Game Ten: A gripping conspiracy thriller, page 24
In her mind, a man’s voice spoke again and it came back, all of it. The piratical black ketch, Charles Golant smashing Jerome’s flagmast with a well-aimed bowsprit, and the addresses they had exchanged. ‘If you need rescuing, just call. I’m very good at damsels in distress,’ he’d said. Landrake. That was his address, she searched her memory. Church Passage House, Landrake. Could there be more than one Landrake? Quite possible. Would he help her? God knows. What alternative was there? None.
The Troppo dancing school’s performance swung into what looked a finale. At any time, the lights might come up. She rose quickly to her feet, turning to the blank back wall as if the ample aisle between the chairs had to be taken sideways and shuffled for the door in the gloom.
She went to the moped but through the darkness, from up the hill, a blue light was still flashing. Road-block? It was quite likely. She took her sailing bag, pushed the moped even further out of sight, dropping her helmet next to it, and went to chance her luck. The profile of the church stuck up against the darkening sky. It was on her side of the road. She didn’t want to risk the pavement with the glare of all the cars’ lights, so she climbed a fence at the back of the car park and waded through tall grass along the back of a row of cottages.
There could easily be more than one Landrake in Cornwall, she thought again. They’re not very inventive about their names, but the four-square Georgian house beyond the cottages said ‘Church Passage House’ by the door, and she felt momentarily weak with relief.
He might not be there any more. He could be away on his boat. It’s a year ago, she thought. Anyway, he might call the police as soon as he sees me, but no alternative had yet presented itself, so she rapped the knocker, then stood well back in the shadows to see who came.
It was him. He opened the door, looked out in surprise, then up and down. She spoke from the shadows. ‘Are you still good at rescuing damsels in distress?’
There was a short silence, then he said, ‘At your service,’ and there was excitement in his voice.
There’d only been one more question after that.
‘Did you kill her?’
‘No. I . . .’
‘The rest can wait.’
Then it was all action. He opened the back doors of a big van, full of clutter.
‘Get in there, under the sacks. I’ll put some boxes in front of you. Don’t move a muscle. OK?’
‘OK.’
He hid her, climbed into the driver’s seat and started off. Lying in the dark, she felt the van bump off the kerb and accelerate up the road. Two minutes later it slowed to a stop then moved forward in fits and starts. After some time, she heard that deep voice again, raised in a question, then answering briefly. The road-block. Unbearable tension twisted her as the back doors of the van squeaked open, but only for a second or two, then they banged shut, there was a call of ‘Go on then’ from the rear, and they were off again.
‘We’re all right,’ called the voice from the front, ‘but stay where you are just in case. It won’t be long.’
The van twisted and turned, accelerated and braked for maybe ten minutes, then bumped down a long, rough track. It turned sharp right and stopped abruptly, dipping at the front and rolling Claire forwards against the metal partition behind the seats.
‘Right,’ Charles said, ‘we’ve arrived. Just be very quiet.’
He slid the door open and she climbed out. The first thing that struck her was the instantly familiar sound of rigging slapping against aluminium masts in the gentle wind. It was almost completely dark now but she could see tall masts, massed together as if in a marina, against the fading sky; but there were also trees and a hill side stretching away up to her right and no feeling of nearby water. She followed him through a curving pathway between big sheds and ranks of speedboats on trailers. Bigger boats on cradles were crowded together off to their right. Past a massive self-propelled crane on giant rubber tyres they turned left down a long concrete slipway. She followed now without a second thought. There was no hint of coercion and she had no hint of a choice.
At the bottom, he stepped on to a slippery, floating pontoon which stuck out into a narrow river. Three or four small yachts were moored to it as well as a big Dutch barge with lights showing inside. He raised a finger to his lips and bent to untie the painter of a battered, paint-splattered fibreglass dinghy. A voice from inside the barge called out, ‘That you, Charlie?’ and he froze.
‘Yes Frank, bit of a rush. See you tomorrow.’
There was a grunt from within. They got in, and with economical strokes he turned and rowed them past the pontoon and on down what was more of a creek than a river.
He didn’t say a word and, feeling protected by the night, the water and the silence, she sat there watching. Over his shoulder she could see that the creek joined a much wider expanse of river ahead and in the bend at their junction a large boat showed black in the silver light, two thick masts bracketing the moon.
He turned his head briefly for a moment, adjusting his course for the first time since they started, a measure of how many times he must have made this journey. Two quick pulls on the right oar brought them neatly alongside the boat, whose rough, dark-planked sides towered over them. He stood, painter in one hand, her bag over his shoulder, and was up the side like a fly, leaving the dinghy barely rocking, such was his balance. She stood carefully, feeling for her centre of gravity and could see no way up, but there, dimly lit in the moonlight, was a hinged gate cut in the boat’s high bulwarks. It was closed and he hadn’t bothered to open it, so why should she? She found the gaps in the planking around it and used those for a purchase just as he must have done and with a heave she was over the side and standing on deck by him. He grinned, teeth white in the moonlight, unhooked a door in the cockpit, and beckoned her down rough steps in the darkness. A match flared, then an oil lamp glowed and rose into soft yellow light and she found herself in wonderland.
It was a capacious cabin, walled with rough timbers. Big, overstuffed sofas ran along both sides, old oil paintings in battered gilt frames hung above them. Books were everywhere. Richly-carved columns supporting the deck broke up the space, and a mast like a tree trunk passed through it. A passageway ran aft next to the ladder they had come down. She could see another chamber opening off it to one side with a huge Victorian bath in it. A passageway for’ard showed glimpses of more cabins and velvet hangings. Rich, soft decay was everywhere.
‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ he said. ‘Or would you rather have Scotch?’
‘Both,’ she said, ‘if that’s OK.’
She sat in silence on the sofa, while he boiled a kettle.
He sat down opposite her. ‘You were lucky you caught me. The house is between tenants, I usually live here. This . . .’ he waved an expansive hand around, ‘. . . is the Cauchemar, which you’ve met before, formerly a French fishing boat, latterly a hulk, until I resurrected her. I know you understand sailing boats. You’re an expert sailor, it said so in the papers.’
‘You do know you can get a big reward from National for catching me.’
‘Money is money,’ he said, ‘and it just fools you for a while until it goes away again. A damsel in distress is something splendid and that doesn’t come your way more than once in a lifetime.’
She shook her head. ‘You don’t have any way of knowing I didn’t do it. All right, you asked me, fine, but I would hardly have admitted it.’
‘I see auras,’ he said. ‘I can see yours. I can tell.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You sound almost affronted,’ he smiled. ‘As soon as I saw you at the house, even in the twilight. I saw you as you are, as you couldn’t disguise it. A victim, not a murderer, so I knew I had to help. Are you complaining?’
‘No,’ she shook her head, trying to get the hang of him. He continued to look amused. ‘I’m not complaining.’
‘You’re exhausted, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a cabin for’ard on this side. Mine’s opposite. There’s no door, but don’t worry, not only am I saddled by birth with the genes of a perfect gentleman, but I’m staying celibate this year as an experiment. I’ll run you a bath.’
The bath was fed by a Heath Robinson geyser, apparently fuelled by a coke fire. He pulled a blanket across the entrance for her sake. Ten minutes later she was fast asleep on a hugely soft, shapeless feather mattress under a pile of blankets.
Claire woke to broad daylight streaming in through a pointed glass dome that stuck down through the deck like the upside-down centre of an orange squeezer. The noise that had woken her was the rattle of chains from above and the flapping of sails. Laid out on her bed were a pair of faded tan sailcloth trousers, an equally faded blue work shirt, and a sailing smock. She put them on, grateful for the feel of fresh clothes, and went through the main cabin and up on deck.
Charles had three sails up and flapping loose, and was just preparing to let go.
‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Good timing. Come and take over here, will you? Let go when I shout.’
‘Are we going somewhere?’
‘Just out for a little breathing space. The wind’s from the west, we can trickle all the way down to the Sound on that.’
And so they could. The big old boat, sixty foot long not counting the bowsprit, quietly came to life as he sheeted in the multi-coloured patched sails, and with a gathering splashing from under her stem slipped out into the main river and turned to the east.
‘Put this on,’ he said when she joined him at the wheel, and handed her a battered sailcloth cap. ‘Tuck your hair up underneath it. Just in case anyone’s watching.’
‘Where exactly are we?’
‘This is the Lynher. It joins the Tamar at the Hamoaze opposite Devonport, right by the naval dockyard.’
‘And that place last night?’
‘Boating Heaven. One of the world’s least accessible boatyards. A great place. You can only get to it on the top of the tide, and even then you have to know the channel like the back of your hand. Ideal for people like me because it keeps the plastic people away. It’s full of us wooden boat eccentrics.’
He was sitting high up on an old leather armchair which sat in a little cuddy like a garden shed behind the wheel. In front of them the deckhouse had window boxes arranged all around it. Claire looked around, through the tattered rigging. A boxed emergency life raft was lashed to the cabin top. That seemed so out of keeping that she looked more closely. The label said, ‘Next service due: 1983.’
He caught her look. ‘She doesn’t sink often.’
‘Often?’
‘Well, only once in the last two years.’
‘What happened?’
‘Oh, nothing much. I raised her and fixed the hole.’
‘How?’
‘Concrete.’
She laughed for the first time in days.
They loafed along, past Ince Castle on the north bank and Jupiter Point to the south. As the Tamar and Plymouth loomed ahead, there were more boats on the water, trots of thirty-foot weekend cruisers on both sides.
‘Charles,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
A direct question seemed the best. ‘I’ve got a friend who’s trying to sort things out. How long can I stay on the boat?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘As far as I’m concerned, you can stay as long as you like, but I think we’d better find another answer.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, people come and see me a lot. They don’t ask first, they just turn up. The boat’s a bit of a focus for all kinds of funny folk. It’s their meeting point. That’s why we’re sailing now. Weekdays are bad enough, but at the weekends they come in droves. I don’t think I could hide you for long.’
Despair seized her so fast that she could only nod dumbly.
‘However,’ he said, ‘I do have a little idea. That’s another reason we’re here.’
*
Claire had stayed down below while Charles rowed across to the quay at Saltash. She stuck her head out of the hatch from time to time and when she saw the dinghy returning, she was ready for him, taking the painter and a shopping bag full of beer and hot pasties. He trailed the dinghy astern and secured it.
‘Did you call him?’ she said anxiously.
‘Yes. I’m afraid he’d already left, at least his machine was on. I left a cryptic message saying you were OK.’
‘Thanks.’
He looked at her. ‘Someone special.’ It was a statement.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘under any other circumstances he could have been.’ She looked at the nearby hill side, terraced with ranks of houses, and shivered. ‘I feel a bit vulnerable here. Can we get under way again?’
‘Why not? But first of all, look over there.’
She followed his finger pointing along a line of moored boats stretching back around the curve into the mouth of the Lynher.
‘Where?’
‘What do you see?’
‘Some boats.’
‘Use your eyes. Tell me about them.’
She went along with it, unsure of what he might mean. ‘There’s a nice ketch. Then there’s one of those fake plastic Cornish Crabbers. The third one’s an old Nicholson, then something very flashy I don’t recognize and a couple of Hurleys, then there’s what looks like a Contessa 32.’
‘Very good. What do you make of the Contessa?’
‘Covered in seagull shit. Someone’s little dream that they never get round to sailing. It doesn’t look as if it’s been out in years.’
‘That seagull shit, and the contents of my shed, might just be your salvation.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Saturday August 10th
‘We can’t have that,’ Gilligan had said when he learnt he’d been booked first class and Harry was in economy. ‘I’m a republican. I believe in equality.’
It was a disappointment that Gilligan’s chosen solution was to downgrade his own ticket instead of upgrading Harry’s, but comfort was far down the list of things Harry held important right then. Until they got airborne.
The seat in front of him was far too close, and to add injury to the insult, its occupant had tipped it right back as soon as the seat belt light was switched off, forcing Harry to recline his own seat to avoid being crushed into a right angle by the oncoming hypotenuse and, judging by the grunt of protest from behind, setting off a domino effect right down the ranks of close-packed economy class seats behind him.
Gilligan laughed. ‘You shouldn’t have such long legs.’
The stewardess gave Harry a Bloody Mary from the drinks trolley and passed a soda water to his boss.
‘Don’t have too many of those things,’ said Gilligan, ‘I want you in good condition when you get there. Alcohol dries you out, makes it harder to get over the lag.’
‘I think it might help if you told me why we’re doing this,’ said Harry.
‘I thought you would have guessed,’ the other man said quietly. ‘We’re still eating up money. I need the banks to keep the faith until we turn the corner.’
‘And the banks are American?’
‘Two of them are. I can give them all the paperwork you like and they won’t get too stirred up, but a story about National on primetime network TV, that’s something else. They’ll start believing we’re for real.’
Harry nodded. Gilligan looked at him and considered. ‘You a discreet sort of guy, Harry?’
‘When it matters.’
‘The first two stations on the list matter more than the rest. There’s just a chance of buying in to them. That’s the real reason I came along. It gives me an excuse to take a look round when they’ve got their guard down.’
‘So the rest are a waste of time?’
‘For me, not for you. I’ll leave you on your own for them.’
It was disconcerting to know he would have to talk to his boss for much of the flight. There was a gulf between them. Harry knew Gilligan’s track record and the wide span of his business. He sat in a state of mild panic, rejecting possible conversational openings as too banal to waste the other man’s time. There was a short silence, then Gilligan surprised him.
‘What’s with this sick relative of yours?’
‘How do you know about that?’
‘You mentioned it on Wednesday. Tell me.’
So Harry, warming to the man, told him as he had told no one else except Claire, and Gilligan was interested and listened carefully to the whole story.
‘Are you happy they’ve done everything they can?’ he said finally.
‘I don’t know.’
‘When we’ve got this out of the way, I’ll see what I can do. There are some specialists I know who ought to take a look at her. Would that be all right with you?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Harry, ‘please.’
They ate their food then Gilligan sighed. ‘Why do you think Claire Merrick flipped like that?’
It was the moment when Harry could so easily have told him about Ann’s sheets of paper burning a hole in his pocket, could so easily have taken them out and talked the whole thing through with the one man who might just have the clout to do something about it. He very nearly did, but it was too early. He was unsure of the way this thoughtful, confident man would take it. He felt a growing understanding between them but it needed more time, so he simply said, ‘I really haven’t a clue. You’re sure the Americans are going to be interested in the story?’
‘There’ll be some very expensive PR people looking for a new job if they aren’t. We’ve done a lot of promotion on this to stir up their appetite. I want you to really hit the way she fooled us all, how plausible she made all this plot stuff sound. Really go for it. Have you seen the London papers today?’ Gilligan took out the Daily Mail and unfolded it to find a lead story with a still from the show: Harry in the foreground, Claire’s giant picture in the background. ‘Hunt for Crookbuster Claire Switches to West,’ said the headline.
