Geoffrey Jenkins - A bridge of Magpies

I was up to him in a moment. I slipped the rifle's safety catch. He had a knife in one hand and in the other some rings and jewellery-and what appeared to be a rather timeworn passport. Jutta was confronting him as if she couldn't believe her eyes.

'You bastard!' I exclaimed. 'Fishing… balls! You bloody grave-robbing bastard!'

His face was a mask; he didn't retaliate; just came towards me holding out the battered passport. I wasn't dumb enough to fall for that one.

I kept the gun steady on him. `The knife-drop it 1 At my feet!'

He hesitated-unflappable and therefore dangerous. But he saw I'd blast him if he tried any tricks. He gave a slight shrug and threw it open.

'Now the passport!'

It joined the knife.

'Hold out your hand!'

There were a couple of rings and some trinkets in his palm.

I risked a glance at the things he'd kicked away: a tiny coloured porcelain figurine and some smashed painted shells which had been stuck together to imitate flowers.

'Now get off that grave!' I ordered. 'You're under arrest. Where'd you get that loot from?'

He indicated the mount The wind had long ago blown the shabby cross askew-by contrast, most of the other graves were unmarked-and the sand had filed away the lettering, which appeared to have been burned in with a hot iron. It read, 'Joyce Walsh. Died in childbirth, July 1943. R.I.P.'

Jutta's thoughts were a millisecond ahead of mine. She snatched up the passport, flicked it open, paged through it rapidly, concentrating on the wording and franking-stamps. Before she'd reached the last page her eagerness seemed to 66 have evaporated.

Her voice was dry and level as if she'd experienced some big let-down.

'My mother's.'

'Yes,' said Kaptein Denny. 'The rings-I took them from her fingers myself.'

'Christ, you're a cool one!' I exploded.

Jutta said in the same level-unemotional voice, 'If that's true, you didn't do it just now. That grave's not been disturbed.'

She was right. It certainly hadn't been dug up and unless the body lay six inches deep he couldn't have got at it. Kaptein Denny left me out of what he had to say next. 'I made that cross. The liner captain gave me your mother's passport so I'd get the name right. I took the jewellery. I've kept them all… it's a long time now.'

'You were there!'

'I was there. These things belong to you now, Miss Jutta.' `

Jutta! ' I echoed. 'You're mighty quick off the mark for a charter skipper.'

'I've known Miss Jutta a long time. From the moment of birth, in fact.'

'Rescuer Jutta exclaimed. 'It was you! Kaptein Denny!' He remained unruffled. 'I rescued a lot of people that night. Your mother among them. You were born in my boat.'

'Don't play the fool with me,' I snapped at him. I put up the gun but kept my foot on the knife. 'Let's have your story straight-and quick.'

'I was in the Possession channel that night U-160 sank the City of Baroda…:

'Doing what?'

'Fishing.'

It was too pat. Fishing nets a multitude of sins.

'In wartime? With enemy subs around?'

'I was fishing.'

I let it go.

'I saw the liner beached. It was a wild, stormy night. The passengers wouldn't have stood a chance in the seas that were breaking over the rocks. I took off a lot of them – including Miss Jutta's mother, as I said.'

Jutta fiddled with the rings. She was clearly lining up on his 67 side. Maybe she'd never left it. Maybe that's why both of them were ashore the same day..

`You must have known all along who I was when I came to you in Luderitz for a boat-why didn't you say?' `

The time wasn't then.'

`You vanished before the survivors from the City of Baroda could even say thank you. No one was ever able to identify their rescuer.'

'It's the way I'm made.'

I said, 'It takes a power of modesty to dodge a couple of warships out hunting a U-boat. Yet you succeeded.'

`They concentrated on the mouth of the channel near the Kreuz shoals where the oil slick was. I took my boat round the other way.'

Okay,' I said. 'You were super-modest. It's all in the past and it doesn't matter a damn to me whether you wanted modesty or a medal. What concerns me is the present..

'It's Miss Jutta's birthday,' he interrupted. 'It's also a deathday. I'm a Malay. That was a rite for her mother's spirit you interrupted.'

Jutta gathered up the figurine and the broken seashells. Fine,' I said to Denny. 'You've done your stuff, both temporally and spiritually. I couldn't care less. What I care about is that both of you are defying the law. This is Sperr- gebiet! Get going I'

'You can't – not now! Jutta was incredulous.

'Now's just the time.'

'Not when everything's going my way

`What way is that?'

She didn't answer. What had been brewing inside me, ever since our breather-stop, lashed back at me. I went on, 'You had a lot of show-me wishes. I obliged. The party's over.'

`Struan I '

There was more than disappointment and anger in that one word-it could have been hurt. I bulldozed it aside.

'This shore isn't a free-for-all. You both seem to have forgotten that. Now let's get moving to the boat? And then?' All feeling had left her voice.

`Luderitz. Kaptein Denny will take you back?

'That "will" sounds exactly like a re-tread captain's order.' '

Re-tread or not, it's an order. I'm also confiscating all 68 this stuff until I can go through it'

'I'm staying That's flat!'

'What have you got to say-Kaptein Denny?'

'I agree to return to Gaok. There's no law against a man sitting in his boat in the channel. Merely sitting.'

He was right, of course, Essentially he was saying the same thing as Jutta, but more cleverly.

I was saved by the bell from further argument I heard Koch's Land-Rover before they did, because I was expecting him. It was grinding through an outcrop barrier behind the sandhills, and trailing a long plume of dust.

I pointed it out to them; and tried bluffing, because I didn't want Koch to come and find me unable to shift a girl and a fisherman from the beach.

'That's probably a diamond patrol. You're in a hot seat. You can save yourselves trouble by coming to the boat right away.'

'I'll give you my word not to come ashore,' said Kaptein Denny.

'And you, Jutta?'

'No.'

There was a tight silence. Then she exclaimed. 'You don't.. can't

… understand! It would take hours to explain. You' ve been wonderful-and beastly-today.'

'The boat'

'Oh, damn and blast you!'

Kaptein Denny said, 'That's not a police patrol. Their vehicles are painted bright orange so they can be spotted from their air if they're in trouble.'

Koch broke it up by coming round the sandhills in a tearaway slide. He'd clearly sighted our group. There wasn't much of his Austrian charisma in evidence when he finally pulled up hard and covered us in dust.

'What the devil goes on here-Struan? Showing tourists around?'

'Keep your cool. We were just sorting things out.' '

A woman tool'

He'd had a rough ride over the desert, judging from his red, hollow eyes and dust-covered face. His cheeks were stubble-shadowed; and dust made a tracery in the lines about his 'nose, making him look angry and older. A roof tar69 paulin covering his gear and extra jerricans of petrol had blown loose and flapped in the wind, drawing attention to the load.

Koch saw that Kaptein Denny was eyeing it and snapped, '

Get in. I want a word with you.'

`To the boat,' I ordered the other two; but they just went on standing there. Koch slammed in the gears and we drove up a dune-out of earshot,

I got in first. 'Now.. I gave him a quick rundown of the situation and why Jutta was there.

'Be your age, man!' he retorted. 'Women in these days don't dare deserts simply in order to brood over sites of minor naval actions and placate ancestral spirits! Lady Hester Stanhope's dead!'