The Saint and the People Importers (18 page)

Haroon kept himself at least ten feet away, backing off as Kalki approached.

Kalki did not say anything but “Where?”

Haroon pointed to the open door. The passers-by hurried around him in the sunshine, seeing nothing strange. Only when Kalki had stalked into the restaurant did Haroon venture nearer. Still standing well back from the threshold he peered inside and ascertained that Kalki had gone on towards the rear of the premises. Then he edged into the doorway, leaving most of his mass outside in the sun while he extended his neck in order to hear what was happening.

The strange thing was that he heard nothing. He had expected screams and roars. He had to sidle halfway across the dining room before he detected the sounds of voices. Before he could make out the words the voices abruptly stopped. The silence was then stranger than ever. Straining his senses, Haroon heard a sound like a gasp of air escaping briefly from a balloon, and then a noise like the crushing of an eggshell.

Abdul Haroon turned and fled, his coattails flapping, and did not stop running until he was in a taxi bound for Victoria Station and the next train from London to anywhere else.

6
HOW KALKI TOOK A DIVE,
AND SIMON TEMPLAR MADE
HIS PROFIT

Highway A13 out of London follows the northside curves of the widening Thames where the river opens its mouth to the North Sea. The Dartford Tunnel, on the eastern rim of the city, is the last man-made spanning of the estuary. From there on the water is free of all traffic except boats, fish, and seagulls, though its banks are burdened with the giant chimneys of power stations and the cranes of dockyards-skeletal forests like burnt-out woodlands with the smokey haze of their extinction still hanging over them.

Even though the river soon becomes so broad that it would be better called a gulf, and half an hour farther east expands so far as to become indistinguishable from the sea, the smokestacks of the power stations remained a constant landmark down to the Saint’s right as he drove along the highway. At first they dominated the landscape entirely. They were supplanted by their monstrous stepsons, great towers of steel which carried the high tension powerlines across the countryside on their shoulders.

But even those ventured only as occasional stragglers very far from the complex that spawned them. Huge lorries rolled on across Essex, but the countryside gradually turned less commercial. Oil storage tanks looked lost in open fields amongst signs offering NEW LAID EGGS and HOME GROWN POTATOES. There was a Donkey Derby at One Tree Hill, and a more hopeful signal in the form of a beat-up old boat in somebody’s front garden.

“How far do we have to go before we take to the water?” Tammy asked the Saint.

She sounded admirably calm, but he noticed that her fingers kept fiddling with the leather strap of the binoculars he had brought from his house in Upper Berkeley Mews before they left London.

“No farther than we have to,” he said. “But we’ve all day, and we might as well enjoy it. How are we looking on the chart?”

“There’s a picture of a sailboat at South Benfleet,” she told him, tracing their route on a map of southeast England. It’s not far off this road.”

“That’s probably where Fowler’s boat stops over on these runs,” Simon remarked. “But I don’t think he’ll be there himself as early as this. Keep your fingers crossed, though.”

“Turn right at Great Tarpots,” said Tammy.

They negotiated a roundabout south of Basildon and drove through an area heavily built up with houses. But down on the right they could see the marshy banks of the last official few miles of the Thames. The water even then no longer looked like a river: it was a broad expanse glaring in the light of the low sun.

The Saint slowed down. Great Tarpots might once have been conspicuous enough to merit its grandiose name, but now it appeared to have been lost in the general spread of dwellings and shops between Basildon and Thundersley. The turn to South Benfleet was marked not only by an appropriate roadsign, but also by the more ominous presence on the corner of ALDEN & SONS, FUNERALS AND MEMORIALS.

“That’s promising,” Tammy observed.

“Maybe we should make advance reservations for Fowler and Kalki,” was the Saint’s more optimistic reply. “But on second thoughts it’d be cheaper to give the fish a treat.”

It was the time of the mid-morning break now, and the residential streets were full of schoolgirls in uniform skirts and jackets and boy-style neckties. But within a mile or so the unwelcome dampness of the river’s tidal banks kept homes at a distance. The fenced premises of the Benfleet Yacht Club were an encouraging sight, even though its vessels were for members only.

Simon slowed down. Just ahead was a swing bridge, and the creek it crossed was lined with half-floating sail- and motor-boats. The tide was fairly low. Simon could only hope that it was coming in rather than going out. Otherwise the creek looked barely navigable.

He managed to find a place to park his car just off the road, and he and Tammy walked to the nearest of several establishments along the creek which dealt in boats. It was a barren place, with grassy mud flats crisscrossed with shallow reeking ditches where shellfish must have spent at least half their lives dying at low tide. The wooden building looked no friendlier, and neither did the boaty type who stepped out with a one-eyed mongrel dog at his side to meet the Saint and his companion.

“I’d like to hire a sailboat,” Simon told him after a cautious exchange of greetings.

The Saint stood with his hands in his pockets while the other man mulled over the question.

“It’s not easy to hire a boat around here.”

“There seem to be plenty of them,” Simon rejoined.

As the man answered, it seemed that he was more reserved than unfriendly.

“You’d be better off around at Thorpe Bay or someplace like that,” he said. “We’ve had bad luck hiring boats to people in these tidal waters. The creek’ll be two foot deep in one spot and twenty foot deep in another, and when the tide goes out they’ll run aground and walk off and leave the boat, and then the tide comes in and the boat turns up floating on the Canvey front and we’ve got to go and fetch it.”

At least he had not said no.

“You don’t have to worry,” Simon said. “I won’t run aground and I won’t abandon your boat.”

“How long do you want it for?”

“A few hours-most of the day, probably.”

The boatman looked out across the mud and water. The sky was clear and bright, with only a few small clouds above the distant smokestacks and their windblown plumes of white steam.

“Should be a nice day.” He sampled the crustacean-scented atmosphere with his nose. “But it’s not very warm. Not much of a time for being out on the water.”

“We’re hardy types,” the Saint assured him. “We belong to the Polar Bear Club. We take a dip in the sea every Christmas Day.”

The man facing him huddled down inside several layers of sweaters and a duffle coat.

“You’re welcome to it,” he said. “But you’d be better off around at Thorpe Bay or someplace.”

“How much does it cost to hire a boat when you do hire one?” Simon interrupted.

The man paused to ponder how much he might get.

“Two pounds an hour for a boat big enough to be even halfway safe out there this time of year.” He shook his head. “But I just don’t want to take a chance. I’m sorry.”

Simon had already spotted a likely looking if weather-beaten craft in the water near the wooden building.

“How much would that cost?” he asked.

“I told you-“

“I mean how much would it cost if I just took it out and sank it-which I don’t intend to do, incidentally.”

“It’s not for sale, but if it was I reckon it might bring two hundred quid.”

Simon did not bat an eye at the vast overestimate. He reached inside the weatherproof tan jacket he was wearing and pulled out a wallet. From the wallet he counted fifteen ten pound notes.

“Deposit,” he said, offering them to the other man, who had been watching with rapidly expanding interest. “That should make it worth your while even if you had to go down to Canvey to fetch it-which you won’t.”

The man looked at the money and then at the Saint.

“You really mean it?”

“Take it,” Simon said.

The man took it, took his customers into the building, and laboriously wrote out a receipt. Then he started getting the boat rigged with sails, all the while giving directions for negotiating the creek which would have appalled a Mississippi riverboat captain.

“You’re lucky the tide’s coming in,” he said. “Makes it a little easier.”

“I’ll go fetch our lunch,” Simon said.

He set off back to the car for the picnic provisions which he had thoughtfully packed in Upper Berkeley Mews- some cold tongue and ham, bread and butter, apples, cans of beer in a thermal bag full of ice cubes, and a flask of martinis. Tammy followed him.

“Don’t you think we should get one with a motor on it?” she muttered. “I mean, we’ve got a pistol and binoculars and a flashlight, but not water wings. I’d hate to have to swim back.”

“We’ve got to look innocent,” Simon said. “In a sailboat, we can drift about and tack around the fort in all directions, without looking as if it was our special target. But at the first sign that we’re not a couple of lovebirds enjoying a sail, we’ll become a couple of sitting ducks in a shooting gallery.”

The boat owner was busy with the sails when they returned with their burdens. Tammy gazed pessimistically at the boat, which bore the name Sunny Hours. It appeared to have seen many a sunny hour, and many a stormy one as well. Possibly it would look bright and new after its winter renovation, but right now it looked fit for piecemeal consumption on a fireplace.

It floated, however. Simon took the tiller, Tammy got herself more or less comfortably installed beside him, and the owner waded out in boots to get the craft into deeper water.

“Well,” said Simon as the southerly breeze caught the sails. “Wish us bon voyage.”

“Good luck,” the boatman said dubiously.

It was a long awkward run that they made down the variable waters of the creek, but the channel widened after a while, and at last the Sunny Hours spread her wings in the open river. She had no company except wheeling gulls and a long barge churning its way slowly in the opposite direction towards London.

“I don’t see any forts,” Tammy said, peering ahead.

“They’re out there somewhere,” Simon assured her. “We’re still in the river until we get abeam of Southend. Just enjoy yourself. We’ve got a long way to go yet.”

“And when the sun sinks in the west, so do we?”

Simon smiled at her.

“Think positively. It’s Fowler who’s going to get sunk. Relax.”

The dead forest of smokestacks lay small in the haze behind them. The mouth of the creek from which they had entered the Thames was lost in the dwindling line of the shore. There was no need for tacking. The wind was almost on the starboard beam, growing fresher. The pressure of the sail strained hard against Simon’s hand and as the boat’s speed increased the water gurgled and coiled away from the rudder in a thin white wake. There was a perceptible rolling when they encountered bigger waves farther from the shore.

“Cor,” Tammy said. “I wish the wind would let up a bit.”

“Don’t say things like that,” the Saint warned her. “We seafaring men are notoriously superstitious. All we need to scuttle the whole operation is to get ourselves becalmed.”

“Fat chance of that,” Tammy said, clinging to the side of the boat as it swung skittishly from a swell to a trough.

“Speaking of fat, I wonder how Abdul’s getting along,” Simon said.

“What can go wrong?” Tammy asked.

“Abdul can,” the Saint replied. “He’s got the moral fibre of a three-week-old stick of celery.”

“Well, there’s no point worrying about that. We’ve not only crossed the Rubicon-we’re right in the middle of it.” She stopped suddenly and pointed towards the horizon. “What’s that over there?”

Simon pulled a maritime chart out of one of the large pockets of his windbreaker and with Tammy’s help spread it on his knees.

“It is one of the forts,” he said after a moment. “But it’s the wrong one. Too close in. The one we want has to be somewhere off Shoeburyness. That would be at least thirteen miles from where we started.”

“How lucky,” Tammy commented.

Simon adjusted his course slightly. They were far from the nearest land now. To the north, the Essex coastline was almost parallel to their course. Kent, to the south, curved sharply away into the distance, but was mostly lost in a yellowish mist that seemed absent over the water itself. The fort they had seen was scarcely more than a darkish silvery point, and they drew no closer to it.

For a long time they sailed on. After a while it was like being on the open sea, but their rate of travel was becoming slower. The sheet was tugging less forcefully against Simon’s hand. He tensely endured the slackening of the wind for almost half an hour before saying anything.

“You’ve done it,” he said to Tammy at last.

“Done what?”

“Wished us into trouble. The wind is dropping. We are about to become the victims of light airs.”

“What are they?” she asked anxiously.

“They are airs of insufficient velocity to move a boat with any rapidity through the water. In short, if things get much worse we could be sitting here watching on some very wet sidelines while Fowler does what he pleases.”

Tammy put one of her hands into the water and watched the surface break around it.

“We’re still moving,” she said.

“About half as fast as we were before you jinxed the wind,” he retorted.

The sail became slacker. It had carried them less than half the distance to the island when Tammy tested the relative motion of the water again. There wasn’t any.

“We’ve stopped,” she said meekly.

The sail hung from the mast with dejected limpness. The erstwhile waves had become oily swells.

“I told you we should have had something with an engine,” she said.

“We’ve got something better: we’ve got martinis,” said the Saint cheerfully. “Since we can’t anchor out here, this seems a good time to have lunch. There must be a certain amount of current from the flow of the river, so we still ought to be drifting in the right direction. Fowler isn’t supposed to make his pick-up till late in the afternoon, and this calm won’t last forever unless you do some more reckless wishing.”