Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

Garrard had a smaller torch and, in its light, he examined the bow and stern ropes and the spring lines, then flashed the beam up to trace the rope that was taut at the spreaders. He walked to the workshop wall and tugged on the rope and he saw how the added tension dragged the mast towards him. He tested the rope again, and I knew what was passing through his evil mind. Without that tether, Sunflower’ s balance would be very precarious. She was resting on her long, deep keel and, though she weighed a good few tons, it would not take much effort to unbalance her. It was just about low tide and, with one good push, she would fall like a truck into the shallow waters eight feet below her. Her mast would break and God knew what other damage would be done.

Garrard plucked down my notice which warned no one to touch the rope and tore it into two. I tensed, ready to charge at him, but instead of drawing his knife and slashing the rope he lit a cigarette and leaned against the workshop wall. It seemed he had no intention of destroying Sunflower , just as, strangely, he showed no sign of wanting to search her. It appeared the two men had only one interest this night: finding me.

“Bugger’s gone.” Peel trudged disconsolately into view.

They spoke softly for a minute or two, too softly for me to hear anything they said. Both their torches raked once more round the yard, the beams scything over my head, but for some reason neither man searched the low heap öf metal behind which I was hidden. They did shine their torches down into the moored boats, but it was clear they had given up any hope of finding me.

“Fetch the van,” Garrard said.

Peel started the van and switched on its headlights. In the strong light I could see Garrard was dressed in his horsy cavalry twill, waistcoat and tweed jacket. I could also see that his right hand was bandaged from the savaging I’d given it with the boathook. He looked like the kind of man I used to know well: loud-voiced and confident, always to be found at a racecourse where he’d have known the stable lad of an unfancied horse in the third race which was worth a bob or two on the nose. Such men had knowing eyes and bitter resentments. They could be good companions for an afternoon, but not for longer.

Peel put the van into gear. The bandage on Garrard’s right hand was not inconveniencing him for, almost casually, he drew his knife and reached up to Sunflower’ s tethering rope. The knife must have been razor sharp, for it sliced through the half-inch rope without any apparent effort.

I tensed again in sudden flaring panic.

I could see, in the van’s headlights, that Sunflower had not moved. I had her leaning towards the dock, which offered a margin of safety, but my heart was flogging like a wet sail in a headwind all the same. Garrard watched her, half expecting to see the yacht crash down into the Stygian blackness beneath, but she stayed upright. He crushed his cigarette under his right shoe, opened the passenger door, and the van drove away.

I waited. The van disappeared behind the workshop. I heard the yard gates open, the van growl through, then the gates crash shut. I listened as the van drove up the street, paused at the main road junction, then accelerated away.

Silence.

The wind was lifting the cut rope into the night, but Sunflower , good Sunflower , was stable and solid.

I stood up slowly. I was freezing cold. I was wearing nothing but one pair of sodden jeans and my muscles were stiff as boards. I took the wet jeans off, walked to the quayside, and tossed them down into Sunflower’ s cockpit. This was no time to be worrying about being naked, my priority was to retrieve that flying rope and rerig it, and that, I knew, would take some careful work.

The rope was cut, so I needed some more to make its length good. George had some old rope lying in the yard, but I did not trust it. Instead, and taking exquisite care not to upset Sunflower’ s precarious balance, I lowered myself into her cockpit. I stayed on the dockside gunwales, adding my weight to her stability. In a cave-locker in the cockpit I had some spare warps. I found one and tossed it up to the quay, then, still staying hard by the dock wall, I groped with the boathook for the rope’s bitter end.

The wind was carrying the cut rope away from me, out over the dark waters of the dock. I reached for the errant line with the boathook’s full length, but the weighted head made the implement much too unwieldy for such a delicate job. I slotted the heavy boathook back into place and pulled out the other one. That did the job quickly, snagging the wind-whipped rope-end that I drew towards me. I held on to it as I climbed back to the quayside.

It took five minutes to disentangle the rope from where it had blown itself about the shrouds. The wind dried me as I worked, but I was still bitterly cold.

I tied the cut rope to my spare warp with a sheet bend, then made a lorryman’s hitch in the warp. I threaded the loose end through the ringbolt, back through the hitch’s loop, then hauled it tight. I felt Sunflower’ s mast come towards me as the rope took her weight. I made two turns and hitches to make the whole thing fast, then let out my breath. Sunflower was secure again.

“Clever boy,” said Trevor Garrard.

I turned.

He was no more than five paces from me. He held the knife loosely in his bandaged right hand, but it wasn’t the long blade which disturbed me, rather his face, which was lit by the bulb outside George’s office. He was utterly confident. Whatever happened now, and it was bound to be violent, this man had no fear.

“But you’re not so clever as you think,” he went on in a mocking tone, “because it was really rather obvious that you’d make your boat safe as soon as we’d gone, so all I had to do was stay in the yard.” He smiled in tribute of his own cleverness, then gave me a small mocking bow. “Good evening, my lord.”

I said nothing. Being naked made me feel horribly vulnerable. I had no weapon, and this man’s calm assurance was very frightening. He might smile at me, but his eyes were feral, suggesting a man who knew neither pity nor remorse. A bitter man, fallen from grace and resentful. I backed away from him, but there was nowhere to flee to, except the river, and Garrard had carefully placed himself between me and that refuge.

I backed round the workshop corner in time to hear the main gate creak open again.

“That’s Peel coming back,” Garrard said. “You haven’t met Peel properly, have you? I’ll introduce you in a moment.”

My right foot jarred against a loose metal stanchion. I stooped quickly and picked it up. It was a two-foot length of rusting angle-iron sharpened to a crude point. The weapon gave me some confidence, but it did not seem to worry Garrard. “Peel!” he shouted.

“I’m here, Mr Garrard.”

“Find a tarpaulin, Peel.” Garrard gave his orders as though he was still in the army. He looked back to me. “Peel is not the brightest luminary to emerge from the state-school system, but he has the gross virtue of huge bodily strength. He used to be a professional wrestler. If you attack me with that crude piece of iron, my lord, I shall be forced to hurt you rather nastily.”

“I don’t have the painting,” I said in a futile hope that the denial would give him pause.

“Of course you don’t. My task is simply to make certain that you don’t get it back.”

He was so foully sure of himself, and he was confusing me. Why was he so confident that I didn’t have the painting? He had surely suspected me when he had searched Sunflower , but tonight he had not even bothered to go into her cabin. I was trying to snatch answers from a fog, and the fog was shot through with rank fear. “Do you have the painting?” I asked him.