Last Out From Roaring Water Bay
Read Last Out From Roaring Water Bay Online
Authors: Joe Lane
Author's Note
In the context of this story I specified that a Japanese type C-3 cargo submarine, the I-52, was sunk by the Allies in the Atlantic in 1944 while rendezvousing with a German U-boat in the Bay of Biscay. The sinking of the submarine is a true wartime incident that occurred during the Second World War and therefore I cannot claim it as a piece of my creative imagination. As to the events surrounding the fate of I-52, and the role that Allied intelligence played, the Allies believed that the Japanese submarine carried amongst its cargo a quantity of gold bullion destined for the Third Reich to assist Adolf Hitler with the war. It was imperative that the Allies stopped the submarine before the transfer of cargo could be concluded. Whether there was any truth of gold aboard the I-52, all the evidence went down when the submarine was sunk.
In recent times, the I-52 was the subject of a television documentary featuring a team of American treasure hunters who had pinpointed the wreck site. Where the I-52 lay on the seabed, the submarine could only be reached with the use of submersibles and robotic cameras. The operation ended in disappointment, the team salvaging only tin ingots from the wreck and a few artefacts. There was no sign of the gold. The American salvage team presumed that the gold might never have existed in the first place, and if it had, then the mystery only deepened, probably never to be solved and the gold myth lost forever.
The incident concerning the I-52 came to my attention much earlier, before the documentary was made. I read of its fate in an English newspaper article. The thought of gold excites people. It makes good reading. It excited me too. The newspaper story had my imagination running wild:
what if
and
decoy
occupying my thoughts. Both sent my imagination dizzy. What the wartime incident did provide was the inspiration for me to develop and fantasize an intriguing deceptive plot and the chance to introduce my modern day metal detectorist
*
and renowned treasure hunter, Shackleton (Shacks) Speed, into the affray. More appealingly, to drench the readers thirst for adventure and my theory of what could have happened to the gold in that eventful year of 1944, so long ago. I often wonder if I am close to the truth of where the gold went during the war and, inadvertently, my story does mirror something that had actually occurred; uncovered a long lost secret perhaps. After all fiction is a dream and sometimes dreams come true. Perhaps my story holds hidden truths too, and out there, waiting to be exposed, there is a hoard of gold to be discovered. Who knows maybe âLast out from Roaring Water Bay' points in that direction?
*
Metal detectorist
is not a phrase printed in the English dictionary that I used. I refer to a
metal detectorist
as a person who skilfully locates buried treasure solely by the means of a hand held metal detecting device.
Snake Jacobs in the USA, for his guidance and unselfish editing on my behalf.
JOE LANE
Fate powers life. It determines timing, the place, the day and the moment of action. It has its advantages. It has its disadvantages. It can be lucky. It can be cruel. Mixed with a pile of trouble it can be frigging dangerous and life threatening and I was somewhere in the middle.
I’ve never set out to find trouble; it usually finds me instead. I deal with trouble remarkably well, and eventually, I escape smelling of roses instead of human excrement. Certain antagonists had me down as an arrogant, lucky bastard who should be locked up and the key thrown away. Fortunately, I ride my luck well and I wasn’t going to change the way I operated because of a few scares. I always thought I could handle awkward troubles. It seems I was wrong. The trouble hurtling towards me on my blind side, as I shuffled around in the hollow of a shallow gully nestling in the middle of a windswept Berkshire field using my metal detector, was trouble that bordered on destroying my confidence on how life in the fast lane had been good to me.
It all began inconspicuously enough when the metal detector sent a signal into my headphones indicating a buried object. The erratic bleeping more or less informed me that I’d located something big. What the bleeps didn’t reveal, and something I would never have envisaged, is my next action would ultimately veer me along a road to unforeseen bedlam and the possibility that I would have to kill someone along the way.
I was too preoccupied listening to the strength of the bleeps to be thinking of such drastic circumstances. I was scanning the ground in front of me, ascertaining the true point of contact as to where I should dig first. Satisfied, I pushed the spade into the soil to mark the spot, put the detector down to one side, slipped the headphones down around my neck and turned over the grassy clump of dirt with high expectancy, only to be disappointed with what I’d unearthed.
Instead of the anticipated antiquity, I was staring at a length of rotting, dark brown braided electrical flex which wasn’t even worth scrap value. False alarms are common amongst detectorists, but I don’t usually fall into that category. I’m usually a lucky bastard through and through when it comes to finding something worthwhile. Not this time. In sheer frustration that I’d been conned, I pulled hard on the flex to dislodge it from the ground, probably too hard because it gave suddenly and I startled when a fist of skeletal knuckles flew out from the soil and tried to grab me by the throat.
I was probably overreacting on the ‘grab my throat’ theory but my gut reaction had me rearing away expecting the putrid smell of decaying flesh when in reality there was nothing but the smell of freshly dug peaty soil. I stood there wondering what I should do next, as this was my first grave find. A sensible person would have walked away immediately and contacted the police. Sensible people, on the other hand, make little headway in the pursuit of discovery. I’m different. I like a challenge, and I have an insatiable curiosity to meddle and learn, especially with things buried.
I didn’t need much encouragement to coax me to continue digging. Ever so carefully I began to clear away the soil from around the hand bones, burrowing deeper into the grassy slope with my short handled miniature spade and ideally suited for delicate work. Within minutes I’d unearthed the skeleton’s skull and left shoulder. I assessed what I’d found, and judging by the deterioration of the leather skullcap, flying jacket and tunic, glare goggles, the oxygen equipment and mouth inflatable life jacket, it was obvious that I’d found the remains of a wartime fighter pilot. Further digging showed the pilot was still harnessed inside the crumbling cockpit, which clearly suggested he never got the chance to escape before the plane crashed.
I gave a customary military style salute. My, “welcome home, Mister,” was greeted by the unnerving movement of the skeleton’s skull rolling slowly sideways as the supporting soil fell way. Something fell from behind the glare goggles and dangled there. It was the pilot’s identity tags, or at least what was left of them. I leaned over and handled the tags with care while I cleaned the dirt from the metal with a little spit and finger rubbing, eventually revealing the faint indentations that were still visible. Corrosion had set in but one word showed through faintly, ‘Craven’. I let the tags fall back and stepped away from the remains.
I didn’t spend too much time pondering on whether Craven was the first or surname name of the pilot because I’d no intention to make this my problem. I wiped my soiled hands across my trousers, took the mobile phone from my jacket pocket and called the owner of the land.
“Tommy…Yes it’s me, Shacks. Come down to the far field as quickly as you can…Don’t ask questions, mobiles cost money. I’m down in a gully…Where? Look for the cows congregating…No I’m not in any trouble, but hurry anyway because I’ve something to show you.”
While I was tucking my phone back into my pocket I noticed the flex I’d unearthed was attached to something still gripped in the skeleton’s hand. Now I was well aware of the implications for desecrating a war grave but I’ve little patience of listening to what I can do and what I can’t do, and bearing in mind that nobody was watching, I prised the finger bones apart to recover the device.
It was a push button mechanism made of Bakelite, its inners seized as I discovered when I tried to press the trigger. It had to have operated something of importance for the pilot to have kept hold of the device and I wanted to know what. I began tracing where the flex went, easing the cable gently from the crumbling soil so as not to snap and lose it, eager to find its origin before Tommy arrived.
The flex finally disappeared into what I assumed to be a corroding camera casing which dropped away from its attachment when I had moved the soil. In that instance I knew I’d found a WWII photographic reconnaissance plane. I wondered how much money old wartime footage would bring on the open market? With no hesitation I ripped the flex from the camera, crouched down onto one knee, slipped the large rucksack from my shoulder, wrapped the camera in a sheet of polythene and stuffed the camera inside the rucksack quicker than a Harrods shoplifter committing their crime behind a store detective’s back.
I rose to my feet when I heard the clanging of Tommy’s ancient tractor as it approached the top of the gully. He was on foot when I caught sight of him peering down. He had his dog beside him, Winston, a strange looking beast, a cross between a Labrador and a Staffordshire bull terrier and despite the reputation of a half fighting dog, Tommy insisted Winston was a loveable character and he wouldn’t hurt a fly. I’d no reason to disbelieve him. Nonetheless, this was a situation when no dog could be trusted.
I gestured for Tommy to join me in the gully. I said, “Leave Winston up there. I don’t want the mutt running around the countryside with a bone clamped in his mouth.”
Tommy was puzzled by what I said. His nose crinkled when he said, “Winston hasn’t got a bone.”
“He will have if he comes down
here
.”
Still puzzled, Tommy finger signalled and told Winston to sit and stay. The dog obeyed. Tommy made his slow descent, his arms spread out for balance, not wanting the indignity of a clumsy slip onto his arse. I was amazed how agile he was for his age.
Tommy Bickermass had told me he was seventy two years old and the deep facial lines criss-crossing his leathery face verified his age. His day attending the farm began so early that it was rumoured he was solely responsible for waking up the crack of dawn before the cockerel even thought about it. He was dressed in his usual flashy woman pulling attire, a grubby flat cap, green checked tweed jacket covering a black satin waistcoat and a stained shirt. His brown cord trousers he had tucked into a pair of knee cap length Wellington boots that flopped when he walked. The thick curls of hair showing from beneath his hat was a mixture of yellow streaks mingling with grey and white, the yellow strands caused by the application of Grecian 2000, so he assured me.
When he saw the grisly remains his grey eyes popped out and most noticeably a peculiar shade of white varnished his red mottled complexion. Composing himself with a puff of his cheeks, he said, “Blimey!” then added something really stupid. “Is the bugger dead?”