The Angel of Whitehall

by Lewis Hastings

  She studied the navigational chart in the wheelhouse, with its restored timber panelling and quaint furnishings. It was what afficionados called a Gentleman’s Yacht. Mick Baker had bought her as an ongoing restoration project – actually, she was a wreck and yet each summer he and Jan had lived on board, chipping away the old, leaving the history in its rightful place and bringing her once more back to life.

  Finally, adding the small brass plaque that said simply Dunkirk 1940 was for him the moment of triumph. And now he lay pinned to the deck watching the world, and his life go by as he looked at the plaque and prayed for their own rescue.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  “Down here, this way.”

  Roberts had checked his phone. One text and a few missed calls. The text was from Carrie. Made sense.

  He was now pointing out where he felt they should head as McGee navigated skilfully around traffic, holding back, accelerating, reading the road, just as she’d been taught, years earlier. The driving course had been one of her favourite moments in her training, but you learned the real roadcraft the first time you ever drove at speed with the cocktail of lights and sirens waking the dead.

  “Why this way, boss?”

  “No idea B., call it instinct. In fact, call it Carrie’s instinct. Our boys didn’t find the Bentley so it has gone somewhere else, it hasn’t pinged the ANPR camera so it must be somewhere it needs to be, and looking at the map on my phone there’s bugger all out here of interest unless you are into industrial stuff. But down this way there’s a marina…”

  “You think they are trying to escape on a boat?” Reddington was intrigued.

  “What would you do? Airports are potentially sealed; a light aircraft is a possibility but we could track that and I can’t see any runways.”

  “We can track boats too.”

  She had a point. But only if it had a beacon.

  “Fair call. Look bear with me? Just a hunch. I have them occasionally.” To be fair he was acting on the hunch of one of his best analysts, one who had seen him survive some tough times and who had lived through far worse than anyone on his team. He was thinking back to a year before when all hell had broken loose and his team had been the subject of a cruel vendetta. His mind drifted until McGee locked up the brakes, gripped the wheel, missed the elderly pedestrian by the depth of a cigarette paper. A hair’s breadth was luxurious in comparison.

  “Christ, that was close Bridie.”

  “Nowhere near guv. Keep going?”

  “Yep, we’ve brought the place to life now. Kill the sirens though.”

  He was scrolling through his phone looking for answers when he stopped. “Five One Two,” he said aloud.

  “Something on your mind?” Briton asked, keen to engage in any conversations with a man she genuinely found attractive but knew that ship had already sailed.

  “Ah, probably not. Seems too obvious. Tom had a safety deposit box…”

  “He did. Five One Two.”

  “Of course, I forget you’ve already burgled my mind and rifled through my underwear drawer already haven’t you?”

  “I said I was sorry. Same team now. Trust me?”

  “No. Not at all. But what choice do I have?”

  “How about I add Zero, Zero and Three?”

  “Who’s that then James Bond’s son?”

  “Hilarious. No, it’s three numbers we managed to gather from our own work. We found a padlock with zero zero three on it. Then another with a letter. Then we hacked into what your team had done. Add them together, lay them over a map, and as you would say Robert, is your mother’s brother.”

  “Bob’s your uncle indeed.” He smiled. It was rare, but there on the page of the map book he’d hauled out of the back of the passenger seat pocket was an approximate answer.

  “How did you get this?”

  “Let’s just say I slept around a little and leave it at that.”

  “So you are a map whore?”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  “Really? I can’t think that anyone has ever been called that before, anywhere!” He laughed. Suddenly being three-fifths of the way towards an answer seemed to make him relax.

  “But you still need us to guide you, don’t you?” He looked into Briton’s eyes.

  “Of course. Look what we managed to gather together put us slap bang in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We’ve been running searches of likely places, but none of it made an ounce of sense. We reversed the numbers that put us even further away, then one day we ran the first couple of sets and behold!”

  “Behold you ended up railroading my operation and trying to seek the glory.”

  “Jason, there’s no glory in trampling over your team trust me. What I am looking for is grisly at best with a few patches of sunlight. That is what my grandfather Ted described it as. I know now that he was killed. There was no way he fell to his death.”

  “That or he knew he had no choice.”

  “Possibly. Probably. Either way, we ended up with a map of Kent and a possible search grid at the same time as your team did. I’m missing a few numbers and was hoping we could swap – you know, for a share of the spoils?”

  “Spoils? You actually believe all this bollocks about diamonds?”

  “No, not at all. I meant solving the issue of modern-day slavery. But at least I know where your moral compass lays.”

  “Right now, due east and in a hurry. Anyone drive a boat?” he asked, hopefully.

  “I think you steer a boat, don’t you?” asked Reddington with a sly grin.

  “Well, can you?”

  “Of course. I come from a very posh family; we had a boat. Papa let me take the wheel often.” Her voice was deliberately affected.

  “Then when we get to the marina, we will commandeer a vessel!” He replied, equally pretentious.

  “Do we know what we are going to do when we get out on the water? Have we got life jackets? Is the tide in? Do we go left or right?”

  “Bridie. Stop asking such sensible bloody questions. There, stop there, next to that bloke, he looks like he could drive or steer or pilot or whatever it is you do with a fucking boat.”

  They came to an abrupt halt and exited.

  “DS McGee and DCI Roberts Met Police we need to get a boat now!”

  The old sailor rubbed his ginger and grey beard, licked his index finger and held it up into the breeze.

  “They said there was a storm coming, but I didn’t quite expect it to arrive the manner in which it has.” He pondered his own words, painfully slowly, which made Roberts start to pace like an expectant father.

  “Now, what sort of boat are you looking for? We’ve small ones, big ones…”

  “Some as big as your hat?” asked Roberts flippantly.

  “Pardon?” asked the sailor.

  “It doesn’t matter, mate. Seriously, a dinghy. No, a boat big enough and fast enough.”

  “For?”

  “For to go out on the river…” he said each word very slowly.

  “No need to be sarcastic now. What do you want to go out on the river for?” he asked, equally sarcastically.

  “To…” Roberts paused. It was a great question.

  “To…?”

  “Be out there when something important happens,” offered Susan Reddington.

  “Hello, I’m Captain Susan Reddington, British Army. How do you do?”

  “Very well ma’am. I’m Ralph Kent, ex-warrant officer and now security manager of Hoo Marina. Kent by name, Kent by nature.”

  “Bit of a mad Kent, if you ask me,” whispered Roberts to his DS.

  “I heard that, and it’s neither funny nor original,” the orange-grey-haired, grey-eyed seventy-year-old replied.

  “Now, it strikes me you four are not here for a pleasure cruise, so let’s take my boat and go and have an adventure on the high seas. I hope you are good sailors because it’s going to get rough out there!”

  “God. I leave one mode of transport that made m
e puke, for another that could be worse.” Roberts groaned, bile rising into his throat.

  “Welcome aboard the Marsh Harrier. She’s old, but she has a surprise under her skirt.”

  “Like a Thai masseuse?”

  “Worse, DCI Roberts, much worse!”

  The boat started with a roar and soon settled to an impressive burble. To the uninitiated it sounded powerful.

  “It’s strange, but we’ll be only the second boat to leave the marina today. Weather isn’t looking that cheerful you see. No one in their right mind would normally go out in this.”

  Reddington looked out into the vast river and struggled to see anything other than dark brown water and darker grey clouds.

  “So what was the other boat?”

  “That would be the Medway Girl. Beautiful old restored Dunkirk boat. The owner’s pride and joy.”

  “And would they normally take her out on a day like this?”

  “Never. Is that relevant?” Kent was learning quickly.

  “Very.” She looked at Roberts, who nodded.

  “And what about the occupants of that rather flash Bentley parked between those two buildings over yonder? Would you be interested to know that they boarded the Medway Girl?”

  “Even more so.” She smiled at Roberts. He was right.

  “Alright. Now, which way?” The soldier-turned-sailor asked with a new lease of life. He’d not seen this much action since his last tour of Northern Ireland.

  “Can you head out into the midstream and plot a course towards the channel?” asked Roberts almost convincingly.

  “Your wish is my command. Hang on.” He pushed the throttle, and the bow lifted and the old girl seemed to dig herself into the water before setting off at a rate far faster than Roberts expected.

  He hung on to the side rail and rang Cade.

  “Hey mate, where are you?”

  “Cruising along the Kent coast looking for inspiration. You’d be glad you left us, it’s like being in a washing machine on spin up here. You?”

  “I’ve swapped air for sea, my friend. And we are flying too. Long story but we are heading east on the Medway towards the ocean.”

  “Any reason?”

  “A vessel called the Medway Girl left Hoo Marina earlier. We are with the marina manager, ex-soldier, reckons it was unusual. Even more so that two women from a blue Bentley are on board. So we are heading out there too. Weather is shite. Can you stay airborne?”

  “One hundred percent. Tom is having a ball. He survived the Arctic Convoys don’t forget; this is child’s play. Describe the Medway Girl, we’ll scoot down the channel and take a look. Nothing has prompted Tom to make any startling exclamations yet.”

  Roberts passed an accurate description of the target boat and rang off.

  “There’s bloody waves out here Bridie. I wish I’d stayed on shore.”

  “You’ll be fine, boss. You need to be here for this. It’s just a matter of time. Should we be getting other units out here too?”

  Reddington shook her head.

  “Fair question. The answer is no Bridie. This is close hold, and it stays that way. I was told your unit thrives on work that is just off the radar. For now, it must stay this way.” She scanned with a set of binoculars, first down the river towards the famous docks at Chatham, then back upstream towards the North Sea.

  “There!” She spotted a white motor launch a fair distance away, but it had to be their target. No one else in their right mind would have been in the river in these conditions.

  “Let me see,” said Kent, taking the binos in one hand whilst the other steered them safely out into the main channel of the Medway.

  “That’s her alright, she’s moving too. Close to the shore though, risky in this weather, I’d want to be midstream where it’s deeper. But Mick knows what he’s doing. Better sailor than me, that’s for sure. You want us to keep following?”

  “Yes. Keep going please Ralph until I ask you to hang back a bit. Would they know we are following?”

  “Unlikely, they are heading into the same weather we are so their minds will be somewhat forward focused. Look, I’m risking a few things here, least of all my boat. Can I ask what this is about?”

  Roberts looked at Red who took a moment then nodded – the sort of nod that said, ‘yes, you can explain, but if you explain too much, it’s on your head.’

  “In a nutshell, Ralph, we’ve been pursuing a group of people who are involved in people smuggling – and our intel suggests that this used to happen in a few places up and down the English coastline, this area features in a lot of our information. The trouble is…” Roberts held the railing firm as the boat crashed into a larger wave. “Trouble is, it’s all a little vague. I mean, where would you hide people along this coast, it’s just about the most desolate place I’ve ever been.”

  “Unfair, have you been to Northumbria in the winter?” asked Kent, smiling and skilfully undoing a flask with one hand whilst the other gripped onto the wheel and guided them safely through the more problematic areas.

  “You see, Jason, there are plenty of places you could hide people along here. There’s an old legendary tale from years ago about an old ship that ran aground out here and caught fire. They say that only one man was found on board. She’d set sail from West Africa weeks before. The chances are strong that she contained more than her cargo of Bauxite.”

  “People?”

  “Almost certainly. Do you know why I think that?”

  “No, but I’d like to.”

  “That hulk is just over there, tied up ever since. Big old piece of maritime real estate that will never sail again, in a ship’s graveyard amid the salt marshes, among the river and her many channels and tributaries, where they say the ghosts of sailors and Napoleonic soldiers roam, once held as prisoners in prison ships all along this beautiful coast.”

  “It’s desolate, Ralph, I’ll give you that. Now I look there are old boats everywhere, look at them! And what was the big one you mentioned? Is that it?”

  “What’s left of her. Sad tale that one. A few locals, mostly those in old people’s homes, reckon they heard the screams of the dying out in the marshes.”

  “Bloody hell, Ralph, you make it sound like the opening chapter from Great Expectations – Dickens would be so proud of you.”

  “He would. You see, he set it just over there.” He pointed to an area on the shore that to city dweller Roberts looked like the most desolate place he’d ever seen.

  “There’s a lot of truth in old Dickens’ work, you just have to know where to find it. Folklore tells of the bones of a thousand men out on Deadman’s Island. The truth is most of them are too modern to be from the Napoleonic era, well according to a lady who’s been out there a fair bit recently – doing historical research, she said, I’d spot a government worker anywhere me. She was there for another reason, I’ll put what money I have on it.”

  Roberts ignored the last sentence.

  “This big ship, what was she called?”

  Kent grunted “That old girl was called many things, but her last name was the Albatross. Lovely old steam ship she was too. Plied the West African route month after month in all weathers, she was as strong a ship as they ever made Jason. There was no way she failed the skipper. She was deliberately run aground and torched. She had something to hide that night. Look at her now. Such a shame.”

  “And your theory is that she was a prison ship, of sorts?”

  “Spot on. There’s a few that call into the Isle of Grain, just up the coast from here. She’s a container and fuel port. Bleak as they come. Ideal place to drop refugees off – or rather those poor buggers who gathered together what money they could for a better life. The most valuable commodity there is.”

  “Now tell me, if you know this and others do too, why has no one ever said anything?”

  “The last old girl that tried met an untimely end. Her son tried to find out the truth about her death and…”

  “He’s g
one too?”

  “Bingo, brother. You’ve got it. Dead as the poor buggers on that island. Boys and men, prisoners a few hundred years ago, locked up on hulks, out in the marshes, most died from horrid disease, then those that weren’t buried in coffins were buried in the mud. They’re still surfacing now. Mother Nature has a way of giving up her dead. But you see their bones are older, browner and the jaws and teeth are different.”

  “You’ve studied this, haven’t you?” asked McGee who had a fascination for history.

  “Bugger all else to do around here, love. And I know this river all too well. Now and then she shares her secrets. And one is a more modern story of human cruelty. Hundreds of those skeletons over there are newer and the skulls have rectangular eye sockets, we have round ones, henceforth they are African. I tell no one anymore. I value what’s left of my life.”

  “But how do you know some of this, Ralph?” asked Roberts. “Google?”

  “Hardly, why use the internet when there’s an expert that charters my boat now and then to go and do her studies.”

  Roberts didn’t miss it a second time – an osprey on a salmon.

  “This woman. Describe her to me.”

  The description was so accurate Roberts could have reached out and touched her.

  “Jacqui Clarke.”

  “Is that her name? Nice girl. Knows her stuff alright.”

  “She’s probably the most knowledgeable person on tribal West Africa I’ve ever met. Trouble is, she’s in a little too deep with the wrong people and she was so far off of our radar we missed her.” He sighed.

  “Then I’ll be sure not to let her on board in the future.”

  “I suspect there won’t be a future for Miss Clarke if she’s on board that boat in front of us which seems to be slowing. What is that place to the left?”

  “That’s Fort Hoo. Old Napoleonic sea fort, to the right there in the squall is Fort Darnett. They were built to defend the port of Chatham from invasion. Loads of cannons in their day and stationed with troops constantly during that period. No one goes there now. Not since the plague was mentioned.”

  “The plague?”