The Black Tide (11 page)

He laughed. ‘If I knew I wouldn’t need you, would I?’

‘But it’s not the
Petros Jupiter
’

‘No, it’s not the
Petros Jupiter
. It’s another ship. In fact, it’s two now.’ And when I told him I was only interested in the
Petros Jupiter
, he said, ‘Yes, of course. I understand that.’ He was leaning forward, still watching me. ‘That’s why I wanted to meet you. Ninety per cent of the time I’m just a hardworking solicitor slogging through the paperwork. But
there’s ten per cent of the time I’m operating by the seat of my pants, sleuthing out the truth like some amateur detective. That’s the fun side – or it can be when you get it right and a hunch pays off.’ He stopped there. ‘It’s not the ship you’re interested in. It’s the engineer, isn’t it?’ He said it tentatively, not looking at me now. ‘Did Ferrers tell you he’s changed his name, flown to Bahrain and is now on board a small freighter bound for Karachi?’

‘Yes, he showed me the telex. It was from the Lloyd’s agent in La Rochelle where the fishing boat landed him.’

‘Suppose we were to send you to Karachi, everything paid, and a fee … You fly out, you’d be there about the time the
Corsaire
arrives.’ He looked at me then. ‘That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want to talk to Aristides Speridion who now calls himself Henri Choffel.’ I nodded and he smiled. ‘One of our partners would be interested in that, too. He’s handling the
Petros Jupiter
case.’ He paused then, watching me. ‘Well, what do you say?’

I didn’t answer immediately. In fact, I was thinking of Baldwick and his proposition. This, in a way, was even odder. Saltley misinterpreted my silence. ‘Sorry’, he said. ‘Afraid I’ve put it to you very abruptly. Let me fill you in a bit. First, the seat of the pants side of it. Back in November the
Aurora B
disappeared. We don’t know where. All we know is she missed her radio schedule when she should have been west of Sri Lanka and hasn’t been heard of since. Now, just a few days ago, another VLCC, the
Howdo Stranger
, misses her schedule.’

‘I was with Ferrers when the news came through,’ I said. ‘They both missed their schedules in the same area.’

He nodded. ‘With a twice-weekly radio schedule it’s just guesswork where they disappeared. But yes, the same area roughly. Both insured at Lloyd’s, and the lead underwriter in each case Michael Stewart. He’s a member here and a friend of mine. In fact, I was at his daughter’s twenty-first today. We both started our racing together, you see, in the Lloyd’s yacht
Lutine
’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Not the best day to pick for a party. And the poor fellow wrote the slip for the
Petros Jupiter
as well, all three of them for the same
syndicate, including the Sinister Syndicate, which is hard luck on the girls. He took quite a slice of it for them.’

I suppose he sensed I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, for he said, ‘You know how Lloyd’s work do you? The Members – Names, we call them – operate in syndicates. There are around twenty thousand Names and their personal financial commitment is total. Each is limited in the extent of the premium income he, or she, can underwrite, but if things go wrong, then there’s no limit at all to the amount they may be called upon to pay out, even to the point of complete bankruptcy.’ And he added, ‘One of the syndicates involved here is a rather special one. It’s a marine syndicate composed entirely of Members’ wives and daughters. My wife’s a member of it, so is Mike’s, and now his daughter Pamela. She’s one of his regular racing crew, and her birthday being on New Year’s Eve, the party today was really more to celebrate the start of her under-writing.’ He smiled wryly. ‘Virgins Unlimited, or the Sinister Syndicate, those are the tags the syndicate has got stuck with and I’m afraid it may prove more apt than intended. They could be facing a very big loss on these three vessels if all the claims are substantiated. And that won’t do Mike’s reputation any good. He might not even survive it.’

And then abruptly he switched back to the missing ships. ‘GODCO – that’s the company that owns the two missing VLCCs – operates right through the Gulf. They have offices not far from here, in Curzon Street of all places. But the centre of their operation is Dubai. If you went out, I’d see you had letters of introduction to Gulf Oil executives, the Lloyd’s agents of course, also some very useful contacts I’ve built up over the years. But,’ he added, ‘that’s on the official level. Much more important, I feel, is what you, with your knowledge of Urdu, might pick up unofficially, in the docks, or the bazaars, also in hotel bars. I’m thinking of Karachi, you see. I don’t know why, but ever since this second GODCO tanker went missing I’ve had a feeling …’ He hesitated, staring at me, then gave a little shrug and picked up his drink.

‘You think it’s sabotage?’ I asked.

‘It has to be, doesn’t it? Two GODCO ships in two months. They haven’t lost a VLCC in eight years. But even if I’m right, I’ve still got to prove it.’

‘And the
Petros Jupiter?
’ I asked. ‘Who owned her?’

‘A Dutch company.’

‘I thought it was Greek.’

‘It was, but they sold her a few months back. We’ll be checking on the Dutch company, of course, but I’m told it’s a perfectly reputable outfit.’ He didn’t know its name or anything about it. Another partner, a man named Pritchard, was handling the
Petros Jupiter
. And he explained that he’d been fully occupied recently preparing a briefing for arbitration in the matter of a £30 million claim where it was suspected that navigational negligence was a contributing factor in the loss of a giant tanker. But now, with the
Howdo Stranger
failing to keep its radio schedule, Stewart was pressing him to begin a full scale investigation of the
Aurora B
claim. That meant, not one, but two new casualties added to his work load. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve made you a proposition. You go away and think about it. Tomorrow come along to our offices and have a look through the files.’ And he added, with a quick little smile, so that I knew he was baiting the hook for me, ‘The
Petros Jupiter
’s cargo was re-sold on the spot market the day before she was wrecked and the skipper’s statement makes it clear that his instructions to alter course for Rotterdam reached him when he was midway between Land’s End and the Scillies.’ And he added, ‘I can arrange for you to see that statement. In fact, the whole file, if you like.’

That was how, on the following morning, with the snow still falling and half England a no-go area because of blocked roads, I came to be sitting in the offices of Forthright & Co., marine solicitors, at Saltley’s desk, with the
Petros Jupiter
file in front of me. All I had been given on arrival were the papers relating to the
Aurora B
claim. There was nothing on the
Howdo Stranger
. At least, that was what I was told by the only girl I could find who knew her way around the files. Saltley’s secretary hadn’t made it to the office, nor had half the Forthright staff, so that the whole place had a slightly deserted
air, particularly the reception area, which must have cost a fortune in rental it was so vast. A matronly, grey-haired woman in tweeds, standing in as receptionist because neither of the girls at the two big desks had arrived, took me down a long corridor through fire doors to Saltley’s empty office. ‘Phone me if you want anything.’ She gave me the number to dial on the internal phone, then shut the door on me so that I felt like a prisoner being locked into his cell.

It didn’t take me long to go through the
Aurora B
file – the failure to meet her radio schedule on November 7, details of loading at Mina Zayed, condition and rating of vessel, information about the recent installation of anti-explosion precautions, all the basic, humdrum details on which any assessment of what might have caused the vessel’s mysterious disappearance would depend. There was nothing about crew, no photograph, nothing – which was odd as GODCO always photographed and dossiered crew personnel before every voyage. I knew that because I had shipped a man once who had refused to sail on a GODCO tanker at the last moment because he wouldn’t be photographed. In the end, he told me the reason he was camera-shy was that he was bigamously married and afraid that his first wife, whom he described as a right bitch, might see it and come after him. Why we all leap so readily to fanciful conclusions I am not sure, but until then I was convinced that he was either one of the train robbers still on the run, or else a murderer.

There was an internal and an external telephone on the desk. I lifted the external receiver and asked the switchboard operator for a line. She didn’t ask who I was or who I was going to ring at the office’s expense, she just gave me the line. But when I got through to the GODCO offices in Curzon Street and asked for the current voyage
Aurora B
crew details and pictures, they said all crew information was held at their Dubai offices. They gave me the number and the man to contact.

I might not have followed it up, except that I had asked for the
Petros Jupiter
file and the girl had come back to say that it was with Mr Pritchard and he was asking who I was and why I wanted it. While I waited, hoping he’d let me see it, I asked the switchboard if it was possible to get me the Dubai
number and in a matter of minutes I was through to the GODCO Marine Superintendent’s office. The man in charge of crew dossiers said that copies of all information concerning the
Aurora B
and the
Howdo Stranger
crews, including copies of the crew pictures, had been despatched airmail to London two days ago. But when I rang the London office again the man I had spoken to before finally admitted their staff was so depleted that morning that he couldn’t tell me whether the crew details had arrived or not.

After that there was nothing for me to do but sit there waiting in that empty office. It was an odd feeling, as though I was suspended in limbo – the frozen world outside, and here, encased in concrete and glass, an organization that fed upon disaster, encapsulating the realities of existence, the gales, the sand storms, the oiled-up beaches, the furnace heat of raging fires, into typed reports and telex messages compressed and neatly filed between plastic covers. Cargoes, ships, dockside greed and boardroom chicanery, the remote cold-bloodedness of owners whose decisions were based on money, not humanity, it was all there, neatly filed and docketed – remote, unreal. Legal cases, nothing more.

The previous night, just as I was leaving, Michael Stewart had come into the club with his wife and daughter. They had been to the theatre, but when Saltley introduced me to him I could see the evening had not been a success. The man was under intense strain. And that morning I had spent the first hour or so visiting two shipping offices close to the Baltic Exchange in St Mary Axe. Rates were low, a lot of vessels still laid up and the chances of employment very slight unless you happened to be in a place where the need of a ship’s officer was urgent.

Humans, not files – that was the real world. In the circumstances I could count myself lucky I’d had two offers of a job and hadn’t had to go looking for either of them. There was a tap at the door and a sharp-faced man with a little brushed-up moustache sidled in, a file under his arm. ‘Rodin?’ He had a tired voice that matched the weary look on his face. He gave the impression of having seen too much of the wrong side of life.

I nodded and he said his name was Pritchard. His eyes,
which were dark, had a nervous, sort of clockwork tick, shifting back and forth, left and right, avoiding contact, but at the same time examining me closely. ‘Salt told me you’d be asking for the
Petros Jupiter
file. Any particular reason, apart from your wife’s involvement?’

‘Isn’t that sufficient?’ I disliked the darting eyes, his lack of sensitivity, the coldness of his manner.

He put the file down on the desk in front of me, flipped open the plastic cover and pointed to the most recent item, a telex. ‘That arrived this morning.’ And he stood over me while I read it, watching me closely all the time, waiting no doubt to see how I would react to the news.

The telex was from the Lloyd’s agent at Karachi. The
Corsaire
had docked that morning at first light.
PASSENGER CHOFFEL NOT ON BOARD. TRANS-SHIPPED TO DHOW HORMUZ STRAITS
11.00
GMT YESTERDAY. CORSAIRE’S CAPTAIN UNABLE TO IDENTIFY DHOW’S NATIONALITY. NO NAME. NO FLAG. SKIPPER SPOKE SOME ENGLISH, NO FRENCH. ALL ON BOARD PROBABLY ARAB. ADVISE CONTACT AGENTS UAE PORTS.

So he’d gone, got clear away. The chances of finding him now … I closed the file and sat staring at the phone. I could do as the Karachi agent advised, start ringing round the ports of the United Arab Emirates. But how would the Lloyd’s agent in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Doha, Bahrain or Kuwait know what dhow it was? There were so many in the Gulf.

‘You’ve seen all you want?’

I nodded.

‘Your only interest then was Choffel?’ He was leaning over me, his eyes darting.

‘Yes.’

‘Pity!’ He hesitated. ‘I never had a case like this before. Stranding is one thing. We might have been able to claim negligence in their employment of a man like Choffel, particularly as he had assumed a different name. In any case, both the ship and its cargo could have been salvaged. That was what the Dutch said. But then your wife’s action … quite unprecedented. It introduced a new dimension altogether.’

‘She’s dead,’ I said.

The words meant nothing to him. ‘There’s no policy I’ve ever seen covers that sort of thing. You couldn’t call it sabotage, could you?’

I stared at him, disliking him intensely. No use telling him I’d seen her die, watched the ship go up, and the man who’d caused her death running free somewhere in the Gulf. I opened the file again, leafing through the thick wad of papers. It was similar to the
Aurora B
file, but much fuller, of course, since the vessel had been there on the rocks for all to see. Salvage reports were interspersed with newspaper cuttings and both shore and marine pollution assessments …

‘Salt said you might be going out there for us.’