by Jim Newell
The ship remained at Halifax for ten days before the engines were finally repaired and it was able to put to sea again to head for its original destination. When it had docked at Montreal, a visitor came on board while the cargo was being unloaded and he and the Captain, Georgio Houlas, had a conversation in the Captain’s less than tidy cabin. The Captain, a short, chunky individual, dressed in jeans, a dark high-necked sweater and a dirty peaked cap that might once have indicated a ship’s officer, sat comfortably in the chair beside his desk and waved his visitor to a dilapidated couch against the bulkhead. He accepted a cigar from the visitor and both lit up.
The immaculate dress of the visitor contrasted with the slovenly look of the Captain. Manfred Koch wore an expensive tailor-made suit in a rich dark tan colour with a matching shirt and tie, shoes polished to a high gloss. The visitor looked totally out of place in the shabby cabin of the old tramp freighter, but his demeanor did not indicate that he felt out of place.
“Well, Georgio,” began the visitor, letting the smoke dribble from his nostrils, “what happened?”
“What happened? We got caught in that storm and both engines quit. That was one helluva storm, Manfred. The engine breakdown was legitimate. We had two other problems. One was that we—what do you call it—collided—with a fishing boat.”
“You what? What was a fishing boat doing out there in that storm?”
“He got caught, same as we did, and his engine quit, too. We didn’t see him for waves and wind. We were just drifting, trying to keep her head into the wind. He was small, an on-shore fishing boat, I think they call those little fishing boats, and he was down in a trough when we hit him. When we hit him—Huh! When the storm blew us into him. No chance for him at all. The three guys on board got into their dingy, but we had to take them on board. They were wearing immersion suits and who could tell how long before they might have been located. We didn’t have any choice, so we picked them up.
“I got them in the cabin here and shot them. After midnight, Stevanos and I stripped off their immersion suits and tossed them overboard. They must be long gone to the bottom by now.”
“How’d you explain that to the crew?”
“Said they washed overboard in the storm. Not used to being on a big ship.”
“And the crew believed you?”
“Did they have a choice? Who could prove it? We had enough problems: we lost both engines. Lost ’em about an hour or so before we hit the fishing boat. Not enough power to keep us pulling through those waves. The starboard engine broke a piston rod, and the port side couldn’t hold it by itself and just gave out. Those are very old engines, Manfred. But tell the owners.” Georgio spat into the wastebasket already overflowing and stinking with paper along with garbage from meals taken in the cabin. “They don’t care as long as they get the stuff delivered and pocket their millions.
“Tell you the truth, I was a little scared in this storm myself and the crew were really scared. We were drifting, blown by that damned wind and the tide actually toward Rocky Island. We drifted about fifty miles or so before the tug got to us. Thankfully we’d drifted back out to sea by that time. There would have been a lot of questions asked if we had let anybody know how close in we were when we lost our engines.”
“But your biggest problem was having the cocaine on board.”
“True—damn true. Stevanos and I went down after we called for help from the tug, and took an axe to the three containers, and beat up the bags of cocaine. Took us almost all night. Next morning the storm was dying down and I got the crew down there shovelling the stuff overboard. Nobody complained.”
“And you tossed a couple of hundred million dollars worth of stuff overboard.”
“What did you want me to do? Let the ship sink and lose my life? Let customs find the cocaine? Tell me.”
“Well, Nicolai is one unhappy man right now. I can tell you that. That stuff was worth two hundred and fifty million on the street.”
“Tell Nicolai he can come and ride this cruddy old ship if he wants. I can get another job. If he doesn’t like the way I do things, there are others who will hire an experienced captain who knows how to get the stuff from Venezuela to Canada.”
The Captain, becoming angry, stared silently at his visitor until the other man finally spoke.
“We’re not really upset with you for what you did, Georgio. We’re upset with the whole mess. I think you did a good job, but a quarter of a billion US dollars is a lot of money.”
“So, get us a cargo and we will go back and try again. If you happen to find out how to control the weather, let me know and I’ll stay out of storms.”
When Manfred had gone ashore, the Captain sat at his desk for half an hour, smoking and thinking.
*
About the same time as the conversation between Manfred Koch and Captain Georgio Houlas, a meeting was taking place at RCMP headquarters in downtown Halifax. Inspector Tom McLellan, the officer in charge of the major crime unit for the province of Nova Scotia was meeting with the commander and deputy commander of the drug unit. Staff Sergeant Harry Kellerman and Corporal Jason Brock were listening to the Inspector’s ideas about the murder of Allison’s father, Aubrey Smith and his crew.
“What do you think of the possibility that Smith happened on a transfer of cocaine from the Helen of Troy and had to be silenced?”
“I think it’s quite possible but—but what makes you sure it was cocaine?” asked Kellerman.
“I was talking with Inspector Germaine in Fredericton yesterday afternoon. They are working on a number of transfers of cocaine from somewhere to cross-border smugglers. He figures the coke is coming in from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland by fishing boats, and that they in turn must be getting it from a smuggling vessel at sea.”
“Well,” added Brock, “we know that there have been drugs smuggled into small harbor along the South Shore in the past. Could be happening again.”
“But how are we supposed to patrol the whole damn South Shore with eight officers?” asked the staff sergeant.
“We can’t. That’s the simple answer,” replied McLellan. “But now we can narrow it down to Shelburne County, and that’s a help. It gives us a place to begin searching.”
“I would say that we begin by looking for the unusual,” said Brock. “The majority of fishermen along that part of the coast are pretty routine in their work and they notice anything new or different.”
“But if we start going around asking what’s new and different and you ask the wrong person, then you could alert the smugglers,” protested Kellerman.
“We’ll just have to be more subtle.”
“Do you think that’s where the missing containers from the Helen of Troy went?” asked Brock.
“Not all of them,” replied the Inspector. “Cape Island fishing boats are too small to carry a full-sized container, but a few of them could carry the contents of a container if it were split among them. The longliners based in Newfoundland could. What do you think of the idea that a vessel stops within twenty miles or so of the shore and transferred the contents of one container to a couple of small fishing boats and then proceeds to an another off-shore rendezvous, this time with a couple of Newfoundland longliners.”
The two drug investigators pondered the Inspector’s question. It was Brock who replied first.
“That would make sense, but the second transfer didn’t take place this time because the Helen of Troy lost her engines.”
“And that would answer the Customs Officers’ suspicions about the empty spaces where the containers should have been,” added Kellerman. “It would also fit the Captain’s explanation—which I don’t believe—about having the containers carrying sugar and breaking in the storm.”
“Exactly,” said Inspector McLellan. “Also, the Helen of Troy’s original port of departure was in Venezuela, not far from the Columbia border.” He paused for thought and there was silence in the office for a couple of minutes. “So where do we go from
here?”
“My suggestion would be to discover who owns the Helen of Troy,” chimed in Brock, “and see if we can tie the owner in with any known drug trafficking. That means getting the DEA on side.”
“They are already working on that, and also looking for a trucking company operating in Maine, to see whether they can help the New Brunswick people track down the location of cross border smuggling up there. With the post 9/11 security increase, I find it hard to imagine where the smugglers can cross into Maine, but I guess where there’s a will there’s a way, as the old saying goes.” The Inspector shook his head.
“I think I’ll go down and pay another visit to Toby French, the lighthouse keeper on Rocky Island,” mused Corporal Brock. “He’s a good man. He keeps his eyes open and he may be able to help us. While I’m in the area, I’ll stop at coffee shops along the way and just listen to conversations. At least it’s a place to start.”
The others agreed. “This is not going to be a quick case to solve,” said Staff Sergeant Kellerman. “We’re going to have to take our time and make sure we don’t miss anything, no matter how small.”
With that the meeting broke up.
*
Life slowly returned to normal for Toby and Allison. She mourned her father but did not feel terribly sorry for her mother. She was happy with her return to Rocky Island. People on the mainland often asked her how she could stand the lonely life fifteen miles out in the ocean. She always answered that life on the island was good, that she had all the amenities of shore life except a car and neighbours and she was quite happy without either. She could do her shopping by long distance and have everything delivered to her door. While on the mainland Allison had taken the opportunity to have her hair cut short. Toby was disappointed because he liked her with long blonde braids worn below her shoulders. But he recognized the fact that haircuts and styling were not available on the island. Allison cut his hair about once a month, very expertly, but he was not able to return the favor.
She was also becoming even more successful with her painting. She was able to complete a painting about every three months or so. She had converted the never used second bedroom into a studio; the sea shore paintings were fetching up to ten thousand dollars apiece and her investment portfolio was growing substantially. This latter bit of information she kept to herself and Toby.
Toby was also satisfied with his life as a lighthouse keeper. He was by nature a tinkerer who liked to keep machinery running, to repair whatever needed repairing. In his first floor workshop in the lighthouse he crafted and varnished frames for Allison’s paintings. He was also a man who had always enjoyed living on a schedule. He knew what had to be done and when it had to be done and could adjust his life accordingly, filling the intervening times as he chose. He even enjoyed his long early morning walks, no matter what the weather, checking the shoreline and enjoying the solitude of his thoughts.
He had thought about getting a dog to accompany him, but decided against it for several reasons. The main reason was that Allison was not really a dog person; the other reason was veterinary care that was bound to come up occasionally. The Department of Transport was not going to send a helicopter to Rocky Island to take a dog to the vet and return it.
Much the same reason played a part in the couple’s decision not to have children. Visits to a doctor both before and after the birth would prove to be a problem. They were happy in being together, just the two of them. If eventually they decided on having a family, it would be when they decided to give up living on the island and move back to the mainland, and that would mean finding a different type of job for Toby.
So they settled back into their normal lifestyle. But that lasted for less than a month.
Toby was out on his walk one mid-November morning, after turning off the light and making the lighthouse ready for the next night, checking the shoreline for whatever might have floated up or otherwise found its way to the island. He usually began, as he did this morning, on the south-west corner where the rocky reef was visible for about a quarter of a mile at low tide. Elsewhere, the reefs were closer to shore, and at one spot on the western side of the island, not far from the lighthouse, there was actually a small cove where a fishing boat, navigated carefully, could get right in to the shore at high tide.
This particular morning at about the same spot on the rocky eastern shore where he had found the bow remains of the Smitty II, he made a startling discovery. He wasn’t sure at first what he was actually seeing, but he soon realized what it was. He had discovered a body, or at least the remains of a human body, partly clothed, washing back and forth in the waves. The body was banging against the rocks, not hard, but hard enough that he could see that there would be further damage to it if he didn’t get it out of there.
He waded carefully out into the water, carrying a long piece of driftwood he had found on the shore, thankful for his hip length rubber boots. After some few minutes, he was able to reach the floating body with the driftwood stick and after pulling it closer, he could get hold of the shoulders and manoeuvre it onto the shore. The body had been in the water for some time and was not easily recognisable. After examining what remained of the face, Toby was fairly sure that the remains were those of Harvard Meadowcroft. Harvard was a man about Toby’s own age; they had gone to school together as boys. He had known Harvard for more than twenty years and knew that he had frequently worked for Allison’s father as a crewman on The Smitty II.
Then Toby got another shock. When he turned the body over to pull it further up on the shore, he could clearly see a bullet hole in the back of the head, enlarged after a month or more in the water. He sat down on a small boulder for a few moments until he got himself under control. Then, leaving Harvard’s body where it was, he hurried back to the house. Allison was in the shower so he went on into the office and called on the satellite link to report to the Transport Department Duty Officer. He was told to expect an RCMP investigator and a DOT investigator in a couple of hours or less.
Allison was just emerging from the shower when he finished his call. When he told her what had happened, he was somewhat surprised at how calmly she took the news.
“I don’t know what’s happened, Toby, but this is really not only a tragedy, but something that needs to be thoroughly investigated. My father and his crew were murdered. That’s almost unbelievable in this part of the country.”
She sat down in the living room and stared off into space. He waited for a few minutes to see whether she was okay, decided that she was, and went out again. He went to the storage shed and got a tarpaulin off the Zodiac, bundled it up and walked back to the place where he had left the fisherman’s body and covered it up. Then he returned to the house. Allison was still sitting where he had left her.
“Come on, Allie. There’s nothing we can do right now. If you don’t want breakfast, at least let me get you some coffee.”
She stirred. “That would be nice. No breakfast. I’m just so surprised and distressed and—and—I just don’t know how to express the way I feel. I can’t believe it. Can you? Really?”
“I believe it because I’ve seen this part of it and because of what the police have told me. But the why of it is beyond me. It’s too much. I certainly intend to be very careful, and I intend to get out the shotgun and load it.”
“You mean you think somebody is around Rocky Island killing people?”
“I don’t know what to think, honey. But I’m going to be very careful about where I go and I want you to be just as careful. This is big time stuff and we’re right in the middle of it. I sure don’t like it.”
Toby did break out the twelve gauge and oil it. He slipped a cartridge into the chamber, snapped on the safety, shoved three more cartridges into the breech and took the gun with him as he went about his daily chores about the lighthouse, checking on the windmill and diesel. The beat of a helicopter’s blades caused him to look toward the west about eleven o’clock. When the machine had landed on the pad n
ear the lighthouse, he walked over and met the two policemen and a man the officer introduced as Dr. Atchison, the coroner. The RCMP corporal, Jason Brock, he had met the last time he had come, that time to look at the remains of The Smitty II. This time, he had brought a new officer with him, a forensic officer, Corporal Jamieson. The helicopter crew, the familiar Transport Department pilots, Luke Hepburn and the new co-pilot, Johnny Washington, along with the loadmaster, Ed Harrison, and the coroner from Yarmouth, also got out of the machine. Toby welcomed the aircrew with a rueful, “You guys getting tired of flying out here so often?”
“Naw,” replied Luke. “We kinda like the scenery and the coffee and Ed has some stuff he brought for Allison. Where’s she want it?”
“Don’t know. What is it?”
“Some boxes of food and other household goods, I guess.” Ed replied.
“I’ll get her. She’s pretty upset about what happened this morning.” He turned to the officers and the coroner. “I guess you’ll be wanting to see Harvard’s body.”
Allison was just coming out the door and she and Ed remained behind to look after the cargo while the others followed Toby along the path to the east side of the island to the spot where he had left the body of the murdered fisherman. The two pilots carried a stretcher between them.
There wasn’t much to be done. The forensic officer took photos of the body and the rocks where it had been washing in the water when Toby found him. Toby gave Brock a taped statement which the officer said he would have transcribed and sent out for signature. The coroner did his thing of officially pronouncing Harvard Meadowcroft dead, asked Toby a few questions about the way he found the body and how he had removed it from the water. They loaded the remains into a body bag and onto the stretcher, then quietly paraded back to the helicopter. Toby asked them if they wanted to stay for lunch at the house, but they unanimously decided that they would rather return to Yarmouth.
