutes and the bone, still clenched between his teeth, was buried with him. Various theories were put forward to explain Rex’s fatal behaviour. “Rabies,” suggested Roger, trying to deflect inquisitive stares.

  “Nonsense,” responded his father, but a worried look spread over his mother’s face.

  “You didn’t get bit, did you?” she enquired quickly, checking his hands for signs.

  “I ’spect he were chasing one of the cats,” said Mrs. Merryweather through tears, then added redundantly, “Rex never done nothin’ like this before.”

  Everyone had their own ideas, jaundiced eyes fixated on Roger, though no one was willing to risk his mother’s wrath by pointing a finger.

  As if waking from a dream to an unusual noise, Roger’s conscious mind tried desperately to take control, and fighting through a mental fog to make sense of what was happening. It’s true, he thought, your whole life does flash before you in death. Then reality struck—as far as he could tell he was dead.

  Nosmo King, still smarting from his conversation with Billy Motsom, prayed otherwise, and was on the aft deck of the SS Rotterdam, desperately searching for some way of stopping the ship without becoming ensnared in the inevitable furore.

  chapter two

  Detective Inspector David Bliss, still fuming at his colleagues, scooted around the deserted restaurants and coffee shops, frantically seeking Roger LeClarc. “There’ll be hell to pay if we lose the fat git,” Sergeant Jones had said, before he had discovered the duty-free bar and lost his senses. Yet, despite his size, LeClarc had slithered from sight.

  Nosmo King had also searched for LeClarc; his motives were less virtuous, and he found himself being hauled to the bridge by a crewman who stumbled across him on the aft deck just as he’d launched a life raft in a final act of desperation. Looking like an antisubmarine depth charges, the cylindrical capsule descended spectacularly into the water, leaving King musing, “Did I do that?” The ripcord yanked tight, splitting it apart, the emerging life raft inflated like the wings of a newly hatched butterfly as carbon dioxide flooded its body.

  Jacobs’ voice startled him, “Oy! What’ya doing?”

  Heart thumping, he looked over his shoulder to find the catering assistant heading his way.

  “Man overboard!” he shouted excitedly, then turned to peer at the raft: a child’s giant paddling pool bucking and leaping in a white-water thrill ride as it bounced repeatedly off the ships wake. His spirits sank. “Bugger. It’s tied on,” he muttered to himself, realizing the ripcord was tethered to a shackle at his feet. Jacobs’ calloused hand grabbed his wrist as he reached down to undo it.

  “I didn’t see nobody fall overboard,” said the young catering assistant cagily, his mind whirling at the thought that he might be dealing with a deranged lunatic or a dangerous drunk.

  “Well I did,” King lied. “Look, there he is.”

  The crewman, used to keeping watch, gazed into the blackness. “Where?”

  “Over there. Look he’s waving,” said King with a positiveness that defied contradiction.

  “Can’t see no one,” said Jacobs finally, although the flatness of his tone suggested his conviction was draining.

  Nosmo seized the moment. “I’m not going to let the poor bastard drown even if you are. Help or get out o’ the bloody way.”

  Jacobs let go of King’s wrist, deftly unscrewed the shackle, and they watched for a couple of seconds as the raft was swept astern on the tide created by the propellers’ thrust.

  Jacobs shut the bridge door behind them and King found himself blinded by absolute blackness. A voice floated out of the dark. “Yup. What do you want?”

  King froze, fearful of walking into something painful.

  “Jacobs, Sir,” called the voice from behind him. “This passenger says someone’s fallen overboard.”

  “Well don’t just stand there, come in.”

  Which way? wondered King. “Uh, I can’t see anything.”

  “Don’t worry, your eyes will get used to it in a minute,” said the disembodied voice. “Bring him to the radar cubicle Jacobs, there’s more light there.”

  Guiding hands on his shoulders propelled King across the bridge to an area cordoned off with blackout curtains. The invisible man explained, “We have to keep it dark so we can see what’s ahead—no streetlights at sea. Lots of yachts have poor navigation lights. Some don’t have any.”

  Squeezed together inside the tiny cubicle, the men took on an alien appearance in the luminous green glow from the radar screen, and King wilted under the presence of the officer. Six-foot-four and two hundred and fifty pounds, he estimated, and the man’s smart uniform, contrasting sharply with the catering assistant’s grease-streaked jeans and dirty shirt, added weight.

  Pulling himself upright, Nosmo King strengthened his resolve and launched himself at the officer. “Why don’t you stop the ship?.Someone’s fallen overboard.”

  “Sir, this isn’t a double-decker bus. You don’t just hit the brakes and stop. I’ve given the bos’n instructions, but I need to know exactly what happened.”

  This was someone used to giving orders, expecting to receive answers, and King’s confidence crumpled. It’s a good job the lighting’s poor he thought, as beads of sweat broke out on his upper lip and the blood drained from his face. “Ah … well. Ah … like he told you,” he stuttered, “I… I saw someone fall overboard.”

  “How did they fall?”

  That’s sharp, thought King. “What do you mean, how did they fall?” he stalled, having given no thought to the physical difficulty of falling over a ship’s rail, but realizing from the officer’s tone it might be impossible; that it would need a jump, a push, or a violent lurch in a stormy sea.

  Apparently the officer had similar thoughts and had no intention of helping out. “Sir, please explain to me exactly what you saw; how he fell.”

  King, cornered, backtracked. “Well… I came out on deck and saw a figure disappear over the side. I dunno how it happened. Didn’t notice what he looked like. It was over in a second. I just rushed to the back …”

  “Stern,” corrected Jacobs.

  “Yeah … stern. I went to the stern and saw him in the water, so I chucked one of those life-thingies over.”

  “You launched a life raft?”

  “Ah …”

  “That’s when I saw him,” Jacobs started, cutting King off. “He’d just launched an inflatable off the starboard upper boat deck.”

  With a doubtful look the officer turned questioningly to the catering assistant. “Did you see the man go overboard?”

  “No, Sir. And I couldn’t see him in the water neither,” Jacobs shot back, his confidence buoyed by the senior officer’s apparent scepticism.

  Shit, thought King, if they won’t stop the ship I’m screwed. “Sir …” he began but the officer waived him off.

  “Would you excuse us for a moment?” he said, catching Jacobs’ sleeve and pulling him out of the cubicle.

  Left alone, King’s mind raced. How the hell did I get mixed up with this. The poor fat geezer’s going to drown … not such a bad thing, for him anyway … but what else can I do, they obviously don’t believe me. You know the rules, he thought. The catechism according to the locker room lawyers: Stick rigidly to the story, say as little as possible, and deny everything contradictory; even if they’ve got photos. He’d heard a similar phrase a thousand times, even uttered it a few. Whenever a fellow cop was in trouble for remodelling a prisoner’s nose, creatively constructing a confession, or even lifting a few things from the scene of a burglary the advice of colleagues was always the same. “Keep your mouth shu
t and deny, deny, deny.”

  “But they’ve got the evidence!”

  “Even if they’ve got video—deny it. Evidence can always get lost.” That’s a laugh, he thought; cops give exactly the opposite advice to criminals: soft voiced, persuading, “Why don’t you tell me all about it? It’ll go in your favour and I’ll even put in a word with the judge.”

  How many times had he said roughly the same thing, knowing very well that ninety percent of criminals were only convicted because they’d blabbed. As for putting in a word with the judge: even the chief constable would be stretching the thin blue line if he tried that one. Anyway, the only reason he’d got mixed up with Motsom was because he’d believed his chief inspector, who’d persuaded him everything would be alright if he just told the truth. He’d blabbed, and where had it got him—prison, dishonourable discharge. I’ll keep my bloody mouth shut in future, he’d thought at the time. But there wouldn’t be a future. He was out of the force, unemployed, with a certificate of service that wouldn’t get him a job as a bouncer in a daycare centre.

  Jacobs and the officer crammed themselves back into the tiny cubicle, interrupting King’s woeful thoughts, and his hand involuntarily sprang to his nose: Jacobs needed more than a clean shirt. His attention swung back to the officer who was insistently tapping his finger on the radar screen where numerous lights twinkled like stars in an alien sky.

  “See all these dots. Do you know what they are, Sir?”

  King’s mind was adrift, still smarting from past injustices, and he queried glibly, “Ships?”

  “No, Sir. These dots up here are ships,” said the officer pointing out an area where there was only a smattering. Then he returned to a part of the screen where so many tiny points of light clustered together they melded like dots of paint in a Pisarro masterpiece. “This is clutter—caused by big waves or heavy rainfall. That’s what this is—a storm, a big storm, and it’s headed our way. I don’t want to stop and look for a missing passenger unless I’m absolutely certain. Do you understand?”

  King nodded thoughtfully as if re-evaluating his account of LeClarc’s disappearance, then pulled his face into a funereal seriousness, deepened his tone respectfully, and pronounced, “I’m sure he fell overboard, Sir.”

  The officer made up his mind. “Call the captain,” he barked, then rattled orders to the invisible crewmen on the bridge, while leaving King pondering over the mess of luminescent dots from the approaching gale. “Poor bastard,” he breathed.

  The captain, tie-less in a slept-in shirt, fly undone, and hair all over the place, looked as though he’d been dragged out of a brothel in a raid; he was not in the best of moods when he appeared in his brightly lit office, behind the bridge, a few minutes later. At fifty-nine, he’d been at sea long enough to know passengers would report seeing all sorts of things—usually UFOs or giant green squids—especially at night. He had hoped to get a few hours sleep before dealing with the impending storm, but now he faced the same dilemma as the officer: If he ignored King, and it turned out someone was missing, all hell would break loose—the press would have a field day. He was already envisioning the headlines: “Drowning Man Left to Perish.” “Passenger’s Pleas Ignored—Man Dies.”

  “What’s your name, Sir?” he enquired in a no-nonsense tone, sitting at his desk and taking notes, while peering inquisitively over the top of his spectacles at King.

  “Nosmo King, Captain,” he replied without hesitation.

  “Strange name …?” he began, his words floating.

  “Nickname,” King obliged. “It’s David, but everyone called me Nosmo at police college because I didn’t smoke.”

  A look of confusion furrowed the captain’s brow, his blood-shot eyes squeezed into questioning slits.

  “Nosmo King … no-smo-king,” explained King, the urgency in his voice screaming, “For God’s sake hurry up. There’s a man drowning out there.”

  But the captain, refusing to be harried, echoed. “Police college?”

  Another unasked question demanding an answer.

  Big mistake, thought King, realizing instantly that he’d violated the criminal’s code by volunteering information. “Long time ago,” he shrugged, as if it had been of no consequence, and re-iterated his story. The captain’s pen flashed across the log as they spoke, but he kept his focus on King, reading his expression, noting his tapping foot and wringing hands. Feeling the rising tension, King tried holding the other man’s steely gaze, but found his eyes wandering to the porthole, his mind striving to deal with the possibility that his quarry was struggling for life in the cold, black ocean.

  The wall clock ticked noisily as the captain took forever to scan his notes. He looked up. “How do you know it was a man?”

  Now what? thought King as the captain, chief officer and Jacobs held their breaths, and he felt six eyes burning into him as tense seconds ticked by. “I only assume it was a man,” he said eventually, reigning in his voice, feeling as if his chest were in a vice. “I suppose it could have been a woman. But I just have the feeling it was a man.”

  The search started almost immediately—02:34:17 according to the digital clock in the officers’ wardroom where King had been told to wait. And each second ticked by with exasperating slowness as he paced in rhythm, willing the next digit to appear. Five steps one way and five back. Ten seconds! Is that all? Hurry up for Christ’s sake; start turning the ship round. Motsom will kill me if we don’t find him.

  Kings’ anxiety was echoed on the bridge, now a hive of activity. When King had first entered, its gloomily serene atmosphere had reminded him of the church he’d attended, early each morning, as a young altar boy. Even the smell had been strangely reminiscent—an amalgam of leather, varnish, and dampness—which to him, an eleven-year-old struggling with the concept of Christian faith, became the embodiment of the Holy Ghost. Now, the ghostly congregation of officers and crew stood at their allotted stations and watched as a halo of multicoloured rotating lights, in the ceiling above the captain’s head, indicated the ship was turning hard to port.

  “Another ten degrees to port,” the captain chanted.

  “Ten degrees to port,” echoed an acolyte in the guise of the chief officer.

  “Ten degrees to port it is, Sir,” responded a server whose job it was to turn the handlebars, which had replaced the giant steering wheel no longer necessary on a modern ship.

  The acolyte took up the cry again, adding his own prayer for good measure. “Ten degrees to port it is, Captain. Heading now, two hundred and twenty-five degrees. E.T.A. 17 minutes.”

  “Thank you, Chief,” said the captain who might just as easily have intoned, “Amen.”

  The service continued; litany and responses flying back and forth as a hundred details were attended to: Preparation of lifeboats and rescue teams—For those in peril on the sea: Lord have mercy—notification to coastguards and other ships; updates on the position of the approaching storm— From lightning and tempest … Good Lord deliver us—requests to the port authorities in Holland, asking they delay trains, advise relatives, inform the police, and carry out a dozen other tasks—Oh God, the Father of Heaven: have mercy …

  A supplication, by ships tannoy, for information about any passenger whose presence was unknown, brought no response, and the captain considered holding a roll call of all crewmembers and passengers, even starting to give the chief officer an order, but then thought better of it. With over two thousand people on board, it would take hours to assemble them in a place where they could be counted with certainty. But, he realized, if just one were accidentally counted twice the man in the water would be left to drown. Yet, if the tally were accurate and showed no one missing would he risk his conscience by accepting the result?

  Once committed, the captain—the High Priest of the ship—would do whatever he could to find and rescue the missing man.

  Roger vomited and retched periodically as the salt water slopped into his mouth. Seasick, and sick of the sea, he str
uggled less and less for survival as his tired body sank deeper. The effort of climbing each successively higher crest had become too great, and the fast approaching gale whipped waves into a frenzy that tripped over each other and shot gobs of spray into his face. A fit, accomplished swimmer may have surmounted the ever-steepening sea, but Roger was not fit—had never been fit. Fat, even very fat, was the best possible description of his physical condition. Fat, but certainly not fit. In all probability it was his fatness that had kept him afloat for the past twenty minutes or so, although his eiderdown coat was definitely a contributing factor.

  “Waste of bloody money,” his mother had screeched when she’d picked the price tag out of his trashcan. “They must’ve seen you coming, you great dolt.”

  Although it was now gradually soaking up seawater, the coat, stuffed with waterproof duck plumage and sealed with a multitude of zips and ties, provided excellent buoyancy and protection against the cold. He had never regretted buying it, despite his mother’s reaction; in fact, he was beginning to find it amusing to do things deliberately to aggravate her. Although lying about his homosexuality was perhaps the worst thing he could have done. Why did I say that? he’d wondered. She’d taken it badly, smacking him fiercely over the head with a plate. “Wait ’til your father gets home,” she’d shouted. “You bloody poofter! Wait ’til I tell ’im.”

  He’d laughed it off. “I was only joking.”

  Am I? he’d wondered darkly.

  Am I what?

  Gay or just joking?

  He’d been tempted, more through default than desire. If women didn’t fancy him, and they didn’t, then maybe, just maybe, he’d have more success with men. Rejection was both swifter and more painful—one false start in a park washroom left him with pants round his knees, his head in the toilet, and the contents of his wallet being divvyed up amongst a vicious gang of assertive gays. Failure to make his chosen team was bad enough without being rolled over by the opposition.