No Escape (21 page)

He seemed to be passing out pretty rapidly, Tim thought, so he moved gently forward and passed through the cabin door and shut it very quietly after him.

The rolling of the launch made movement slow and difficult. Holding on to the top of one of the bunks Tim looked about him.

The two berths were piled with folded blankets. They did not seem to have been used for some time. The man in the saloon probably used the seat he was now lying on, Tim decided.

Under each bunk there was a drawer that pulled out. Both were quite empty. Beyond, another closed door led to a forepeak with a wash-basin and lavatory set at one side and a jumble of rope, shackles, empty petrol tins and a couple of large anchors at the other.

Which makes three, Tim thought, looking at them, remembering the one lashed in chocks on the foredeck.

He began to turn over the junk, vaguely disappointed that he had found nothing of sinister import anywhere on board. His foot slipped on a round object. He picked it up. An anchor buoy, evidently. Well, that was natural enough. A good idea to buoy the anchor. Was this the only one or did they have one for each anchor?

He went on searching, turning over lengths of rope, mooring lines mostly, one large coil he could not move. A towing line, perhaps?

Then he found it. Made of plastic, coloured to look like brown glass, even painted with an exact replica of the label of a well-known beer. The narrow end was shaped with a scooped-out hollow; the base of the bottle had a flange with a hole in it through which a light line could be threaded.

It could be another anchor buoy, but who wanted an anchor buoy elaborately got up to look like a floating bottle?

A floating bottle
! A bottle that could carry any reasonably light package attached to its base. It would bob about, disregarded, until it was located by those for whom it was intended.

Tim's excitement rose. Now he understood. The launch picked up the supplies somewhere at the mouth of the Thames. Stick a cork, a real cork, in the top of the false plastic bottle, supply it to the chap with the goods, probably at the last port of call before London. All he had to do was tie on a prepared, waterproofed package and drop the whole thing overboard minus the cork. The launch and the organisation did the rest.

Pushing the thing inside his windcheater Tim retreated into the cabin and moved to the saloon door. He turned the handle carefully and pushed. Nothing happened. Feeling a sudden nausea, a quick wave of self-condemnation, he tried again and pushed hard, not caring now if he made a noise.

Giles Winter's voice, clear and sharp, not at all drunken, said, “No go, my friend. We don't like snoopers.”

“Open this door,” Tim ordered. “Can't your guests visit the heads without having this feeble sort of joke?”

“No joke at all. We know who you are. You weren't invited.”

Tim forced himself to speak quietly.

“If it isn't a joke, what is it? You can't keep me here indefinitely. I would very soon be missed at the hospital.”

“Did you tell anyone where you were going?”

It was a new voice that spoke. Though Tim did not know the man. Ronald Bream had joined his partner in the saloon.

“Yes,” lied Tim and added truthfully, “They all know I like to walk down to the bridge in the evening.”

“But you didn't walk, did you?”

So they knew that, too. Probably knew he had taken Jane out to dinner and where. While he was considering the full significance of his position the door opened suddenly and he found himself confronted by Winter with a levelled gun and a short stout figure he had noticed at the rail while he was trying to take off Jane.

“Come out,” Winter said. “Ron wants to go in there. Come out and stand against that wall.”

Tim had no alternative. Bream went rapidly into the cabin and beyond into the forepeak. After a few seconds he came out again.

“Nix,” he said. His face was anxious, sweating a little.

“Frisk him,” Winter ordered.

Bream found the plastic buoy almost at once.

“That settles it.”

Winter motioned to Tim with a sideways jerk of his head. “Back inside,” he said grimly.

Tim saw that he meant it, that he would not hesitate to use the gun. He went back into the cabin, the door was locked again from the outside. At the same instant the light went out.

All right, he thought, let them think they have me bottled, let them go. They'd be a jump ahead, he knew, but with all that stuff in the forepeak, the spare anchors, the chain, the rope, he ought to be able to break his way out when he was alone.

He waited. The voices died away. They had gone out on deck. Presently he heard sounds again, coming now from the outside of the hull, a hoarse shout, a few bumps, then silence again, unbroken, final he hoped.

It was only now that he realised he was standing in an inch of water.

He stared down in the darkness, unbelieving, suddenly very much afraid. He felt it seep into his shoes, coldly mount over them. Before he recovered enough to move it was halfway up his calf and lapping against the sides of the bunks.

He sprang into the forepeak to drag out an anchor and hurl it against the door. But in the dark, under water, it was not easy to locate anything distinctly. He stumbled about, fumbling with the junk that lay everywhere, desperately trying to remember where he had seen the things, dragging away at rope that led nowhere, tripping over boxes. The anchors seemed to have vanished. Perhaps Bream had moved them deliberately into some inaccessible corner.

And all the time the water rose. It was impossible now to go on searching in the forepeak. He had a sudden panic fear he would not be able to find his way back into the cabin, where the roof was higher. But he managed it.

No use now to hope to batter down the door. Water held it on both sides. The launch was sinking; those bloody thugs had opened the sea-cocks or whatever you called them. Had scuttled, anyway. They meant her to go to the bottom with him inside her. They intended to drown him because he now knew too much.

Tim remembered, despairingly, that the cabin-cruiser was on moorings, tied fore and aft away from the shore, so that whenever the gang wanted to go off down the river they could do so, regardless of the tide. So whatever he did he was going to sink with her and this was the end.

Nevertheless he climbed on one of the bunks and as the water rose, crouched with his face turned up to the roof, determined to last as long as he could. When the cabin was full to the top of the door and the pressure equalised he would try to kick the door down before he drowned.

A sudden lurch flung him off balance and under the water. He recovered, only to feel his head strike the roof, still under water. Understanding came in a quick surge of hope. He turned, struck out under water, bumped into the bunk on the opposite side of the cabin, climbed on to it and with bursting lungs emerged into air and stayed there, gasping.

On this side of the cabin the water was barely up to his neck. As he waited, conscious only of the utter stillness in place of swinging motion and of the stale air, growing more stale every minute, the water began to slide away. It was down to his waist, to his knees. It had left him high but not dry on the bunk. Presently he stretched a leg over the side. The water was less than twelve inches on the cabin sole.

But the air was getting worse all the time. He might not drown now, not on this tide, but he might suffocate.

While he was on the bunk he remembered he had felt something soft against the side of the boat. A curtain, perhaps, over a porthole. He turned to investigate, found what he sought and dragged it away. Dimly, through a coating of river mud he saw lights. He need not have been in such terrifying darkness if he had remembered those small thick curtains earlier.

The porthole had a clasp. It was very stiff, not often opened, evidently, and not improved by its short immersion, but he got it open and stayed beside it for some minutes, drawing in great gulps of air, astonished to find himself still alive.

He now understood fully what had happened. They meant to drown him and lose the launch. Stage an accident, perhaps? Or clear out altogether. They had let the water in, but they had reckoned without the wind. It had blown hard enough to move the cabin cruiser towards the shore. With the tide running out she had taken the ground and tilted over. Fortunately he had been on the bunk nearer the shore, so his weight added to the wind had helped to put her down in this position. Instead of a couple of inches of air above the water on an even keel, inches that would disappear as she sank, she had grounded and tipped and he had found safety.

For a few hours, only. When the tide rose again the launch would not rise, but the water would. Higher than before. He had to get out and fast.

By the light from the open porthole Tim managed to locate a useful piece of hard junk from the forepeak. It was a length of hollow, rounded metal used as an additional lever on the anchor winch. With it he managed to splinter the cabin door and then wrench it apart. He wriggled through the gap he had made, clambered to his feet and promptly fell down again.

The deck of the saloon was covered with a thin film of oily mud. Tim picked himself up and struggled to the companionway and up it into the wheelhouse and on into the open air. The stench below had been unbearable. In any case, though he felt weak and still breathless, he was determined to complete his escape as quickly as possible.

On deck he moved to the bows and looked over. He saw at once that apart from the action of the wind, which still blew with considerable force, another factor had helped to strand the boat.

In order that the warps tying her to the buoys should not hold her up when she was nearly water-logged, but let her sink to the bottom of the river, Winter and Bream had let them off considerably; lengthened them both fore and aft. This accounted for the shouts and bumps he had heard before they left. In plain fact, their action, intended to assist in drowning him, had contributed very largely to preserving his life. They had given the cruiser a freer range of movement and the wind, blowing her strongly broadside on, towards the shore, had done the rest.

Tim's spirits rose considerably as he noted this, in spite of the fact that he was now very cold and shivering violently and saw no immediate prospect of getting off the launch. Though she had gone aground she was not near enough to any of the other vessels for him to jump on to one of them. Nor could he walk over the mud; he would only sink in it or stick there and drown as the tide rose.

He could shout for help. There were no lights on any of the houseboats. He did not even know if they were inhabited. He saw no dinghies among them. Those off-shore were on the mud, like the cabin-cruiser. The ones on the wall leaned against it and one another.

Though it was now well past midnight, he guessed, the usual steady stream of cars was passing over Hammersmith Bridge. They were an encouraging sight, but not helpful.

He looked towards the shore. He could not see any movement on the towpath and he had no means of knowing if the enemy still lurked there, watching. They would, if this was the case, know that the launch had not sunk. They might even have seen him emerge on deck, alive. They might be watching for the next tide to finish him off.

He moved to the river side of the deck and in spite of the wind, stayed there at the rail, prepared to shout if any sort of craft appeared that might take a message for him.

He did not have to wait long. The River Police patrol, passing back from its upper limit, swung a searchlight once more over the boats near the bridge. They saw the cabin-cruiser heeled over on the mud, they saw Tim waving frantically. Keeping the searchlight upon him the police launch edged inshore, stopping about twenty yards off, her bows up-stream to meet the tide, her engine running to maintain her position.

“Can you take me off?” Tim shouted. “I can't get ashore.”

There was a rapid consultation on the patrol boat, then a figure came to the rail and called, “We can't get in any closer. Can you swim?”

“Yes,” Tim answered, hoping he was not too weak to do so effectively.

“Then get off by your after warp. There's more water there.

Keep up off the mud. When you reach the buoy I'll throw you a rope, or you can swim off if you like.”

“Thanks,” Tim called hack.

He moved quickly to the stern, climbed over and wrapping his legs round the chain that led to the buoy, let himself slide slowly down it.

He shuddered as the water closed on him again but managed to hold on. The chain was taut, the cabin-cruiser having moved as far as possible, so Tim's head was above water as far as the buoy. When he reached it, he grasped the ring firmly in one hand and waved with the other.

A thin rope snaked through the air towards him. It fell a yard or two short, but Tim, determined to get out of this freezing element as quickly as possible, plunged away from the buoy, caught the rope, gave it two turns round his waist and tied it, treading water and proceeding rapidly downstream as he did so, the patrol paying out rope until he was secure.

He then set off towards the police launch, the crew, drawing on the rope to help him along. He was soon on board, gasping and limp, but safe.

“You again,” said the officer in charge, in a voice of disgust.

Tim looked at the familiar face and grinned feebly.

“Sorry,” he said. “I'm afraid it is.”

A few minutes later, rubbing down, he asked, “What's the time? I seem to have drowned my watch.”

“You said that before,” the officer told him.

Gerry drove into the Staff car park at the West Kensington Hospital and got out of the car. He moved round to the passenger side, opened the door and then told Jane to get out.

She hesitated, but seeing no other course of action, obeyed.

“You know what you have to say,” he reminded her. “No tricks, mind, or you've had it.”