When Eight Bells Toll

when Tim Hutchinson came in. He was dressed all in black, trousers, sailor's jersey, mackinaw and seaboots. Beds were deceptive, he'd probably passed the six foot four mark when he was about twelve and had just stopped growing. He glanced at the collection and grinned.

'Who would have thought it?' he said. 'The Guggenheim and Craigmore. Hotbeds of culture, both of them. Don't you think the one with the ear-rings looks indecently overdressed?'

'You must have scoured the great galleries of the world,' I said reverently,

'I'm no connoisseur. Renoir and Matisse are my cup of tea.' It was so unlikely that it had to be true. 'You look like a man in a hurry. Just leave out all the inessentials.'

I left out the inessentials, but not one of the essentials. Unlike MacDonald and Charlotte, Hutchinson got not only the truth but the whole truth.

'Well, if that isn't the most goddamned story any man ever heard. And right under our bloody noses.' It was hard to tell at times whether Hutchinson was Australian or American - I learnt later that he'd spent many years tuna-fishing in Florida. 'So it was you in that chopper this afternoon. Brother, you've had a day and then some. I retract that' sonny boy' crack. One of my more ill-advised comments. What do you want, Calvert?'

So I told him what I wanted, his own personal assistance that night, the loan of his boats and crews for the next twenty-four hours and the use of a radio transmitter immediately. He nodded.

'Count on us. I'll tell the boys. You can start using that transmitter right away.'

'I'd rather go out with you to our boat right away,' I said, 'leave you there and come back in myself to transmit.'

'You lack a mite confidence in your crew, hey?'

'I'm expecting to see the bows of the Firecrest coming through that front door any minute.'

'I can do better than that. I'll roust out a couple of the boys, we'll take the Charmaine — that's the M.F.V. nearest the flensing shed - out to the Firecrest, I'll go aboard, we'll cruise around till you get your message off, then you come aboard the Firecrest while the boys take the Charmaine back again.'

I thought of the maelstrom of white breakers outside the mouth of the alleged harbour. I said: 'It won't be too dangerous to take an M.F.V. out on a night like this?'

'What's wrong with a night like this? It's a fine fresh night. You couldn't ask for better. This is nothing, I've seen the boys take a boat out there, six o'clock in a black December evening, into a full gale.'

'What kind of emergency was that?'

'A serious one, admittedly.' He grinned. 'We'd run out of supplies and the boys wanted to get to Torbay before the pubs shut. Straight up, Calvert.'

I said no more. It was obviously going to be a great comfort to have Hutchinson around with me for the rest of the night. He turned towards the corridor and hesitated: 'Two of the boys are married. I wonder-----'

'There'll be no danger for them. Besides, they'll be well rewarded for their work.'

'Don't spoil it, Calvert.' For a man with such a deep rumbling voice he could make it very soft at times. 'We don't take money for this kind of work.'

'I'm not hiring you,' I said tiredly. I'd quite enough people fighting me already without Tim Hutchinson joining their ranks, 'There's an insurance reward. I have been instructed to offer you half.'

'Ah, now, that's very different indeed. I'll be delighted to relieve the insurance companies of their excess cash at any time. But not half, Calvert, not half. Not for a day's work, not after all you've done. Twenty-five per cent to us, seventy-five per cent to you and your friends.'

'Half is what you get. The other hah' will be used to pay compensation for those who have suffered hardship. There'san old couple on Eilean Oran, for instance, who are going to be wealthy beyond their dreams for the rest of their days.'

'You get nothing?'

'I get my salary, the size of which I'd rather not discuss, as It's a sore point. Civil Servants are not permitted to accept gratuities.'

'You mean to say you get beaten up, shot down, half-drowned and suffered another couple of murder attempts just for a lousy pay cheque? What makes you tick, Calvert? Why the hell do you do it?'

'That's not an original question. I ask myself the same question about twenty times a day, rather more often recently. It's time we were gone.'

'I'll get the boys up. They'll be tickled pink by those gold watches or whatever the insurance boys will be handing over. Engraved, of course. We insist on that,'

'The reward will be in cash, not kind. Depends how much of the stolen goods are recovered. We're pretty sure to recover all the Nantesville's cargo. Chances are that well recover the lot. The award is ten per cent. Yours will be five. The minimum you and your boys will pick up will be four hundred thousand pounds: the maximum will be eight hundred and fifty. Thousand pounds, I mean.'

'Say that in English.' He looked as if the London Post Office Tower had fallen on top of him. So I said it again, and after a time he looked as if only a telegraph pole had fallen on him and said carefully: 'At rates like that, a man might expect a fair bit of co-operation. Say no more. Put right out of your head any thoughts you had of advertising in the Telegraph. Tim Hutchinson is your man.'

And Tim Hutchinson was undoubtedly my man. On a night like that, dark as doomsday, rain sluicing down and a thickening mist making it impossible — for me, at least — to tell the difference between a naturally breaking sea and a wave foaming over a reef, Tim Hutchinson was my man. Cheap at half a million.

He was one of that rare breed, that very rare breed, of naturals to whom the sea is truly home. Twenty years' daily polishing and refining in every conceivable condition a rarely-bestowed gift with which you must be born in the first place and anyone can be like this. Just as the great Grand Prix drivers, the Carraciolas and Nuvolaris and