Body Line

‘A power yacht, I suppose,’ Slider said, admiring the rake of the superstructure, the fluid lines, the thrust and pointiness of the pointed end. ‘Sixty foot, I’d say,’ he remarked. ‘Twin engines. She looks fast.’

‘She looks like the rich man’s ultimate wet dream,’ Atherton said. ‘We no longer have to wonder why David Rogers had a boat. It’s an answer in itself.’

‘Night fishing, though,’ Slider said. ‘I suppose it was an excuse of sorts. Shall we have a look inside?’

Helen Aldous had provided them with a key. Inside it was immaculate, still smelling new. It was fitted out with tasteful luxury – wood panelling, leather upholstery, brass lamps with acid-embossed glass shades, varnished wooden decks and thick carpet in the staterooms. It was not huge inside, but so well laid-out that it felt roomy. But the beds were not made up and there were no personal belongings stowed anywhere. The cupboards were empty, and apart from soap and toilet paper in the heads, and a tin of biscuits and a bottle of brandy in the galley, it might just have come from the showroom.

‘I suppose he brought everything with him, trip by trip,’ Slider said. ‘She said he went out on Wednesday night and came back Thursday morning, so he didn’t sleep on-board. The galley looks as if it’s never been cooked in.’

‘What a waste,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s hard to believe a man who frequents strip clubs and picks up pole dancers wasn’t having tacky booze-fuelled parties and bonking cruises at every opportunity.’

The only thing of interest was found on the floor on the bridge: an enormous refrigerated cold box of white- painted aluminium, its plug lying next to the socket that would power it. ‘You could get a lot of champagne in that,’ Atherton said. But it was, in fact, empty as well as unplugged. ‘He must have been having parties,’ he complained. ‘Why else all the chiller capacity?’

‘To hold the fish he caught on his night fishing trips,’ Slider said.

‘Yeah, fish.’ They exchanged a look. ‘What contraband needs to be kept cold?’ Atherton mused. ‘Maybe he was smuggling caviar.’

There was nothing else to be gleaned from this ultimate empty vessel, which was sadly making no noise at all that might help them, just a gentle slapping of water against the hull and creaking of rope as she worked her moorings.

They teetered off the end of the rickety jetty on to solid land again, and turned for one last, baffled look at Rogers’s prize. And as if by magic a man materialized beside them: a short, squat man whose weather-pulverized face made it impossible to tell his age. He might have been sixty or eighty or anything in-between. He was hunched into a black donkey-jacket, his hands stuffed in the pockets; a battered and greasy black fisherman’s cap was pulled down hard on his head, and a cigarette drooped from his lip, making him screw up his eyes against the rising smoke. With native politeness he did not meet their eyes, looking instead, with an air of indifference, at the Windhover.

‘Thinking o’ buying her?’ he enquired.

SIXTEEN

Jewel Carriageway

‘Is she for sale?’ Slider asked neutrally.

‘Wouldn’t wonder,’ the man commented, the cigarette wagging with his words. He unpeeled it from his lip and spat politely sideways away from them into the water.

Atherton was about to speak, and Slider froze him with a lightning glance and a hidden elbow nudge. Keeping silence invited confidences. In the absence of questions, a man eager to impart had to make his own timing. Eventually the man had to speak. A casual glance behind him showed Slider that there were others of the local fishing community, messing about by their huts or laying out fish on their stalls, equally uninterested in Slider, Atherton, Windhover and their new friend. You could tell they weren’t interested by the way they were pointedly not looking at them, while their attention was out on stalks. It was the country way, as Slider, a country boy, knew well.

‘Ent bin down this week, th’ole doc. Never misses.’

After a pause to show lack of interest, Slider said, ‘She’s a nice-looking craft.’

The man grunted agreement, and then became positively loquacious. ‘Fairline Milennium Seahawk, Mark II. Special job. Marine allyminimum hull. Twin three thousand ’orsepower diesels plus a gas turban. She’ll do sixty knots in any sea. Carries more’n seven thousand gallons o’ fuel. Range like that, she’ll take you to Norway an’ back on one tank. Lovely ole gal, th’ole Wendover.’

He pronounced it like the Buckinghamshire town. Slider reckoned he probably would have pronounced the right name the same way, and wondered whether the makers of the dodgers had realized that and taken the line of least resistance.

‘She’s a lady, all right,’ he said.

‘That is,’ the man agreed.

‘So you think she might be for sale?’ Slider said.

The man looked sidelong at him, and snorted with faint amusement. ‘Coppers, ent yer.’ It was not really a question.

Slider shrugged non-committally. He wasn’t giving the farm away. He looked to the left, towards the river mouth, and said, ‘Tide’s turning.’

‘Slack water,’ the man said, and the agreement seemed to create a bond between them. He took a last drag on his cigarette, threw it down and ground it out, shoved his hands back in his pockets and said, ‘Knew he’d be in trouble sooner or later, that ole doc.’

‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ Slider said.

The man nodded as if he’d expected that. ‘Never missed. Went out Wensdy night, come in early hours Thursdy mornin’. Sport fishin’,’ he concluded derisively.

‘Just an excuse?’ Slider hazarded.

‘Man like that, boat like that, don’t go fishin’ alone! Never had no parties in ’er. No drink, no girls.’

‘So what did he do?’

He watched a burgee fill and crack straight in a brief, sudden air. ‘Sometimes he’d go out same time as us. Set off ’ell for leather. Never see where he fished. Sometimes he’d come in same time as us. Come off with a big ole cool box o’ fish every week. “Had a bit o’ luck,” he’d say. “Got some big ones,” he’d say.’ He snorted. ‘Any fish he had, I reckon he bought at Macfisheries.’ He seemed amused at his own wit.

‘Did he ever show you his catch?’

‘Never showed no one. Never saw what he ’ad in that box. “Got some beauties,” he’d say. That went straight in ’is car, and off away, out o’ town, quick as you like.’

Slider was having trouble with the cool box – that thing wasn’t designed to be portable. ‘That refrigerated box in the cockpit—’

‘Not that one. Portable job. Kept th’electric one on-board.’

Slider had an image of Rogers coming in, tying up, emerging with his cool box on to an apparently indifferent harbourside, blissfully unaware of the dozens of eyes clocking his every movement. But if no one ever said anything, what harm?

‘Dead, eh?’ the old man mused at last, staring at the swirl of slack-tide on the brown-grey water.

‘He was up to something,’ Slider said indifferently to a passing seagull.

‘Free trade, thass what we call it,’ the old man said at the conclusion of some thought process. ‘Suppose to be in th’ole Europeen Union, ent we? Suppose to be free movement o’ goods. So how come a man can’t bring in a foo bits an’ bobs for hisself an’ his mates without th’ole Customs and Excise persecootin’ him?’

‘Beats me,’ Slider said. ‘That’s not my department.’

‘Huh!’ the man snorted, but it was aimed at the Customs and Excise, not Slider, who was still, as a man who could tell when the tide was turning, the acceptable face of the law.

‘So the doctor was a free-trader,’ Slider mused, not making it a question.

‘He weren’t sport fishin’, thass for sure,’ his new friend agreed, and then, as a final, huge concession, actually looked at Slider and said, ‘Coastguard bin watchin’ him. You go and talk to coastguard.’

‘Thanks,’ Slider said. After a suitable pause, he nodded farewell and he and Atherton moved nonchalantly