Hammond Innes - The Black Tide

He gave me a quick hard look. ‘The Petros Jupiter?’

I nodded.

The lift came. ‘I don’t think we’ll object to your running the enquiries in-tandem. I know Mike won’t. He knows now he slipped up on the Petros Jupiter. He should never have written the slips. As good as told me so last night. But it’s the other two claims … if he has to meet those—’ He gave a little shrug. We were out into Lime Street, picking our way diagonally across the grey, churned-up slush of the roadway and into the great arched portals of Lloyd’s itself.

I couldn’t help it. I suddenly felt overwhelmed, a sense of excitement, of awe almost. All my life, ever since I had gone to sea, I’d always heard of Lloyd’s. It had always been there in the background, to initiate enquiries into any misadventure, any slip-up in navigation, to survey the ship, check seaworthiness, pay for damage, arrange salvage, the cargo too — and here I was entering the building, being taken to lunch in the Captain’s Room. A waiter took our coats, a magnificent figure in long scarlet greatcoat, black-collared and cuffed, the whole elaborate archaic paraphernalia topped off with a gold-banded tall black hat. The grandeur and opulence of that entrance; it was more like a museum, except the undercover roadway went through to the offices of the Baltic Exchange. ‘I said

I’d pick him up at his box,’ Saltley said. ‘Give you an opportunity to see the Room.’

We went through swing doors into a high room floored in black, white and grey marble, half a dozen flags flanking a stained glass window at one end, and at the other a scarlet-coated waiter sitting at a desk. Saltley said good morning to him, produced a plastic pass card and went on through revolving doors that were posted as Private — for the use of Members and their associates, through into a lofty, galleried room the size of a football field filled with dark-suited men armed with papers, books and files. They stood about, talking softly or hurrying between the ranks of ‘boxes’ that were the underwriters’ pitches and looked like old-fashioned, high-backed pews, except that the men sitting in them were writing busily or looking up information in the books and ledgers that were stacked on the shelves.

‘It goes on like this all day,’ Saltley said over his shoulder as he pushed his way to the far end of the Room. ‘Most of the fellows you see rushing about are brokers and their clerks busy getting underwriters to sign the slips that give insurance cover to whatever the business is they’re handling. Looks a madhouse, but the box arrangement is the most space-saving way of handling such a huge volume of business.’

The wall to the left was papered with telex sheets and typed information, the Stock Exchange news running into weather forecasts and sports results. There were three lifts, but Saltley turned away from them, threading his way quickly between ledger-piled

boxes, heading out from under the balcony into the centre of the Room. Michael Stewart’s box was in the far corner. There were three men in it and a queue of three or four clerks waiting upon him with papers ready in their hands. He handed over to one of the others and came hurrying across. I saw him glance at Saltley, who gave a little nod, then he was greeting me. ‘We’ll have a quick drink first. I’ve sent my daughter up to grab a table. She insisted on lunching with us.’ His hand was on my arm, steering me to the lifts near the Lime Street entrance, and I was remembering my meeting with the girl the previous night. She had been quite plain-looking with a squarish face, very little make-up and no jewellery; a big, sensible girl with strong hands and a nice smile. ‘You’ve seen the files, have you? Got all the information you need?’ His voice sounded tense. ‘That’s the Casualty Board, incidentally.’ He nodded to two short display panels opposite the lifts peppered with yellow pages of typescript secured with bulldog clips. ‘That’s where all the bad news is posted. The Ulcer Board, a friend of mine calls it. Every year, it seems, the casualties get worse. When are you leaving?’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ Saltley answered for me. ‘He’s flying to Nantes.’

‘Nantes! Why Nantes?’

‘A contact,’ I told him. I turned to Saltley. ‘A hunch really.’ I knew he’d understand that.

‘And after Nantes?’ Stewart asked.

‘One of the Gulf ports. Dubai most probably since that seems to be my man’s present base. But from my

knowledge of him I’d say he operates in any port of the Gulf where there’s drugs or arms or something equally nasty to be shipped. At the moment he’s headhunting officers for a consortium starting up in the tanker business. I think he’s recruited Choffel.’

‘And you’re going to let yourself be recruited, that it?’ His assumption came as a shock, though I suppose the thought had been there at the back of my mind. We were in the lift then and he was smiling, his manner suddenly easier and more relaxed. He turned to Saltley. ‘Looks like you’ve picked a flier.’ And then to me: ‘You don’t waste time. How did you hear this man was recruiting ships’ officers?’

I explained briefly and by then we had reached the second floor and were out into a big room with high narrow windows. It was very crowded, the waitresses bustling from table to table with trays of drinks. ‘Ah! There’s Pam, and she’s got a table.’ His face had brightened, his manner suddenly almost boyish. ‘Best of running a boat, even daughters do as they’re told.’

Pamela Stewart was holding the fort at a table in a large annexe guarded by white pillars. There was an oil painting above her head of the Room cleared of boxes with a diamond-spangled ball in formal swing. She jumped to her feet, her eyes lighting, and in that instant she looked quite lovely, brimming over with youth and vitality. Perhaps it was her presence, the way she leaned forward, her eyes on me all the time, but before I had even finished my Bloody Mary I had filled them in on Baldwick and how he and Choffel were a possible lead. And over lunch, in one of the

wooden cubicles of the solid, rather old-fashioned restaurant they called the Captain’s Room after the room in the old Lloyd’s Coffee House where the insurance business had all started, I even talked about my book. And all the time I was conscious of Pamela’s brownish-green eyes watching me intently. She was dressed in a close-knit woollen dress, very plain with a high neck. It was the colour of autumn gold and there was a golden eagle clutching a round globe of some deep-red stone at her throat.

And afterwards, when we had finished our coffee, she insisted on taking me down to the Nelson Exhibition on the Gallery floor. It was a beautiful room, all rich woodwork and flanked by glass display cabinets full of Nelson letters and a lot of silver. There was an alcove to the left with a big oil canvas of Nelson by a painter called Abbott, and at the far end Hardy’s golden Trafalgar sword was displayed in a separate case below some more Nelson letters and a Hopner print of him. And then I was leaning on the only other glass table case in the room, staring at the log of HMS Euryalus covering the period 23 May to 11 March 1806. It was open at the page recording Nelson’s England expects signal.

‘Something I want you to understand…’ She wasn’t looking at the log book. She hadn’t commented on it, or on anything else in the room. The visit to the exhibition was just an excuse, and now, with her back to the priceless relic, leaning her handsomely shaped body against the case containing Hardy’s sword, she went on in a quiet, very throaty voice, ‘We’re in

trouble, and after listening to you today, over drinks and during lunch, I’ve got a sort of feeling … I don’t know how to put this. But it’s like you are our only hope, if you see what I mean.’