Simon Brett - The Sinking Admiral

The wind from the Urals was predictably invigorating once she got outside, but Amy was used to it. All the Crabwell locals instinctively adopted a particular stance, leaning into the wind as they walked. Amy comforted herself with the thought that at least it wasn’t raining. But the weather was dull and miserable, almost impossible to see where the slate grey of the sky met the slate grey of the sea. It was one of those Suffolk afternoons when there wouldn’t really be a dusk, just a darkening of the grey until it was imperceptibly transformed into black.

There weren’t many people about, though a little way up the beach Amy could see a group of Girl Guides struggling against the wind to erect some tents on the shingle. She remembered the girls’ leader Greta Knox telling her they had some camping exercise planned, though it didn’t look much fun on a cold March evening. She recognised Greta’s stocky outline amongst the girls, and waved vaguely in her direction. Whether Greta saw her or not, she couldn’t judge.

Amy also saw, lingering on the edge of the group, trying to avoid doing anything useful, a girl called Tracy Crofts to whom she had more than once refused service at the bar of the Admiral Byng. In spite of her protestations, Amy knew the girl to be underage. There was a general view in Crabwell that it was only a matter of time before Tracy Crofts, a seething mass of teenage hormones, came to no good.

Amy Walpole lived in a dilapidated little seafront cottage only five minutes’ walk from the pub, and she felt a strong temptation to go home, however briefly. Just to put her feet up, have a cup of tea. But she resisted the impulse. She knew how much more difficult it would be to force herself back to work if she succumbed to home comforts.

So she walked determinedly in the opposite direction from her cottage. Towards the end of the beach where, drawn up on the sand, there were a lot of boats. Including the dinghy owned by her boss. No surprise really that its name, picked out in silver stick-on letters across the stern, was The Admiral .

More of a surprise, though, that afternoon, was that the boat’s owner was standing by it, checking the cords that tied down the tarpaulin cover from which the mast protruded. He wore no overcoat, just his usual blazer.

‘Evening, Admiral,’ said Amy.

‘Hello there.’ There was an uncharacteristic air of complacency in his smile, of relief almost, as if he had just achieved something very necessary.

‘Problems with the cover?’

‘Just checking it, Amy. There have been rather too many thefts from boats on the beach here recently.’

‘Have you got much of value in there?’

‘Now that’d be telling,’ he replied with an enigmatic grin.

‘I’ve hardly seen you today.’

‘No, I’ve been busy in the Bridge.’

‘So I gathered. And you haven’t talked yet to Ben Milne, the Grand Inquisitor?’

‘No. That pleasure is scheduled for tomorrow. Seems to me to be a rather cocky young man.’

‘I think if you work in television that goes with the territory.’

He grinned, then his face clouded as he said, ‘Also, Amy, you and I need to have a long talk.’

‘Really?’ She spread her hands wide. ‘Well, I’m happy to talk now.’

‘No, no.’ The Admiral shook his grey head. ‘That will keep till tomorrow too. I have other plans for tonight.’

‘And what do they involve?’

‘Tonight, Amy, is to be my “Last Hurrah”. I plan to get extremely drunk.’

‘Oh. Drunker than usual?’

‘Very definitely.’

‘Are you celebrating?’

‘Something like that,’ replied the Admiral, with a teasing hint of mischief in his voice.

But as it turned out, he never did have an inquisition from Ben Milne. Or his long talk with Amy Walpole. Because, by the next morning, the Admiral was dead.

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