Michael Pearce - A dead man of Barcelona

‘As a matter of fact, sir-’

‘I’d hang on a bit if I were you,’ continued the voice mercilessly. ‘You don’t want to draw attention to yourself, do you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘He won’t be bothered by a few discrepancies, anyway.’

‘That’s right, mate,’ the coarser voice chipped in encouragingly. ‘Small things are not going to bother him.’

‘It’s the big things he’d be looking for,’ said the jaunty one. ‘Just big things. Ferry, you are looking a bit off-colour. I’ll see if I can get something done about the heat in the stores. That is the problem, isn’t it?’

‘A bit hot, sir, yes. Just at the moment.’

‘Don’t worry, mate. He won’t know if things are shipshape or if they’re not!’

‘And they will be shipshape, won’t they?’ continued the merciless one, who seemed to be some sort of superior. ‘By the time he gets there? I think if I were you, Ferry, I’d get along to the stores pretty smartish.’

‘Yes, sir, I will, sir. If you don’t mind-’

‘Sir, he’s still waiting outside,’ said the seaman who had been checking Seymour’s papers.

‘Thank you, Parsons. We’d better get someone to take him over. In fact, I’ll take him over myself.’

The seaman came out, accompanied by a midshipman who looked about fifteen years old. He put out a hand.

‘Hello, Mr Seymour. I’m McPhail. The Duty Officer just at the moment. I’ll take you over to see the comber eel right away.’

‘Comber eel?’

‘That’s what we call him. The Admiral. But that’s unofficially. Nice to meet you, Inspector. Are you going to help us solve our problems?’

‘I doubt it,’ said Seymour.

The midshipman laughed. ‘Well, we start level, then. Because I don’t think we’re going to solve them, either.’

The seaman raised the bar which had been across the entrance.

‘Sorry about all this,’ said McPhail. ‘It’s not as if someone’s going to come in and pinch a ship.’

‘Where are the ships?’

‘Mostly out at sea. Wish I was, too. But there’s a corvette in over there, and, just around the corner, a Navy tanker. Nothing much just now. Are you familiar with ships, Mr Seymour?’

‘Not really. I occasionally have jobs in the docks, though.’

‘Ah, do you? You’ll know your way around this sort of place, then?’

‘I wouldn’t say that.’

But then, deciding to add to the stir:

‘A bit about Purchasing, perhaps.’

‘Ah, Purchasing?’ He raised his voice: so that it would carry to the guardroom. ‘You know about Purchasing, do you?’

Seymour thought he heard a faint groan.

‘And stores,’ he said.

‘Stores, too? Oh, that will be very helpful!’

Seymour laughed. ‘I’m not sure everyone will think so.’

McPhail laughed, too.

‘You won’t find anything too awful,’ he said. ‘But it won’t half do them good if they think that you might.’

He pointed to a large building with long windows looking out to sea.

‘That’s the mess. The officers’ mess. The wardroom, we call it. I expect the Admiral will take you over for a drink. Are you putting up there, while you’re here?’

‘No, I’ve booked in at a pension. The Pension Francia.’

McPhail looked doubtful. ‘The Francia? Well, a lot of our people do stay there. When they’re with a lady friend. Or wife, of course. Ladies can’t stay in the mess. But the Francia is very handy.’

‘It’s that sort of place, is it?’ said Seymour.

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘So you’ve come over to Gibraltar, then?’ said the Admiral.

‘Yes. There are several things I want to do. But it might be helpful if I could pretend to be investigating something else. You remember we spoke of the stores.’

‘Fine. I’ll set it up.’

‘I’ve already dropped a few hints.’

‘That probably accounts for the worried look on one or two faces.’

‘If you can arrange things, I’ll make a start. But that, of course, is not the real reason why I am here. Nor, I imagine, for your interest in Lockhart.’

‘No.’

‘What is the real reason for your interest in Lockhart?’

‘I don’t know how far I can go…’

‘I’ve done a lot of Diplomatic work.’

‘The man from the FO said you had, and that’s good. But this isn’t quite Diplomatic work.’

‘I didn’t think for a moment that it was.’

‘No.’

The Admiral rubbed his chin. The bristles made a slight scrapy noise. Probably been up for hours, thought Seymour. Shaved in the middle of the night.

‘No,’ the Admiral said again. ‘Defence is not the same as Diplomatic. Especially at the moment, when we might be in the run-up to another war.’

‘You think so?’

‘You always have to think so if you’re in the Services. Especially if you’re in the Navy. You’ve got to think that far ahead. Do you know how long it takes to get one of our capital ships on a new course? One of the big ones? Well, you won’t do it in much less than three-quarters of a mile. So it’s no good coming up at the last moment and saying, “Mind that boat!” Or rock, or whatever. So you’ve got to think ahead. Which, believe it or not, is just what the Government is doing.’

Seymour didn’t believe it. In his experience, which was of the ministry responsible for the police, the Home Office, ministers didn’t think ahead. They just improvised on the spot, after the event, when it was already too late.

‘It’s this new bloke,’ said the Admiral. ‘Did you know we’ve got a new bloke at the Admiralty?’

Seymour didn’t. In the East End Naval affairs did not loom large.

‘Yes. There’s been a switch around and we’ve got a new bloke. Churchill, his name is. Doesn’t know anything about the Navy, of course. Been a soldier. Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t get you far when you’re managing ships. But this new bloke seems actually to have a few ideas, and some of them are not totally daft. For instance, he intends to switch the whole Navy from coal to oil. Fisher’s idea, of course, but a good one.’

He looked expectantly at Seymour. Seymour could see this was significant but for the life of him he couldn’t see why. Something to do with fuel, obviously. What made ships go. Until now he had not, actually, ever thought about this. If anything, he was still living mentally in the world of sail. Of course, he knew, vaguely, that sail was being superseded by steam. That must be the coal. And now, apparently, coal was being superseded in its turn by oil.

‘Hmm,’ he said, trying to sound impressed. ‘Important, I imagine.’

‘It is!’ said the Admiral enthusiastically. ‘You can see at once the implications it has for us!’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Seymour. ‘Oh, yes.’

‘Take refuelling times, for instance. With oil, all you’ve got to do is stick a pipe in and then pump. With coal, you’ve got to have dozens of people shovelling. Takes hours. The switch from coal to oil will cut refuelling times — and, therefore, turn-round times — by four-fifths!’

‘Amazing!’ said Seymour.

‘Oh, it’s going to be. And that’s not the end of it. It will revolutionize the way we do things. But we’ve got to get on with it. Otherwise, the Germans will do it first. In fact, they probably have done it first! But — and this is where I really do take my hat off to the Government — in one respect we’re ahead of them.’

‘We are? Oh, good!’

The Admiral paused dramatically, then lowered his voice.

‘We’ve got the oil,’ he said.

‘Got the-?’

‘Yes. Stitched it up. Bought the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Guaranteed the Navy’s oil supplies for years.’