Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

“Come up to London and chat to the editor. Why not? We’re not talking peanuts here.”

“Fuck you,” I said, and thumped him in the belly. His photographer took a picture of that, so I thumped the photographer as well. I didn’t hurt either man, which was a pity.

But at least my actions saw them off. Jennifer Pallavicini had watched the proceedings from the pontoon, and now she stepped down on to Sunflower ’s foredeck. “You’re really trying to be popular, aren’t you?”

“I thought the object of the exercise was to announce my intention of retrieving the painting, not to win a beauty competition?”

She shrugged that answer off. “Do you always hit people who annoy you?” she asked.

“Only men.”

“Are you ever hit back?”

“Frequently. I once had the shit knocked out of me in Australia.”

She frowned. I thought she’d taken offence at my language, but it seemed there was something else on her mind. “What do you care about, Mr Rossendale?”

“Georgina.” Whom I had carefully not mentioned to any of the press.

“Why?” Jennifer asked.

I paused, wondering whether to answer. “Because,” I finally said, “she’s too loopy to worry about herself.”

“Does that concern apply to everyone who’s too weak to look after themselves?”

“Maybe.”

“Meaning it’s none of my business.” She looked at her watch. “I think that on the whole, and despite your hostility, that was a most successful exercise. I’ll see you in the morning, Mr Rossendale.” I knew she was spending the night with some relatives in Totnes, but I’d somehow hoped she might spend some small part of the day with me. Because, just as Sir Leon was obsessed with my Van Gogh, I was becoming obsessed with his stepdaughter. She was truly beautiful, but just too self-composed. She had become a challenge. Just like the bar at Salcombe.

“You wouldn’t like some lunch?” I asked as she walked away.

“No, thank you,” she called over her shoulder, “not today.”

And up yours, too, I thought, but didn’t say it.

The hook was well-baited now. Elizabeth knew where I was, and knew I was trying to retrieve the painting. Harry had warned me that from this moment on Garrard and Peel might pay me another visit.

They would be walking into an ambush. Two plain-clothes policemen were always on duty to watch me. Not quite always; Harry told me that he couldn’t find the manpower or the money to have me guarded throughout England, so my guardians would only be on duty when I was in Dartmouth itself. If I went away from the river, Harry reasoned, Garrard and Peel could not possibly know where I was going, so would have no chance of finding me. “Suppose they follow me?” I had asked him.

“You’d be dead, Johnny, but don’t worry. The force will send a nice wreath to your funeral.” After which grim jest he told me his men would work in shifts; by day idling with the tourists on the quay above the pontoon, while the night shift would keep watch from a cabin cruiser moored astern of Sunflower .

I didn’t entirely trust the watchfulness of Harry’s men so, once the pressmen had finally abandoned me, I took my dinghy upstream and found a boatyard that could sell me a couple of pounds of lead and a scrap piece of sheet aluminium.

I went back to Sunflower , took the head off my new boathook, and drilled a hollow into the top of the wooden shaft. I didn’t have a crucible or furnace so I used an oxyacetylene lamp to melt the lead. I dripped it piece by piece into the hollow space. I worked on Sunflower ’s foredeck which I shielded with a sheet of scrap iron. When I’d finished melting the lead I wrapped the aluminium about the hollowed section of shaft to give it strength, then drilled a hole so that the metal hook could be bolted back into place. I used a file to sharpen the back edge of the hook and, when it was done, congratulated myself on a proper job.

Then, because I might not get a chance to use the hook, I prepared my other weapons. Some, like the rocket alarm flares, were potentially lethal, while others, like the fire-extinguishers, were merely nasty. If Garrard and Peel did appear, then at least I would have a reception for them.

And I knew I might need all the weapons. Garrard’s reputation was frightening: an officer gone bad, a trained killer, and a man in desperate need of money.

He did not come that first night. I slept nervously, but undisturbed. In the morning I shaved in Sunflower ’s cockpit and watched the yachts motoring towards the sea. It promised to be a warm day. There was no sign of any plain-clothes policemen, but Harry had warned me that they would not be highly visible. “If you can see them,” he had told me, “then so can the nasties.”

I slung my shaving water overboard, then went below and fried myself a big pan of eggs and bacon. I made a Thermos flask of coffee, then carried the whole breakfast up to the cockpit just in time to see Jennifer Pallavicini walking down the pontoon.

“Good morning,” I said cheerfully. “Coffee?”

She ignored the offer, telling me instead that we had both been asked to appear on an early evening television programme. “I’ve said yes for you,” she said.

“Coffee?” I asked again.

She looked at her watch. “Thank you,” she said in a rather grudging voice. She stepped down into the cockpit and sat opposite me. She was carrying a heavy bag that she gratefully dropped into the cockpit sole.

“Bacon and eggs?” I offered her my own plate.

She shuddered. “No, thank you.”

I fetched a mug and poured her some coffee. As she drank it she watched me wolf down the bacon and eggs. “Don’t you ever put on weight?” she asked at last.

“No.”

“Lucky you.” She flinched as I mopped up the egg yolk and brown sauce with a piece of well-buttered white bread. “Don’t you have any idea about healthy eating?” she was driven to ask.

“Well fried and lots of it,” I said enthusiastically.

“You like to shock people, don’t you?”

“What, me? Never. Tell me about this television programme I don’t want to appear on.”

“It’s in London.”

I groaned. “Tell me how I’m supposed to get to London for this television programme I don’t want to appear on?”

“We’ll arrange transport for you.”

“How are you getting there?” I asked hopefully.

“My stepfather’s helicopter,” she answered very distantly, letting me know that, even if politeness forced her to offer me a ride, I should be well-mannered enough to refuse. “I can give you a lift if you like, but I’m leaving very soon. Hans and I have to go to a lunch reception at the Hayward Gallery.”

“What are they showing this month?” I asked. “Collages of squashed cockroaches? Municipal litter baskets? Finger-painting by the Islington Lesbian Collective?”

“Late-eighteenth-century English landscapes, if you must know.”

I gave her a wink. “I’ll give it a miss.”

“Philistine,” she said, but not angrily. Indeed, it was said almost fondly, and the warm tone seemed to surprise her as much as it did me. We looked at each other. I think we were both taken aback by the affection she had unintentionally expressed. She half smiled, then hurried to cover that tiny moment of truth. “Well, you are!” she protested too hastily. “Only a Philistine would give away a Van Gogh!”

“I did it so you’d be hugely impressed by my generosity, not to mention my quixotic soul. I have this theory, you see, that women prefer irresponsible rogues to Swiss cheese merchants.”

“Rogues with twenty million pounds,” she pointed out, “are marginally more attractive than rogues without.”