Hammond Innes - The Black Tide

He shook his head, laughing and telling me he wasn’t here to gossip about the consortium, just to offer me a job and if I didn’t want it, what the hell did it matter to me who the owners were. ‘They operate in the Gulf, of course, and they want ships’ officers, deck

as well as engineers.’ He stood there for a moment, feet apart, with his back to the fire watching me out of his bright little button eyes. ‘Tonight I’ll be in Falmouth,’ he said. ‘I’ll be talking to the captain of the Petros Jupiter. He’ll be looking for another job I wouldn’t wonder.’ He waited, and when I didn’t say anything, he nodded. ‘Okay, suit yourself.’ He pulled a business card from his wallet, took out what looked like a real gold pen, and after copying some entries from a leather diary on to the back of the card, he handed it to me. ‘If you change your mind, those are my immediate movements.’ The card described him as Consultant. On the back he had written down dates and telephone numbers for Liverpool, Nantes, Marseilles, Dubai.

He stood there a moment longer, pointedly surveying the stone-walled room and the junk furniture. Then he turned and zipped up his fleece-lined jacket. I opened the door for him and as he was going out he paused, looking down at me. ‘You’re not a company man any longer. You want a berth, you got to go out into the market and face all the other ships’ officers that’s out of a job.’ His little eyes were cold, his lips a hard line. ‘I’m warning you, Rodin, you’ll find the going rough. A VLCC — you never had anything like that. It’s the chance of a lifetime for a man like you.’ He stood there a moment longer, staring down at me as though to check that his words had sunk in. Then he nodded. ‘Okay. It’s your loss. But if you change your mind, ring me before I leave for France.’

He left then and I stood there, watching him as he

climbed the path, leaning his body into it, and thinking how odd it was, the power of the media. First the publishers, conjured out of the blue because of the publicity, and now Baldwick, appearing like some evil genie and talking of pollution as though oil slicks could be eliminated by rubbing a few gold coins together.

I went back into the cottage, to another night of loneliness with only the memory of Karen for company. The next day I had a service for her in the local church.

There was still nothing to bury. Nothing had been found of her, nothing at all, so it was just a sort of memorial service to a girl who had immolated herself in protest against oil pollution. Most people seemed to regard it as a futile gesture, but they were kind and they turned up in force. The environmentalists made a bit of a demo out of it, the local press were there and two BBC men from Bristol. The little church was packed and it was raining.

The service was very moving, I think because of all the people and the strength of feeling that reached out to me. And afterwards, when one of the reporters started questioning me about her motives, I was in such an emotional state that I just let my feelings rip, telling him I’d get the bastard who put the Petros Jupiter on the rocks, killing Karen, killing the birds, ruining our bit of Cornwall. ‘If the government won’t stop it, I will.’ There was a camera running, everybody staring, and when somebody asked me if I meant to take on the oil companies I answered him, ‘No, the ship owners — the tanker owners — the bastards that

switch names, companies, ownership — the whole stinking, sodding mess of corrupt tanker dealing…’ Somebody pulled me away then, Andy I think. I was in tears, coming out of the church, straight from the service. And that night they had a brief flash of that interview on Nationwide. I watched it in the lounge of a Penzance hotel over a farewell drink with the Kerrisons, shocked as much by the haggard look of my face, and the tears streaming down it, as by the violence of my words. Then they drove me to the station and I caught the night train to London.

It was five days since it had happened, five miserable days alone at the cottage. On the Saturday, when I had seen the estate agents in Penzance, I had told them they could deal with the contents when they liked, but to leave the cottage until the spring, when the evenings would be drawing out and the daffodils in bloom in the sheltered patch behind the elephant rock. It would sell better then. But though it wouldn’t be on the market immediately, the mere fact of having arranged to sell it had had the effect of making me feel an interloper, the place we had striven for and loved so much suddenly no longer part of my life. It added to the bitterness of my departure as the wheels rattled me eastwards through the night.

I hadn’t bothered about a sleeper. I sat up all the way, dozing fitfully, thinking about the Petros Jupiter and what I’d do to that dirty little Greek when I caught up with him. It was either that or start thinking about Karen, and I couldn’t face that, not any more. Not after that service. I felt drained, too nervously

exhausted to plan ahead. I didn’t even think about the letter from the publishers. That meant thinking constructively, about my writing, about the future. I didn’t want to think about the future. I didn’t want to face up to a future alone. And so I sat there, my mind drifting on the edge of consciousness, nerves taut and the wheels hammering the name Speridion into my tired brain. Aristides Speridion. Aristides Speridion.

Dawn broke, cold and grey, the wind blowing out of the north, a curtain of sleet beginning to whiten the roofs of the buildings backed on to the railway. It was much too early to ring the solicitors when we pulled into Paddington, so I took the Circle Line to Liverpool Street, checked my two cases into a lock-up and just had time to buy some papers before catching the next train for Colchester.

Except for a brief paragraph in the Telegraph headed oil slick demo at cornish church, the Petros Jupiter seemed to have dropped right out of the news. The lead story in all the papers was the arrest of four more terrorists at the GB Shahpur Petrochemical Company’s offices in the City. They were charged with being implicated in the Piccadilly Underground explosion that had killed eleven people just before Christmas.

Feeling drowsy as the train ran into the flat Essex countryside, I went into the buffet for some coffee. There was a queue and, while I was waiting, the guard came through checking tickets. The buffet car was full, every seat occupied, and when I finally got my coffee I took it through into the next coach and sat down in

an almost empty first class compartment. There was one occupant only, a neat elderly man with rimless half-glasses who sat hunched in an overcoat in the far window seat reading the Economist. He was making notes and on the seat beside him several articles on insurance lay on top of a slim black leather briefcase. Outside the windows, the drizzle had turned to snow, a thick driving veil of white. I held the paper cup in both hands, sipping the hot coffee and wondering whether I was wasting my time travelling all the way down to see Ferrers when it would have been so much simpler to phone. Quite probably Lloyd’s Intelligence Services wouldn’t know anything more than had already been released to the press. And if they did, would he tell me?

One thing I was sure about, however … if they did know anything more, then I had a far better chance of getting it out of him if I saw him personally. Also, by going to their offices I could see the set-up, form some idea of what their sources of information were. I knew they had agents all over the world, but though I had been conscious of the extraordinary global network controlled by Lloyd’s of London ever since I had become a ship’s officer, I had no real idea how the organization worked, least of all how its Intelligence Service operated. And from Colchester of all places! Why not London?