A Bridge Of Magpies (17 page)

I took the rifle and made as much show of
it
as I could, for the benefit of
Sang A.
I was sure every move of ours was being watched through binoculars.

We landed. When
we
obtained our first clear sight of the vehicle I ordered Jutta to stay right where she
was.
It looked like a charred tree-trunk behind
the
wheel(

It was Koch.

I didn't feel the same revulsion for his remains as I had done for Breekbout's. Maybe the earlier shock had conditioned or numbed my reactions. It was only a faceless, blackened outline, really. We'd also come haJf-prepared for tragedy.

Kaptein Denny and I fanned out
to
approach the LandRover from both sides, J with the rifle cocked. As I walked cautiously through the sand I had a curious impression–one of those ready-made pictures the mind throws up in times of stress–that I'd seen it all before. It
was
coupled with the foreboding of a pattern of future tragedy, into which these two deaths were inexorably grooved.

I reached the driver's side of the
Land-Rover at the same
moment as
Kaptein Denny got to the other.

'All clear!'

He straightened from the half-crouch he'd
gone into when
he'd circled round, and put away his knife.

'Look at this!'

The steel fascia was blackened and buckled. The bonnet
was
also starred with glass fragments from the windscreen. 'An explosion did this,' he said.

I tried not to give way to my doubts and suspicions before testing all the every-day possibilities.

'Of course it did. The tank went up. It's right behind the driver's seat?

116

'Jf it had, the force of it would have thrown him forward and out.'

'Some sort of freak accident.'

'It wasn't an accident. Come over to my side and see. His left leg's gone.'

I went
round
and joined him.

'Someone sneaked up aJongside and threw something next to him on the floor.'

'Something?'

'Grenade. That would account for all the buckling and glass out front.'

Bastards ...l' I began and then took hold of myself: cursing wasn't going to help. 'This was done days ago.'

'Seker –
for sure. The gale swept away the footprints. You couldn't prove anything against anyone now.'

'Except the grenade.'

'The trail's already cold. By the
time
the experts sort that one out it'll be in deep freeze. And
Sang A
will be over the horizon.'

'She's not bloody well going over any horizon! I'm going right back on board

'A lot of men have died in unexplained ways on the Sperrgebiet, Captain Weddell. You don't want to be among them.'

Our eyes locked.
I
felt instinctlvely he'd not had anything to do with the
killings.

'Thanks,' J said. 'I needed that reminder. Now let's do something about Koch.'

'I've got some spare canvas aboard
Gaok?
We
went to Jutta, who had been waiting behind the sandhill-and told her what had happened.

'Why?' she burst out. 'Why kill him? Why kill Breekbout? They didn't have any secrets worth murdering them for ...'

She caught my warning glance and remembered the lost city and that Kaptein Denny didn't know about it. What
did
he know, though? He'd now moved right out of my area of suspicion and was firmly aligned with us against
Sang A.
That was merely the end of the negative aspect, however: he'd done nothing positive yet to win my confidence. And he often indulged in a mannerism which, from my point of view, wasn't at all positive: a nick of quartering the anchorage
117

as if he expected
to
lee
something there. His quick survey always began down by the Bridge of Magpies and worked its way up-channel. His eyesight was so phenomenal that I was sure he'd spot anything long before Jutta or
L

'I'll fetch that canvas.'

Kaptein Denny went off in the dinghy, leaving Jutta and me.

'Keep
out of sight of
Sang A-'
I warned.

'The
fact that they're a lot of weirdies doesn't turn them into murderers, Struan.'

'Who else could it be?'

'Who knows?'

A very uneasy present had blown up in my face and swamped a very puzzling past. Until I'd been confronted by the two murders and the mysterious
Sang A
I'd felt mentally like a castaway wandering on the dint shores of that past –

Jutta's past, Kaptein Denny's past-Doodenstadt's past. Now, however, I'd snapped clean into the present. In doing so a new suspicion the size of Possession Island hit me: was the C-in-C's mission itself not a blind? Maybe it was a front for something much more sinister and deep-rooted that he couldn't–or wouldn't–reveal at our interview. That would make sense of the underhand way he'd brought me from Santorin and his insistence on secret, single-handed investigation on my part. All this carried the implication that Koch was part of his conspiracy. Then he would have been the one who had attempted to get off that emergency radio signal to the C-in-C, via Breekbout. Why not send it himself, though? It was confusing, but possible; and what the time sequence of events was in regard to the two killings I'd never know. I wondered if the little admiral was gambling on the expectation that I would see the lost city mission for the blind it really was, and get his real message when things started
to
hot up? They had now.

Jutta and
I
stood around without saying much more
until
Kaptein Denny returned. He and I shrouded Koch in the canvas and left the body in the Land-Rover. It
was
so charred that we reckoned the jackals wouldn't scent it. Then we rowed out to
Gaok.

I sought a topic to defuse the underlying tension,

'Why'd you call her
Gaok,
Kaptein Denny?'

118

'It's short for
Gaokhaosib -Hottentot
for the Bridge of Magpies.'

Everything always seemed to come back to the Bridge of Magpies! That past again!

We went on in silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Finally when we three were seated in
Gaok's
cabin drinking coffee I said-'Priority number one is for me to go aboard
Sang A again.'

'What purpose will it serve, Struan?' asked Jutta.
'They
will deny any knowledge of Koch-they have already done so-just as they did in the case of Breekbout. It's a foregone conclusion.'

'It would look odder if I didn't inform them there'd been another murder. It mightn't sound too good in court one day.'

'They know already. It's
a
long way from here to court.'

'What if they did kill them both? What do you intend to do about it?' asked Kaptein Denny. He'd been very reserved up to now. 'You haven't even a radio link, now, with the outside world.

'You'll scare them off if you go at It like a bull at a gate,'

said Jutta. 'They'll up-anchor and vanish. That won't do anyone any good.'

`They won't'

There was something about Denny's flat assertion that made the small bell of mistrust tinkle again at the back of my brain.

'What makes you so sure?'

I had a feeling he'd overplayed his hand and he knew it. He back-pedalled on the answer and merely said, Ìra a move which could backfire disastrously on us.'

'How?'

'Look what happened to Breekbout and Koch!'

'They wouldn't dare . .

Jutta interrupted me excitedly, 'Look! Look!
Sang
A
fs getting up steam ! '

We rushed to the nearest porthole. There was a thin wisp coming from the tall funnel, and a bow winch was taking in the slack of the anchor cable.

'That does
it!'
I rapped out. 'Move! She mustn't get away!'

119

I slipped
Gaok's
cable and Kaptein Denny had the diesel roaring in under a minute. We got under way and tore off in the direction of
Sang A.

Jutta joined me on the bridge. I took
a long
look at the black ship.

'We're in danger of making fools of ourselves. That ship's not up-anchoring at all.'

'What's all the activity about then?'

I shouted to Kaptein Denny to cut our speed and join us.
Sang A
wasn't more than a mile and a half away now. 'They'

re trimming her head,'
I
pointed out. 'Look,
it's
beginning to point towards Doodenstadt.'

'There's another mooring buoy astern.' Denny could make it out but I couldn't. 'There's a cable out to it and they're winching her stern round.'

'What the hell are they up tor

°There are a couple of boats, too,' added Jutta.

They were light launches and they were putting off from
Sang A's
side-trailing something between them. I saw what it was
as
Denny spoke.

'A
hawser.
They're dragging for something.'

'We don't want to break up this interesting little party,' I said. 'We'll just stooge around with the engine off.'

While Kaptein Denny attended to the motor Jutta and I kept watch on the launches. They worked their way slowly and deliberately between
Sang A
and a point on Possession, holding so straight a course that it was clear they were steering
on a
fixed bearing.
Gaok
lost way and lay
rising
and falling in the easy swell.

'Looks as if they're
dragging for something on the sea
bed,' I said.

'Perhaps they
lost
an anchor in the storm-' suggested Jutta.

Denny paused before replying-until the launches had made more progress towards the island.

'No, They're much too close
inshore. Any skipper who
120

anchored there would need his head read.'

'Maybe he does anyway,' I retorted. 'See what they're doing with the ship itself.'

Swig A's
head was pointing all wrong, to lie meeting the upchannel current but it was clear that was the way it was intended because they'd now secured her
stern
to the buoy and I could make out the tight thread of cable out of the water between the two.

'Take us close now,' I told Kaptein Denny. 'The top of
Gaok's
crow's nest is about level with the portholes in that odd shack of
Sang A's.
I mean to find out what's inside.'

'A sneak look seems the only way to do it-judging from their previous reception,' said Jutta.

Kaptein Denny grinned. Whatever
Sang A
was up to seemed to have put him in
a
relaxed mood.

'There's nothing to prevent us sailing round and round
Sang A.
You could always be looking after the interests of your darling birds?

The way he put it could have implied anything or nothing. Anything being that he guessed I
was
no more a headman than I was a gannet.

'Let's go.'

Our run-in was from astern of
Sang A.
I'd circled over towards Possession to get into position, and Kaptein Denny was to take the wheel while I made my eye-in-the-sky inspection. We were chugging along at about four knots.

`Steady!'

J glanced up to take my line.

'I'll be damned! Look at that!'

Sang A's
masts and the stumps of the
City of Baroda's
were in a line.

'They've deliberately trimmed
Sang A
on the liner's old course!'

Jutta was afire, now that the liner had come into it. Denny said, 'We too are on that course–exactly.'

'The liner had already been hit by the time
she
reached the position where we are now. She was heading for the rocks to beach herself.'

Jutta gripped me tightly by the arm. She was looking everywhere
as
though she hadn't already memorized every detail of the anchorage!

121

`What's the sense of it? Struan

.? Kaptein Denny . ..?'

Neither of us replied, because there wasn't a reply. `What's the point in mocking up an old course? It doesn't help . . I don't see . .

'I do see something-Jutta: that there's more to
Sang A
than meets the
eye.'

'You're going to cut that stern buoy mighty fine, Captain Weddell.'

'Shave
it
to
a
whisker, if you like. I want the best view.' '

It's like treading in old footprints made by someone you knew?' exclaimed Jutta.

Take it easy,' I said, hearing the excited pitch of her voice. '

There are no footprints in the sea. You've crossed and recrossed the line's course
a
dozen times already and it's meant nothing. Don't start imagining things.'

She replied with a gesture: you didn't need a pelorus to see how the six masts of the three ships stood in a neat line. Take her in now,'
I
told Kaptein Denny. I'm going up aloft.'

Sang A's
crew came running when they saw us boring straight down on their stem. They did more than run when
we
seemed likely to ram. They yelled and waved us off and shouted obscenities. Kenryo was among them.

I ignored them and concentrated on the shack.

The racket brought one man inside to a porthole. He'd forgotten to remove the headphones hanging loose round his neck. The giveaway was complete when Kaptein Denny skimmed
Sang A's
quarter so close that I could almost have reached out and touched two other head-phoned operators seated at big consoles.

The shack was jammed with electronic equipment.

I left the crow's nest and descended to the wheel-house.

'Give her the gun and pull well clear,'
I
told Denny. 'The place is stuffed with electric gear.
Sang A
is no more a trawler than I am Captain Kidd.'

'Then what's she up to, Struan?' asked Jutta.

'I'll reserve judgement until I know what is under those tarpaulins.'