When eight bells toll (4 page)

"In that case they'd be too late anyway. The damage would be done."

"Not without the sole witness who could testify against them?"

"I think we'd better have those guns out."

"No."

"You don't blame me for trying?"

"No."

"Baker and Delmont.  Think of them."

"I'm thinking of nothing else but them. You don't have to stay."

He set his glass down very carefully. He was really letting himself go to-night, he'd allowed that dark craggy face its second expression in ten minutes and it wasn't a very encouraging one. Then he picked up his glass and grinned,

"You don't know what you're saying," he said kindly. "Your neck—that's what comes from the blood supply to the brain being interrupted. You're not fit to fight off a teddy-bear. Who's going to look after you if they start playing games?"

"I'm sorry,' I said. I meant it. I'd worked with Hunslett maybe ten times in the ten years I'd known him and it had been a stupid thing for me to say. About the only thing Hunslett was incapable of was leaving your side in time of trouble. "You were speaking of Uncle?"

"Yes. We know where the
Nantesville
is. Uncle could get a Navy boat to shadow her, by radar if------"

"I know where she was. She upped anchor as I left. By dawn she'll be a hundred miles away - in any direction."

"She's gone? We've scared them off? They're going toJove this."   He sot down heavily, then looked at me.   "But we have her new description------"

"I said that didn't matter. By to-morrow she'll have another description. The
Hokomaru
from Yokohama, with green top-sides, Japanese flag, different masts-----"

"An air search. We could-----"

"By the time an air search could be organised they'd have twenty thousand square miles of sea to cover. You've heard the forecast. It's bad. Low cloud - and they'd have to fly under the low cloud. Cuts their effectiveness by ninety per cent. And poor visibility and rain. Not a chance in a hundred, not one in a thousand of positive identification. And if they do locate them - if - what then? A friendly wave from the pilot? Not much else he can do."

"The  Navy.   They  could call  up the Navy-----"

"Call up what Navy? From the Med? Or the Far East? The Navy has very few ships left and practically none in those parts. By the time any naval vessel could get to the scene it would be night again and the
Nantesville
to hell and gone. Even if a naval ship did catch up with it, what then? Sink it with gunfire - with maybe the twenty-five missing crew members of the
Nantesville
locked up in the hold?"

"A boarding party?"

"With the same twenty-five ex-crew members lined up on deck with pistols at their backs and Captain Imrie and his thugs politely asking the Navy boys what their next move was going to be?"

"I'll get into my pyjamas," Hunslett said tiredly. At the doorway he paused and turned. "If the
Nantesville
had gone, her crew - the new crew - have gone too and we'll be having no visitors after all. Had you thought of that?"

"No."

"I don't really believe it either."

They came at  twenty past four in the morning. They came in a very calm and orderly and law-abiding and official fashion, they stayed for forty minutes and by the time they had left I still wasn't sure whether they were our men or not.

Hunslett came into my small cabin, starboard side forward, switched on the light and shook me. "Wake up," he said loudly. "Come on. Wake up."

I was wide awake.   I hadn't closed an eye since I'd lain down. I groaned and yawned a bit without overdoing it then opened a bleary eye. There was no one behind him.

"What is it? What do you want?" A pause. "What the hell's up? It's just after four in the morning."

"Don't ask me what's up," Hunslett said irritably. "Police. Just come aboard. They say it's urgent."

"Police?   Did you say, ' police'?"

"Yes.   Come  on,  now.    They're  waiting."

"Police?    Aboard  our  boat?    What------"

"Oh, for God's sake! How many more night-caps did you have last night after I went to bed? Police. Two of them and two customs. Ifs urgent, they say."

"It better bloody well be urgent. In the middle of .the bloody night. Who do they think we are — escaped train robbers? Haven't you told them who we are? Oh, all right, all right, all
right
!
I'm coming."

Hunslett left, and thirty seconds afterwards I joined him in the saloon. Four men sat there, two police officers and two customs officials. They didn't look a very villainous bunch to me. The older, bigger policeman got to his feet A tall, burly, brown-faced sergeant in his late forties, he looked me over with a cold eye, looked at the near-empty whisky bottle with the two unwashed glasses on the table, then looked back at me. He didn't like wealthy yachtsmen. He didn't like wealthy yachtsmen who drank too much at night-time and were bleary-eyed, bloodshot and tousle-haired at the following crack of dawn. He didn't like wealthy effete yachtsmen who wore red silk dragon Chinese dressing-gowns with a Paisley scarf to match tied negligently round the neck. I didn't like them very much myself, especially the Paisley scarf, much in favour though it was with the yachting fraternity: but I had to have something to conceal those bruises on my neck.

"Are you the owner of this boat, sir?" the sergeant inquired. An unmistakable West Highland voice and a courteous one, but it took him all his time to get his tongue round the "sir."

"If you would tell me what makes it any of your damn' business," I said unpleasantly, "maybe I'll answer that and maybe I won't. A private boat is the same as a private house, Sergeant. You have to have a warrant before you shove your way in. Or don't you know the law?"

"He knows the law," one of the customs men put in. A small dark character, smooth-shaven at four in the morning,with a persuasive voice, not West Highland. "Be reasonable. This is not the sergeant's job. We got him out
of
bed almost three hours ago. He's just obliging us."

I ignored him. I said to the sergeant: "This is the middle of die night in a lonely Scottish bay. How would you fed if four unidentified men came aboard in the middle of the night?" I was taking a chance on that one, but a fair chance. If they were who I thought they might be and if I were who they thought I might be, then I'd never talk like that. But an innocent man would, "Any means of identifying yourselves?"

"Identifying myself?" The sergeant stared coldly at me. "I don't have to identify myself. Sergeant MacDonald. I've been in charge of the Torbay police station for eight years. Ask any man in Torbay. They all know me." If he was who he claimed to be this was probably the first time in his life that anyone had asked him for identification. He nodded to the seated policeman. "Police-Constable MacDonald."

"Your son?" The resemblance was unmistakable. "Nothing like keeping it in the family, eh, Sergeant?" I didn't know whether to believe him or not, but I felt I'd been an irate householder long enough, A degree less truculence was in order. "And customs, eh? I know the law about you, too. No search warrants for you boys. I believe the police would like your powers. Go anywhere you like and ask no one's permission beforehand. That's it, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir." It was the younger customs man who answered. Medium height, fair hair, running a little to fat, Belfast accent, dressed like the other in blue overcoat, peaked hat, brown gloves, smartly creased trousers. "We hardly ever do, though. We prefer co-operation. We like to ask."

"And you'd like to ask to search this boat, is that it?" Hunslett said.

"Yes, sir."

"Why?" I asked. Puzzlement now in my voice. And in my mind. I just didn't know what I had on my hands. "If we're all going to be so courteous and co-operative, could we have any explanation?"

"No reason in the world why not, sir." The older customs man was almost apologetic. "A truck with contents valued at £12,000 was hi-jacked on the Ayrshire coast last night -night before last, that is, now. In the news this evening.From information received, we know it was transferred to a small boat.   We think it came north,"

"Why?"

"Sorry, sir. Confidential. This is the third port we've visited and the thirteenth boat - the fourth hi Torbay - that we've been on an the past fifteen hours. We've been kept on the run, I can tell you." An easy friendly voice, a voice that said: "You don't really think we suspect you. We've a job to do, that's all,"

"And you're searching all boats that have come up from the south. Or you think have come from there. Fresh arrivals, anyway. Has it occurred to you that any boat with hi-jacked goods on board wouldn't dare pass through the Crinan canal? Once you're in there, you're trapped. For four hours. So he'd have to come round the Mull of Kintyre. We've been here since this afternoon. It would take a pretty fast boat to get up here in that time."

"You've got a pretty fast boat here, sir," Sergeant Mac-Donald said. I wondered how the hell .they managed it, from the Western Isles to .the East London docks every sergeant in the country had the same wooden voice, the same wooden face, the same cold eye. Must be something to do with the uniform, I ignored him,

"What are we - um - supposed to have stolen?"

"Chemicals.   It was an I.C.I, truck."

"Chemicals?" I looked at Hunslett, grinned, then turned back to the customs officer. "Chemicals, eh? We're loaded with them. But not £12,000 worth, I'm afraid."

There was a brief silence. MacDonald said: "Would you mind explaining, sir?"

"Not at all." I lit a cigarette, the little mind enjoying its big moment, and smiled. "This is a government boat, Sergeant MacDonald. I thought you would have seen the flag. Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. We're marine biologists. Our after cabin is a floating laboratory. Look at our library here." Two shelves loaded with technical tomes. "And if you've still any doubt left I can give you two numbers, one hi Glasgow, one in London, that will establish our
bona fides.
Or phone the lock-master in the Crinan sea-basin. We spent last night there,"

"Yes, sir." The lack of impression I had made on the sergeant was total. "Where did you go in your dinghy this evening?"

"I beg your pardon, Sergeant?"

"You were seen to leave this boat in a black rubber dinghy about five o'clock this evening." I'd heard of icy fingers playing up and down one's spine but it wasn't fingers I felt then
₃
it was a centipede with a hundred icy boots on. "You went out into the Sound. Mr. Mcllroy, the postmaster, saw you."

"I hate to impugn the character of a fellow civil servant but he must have been drunk." Funny how an icy feeling could make you sweat. "I haven't got a black rubber dinghy, I've never owned a black rubber dinghy. You just get out your little magnifying glass, Sergeant, and if you can find a black rubber dinghy I'll make you a present of the brown wooden dinghy, which is the only one we have on the
Firecrest,"

The wooden expression cracked a little. He wasn't so certain now. "So you weren't out?"

"I
was
out. In our own dinghy. I was just round the comer of Garve Island there, collecting some marine samples from the Sound. I can show them to you in the after cabin. We're not here on holiday, you know."

"No offence, no offence." I was a member of the working classes now, not a plutocrat, and he could afford to thaw a little. "Mr. Mcllroy's eyesight isn't what it was and everything looks black against the setting sun. You don't
look
the type, I must say, who'd land on the shores of the Sound and bring down the telephone wires to the mainland."

The centipede started up again and broke into a fast gallop. Cut off from the mainland. How very convenient for somebody. I didn't spend any time wondering who had brought the wires down - it had been no act of God, I was sure of that.

"Did you mean what I thought you to mean, Sergeant?" I said slowly. "That you suspected me------"

"We can't take chances, sir." He was almost apologetic now. Not only was I a working man, I was a man working for the Government. All men working for the Government are
ipso facto
respectable and trustworthy citizens.

"But you won't mind ,if we take a little look round?" The dark-haired customs officer was even more apologetic. "The lines are down and, well, you know . . ." His voice trailed off and he smiled. "If you were the hi-jackers - I appreciate now that it's a chance in a million, but still - and if we didn't search - well, we'd be out of a job to-morrow. Just a formality."

"I wouldn't want to see that happen, Mr. –ah–"

"Thomas. Thank you. Your ship's papers? Ah, thank you," He handed them to the younger man. "Let's see now. Ah, the wheelhouse. Could Mr. Durran here use the wheelhouse to make copies? Won't take five minutes."

"Certainly.   Wouldn't he be more comfortable here?"

"We're modernised now, sir. Portable photo-copier. Standard on the job. Has to be dark. Won't take five minutes. Can we begin in this laboratory of yours?"

A formality, he'd said. Well, he was right there, as a search it was the least informal thing I'd ever come across. Five minutes after he'd gone to the wheelhouse Durran came aft to join us and he and Thomas went through the
Firecrest as
if they were looking for the Koh-i-noor. To begin with, at least. Every piece of mechanical and electrical equipment in the after cabin had to be explained to them. They looked in every locker and cupboard.. They rummaged through the ropes and fenders in the large stem locker aft of the laboratory and I thanked God I hadn't followed my original idea of stowing the dinghy, motor and scuba gear in there. They even examined the after toilet. As if I'd be careless enough to drop the Koh-i-noor in there.

They spent most time of all in the engine-room. It was worth examining. Everything looked brand new, and gleamed. Two big 100 h.p. diesels, diesel generator, radio generator, hot and cold water pumps, central heating plant; big oi! and water tanks and the two long rows of lead-acid batteries. Thomas seemed especially interested in the batteries.