Bernard Cornwell - Sea Lord

“Hitch-hiking. Sleeping rough.”

“For Christ’s sake, Johnny, they’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“Who has? Harry Abbott?”

“Buzzacott. He started phoning yesterday afternoon. He’s desperate for you!”

“Why!”

“He wouldn’t tell me, mate, I’m not a bleeding earl. Christ Almighty, look at the time! Where the hell are you?”

I told him.

“Hang on there, Johnny, I’ll be with you in half an hour.”

So I hung on, and Charlie was as good as his word. I wondered how on earth I’d survive without a friend like him, then collapsed into his Japanese four-by-four and fell fast asleep.

Charlie woke Yvonne and demanded breakfast. She came downstairs in dressing gown and slippers, offered me one disgusted look, then banged the frying pan about the stove in noisy protest.

“I’m sorry to be a nuisance, Yvonne,” I said humbly.

She didn’t reply. She didn’t need to. I was about as welcome as a skunk.

“He’s only a bloody earl,” Charlie said in an attempt to placate her with humour, “and he’s been sleeping rough!”

“So have I.” Yvonne slapped a packet of bacon on to the counter.

Charlie gave me a wry look, then took me out to his kennels where we fed his terriers. He kept some of his dogs for ratting, and others, trained to bite less hard, for rabbiting. “Don’t get married,” he told me as he tossed raw meat into the troughs. It was a comment that didn’t require a response, so I made none. Charlie fondled one of his favourite dogs, then stared at the early morning mist shrouding the Salcombe lakes. “I don’t know if it matters,” he said casually, “but Buzzacott said you should telephone him. He doesn’t care how early you call.”

“Sod Buzzacott,” I said.

Charlie laughed. “Fallen out, have you?”

“He doesn’t want my help any more. He’s paid me off. He told me to buy myself a boat, disappear, and never talk to his stepdaughter again.”

“Buy yourself a boat?” Charlie was immediately interested.

I grinned. “You and I have got a hundred and twenty thousand quid to spend.”

Charlie didn’t believe me. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not. I promise you.” Back indoors we found some children’s crayons and drawing paper and I made Charlie a quick sketch of the hull that I was planning. “It’ll have to be steel, of course. Long keeled.” I drew in two masts. “I’m thinking of a ketch.”

“Why?”

“More flexible sail arrangements.”

“More to go wrong,” he said dubiously.

“I’ll double rig her.” We spent a happy breakfast planning the perfect ocean-going boat. Not that I intended going permanently to sea, not till I sailed with Jennifer, but planning the dream boat was a good way to start the day. Charlie and I had done almost everything to that boat except paint her name on the stern when the telephone rang.

It was Sir Leon Buzzacott, and he wanted me.

“Shall I tell the bugger you’re here?” Charlie didn’t bother to put a hand over the receiver as he asked me the question.

“I’ll speak to him.” I took the phone.

Sir Leon’s message in The Times had been answered. The kidnappers – that’s how he described them – had sent him their demands. The money was to be paid over by me. They would accept no one else; only the Earl of Stowey.

He finished speaking. I said nothing. It was so blindingly obvious why they wanted me to deliver the money; so they could kill me and thus bequeath the picture to Elizabeth. But Elizabeth, I thought, had been taking money from Sir Leon, money which had let her hire the thugs who would do her killing today. “How much did you pay my sister?” I asked Sir Leon.

There was a silence, then Sir Leon’s cautious voice. “My lord?”

“How much did you pay my sister three years ago?”

“An honorarium,” he said evasively, “merely an honorarium.”

“You bastard. Don’t you realise what she did with your damned honorarium? She hired Garrard. She hired the man who put Jennifer into hospital. You bankrolled this, Sir Leon. You gave her the money that let her wait till our mother died.”

“At that time I had no reason to believe in your sister’s guilt.” His voice was very stiff.

And what did it matter anyway? Of course Sir Leon would back both of us, because all he had ever wanted was the painting. He did not care who had stolen it, only that it came to him.

I had said nothing for a few seconds. “My lord?” Sir Leon prompted me.

“How did these people communicate with you?” I asked.

He paused, evidently finding the question irrelevant. “By letter. It was delivered by messenger yesterday.”

“Have you given it to the police?”

“I don’t intend to involve the police.”

“Damned if I’m going to be involved then. Those people have tried to kill me twice, and if you think I’ll wander into their trap just to get you a pretty picture, you’re wrong.”

“I beg you –” Sir Leon began.

“Call Harry Abbott.” I was tired, and I really didn’t care any more. I hung up the phone before he could say another word.

“What was all that about?” Charlie asked.

I told him. It was all so clear to me. If Elizabeth’s plans went well today she would receive a ransom of four million pounds. She would also receive the gift of my death, which would make her the beneficial owner of a Van Gogh. Sir Leon, if he wanted to hang that painting in his gallery, would be forced to negotiate a price with her, and I was damned sure the price would be greater than twenty million. Sir Leon would doubtless claim that I had given him the painting, but he had nothing on paper and Sir Oliver Bulstrode would chop him into shreds. In brief, Elizabeth was about to become a very rich woman. She could buy Stowey back and start an equestrian centre that would dazzle the world. She doubtless imagined Royalty coming to her stables and she foresaw winters in warm palaces and summers on the languorous beaches of the very rich.

And to make all that happen, to give my sister the fulfilment of all her dreams, I only had to deliver the ransom. “Don’t do it,” Charlie said earnestly.

“You heard me,” I said. “I told him to call Harry.” Except, I thought, my one last chance of revenging Jennifer was to co-operate with Sir Leon.

But I was not the best instrument of justice. Harry Abbott was, and if Sir Leon wouldn’t tell the police that the ransom was being paid, then I would. “Can I use the phone, Charlie?”

“Help yourself.”

The phone rang a half-second before I picked it up. It was Harry Abbott himself. “I was about to phone you,” I said.

“Don’t do a thing, Johnny.” He sounded excited. “I’m coming to get you.”

“What for?”

“Why do you bloody think? We’re off and running, of course. Buzzacott just phoned me. I’ve got a police chopper…”

“Harry!” I almost shouted his name to calm him down. “For Christ’s sake. They want to kill me!”

“Of course they want to kill you. Just stay there, Johnny, I’m coming to get you.” He slammed the phone down.

“Bloody hell,” I said to Charlie, “Harry’s bought the idea. They want me to pay the ransom!” I felt a chill crawl up my back.

Charlie pointed at me. “Don’t do it, Johnny. Don’t do it! They’ll push you up shit creek without a paddle!”

“I know.” But I’d also made a promise to a girl I wanted to marry, so perhaps the creek had to be risked and a paddle improvised. For revenge.

Harry arrived in a police helicopter. The thing thwacked across Salcombe harbour, reared up to flatten Charlie’s unmown grass, then settled down close to his kids’ sandpit. Harry jumped out and ran crouching across to the house. He was full of his own importance; they’d given him a chopper all of his own, and he felt like a policeman in a TV programme. “Are you ready?” he shouted at me.