by Peter Tonkin
There seemed little more to say at the moment. Both men knew there were still a lot of loose ends to be tied up, but for the time being they had sketched out the broad outlines of the plot. Watson went below to check through the records, now that he had a clearer idea of what he was looking for.
Richard made a mental note to get the police aboard the moment they dropped anchor in Lyme Bay, then stood looking south, lost in a brown study. After a few moments, the door opened and closed. He turned to find Sir William beside him, his back ramrod straight and his shoulders square again.
They stood in companionable silence, then Richard, unable to say how happy he was to be beside his father-inlaw again, said instead, solicitously, 'Robin said you'd not been well.'
'Told you that, did she?'
'Yup.'
'Ah well. Happen she thought she had reason.’ A hint of displeasure, like distant thunder in his voice.
'But there was no cause for alarm?'
'No!' The northern accent drew the vowel out derisively. As though there could be anything wrong with Wild Bill Heritage! The very idea invited scorn.
Richard was lifted by the negative - and the old, familiar confidence beneath it. This was the man he remembered. Obviously something had strengthened the weak, broken man Robin had described to him.
'How's the oil market?' Richard asked, as though the suspicions, as though the last five years, had never existed.
'Very buoyant. Rumours of another cut in Middle Eastern production. Problems in Iran. Prices going through the roof.'
'You were lucky to buy in at the start.'
'I was owed some favours by someone in the Foreign office.'
'And you sold it on ...When?'
'Ten days ago.'
'That fits. Who to?'
'Some outfit I'd never heard of: Americorp. Good profit.'
'Too good?'
'Good enough to make me feel dirty? That what you mean?'
'No, Bill. We're over that. Good enough to look suspicious?'
'Not with the market jumping like that ...'
Richard nodded. Then something else occurred to him. 'Why'd you come out, Bill?' he asked. 'It was more than just seeing Robin. She's been her own woman for years now. You knew she was safe, like the rest of us. You've never fussed before.'
'This was different!'
'Right about that!' His tone was mild, robbing the words of offence.
'And anyway ...'
'I knew there was more. What?'
'It hardly seems important now. We're headed for safe anchorage. Only a matter of hours to go.'
'Right. So?'
'I heard yesterday morning, and it frightened the life out of me, I admit.'
'Out with it, Bill. What?'
'Prometheus's sister. Doesn't have a name any more. Last registered as Tethys. Tied up in the next anchorage to Prometheus in Valparaiso all these years ...'
'Yes?'
'Broke in half. Sank in minutes. Complete harbour watch gone. Riding in ballast. Clear day. No warning, nothing. They reckoned it was the long seas did it - you know what the sea's like, down there in the Forties bending her like a piece of wire, never varying. Bending her like a piece of wire till she snapped.'
Richard felt his body chill. 'No warning at all?'
'One of the watch aboard was talking to his daughter on the ship-to-shore phone line. Cut off in mid-word. That's how they found out so quickly. She looked out of the window and it was gone. Bloody great supertanker gone. No ship; no father. Nothing. Quick as that.'
Chapter Twenty Three
The helicopter was back again in minutes, ferrying in a doctor and a nurse, another coastguard, a Customs officer who looked like the sailor on the front of the old cigarette packet, and the first policeman, a self-effacing detective sergeant from Falmouth.
They might just as well have called in at any of the islands after all, thought Richard grimly. The only difference would have been the nationality of the officialdom which overwhelmed them.
But all these new - and not particularly welcome - faces had the unexpected effect of welding the crew even more closely together. If they looked upon the first influx as aliens, they looked upon the rest as little short of vermin. On the one hand, Richard found himself rapidly running out of patience as all sorts of bureaucratic pygmies made importunate demands on his time he could not begin to fulfil; on the other, the rest of the crew, from the First Lieutenant to the lowliest of Ho's stewards, flatly refused to do or say a thing without referring, either directly or through the chain of command, to their Captain. He had, after all, brought them this far against unimaginable odds; he would stand by them now.
And he did. Although he would far rather have been leading a team to check for possible weaknesses in the hull which might trip them, fatally, at the last fence from home.
The god-like awe in which they seemed to hold him became a source at once of great strength and of great irritation. And of increasing isolation.
He felt alone, but he was not. They all, to varying degrees, felt isolated too. Robin, even though she was with her father, to whom she had given a lifetime of filial devotion, looked almost with pity on the grand old man because he had not shared what the rest of them had. No matter what he had seen or known, it could be nothing like this. There was a part of her which he would never be able to reach again. Which any other one of the crew, no matter how little known or how faintly remembered, had direct access to. And each of the others, looking at the interlopers, felt the same. Events, and Richard's titanic abilities as a leader, had welded them together into a combat unit. Had strung between them those bonds almost of blood, which would see the passing of years as nothing to the enduring of this experience.
As midday approached, the Captain firmly extricated himself from the clutches of the insistent Customs man, swept past the policeman, and entered the bridge. His impatience was instantly obvious to his crew. It was pleasant to have the radio aboard, but the current news concerned only pop stars and drugs. They had missed the final Test, of course. There was nothing of real interest. He listened for a few minutes, then swung round.
'Bearing to Mecca?'
Ben was just relieving Robin, and it was she who rattled it off. She hadn't seen Richard in this mood for many years - since her twenty-first birthday, in fact - but she remembered it vividly and with some trepidation, even now. When he turned and exited from the bridge, the Mate and the Third Lieutenant exchanged a long look.
A moment or two later, the ship's address system came on. 'Attention. Your attention, please. This is the Captain speaking ...' Absolute silence fell. Even the engines seemed to quieten.
Surprised by this simple demonstration of the Captain's power, Moriarty turned, and his eyes met the awed glance of Quine, the new Radio Officer. They stood in respectful silence until the bearing of Mecca completed the messages.
Then, 'What sort of a man is he, your Captain?' Moriarty asked Ben.
'The only man alive who could have brought us through like this.' Ben might have been going to say more, but the subject of their discussion came back on to the bridge just then.
'You can go down to lunch, Number Three. Tell them to send the rest of us up some sandwiches.'
Robin was happy enough to leave, but he stopped her at the door. 'Oh. And find that policeman. I don't want him being sick all over my ship.'
She turned away. Too soon.
'And if you see Sir William, tell him he is welcome either to join us here or to eat with the officers below.'
'Aye, sir.' She hadn't called him 'sir' since Durban, and not very often before Durban, either.
The afternoon passed in that air of dangerous calm. Richard stayed on the bridge, unable to do anything else without tripping over importunate officialdom. Anyone who wanted to see him - fewer and fewer as the day progressed - came and were growled at there. Off their port beam the coast of England loomed and receded as they swept past bays and headlands most had never thought to se
e again. They had passed the Lizard, Black Head and Manacle Point while Moriarty was getting used to her. They had passed distant Dodman Point and Chapel Point. They had passed the Eddystone Rocks soon after Richard's curt broadcast; and now, looming large across Bigbury Bay lay Prawle Point, and beyond it, Lyme Bay.
What had started as a bright day was gathering itself into a dull evening. The mares' tails that Richard had seen this morning were replaced by a flat grey overcast. The sea, grey-green at the best of times, now seemed almost black, rolling in on the starboard quarter from Biscay and the south-west.
Because the overcast was so low, the last helicopter came as a surprise, dropping out of the murk without warning to settle on the pad at 16.10.
'Ben, go down and see what that is all about,' ordered Richard testily, expecting more snoopers. But before Ben could even move, the side door of the craft opened, and it became obvious what it was all about. Half a dozen journalists overflowed out on to the deck; photographers snapping avid photographs of all and sundry, the rest speaking into the sort of portable tape recorders Watson had been using.
Ben was in motion at once, and Richard wasn't far behind. He had nothing in particular against the press - they had been good friends to him of old - but this was the last straw! Rage boiled in him as he thundered behind the Mate down the stairs to A deck, then out through the bulkhead door on to the main deck itself.
Most of them were gathered around the hole above the Pump Room when he arrived. The safety markers had been ignored. They were far too near the edge. Ben was having no success at all in getting them back aboard the chopper. He was deep in the middle of them, manhandling two of them back down the deck. Richard didn't bother getting that close.
'You lot!' he bellowed. 'Get the hell off my ship.'
One of the reporters Ben had been pulling broke free of his grip and came storming back towards the angry Captain. He was a large man, run to fat and seed, with the bright florid face of a drinker. 'Now just you look here,' he began to bluster, in the less than sober tones of a man who had lived long in Devon.
Richard cut him off. 'No! You look here. You are trespassing on my ship and I want you off. If you don't go, I'll have you clapped in irons, the lot of you.'
The archaic phrase turned all their heads, especially as it was patently obvious the Captain meant it. He paused for an instant, now that he had their attention, trying to calm himself so that he could make a reasoned, reasonable appeal to them.
Round from the starboard side of the bridge came a crowd of seamen, led by Sir William and Robin. Watson was among them, as was John Higgins who had temporarily left the watch with Captain Moriarty, coming down as though helping his own Captain to repel boarders.
The drunk reporter used the pause to lurch right up to Richard. 'Clap me in irons?' he slurred. 'I'd like to see you try.'
It wasn't much, but it was enough. 'Number Three,' snapped Richard. 'You and your men will kindly escort this gentleman to the sickbay and keep him there until he sobers up. Now, as for the rest of you ...'
He stepped forward, past the reporter. The rest of them looked on, stunned as, without question or hesitation, the tall slim woman in uniform calmly ordered the two largest in her group to take the journalist by the arms. The others surged forward, Ben still behind them trapped by the sudden turn of events. John moved his men closer in. Watson, Sir William and the rest closed round behind them. All eyes were on Richard.
'You can't do that!' called a carefully anonymous voice. The others agreed, increasingly loudly.
'I can and I have. I'm the law here as far as you are concerned. Now either get off or join him!'
There was a sort of concerted movement towards Richard as he stood there, rock-like, daring them to challenge his authority further.
'Ngaaaaaaaaaaah!'
The scream stopped them in their tracks as it echoed up, eerily, from beneath their feet, fading to silence an instant before the sickening thud.
'Captain!' It was Ben Strong's voice, shaken, horrified. 'It's Watson! He's fallen into the Pump Room!'
The detective sergeant's name was Bodmin, like the Moor; and he wasn't either as self-effacing or as seasick as he seemed. He had been born and raised in Falmouth, able to sail a boat before he could ride a bike. Only education in London, at Hendon, and his detective's course in Manchester, had taken him far away from the sea. As soon as he had passed out of police training college, he had transferred back to the Cornish force and his childhood sweetheart, content to make his way slowly and happily down here.
Nor was he a fool, for all that he played up his accent and acted before the ignorant a little of the country bumpkin.
So when he told the Chief Engineer to consider himself under arrest, Harry Bodmin knew well enough what he was up to. The American took it surprisingly calmly, and at first the detective thought he couldn't have heard above the grumble of the engines in the engine control room. But Martyr had heard all right, as had Rice and McTavish. Their reaction was more marked than the Chief's, for, as it was with Captain Mariner and the deck officers, so obviously it was with Martyr and his engineers. For a moment, Bodmin wondered if he had miscalculated after all and was about to meet a sticky end.
But Martyr swung round slowly, wearily. 'Can't prove nothing, son,' he said. 'But you're welcome to try like the others back home.'
'Thank you, sir. At least I can assume you are not going anywhere for the moment, and I know you are necessary to the running of the ship, so it's a notional arrest. Unless you try to escape before this inquiry is over, of course.' He saw the sceptical look in the Chief's eye and added dryly, 'Scotland Yard is of course aware of the warrant for Multiple Homicide outstanding against you in Florida, though I believe that to be a Federal Offence and we are in possession of a standing request to enforce it as far as possible if you ever do fall under our jurisdiction. Further, together with the investigator from Lloyd's, I cannot see how this alleged fraud could possibly have been perpetrated without your active or passive connivance. You are the last of the original officers left alive. This ship was always bound, illegally, for Durban. You and your dead comrades must have known that from the start. When we have proved what is actually in those tanks, we might well be adding our own charges to the Federal warrant against you.'
Rather pleased with that as an exit speech, he swung wide the door into the strangely misshapen, blast-damaged corridor past the Pump Room.
'Ngaaaaaaaaaaah!'
The scream grew in volume, ending with the most sickening thud and slither Bodmin had ever heard. He hesitated for an instant and Martyr took charge. 'That was someone in the Pump Room! Quickly!' He spoke quietly, but that only emphasised the urgency of his words. He swept past the detective with McTavish at his heels. Even in this crisis, Rice remained on watch. Bodmin swung round and followed. The passage was a little like a funhouse he had visited at a fair as a boy. The walls bulged. The floor sagged and leaned. He kept hitting his shoulder, always running down the slope away from the seat of the explosion.
There was no door, of course: just a yawning hole with a dent in the scorched wall opposite. Paint and veneer long gone, naked steel strained towards them, agape as though the room itself had screamed. Behind the iron lips, darkness.
They hesitated, even Martyr given pause by the sheer malignity that seemed to radiate from the place. Then, as their eyes adjusted, they could see a long beam of dull light which fell wearily from the split above. And, on the edge of that pool of brightness, lay Watson. It was immediately obvious to all of them that he was dead. Martyr took over at once, kneeling beside the corpse before the shocked Bodmin could react. So only Martyr saw that in its right hand it clutched the tiny tape recorder Watson habitually carried in life. Incredibly, it was still running. Martyr wrapped the whole hand in his handkerchief and extracted it with care. He switched it off, wrapped it like a parcel in the white cotton and slipped it in his pocket. Then Bodmin, who had seen none of this, pushed the Chief aside and checked i
n vain for a pulse.
After that, there was nothing to be done except to put the young investigator with the others in the crowded cold room, and interview those who had been nearest him on the deck, trying to find whether he had taken one foolish step too many, or whether he had been deliberately pushed. Though, in the detective's opinion, precious little happened on this ship other than by design.
Ninety minutes later, he was finished. The story never varied, but no one had really admitted to seeing anything. One minute he had been there, at the back of the group, the next he was screaming. That was all. Bodmin decided to call it a day. He had no intention of staying aboard all night; and anyway, he had to communicate with his superiors.
He found Martyr and the Captain on the bridge, both looking morosely across the choppy expanse of Lyme Bay to where the lights of Exmouth twinkled in the distance. As soon as Mariner saw him, he went straight into the attack. 'I hear you've put my Chief under some kind of arrest.'
It was only to be expected, thought Bodmin, without a trace of resentment at the hostility. It hadn't taken him long to see how close-knit this crew had become, like some station houses he had known on the force. He hoped if he ever got into trouble there would be people like these to stand beside him. He calculated that this was the time for a softly-softly approach, if he wanted to get ashore.
'Only notionally, sir. I'm not quite sure of my authority. If Mr Martyr were considering coming ashore, I might be able to arrange some sort of accommodation until ...'
'He's not. Now that we're at anchor, we're keeping a harbour watch until the rest of the authorities come aboard in the morning.'
'And that watch will include the Chief?'
'Yes. It includes all the crew.'
'Fine. How do I get ashore?'
'If you hurry, Captain Moriarty may let you have a seat in the Pilot's cutter. It's just about to pull away.'
Bodmin left at a run.
Richard had not been lying to protect his Chief. He did fully intend to keep watches above and below deck all night no matter how exhausted he and his crew were. He had a feeling that their safety was by no means assured now they were at anchor - indeed, he was absolutely certain that this position was not the beginning of safety but the climax of danger. Had he ever had any doubts on that score, Watson's death had settled them once and for all.
