Hammond Innes - Medusa

I called again as I started up the ladder and Carp’s tonsured head popped out of the wheelhouse. He was his usual gloomy self as he showed me another frame with its fastenings gone, also at least three deck beams that needed replacement. ‘Won’t ever finish in time, will we?’ he grumbled as he indicated one of the knees rotted where water had been seeping from the deck above. ‘And the engine still to be fiddled in, all the rigging. I’ll ‘ave to take Rod off of the American boat for that.’

I told him that was impossible. He already had Luis varnishing the brightwork. With Rodriguez, that would make two of our locals, as well as himself, working on the one boat. ‘Well,’ he said, looking me straight in the face, ‘d’you want ’er finished on time, or don’t you?’ And he added, ‘Up to you. I didn’t promise nothing.’

In the end I agreed, as he knew I would. And all the time we were talking I had the feeling there was something else on his mind. It wasn’t until I was leaving that he suddenly blurted it out — ‘That man outside the shop this morning — did you see him? A little red car. He was there just as I left. Did he come into the shop?’

I was on the ladder then, beginning to climb down, my face almost level with the deck. ‘Yes. I sold him a couple of charts.’

‘Did he say who he was?’ I told him the man’s name and he nodded. ‘Thort so. He must have recognised me, but he didn’t want to know me, did he, so I thort I was mistaken.’ He leaned out towards me. ‘If it wasn’t for me that man would’ve died of cold. Well, not just me. There was four of us in the pilot boat, see, but it was me wot cut him down off the Woodbridge Haven buoy. Did he give you any sort of rank?’

‘No,’ I said, curious now and climbing back up the ladder.

‘Mebbe he hasn’t got one now. There was a lot of talk at the time.’

‘About what?’

‘Well, it was an arms run, wasn’t it, and he was a Navy lieutenant.’ And then he was telling me the whole story, how the Deben pilot at Felixstowe Ferry had seen something odd fixed to the Haven buoy and the four of them had gone out in the dawn to find a man fully clothed and tied to the side of the buoy with a mooring line. ‘Poor bastard. We thort he were dead. Cold as buggery off the bar it was, the wind out of the north and beginning to whip up quite a sea. Then later, when he’s out of hospital, he comes and buys us all a pint or two in the Ferryboat, so he knows bloody well I was one of those that rescued him. Funny!’ he said. ‘I mean, you’d think he’d come and say hullo, wouldn’t you? I’d seen ‘im before, too. When he were a little runt of a fella living with a no-good couple and their son on an old ‘ouseboat in a mud creek back of the Ferryboat, an’ I wasn’t the only one that recognised him. That’s what started tongues wagging.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, you bin there, when you was looking for a boat that spring. You know wot it’s like there, an’ a couple of kids, no proper man to control them. They broke into a yacht moored back of the Horse Sand and got at the drink locker. No harm done, but later they had a go at the RAF mess over at Bawdsey — for a lark they said. People remember that sort of thing.’

I didn’t see what he was getting at. ‘What’s that got to do with arms-running?’ I asked. ‘You said something about arms-running.’

‘That’s right. But we didn’t know about that at the time, did we? There was just a lot of rumours flying about on account of strangers poking around in the mud at the entrance to the King’s Fleet. Then, after those terrorist attacks on police stations at Liverpool and Glasgow, and on that court in Clerkenwell, the papers were full of it. This Lieutenant Jones, he makes a statement, about how he’d been bird-watching an’ had seen them unloading the arms at the King’s Fleet, about half a mile inside the Deben mouth. It was an IRA gun run, you see, and they caught him watching ‘em from the high bank of the river as they landed the stuff. That’s how he come to be on the buoy. Didn’t shoot him, instead, they threw him overboard out beyond the Deben bar, so he’d drown and it would look like an accident.’

He shook his head slightly, muttering to himself: ‘Funny that — him not wanting to talk to me.’ And then he brightened. ‘Mebbe they sacked ‘im. That’d account for it. There was a swarm of investorigaty journalists digging into his background, and some of the stories they ran …’ He gave a little shrug and turned away. ‘Well, better get on if we’re ever goin’ ter finish this job.’ And without another word he went back to the wheelhouse and disappeared below.

Was that it? Was he now into some smuggling racket, having been forced to resign his commission? All those questions about coves and inlets … I was wondering about him as I drove home along the waterfront, wondering whether I would be able to get anything out of him during the evening.

He was punctual, of course, the bell of the chandlery sounding virtually on the dot of 20.30. I called down to him to come up, and introducing him to Soo, I said, ‘Is it Mr Lloyd Jones or do you have anything in the way of a rank?’

‘Gareth Lloyd Jones will do,’ he said, smiling and taking Soo’s outstretched hand. Some sort of a spark must have passed between them even then, her cheeks suddenly flushed and a bright flash of excitement in those dark eyes of hers as she said, ‘I think you’ll enjoy this evening. Manuela and her friends have done a great job of the preparations.’ But I didn’t take note of it at the time, still thinking about the way he had parried my question. If my suspicions were correct I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to be seen entertaining a man who might land himself in trouble.

Petra was usually late and that evening was no exception. She was a large-boned girl with a freckled face and wide mouth that always seemed to be full of teeth. But her real attraction was her vitality. She came thundering up the stairs, that broad grin on her face and breathless with apologies. ‘Sorry. Found I’d ripped my pants dancing the other evening and had to change.’ She saw Lloyd Jones and stopped. ‘I’m Petra Callis.’ She held out her hand.

‘Gareth Lloyd Jones.’ And then, as I was getting her a drink, I heard her say, ‘Soo will have told you what I’m up to, digging about in megalithic holes. I live out there on Bloody Island, a leaky tent among the ruins.’ She jerked her head towards the window. Then she asked with blatant curiosity, ‘What’s your line of country? Yachts, I suppose, or are you a villa man?’

‘No, neither.’

But Petra wasn’t the sort of girl to be put off like that. She opened her mouth wide and laughed. ‘Well, come on — what do you do? Or is it something mysterious that we don’t talk about?’

I glanced back over my shoulder to see Lloyd Jones staring at her, a shut look on his face, mouth half-open and his eyes wide as though in a state of shock at the blatantness of her curiosity. Then he smiled, a surprisingly charming smile as he forced himself to relax. ‘Nothing mysterious about it. I’m a Navy officer.’

As I passed Petra her gin and tonic Soo was asking him what branch of the Navy. ‘Exec,’ he replied, and she picked that up immediately. ‘So was my father. Came up through the lower deck.’ A moment later I heard the word Ganges mentioned.

‘HMS Ganges? ’ I asked. ‘On Shotley Point just north of Harwich. Is that the school you were referring to this morning, the one you and Evans were at?’ And when he nodded, I said, ‘It’s called Eurosport Village now, or was when I was last there. I know it quite well. There’s a commercial range and I used to practise there before going on to Bisley for the Meeting.’