With a hose, a brush and a mop, he sluiced through the wheel-house and the galley, and if he lifted his head he saw the rest of the town's fleet put to sea in breezy sunshine.
For more than three hours, he was alone on the trawler with memories of a storm blowing off a German island that were alive, and dreams of owning an historic sailboat that were dead.
He locked the wheel-house, hitched his bag on to his shoulder and walked the deck to the point where the old encrusted ladder would take him up on to the quay. He swung his legs over the side and on to a slippery rung, and saw two men above him.
No bullshit, no protestations of innocence… Too exhausted for it, too much of his life hacked from him.
They came down the ladder, gingerly, in their city shoes and suits, and he led them back to the wheelhouse. He made them coffee, but that did not soften the coldness on their faces.
He had no one on board. They could search if they wanted to. He had brought back no passenger.
Harry said, 'You make a mistake in your life, and each day that follows it's harder to extricate yourself from that mistake. My mistake was Ricky Capel. I have no excuses and I look for no sympathy, and the mistake is mine. You want to know about the man with Ricky Capel on the beach, and I'll tell you what you want to know. Billy went out in the dinghy, in a hell of a sea, and part of what I'm saying is from him, but most of it is from what I saw with the light. They were in the water, big swell and surf, and coming slow towards the dinghy. I saw this guy come off the beach, and he ran into the surf, and Ricky Capel and his man never saw him. Ricky was behind. The guy smacked into Ricky Capel and he put him down. They went together, under, then just the guy came up. The man, Ricky's man, turned, would have seen the guy, fired at him. I saw the flashes and I heard the gun, and the guy went down, and I killed the light. The man got on board Billy's dinghy. Billy brought him back to us. I was turning hard. Billy came on board first, and then he had hold of the rope, took it from young Paul, and the man was going to follow him. I left the wheel, left it spinning, and I went on deck, and I got the rope off Billy, and I chucked it. He lifted the gun and I was flat in his sights. He'd have blasted me but it didn't fire, must have been too much water in it, and then there was the gap between him and us… I went back in the wheel-house and took the engine to power. We left him. He had the dinghy, he had an outboard with a full tank, he had the reserve, but he didn't have us. I never saw him again, God's truth, and Billy didn't, nor Paul. We took her back to sea. I can't say what happened to him, but it was foul conditions for an open dinghy. Can't say whether he drowned, made a landfall, whether he survived and is still out there, can't.'
He had been summoned to the heavenly heights of Vauxhall Bridge Cross. He had knocked and there was the answering call for him to enter, but then he was kept standing for those few seconds, while the assistant deputy director studied desk papers, that confirmed celestial authority.
'Ah – sorry, good to see you, Freddie. Your leave went well?'
'Thank you, Gilbert, yes. It was excellent.' Frederick Gaunt was damned if he would show annoyance at the casual insult, or speak of the raging cold he had acquired in a Wiltshire field. 'We had a first-class dig.'
'Glad to hear it. I'll get you up to speed. Your target, Anwar Maghroub is lost, presumed drowned, but there is, sadly, no confirmation of that and no body. To be very frank, Freddie, some have spoken of your role in this, and that of Miss Wilkins, and of the 'hired hand' as adding up to a shambles, the destruction of an operation that should have brought great rewards
– and would have done if that bloody Kitchen, and the reasons for his actions remain a mystery, had not interfered. I, of course, and you would have the right to expect it, have fought your corner with vigour but against considerable opposition. I think we are at a time when we require new brooms and fresh per-spectives, almost a cleaning of Augean stables. You know – washing out the stables of the king of Elis, a labour of Hercules.'
'I am familiar with Greek mythology.'
'Good – different minds bringing different thinking to ongoing problems. We don't want to lose you, Freddie. We'd hate a man of your talents to throw in the towel and make an overhasty decision on early retirement, though the packages on the table are generous to a fault and offer many opportunities for the pursuit of valuable hobbies. We'd hate you to walk away. What's vacant, because of Wilson's diagnosis of diabetes, is Uruguay. It's a bit of a backwater, but that's where we are. What do you say to Montevideo, three years and perhaps an extension to four?'
If he gulped, he did not show it. If he felt a frisson of anger, he hid it.
Gaunt said, 'I'd like that very much.'
They wanted his neck on the block, wanted him gone. He would deny them the satisfaction. He saw the face across the desk flex in the irritation caused by his acceptance.
'I'd say Uruguay for three years, or four, would be most challenging… worthwhile.'
Gulls wheeled, screamed and dived on the bright-coloured intruder that was marooned at the base of the red stone cliffs.
An ornithologist saw it and reported to the coastguard station on the North Sea island of Helgoland that an upturned dinghy had been washed ashore. He was able to return in time to the cliffs and watch men come by cutter and retrieve it, but he was on a day's visit and did not have time to learn what the) had found. He telephoned from the mainland the next morning and heard the dinghy carried the name of a British registered trawler, and heard also that the cliffs and beaches of Helgoland had been searched, but without further result.
'No bodies have come ashore?'
None had been discovered.
'Perhaps it was taken off the deck by that storm last month.'
Perhaps it had been.
He came out of the stairwell and into the summer heat that burned off the block's concrete. A voice boomed behind him, 'How you doing, Mr Johnson? How you keeping?'
He turned, saw the big West Indian with the weightlifter's shoulders.
'Fine, Ivanhoe, just fine.'
'More important than how you're doing, keeping – how's Millie?'
'She's well, as good as to be expected, quite chirpy
… She asks after him.'
He had a handkerchief out and mopped his forehead, saw that sweat ran rivers on the social worker's face.
'She can ask but I doubt she'll see him. A new man, a changed man, and without old baggage. You, Mr Johnson, and me and her, we'd be old baggage, but he came back to the Amersham.'
'Millie heard he was here, not living on the estate but working.'
'I just seen him the once, turned up at my office door and all humble requested a job. I sent him where he wanted to go. They fixed him – a low grade because of no qualifications. I've not seen him since.'
'Where did they place him?'
The arm of Ivanhoe Manners waved expansively, generalized, in the direction of the estate facilities, buildings that had survived the warfare of vandalism, where the money of the New Deal for the Community had been swallowed, where the Pensioners'
Association played bingo and the Tenants' Association held meetings.
'Over there's where he is.'
'You got time to show me?'
A wide frown played on Ivanhoe Manners's forehead, as if the question perplexed him, as if an answer would embarrass him. Then he scratched at his ear, and seemed to wince as if the request hurt him. ..
Tony Johnson knew the basic detail of what had happened, months before, on a German beach, but what had crossed his desk had been sanitized of intelligence material. He knew the proof of it because, with half a hundred others from the Criminal Intelligence Service and the Crime Squad and the Organized Crime Unit, he had gone down to Lewisham to see the coffin of Ricky Capel – the untouchable smart kid put down in the earth. Not a wet eye to be seen; a parson clamouring through the service like he'd another one backed up; poor turnout and almost a carnival mood from those who'd showed. He was just home from holiday, two weeks on the Algarve, and Millie had told him that Malachy was back – ears like bloody surveillance antennae the lady possessed. He had come, almost, to wish he hadn't asked.
'I'll take you, but it's not for talking – just watching.'
'That'll do me.'
They went across a plaza, through a play area and across a road. The building where the facilities were, Tony
