Death Watch

below in the three-foot gap between the hull and the wharf, a porthole’s light reflected as a lazy, unmoving oval. Strapped to the side of the gangplank was the three-inch-thick power cable. The ship hummed with power, a note low enough for Shaw to feel it in his bones. A door stood open at the top. He looked over his shoulder and saw Valentine behind him. Back-up would be twenty minutes. The rule book said he should wait. But for once he didn’t have time for the rule book.

He stepped over the metal threshold into a stairwell, immediately struck by the carpet — a corporate flecked POOP DECK — and a plan of the Rosa. The corridors and serried cabins reminded Shaw of the map of Level One. He stood for a second listening; somewhere laughter came in short, drunken bursts. Galloway had said the crew was seven strong. He looked Valentine in the face, about to ask if he was up for going on, but the look in his DS’s eyes told him it was a question he didn’t need to ask.

They climbed towards the noise. One flight, two, then three, before stepping through another door into a corridor. Again, the odd feeling that he was on a cross-Channel ferry — the antiseptic smell, the blue metal doors, the carpet, the helpful signs.

Footsteps were suddenly near, and round a corner came one of the crew — a Filipino in spotless white shorts, carrying a towel. He stopped in his tracks, then turned and ran. They followed for twenty yards, then a sharp left and a door ahead, a sign which read MESS.

The crew were ready for them, all standing, tensed, the smell of fear in the airless room as solid as the cool metal walls. There were two tables with banquette seating, a wall-fitted flat-screen TV, a shelf of videos and DVDs; two portholes, thrown open. There were six men in the room and none of them spoke.

Shaw flashed his warrant card. ‘Captain?’

No one spoke again.

‘Anyone speak English?’ asked Valentine, walking in to see that they’d been watching a DVD — no sound. Porn: two men, one woman, the smiles and gasps as fake as the suntans.

Shaw knew they’d be calculating too, trying to work out if these two policemen were really stupid enough to come aboard without support. He tried not to show that his heart beat had hit 120.

‘George, stay here. No one leaves. I’ll get the rest on the search.’

Valentine’s mobile trilled and he flicked it open to see a text from Twine.

FIVE MINUTES AWAY

‘Unit 3’s at the gate as well,’ said Valentine, leaning back against the metal wall. ‘You lot can sit.’

They subsided slowly, like tower blocks on a demolition site.

‘You,’ said Shaw, pointing at the man who spoke English. ‘Name?’

‘Albert Samblant, First Officer.’ The man looked Shaw in the face, unable to stop his focus falling on the moon eye.

‘Right. Tell ’em to sit tight. No one’s going anywhere. Then I want you to take me to the captain’s cabin.’

Samblant spoke to the crew in English, Spanish and French. Then he led the way, his short legs working crab-like, so that he seemed to sidle down the corridor.

The captain’s cabin was another ladder up. Samblant knocked, then stood back. Shaw noticed that he was

‘Open it,’ said Shaw.

Albert shrugged, rattling the lock, but the door wouldn’t open.

Shaw knocked once, twice, then took two steps back, swivelled onto his left leg, and kicked out — making contact at a point precisely three inches above the lock. The door and jamb buckled, so that the second kick left it hanging from a single hinge.

The room stank of cigarette smoke and a plate of chorizo and beans which was on the small table, untouched. There was an ashtray containing a single match — broken to form a V. Shaw tried to understand what that meant — that Andy Judd had been in the cabin? Maybe.

The First Officer hadn’t moved. He stood on the threshold as if barred by an invisible trip wire.

There was one other door and Shaw pushed it open to reveal a shower room. The air was still heavy with moisture, the mirrors misted. Sitting in the shower, the curtain wrapped round his neck, was a man with a face the colour of a rotten peach, a film of vomit dripping from his chin to his naked chest. No one, Shaw instantly knew, with a face like that, had ever taken another living breath. The rest of the body was blotchy but white, a thin stain of urine running away from the corpse in a spiral towards the plughole.

Shaw’s heartbeat was painful now, and the almost physical shock of seeing a corpse sparked a massive release of adrenaline in his bloodstream. He went back to

‘Is this the captain?’

‘Jesus,’ said Samblant, trying to cover his face. Then he threw up, missing the toilet bowl.

Shaw got hold of the corpse under the armpits. The flesh was still warm. Lifting the body away from the tiled shower wall, he tried to unwrap the plastic curtain which was clinging to it like a second skin. When he’d got the material away from the neck he felt for a pulse. He was appalled that a body could be at once so hot and so dead. The captain had been fifty, maybe more, just the hands and face browned by a lifetime afloat. In the base of the shower there was a tide mark, a thin line of dirt, red and gritty. Shaw ran a finger along it and looked at the smudge, smelt it, worked it between thumb and forefinger. It was red sawdust.

‘Bloodwood,’ he said.

‘Where’s Phillips?’ he said to Samblant, who was sitting against the wall beside a washbasin. A dark saddle in his jeans around his groin showed that he’d wet himself. He still held shaking hands across his face. Shaw pulled the meshed fingers apart, grabbed his chin. ‘Where’s Phillips, the surgeon?’

But there was still enough fear in this man to summon up the nerve for what must have been one last lie. ‘Gone. An hour, two.’

In the corridor they heard footsteps and Twine appeared at the door. He took in the scene. ‘Unit’s here — six officers. Another on the way. Search the ship?’

Twine’s team searched the Rosa in twenty minutes: six decks down to the engine room, eighteen cabins, the forward stores, the galley, the mess room. Nothing. Then they did it again, this time using the plans on each deck to block off each room shown, and with a dog team they’d called in from St James’s. Nothing. The Port Authority got them a skeleton crew for the quayside so they could roll back the last pontoon to reveal the cargo — three separate holds brimful of grain, the surface of each as untouched as a beach at dawn. Then they edged down the side of the deck to the fo’c’s’le and checked that. Again nothing, just cable, anchors, and rope.

Shaw was back in the mess room when Twine reported in. ‘We’re doing it again.’ Shaw laid his hands out on the mess table, aware that stress was making his joints ache. If the operating room wasn’t on board, where was it? They hadn’t actually seen Andy and Neil Judd go aboard — perhaps they’d gone somewhere else, the surgeon too? The containers on the dock? That was possible. Metallic. Hot. But did they rumble and hum? The dockside cranes would make them vibrate. Or the HGVs edging past in first gear.

‘OK, Paul. Rustle up the dock manager — I want all the containers opened on the quayside. Now.’

Twine went, and Shaw was pretty sure he saw Samblant

He rang Birley at the dock gates. ‘Mark? Run the CCTV back to when the Rosa was in port last time — see if you can ID any of the containers on the dockside that night. Then compare that with what we’ve got out there now. OK — do it.’

He looked at the crew. One of them smiled, a fatal error, because you couldn’t fake a smile like that.

‘Stand up,’ said Shaw. They all stood, exchanging glances, and one or two now suppressing smiles. They thought they were safe, and that made Shaw certain they weren’t. Valentine came in with DC Lau.

‘Search them,’ he said. They did a two-hander, shuffling each one forward and then pushing them through to the galley. Nothing.

‘OK — strip off,’ said Shaw. They piled their clothes on the mess table and stood, their faces showing something else now — anger, betrayal, shame perhaps, so that the tension in the room was electric.

Six naked bodies. Six clean naked bodies. ‘Clean as whistles,’ said Valentine. All except for the white charity bracelets on each wrist. But they were clean, and that’s what Shaw had missed, until