Authors: Hammond Innes
Saltley’s warning proved only too accurate. The following day, when I returned from buying some clothes after opening an account at the local bank and paying in the cheque he had given me, Mrs Steinway informed me the police had been asking for me. ‘Haven’t done anything wrong, have you, luv?’ She was a real East-ender, and though she said it jokingly, her eyes watched me suspiciously. ‘Cos if you have, you don’t stay here, you understand?’
They had asked when I would be back, so that I was not surprised to have a visit from a plain clothes officer. I think he was Special Branch. He was quite young, one of those shut-faced men who seem to rise quickly in certain branches of the Establishment. He wasn’t interested in what I could tell him about the hidden tanker or about Choffel, it was the political implications that concerned him, his questions based on the assumption that the whole story was a concoction of lies invented to cause trouble. He asked me what my political affiliations were, whether I was a communist. He had checked with the Passport Office that I was the holder of a British passport, but was I a British resident? Was there anybody who knew me well enough to vouch for me? He was a little more relaxed after I had told him I owned a cottage on the cliffs near Land’s End and that my wife had died in the
Petros Jupiter
explosion. He remembered that and he treated me more like a human being. But he was still suspicious, taking notes of names and addresses and finally leaving with the words, ‘We’ll check it all out and I’ve no doubt we’ll want to have another talk with you when we’ve completed
our enquiries. Meanwhile, you will please notify the police if you change your address or plan to leave the country, and that includes shipping as an officer on board a UK ship. Is that understood?’ And he gave me the address of the local police station and the number to ring. ‘Just so we know where to find you.’
It was dark by the time he left, a cold, frosty night. I put on the anorak I had bought that morning and walked as far as the river. I was feeling isolated and very alone, quite separated from all the people hurrying by. Lights on the far bank were reflected on a flood tide and the sky overhead was clear and full of stars. I tried to tell myself that an individual is always alone, that the companionship of others is only an illusion, making loneliness more bearable. But it’s difficult to convince yourself of that when loneliness really bites. And what about my relationship with Karen? I leaned on the frosted stonework of an old wharf, staring at the dark flowing water and wishing to God there was somebody I could talk to, somebody who knew what it was like to be alone, totally alone.
I was very depressed that evening, staring at the river, shivering with cold and watching the tide make. And then, when I went back to pick up the typescript so that I would have something to read over a meal, Mrs Steinway came out of her back room with the evening paper in her hand. ‘I just been reading about you. It is you, isn’t it?’ she asked, pointing to a paragraph headed:
Missing Tanker Man Returned to UK
. It was the Reuters story datelined Karachi. ‘No wonder you’ve got the Law keeping tabs on you. Is it true about the tanker?’
I laughed and told her I seemed to be about the only one who thought so.
‘They don’t believe you, eh?’ The bold eyes were watching me avidly. ‘Well, can’t say I blame them. It’s a funny sort of story.’ She smiled, the eyes twinkling, the heavy jowls wobbling with delight as she said, ‘Never mind, luv. Maybe there’s one as will. There’s a young woman asked to see you.’
‘Me?’ I stared at her thinking she was having a bit of fun. ‘Who? When?’
‘Didn’t give her name. I didn’t ask her, see. You’d been gone about ten minutes and she said it was urgent, so I told her she could wait in your room. ’Course she may be a newspaper girl. But she didn’t look it. I’ve had them before, see, when there was that Eddie Stock here and they mistook him for the fellow that did the Barking shotgun hold-up …’
But by then I had turned and was hurrying down the basement stairs. It had to be her. There was nobody else, no girl at any rate, that could have found out where I was. Unless Saltley had sent his secretary with a message. I don’t know whether the eagerness I felt stemmed from my desperate need of company or from a sexual urge I could hardly control as I jumped down the last few stairs and flung open the door of my room.
She looked up at my entrance, the jut of her jaw just as determined, but the squarish, almost plain face lit by a smile. There were other parts of her that jutted, for she was wearing slacks and a very close-fitting jersey-knit sweater. A fleece-lined suede coat lay across the bed and she had the typescript of my book in her hands. She got up and stood facing me a little awkwardly. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’ She held up the dog-eared typescript. ‘I couldn’t resist.’ She was unsure of herself. ‘Salt was very stuffy about it at first – the address, I mean. But I got it out of him in the end. Such an incredible, marvellous story. I just had to see you.’ She had a sort of glow, her eyes alight with excitement.
‘You believe it then?’
‘Of course.’ She said it without the slightest hesitation. ‘Salty said nobody could possibly have invented it. But then, of course,’ she added, ‘we want to believe it, anyway – Daddy, Mother, me, Virgins Unlimited … I told you about the syndicate, didn’t I? – the rude name they call it. The other syndicates, too.’ She was nervous, talking very fast. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’ She put the typescript carefully down beside her coat. ‘I read a couple of chapters, that’s all, but I’ve learned so much – about you and what you want out of life. I’d like to take it with me. It’s so moving.’
‘You like it?’ I didn’t know what else to say, standing there, gazing at her and remembering that letter I’d received at Ras al Khaimah.
‘Oh, yes. What I’ve read so far. If I could borrow it … there’s a publisher, a friend of ours, lives at Thorpe-le-Soken …’ Her voice trailed away. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being bossy. Daddy says I’m always trying to run other people’s lives for them. It’s not true, of course, but I’m afraid I sometimes give that impression. Do sit down please.’ She looked quickly round the room and I could almost see her nose wrinkling at the bare bleakness of it. ‘Did you get a letter from me?’ She said it in an offhand way, busying herself with picking up her coat and hanging it on the hook of the door. ‘Perhaps the bed will be more comfortable. That chair’s an arse-breaker, I can tell you.’ She plumped herself down on the far side of the bed. ‘Well, did you?’ She was watching me intently, her eyes bright. ‘Yes, I see you did. But you never replied.’
I hesitated, my blood beginning to throb at the invitation I thought I could see in her eyes. ‘Yes, the dhow brought it to me.’ I sat down on the bed beside her and touched her hand. ‘And I did reply to it. But if you believe my account of what happened you’ll realize the reply is still on board that tanker.’
Her fingers moved against mine. ‘I only know what Salty told me. Daddy and I were at his office late this afternoon. He gave us an outline, but very brief. Daddy was there to decide what action should be taken as a result of your report.’ She gripped my hand. ‘When I insisted Salty give me your address, and Daddy knew I intended seeing you, he said to give you his warmest thanks for risking your neck and achieving – well, achieving the impossible. Those were his words. And Salty thought the same, though of course he didn’t say so. What he said was that he’d only given you what had been agreed, but that if your information resulted in any of the GODCO claims being set aside, then there would be a proper recompense.’
‘I had my own motives,’ I muttered.
‘Yes, I know that. But it’s just incredible what you did, and all in little more than a week.’
‘Luck,’ I said. ‘I was following Choffel.’
She nodded. ‘Tell me what you said, would you please.’
‘To Saltley?’ I half shook my head, remembering that long
cross-examination and not wanting to go over it all again. But then I thought it might help for her to know, so I started to tell her about Baldwick coming to see me at Balkaer. But that wasn’t what she wanted. It was the letter. ‘What did you say – in that letter I never received. Please tell me what you said.’
I shook my head. It was one thing to write it in a letter, another to say the same words to her face. I took my hand away and got up. ‘I don’t really remember,’ I muttered. ‘I was touched. Deeply touched. I said that. Also, that I was lonely – a little afraid, too – and your letter was a great comfort … to know that somebody, somewhere, is concerned about whether you live or die, that makes a great difference.’
She reached out and touched my hand. ‘Thank you. I didn’t know how you’d feel. It was so—’ She hesitated, blushing slightly and half smiling to herself. ‘After I posted it – I felt a bit of a fool, getting carried away like that. But I couldn’t help it. That was the way I felt.’
‘It was nice of you,’ I said. ‘It meant a great deal to me at that moment.’ And I bent down and kissed her then – on the forehead, a very chaste kiss.
‘Go on,’ she said, and giggled because she hadn’t intended it as an invitation. ‘You started telling me about the man who came to your cottage. I interrupted, but please … I want to know everything that happened after I left you that day at Lloyd’s.’ She patted the coverlet beside her. ‘You went off the following day by air for Nantes …’
I took it up from there, and now she listened intently, almost hanging on my words, so that halfway through, when I was telling her about my eerie night walk the length of the tanker’s deck, I suddenly couldn’t help myself – I said, ‘I warn you, if you stay and listen to the whole thing I may find it very difficult to let you go.’
‘I could always scream the house down.’ She was suddenly laughing and her eyes looked quite beautiful. But then she said quickly, ‘Go on, do – how did you and Choffel land up alone on that dhow together?’
But at that moment footsteps sounded on the stairs. There
was a knock at the door. ‘Can I come in?’ It was Saltley. He checked in the doorway, smiling at the two of us sitting on the bed, his quick gaze taking in the details of the room. ‘So this is where you’ve holed up.’
‘Why have you come?’ was on my feet now, resenting the intrusion.
He unbuttoned his overcoat and seated himself on the chair. ‘Have the police been to see you?’ And when I told him about the Special Branch visit, he said, ‘That was inevitable, and I warned you.’ He was staring at me, the smile gone now and his eyes cold. ‘Are you sure you didn’t shoot Choffel?’
‘Why do you ask? I told you how it was.’
And Pamela, suddenly very tense, asked, ‘What’s happened?’
He turned to her and said, ‘It was just after you left. A girl came to see me, a dark-haired, determined, very emotional sort of person. A secretary at some clinic in France, she said, and in her early twenties. She had flown in from Nantes this morning and had been given my name and the address of the office by the Lloyd’s agent.’
I sat down on the bed again, conscious of his eyes on my face. ‘Choffel’s daughter.’
He nodded, and my heart sank, remembering her words as I had left for the airport. ‘She claims you killed him. Says she’ll go to the police and accuse you of murder. Did you kill him?’
‘No. I told you—’
He waved aside my protest. ‘But you intended to kill him, didn’t you? That’s why you went to Colchester to check what other names he used, why you went to Nantes, why you got the Lloyd’s agent to take you to see his daughter. You were tracking him down with the intention of killing him. Isn’t that true?’
I didn’t say anything. There was no point in denying it.
‘So the girl’s right.’
‘But I didn’t kill him.’
He shrugged. ‘What does that matter? He’s dead. You had the opportunity and the intention.’ He leaned forward and gripped my arm. ‘Just so that you see it from her point of
view. I’d like you to get yourself lost for a time. Sooner or later the man’s body will turn up. They’ll find a bullet in his guts and you’ll be arrested.’ And he added, ‘I don’t want you charged with murder before those tankers materialize.’
‘And when they do?’ I asked.
‘We’ll see. If they do, then part of your story will be corroborated and they’ll probably believe the rest of it, too. At least, it’s what I would expect.’ He asked me to continue then with the account I had been giving Pamela. ‘There’s one or two things towards the end I’d like to hear again.’ His reason was fairly obvious; if I was lying, then it was almost inevitable I’d slip up somewhere, small variations creeping in with each telling.
The first thing he picked me up on was Choffel’s reference to the
Lavandou
and what had followed. ‘His mother was ill. That’s what you said in my office. She was dying, and it was to get her the necessary treatment that he agreed to scuttle the ship. Did he tell you he was only a youngster at the time, twenty-two or twenty-three?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Twenty-two he told me.’
‘That’s what his daughter said. Twenty-two and the only ship he ever sank. Did he say that to you?’
‘No, not in those words.’
‘But he implied it?’
I nodded, the scene coming back to me, the sound of the sea and the stinking lazarette, and the dhow wallowing. ‘Only once, he said, or something like that. He was talking about the
Lavandou
, how the operation had gone wrong and Lloyd’s had twigged it. I remember that because it was an odd way of putting it.’
‘You didn’t tell me that. Why not?’
‘Well, it’s what you’d expect him to say, isn’t it?’
‘You said that before, when you were trying to shake the destination out of him.’
‘Not the destination,’ I corrected him. ‘I’d been asking him that, yes. But when I was shaking him, and shouting Where at him, it was where the two tankers were going to meet I was asking him.’
‘And he didn’t know.’
‘I’m not sure he even understood. His mind was wandering, not quite delirious, but bloody near it. I think he was probably referring back to one of the ships he’d wrecked. It might even have been the
Petros Jupiter
. There was a Dutch salvage outfit trying to get her off the Kettle’s Bottom before he’d even come ashore.’