The Black Tide (38 page)

‘But when she went to the police … Jean Kerrison heard a programme on the radio, an interview with her, which ended with her saying she was going straight to the police and a warrant would be issued for my arrest on a charge of murder. Did she go to the police?’

He shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘But presuming she did, what would happen next? What action would the police take?’

‘I think it would depend on the evidence she produced. I imagine it’s pretty thin but, if she did convince them, then her statement would be sent on to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions with whatever comments the police felt were warranted, together with the results of any enquiries they may have instituted. It would be up to the Public Prosecutor then.’

‘And what happens when they discover I’ve fled the country?’ I was remembering the Special Branch man’s instructions to notify the nearest police station of any change of address. They would almost certainly trace me to Balkaer and question the Kerrisons. I was angry with him then, feeling he was using me. Fleeing the country was the most damning thing I could have done.

‘They may notify Interpol,’ he said. ‘But by the time they’ve traced you to Gibraltar we’ll almost certainly be at sea. Forget about it,’ he added. ‘If we find that tanker waiting for us out there by the Selvagens, then that part of
your story will be confirmed. Once they believe that, they’ll believe the rest.’

I had to accept that, since it was my only hope, but I should have stayed. I should have faced her accusations, reiterating the truth of what had happened. Instead, I had run away at the instigation of this ruthless bastard who was only interested in finding the missing tankers and saving his friend’s skin. If I’d had any guts I’d have walked off the boat then and there and taken the next plane back to London. But I didn’t. I stayed on board and each day I listened to the BBC news, waiting, always waiting to hear my name mentioned.

We sailed for the Selvagens on Saturday, February 6. It was just six days since the Kerrisons had driven me into Penzance to catch the Brittany ferry, seventeen days since the
Aurora B
had left her bolt-hole in the Musandam Peninsula. ‘She’ll be about halfway,’ Saltley said. ‘Just rounding the Cape probably.’ We were standing at the chart table, the boat heeled over as we ploughed our way through the Straits, thrashing to windward with the bows slamming and sheets of spray hitting the mains’l with a noise like gunshot. ‘That is, if she’s steaming at full speed. Pity we’ve lost that levanter.’ He smiled at me, looking more like a gnome than ever in his bulky oilskins. ‘Hope you’re a good sailor. It could be a hard beat.’

Only the previous day the wind had gone round to the south-west and now it was blowing force 5 to 6, a dead-noser, for it was south-west we needed to go. ‘I had reckoned on reaching the islands in less than six days, which would make it Day Twenty-two of the
Aurora B
’s voyage. But if it’s going to go on blowing from the south-west we’ll be increasing our miles through the water considerably. It could make a difference of two or three days.’

We had the Rock and the African shore in sight all through the daylight hours. It was wind against current most of the time, with steep breaking waves and a movement more violent than I had ever previously experienced. It was impossible to stand without holding on to one of the hand grips all the time and in the cockpit we were all of us wearing our safety harnesses clipped to securing wires.

It was towards dusk, when the wind had eased slightly, that I took my first trick at the helm under Pamela’s supervision, the others having got their heads down in preparation for the long hours of darkness when they would be standing lone watches. It was only then, with my hands gripping the wheel, that I began to appreciate the extraordinary power of an ocean-racer. Until then I had only seen them at a distance, but now, feeling that wind-driven power under my hands and vibrant throughout the ship, I experienced a feeling of intense excitement, a sense of overwhelming exhilaration as though I were a god riding the sea on a white-winged Pegasus. And when Pamela clapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘You’ll do, mate,’ I felt a wave of pleasure as though I were a kid and had passed some sort of a test. She got up then, bracing herself with a hand on the bar-taut mainsheet. ‘You’re on your own now. I need a pee and there’s the evening meal to get.’

She left me to my own devices then, so that for almost two hours the ship was mine, and as we powered to windward I found myself revelling in the extra thrust that came from slight adjustments of the wheel, the way I could slide her over the worst of the waves, and once in a while Pamela, keeping an eye on me from the galley, gave me a little smile of approval. With no make-up on, a dirty old woollen cap pulled down over her head and yellow oilskins she looked more like a ship’s boy than the owner’s daughter, and how she could cook with the boat pitching and slamming I couldn’t imagine. When Toni Bartello finally relieved me and I went below I found I had no interest in food and had to get my head down or be sick.

The seasickness didn’t last, but the sou’wester did. The wind seemed fixed in that quarter, staying there for almost a week, sometimes light, sometimes blowing a near-gale, and always we were beating.

It was a strange life, the five of us cooped up together, at such close quarters, and in some respects in such rugged conditions, that it was almost the equivalent of serving as a seaman in the Navy two centuries ago. Most of my working life had been spent at sea so that it was difficult for me to
understand at first why anyone would do it for pleasure, particularly a girl. So little space and no privacy, the violence of the movement – and yet it worked, our lives ruled by the sea and the wind, and little time or energy to think who it was had left the bunk warm for me when I came below tired after a sail change or a long spell at the wheel with the salt of the wind-driven spray crusted on my face.

The sun shone most of the daylight hours and when the wind dropped and we had the engine on, all of us up in the cockpit with a drink in our hands, then it was different. We were relaxed, talking uninhibitedly about our lives, or speculating what we would find when the Selvagens appeared over the horizon. Would we find the
Howdo Stranger
sitting there, waiting? And if so, what would she be called now, what false name would they have painted on her bows and stern? We had a lot of fun inventing names for her, and for the
Aurora B
, laughing uproariously at simple jokes, like twinning them and calling them
Castor
and
Bollocks
. We laughed a lot at silly ordinary things, ate enormously and drank well. It was, in fact, a singularly happy ship, made more so I think by the presence of a girl who was a good cook, a good sailor and good company. There were times when I found it difficult to take my eyes off her, for it was getting warmer all the time and, ghosting along in light airs after Saltley had decided we needed to save our fuel, she was wearing very little at the midday pour-out.

We were drinking wine, not spirits, but it was strong Spanish stuff and I suppose my interest in her showed. It was on the eighth day, when the wind had at last gone round to the north-west, where it should have been all the time. I had the middle watch and when I took over from Mark he brewed us mugs of cocoa and joined me in the cockpit. ‘Lovely night,’ he said, staring up at the stars. He was silent for a long time after that, so I knew he had something on his mind. At last he came out with it. ‘Look, Trevor – hope you don’t mind, but I think I’d better tell you.’ He paused there, not looking at me, his face in silhouette against the light of the compass. ‘About Pam,’ he went on awkwardly, burying his face in his mug and speaking very quietly. ‘I know she
admires you, thinks you’re quite a guy, in fact. And you’re not exactly – well, disinterested. I don’t mind myself, your eyeing her I mean. But if I’ve noticed it, then Salt will have, too, and he is … well, in love with her, I suppose. It’s generally recognized – in the family, I mean – that she’ll marry him in the end. You see, he’s been after her ever since she left finishing school – oh, before that … since ever almost – hanging round her like a bee round a honeypot.’ He finished his cocoa and got up very abruptly. ‘You don’t mind my mentioning it, I hope, but if you could just keep your mind concentrated on the job in hand …’

He dived down the companionway then, leaving me alone at the wheel. The boy was embarrassed and I knew why. Saltley might be an older man with a lopsided face, but he’d been to the right schools, belonged to the right clubs. He had the right background, and above all, he was the man their father turned to when there was underwriting trouble. Also, and perhaps this rankled more than anything, they knew my own family background.

I didn’t sleep much that night and in the morning Saltley asked me to take a noon sight myself and work out our position. It made me think he had put Mark up to it. But we were under spinnaker now, sailing on a broad reach at just over six knots, and with only another day to go before we raised the Selvagens it was obviously sensible to make use of my professional capabilities and get a check on his last fix.

I took the sights, and when I had finally got a position, there was only a mile or two in it, Selvagem Grande bearing 234°, distant 83 miles. It was now 26 days since the
Aurora B
had sailed. Only two or three more days to go. It depended how much of a lift the strong Agulhas current had given her, what speed she was making. She could be a little faster than we reckoned, or slower. It was just conceivable the rendezvous had already taken place. But Saltley didn’t think so. ‘Things always take a little longer than people reckon.’ But he was convinced the first tanker would be in position at least two days ahead of schedule, just in case, ‘That means we could find the tanker already there. I don’t think it will be, but it’s just possible.’ He gave me that lop-sided smile. ‘We’ll
know tomorrow.’ And he added. ‘Wind’s falling light. We may have to run the engine later.’

It was only now, as we neared our objective, that we began to face up to the fact that if we were right, then we were the only people who could alert the countries bordering the English Channel and the southern North Sea to the possibility of a major marine disaster. In putting it like that I am being a little unfair to Saltley. The thought would have been constantly in his mind, as it was in mine. But we hadn’t talked about it. We hadn’t brought it out into the open as something that could make the difference between life and death to a lot of people, perhaps destroy whole areas of vital marine habitat.

And that evening, sitting in the cockpit drinking our wine with the last of the sun’s warmth slipping down to the horizon, I began to realize how far from the reality of this voyage the three younger members of the crew were. Pam and Mark, they both knew it could affect them financially, but at their age that was something they took in their stride. Sailing off like this to some unknown islands had been fun, a sort of treasure hunt, a game of hide-and-seek, something you did for kicks, an adventure. I had to spell it out to them. Even then I think they saw it in terms of something remote, like death and destruction on the television screen. Only when I described the scene in the
khawr
as the dhow slid away from the tanker, with Sadeq standing at the top of the gangway, a machine pistol at his hip spraying bullets down on to us, only then, when I told them about Choffel and the’ stinking wound in his guts, and how bloody vulnerable we could be out there alone by the Selvagens facing two big tankers that were in the hands of a bunch of terrorists, did they begin to think of it as a dangerous exercise that could end all our lives.

That night it was very quiet. We had changed from spinnaker to a light-weight genoa at dusk and the boat was ghosting along at about four knots in a flat calm sea. I handed over to Mark at midnight and my bunk was like a cradle rocking gently to the long Atlantic swell. I woke sometime in the small hours, a sliver of a moon appearing
and disappearing in the doghouse windows, the murmur of voices from the cockpit.

I was in the starb’d pilot berth, everything very quiet and something about the acoustics of the hull made their voices carry into the saloon. I didn’t mean to listen, but then I heard my name mentioned and Mark saying, ‘I hope to God he’s right.’ And Pam’s voice answered him. ‘What are you suggesting?’

‘He could be lying,’ the boy said.

‘Trevor isn’t a liar.’

‘Look, suppose he did kill that French engineer …’

‘He didn’t. I know he didn’t.’

‘You don’t know anything of the sort. And keep your voice down.’

‘He can’t hear us, not in the saloon. And even if he did kill the man, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong about the tankers.’

Her brother made an angry snorting sound. ‘You’ve had the flags out for him ever since the old Salt sent him off in search of the
Aurora B
.’

‘I think he’s got a lot of guts, that’s all. Getting himself on board that tanker, then getting away on the dhow with the man he was looking for. It’s quite incredible.’

‘Exactly. Salt thinks it’s so incredible it must be true. He says nobody could have made it all up. The next thing is every word he’s uttered is gospel, so that here we are, out in the Atlantic, everything hung on that one word
salvage
. And I’m not just thinking of the money. I’m thinking of Mum and Dad, and what’s going to happen to them.’

‘We’ve all of us got stop-loss reinsurance,’ she said. ‘Mine is for fifty thousand excess of thirty. Daddy’s is a lot more I know. It probably won’t save us, but it’ll help.’

‘I told you, I’m not thinking of the money.’

‘What then?’

‘If Trevor’s lying … All right, Pam, let’s say he’s told us the truth, say it’s all gospel truth, but we’ve got it wrong about where they’re going to meet up and there’s no tanker waiting at the Selvagens, how do we ever prove that the vessels we insured aren’t lying at the bottom of the sea? We’ve got to show that they’re afloat and in the hands of Gulf
terrorists, otherwise that cleverly worded war zone exemption clause doesn’t operate.’