Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

“Calm down,” Peel said again. “It won’t last long. Do you want me to ask Mr Garrard for a ciggy?”

Garrard had freed the rope and now walked with it up one side of the dock, out towards the river, so that when he pulled he would be dragging Sunflower away from the dock’s end wall. “No!” I shouted.

“It’s all right.” Peel seemed very worried for me. “Are you sure you don’t want a ciggy?”

“No!”

The cry was despairing.

Sunflower was moving.

It took all the strength in Garrard’s wiry body. At first he could not move the big boat, but then he began to pull rhythmically and, inch by inch, the hull responded. I heard the fenders shifting against the dock’s wall. I was trying to protest. I was half blinded by tears of rage, but I could still see the mast-tip moving against the night’s clouds.

“No!” I wailed the protest.

The mast-tip moved a full foot, returned, then moved again, and this time it did not oscillate back. Sunflower was teetering on the knife edge of her long keel. Garrard grunted, strained, and I saw the mast move away from me.

“No!” But this time the cry was a sob. I twisted to the dock edge so I could watch my boat fall.

Sunflower fell. The springs momentarily checked her fall, but the weight of her steel hull was too great and I heard the cleats rip clean out of her deck. She gathered speed. Garrard switched on his torch.

Sunflower’ s chines crashed on to the edge of the grid. The whole boat bounced and shook. I saw the splash of water as her mast slashed down into the dock, then heard the grinding and splintering as the falling hull drove the tall mast down into the dock’s bottom. Her keel was still lodged on the grid. For a second I thought the whole hull would turn over, but then the keel scraped free of the timbers and the steel hull crashed down into the shallow water. A small tidal wave creamed white to rock the moored fishing boats. The wave crashed against the dock’s sides, then flowed back. I half expected the liferaft canister to explode its pneumatic contents, but the canister stayed shut as the water in the dock splashed, gurgled and subsided.

“Most successful,” Garrard said happily as he shone his torch into the dock.

Sunflower lay on her port side, half sunk in the black disturbed water. Her mast was torn off in a tangle of shrouds and halliards. From this angle the hull looked relatively unscathed, but I knew that her portside guardrails would certainly have sheared, and that her scuttles were probably broken. As the tide rose she would fill, then be sunk.

“What we do now” – Garrard had walked back to where Peel guarded me – “is to drown you, my lord.”

“Do I put him in the sleeping bag first?” Peel asked.

“He will be easier to manage when he is dead. Just like all the others. So take him down there, Peel, and give him a very good baptism. Total immersion, I think.” Garrard mockingly touched his forelock to me. “Goodnight, my lord.”

“For God’s sake!” I had no fight left in me, nothing now but an abject, bowel-loosening terror. I really was going to die in this miserable dock, and I didn’t even know why. “For God’s sake! I haven’t done anything!”

“You inherited, my lord, that is what you did wrong.” Garrard laughed. He was pleased with himself, and well he might be. The stratagem he had devised for my death was nothing short of brilliant. I could not guess what means of my murder he had planned, but once he had discovered the condition of my boat he had improvised this apparent accident. In the morning, when Rita or George found Sunflower , it would be assumed that I had drowned in the night because I had not tethered my boat properly.

And I still did not know why my death was sought, except that it must be connected with the Van Gogh. “Who sent you?” I pleaded.

But Garrard was finished with me. He pushed back his cuff to look at his watch. “Let’s get on with it, Peel!”

Peel hesitated. Not out of any sudden pity for me, but because he was trying to work out how best to carry my wrapped body down the sheer dock wall to the water.

“Tie him up!” Garrard sounded exasperated. “For God’s sake, Peel, use what few bloody brains you’ve got!”

“But I haven’t got any rope.”

“God spare me from employing cretins.” Garrard strode away to find a length of rope.

“Who sent you?” I asked Peel.

“You know we can’t tell you that. Are you sure you don’t want a ciggy?”

“Who?” I pleaded.

“Jesus Christ!”

This was not the answer to my question, but rather a symptom of fear. Peel, who had been pinioning me, abruptly straightened up. “Mr Garrard! The police!” He hardly needed to shout the warning, for headlights were suddenly brilliant in the yard, throwing a bright light on to Garrard who was trying to shield his eyes. A car’s engine roared loudly. Peel, when he drove the van back to the yard, must have left the gate open, for I’d heard nothing.

A single car accelerated into the yard. Garrard fled into the alley behind the warehouse. I was shouting. The driver of the car must have locked his handbrake for the back wheels skidded around to slash the headlights past me.

The car stopped. Peel had already abandoned me and was running for dear life into the shadows behind the workshop. I rolled over and over, trying to free myself of the constricting canvas. I could hear Peel scrambling away, then I saw Garrard sprinting across the yard towards the open gate. “Stop him!” I shouted.

I freed myself of the canvas and lurched to my feet. The car’s lights were dazzling me now. I saw a tall man’s silhouette. He was ignoring my attackers, and instead just walked slowly towards me. “You should have stopped them,” I protested feebly.

“Bloody hell fire.” The man stopped a few paces from me. He was still standing in the headlights’ full glare, so all I could see of him was his shape. He laughed. “Just look at the state of you, boy! You’re as naked as the day I found you in Sally Salter’s caravan. Except you were having a deal more fun that day.”

“Oh, my God.” It wasn’t the police. It was Charlie Barratt. My knees began to shake. I was staggering with weakness and relief and happiness and the sheer backwash of a terrible and unnerving fear. “Oh, my God.”

“Hello, Johnny.” He ran forward because I was collapsing.

“I’m all right,” I said, but I wasn’t.

“It’s OK, Johnny.” His arms caught me, held me, then leaned me gently against the workshop wall.

“Oh, my God.” My eyes were tight closed, but I could still see the dark water into which, in another moment, I’d have been plunged head first. I imagined the filthy cold water forcing itself down my gullet and so real was the feeling that I suddenly gagged. I dropped to my knees and vomited. I didn’t think I had ever been so near death. I was shaking, shivering, weeping, spewing.

Charlie fetched a rug from his car and draped it round my shoulders. I was trying to apologise. I felt ashamed. I was crying helplessly. I was shivering and crying and vomiting, yet Charlie crouched beside me and pushed a flask to my lips. “Drink up, Johnny.”

It was Scotch. I gagged on it, spat, then seized the flask to drink it properly. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Oh, God, I’m sorry.”

“Shut up, you bloody fool. Drink.”

And suddenly I knew everything would be all right, because I had found my friend. Or rather he had found me. And saved me.

Part Two

“The bastards.” Charlie had taken a lantern from the boot of his car and, in its bright light, was staring down at the stranded Sunflower . His voice was full of disgust and shock; almost, it seemed to my confused mind, full of a personal revulsion at what Garrard had done to my boat. “Oh, God, the bastards,” he said again, then, with all his old resilience, he plucked optimism out of disaster. “But don’t worry, Johnny. We’ll mend the boat! I’ll have some lads and a crane here at sparrow’s fart. We’ll lift her out, bung her on a low-loader, and take her to my place. We’ll make her good as new, eh?”