weedy hull and pulled on the waders, buckling the straps to his belt. His shoes he left neatly beside the boat like slippers under a bed.
Then he dared to look ahead. Of course there were more boats there. He shouldn’t have panicked. Of course he’d find
He looked back, sensing the outline of the houses and the position of the picture window. He still seemed to be on course. Two other boats lay one each side of him, but their outlines were wrong; one was a motor launch, the other a huge dinghy. But there was something else ahead.
This boat was shifting and swaying as it felt the tug of the tide. The keel was still grounded at the front, but the boat’s stern twitched.
Graham flashed his torch, again to be disappointed.
But there was another shape just beyond that moved more regularly, responding to the ripples of the sea and the drag of its mooring chain. Graham’s eyes strained to prise apart the darkness, but he couldn’t be sure.
He moved forward slowly. Each raised footstep made a sucking sound as it left the mud. He stepped into the water till it tickled at the wader’s ankles.
Then he flashed the torch.
The boat was definitely afloat, only some two metres away from him. Graham looked at his watch. 1.54. He wished he had understood the Tide Table better and knew whether the water was still receding or had started to rise.
But he couldn’t worry about that. Having got so close, he would complete the job. In ten minutes he reckoned he could be on his way back. He stepped forward.
He was surprised by the power of the current that dragged at his legs, but he managed to keep his balance. He was also surprised by how quickly the ground shelved. And by how much further away the boat was than it had at first appeared.
He concentrated hard on the placement of his feet. He tried shuffling, but the mud was too sticky, so he had to risk the lift of each foot and subsequent moment of imbalance. His pullover felt suffocatingly hot; sweat dribbled down his sides to the top of his trousers.
At last he had one hand on the side of the boat and felt the stippled effect of its non-slip surface under his fingers. It was then he remembered that he had not brought his rubber gloves.
But nothing was going to stop him now. He threw the torch into the boat, hearing it clatter on the wooden boards within, then moved round to the stern, where the vessel was lowest in the water. The top of the transom was at chest height, the water level round his knees, though it splashed higher.
The first attempt to heave himself up failed. His body slipped back, raising a spout of spray between the hull and his chest. He felt the shock of the water’s coldness and tasted salt on his tongue. Damp trickled over the top of his waders.
The second attempt succeeded. He jerked the weight of his body over the transom and, in an ungainly scramble of flailing legs, slid down into the well of the boat.
Swivelling his body round, he lay on his back, with his feet still over the side. He was about to bring them in, when he was halted by a caution. Muddy footsteps all over the clean fibreglass and bottom-boards were not the kind of signature he wanted to leave on the job. He unbuckled the straps from his belt and slid his legs out with some difficulty. He left the waders flat with their feet dangling over the transom.
When he stood up, the boat’s movement brought immediate queasiness. In his state of hypertension, nausea seemed dangerously close. That really would do it, to leave a neat little pool of vomit as a calling-card. He forced control on himself and reached under the damp pullover to the key in the breast pocket of his shirt.
God, if it didn’t fit, after all this. . He tottered forward to the cabin hatch and felt for the padlock with his right hand. His left hand trembled so much that he couldn’t guide the key into its socket. He dropped it and had to scrabble through the bottom-boards by torchlight. He was careful to switch off the torch before the beam rose above the side of the boat. Eliminate risk.
Imposing calmness, he approached the padlock again. The key slid into its aperture and clicked home. He turned it. Another click, and the padlock sprang open.
Graham felt a deep peace. It would be all right. It was all going to work, after all.
He pushed back the sliding hatch at the top, gently, then lifted out the vertical wooden section. With a surge of comfort, he realised that his memory of how the opening worked had been accurate.
Now he felt relaxed. Steady against the rocking boat, he turned back for the torch and then stepped down into the cabin.
The tiny windows were curtained, so he felt safe to use the torch. Keeping its beam low, he made a quick survey of the cramped space. Forward, the recess with its four bunks was illuminated. He drew across the thick curtain which separated this from the tiny galley area. The torch beam passed across the folding table, nylon sail bags and the two hot-plates fixed over the curtained space where the Calor Gas cylinder was stored.
He directed the torch to the hatch above his head. It was as he had remembered. The fibreglass top slid back and forth on wooden rails.
It was perfect.
He slid the hatch backwards and forwards experimentally. Then, with all the time in the world, he selected one of his strips of sandpaper and glued it along the underside edge of the hatch, just above the rail. He closed the hatch and marked a point on the rail a couple of inches in front of the sandpaper.
Pushing the hatch forward again, he got out his gimlet and, from above, drilled a neat hole in the rail where he had marked it. He slid the hatch back to check the alignment. It was right.
He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out the box of Swan Vestas matches.
As he felt it a new, cold horror struck him. The cardboard was damp and soft to the touch. He snatched it open and struck a match against the side of the box. Nothing. Maybe it was just the abrasive surface that was wet. He tried a match against one of his own dry pieces of sandpaper. Nothing. He tried another, and another, and another.
‘Fuck it! Fuck it!’ he screamed in childlike frustration. He dropped the matches, and sank to the floor of the galley, weeping.
It was a look at his watch that finally brought him to his senses. 2.17. He must either sort something out or get away quickly. If Robert Benham arrived next morning for a day’s sailing and found his office rival in
Robert Benham. Robert Benham was of course hyperefficient. He was the sort of man who would ensure that his boat contained all requisite stores.
Graham straightened out of his crumpled heap of self-pity and moved across to the gas rings.
Good old Robert. There, tucked behind the blue metal frame lay not one, but two boxes of Swan Vestas matches. One match on its own wobbled sideways in the hole he had drilled. Two stayed, but didn’t feel very secure. Three, however, jammed in, tight and unshifting.
He moved the hatch back gingerly, but the matches stood too proud. He took them out and cut them down to the right length. The matchheads almost touched the underside of the hatch. They would definitely touch the sandpaper as it was pushed over them.
He couldn’t resist one practice go. He moved the hatch to its closed position, very slowly, so that the sandpaper just caressed the red matchheads.
Then, with only average force, he opened the hatch. There was a little rasp and a flame flared.
It worked.
He closed the hatch hastily and the action put out the flame. When inspected, the fibreglass showed a slight discoloration behind the sandpaper, but the flash had been too brief to deform its shape.
Graham took out the three spent matches and, almost as if he were blessing them, cut three new ones to length and set them in place.
Shining the torch on the floor, he meticulously picked up all his spilled, damp matches and put them in his pocket.
Then, covering his hand with a tea-towel that lay neatly beside the stove, he turned the switches of both hot-plates on, low. Reaching through the curtain beneath, he found the domed stopcock of the Calor Gas cylinder. One way it would not turn.
