Алистер Маклин - When Eight Bells Toll

‘I want aboard. I want to see this smashed transmitter of his.’

‘Why?’

‘A hunch, let me call it, Annabelle. No more.’

Uncle Arthur was going in for the long silences in a big way to-day. Then he said: ‘A hunch? A hunch? You told me this morning you were on to something.’

‘There’s something else. I want you to contact the Post Office Savings Bank, Head Office, in Scotland. After that, the Records files of some Scottish newspapers. I suggest The Glasgow Herald , the Scottish Daily Express and, most particularly, the West Highland weekly, the Oban Times.’

‘Ah!’ No relief this time, just satisfaction. ‘This is more like it, Caroline. What do you want and why?’

So I told him what I wanted and why, lots more of the fancy code work, and when I’d finished he said: ‘I’ll have my staff on to this straight away. I’ll have all the information you want by midnight.’

‘Then I don’t want it, Annabelle. Midnight’s too late for me. Midnight’s no use to me.’

‘Don’t ask the impossible, Caroline.’ He muttered something to himself, something I couldn’t catch, then: ‘I’ll pull every string, Caroline. Nine o’clock.’

‘Four o’clock, Annabelle.’

‘Four o’clock this afternoon?’ When it came to incredulity he had me whacked to the wide. ‘Four hours’ time? You have taken leave of your senses.’

‘You can have ten men on it in ten minutes. Twenty in twenty minutes. Where’s the door that isn’t open to you? Especially the door of the Assistant Commissioner. Professionals don’t kill for the hell of it. They kill because they must. They kill to gain time. Every additional hour is vital to them. And if it’s vital to them, how much more so is it to us? Or do you think we’re dealing with amateurs, Annabelle?’

‘Call me at four,’ he said heavily. ‘I’ll see what I have for you. What’s your next move, Caroline?’

‘Bed,’ I said. ‘I’m going to get some sleep.’

‘Of course. Time, as you said, is of the essence. You mustn’t waste it, must you, Caroline?’ He signed off. He sounded bitter. No doubt he was bitter. But then, insomnia apart, Uncle Arthur could rely on a full quota of sleep during the coming night. Which was more than I could. No certain foreknowledge, no second sight, just a hunch, but not a small one, the kind of hunch you couldn’t have hidden behind the Empire State Building. Just like the one I had about the Shangri-la.

I only just managed to catch the last fading notes of the alarm as it went off at ten minutes to four. I felt worse than I had done when we’d lain down after a miserable lunch of corned beef and reconstituted powdered potatoes – if old Skouras had had a spark of human decency, he’d have made that invitation for dinner. I wasn’t only growing old, I felt old. I’d been working too long for Uncle Arthur. The pay was good but the hours and working conditions – I’d have wagered that Uncle Arthur hadn’t even set eyes on a tin of corned beef since the Second World War – were shocking. And all this constant worrying, chiefly about life expectancy, helped wear a man down.

Hunslett came out of his cabin as I came out of mine. He looked just as old as I did. If they had to rely on a couple of ageing crocks like us, I thought morosely, the rising generation must be a pretty sorry lot.

Passing through the saloon, I wondered bitterly about the identity of all those characters who wrote so glibly about the Western Isles in general and the Torbay area in particular as being a yachtsman’s paradise without equal in Europe. Obviously, they’d never been there. Fleet Street was their home and home was a place they never left, not if they could help it. An ignorant bunch of travel and advertising copywriters who regarded King’s Cross as the northern limits of civilisation. Well, maybe not all that ignorant, at least they were smart enough to stay south of King’s Cross.

Four o’clock on an autumn afternoon, but already it was more night than day. The sun wasn’t down yet, not by a very long way, but it might as well have been for all the chance it had of penetrating the rolling masses of heavy dark cloud hurrying away to the eastwards to the inky blackness of the horizon beyond Torbay. The slanting sheeting rain that foamed whitely across the bay further reduced what little visibility there was to a limit of not more than four hundred yards. The village itself, half a mile distant and nestling in the dark shadow of the steeply-rising pine-covered hills behind, might never have existed. Off to the north-west I could see the navigation lights of a craft rounding the headland, Skouras returning from his stabiliser test run. Down in the Shangri-la’s gleaming galley a master chef would be preparing the sumptuous evening meal, the one to which we hadn’t been invited. I tried to put the thought of that meal out of my mind, but I couldn’t, so I just put it as far away as possible and followed Hunslett into the engine-room.

Hunslett took the spare earphones and squatted beside me on the deck, note-book on his knee. Hunslett was as competent in shorthand as he was in everything else. I hoped that Uncle Arthur would have something to tell us, that Hunslett’s presence there would be necessary. It was.

‘Congratulations, Caroline,’ Uncle Arthur said without preamble. ‘You really are on to something.’ As far as it is possible for a dead flat monotone voice to assume an overtone of warmth, then Uncle Arthur’s did just that. He sounded positively friendly. More likely it was some freak of transmission or reception but at least he hadn’t started off by bawling me out.

‘We’ve traced those Post Office Savings books,’ he went on. He rattled off book numbers and details of times and amounts of deposits, things of no interest to me, then said: ‘Last deposits were on December 27th. Ten pounds in each case. Present balance is £78 14s. 6p. Exactly the same in both. And those accounts have not been closed.’

He paused for a moment to let me congratulate him, which I did, then continued.

‘That’s nothing, Caroline. Listen. Your queries about any mysterious accidents, deaths, disappearances off the west coasts of Inverness-shire or Argyll, or anything happening to people from that area. We’ve struck oil, Caroline, we’ve really struck oil. My God, why did we never think of this before. Have your pencil handy?’

‘Harriet has.’

‘Here we go. This seems to have been the most disastrous sailing season for years in the west of Scotland. But first, one from last year. The Pinto , a well-found sea-worthy forty-five foot motor cruiser left Kyle of Lochalsh for Oban at eight a.m. September 4th. She should have arrived that afternoon. She never did. No trace of her has ever been found.’

‘What was the weather at the time, Annabelle?’

‘I thought you’d ask me that, Caroline.’ Uncle Arthur’s combination of modesty and quiet satisfaction could be very trying at times. ‘I checked with the Met. office. Force one, variable. Flat calm, cloudless sky. Then we come to this year. April 6th and April 26th. The Evening Star and the Jeannie Rose. Two East Coast fishing boats – one from Buckie, the other from Fraserburgh.’

‘But both based on the west coast?’

‘I wish you wouldn’t try to steal my thunder,’ Uncle Arthur complained. ‘Both were based on Oban. Both were lobster boats. The Evening Star , the first one to go, was found stranded on the rocks off Islay. The Jeannie Rose vanished without trace. No member of either crew was ever found. Then again on the 17th of May. This time a well-known racing yacht, the Cap Gris Nez , an English built and owned craft, despite her name, highly experienced skipper, navigator and crew, all of them long-time and often successful competitors in R.O.R.C. races. That class. Left Londonderry for the north of Scotland in fine weather. Disappeared. She was found almost a month later – or what was left of her – washed up on the Isle of Skye.’